Weapon

A weapon, arm, or armament is any device used with intent to inflict damage or harm to living beings, structures, or systems. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy and efficiency of activities such as crime, law enforcement, self-defense, and warfare. In a broader context, weapons may be construed to include anything used to gain a strategic, material or mental advantage over an adversary.

While just about any ordinary objects such as sticks, stones, cars, or pencils can be used as weapons, many are expressly designed for the purpose – ranging from simple implements such as clubs, swords and guns, and to complicated modern intercontinental ballistic missiles, biological and cyberweapons.

History

Prehistoric

The use of objects as weapons has been observed among chimpanzees, leading to speculation that early hominids first began to use weapons as early as five million years ago. However, this can not be confirmed using physical evidence because wooden clubs, spears, and unshaped stones would not have left an unambiguous record. The earliest unambiguous weapons to be found are the Schöninger Speere: eight wooden throwing spears dated as being more than 300,000 years old. At the site of Nataruk in Turkana, Kenya, numerous human skeletons dating to 10,000 years ago have major traumatic injuries to the head, neck, ribs, knees and hands, including obsidian projectiles still embedded in the bones, that would have been caused by arrows and clubs in the context of conflict between two hunter-gatherer groups.

Character design of Final Fantasy

Although each installment of the Final Fantasy series is generally set in a different fictional world with separate storylines, there are several commonalities when it comes to character design, as certain design themes repeat themselves, as well as specific character names and classes. Within the main series, Yoshitaka Amano was the character designer for Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI, Tetsuya Nomura was the character designer for Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIII, Yoshitaka Amano created and did the concept art for the characters while Toshiyuki Itahana was the final character designer for Final Fantasy IX, and Akihiko Yoshida was the character designer for Final Fantasy XII.

Visual character design

The series has often featured male characters with slightly effeminate characteristics, as well as female characters with slightly tomboyish, but still feminine, characteristics. This trend has generally increased as the series evolved. These characters are usually teenagers, which some critics have interpreted as an effort on the part of the designers to ensure the players identify with them. At the same time, some female characters have been increasingly designed to wear very revealing outfits. Square Enix has stated that a more rugged looking hero had been considered for Final Fantasy XII but had ultimately been scrapped in favor of Vaan, another effeminate protagonist. The developers cited scenaristic reasons and target demographic considerations to explain their choice. For Final Fantasy XIII, Square Enix settled on a female main character, described as a "female version of Cloud from FFVII." This aspect of Final Fantasy can also be seen in Sora, the protagonist of Kingdom Hearts, a crossover series featuring Final Fantasy and Disney characters.

Weapons (album)

Weapons is the fifth and final studio album by the Welsh alternative rock band Lostprophets, released through Epic on 2 April 2012. It's the first and only record featuring Luke Johnson on drums, after being with two other drummers previously, Mike Chiplin and Ilan Rubin (the latter of whom features in archive recordings included on the "deluxe edition" of Weapons, as well as the hidden track "Weapon" on all versions of the album).

Just like their third studio album it features Latin on the front, which reads deus velox nex. When translated it reads Gods swift violent death. This has been confirmed by guitarist, Mike Lewis.

Writing and recording history

The band started writing new material after finishing The Betrayed Tour. The album is produced by Ken Andrews at Hollywood. Several songs were debuted before it official release date. "Bring Em' Down" was played live in the warm up shows for the 2011 V Festival, and was aired as the first single from Weapons on Zane Lowe's Hottest Record on 6 February 2012. "We Bring an Arsenal" made its debut on 25 February 2012. The song "Better Off Dead" received its first radio play by BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe as his "Hottest Record in the World". As of 6 January 2012 it was made available for download from the band's official website.

Raise

Raise may refer to:

See also

Raise!

Raise! is the eleventh studio album by Earth, Wind & Fire, produced by the band's leader Maurice White for Kalimba Productions, and released in 1981 on CBS Records. Raise! has been certified platinum in the US by the RIAA for sales of over a million copies and gold in the UK and Canada by the British Phonographic Industry and Music Canada respectively.

Raise! was the bestselling R&B album of 1982. The album featured the #1 R&B and # 3 Pop hit "Let's Groove". The single "Wanna Be With You" won EWF a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance By A Duo Or Group. Raise also marked the return to the band of rhythm guitarist Roland Bautista, last heard from on 1972's Last Days and Time.

Raise! would be the final EWF album to be released on ARC. The label would be discontinued by Columbia Records the following year.

Critical reception

Ken Tucker of Rolling Stone describes Raise! as a reflection of "street-gritty black pop" and that on "Let's Groove" and the fast, cutting "Lady Sun", the horn section screams like a car running a red light". Music critic Robert Christgau says that on the album, he felt "a show of strength was due".

Raise (Lake District)

Raise is a fell in the English Lake District. It stands on the main spine of the Helvellyn range in the Eastern Fells, between Thirlmere and Ullswater.

Topography

The Helvellyn range runs broadly north-south for about 7 miles (11 km), remaining above 2,000 ft (600 m) throughout its length. Raise is near the centre of this ridge, with Stybarrow Dodd to the north and White Side to the south. As with many of these fells, Raise displays smooth grassy slopes on the west and rougher ground to the east. Here however the contrast is much less marked than further south around Helvellyn and Nethermost Pike.

Unusually for such a high fell, the slopes of Raise do not have a toehold at valley level on either side. In the west the boundary streams of Sticks Gill (West) and Brund Gill meet just below White Side's Brown Crag. As Fisherplace Gill they descend a further thousand feet to the valley, and originally turned north to join St John's Beck. All of this changed as part of the Thirlmere reservoir scheme in 1894, when a water race was constructed to carry most of the water into the lake. To the east the fell is also squeezed out at height by its neighbours, failing to reach the shore of Ullswater. Raise has a short eastern ridge, Stang, descending between Sticks Gill (East) and Glenridding Beck, but these streams combine above the site of the old Greenside Mine to leave Sheffield Pike and Birkhouse Moor overlooking Glenridding.

Yasmin (disambiguation)

Yasmin is a common female given name.

Yasmin may also refer to:

Film and television

See also