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43-496: The zoo is rated as the seventh best zoo in the world by Forbes Travel Guide in 2007, and is rated as the fifth best in the world by TripAdvisor . The zoo has contributed significantly to saving Przewalski's horse ; for many years, it was the leading breeder of the subspecies. The zoo director is Miroslav Bobek . The idea for a zoological garden in Prague was first proposed in 1881 in a newspaper article by Count Sweerts-Spork, on

86-509: A big cat pavilion in 1991. In 2001 the first artificial breeding of a Przewalski's Horse in the world took place at the zoo. In 2002 Prague suffered the worst floods in its history. A large part of the zoo was flooded and 134 animals died, including an elephant, a lion, a gorilla, and four hippopotamuses. A brown fur seal named Gaston swam the Vltava and Elbe rivers to Dresdon Germany , where Gaston died of exhaustion or injury. Gaston

129-478: A "worthless" movie. Roger Ebert occasionally gave zero stars to films he deemed "artistically inept and morally repugnant." Scheuer's guide calls "one and a half star" films "poor", and "one star" films "bad". Not all film critics have approved of star ratings. Film scholar Robin Wood wondered if Sight and Sound readers accepted "such blackening of their characters." Jay Scott of Canada's The Globe and Mail

172-529: A game or stage's difficulty (such as in the SNES version of Street Fighter II and its updates), or to rate the attributes of a selectable character or, in sports games , a team. Restaurant guides and reviewers often use stars in restaurant ratings . The Michelin system reserves star for exceptional restaurants, and gives up to three; the vast majority of recommended restaurants have no star at all. Other guides now use up to four or five stars, with one-star being

215-469: A licensing agreement with Forbes Media, and renamed the Star Awards and guidebook series, Forbes Travel Guide. Forbes Travel Guide's new online home, ForbesTravelGuide.com, was launched in 2011, which marked the last year of publication of the traditional printed guidebook series. In 2019, Forbes Travel Guide formed an exclusive partnership with Jet Linx Aviation, becoming the guide's first partner in

258-457: A mob of overworked employees so pitifully huddled together in an ill-ventilated factory as are the Asterisks in this Sweatshop of Twaddle." Literary editor Katrina Kenison dismisses O'Brien's grading systems as "excessive at best, fussy and arbitrary at worst." Book reviewers generally do not use a star-rating system though there are exceptions. The West Coast Review of Books rates books on

301-412: A purely mathematical basis, 2 1/2 stars would be the dividing line between good and bad on a 0–5 scale. Common Sense Media uses a scale of one to five, where 3 stars are "Just fine; solid" and anything lower is "Disappointing" at best. There is no agreement on what the lowest rating should be. Some critics make "one star" or a "half-star" their lowest rating. Dave Kehr believes that "one star" indicates

344-422: A ranking date to Mariana Starke 's 1820 guidebook, which used exclamation points to indicate works of art of special value: ...I have endeavored... to furnish Travellers with correct lists of the objects best worth notice...; at the same time marking, with one or more exclamation points (according to their merit), those works which are deemed peculiarly excellent. Murray's Handbooks for Travellers and then

387-572: A rating. Star ratings are also given out at stand-up comedy performances and theatre productions. Star ratings are given at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe , the largest arts festival in the world. Since 2010, the British Comedy Guide has collected over 4,300 reviews of around 1,110 different acts, across 83 different publications in the form of a star rating. The use of star ratings is controversial because

430-555: A scale of one ("poor") to five ("superior") stars. According to editor D. David Dreis, readers love the ratings but publishers don't. In the 31 July 1928 issue of the New York Daily News , the newspaper's film critic Irene Thirer began grading movies on a scale of zero to three stars. Three stars meant 'excellent,' two 'good,' and one star meant 'mediocre.' And no stars at all 'means the picture's right bad,'" wrote Thirer. Carl Bialik speculates that this may have been

473-488: A star rating to rank the safety of transportation. EuroRAP have developed a Road Protection Score which is a scale for Star Rating roads for how well they protect the user from death or disabling injury when a crash occurs. The assessment evaluates the safety that is 'built into' the road through its design, in combination with the way traffic is managed on it. The RPS protocol has also been adapted and used by AusRAP, usRAP and iRAP. Euro NCAP awards 'star ratings' based on

