A ritual "is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and performed according to set sequence." Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized by formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance, sacral symbolism, and performance.
Rituals are a feature of all known human societies. They include not only the worship rites and sacraments of organized religions and cults, but also rites of passage, atonement and purification rites, oaths of allegiance, dedication ceremonies, coronations and presidential inaugurations, marriages and funerals, school "rush" traditions and graduations, club meetings, sporting events, Halloween parties, veterans parades, Christmas shopping and more. Many activities that are ostensibly performed for concrete purposes, such as jury trials, execution of criminals, and scientific symposia, are loaded with purely symbolic actions prescribed by regulations or tradition, and thus partly ritualistic in nature. Even common actions like hand-shaking and saying hello may be termed rituals.
Ritual is the first album by the Brazilian heavy metal band Shaman. It was first released in 2002, and it is a concept album, about many cultures, mainly indigenous cultures and shamanism. The album sold over 500,000 copies worldwide since its release.
All lyrics by Andre Matos.
This is a list of fictional concepts in Artemis Fowl, a novel series by Eoin Colfer.
A high-tech, fairy-manufactured guided missile, also known as a "bio-bomb" or a "blue-rinse" because of its blue colour. Once detonated, it employs the radioactive energy source Solinium 2 (an element not yet discovered by humans), destroying all living tissue in the area while leaving landscape and buildings untouched. It was used on Fowl Manor in Artemis Fowl, and, later, in Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception, Opal Koboi manufactures a larger missile-guided bio-bomb and a compact bio-bomb with a plasma screen that can only be blocked by the rigid polymer of a LEP helmet.
The Book of the People is the Fairy bible, known by the fairies themselves simply as the Book. It is written in Gnommish, the fairy language. As it contains the history of the People and their life teachings, Artemis Fowl manages to secure a copy from an alcoholic fairy in Ho Chi Minh City and use it to kidnap Holly Short, and to decode Gnommish. The first few lines are included in the first book.
A sink (also sinker, washbowl, hand basin and wash basin) is a bowl-shaped plumbing fixture used for washing hands, dishwashing, and other purposes. Sinks have taps (faucets) that supply hot and cold water and may include a spray feature to be used for faster rinsing. They also include a drain to remove used water; this drain may itself include a strainer and/or shut-off device and an overflow-prevention device. Sinks may also have an integrated soap dispenser.
When a sink becomes stopped-up or clogged, a person will often resort to use a chemical drain cleaner or a plunger, though most professional plumbers will remove the clog with a drain auger (often called a "plumber's snake").
The washstand was a bathroom sink made in the United States in the late 18th century. The washstands were small tables on which were placed a pitcher and a deep bowl, following the English tradition. Sometimes the table had a hole where the large bowl rested, which led to the making of dry sinks. From about 1820 to 1900 the dry sink evolved by the addition of a wooden cabinet with a trough built on the top, lined with zinc or lead. This is where the bowls or buckets for water were kept. Splashboards were sometimes added to the back wall, as well as shelves and drawers, the more elaborate designs usually placed in the kitchen.
Mediterranean Sink during the Messinian Event
Red Sea when blocked by the Perim volcano
Africa: Afar Depression
USA: Carson Sink
USA: Humboldt Sink
USA: Quinn River Sink
USA: Salton Sink
A geographic sink is a depression within an endorheic basin where water collects with no visible outlet. Instead of discharging, the collected water is lost due to evaporation and/or penetration (water sinking underground, e.g., to become groundwater in an aquifer). If the sink has karstic terrain, water will sink at a higher rate than the surface evaporation, and conversely if the lakebed or sink bed has a layer of soil that is largely impervious to water (hardpan), evaporation will predominate. Since dry lakes in sinks with hardpan have little penetration, they require more severe aridity/heat to eliminate collected water at a comparable rate as for a similar sink with appreciable penetration.
Depending on losses, precipitation, and inflow (e.g., a spring, a tributary, or flooding); the temporal result of a lake in a sink may be a persistent lake, an intermittent lake, a playa lake (temporarily covered with water), or an ephemeral lake.
In mathematics, and more specifically in graph theory, a directed graph (or digraph) is a graph, or set of vertices connected by edges, where the edges have a direction associated with them. In formal terms, a directed graph is an ordered pair G = (V, A) (sometimes G = (V, E)) where
It differs from an ordinary or undirected graph, in that the latter is defined in terms of unordered pairs of vertices, which are usually called edges, arcs, or lines.
A directed graph is called a simple digraph if it has no multiple arrows (two or more edges that connect the same two vertices in the same direction) and no loops (edges that connect vertices to themselves). A directed graph is called a directed multigraph or multidigraph if it may have multiple arrows (and sometimes loops). In the latter case the arrow set forms a multiset, rather than a set, of ordered pairs of vertices.