Investment (military)

Investment is the military process of surrounding an enemy fort (or town) with armed forces to prevent entry or escape. It serves both to cut communications with the outside world, and to prevent supplies and reinforcements from being introduced.

A circumvallation is a line of fortifications, built by the attackers around the besieged fortification facing towards an enemy fort (to protect the besiegers from sorties by its defenders and to enhance the blockade). The resulting fortifications are known as 'lines of circumvallation'. Lines of circumvallation generally consist of earthen ramparts and entrenchments that encircle the besieged city. The line of circumvallation can be used as a base for launching assaults against the besieged city or for constructing further earthworks nearer to the city.

A contravallation may be constructed in cases where the besieging army is threatened by a field army allied to an enemy fort. This is a second line of fortifications outside the circumvallation, facing away from an enemy fort. The contravallation protects the besiegers from attacks by allies of the city's defenders and enhances the blockade of an enemy fort by making it more difficult to smuggle in supplies.

Invest (meteorology)

An invest in meteorology (short for investigative area, alternatively written INVEST) is a designated area of disturbed weather that is being monitored for tropical cyclone development. Invests are designated by three separate forecast centers: the National Hurricane Center, Central Pacific Hurricane Center and Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

Designation

Invests are designated by three separate forecast centers: the National Hurricane Center, Central Pacific Hurricane Center and Joint Typhoon Warning Center. The designation of a system as an invest does not necessarily correspond to any particular likelihood of development of the system into a tropical cyclone. Invests are numbered from 90 to 99, followed by L in the Atlantic, E and C in the East and Central Pacific respectively, or W in the West Pacific; the Joint Typhoon Warning Center also issues unofficial warnings for the Australian cyclone region, designating tropical invests with the "S" suffix when they form west of 135°E, and the "P" suffix when they form east of 135°E. Invests in the North Indian Ocean cyclone basin are also labelled by the JTWC, and are suffixed with "A" if they form in the Arabian Sea and with "B" if they form in the Bay of Bengal. Numbers are rotated within the season and are re-used as necessary (the next invest after 99 would be numbered 90). If the system develops into a tropical cyclone, it is reclassified as the next name/number on the list.

INVEST (mnemonic)

The INVEST mnemonic was created by Bill Wake as a reminder of the characteristics of a good quality user story, as may be used in a Scrum or Kanban backlog or XP project.

Independent

One of the characteristics of Agile Methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban or XP is the ability to move stories around, taking into account their relative priority - for example - without much effort. If you find user stories that are tightly dependent, a good idea might be to combine them into a single user story.

Negotiable

The only thing that is fixed and set in stone in an agile project is an iteration backlog (and, even then, this "can be clarified and re-negotiated... as more is learned."). While the story lies in the product backlog, it can be rewritten or even discarded, depending on business, market, technical or any other type of requirement by team members.

Valuable

The focus here is to bring actual project-related value to the end-user. Coming up with technical stories that are really fun to code but bring no value to the end-user violates one of the Agile Principles, which is to continuously deliver valuable software.

Woman

A woman is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent. The term woman is also sometimes used to identify a female human, regardless of age, as in phrases such as "women's rights". "Woman" may also refer to a person's gender identity. Women with typical genetic development are usually capable of giving birth from puberty until menopause. In the context of gender identity, transgender people who are biologically determined to be male and identify as women cannot give birth. Some intersex people who identify as women cannot give birth due to either sterility or inheriting one or more Y chromosomes. In extremely rare cases, people who have Swyer syndrome can give birth with medical assistance. Throughout history women have assumed or been assigned various social roles.

Etymology

The spelling of woman in English has progressed over the past millennium from wīfmann to wīmmann to wumman, and finally, the modern spelling woman. In Old English, wīfmann meant "female human", whereas wēr meant "male human". Mann or monn had a gender-neutral meaning of "human", corresponding to Modern English "person" or "someone"; however, subsequent to the Norman Conquest, man began to be used more in reference to "male human", and by the late 13th century had begun to eclipse usage of the older term wēr. The medial labial consonants f and m in wīfmann coalesced into the modern form "woman", while the initial element, which meant "female", underwent semantic narrowing to the sense of a married woman ("wife"). It is a popular misconception that the term "woman" is etymologically connected with "womb", which is from a separate Old English word, wambe meaning "stomach" (of male or female; modern German retains the colloquial term "Wampe" from Middle High German for "potbelly"). Nevertheless, such a false derivation of "woman" has appeared in print.

Women (novel)

Women is a 1978 novel written by Charles Bukowski, starring his semi-autobiographical character Henry Chinaski. In contrast to Factotum, Post Office and Ham on Rye, Women is centered on Chinaski's later life, as a celebrated poet and writer, not as a dead-end lowlife. It does, however, feature the same constant carousel of women with whom Chinaski only finds temporary fulfillment.

Plot

Women focuses on the many dissatisfactions Chinaski faced with each new woman he encountered. One of the women featured in the book is a character named Lydia Vance; she is based on Bukowski's one-time girlfriend, the sculptress and sometime poet Linda King. Another central female character in the book is named "Tanya" who is described as a 'tiny girl-child' and Chinaski's pen-pal. They have a weekend tryst. The real-life counterpart to this character wrote a self-published chapbook about the affair entitled "Blowing My Hero" under the pseudonym Amber O'Neil. The washed-up folksinger "Dinky Summers" is based on Bob Lind.

Women (album)

Women is the debut album by Calgary band Women, recorded by fellow Calgary-native Chad VanGaalen. It was released in 2008 on VanGaalen's Flemish Eye record label in Canada, and on Jagjaguwar in the US. The song "Sag Harbour Song" is a direct reference to the suicide of the artist Ray Johnson, like "Locust Valley" and "Venice Lockjaw" on Women's second album of 2010, Public Strain.

Recording

Women was recorded by Polaris Music Prize-nominated Chad VanGaalen, in "[VanGaalen's] basement, an outdoor culvert and a crawlspace." It was recorded using boom boxes and tape machines, contributing to its lo-fi sound.

Reception

Women was released to favourable reviews, with Cokemachineglow naming it as "the best 'indie rock' record released [in 2008], hands down."

Track listing

References

External links