Thirteenth Step

Thirteenth Step is the second studio album by American rock band A Perfect Circle, released on September 16, 2003. The album sold well, charting at the number 2 position on the Billboard 200 in its premiere week, selling over 231,000 copies and staying on the charts for 78 weeks. The album went on to be certified as gold on November 4, 2003 and as platinum on March 24, 2006 by the RIAA. Three singles were released from the album, "Weak and Powerless", which topped both the Mainstream Rock Tracks and Modern Rock Tracks, followed by "The Outsider" and "Blue", which also charted on the respective charts.

Background

Writing and recording

The band's writing process was very different from the band's first album, Mer de Noms. With the first album, a majority of the album had been already written and recorded over a long period of time by guitarist Billy Howerdel, before a band had even been assembled. He had recorded it with a female vocalist in mind, but upon Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan hearing it and offering to sing for the material, the content was then quickly finalized upon adding Keenan's vocals and re-recording the drums with band member Josh Freese. With beginning the second album, the band found themselves starting fresh, without any material to start with, with the exception of the track "Vanishing", which originally was intended to be on the band's first album, but Howerdel could not find the song file in the studio, having accidentally named it "test". Upon finally recovering the track in 2001, it was only slightly altered for its final release, to better match the eventual sound of Thirteenth Step.

7-PET

7-PET was discovered by K.W. Bentley and is a potent opioid analgesic drug, 300 times the potency of morphine by weight. It is related to the more well-known oripavine derivative opioid etorphine, which is used as a very potent veterinary painkiller and anesthetic medication, used primarily for the sedation of large animals such as elephants, giraffes and rhinos. 7-PET itself has a 3-O-methyl ether which reduces potency, but the 3-OH derivative is around 2200x morphine, almost the same potency as etorphine as a μ agonist, and unexpectedly the 3-desoxy compound is also around the same potency of 2000x morphine.

Unlike etorphine however, 7-PET is not an illegal drug, and is not controlled under the UN drug conventions, but it might still be considered to be a controlled substance analogue of etorphine on the grounds of its related chemical structure in some jurisdictions such as the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

See also

Commodore PET

The Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) is a line of home/personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A top-seller in the Canadian and United States educational markets, it was Commodore's first full-featured computer, and formed the basis for their entire 8-bit product line, including the Commodore 64.

History

Origins and the early models

In the 1970s Commodore was one of many electronics companies selling calculators designed around Dallas-based Texas Instruments (TI) chips. However, in 1975 TI increased the price of these components to the point where the chip set cost more than an entire TI calculator, and the industry that had built up around it was frozen out of the market.

Super (2010 American film)

Super is a 2010 American superhero dark comedy-drama film written and directed by James Gunn, starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon and Nathan Fillion. The film premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in theaters in the United States on April 1, 2011 and on video on demand on April 13, 2011. The film was released unrated in U.S. theaters, and later received an R rating for its DVD/Blu-ray release.

Plot

Short-order cook Frank Darbo (Rainn Wilson) says in voice-over that he has only two good memories from a disappointing life: marrying his beautiful wife, Sarah (Liv Tyler), and an incident in which he directed a police officer to catch a purse snatcher. Frank immortalizes these two events in a pair of crayon drawings that he hangs on his wall for inspiration.

Later, Sarah, a recovering addict, leaves Frank for Jacques (Kevin Bacon), a charismatic strip club owner who gets her hooked on drugs. Frank sinks into depression, where he has a vision in which he is touched by the finger of God and meets the Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion), a superhero from a public-access television show on the All-Jesus Network, who tells Frank that God has chosen him for a very special purpose. Frank believes that God has chosen him to become a superhero and goes to a local comic book store for inspiration. His claim that he is designing a new superhero is met with enthusiastic appreciation from the foul-mouthed store clerk, Libby (Ellen Page). Frank creates a superhero costume and assumes the identity of "The Crimson Bolt."

Super (Neu! song)

Super is a single by German band Neu!, released in 1972. It failed to chart and has never been re-released, but has become a collector's item due to the rarity of the original vinyl 7". After the single's recording both the A and B side tracks were added to the album Neu! 2, which was released the following year.

Recording, Release & Remixing

Both tracks were recorded quickly at Conny Plank's studio in Cologne during the summer of 1972, six months after the release of Neu!'s debut album. Brain were pessimistic about the single's chances, and had to be convinced to release it by Dinger and Rother. When it was released, it was backed by only minimal promotion, and predictably failed to make any impact on the German music charts (though some Krautrock acts - such as Can - did have successful singles in the early '70s).

When Dinger and Rother returned to the studio in early 1973 to record Neu! 2, they decided to fill the second side of the new album with tape manipulated remixes of the Super/Neuschnee single. There have been several conflicting explanations as to why this was done, the most quoted being Dinger's assertion that:

.45 Super

The .45 Super is a large and powerful smokeless powder center fire metallic firearm cartridge developed in 1988 by Dean Grennell, a well-known writer in the firearms field as well as managing editor of Gun World magazine. Born of a desire to update and improve the 1906 era .45 ACP, the .45 Super cartridge is dimensionally identical with the older .45 ACP round. A notable difference is that it has a thicker case wall than its ACP brethren cartridge, and the Super is loaded to higher pressures, which makes it a substantially more powerful round than the standard .45 ACP. It offers an average 300 foot per second (ft/s) improvement in muzzle velocity. The cartridge was co-developed by Tom Fergerson and Ace Hindman.

Development history