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516-466: A star rating, with a bullet reserved for movies that the magazine didn't like." The highest rating any film earned was five stars. The British film magazine Sight and Sound also rated films on a scale of one to four stars. Some critics use a "half-star" option in between basic star ratings. Leonard Maltin goes one further and gives Naked Gun 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 : The Final Insult a 2 + 1 ⁄ 3 star rating. Critics do not agree on what

559-434: A type of rating scale using a star glyph or similar typographical symbol . It is used by reviewers for ranking things such as films, TV shows, restaurants, and hotels. For example, a system of one to five stars is commonly used in hotel ratings , with five stars being the highest rating. Similar systems have been proposed for electing politicians in the form of score voting and STAR voting . Repeated symbols used for

602-756: Is a star rating service and online travel guide for hotels, restaurants and spas. In 2011, Forbes Travel Guide published its last set of guidebooks and, on November 15, 2011, launched its new online home, ForbesTravelGuide.com, which covers numerous international destinations, including Hong Kong, Macau, Beijing, Singapore, Shanghai, Mexico, the Caribbean, Latin America, Japan, Thailand and London. ForbesTravelGuide.com combines Forbes Travel Guide's Five-Star travel ratings system with insights and perspectives from Forbes Travel Guide's own inspectors. Founded by Mobil and Simon & Schuster in 1958, Forbes Travel Guide

645-485: Is the oldest travel guide in the United States. Ratings are given by anonymous, paid staff members in stars (Five-Star, Four-Star or Recommended ratings), based on objective criteria. A Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star rating is a considerable honor, with only 323 hotels, 102 spas and 74 restaurants receiving the top honor in 2022. The ratings serve as a certification mark , in that Mobil had registered trademarks for

688-501: The Baedeker Guides (starting in 1844) borrowed this system, using stars instead of exclamation points, first for points of interest and later for hotels. The Michelin restaurant guide introduced a star as a restaurant rating in 1926, which was expanded to a system of one to three stars in 1931. In 1915, Edward O'Brien began editing The Best American Short Stories . This annual compiled O'Brien's personal selection of

731-651: The "death doughnut". Roger Ebert used a thumbs-down symbol. Other critics use a black dot . Critics also do not agree on what the lower ratings signify, let alone the lowest rating. While Maltin's and Scheuer's guides respectively explain that lowest rated films are "BOMB(s)" and "abysmal", British film critic Leslie Halliwell instead writes that no star "indicates a totally routine production or worse; such films may be watchable but are at least equally missable." Like Halliwell and Dave Kehr, film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum believes one-star films have some merit, however unlike Halliwell, Rosenbaum believes that no stars indicate

774-759: The West were introduced. Guides covering the Middle Atlantic States and the Northwestern states were introduced in 1962. In 1965, a guide for the Southeastern States was introduced, although only one state covered by this volume, Tennessee, had any Mobil service stations. Five-star restaurants in the United States: Later, the number of volumes was expanded, as regions covered by the guide shrank. For instance, California

817-444: The cutoff is for a recommendation, even when they use the same scale. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert "both consider[ed] a three-star rating to be the cutoff for a "thumbs up" on their scales of zero to four stars. Film critic Dave Kehr —who also uses a 0–4 star scale—believes "two stars is a borderline recommendation". On a five-star scale, regardless of the bottom rating, 3 stars is often the lowest positive rating, though judging on

860-450: The facilities provided. Some consider this disadvantageous to smaller hotels whose quality of accommodation could fall into one class but the lack of an item such as an elevator would prevent it from reaching a higher categorization. In recent years hotel rating systems have also been criticized by some who argue that the rating criteria for such systems are overly complex and difficult for laymen to understand. It has been suggested that

903-421: The film has redeeming facets, and instead uses zero stars as his lowest rating. Examples of rating scales: Critics have different ways of denoting the lowest rating when this is a "zero". Some such as Peter Travers display empty stars. Jonathan Rosenbaum and Dave Kehr use a round black dot. Leslie Halliwell uses a blank space. The Globe and Mail uses a "0", or as their former film critic dubbed it,

