Granite (Stifter)

Granite (original German title: Granit) is a novella by Adalbert Stifter, included in his collection Colourful Stones, 1853 (original title: Bunte Steine). On a walk, the grandfather of the protagonist tells him the story of a family of resin extractors' vain endeavour to escape and the rescue of two children. It is the revised edition of the novella Die Pechbrenner, published in 1848.

The Story

The narrator remembers an event from his childhood, in Bohemian Horní Planá: cart grease was smeared by a passing resin extractor onto his legs. After entering the living room in this way, dirtying the recently mopped floor, he was scolded by his mother. In order to console him, his grandfather took the child for a walk to a neighbouring village, and, on the way, told him a legendary story, which he himself had been told by his own grandfather. A resin extractor wanted to escape the oncoming plague and fled into the deep woods. However, this did not help, and his family died; only the resin extractor’s young son survived. The boy met a little girl who had lost her way, and, under his guidance, they both found their way out of the wood. Some years later, when the youth had become a young man, he sought the girl from that episode and it emerged that she was the Lady of the Castle. He followed her and achieved prosperity and esteem. This is the story of the grandfather.

Granite

Granite /ˈɡrænᵻt/ is a common type of felsic intrusive igneous rock that is granular and phaneritic in texture. Granites can be predominantly white, pink, or gray in color, depending on their mineralogy. The word "granite" comes from the Latin granum, a grain, in reference to the coarse-grained structure of such a holocrystalline rock. By definition, granite is an igneous rock with at least 20% quartz and up to 65% alkali feldspar by volume.

The term "granitic" means granite-like and is applied to granite and a group of intrusive igneous rocks with similar textures and slight variations in composition and origin. These rocks mainly consist of feldspar, quartz, mica, and amphibole minerals, which form an interlocking, somewhat equigranular matrix of feldspar and quartz with scattered darker biotite mica and amphibole (often hornblende) peppering the lighter color minerals. Occasionally some individual crystals (phenocrysts) are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic texture is known as a granite porphyry. Granitoid is a general, descriptive field term for lighter-colored, coarse-grained igneous rocks. Petrographic examination is required for identification of specific types of granitoids.

NRAM plc

NRAM plc (previously Northern Rock (Asset Management) plc) is a British asset holding and management company which was split away from the Northern Rock bank in 2010. It is currently under public ownership, due to the bank's nationalisation in 2008. The company continues to service a residential mortgage book of approximately £50 billion.

NRAM comprises the bad debts of the former Northern Rock bank and is described as the "bad bank". The remainder, Northern Rock plc, was designated the "good bank", and in 2012 was bought by Virgin Money. Since nationalisation, the assets of NRAM have been sold off in parts, most recently with the sale of £13 billion of mortgages and loans to Cerberus Capital Management in November 2015.

History

Northern Rock (Asset Management) plc was renamed from Northern Rock plc on 31 December 2009, and the following day the banking assets were split off into a new company called Northern Rock plc. Therefore the current legal entity which exists as Northern Rock (Asset Management) company is in fact the company of the Northern Rock Building Society (founded 1965) which turned into a bank in 1997.

Granite (song)

"Granite" is the first single from Australian drum and bass band Pendulum's second studio album In Silico. It was released through Warner Music UK, and through the band's new Ear Storm imprint with Warner Music Group. The song entered the UK Singles Chart on 11 November 2007, peaking at number 29 on 2 December. The single is supposedly inspired by the likes of video game boss battles, including the theme of various battles against the Mario series' Bowser; it directly samples the beginning of the music from the castle stages in Super Mario World. Q Magazine named it 24th in the 50 top records of December 2007. When played in reverse, the main melody changes into the melody used in the end of the song, and vice versa. The song is featured in Need for Speed Undercover.

Music video

The music video is centred on the theme of ufology and aliens visiting Earth. The video features "amateur" video footage of various UFO sightings over cities and famous landmarks and monuments, as well as simulated news footage. Some of the UFOs resemble Pendulum's logo on their "In Silico" album and were later seen again in the music video for their other single "The Other Side". Locations include: Rome, Italy; Brussels, Belgium; Barcelona, Spain; Mexico City, Mexico; Paris, France; and London, England. In the last few images of the video a ghostly silhouette of an alien can be seen from an upstairs window.