Coil was an English cross-genre, experimental music group formed in 1982 by John Balance—later credited as "Jhonn Balance"—and his life partner and collaborator Peter Christopherson, aka "Sleazy". The duo worked together on a series of releases before Balance chose the name Coil, which he claimed to be inspired by the omnipresence of the coil's shape in nature. Today, Coil remains one of the most influential and best-known industrial music groups.
The group's first official release as Coil was a 1984 12" album titled How to Destroy Angels released on the Belgian Les Disques du Crépuscule's sublabel LAYLAH Antirecords. Following the 12"s success, Some Bizarre Records produced two albums, Scatology, Horse Rotorvator and Coil departed SomeBizzare Label and Produced Love's Secret Domain, which met with little commercial success, but were praised as innovative due to their blend of industrial music and acid house.
In 1985, the group began working on a series of soundtracks, amongst them music for the first Hellraiser movie based on the novel The Hellbound Heart by their acquaintance at that time, Clive Barker. The group's first live performance in 16 years occurred in 1999, and began a series of mini-tours that would last until 2004. Following the death of John Balance on 13 November 2004, Christopherson announced via their official record label website Threshold House that Coil as an entity had ceased to exist.
An electromagnetic coil is an electrical conductor such as a wire in the shape of a coil, spiral or helix. Electromagnetic coils are used in electrical engineering, in applications where electric currents interact with magnetic fields, in devices such as inductors, electromagnets, transformers, and sensor coils. Either an electric current is passed through the wire of the coil to generate a magnetic field, or conversely an external time-varying magnetic field through the interior of the coil generates an EMF (voltage) in the conductor.
A current through any conductor creates a circular magnetic field around the conductor due to Ampere's law. The advantage of using the coil shape is that it increases the strength of magnetic field produced by a given current. The magnetic fields generated by the separate turns of wire all pass through the center of the coil and add (superpose) to produce a strong field there. The more turns of wire, the stronger the field produced. Conversely, a changing external magnetic flux induces a voltage in a conductor such as a wire, due to Faraday's law of induction. The induced voltage can be increased by winding the wire into a coil, because the field lines intersect the circuit multiple times.
The coil hieroglyph is used in the Ancient Egyptian language hieroglyphs as an equivalent for the Quail chick (hieroglyph), but is also used in other word constructions, probably for the balance of the hieroglyph composition block. The coil as well as the quail chick are used for the alphabetic vowel letter w, (or u). Because 'w' is not a "vowel", the use is often in the form of 'woo' for the w, and 'oo' for the u.
The following two tables show the Egyptian uniliteral signs. (24 letters, but multiple use hieroglyphs)
External wall relief; (foot and leg hieroglyphs)
External wall relief; (foot and leg hieroglyphs)
Column relief
Column relief
An elf (plural: elves) is a type of supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore. Reconstructing the early concept of an elf depends almost entirely on texts in Old English or relating to Norse mythology. Later evidence for elves appears in diverse sources such as medical texts, prayers, ballads, and folktales.
Recent scholars have emphasised, in the words of Ármann Jakobsson, that
However, some generalisations are possible. In medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, elves seem generally to have been thought of as a group of beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty, ambivalent towards everyday people and capable of either helping or hindering them. However, the precise character of beliefs in elves across the Germanic-speaking world has varied considerably across time, space, and different cultures. In Old Norse mythological texts, elves seem at least at times to be counted among the pagan gods; in medieval German texts they seem more consistently monstrous and harmful.
An elf, in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, is a humanoid race, one of the primary races available for player character. Elves are renowned for their grace and mastery of magic and weapons such as the sword and bow. Becoming physically mature by the age of 25 and emotionally mature at around 125, they are also famously long-lived, capable of living more than half a millennium and remaining physically youthful. Possessed of innate beauty and easy gracefulness, they are viewed as both wondrous and haughty by other races; however, their natural detachment is seen by some as introversion or xenophobia.
There are numerous different subraces and subcultures of elves, including aquatic elves, dark elves (drow), deep elves (rockseer), grey elves, high elves, moon elves, snow elves, sun elves, valley elves, wild elves (grugach), wood elves and winged elves (avariel). The offspring of humans and elves are known as "half-elves" among humans, and as "half-humans" among elves. In 4th edition, the eladrin are high elves.
Fairies, in the fantasy series Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer, are fictional beings, usually shorter than a human, who possess magic properties. The average height of a fairy is exactly 1 metre, one centimetre. All the fairies have retreated below the Earth to escape the destructiveness of the human race. Their underground civilization is centered on the capital city of Haven. Fairies are vernacularly known as the People, and live a life according to the Book of the People. There are 8 recognized families of fairies- Elves, Dwarves, Pixies, Gnomes, Gremlins, Goblins, Sprites and Demons. However, the centaurs have been mentioned several times, as with trolls, and the centaurs' cousins, the unicorns, were killed off, yet they are not recognized.
In Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony, it is said that 10,000 years ago, there were eight families (or species) of fairies. It is possible that Centaurs and Trolls used to live not underground but above ground, and were recruited by the fairies for the war against the Mud People (the term used by fairies to address humans). This would explain the links between many animals these two species have, and would explain why they don't have magic. Centaurs are also cousins of unicorns, so they couldn't be in the fairy family without the unicorns. The fairies, however, are mostly humanoid. Warlocks are also part of the fairy world. They are extremely magical fairies that originate under unknown circumstances.