Speedball

Speedball is one of several game types of the sport of paintball.

Speedball may also refer to:

In sports

In media and entertainment

In music

In other uses

In drugs and alcohol

In business

Robbie Baldwin

Robert "Robbie" Baldwin is a fictional character, a superhero appearing in books published by Marvel Comics.

Created by artist Steve Ditko and writer Tom DeFalco, the character first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #22 (January 1988) originally known as Speedball, as well as in Civil War: Front Line #10 (January 2007) as Penance.

The character's origin and early exploits as Speedball were depicted soon after in a solo series. After that series was cancelled, he appeared as a member of the superhero team the New Warriors, in the monthly title of the same name. In the Marvel Comics crossover "Civil War", the character changes his name and appearance to Penance. Following this change, he is a member of the Thunderbolts. As of the first issue of "Avengers Academy", he has reverted to Speedball and a modified version of his first appearance.

Publication history

Created by artist Steve Ditko and writer Tom DeFalco, the character first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #22 (January 1988) originally known as Speedball, (initially as a candidate for Marvel's separate New Universe imprint).

Speedball (paintball)

Speedball is one of the three distinct game variants in the sport of paintball, woodsball and scenario paintball.

It is a general term for a game in which the playing field is composed of bunkers, of the same location and number on each side of the field, that provide an equal playing field for each team competing. It was created in this way to give a better format for competitive paintball, both in playing and viewing the games.

General

Paintball is one of the most widely played extreme sports in the United States. Due to the popularity of the speedball variant in professional paintball leagues, speedball evolved paintball into a more formalized game, with each league having a differing format. Paintball was originally a recreational activity, but became a sport with the advent of organized speedball tournaments, professional teams making use of coaching, corporate endorsements, media coverage, and fan followings.

History

Absolute (Time-Life album)

Absolute is a music compilation album under both the Body and Soul and Midnight Soul collection series. Distributed by Time-Life through its music division, the album was released January 28, 2003 and was originally under the Body and Soul series. It was re-released in 2008 when Time-Life launched the Midnight Soul series.

It is distributed both in two versions: the single CD sold-in-stores and the Time-Life exclusive version on the double CD set. The sold-in-stores version features seventeen urban contemporary R&B hits, with many of them released in the Neo soul music era. The Time-Life exclusive version features 24 hits on 2 CDs, including seven more songs not featured in stores.

Track listing

sold-in-stores version

Absolute construction

In linguistics, an absolute construction is a grammatical construction standing apart from a normal or usual syntactical relation with other words or sentence elements. It can be a non-finite clause that is subordinate in form and modifies an entire sentence, an adjective or possessive pronoun standing alone without a modified substantive, or a transitive verb when its object is implied but not stated. The term absolute derives from Latin absolūtum, meaning "loosened from" or "separated".

Because the non-finite clause, called the absolute clause (or simply the absolute), is not semantically attached to any single element in the sentence, it is easily confused with a dangling participle. The difference is that the participial phrase of a dangling participle is intended to modify a particular noun, but is instead erroneously attached to a different noun, whereas a participial phrase serving as an absolute clause is not intended to modify any noun at all.

English

While the absolute construction is not particularly common in modern English and is generally more often seen in writing than in speech, it may be spoken as one of several fixed expressions:

Absolute (perfumery)

Used in perfumery and aromatherapy, absolutes are similar to essential oils. They are concentrated, highly aromatic, oily mixtures extracted from plants. Whereas essential oils can typically be produced through steam distillation, absolutes require the use of solvent extraction techniques or more traditionally, through enfleurage.

Production

First, an organic solvent, such as hexane, is added to the plant material to help extract the non-polar compounds. This solution is filtered and concentrated by distillation to produce a waxy mass called concrete. The more polar, fragrant compounds are extracted from the concrete into ethanol. When the ethanol evaporates, an oil—the absolute—is left behind.

Character and use

Absolutes are usually more concentrated than essential oils. Also, the efficiency and low temperature of the extraction process helps prevent damage to the fragrant compounds. With a good understanding of the solvent they are using, extractors can produce absolutes with aromas closer to the original plant product than is possible with essential oils produced through distillation. Examples of this are rose otto (steam-distilled rose oil), as opposed to rose absolute, and neroli (steam-distilled oil from the blossom of the bitter orange tree), as opposed to orange blossom absolute. Also, some raw materials are either too delicate or too inert to be steam-distilled and can only yield their aroma through other methods, such as solvent extraction or lipid absorption. Examples of these are jasmine, tuberose, mimosa, and beeswax.