Alien (law)

In law, an alien is a person who resides within the borders of a country and is not a national of that country, though definitions and terminology differs to some degree.

Etymology

The term "alien" is derived from the Latin alienus, meaning stranger, foreign.

Categories

Different countries use varying terms for "aliens" including:

Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

The "Alien" (also referred to as a "Xenomorph") is a fictional endoparasitoid extraterrestrial arthropodal species that is the eponymous antagonist of the Alien film series. The species made its debut in the film Alien (1979), and reappeared in the sequels Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), and Alien: Resurrection (1997), as well as the crossover franchise Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007). A similar creature of a slightly different design also briefly appears in the Ridley Scott film Prometheus (2012). In addition, the Alien appears in various literature and video game spin-offs from the franchises.

Unlike many other extraterrestrial races in science fiction, the Aliens lack a technological civilization and are predatory creatures with no higher goals than the propagation of their species and the ultimate destruction of lifeforms that could pose a threat to them. Like wasps or termites, Aliens are eusocial, with a single fertile queen breeding a caste of warriors. The Aliens' biological life cycle involves traumatic implantation of endoparasitoid larvae inside living hosts; these larvae erupt from the host's chest or intestines after a short incubation period, rapidly mature from juvenile into adulthood, and seek out more hosts for implantation.

Alien (franchise)

Alien is a science-fiction horror film franchise centered on a film series that depicts Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her battles with an extraterrestrial lifeform, commonly referred to as "the Alien".

Produced by 20th Century Fox, the series began with Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott. It was followed by three sequels, released in 1986, 1992 and 1997. A planned prequel series directed by Scott is in development, beginning with the 2012 release of Prometheus.

The series has led to numerous books, comics and video game spin-offs. Related to the franchise is the two-part Alien vs. Predator series, which combines the continuities of Aliens with the Predators from the Predator film series.

Background

After completion of the film Dark Star (1974), writer Dan O'Bannon thought to develop some of the ideas (especially the theme of "alien hunts crew through a spaceship") and create a science-fiction horror film. Provisionally called Memory, screenwriter Ronald Shusett collaborated with O'Bannon on the project, adding elements from a previous O'Bannon script, Gremlins, which featured gremlins causing mayhem aboard a World War II bomber and wreaking havoc with the crew. The duo finished the script, initially entitled Star Beast, which was later changed to Alien after O'Bannon noticed the number of times the word "alien" occurred in the script. Their script was sold to Brandywine Productions, a company formed by producers Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill that had a distribution deal with 20th Century Fox. The writers imagined a low-budget film, but the success of Star Wars inclined 20th Century Fox to invest millions on the production.

Erasure

Erasure (/ᵻˈreɪʒər/) are an English synthpop duo, consisting of singer and songwriter Andy Bell and songwriter and keyboardist Vince Clarke. They formed in London, and entered the music scene in 1985 with their debut single "Who Needs Love Like That". Following the release of their fourth single "Sometimes", the duo established itself on the UK Singles Chart and became one of the most successful artists of the late 1980s to mid-1990s.

From 1986 to 2007, Erasure achieved 24 consecutive Top 40 hits in the UK, while having three Top 20 hits in the US (on the Billboard Hot 100): "A Little Respect", "Chains of Love", and "Always". By 2009, 34 of their 45 singles and EPs (of which 8 out of the 45 were not chart eligible in the UK) had made the UK Top 40, with 17 climbing into the Top 10. At the 1989 Brit Awards, Erasure won the Brit Award for Best British Group.

The duo are most popular in their native UK and mainland Europe (especially Germany, Denmark and Sweden) and also in South America (especially Argentina, Chile and Peru). To date, they have sold over 25 million albums worldwide. The band is also popular within the LGBT community, for whom openly gay Bell has become a gay icon.

Erasure (artform)

Erasure is a form of found poetry or found art created by erasing words from an existing text in prose or verse and framing the result on the page as a poem. The results can be allowed to stand in situ or they can be arranged into lines and/or stanzas. Erasure is a way to give an existing piece of writing a new set of meanings, questions, or suggestions. It lessens the trace of authorship but requires purposeful decision making. What does one want done to the original text? Does a gesture celebrate, denigrate, subvert, or efface the source completely? One can erase intuitively by focusing on musical and thematic elements or systematically by following a specific process regardless of the outcome.

Here is a nonce example using text from the November 2003 version of the English Wikipedia Main Page:

Several contemporary writer/artists have adopted this form to achieve a range of cognitive or symbolic effects.

Examples

Doris Cross appears to have been among the earliest to utilize this technique, beginning in 1965 with her "Dictionary Columns" book art. d.a. levy also worked in this mode at about the same time.

Erasure (logic)

In mathematical logic, a logical system has the erasure property if and only if no subset of the propositions can be added to another subset of the propositions to refute a consequence.

For instance, if proposition A means "the store is open from 8:00 to 22:00" and proposition B means "except Tuesdays", the system AB does not have erasure.

See also