Postcards (band)

Postcards is an alternative Lebanese indie folk band. The band was formed in Lebanon in 2012, and takes its name from the band Beirut's album Postcards from Italy. Incidentally, Postcards supported Beirut during their performance at the Byblos International Festival in 2014.

History

The band was formed in 2012 in Lebanon when Marwan and Pascal (who are cousins) met Julia. They started jamming, playing covers and writing original material, and eventually were joined by Rany. So far the band has released one EP, Lakehouse, which was described by one reviewer as "down-to-earth, gentle, yet packed with energy".

Within a year of forming, they had opened for international acts such as Swedish indie rock band The Royal Concept and American indie folk giants Beirut. Besides touring extensively in Lebanon, they have also performed regularly in the UK, including Wilderness Festival.

The band is managed by Beirut Jam Sessions, pioneers of the alternative music scene in the country.

Discography

Postcards (Cindy Morgan album)

Postcards is the eighth album from Contemporary Christian music singer Cindy Morgan, her first for Reunion Records and her first with producer Kirkpatrick.

Track listing

All songs written by Morgan, except where noted.

Postcards (novel)

Postcards is E. Annie Proulx's 1992 novel about the life and travels of Loyal Blood across the American West. The critically acclaimed predecessor to Proulx's award-winning The Shipping News, it cuts between stories of Loyal's travels and the stories of his family, to whom he sends irregular postcards about his life and experiences. Loyal never leaves a return address, so is unable to hear back from his family and therefore misses all the news from home, including the death of his father and mother, the sale of the family farm and the marriage of his sister to a virtual stranger.

The novel's ambiguous content provides a more personal view of America in the 20th Century, dealing with themes of war, industrialization, conservation and The American Dream. It also provides a glimpse into the way a family unit is slowly destroyed due to this arrival of a new age. Fate is one of the chief themes that the novel holds to, and the idea that no matter how hard one works for a better life, fate will never let you.

Operation Sigma Sigma

The Sigma is an experimental glider developed in Britain from 1966 by a team led by Nicholas Goodhart. After disappointing performance during flight testing the Sigma was passed on to a Canadian group which carried out modifications, making the Sigma more competitive.

Design and development

Designed to compete in the 1970 World Championships, the team aimed to develop a wing that would climb well through a high lift coefficient and a large wing area, but equally had the "maximum possible reduction of area for cruise at low lift coefficients". At the same time for the minimum possible drag they aimed for "extensive" laminar flow. To achieve this they employed flaps that would alter both wing area and wing camber. Based on analysis of the nature of thermals encountered in cross-country flying, they reasoned that by having a slow turning circle, their sailplane could stay close to the central (and strongest) part of the thermal and gain maximum benefit.

Its unusual feature is its ability to vary its wing area using Fowler flaps. It had been tried before by the Hannover Akaflieg in 1938 with their AFH-4, the South African Beatty-Johl BJ-2 Assegai and the SZD Zefir gliders.

Sigma (cosmology)

Sigma in cosmology was a property of galaxies used when trying to work out the mystery of galaxies and their supermassive black holes.

History

In the late 1990s the NUKER experts had made observations with a spectroscope of two galaxies, one of an active galaxy with an active galactic nucleus called NGC10-68 and a dormant galaxy next door to us named Andromeda.

The observations are shown. The light from the centre in Andromeda galaxy was distorted proving the existence of super-massive black holes.

Other observations proved most galaxies had a similar centre whether it be active or dormant.

They then realised that the black holes must have something to do with a galaxy's formation, so they turned to something they thought was useless: the speed of the stars around the edge of the galaxy. This was Sigma, the speed of the stars at the edge of the galaxy supposedly unaffected by the mass of the black hole at the centre.

Usage In Cosmology

The NUKER team calculated the sigma of several stars in different galaxies and the mass of the black hole at the (nucleus) centre. They expected no correlation what so ever. But when plotting their results on a Scatter diagram and drawing a line of best fit they ended up with a positive correlation. It appeared that the heavier the black hole at the centre was the faster the stars within the galaxy travelled.

Sigma (duo)

Sigma is an English drum and bass duo consisting of Cameron Edwards and Joe Lenzie. They met at Leeds University at drum and bass nights. Their 2010 collaboration with DJ Fresh, "Lassitude", peaked at number 98 on the UK Singles Chart. Their single "Nobody to Love" topped the UK Singles Chart, becoming their first UK number one. Follow-up single "Changing", featuring Paloma Faith, also got to number one.

Career

Formation

Lenzie and Edwards met in 2006 at Leeds University; Cameron was working in local record store Tribe Records and with Echo Location's Obi running local night Event Horizon, while Lenzie was DJing hip-hop and warming up Event Horizon for such acts as Rahzel and Grandmaster Flash. Once they had finished in Leeds, they relocated to London and became a three-piece with Edwards' school friend Ben Mauerhoff, being signed under DJ Fresh's Breakbeat Kaos. After a while, long distances took their toll – Edwards and Mauerhoff were based in Surrey, whereas Lenzie was based in Harpenden, Hertfordshire and they couldn't get three people into the Harpenden studio – and Mauerhoff left. In December 2008 they formed their own record label, Life Recordings (so called because, according to Lenzie, the industry demanded that it be their life). Its inaugural release was a VIP mix of their early Bingo Beats single "El Presidente".