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946-459: The first artificially bred Andean condor in the world was hatched and reared, and the first artificially bred polar bear , a female named Ilun, followed in 1942. In 1959 Dr. Zdeněk Veselovský was appointed as director of the zoo. Under his leadership, the zoo achieved some world-class successes in the area of breeding and scientific research. In 1971 a new pavilion opened for large mammals, including elephants , hippos and rhinos , followed by

989-472: The first time a film critic used a star-rating system to grade movies. "The one-star review of The Port of Missing Girls launched the star system, which the newspaper promised would be 'a permanent thing.' According to film scholar Gerald Peary , few newspapers adopted this practice until the French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma "started polling critics in the 1950s and boiling their judgment down to

1032-574: The international star ratings program for hotels and spas with the release of the inaugural Forbes Travel Guide Beijing and Forbes Travel Guide Hong Kong and Macau. Published in print by ExxonMobil Travel Publications, until 2011, the guide was published online by HowStuffWorks.com . In October 2009, ExxonMobil licensed the brand to the Five Star Ratings Corporation, which is owned by internet entrepreneur and WebMD founder Jeff Arnold. Five Star Travel Corporation entered into

1075-499: The lack of a unified global system for rating hotels may also undermine the usability of such schemes. In the UK, providers and comparison websites often use stars to indicate how feature-rich financial products are. The most senior military ranks in all services are classified by a star system in many countries, ranging from one-star rank which typically corresponds to brigadier , brigadier general , Commodore or air commodore , to

1118-443: The lowest rating. The stars are sometimes replaced by symbols such as a fork or spoon. Some guides use separate scales for food, service, ambiance, and even noise level. The Michelin system remains the best known star system. A single star denotes "a very good restaurant in its category", two stars "excellent cooking, worth a detour", and three stars, "exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey". Michelin stars are awarded only for

1161-582: The most senior five-star ranks , which include Admiral of the Fleet , Grand Admiral , Field Marshal , General of the Army and Marshal of the Air Force —some five-star ranks only exist during large-scale conflicts. Recruits entering American college football are commonly ranked on a five-star scale, with five representing what scouts think will be the best college players. International organisations use

1204-639: The number of predicted stars. The Unicode Standard encodes several characters used for star ratings in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows block: The STAR WITH LEFT HALF BLACK and LEFT HALF BLACK STAR are intended for use in left-to-right contexts where the half star is positioned to the right of one or more whole stars, whereas the STAR WITH RIGHT HALF BLACK and RIGHT HALF BLACK STAR are intended for use in right-to-left contexts (such as Arabic or Hebrew ) where

1247-492: The occasion of the marriage of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and Princess Stéphanie of Belgium . In 1919, at a meeting of the advisory board for mathematics and natural sciences at the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment, a committee was established to start the preparatory work on the establishment of the zoo. The zoo was opened to the public on 28 September 1931 by the founding director Jiří Janda . In 1938,

1290-729: The performance of vehicles in crash tests, including front, side and pole impacts, and impacts with pedestrians. The United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also uses a star ranking to rank the safety of vehicles in crash tests, including front, side, pole impacts, and rollovers, with 5 stars being the most secure. Some web content voting systems use five-star grades. This allows users to distinguish content more precisely than with binary " like buttons ". Many recommender systems , such as MovieLens or Amazon.com , ask people to express preferences using star ratings, then predict what other items those people are likely to enjoy. Predictions are often expressed in terms of

1333-591: The phrases and designs indicating each star rating level, and allowed only rated establishments to display them. Initially, guides were regional and limited to the United States and Canada. The first, issued in 1958, covered five states in the Southwest and South Central United States. In 1960, this guide was revised and volumes covering the Northeastern States, the Great Lakes, and California and

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1376-508: The player to repeat and fully master previously beaten levels in order to receive a perfect 3-star rating, which may confer other benefits or bonus content. Another use of star ratings is to denote the rarity of characters in video games where players are tasked in collecting numerous characters, such as Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes and Marvel: Contest of Champions , in which stronger and rarer characters are marked with more stars to make them appear more valuable. Stars are also used to rank

