Top (comics)

The Top is a fictional character, a supervillain in the DC Universe. One of the earliest members of the Silver Age Flash's "Rogues' Gallery", the character debuted in The Flash #122 (August 1961).

Fictional character biography

Roscoe Dillon is a small-time crook who turns his childhood obsession with tops into a criminal persona. Roscoe taught himself how to spin around fast enough to deflect bullets and produce other semi-useful effects. The Top soon discovers that the spinning somehow increased his intelligence as well, allowing him to create a variety of trick tops. He tried to blackmail the world with an Atomic Top that would destroy half the world when it slowed down and imprisoned the Flash inside it, but the Flash vibrated out of it and sent it into space. His unique gimmick and moderate success in crime soon makes him a respected member of the Flash's rogues gallery. He dates Golden Glider, Captain Cold's sister, while coaching her on ice skating. Eventually, the Top develops immense psionic powers, as years of spinning moves dormant brain cells to the outer areas of his brain, endowing him with mental powers.

The Top (short story)

"The Top" (orig. German Der Kreisel) is a short story by Franz Kafka, written sometime between 1917 and 1923.

Plot summary

A philosopher believes that he could understand everything in the world if he were to understand a single element in it. To this purpose he tries to catch a child's top as it spins, hoping that it would continue spinning in his hand, but it always stops the moment he grabs it.

Interpretation

The top could be seen as a symbol of the spinning earth - the populated world which the philosopher tries to understand. The irony implied herein is that by focusing on the top itself the philosopher ignores the other forces that set it in motion - the children and the string.

Some critics have noted a correspondence between the structure and theme of the story - the spiraling movement of the top is echoed by the spiraling structure of the story, as the sentences are at first of uniform length, then get gradually longer until the last line which is meandering and prolonged, like the top's last staggering spin and final collapse.

Straight (2007 film)

Straight is a 2007 German film by director Nicolas Flessa.

Plot

The young German-Polish Jana does everything possible to give the impression of a straight acting woman. Her good-looking, bourgeois friend David and her pretence to work for a newspaper are attempts to hide her inner conflicts and her true occupation of a social worker in the low-prestigious Berlin district of Neukoelln.

But there is the young German Turk Nazim, who also tries hard to keep up the appearance of straightness. Night after night he goes out with his homies, dances with girls like Jana and deals with drugs on Hermann Square. Neither his best buddy Akin nor his playmates are suspicious.

Since his nocturnal encounter with a young German guy on Sonnenallee it has got more difficult for him to keep up the façade of normal life. This is the beginning of a love triangle that is dangerous for the self-understanding of all parties: because Nazim's new lover is no one else but Janas boy friend David...

Cast

Straight-seven engine

A straight-seven engine or inline-seven engine is a straight engine with seven cylinders. Wärtsilä, with their RTA96-C, and MAN Diesel produce crosshead two-stroke diesel engines in this configuration. Wärtsilä also produces regular trunk engines in this configuration. It is more common in marine applications because marine engines are usually based on a modular design, with individual heads per cylinder.

Land use

Only one straight-seven engine for land propulsion is known to be in production, the AGCO Sisu 7-cylinder diesel engine. This engine configuration was chosen because of size, parts commonality, and power range issues. A straight-8 would be too long for the farm machinery application the engine was intended for, whilst a V engine would require a higher investment compared to the expected low sales volume for this power range. The straight-7 configuration is a lower investment because Sisu has reused cylinder heads from their I3 and I4 diesel lineups. This is possible because the cylinder volume, pistons and con rods are identical across the Sisu model range.

Straight engine

The straight or inline engine is an internal-combustion engine with all cylinders aligned in one row and having no offset. Usually found in four, six and eight cylinder configurations, they have been used in automobiles, locomotives and aircraft, although the term in-line has a broader meaning when applied to aircraft engines, see Inline engine (aviation).

A straight engine is considerably easier to build than an otherwise equivalent horizontally opposed or V engine, because both the cylinder bank and crankshaft can be milled from a single metal casting, and it requires fewer cylinder heads and camshafts. In-line engines are also smaller in overall physical dimensions than designs such as the radial, and can be mounted in any direction. Straight configurations are simpler than their V-shaped counterparts. They have a support bearing between each piston as compared to "flat" and "V" engines, which have support bearings between every two pistons. Although six-cylinder engines are inherently balanced, the four-cylinder models are inherently off balance and rough, unlike 90-degree V fours and horizontally opposed 'boxer' four cylinders.

Top (clothing)

A top is clothing that covers at least the chest, but which usually covers most of the upper human body between the neck and the waistline. The bottom of tops can be as short as mid-torso, or as long as mid-thigh. Men's tops are generally paired with pants, and women's with pants or skirts. Common types of tops are t-shirts, blouses and shirts.

Design

The neckline is the highest line of the top, and may be as high as a head-covering hood, or as low as the waistline or bottom hem of the top. A top may be worn loose or tight around the bust or waist, and may have sleeves or shoulder straps, spaghetti straps (noodle straps), or may be strapless. The back may be covered or bare. Tops may have straps around the waist or neck, or over the shoulders.

Types

Neck styles

See also

References

External links

2007–08 Top 14 season

The 2007-08 Top 14 Competition was a French domestic rugby union club competition, operated by the Ligue Nationale de Rugby (LNR). Because France hosted the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the competition did not begin at its normal time of August, but instead started on the last weekend in October 2007, one week after the Rugby World Cup final. The league compensated for the late start by playing on several weekends that it normally skips, namely the weekends of the 2008 Six Nations Championship and the semifinals and final of the 2007-08 Heineken Cup. The season ended on June 28, 2008, with Toulouse defeating regular-season league leader Clermont 26–20 in the final and thereby lifting the Bouclier de Brennus.

This year's edition of the Top 14 welcomed Auch and Dax, who earned promotion from Rugby Pro D2.Agen and Narbonne were relegated from the Top 14.

As in previous seasons, the top four clubs at the end of the home-and-away season advanced to a single-elimination playoff. The semifinals were held at neutral sites, with the final at Stade de France. Going into the season, the top six clubs were guaranteed of berths in the 2008-09 Heineken Cup. Since Toulouse advanced to the 2007-08 Heineken Cup final against Irish club Munster, thereby assuring a higher finish for a French team in that competition than for any team from England or Italy, the seventh-place club also earned a berth in the 2008-09 Heineken Cup. The bottom two teams were provisionally relegated to Pro D2, with the possibility of one or both of the bottom teams to be reprieved if a team above them failed a postseason financial audit. This happened in 2007-08, as Albi failed the audit, ultimately giving a reprieve to second-from bottom Dax.