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.

Electron

The electron is a subatomic particle, symbol e− or β−, with a negative elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no known components or substructure. The electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton.Quantum mechanical properties of the electron include an intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of a half-integer value in units of ħ, which means that it is a fermion. Being fermions, no two electrons can occupy the same quantum state, in accordance with the Pauli exclusion principle. Like all matter, electrons have properties of both particles and waves, and so can collide with other particles and can be diffracted like light. The wave properties of electrons are easier to observe with experiments than those of other particles like neutrons and protons because electrons have a lower mass and hence a higher De Broglie wavelength for typical energies.

Electron (bird)

Electron is a genus of the motmots, a family of Neotropical near passerine birds. The genus has two species:

Both inhabit humid evergreen tropical forest. Both occur in Central America, and the broad-billed motmot occurs in a large region of South America as well.

They are distinguished from other motmots by their much wider bills. The rackets on their tails are less dramatic than those of many other motmot species and may be absent. The species are very similar except in adult plumage (but the adult keel-billed resembles the juvenile broad-billed). A mixed pair apparently courting has been observed (Howell and Webb 1995).

The name Electron is a Latinization of the Ancient Greek word for amber, and can mean "bright" in scientific names (Jaeger 1978). The name was given 46 years before an elementary particle was named electron.

References

Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab Ltd. is an American aerospace company headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It has a subsidiary office headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. It is developing the 'Electron' rocket for high-frequency rocket launches with low mass payload to Earth orbit.

History

Rocket Lab was founded as a New Zealand firm. As of mid-2014, media sources continued to refer to Rocket Lab as a New Zealand company.

Former Crown Research scientist Peter Beck is its founder, CEO and Technical Director. Internet entrepreneur Mark Rocket was the seed investor and co-Director from 2007 to 2011.

In December 2010 Rocket Lab was awarded a US contract from the Operationally Responsive Space Office (ORS) to study a low cost space launcher to place nanosatellites into orbit.

Funding has been obtained from Bessemer Venture Partners, Callaghan Innovation, in 2014, and from Khosla Ventures in 2013.

In February 2015, Rocket Lab USA was evaluating Cape Canaveral Air Force Station as a possible launch site.