Swatch Internet Time

Swatch Internet Time (or beat time) is a decimal time concept introduced in 1998 by the Swatch corporation as part of their marketing campaign for their line of "Beat" watches.

Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided up into 1000 parts called ".beats". Each .beat is equal to one decimal minute in the French Revolutionary decimal time system and lasts 1 minute and 26.4 seconds (86.4 seconds) in standard time. Times are notated as a 3-digit number out of 1000 after midnight. So, @248 would indicate a time 248 .beats after midnight representing 248/1000 of a day, just over 5 hours and 57 minutes.

There are no time zones in Swatch Internet Time; instead, the new time scale of Biel Meantime (BMT) is used, based on Swatch's headquarters in Biel, Switzerland and equivalent to Central European Time, West Africa Time, and UTC+01. Unlike civil time in Switzerland and many other countries, Swatch Internet Time does not observe daylight saving time.

History

Swatch Internet Time was announced on October 23, 1998, in a ceremony at the Junior Summit '98, attended by Nicolas G. Hayek, President and CEO of the Swatch Group, G.N. Hayek, President of Swatch Ltd., and Nicholas Negroponte, founder and then-director of the MIT Media Lab. During the Summit, Swatch Internet Time became the official time system for Nation1, an online country (supposedly) created and run by children.

Jet Set Radio

Jet Set Radio (ジェットセットラジオ, Jetto Setto Rajio), titled Jet Grind Radio in North America, is a video game developed by the Sega studio Smilebit. It was published by Sega for the Dreamcast on June 29, 2000 in Japan, October 30, 2000 in North America and November 24, 2000 in Europe. The player controls one of a gang of youths who roam the streets of Tokyo-to, rollerblading and spraying graffiti while evading the authorities. It was one of the first games to use cel-shaded visuals, giving it a "flat", cartoon-like appearance.

A version by Vicarious Visions was released by THQ for Game Boy Advance on June 26, 2003 in North America and February 20, 2004 in Europe. A sequel, Jet Set Radio Future, was released in 2002 for the Xbox. A high-definition port by Blit Software was released for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and Windows in September 2012.

Gameplay

The player controls Beat, a tagger who forms a gang of graffiti-tagging rollerbladers. In a typical stage, the player must tag every graffiti spot in each area before the timer runs out, while evading the authorities, who pursue on foot, in tanks and helicopters. New playable characters are unlocked after the player beats them in trick battles.

Beat (album)

Beat is the ninth studio album by the British rock band King Crimson, released in 1982. The halftone quaver image on the cover was designed by artist Rob O'Connor.

Song Information

According to the Trouser Press Record Guide, the album focused on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The album makes several references to the writings of the Beat Generation:

Horse

The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. It is an odd-toed ungulate mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, Hyracotherium, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began to domesticate horses around 4000 BC, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BC. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated, such as the endangered Przewalski's horse, a separate subspecies, and the only remaining true wild horse. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior.

Horses' anatomy enables them to make use of speed to escape predators and they have a well-developed sense of balance and a strong fight-or-flight response. Related to this need to flee from predators in the wild is an unusual trait: horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down. Female horses, called mares, carry their young for approximately 11 months, and a young horse, called a foal, can stand and run shortly following birth. Most domesticated horses begin training under saddle or in harness between the ages of two and four. They reach full adult development by age five, and have an average lifespan of between 25 and 30 years.

Horse (musician)

Horse (born Sheena Mary McDonald, 22 November 1958 in Newport on Tay, Fife, Scotland) is a Scottish female singer-songwriter. She has a wide following in the UK and worldwide and has toured with Tina Turner and secured several record chart hits in Europe. She is noted mainly for her rich, sonorous voice, and The Scotsman referred to her as "one of Scotland's all-time great vocalists, also possessed of a keen songwriting intelligence".

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of her debut album The Same Sky, Horse and her band played the entire album on a concert tour of the United Kingdom in October and November 2010.

In 2011, Horse performed a duet with Heather Peace, on a song they wrote together: Beechwood avenue.

Horse toured in March 2011, playing an unplugged acoustic set with the full band. These concerts featured "exclusive previews of several new songs from the upcoming ninth album, as well as Horse standards and rare B sides".

She is also slated to appear in the soundtrack of the forthcoming UK independent film, About Her.

9th Deccan Horse

The 9th Deccan Horse is a regiment of the Indian Army, which was a regular cavalry regiment of the British Indian Army, the Royal Deccan Horse (9th Horse). It was formed from the amalgamation of two regiments after World War I. They saw service from the Mutiny of 1857 up to and including World War II.

Formation

The 9th Royal Deccan Horse can trace its formation to 1790 when it was called Asif Sah's Irregular Cavalry. Two Regiments were raised for service under the Nizam of Hyderabad in Berar who was allied with the East India Company.

During the following years the Regiment's title would change and they were known by the following titles over the years;

The Deccan Horse was frequently called for service during the 18th and 19th Centuries, winning a Victoria Cross in 1859 and was also awarded the battle honour, ‘Central India’.

The Regiment was also in action during the Second Afghan War, the Burma War, and in China during the Boxer Rebellion. In 1903 during Kitcheners reform of the Indian Army the two Regiments were incorporated into the regular Indian Army with the titles XXth Deccan Horse and the 29th Lancers (Deccan Horse).

Lotna

Lotna is a Polish war film released in 1959 and directed by Andrzej Wajda.

Overview

This highly symbolic movie is both the director's tribute to the long and glorious history of the Polish cavalry, as well as a more ambiguous portrait of the passing of an era. Wajda was the son of a Polish Cavalry officer who was murdered by the Soviets during the Katyn massacre.

The horse Lotna represents the entire Romantic tradition in culture, a tradition that had a huge influence in the course of Polish history and the formation of Polish literature. Lotna is Wajda's meditation on the historical breaking point that was 1939, as well as a reflection on the ending of an entire era for literature and culture in Poland and in Europe as a whole. Writing of the film, Wajda states that it "held great hopes for him, perhaps more than any other." Sadly, Wajda came to think of Lotna "a failure as a film."

The film remains highly controversial, as Wajda includes a mythical scene in which Polish horsemen suicidally charge a unit of German tanks, an event that never actually happened.