Rose McDowall

Rose McDowall (born 21 October 1959) is a Scottish musician. Along with Jill Bryson, in 1981 she formed the new wave band Strawberry Switchblade.

History

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, McDowall's first venture into music was in the Poems, an art-punk trio formed in 1978 with her then-husband Drew McDowall. She formed Strawberry Switchblade in 1981 with Jill Bryson. After signing with Warner Bros. Records they enjoyed chart success with their single "Since Yesterday" in 1984; however later singles and an album did not sell as well as expected. This and internal problems lead to an acrimonious split in 1986.

For the next six years, McDowall was primarily a guest vocalist or "floating member" of several different alternative bands, particularly neofolk. She contributed backing or lead vocals for Coil, Current 93, Death in June, Felt, Alex Fergusson, Into a Circle, Megas, Nature and Organisation, Nurse with Wound, Ornamental, Psychic TV and Boyd Rice on recordings as well as singing or playing guitar for live appearances. In 1993, she collaborated with Boyd Rice under the band name Spell producing two singles and an album of 1960s style pop, country and psychedelia covers for Mute Records.

Sorrow (emotion)

Sorrow is an emotion, feeling or sentiment. Sorrow "is more 'intense' than sadness... it implies a long-term state". At the same time "sorrow — but not unhappiness — suggests a degree of resignation... which lends sorrow its peculiar air of dignity".

Moreover, "in terms of attitude, sorrow can be said to be half way between sadness (accepting) and distress (not accepting)".

Cult

Romanticism saw a cult of sorrow develop, reaching back to The Sorrows of Young Werther of 1774, and extending through the nineteenth century with contributions like Tennyson's "In Memoriam" — "O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me/No casual mistress, but a wife" — up to W. B. Yeats in 1889, still "of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming". While it may be that "the Romantic hero's cult of sorrow is largely a matter of pretence", as Jane Austen pointed out satirically through Marianne Dashwood, "brooding over her sorrows... this excess of suffering" could have serious consequences.

Partly in reaction, the 20th century has by contrast been pervaded by the belief that "acting sorrowful can actually make me sorrowful, as William James long ago observed". Certainly "in the modern Anglo-emotional culture, characterized by the 'dampening of the emotions' in general... sorrow has largely given way to the milder, less painful, and more transient sadness". A latter-day Werther is likely to be greeted by the call to '"Come off it, Gordon. We all know there is no sorrow like unto your sorrow"'; while any conventional 'valeoftearishness and deathwhereisthystingishness' would be met by the participants 'looking behind the sombre backs of one another's cards and discovering their brightly-colored faces'. Perhaps only the occasional subculture like the Jungian would still seek to 'call up from the busy adult man the sorrow of animal life, the grief of all nature, "the tears of things"'.

Yak

The yak (Bos grunniens and Bos mutus) is a long-haired bovid found throughout the Himalaya region of southern Central Asia, the Tibetan Plateau and as far north as Mongolia and Russia. Most yaks are domesticated Bos grunniens. There is also a small, vulnerable population of wild yaks, Bos mutus.

Etymology

The English word "yak" derives from the Tibetan gyag (Tibetan: གཡག་, Wylie: g.yag ) – in Tibetan this refers only to the male of the species, the female being called a dri or nak. In English, as in most other languages which have borrowed the word, "yak" is usually used for both sexes.

Taxonomy

Yaks belong to the genus Bos, and are therefore related to cattle (Bos primigenius taurus, Bos primigenius indicus). Mitochondrial DNA analyses to determine the evolutionary history of yaks have been somewhat ambiguous.

The yak may have diverged from cattle at any point between one and five million years ago, and there is some suggestion that it may be more closely related to bison than to the other members of its designated genus. Apparent close fossil relatives of the yak, such as Bos baikalensis, have been found in eastern Russia, suggesting a possible route by which yak-like ancestors of the modern American bison could have entered the Americas.

Yaksha

Yaksha (Sanskrit यक्ष yakṣa, Pali yakkha) is the name of a broad class of nature-spirits, usually benevolent, who are caretakers of the natural treasures hidden in the earth and tree roots. They appear in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist texts. The feminine form of the word is yakṣī) or Yakshini (yakṣiṇī).

In Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist texts, the yakṣa has a dual personality. On the one hand, a yakṣa may be an inoffensive nature-fairy, associated with woods and mountains; but there is also a darker version of the yakṣa, which is a kind of ghost (bhuta) that haunts the wilderness and waylays and devours travelers, similar to the rakṣasas.

In Kālidāsa's poem Meghadūta, for instance, the yakṣa narrator is a romantic figure, pining with love for his missing beloved. By contrast, in the didactic Hindu dialogue of the Yakṣapraśnāḥ "Questions of the Yakṣa", it is a tutelary spirit of a lake that challenges Yudhiṣṭhira. The yakṣas may have originally been the tutelary gods of forests and villages, and were later viewed as the steward deities of the earth and the wealth buried beneath.

Yakovlev Yak-36

Floats (drink)

Floats are a beverage line introduced by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group in January 2008. Two flavors are available, A&W Float and Sunkist Float. The purpose of the concept is to mimic the flavor of an ice cream float of a given soda. Thus, the A&W flavor is intended to taste like a root beer float, while the latter is comparable to an orange creamsicle or Sunkist float.

The drinks are creamy in nature and contain little carbonation, and no caffeine. Ingredients include skim milk, cream, and nitrous oxide to create foam. While it is recommended that they be served chilled, refrigeration of Floats is not mandatory. Available in 11.5-ounce, vintage soda-shop-inspired glass bottles with twist-off tops, Floats are sold at major US retail, grocery, and convenience stores.

Marketing

The product's first press release was issued on January 2, 2008, which included bottle design photos, suggested retail prices, and other information.

In the press release, Andrew Springate, vice president of marketing, stated:

Float (nautical)

Floats (also called pontoons) are airtight hollow structures, similar to pressure vessels, designed to provide buoyancy in water. Their principal applications are in watercraft hulls and aircraft floats, floating pier and pontoon bridge construction, and marine engineering applications such as salvage.

Use

Floats make up the multipart hulls of catamarans and trimarans and provide buoyancy for floatplanes and seaplanes. They are used in pontoon bridges, floating piers, and floats anchored to the seabed for recreation or dockage. They are also used in shipbuilding and marine salvage, often deployed uninflated then pressurized to raise a sunken object.

Construction

Pontoons for marine industrial uses are usually fabricated from steel plate and sheet. Pontoons as parts of watercraft and aircraft are more typically molded in glass-reinforced plastic. Before the 1970s, glass-reinforced plastic was rare; older techniques include those of traditional wooden boatbuilding as well as plywood over wooden ribs or metal sheets over metal ribs (aluminium or steel), reflecting the prevailing practice in aircraft and boats. In model building, floats can easily be carved out of solid blocks or laminated sheets of foam.