Icon

An icon (from Greek εἰκών eikōn "image") is typically a painting depicting Christ, Mary, saints and/or angels, which is venerated among Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and in certain Catholic Churches.

Icons may also be cast in metal, carved in stone, embroidered on cloth, painted on wood, done in mosaic or fresco work, printed on paper or metal, etc. Icons are often illuminated with a candle or jar of oil with a wick. (Beeswax for candles and olive oil for oil lamps are preferred because they burn very cleanly, although other materials are sometimes used.) The illumination of religious images with lamps or candles is an ancient practice pre-dating Christianity.

Although common in translated works from Greek or Russian, in English iconography does not mean icon painting, and "iconographer" does not mean an artist of icons, which are painted or carved, not "written", as they are in those languages.

Comparable images from Western Christianity are generally not described as "icons", although "iconic" may be used to describe a static style of devotional image.

Icon (Vince Gill album)

Icon is a greatest hits album by American country musician Vince Gill. It was released on August 31, 2010 by MCA Nashville, and contains select highlight songs from his career.

Track listing

Critical reception

Stephen Thomas Erlewine, in his review for Allmusic, says the album is "a very good sampler of Vince Gill's biggest hits for MCA Nashville".

Chart performance

References

Icon (Ice Cube album)

Track listing

Man (Francis Dunnery album)

Man is an album from British musician Francis Dunnery, released in 2001. It saw Francis experimenting with new sounds, most notably programmed drum beats - a departure from what had been the norm in his studio work up to this point. Vocalist/keyboardist Erin Moran (of A Girl Called Eddy) features heavily on the album.

Track listing

References

Mandø

Mandø is one of the Danish Wadden Sea islands off the southwest coast of Jutland, Denmark in the Wadden Sea, part of the North Sea. The island covers an area of 7.63 km² and has 62 inhabitants. The island is situated approximately 12 kilometers southwest of the ancient town of Ribe.

Mandø is barely accessible at high tide over an unpaved surface level causeway of about four kilometers in length that connects the island to the mainland. Extensive mudflats and tidal marshes encircle the island and provide breeding areas to multitudes of birds and other organisms. In the past centuries a large earthen dike has been constructed around the perimeter of the island, although substantially set back from the shoreline. This artifice has allowed conventional farming in the form of grain growing and sheep grazing. Mandø is technically a hallig, although it is far from the ten German islands commonly described by that term. The name was formerly often spelled Manø.

Logistics of access

Conventional motor vehicles can access Mandø Island via a causeway unpaved roadway, although this route is compromised in storms at high tide. The nearest village on the mainland which is the gateway to Mandø Island is Vester Vedsted. This simple causeway road is no more than copious gravel laid down on an immense mudflat, with required frequent periodic maintenance of added gravels. Alternatively many visitors reach the island by way of a specially designed tractor pulled bus with greatly oversized tires. This vehicle is capable of traversing some of the firmer mudflats, but only at the lowest tides. In any case private vehicles or the "Mandø bus" leave the mainland at the point of the Wadden Sea Centre, which offers nature information and boasts a small museum devoted to the natural history of Mandø. Mandø is located midway between the two larger islands Fanø and Rømø which are connected to the mainland by a ferry and a road running across a causeway, respectively.

Oman

Coordinates: 21°N 57°E / 21°N 57°E / 21; 57

Oman (ⁱ/oʊˈmɑːn/ oh-MAAN; Arabic: عمان‎ ʻUmān pronounced [ˈuːmaːn]), officially the Sultanate of Oman (Arabic: سلطنة عُمان‎ Salṭanat ʻUmān), is an Arab country in the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Holding a strategically important position at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, the nation is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the west, and Yemen to the southwest, and shares marine borders with Iran and Pakistan. The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea on the southeast and the Gulf of Oman on the northeast. The Madha and Musandam exclaves are surrounded by the UAE on their land borders, with the Strait of Hormuz (which it shares with Iran) and Gulf of Oman forming Musandam's coastal boundaries.

From the late 17th century, the Omani Sultanate was a powerful empire, vying with Portugal and Britain for influence in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. At its peak in the 19th century, Omani influence or control extended across the Strait of Hormuz to modern-day Iran and Pakistan, and as far south as Zanzibar (today part of Tanzania, also former capital). As its power declined in the 20th century, the sultanate came under the influence of the United Kingdom. Historically, Muscat was the principal trading port of the Persian Gulf region. Muscat was also among the most important trading ports of the Indian Ocean. Oman's official religion is Islam.

Lightning

Lightning is a sudden electrostatic discharge during an electrical storm between electrically charged regions of a cloud (called intra-cloud lightning or IC), between that cloud and another cloud (CC lightning), or between a cloud and the ground (CG lightning). The charged regions in the atmosphere temporarily equalize themselves through this discharge referred to as a strike if it hits an object on the ground. Although lightning is always accompanied by the sound of thunder, distant lightning may be seen but be too far away for the thunder to be heard. A lightning strike forms a visible plasma.

General considerations

On Earth, the lightning frequency is approximately 40–50 times a second or nearly 1.4 billion flashes per year and the average duration is 0.2 seconds made up from a number of much shorter flashes (strokes) of around 30 microseconds.

Many factors affect the frequency, distribution, strength and physical properties of a "typical" lightning flash in a particular region of the world. These factors include ground elevation, latitude, prevailing wind currents, relative humidity, proximity to warm and cold bodies of water, etc. To a certain degree, the ratio between IC, CC and CG lightning may also vary by season in middle latitudes. Because human beings are terrestrial and most of their possessions are on the Earth, where lightning can damage or destroy them, CG lightning is the most studied and best understood of the three types, even though IC and CC are more common types of lightning. Lightning's relative unpredictability limits a complete explanation of how or why it occurs, even after hundreds of years of scientific investigation.