Sail

A sail is a catchment device designed to receive and redirect a force upon a generous surface area. Traditionally, the surface was engineered of woven fabric and supported by a mast, whose purpose is to propel a sailing vessel. Sails may be configured in many ways to include traditionally understood maritime purposes, as well as land vehicles and solar collection purposes. The rich encyclopedic history of maritime sails suggests alternative uses of the technology well documented.

History of sails

Archaeological studies of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture ceramics show use of sailing boats from the sixth millennium onwards. Excavations of the Ubaid period (c. 6000 -4300 BC) in Mesopotamia provides direct evidence of sailing boats. Sails from ancient Egypt are depicted around 3200 BCE, where reed boats sailed upstream against the River Nile's current. Ancient Sumerians used square rigged sailing boats at about the same time, and it is believed they established sea trading routes as far away as the Indus valley. The proto-Austronesian words for sail, lay(r), and other rigging parts date to about 3000 BCE when this group began their Pacific expansion.Greeks and Phoenicians began trading by ship by around 1,200 BCE.

Sail (Lake District)

Sail is a hill in the English Lake District, lying between Derwentwater and Crummock Water.

Topography

The North Western Fells occupy the area between the rivers Derwent and Cocker, a broadly oval swathe of hilly country, elongated on a north-south axis. Two roads cross from east to west, dividing the fells into three convenient groups. The central sector, rising between Whinlatter Pass and Newlands Pass, includes Sail. The highest ground in the North Western Fells is an east-west ridge in this central sector, beginning with Grasmoor above Crummock Water and then gradually descending eastwards over Crag Hill, Sail, Scar Crags and Causey Pike.

Sail is in every sense a satellite of Crag Fell, although having sufficient prominence to be listed as a Hewitt. From the summit of Crag Hill the eastward ridge narrows between opposing walls of crag. This rocky crest is The Scar, the depression being at around 2,425 ft. The roughness decreases as the rounded top of Sail is reached, and the ridge then turns east north east. A further depression at 2,015 ft leads to the summit of Scar Crags. This col is unnamed on maps of the Ordnance Survey, but Alfred Wainwright termed it Sail Pass in his influential Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells

Sail (anatomy)

A sail is a large, flattish protrusion from the back of an animal colinear with the spine. Many extinct species of amphibians and reptiles have very extended neural spines growing from their back vertebrae. These are thought to have supported a sail. Paleontologists have proposed many ways in which the sail could have functioned in life.

Function

Many suggestions have been made for the function of the sail. The consensus amongst modern scholars is that, at least for the pelycosaurs, the sail was used for thermoregulation.

Thermoregulation

The structure may have been used for thermoregulation. The base of the spines have a channel which it is proposed contained a blood vessel supplying abundant blood to the sail. The animal could have used the sail's large surface area to absorb heat from the sun in the morning. As ectotherms they required heat from an external source before their muscles would start to function properly. A predator would thus have an advantage over its slower moving prey. The sail could be used in reverse if the animal was overheating. By standing in the shade, the sail would radiate heat outwards.

List of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero characters (S–Z)

This is an alphabetical List of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero characters whose code names start with the letters S-Z.

Salvo

Salvo is the G.I. Joe Team's Anti-Armor Trooper. His real name is David K. Hasle, and he was born in Arlington, Virginia. Salvo was first released as an action figure in 1990, and again in 2005. Both versions have the T-shirt slogan 'The Right of Might'.

Salvo's primary military specialty is anti-armor trooper. He also specializes in repairing "TOW/Dragon" missiles. Salvo expresses a deep distrust of advanced electronic weaponry. He prefers to use mass quantities of conventional explosives to overwhelm enemy forces.

In the Marvel Comics G.I. Joe series, he first appeared in issue #114. There, he fights as part of a large scale operation against Cobra forces in the fictional country of Benzheen. Steeler, Dusty, Salvo, Rock'N'Roll and Hot Seat get into vehicular based combat against the missile expert Metal-Head He is later part of the Joe team on-site who defends G.I. Joe headquarters in Utah against a Cobra assault.

Scoop (novel)

Scoop is a 1938 novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh, a satire of sensationalist journalism and foreign correspondents.

Plot

William Boot, a young man who lives in genteel poverty far from the iniquities of London, is contributor of nature notes to Lord Copper's Daily Beast, a national daily newspaper. He is dragooned into becoming a foreign correspondent when the editors mistake him for a fashionable novelist, a remote cousin, John Courtney Boot. He is sent to the fictional East African state of Ishmaelia to report the crisis there. Lord Copper believes it 'a very promising little war' and proposes 'to give it fullest publicity.' There, despite his total ineptitude, he accidentally manages to get the "scoop" of the title. When he returns, however, credit is diverted to the other Boot, and he is left to return to his bucolic pursuits, much to his relief.

Background

The novel is partly based on Waugh's own experience working for the Daily Mail, when he was sent to cover Benito Mussolini's expected invasion of Abyssinia—what was later known as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War (October 1935 to May 1936). When he got his own scoop on the invasion he telegraphed the story back in Latin for secrecy, but they discarded it. Waugh wrote up his travels more factually in Waugh in Abyssinia (1936), which complements Scoop.

Scoop (2006 film)

Scoop is a 2006 American-British romantic comedy/murder mystery written and directed by Woody Allen and starring Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Ian McShane and Allen himself. The film was released in the United States by Focus Features on July 28, 2006.

Plot

Following the memorial service for investigative reporter Joe Strombel (McShane), Strombel's spirit finds himself on the barge of death with several others, including a young woman who believes she was poisoned by her employer, Peter Lyman (Jackman). The woman tells Strombel she thinks Lyman, a handsome British aristocrat with political ambitions, may be the Tarot Card Killer, a notorious serial killer of prostitutes, and that he killed her when she stumbled onto his secret. The Tarot Card Killer left a card on each murder victim's body.

Sondra Pransky (Johansson) is a beautiful but awkward American journalism student on vacation in London. Pransky attends a performance given by magician Sid Waterman (Allen), aka "The Great Splendini", and agrees to participate on the stage. While in a booth known as The Dematerializer, Pransky encounters Strombel's ghost. The ghost has escaped the Grim Reaper himself to impart his suspicions of Lyman to a journalist who can investigate the story. Sondra decides to infiltrate Lyman's privileged world and find out if he truly is the dreaded criminal, enlisting Sid in the process and taking advantage of his powers of deception.