Stigma (Mind Assault album)

Stigma is the first full-length album by the South African metal band Mind Assault. Stigma was released in February 2008. The album has received largely positive reviews.

The creation of “Stigma”

The members of Mind Assault have had the opportunity to gain a stronger sense of themselves since the beginning of 2007. It was at this juncture, when the line-up was fully completed and all of those elements which the founding members had sought out were finally in place, that the band thought it feasible to think about an album.

It took some time, and a fair amount of argument to decide on which songs to include, and why. At the end of the day, “Stigma” is not so much an album as it is a compilation intended to showcase the abilities and spectrum of the band. The purpose of this creation was twofold:

1) Over the years of tireless performing, there has grown a public demand for good quality recorded material from Mind Assault.

2) If Mind Assault were ever going to achieve greater things than were possible in Southern Africa, then the band would require a “showcase” of sorts to exhibit themselves to prospective overseas interest.

Stigma (letter)

Stigma (ϛ) is a ligature of the Greek letters sigma (Σ) and tau (Τ), which was used in writing Greek between the Middle Ages and the 19th century. It is also used as a numeral symbol for the number 6. In this unrelated function, it is a continuation of the old letter digamma (originally Ϝ, cursive form ), which had served as a numeral since antiquity and was conflated with the σ-τ ligature in the minuscule handwriting of the Middle Ages.

History and use

The στ ligature (, ) was one of many ligature forms that came into widespread use as part of the minuscule writing style of Greek from the 9th and 10th centuries onwards. It is based on the lunate form (Ϲ) of the letter sigma.

With many other ligatures, it was used to print Greek during the early-modern era. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, the use of ligatures in print gradually diminished. The στ ligature was among the last to go, around the middle of the 19th century.

The name, stigma (στίγμα), is originally a common Greek noun meaning "a mark, dot, puncture", or generally "a sign", from the verb στίζω ("to puncture"); the related but distinct word stigme (στιγμή) is the classical and post-classical word for "geometric point; punctuation mark".Stigma was co-opted as a name specifically for the στ sign, evidently because of the acrophonic value of its initial st- as well as the analogy with the name of sigma.

Stigma (wrestler)

Stigma (stylized as STIGMA) is an American professional wrestler, best known for his work in the Chikara professional wrestling promotion, where he is a former Young Lions Cup Champion and King of Trios winner. He was previously known as Shane Storm and has also wrestled for other independent promotions such as Combat Zone Wrestling, Full Impact Pro and Independent Wrestling Association Mid-South.

Professional wrestling career

Stigma received his initial training from Chikara founder Mike Quackenbush at the Chikara Wrestle Factory, where he was trained on the fourth term of the school. He was later also trained by Chris Hero and Jorge "Skayde" Rivera, who joined the school in the following terms.

Chikara

Men@Work (2004–2005)

On March 20, 2004, he made his Chikara debut as a tecnico (good guy) named Shane Storm, wearing a clown mask with either a red, yellow or blue mullet and the gimmick of a traffic regulator, teaming with Private Eye in a tag team match, where they defeated Darkness Crabtree and Phantasmo. At the following show on April 9 Storm scored a major upset by defeating Young Lions Cup Champion Hallowicked in a non-title match to earn his spot in the second Young Lions Cup tournament. Storm entered the tournament on July 10 by defeating Ash, but was eliminated the following day in the quarterfinals, when Larry Sweeney pinned him and grabbed a hold of his tights for leverage. After the tournament Storm formed the tag team Men@Work with Mister Zero and together the two took part in Chikara's feud with Sweeney's stable Sweet 'n' Sour International. The feud culminated on October 30 in the first ever torneo cibernetico match, where Chikara defeated Sweeney's stable.

Uniregistry

Uniregistry is a Cayman Islands-based domain name registry that administers the generic top-level domains .audio, .auto, .blackfriday, .car, .cars, .christmas, .click, .diet, .flowers, .game, .gift, .guitars, .help, .hiphop, .hiv, .hosting, .juegos, .link, .lol, .mom, .photo, .pics, .property, .sexy, and .tattoo. In February 2012, the related company Uniregistrar Corporation became an ICANN-accredited registrar and launched under the licensed Uniregistry brand name in 2014.

History

Uniregistry Corporation was officially founded in 2012 by Frank Schilling, one of the largest private domain name portfolio owners in the world, and registered in the Cayman Islands. However, the domain Uniregistry.com was registered six years earlier and the company filed an intent to use the name in the Cayman Islands in 2010. Trademark applications for the "Uniregistry" mark and its stylized "U" logo were filed in 2012. That year, Schilling invested $60 million and applied for 54 new top-level domains. Uniregistrar Corporation became an ICANN-accredited registrar in February 2013. In January 2014, Uniregistry Inc. became a subsidiary in Newport Beach, California to house a West Coast service and support team. The registrar began operating under the licensed Uniregistry brand name in 2014. Uniregistry's registry infrastructure was designed by Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) and Uniregistry subsequently purchased its infrastructure in 2013.

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Magnoliophyta, also called angiosperms). The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs. Flowers may facilitate outcrossing (fusion of sperm and eggs from different individuals in a population) or allow selfing (fusion of sperm and egg from the same flower). Some flowers produce diaspores without fertilization (parthenocarpy). Flowers contain sporangia and are the site where gametophytes develop. Flowers give rise to fruit and seeds. Many flowers have evolved to be attractive to animals, so as to cause them to be vectors for the transfer of pollen.

In addition to facilitating the reproduction of flowering plants, flowers have long been admired and used by humans to beautify their environment, and also as objects of romance, ritual, religion, medicine and as a source of food.

Icehouse (band)

Icehouse is an Australian rock band, formed as Flowers in 1977 in Sydney. Initially known in Australia for their pub rock style, they later achieved mainstream success playing new wave and synthpop music and attained Top 10 singles chart success in both Europe and the U.S. The mainstay of both Flowers and Icehouse has been Iva Davies (singer-songwriter, record producer, guitar, bass, keyboards, oboe) supplying additional musicians as required. The name Icehouse, which was adopted in 1981, comes from an old, cold flat Davies lived in and the strange building across the road populated by itinerant people.

Davies and Icehouse extended the use of synthesizers particularly the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 ("Love in Motion", 1981), Linn drum machine ("Hey Little Girl", 1982) and Fairlight CMI (Razorback trailer, 1983) in Australian popular music. Their best known singles on the Australian charts were "Great Southern Land", "Hey Little Girl", "Crazy", "Electric Blue" and "My Obsession"; with Top Three albums being Icehouse (1980, as Flowers), Primitive Man (1982) and Man of Colours (1987).