Staring at the Sun (novel)

Staring at The Sun is a novel by Julian Barnes published in 1986.

Plot summary

Julian Barnes examines the ordinary life of Jean Serjeant from her childhood in the 1920s through her adulthood to the year 2021. Throughout her life, Jean learns to question the world's idea of truth while she explores the beauty and miracles of everyday life.

References

External links

Staring at the Sun (U2 song)

"Staring at the Sun" is the second single from U2's 1997 album, Pop. It peaked at No. 3 on the UK singles chart, No. 1 on the Modern Rock Tracks, No. 2 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks, and No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100.

History

The song was written with the line "Stuck together with God's glue," which was taken directly from the title of the album by the Irish band Something Happens, who are good friends with U2. A new mix of "Staring at the Sun" was released for the compilation, The Best of 1990-2000. During the summer of 2002 recording sessions in which "Electrical Storm" and "The Hands That Built America" were recorded, parts for four U2 songs were re-recorded, including "Staring at the Sun." The song has been compared to the work of Oasis.

A kaleidoscope bearing the single's logo in gold was distributed to promote the single.

Live performances

"Staring at the Sun" was played at most of the PopMart Tour shows. However, during the first concert at Las Vegas, U2 failed to time the song correctly and had to start over. Bono singing at the wrong tempo was to blame for the mistake. The song was performed acoustically for most of the rest of that tour. It had several appearances on the Elevation Tour, being the only Pop song to be performed on all three legs of the Elevation Tour. Sometimes it also appeared as a snippet in "Discothèque". It has not been played with the full band since October 24, 2001 in New York City.

No Place in Heaven

No Place in Heaven is the fourth studio album by British singer-songwriter Mika, officially confirmed in the spring of 2015 and released on June 15 via Casablanca Records.

Background and recording

After his first two records were described as campy affairs, Mika's third release The Origin of Love marked a drastic shift in musical style for the songwriter. No Place in Heaven continues that evolution. Mika described the recording process in an interview with Out Magazine: "I formed a little design studio with my sister and started drawing again like we used to in the kitchen of my mother’s house. I was basically liberating myself and making my brain work very hard—scaring myself with challenges. As a result, the album is direct, low-down, open, candid, playful, yet a mature pop album which takes its inspiration from '60s pop music, very much the way my first album did."

Shortly after the record was officially confirmed, the songs "Talk About You" and "Last Party" were released. The latter song is an homage to late Queen frontman Freddie Mercury.

Mir

Mir (Russian: Мир, IPA: [ˈmʲir]; lit. Peace [homonym: world]) was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, owned by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. It had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft. Until 21 March 2001 it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit, succeeded by the International Space Station after Mir's orbit decayed. The station served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and spacecraft systems with a goal of developing technologies required for permanent occupation of space.

Mir was the first continuously inhabited long-term research station in orbit and held the record for the longest continuous human presence in space at 3,644 days until 23 October 2010 when it was surpassed by the ISS. It holds the record for the longest single human spaceflight, with Valeri Polyakov spending 437 days and 18 hours on the station between 1994 and 1995. Mir was occupied for a total of twelve and a half years out of its fifteen-year lifespan, having the capacity to support a resident crew of three, or larger crews for short visits.

Miré

Miré is a commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France.

See also

References

Mir (title)

Mir (مير) (is a title which is derived from the Arabic title Emir). It is an aristocratic title generally used to refer to a person who is a descendant of a commander in medieval Muslim tradition.

It was adopted in many languages under Islamic influence, such as Balochi, Ottoman Turkish,Persian, Turkish, Pashto, Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Sindhi and Bengali meaning leader of a group or tribe. According to the book Persian Inscriptions on Indian Monuments, Mir is most probably an Arabized form of Pir. Pir in Old Persian and Sanskrit means the old, the wise man, the chief and the great leader. It was Arabized as Mir then, with Al(A) (Arabic definite article), it was pronounced as Amir.

Title

Mir was also subsequently used as an honor rank. (See: Mirza).

Amongst Muslims, mir/meer has become an interchangeable synonym of sayyid (or syed), meaning "relative of prophet Muhammad".

(The last name Mirpourian is a present day example of sayyid, a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad.)

In Muslim princely states very few formal mirs have actually reached the level of salute state, notably in present Pakistan, where only two of the six have been entitled to a gun salute and the attached His Highness. The highest-ranking are the Amir of Bahawalpur), the Mir of Khairpur (17 guns) and the Mir of Hunza (15 guns).