Red Wedge

Red Wedge was a collective of musicians who attempted to engage young people with politics in general, and the policies of the Labour Party in particular, during the period leading up to the 1987 general election, in the hope of ousting the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher.

History

Fronted by Billy Bragg (whose 1985 Jobs for Youth tour had been a prototype of sorts for Red Wedge), Paul Weller and The Communards lead singer Jimmy Somerville, they put on concert parties and appeared in the media, adding their support to the Labour Party campaign.

The group was launched on 21 November 1985, with Bragg, Weller, Strawberry Switchblade and Kirsty MacColl invited to a reception at the Palace of Westminster hosted by Labour MP Robin Cook. The collective took its name from a 1919 poster by Russian constructivist artist El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge. Despite this echo of the Russian Civil War, Red Wedge was not a communist organisation; neither was it officially part of the Labour Party, but it did initially have office space at Labour's headquarters. The group's logo, also inspired by the Lissitzky poster, was designed by Neville Brody.

Wedge prism

The wedge prism is a prism with a shallow angle between its input and output surfaces. This angle is usually 3 degrees or less. Refraction at the surfaces causes the prism to deflect light by a fixed angle. When viewing a scene through such a prism, objects will appear to be offset by an amount that varies with their distance from the prism.

Deflection angle

For a wedge prism in air, rays of light passing through the prism are deflected by the angle δ, which is approximately given by

where n is the index of refraction of the prism material, and α is the angle between the prism's surfaces.

Applications

The term "optical wedge" refers to any shallow angle between two plane surfaces of a window. This wedge may range from a few millionths of a degree of perfect parallelism to as much as three degrees of angle. Even though high-precision optics, such as optical flats, may be lapped and polished to extremely high levels of parallelism, nearly all optics with parallel faces have some slight wedge. This margin of error is usually listed in minutes or seconds of arc. Windows manufactured with an intentional wedge are often referred to as wedge prisms, and typically come with wedge angles of one, two, or three degrees. Many applications exist for wedge prisms, including laser-beam steering, rangefinding and variable focusing.

Wedge (mechanical device)

A wedge is a triangular shaped tool, and is a portable inclined plane, and one of the six classical simple machines.It is thick at one end and thin at the other end. It can be used to separate two objects or portions of an object, lift up an object, or hold an object in place. It functions by converting a force applied to its blunt end into forces perpendicular (normal) to its inclined surfaces. The mechanical advantage of a wedge is given by the ratio of the length of its slope to its width. Although a short wedge with a wide angle may do a job faster, it requires more force than a long wedge with a narrow angle.

History

Perhaps the first example of a wedge is the hand axe, also see biface and Olorgesailie. Wedges have been around for thousands of years, they were first made of simple stone. A hand axe is made by chipping stone, generally flint, to form a bifacial edge, or wedge. A wedge is a simple machine that transforms lateral force and movement of the tool into a transverse splitting force and movement of the workpiece. The available power is limited by the effort of the person using the tool, but because power is the product of force and movement, the wedge amplifies the force by reducing the movement. This amplification, or mechanical advantage is the ratio of the input speed to output speed. For a wedge this is given by 1/tanα, where α is the tip angle. The faces of a wedge are modeled as straight lines to form a sliding or prismatic joint.

Wedge (golf)

In the sport of golf, a wedge is a subset of the iron family of golf clubs designed for special use situations. As a class, wedges have the highest lofts, the shortest shafts, and the heaviest clubheads of the irons. These features generally aid the player in making accurate short-distance "lob" shots, to get the ball onto the green or out of a hazard or other tricky spot. In addition, wedges are designed with modified soles that aid the player in moving the clubhead through soft lies, such as sand, mud, and thick grass, to extract a ball that is embedded or even buried. Wedges come in a variety of configurations, and are generally grouped into four categories; pitching wedges, sand wedges, gap/approach wedges and lob wedges.

History

The class of wedges grew out of the need for a better club for playing soft lies and short shots. Prior to the 1930s, the best club for short "approach" shots was the "niblick", roughly equivalent to today's 9-iron or pitching wedge in loft; however the design of this club, with a flat, angled face and virtually no "sole", made it difficult to use in sand and other soft lies as it was prone to dig into soft turf. The club most often used for bunker shots was called the "jigger"; it was used similarly to today's pitching wedge, and had a similar short shaft, but its loft was closer to the "mashie" of the day (equivalent to today's 4-iron). The lower loft prevented the club "digging in" to soft lies, but the low launch angle and relatively high resistance to the club moving through the sand to "dig out" a buried ball made recovery from a bunker with this club very difficult. The club was also not ideal for approach shots from a bunker near the green, as a chip shot made with this club tended to roll for most of its distance.

Product Red

Product Red, styled as (PRODUCT)^RED, is a licensed brand that seeks to engage the private sector in raising awareness and funds to help eliminate HIV/AIDS in Africa. It is licensed to partner companies including Nike, American Express (UK), Apple Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, Starbucks, Converse, Electronic Arts, Head, Bugaboo, Penguin Classics (UK & International), Gap, Armani, Hallmark (US), SAP and Beats Electronics (Beats by Dr. Dre). The concept was founded in 2006 by U2 frontman and activist, Bono, together with Bobby Shriver of the ONE/DATA. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a recipient of (RED) money.

As part of a new business model, each partner company creates a product with the Product Red logo. In return for the opportunity to increase revenue through the Product Red license, a 50 percent of the profit gained by each partner is donated to the Global Fund. As Product Red is a private company, a portion of the contributions received from the partner brands is assigned as profit. Such an amalgamation of humanitarian aid and for-profit businesses is one example of "ethical consumerism."

Red (audio drama)

Red is a Big Finish Productions audio drama based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who.

Plot

The citizens of the Needle are all chipped to prevent them from committing violence. When the Seventh Doctor and Mel arrive, they arouse interest as the only people able to cause harm…

Cast

External links

Reviews

Red (Taylor Swift song)

"Red" is a song recorded by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift for her fourth studio album of the same name (2012). It was released on October 2, 2012, in the US by Big Machine Records as the second promotional single from Red in 2012 and serves as the album's fifth single on June 21, 2013. It was part of the tracks released during the four weeks preceding the release of the album. Musically, "Red" is a country song, and its lyrics uses colors and metaphors to describe an intense and tumultuous relationship.

The track received polarizing reviews from music critics, who praised its lyrics, but were ambivalent towards its composition. The song debuted at number six on the US Billboard 100 and at number one on the Hot Digital Songs chart. It also debuted at number two on the Hot Country Songs chart, behind Swift's previous single "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together".

Background

Swift previewed the track on the October 1, 2012 episode of ABC's Good Morning America. The song finds Swift playing with the idea of colors in relation to her emotions about a relationship. Before playing the track, Swift explained its meaning: "I wrote this song about the fact that some things are just hard to forget," she said, "because the emotions involved with them were so intense and, to me, intense emotion is red." Swift explained that she decided to name this song as her album title, as its lyrics encompass the entire theme of the project. "Thinking about what that means to me and all the different emotions that are written about on this album – they're all pretty much about the sexy, crazy, insane, intense, semi-toxic relationships that I've experienced in the last two years," I noted. "All those emotions – spanning from intense love, intense frustration, jealousy, confusion – in my mind, all those emotions are red. There's nothing in between; there is nothing beige about any of those feelings."