Slavery

Slavery is a legal or economic system in which principles of property law are applied to humans allowing them to be classified as property, to be owned, bought and sold accordingly, and they cannot withdraw unilaterally from the arrangement. While a person is a slave, the owner is entitled to the productivity of the slave's labour, without any remuneration. The rights and protection of the slave may be regulated by laws and customs in a particular time and place, and a person may become a slave from the time of their capture, purchase or birth.

Today, chattel slavery is unlawful in all countries, but a person may still be described as a slave if he or she is forced to work for another person without an ability on their part to unilaterally terminate the arrangement. Such situations are today commonly referred to as "practices similar to slavery". The present form of the slave trade is commonly referred to as human trafficking.

Slavery existed before written history and in many cultures. It was once institutionally recognized by most societies, but has now been outlawed in all countries, the last being Mauritania in 2007. However, it continues through such practices as debt bondage, serfdom, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, human trafficking and forced marriage. Accordingly, there are more slaves today than at any time in history, with an estimated 20 million to 36 million slaves worldwide.

Scorpio (Blake's 7)

Scorpio is a fictional spacecraft featured throughout the fourth season of the British science fiction television series Blake's 7. It is a freighter, noted by Tarrant as an early Mk II "Wanderer-class" planet-hopper.

Scorpio was owned by an alleged salvage operator named Dorian, who had a base on the planet Xenon. Dorian rescues the crew of the recently destroyed Liberator, who are stranded on the planet Terminal. The Liberator crew later kill Dorian in self-defence, occupy the Xenon base and use Scorpio for their own purposes.

When not in use, Scorpio was docked in an underground silo within the Xenon Base. When in flight, only the flight deck part of the ship would normally be pressurised and if the crew needed to go to another part of the ship during flight they had to pressurise that area first. Unlike Liberator, which was superior in speed and weaponry to the Terran Federation's finest warships, Scorpio was initially disadvantaged in comparison. It was slow, ungainly and has little weaponry until the crew modify the ship to increase its capabilities. In the episode "Power", Avon and Orac complete construction of a teleport system for the ship, similar to that seen on Liberator (Dorian had started to create a teleport himself but failed). In the episode "Star Drive", Scorpio is fitted with a new, experimental engine called the 'photonic drive', developed by Doctor Plaxton. This vastly increases the ship's speed to the equivalent of Time Distort 15 but in real time (i.e. without the need for the ship to move into a "time-distorted" dimension) thereby making Scorpio faster than the Liberator had been. The photonic drive is powered by light rather than plasma.

Slave (band)

Slave was an Ohio funk band popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Trumpeter Steve Washington, born in New Jersey, attended highly athlethically aclaimmed East Orange High School, and was one of the first users of the "electric trumpet. He and Mark Hicks (Drac) formed the group in Dayton, Ohio in 1975.

Career

Trombonist Floyd Miller teamed with Tom Lockett Jr. (tenor & alto sax), Carter Bradley (keyboards), Mark Adams (bass), Mark Hicks (lead and rhythm guitar, background vocals), Danny Webster (rhythm and lead guitar, lead and background vocals), Orion Wilhoite (keyboards) and Tim Dozier (drums). Drummer/percussionist Steve Arrington, along with vocalists Starleana Young, then Curt Jones and keyboardist Ray Turner came aboard in 1978, with Arrington ultimately becoming lead vocalist. Their first big hit was the single "Slide" in 1977 for Cotillion Records, where they remained until 1984. Their best work was usually based on bass licks and the band's general arrangements emphasis on the rhythm section and soaring lead vocals.

Holy Grail

The Holy Grail is a dish, plate, stone, or cup that is part of an important theme of Arthurian literature. According to legend, it has special powers, and is designed to provide happiness, eternal youth and food in infinite abundance.

A grail, wondrous but not explicitly holy, first appears in Perceval le Gallois, an unfinished romance by Chrétien de Troyes. It is a processional salver used to serve at a feast. Chrétien's story attracted many continuators, translators and interpreters in the later 12th and early 13th centuries, including Wolfram von Eschenbach, who perceived the grail as a great precious stone that fell from the sky. The Grail legend became interwoven with legends of the Holy Chalice. The connection with Joseph of Arimathea and with vessels associated with the Last Supper and crucifixion of Jesus dates from Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie (late 12th century) in which Joseph receives the Grail from an apparition of Jesus and sends it with his followers to Great Britain. Building upon this theme, later writers recounted how Joseph used the Grail to catch Christ's blood while interring him and how he founded a line of guardians to keep it safe in Britain. The legend may combine Christian lore with a Celtic myth of a cauldron endowed with special powers.

Grail (women's movement)

The Grail is a community of about a thousand women from 24 countries, many different cultures and very different backgrounds and work situations. The Grail was started in 1921 as the Women of Nazareth by Fr. Jacques van Ginneken, a Dutch Jesuit. He felt that many new possibilities were opening up for women and that a group of lay women, unconfined by convent walls and rules, could make an immense contribution to the transformation of the world. By 1939 the Grail had become a colourful movement involving thousands of young women in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Germany, challenging them to deep personal and spiritual commitment. Pioneers in Catholic feminist theology, the Grail in the USA voted in 1969 to admit women of other Christian denominations, and in 1975, to accept Jewish women as members.

The Grail was started in Australia in 1936, in the United States in 1940, in New Zealand in the late 1930s, in Brazil and South Africa in 1951, in Uganda in 1953, in Portugal in 1958 and subsequently in Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, Italy, Mexico, Canada, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Mozambique, Kenya and Sweden. Grail members are also working in Belgium, Belize, Cape Verde, Egypt, France, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, Switzerland, Ecuador and Zimbabwe.

Grail (web browser)

Grail was a free extensible multi-platform web browser written in the Python programming language. The project was started in August 1995, with its first public release in November of that year. The 0.3 beta contained over 27,000 lines of Python. The last official release was version 0.6 in 1999.

One of the major distinguishing features of Grail was the ability to run client-side Python code, in much the same way as mainstream browsers run client-side JavaScript code.

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