1419-542: The previous year's best short stories. O'Brien claimed to read as many as 8,000 stories a year, and his editions contained lengthy tabulations of stories and magazines, ranked on a scale of zero to three stars, representing O'Brien's notion of their "literary permanence." He further listed stories with a ranking of three stars "in a special 'Roll of Honor.'" In this list, O'Brien attached an additional asterisk to those stories that he personally enjoyed. Oliver Herford 's essay Say it with Asterisks , quips "Never, I think, were

1462-556: The private aviation industry. The Mobil Travel Guide Star Ratings provided ratings and reviews of hotels, restaurants and spas on a scale of one star (average to good) to five stars (one of the best in the country) starting in 1958. Forbes Travel Guide has continued the Five-Star ratings with ratings categories of Five-Star, Four-Star and Recommended, and has a team of inspectors who anonymously evaluate properties against proprietary standards. Star rating Star ratings are

1505-433: The public may ignore the reviews and concentrate more the star ratings alone. Star ratings are not often used to rate the quality of a video game but are rather used within certain games for varying purposes. One notable use of the star system is to grade a player's performance in completing a level with up to three stars, used in many modern multi-level games like Angry Birds . This three-star rating system challenges

1548-510: The quality of food and wine; the luxury level of the restaurant is rated separately, using a scale of one ("quite comfortable") to five ("luxury in the traditional style") crossed fork and spoon symbols. Hotel luxury is often denoted by stars. Other classifiers, such as the AAA Five Diamond Award , use diamonds instead of stars to express hotel rating levels. Hotels are assessed in traditional systems and rest heavily on

1591-557: The three unique zoos in the world, which have a breeding pair of Lesser Antillean iguana . In 2023, the Zoo saw the first birth of a Chinese Pangolin in captivity. The pangolin was born in February and weighed in at 135 grams. The birth gives hope that the creature can be rescued from its current status on the endangered species list. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Travel Guide (formerly known as Mobil Guide or Mobil Travel Guide )

1634-459: The wild as part of Return of the Wild Horses reintroduction and in situ conservation project. In 2012 the zoo saw its highest number of babies born, numbering 1,557 from 211 species, including the world's first breeding of the crowned river turtle and the rufous-cheeked laughingthrush , as well as Prague Zoo's first breeding of the red panda . In 2013 a large new Elephant Valley pavilion

1677-456: Was an opponent of using symbols to summarize a review and wrote in 1992 that "When Globe editors first proposed the four-star system of rating movies about a year ago, the response from Globe critics was, to put it mildly, underwhelming." More recently, Mark Kermode has expressed a dislike of star ratings (assigned to his online reviews but not his print or radio reviews) on the grounds that his verdicts are sometimes too complex to be expressed as

1720-602: Was covered by two volumes, one for the north and one for the south. City guides also followed. By 1975 Rand McNally began publishing the Mobil Travel Guides. In 1988, Simon & Schuster's Prentice Hall division acquired the travel books division of Rand McNally. Fodor's , a division of Random House , began publishing the guides in 1995. In 2001, Mobil Travel Guide was spun off as a separate company, with ExxonMobil and publisher Publications International as an investor. In 2008, Forbes Travel Guide launched

1763-638: Was followed in 2007 by the first breeding of a Komodo dragon in Prague Zoo. In 2009 a new exhibition for brown fur seals was opened, with an enlarged swimming pool and a grandstand. The following year saw a Texas tortoise bred in Europe for the first time. In 2011 Moja, a western gorilla famous from the multimedia project The Revealed , was moved to Cabarceno Natural Park in Spain. Four Przewalski's horses were transported to Mongolia to be released into

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1806-458: Was introduced and the first elephant was born in Prague Zoo, named Sita. The zoo was flooded in June the same year for a second time, but most animals were evacuated in time. In 2014, a pavilion was opened for 33 critically endangered Chinese giant salamanders , including three adults. The collection features the largest of such salamanders in Europe. After 13 years of waiting, the zoo is among

1849-465: Was memorialized with a statue in the Prague Zoo. However, thanks to a big wave of solidarity and donations, Prague Zoo greatly flourished in the next decade. The 'Indonesian Jungle' pavilion was opened in 2004 and, at the time, was the largest and most expensive animal pavilion in the country. That same year, the first Western lowland gorilla in the Czech Republic was born and named Moja. This

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