Accelerando is a 2005 science fiction novel consisting of a series of interconnected short stories by British author Charles Stross. As well as normal hardback and paperback editions, it was released as a free e-book under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Accelerando won the Locus Award in 2006, and was nominated for several other awards in 2005 and 2006, including the Hugo, Campbell, Clarke, and British Science Fiction Association Awards.
In Italian, accelerando means "speeding up" and is used as a tempo marking in musical notation. In Stross' novel, it refers to the accelerating rate at which humanity in general, and/or the novel's characters, head towards the technological singularity. The term was earlier used in this way by Kim Stanley Robinson in his 1985 novel The Memory of Whiteness and again in his 1992–96 Mars trilogy.
The book is a collection of nine short stories telling the tale of three generations of a family before, during, and after a technological singularity. It was originally written as a series of novelettes and novellas, all published in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine in the period 2001 to 2004. According to Stross, the initial inspiration for the stories was his experience working as a programmer for a high-growth company during the dot-com boom of the 1990s.
Story or stories may refer to:
"Makes Me Wonder" is the first single released from Maroon 5's second album, It Won't Be Soon Before Long (2007). It premiered on the Las Vegas radio station KMXB, and became an instant hit worldwide. Upon release, the song set a record for the biggest jump to number-one in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, rising from number 64 to number-one. However, the record was later broken by Kelly Clarkson's 2009 single, "My Life Would Suck Without You".
"Makes Me Wonder" also became the band's first number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal at the 50th Grammy Awards, their second song to win the award. The song was among the most successful of 2007, and was their biggest hit until the release of "Moves Like Jagger" by the band in 2011.
Despite the song's commercial success, critical reception was mixed. It was ranked No. 49 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Best Songs of 2007. Maroon 5 performed the song in May 2007 on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Anna Leddra Chapman (born 10 October 1990), better known as Leddra Chapman, is an English singer-songwriter and musician from Brentwood in Essex. She rose to prominence when her debut single, "Story", was released on 7 December 2009 to much critical success and strong radio support from Terry Wogan on BBC Radio 2 during his last months at the station. The track is taken from her debut album, Telling Tales, which was produced by Peter-John Vettese and released for download on 29 November 2009. She was a student at London College of Music and she is also an ambassador for clothing company Quiksilver and The Body Shop. Her single 'All About You', from her second EP 'The Crowds and Cocktails', was BBC Radio 2's single of the week on 4 March 2013 and later added to the radio's B List.
Chapman has been interviewed by industry intelligence magazine, Five Eight, and mentioned by Music Ally. She is best known for her high, soprano voice.Music Week magazine have described her as "filling a similar space to early Alanis Morissette and Joni Mitchell".
Survivor is a 2001 video game for the PC, based on the American version of the TV series Survivor. Developed by Magic Lantern, it was published by Atari on November 12, 2001. It allows players to play as any of the original Pulau Tiga or Australian Outback cast members. The game also includes a character creation system for making custom characters.
Gameplay consists of choosing survivors' skills (fishing, cooking, etc.), forming alliances, developing relationships with other tribe members, and voting off competitors at tribal council.
The game was received very poorly by critics. It has a Metacritic score of 26% based on 7 critic reviews.
GameSpot gave the game a 'Terrible' score of 2.0 out of 10, saying "If you're harboring even a tiny urge to buy this game, please listen very carefully to this advice: Don't do it." Likewise, IGN gave the game a 'Terrible' 2.4 out of 10, stating "It is horribly boring and repetitive. The graphics are weak and even the greatest survivor fan would break the CD in two after playing it for 20 minutes." The game was the recipient of Game Revolution's lowest score of all time, an F-. An 'interactive review' was created specially for the game, and features interactive comments like "The Survival periods are about as much fun as" followed by a drop-down menu, "watching paint dry/throbbing hemorrhoids/staring at air/being buried alive."
Christina Crawford (born June 11, 1939) is an American writer and actress, best known as the author of Mommie Dearest, an autobiographical account of alleged child abuse by her adoptive mother, famous Hollywood actress Joan Crawford. She is also known for small roles in various television and film projects, such as Joan Borman Kane in the soap opera The Secret Storm and Monica George in the Elvis Presley vehicle Wild in the Country.
Crawford was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1939 to unmarried teen parents.
According to Christina Crawford's personal interview with Larry King, her father supposedly in the Navy, was married to another woman while her mother was unmarried. Christina Crawford was adopted from a baby broker in the state of Nevada because Joan Crawford was formerly denied an adoption by Social Services for being an unfit candidate in California in 1940. Christina Crawford maintains that Joan Crawford did not have a positive relationship with her own mother or with her brother, which contributed to Social Services' conclusion, as well as her multiple divorces. Subsequent documentation showed that the adoption was handled by Georgia Tann through Tann's infamous Tennessee Children's Home Society. Christina was one of five children adopted by Joan Crawford.
Survivor is the American version of the international Survivor reality competition television series, itself derived from the Swedish television series Expedition Robinson created by Charlie Parsons which premiered in 1997. The American series premiered on May 31, 2000, on CBS. It is hosted by television personality Jeff Probst, who is also an executive producer, and also executive produced by Mark Burnett and original creator, Charlie Parsons.
The show maroons a group of strangers (as one or more tribes) in an isolated location, where they must provide food, water, fire, and shelter for themselves, while competing in challenges to earn either a reward, or an immunity from expulsion from the game in the next of the successive votes for elimination. While much less common than elimination by vote, medical conditions, such as injury or infection, have eliminated several contestants. The last two or three survivors face a jury composed of the last seven, eight, or nine players voted off. That jury interrogates the final few, and then votes for the winner of the game, the title of Sole Survivor and a million dollar prize.