Angel

An angel is a purely spiritual being found in various religions and mythologies. In Abrahamic religions and Zoroastrianism, angels are often depicted as benevolent celestial beings who act as intermediaries between God or Heaven and Earth, or as guardian spirits or a guiding influence. Other roles of angels include protecting and guiding human beings, and carrying out God's tasks. The term "angel" has also been diversed to various notions of spirits or figures found in many other religious traditions. The theological study of angels is known as "angelology".

In art, angels are often depicted with bird-like wings on their back, a halo, robes and various forms of glowing light.

Etymology

The word angel (pronounced /ˈeɪn.dʒəl/) in English is a blend of Old English engel (with a hard g) and Old French angele. Both derive from Late Latin angelus "messenger", which in turn was borrowed from Late Greek ἄνγελος ángelos. According to R. S. P. Beekes, ángelos itself may be "an Oriental loan, like ἄγγαρος ['Persian mounted courier']." The word's earliest form is Mycenaean a-ke-ro attested in Linear B syllabic script.

Spoke

A spoke is one of some number of rods radiating from the center of a wheel (the hub where the axle connects), connecting the hub with the round traction surface.

The term originally referred to portions of a log that had been split lengthwise into four or six sections. The radial members of a wagon wheel were made by carving a spoke (from a log) into their finished shape. A spokeshave is a tool originally developed for this purpose. Eventually, the term spoke was more commonly applied to the finished product of the wheelwright's work, than to the materials he used.

History

The spoked wheel was invented to allow the construction of lighter and swifter vehicles. The earliest known examples are in the context of the Andronovo culture, dating to ca. 2000 BC. Soon after this, horse cultures of the Caucasus region used horse-drawn spoked-wheel war chariots for the greater part of three centuries. They moved deep into the Greek peninsula where they joined with the existing Mediterranean peoples to give rise, eventually, to classical Greece after the breaking of Minoan dominance and consolidations led by pre-classical Sparta and Athens. Celtic chariots introduced an iron rim around the wheel in the 1st millennium BC. The spoked wheel was in continued use without major modification until the 1870s, when wire wheels and rubber tires were invented.

Swat

Swat or SWAT may refer to:

SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics), a paramilitary unit of law-enforcement agencies

Swatting, a hoax intended to provoke a response from SWAT or other emergency personnel

Swatting, a hoax intended to provoke a response from SWAT or other emergency personnel

Media

Police Quest and SWAT, a video games series published by Sierra On-Line

S.W.A.T. (TV series), a 1970s American television series

S.W.A.T. (film), a 2003 film based on the TV series
- S.W.A.T. (soundtrack)

S.W.A.T. (film), a 2003 film based on the TV series

S.W.A.T. (soundtrack)

S.W.A.T. (soundtrack)

Places

Swat, Pakistan, a district in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province

Swat (princely state), a princely state in present-day Pakistan

Swat River, a river in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan

Other uses

Block (basketball) or swat, a defensive play

Samba Web Administration Tool

SWAT model (Soil & Water Assessment Tool), a river basin scale model

More than 300 reindeer killed "in one moment" in Norway

Edit CBS News 29 Aug 2016

Norwegian Environment Agency releases eerie images showing a jumble of reindeer carcasses scattered across a small area ... ....

photo: Creative Commons / M&R; Glasgow

File - Guns on display at the Houston Gun show in the George R. Brown Convention Center, Texas.

Why Is Japan’s Gun-Homicide Rate 700 Percent Less Than America’s?

Edit WorldNews.com 29 Aug 2016

Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. The senseless killing of professional basketball star Dwyane Wade’s kin, Nykea Aldridge, is another reminder of America’s pathological gun-violence culture. Indeed, not only is America’s gun-homicide rate 700 percent more than that of Japan, but in Japan an individual is more likely to die from being struck by lightning than a fatal gunshot ... destructive weapons should never be used....

photo: Creative Commons / Shalom

Lucy (Australopithecus) - Muzeum Ewolucji PAN - Reconstruction of "Lucy", Warsaw Museum of Evolution

What Killed the World’s Most Famous Fossil?

Edit The Atlantic 29 Aug 2016

In 1974, scientists working in Ethiopia uncovered an extraordinary female skeleton, whom they called Lucy. She was 3.2 million years old, and belonged to a new species of hominid now known as Australopithecus afarensis ... Lucy has since become a household name, and it’s easy to forget that she was more than just an avatar of human evolution. She was also a person ... She ate, drank, and socialized. She climbed trees ... Maybe she was pushed....

photo: NASA

File - Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Jeff Williams of NASA captured a series of photos from the International Space Station on April 25, 2016, for this composite image of the setting sun reflected by the ocean.

Anthropocene: What is the next epoch and has Planet Earth entered it?

Edit The Independent 29 Aug 2016

What is the Anthropocene? ... Why do they think that? ... Read more ....

photo: Public Domain / /

File - Great white shark off (Carcharodon carcharias), Isla Guadalupe, Mexico.

Biologists Say They Found The First Great White Shark Nursery In Long Island

Edit IFL Science 29 Aug 2016

Despite our widespread fascination with great white sharks, we know surprisingly little about their reproduction and their young. But that might be about to change. A team of researchers from OCEARCH believe they have discovered the first known breeding site for great white sharks off Montauk in Long Island, New York, CBS News reports ... “Probably the most important significant discovery we’ve ever made on the ocean.”....

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