Wing walking

Starting in airshows and barnstorming during the 1920s, wing walking is the act of moving on the wings of an airplane during flight.

The beginning of wing walking

The earliest known instance of a wing-walking on a powered aircraft was an experimental flight in England involving a biplane built by Colonel Samuel Franklin Cody in 1911. At Laffan's Plain Cody wished to demonstrate how his Flying Cathedral biplanes had the greatest lateral stability even with a passenger 10 feet 6 inches away from the aircraft's center of gravity. The first wing walker to perform daring stunts was 26-year-old Ormer Locklear. Legend has it that he first climbed out onto the lower wings during his pilot training in the Army Air Service during World War I. Undaunted, Ormer just climbed out of the cockpit onto the wings in flight whenever there was a mechanical issue and fixed the problem.

On November 8, 1918, Locklear wowed the crowd at Barron Field, Texas, with his daredevil wing-walking stunts. Wing walking was seen as an extreme form of barnstorming, and wing walkers would constantly take up the challenge of outdoing one another. They themselves admitted (or rather proclaimed proudly) that the point of their trade was to make money on the audience's prospect of possibly watching someone die.

Wings (Macklemore and Ryan Lewis song)

"Wings" (stylized as "Wing$") is a song by American hip hop duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, released as the debut single from their first studio album The Heist. It features uncredited vocals from Hollis.

Context

Macklemore explained the subject of the single as follows:

Music video

The music video, directed by Zia Mohajerjasbi, alludes to an autobiographical story line. It depicts its main character (Macklemore) and his experiences as a young boy infatuated with basketball and basketball paraphernalia, athletic shoes in particular, and what adverse effect it had on him as he grew up.

The music video starts with Macklemore now a grown-up man, going into an empty basketball court, where the indications are, that he apparently used to practice basketball himself. Macklemore raps while he reminisces himself as a small kid wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey number 23 (clearly alluding to NBA player Michael Jordan) and wearing, in a close-up, Nike sneakers that would "make him fly" (another reference to Nike Air Jordan sneakers). He describes "touching the net" as being the "best day of my life" (also a simile of a Jordan typical Nike ad), boasting about his skills to his mother and friends... until that is "my friend Carlos' brother got murdered for his fours, whoa", a reference to the basketball shoes he was wearing. This incident becomes a wake-up call to young Macklemore.

Rugby league positions

A rugby league football team consists of thirteen players on the field, with four substitutes on the bench. Players are divided into two general categories, forwards and backs.

Forwards are generally chosen for their size and strength. They are expected to run with the ball, to attack, and to make tackles. Forwards are required to improve the team's field position thus creating space and time for the backs. Backs are usually smaller and faster, though a big, fast player can be of advantage in the backs. Their roles require speed and ball-playing skills, rather than just strength, to take advantage of the field position gained by the forwards.

Names and numbering

The laws of the game recognise standardised numbering of positions. The starting side normally wear the numbers corresponding to their positions, only changing in the case of substitutions and position shifts during the game. In some competitions, such as Super League, players receive a squad number to use all season, no matter what positions they play in.

Spoiler (automotive)

A spoiler is an automotive aerodynamic device whose intended design function is to 'spoil' unfavorable air movement across a body of a vehicle in motion, usually described as turbulence or drag. Spoilers on the front of a vehicle are often called air dams. Spoilers are often fitted to race and high-performance sports cars, although they have become common on passenger vehicles as well. Some spoilers are added to cars primarily for styling purposes and have either little aerodynamic benefit or even make the aerodynamics worse.

The term "spoiler" is often mistakenly used interchangeably with "wing". An automotive wing is a device whose intended design is to generate downforce as air passes around it, not simply disrupt existing airflow patterns. As such, rather than decreasing drag, automotive wings actually increase drag.

Operation

Since spoiler is a term describing an application, the operation of a spoiler varies depending on the particular effect it's trying to spoil. Most common spoiler functions include disrupting some type of airflow passing over and around a moving vehicle. A common spoiler diffuses air by increasing amounts of turbulence flowing over the shape, "spoiling" the laminar flow and providing a cushion for the laminar boundary layer. However, other types of airflow may require the spoiler to operate differently and take on vastly different physical characteristics.