Noon (also midday or noon time) is usually defined as 12 o'clock in the daytime. The term midday is also used colloquially to refer to an arbitrary period of time in the middle of the day. Solar noon is when the sun crosses the meridian and is at its highest elevation in the sky, at 12 o'clock apparent solar time. The local or clock time of solar noon depends on the longitude and date. The opposite of noon is midnight.

In many cultures in the Northern Hemisphere, noon had ancient geographic associations with the direction "south" (as did midnight with "north" in some cultures). Remnants of the noon = south association are preserved in the words for noon in French (Midi) and Italian (Mezzogiorno), both of which also refer to the southern parts of the respective countries. Modern Polish, Ukrainian, and Serbian go a step farther, with the words for noon (południe, південь, пoднe – literally "half-day") also meaning "south" and the words for "midnight" (północ, північ, пoнoħ – literally "half-night", as with English mid(dle) meaning "half") also meaning "north".

The Keys to the Kingdom is a fantasy-adventure book series, written by Garth Nix, started in 2003 with Mister Monday and ended with "Lord Sunday". The series follows the story of Arthur Penhaligon and his charge as the Rightful Heir of the Architect to claim the Seven Keys to the Kingdom and the seven demesnes of the House.

Heroes

Arthur Penhaligon

Arthur, a 12-year-old boy, has recently moved to a town and wants to fit into it. After suffering an asthma attack, he is saved by a mysterious metal object, called a Key, given by an even stranger character, Mister Monday, whose servants bring an incurable plague to Arthur's town. Arthur hurries to the House, a mysterious structure that only he can see. Shortly after arriving in the House, Arthur discovers the structure of the house is a complete universe and is informed of his duty to unseat the seven Trustees who run the House, claim their Keys, and rule all of Creation. Arthur cannot live an ordinary life unless he overthrows all of the Trustees, who are also known as the Morrow Days. To do this, however, he must use the Keys, which infect him with sorcery and make him a Denizen of the House; and whenever Denizens appear in the Secondary Realms (everything in Creation that is not in the House, including Earth), they are "inimical to mortal life", i.e. incredibly harmful to reality. This dilemma is a constant theme in the books: as Arthur does not wish to turn into a Denizen; he often resists using the Keys, and only does when it is absolutely necessary.

Nun is the fourteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Nūn , Hebrew Nun נ, Aramaic Nun , Syriac Nūn ܢܢ, and Arabic Nūn ن (in abjadi order). It is the third letter in Thaana (ނ), pronounced as "noonu".
Its sound value is [n].

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek nu (Ν), Etruscan , Latin N, and Cyrillic Н.

Origins

Nun is believed to be derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph of a snake (the Hebrew word for snake, nachash begins with a Nun and snake in Aramaic is nun) or eel. Some have hypothesized a hieroglyph of fish in water as its origin (in Arabic, nūn means large fish or whale). The Phoenician letter was named nūn "fish", but the glyph has been suggested to descend from a hypothetical Proto-Canaanite naḥš "snake", based on the name in Ethiopic, ultimately from a hieroglyph representing a snake,

(see Middle Bronze Age alphabets). Naḥš in modern Arabic literally means "bad luck". The cognate letter in Ge'ez and descended Semitic languages of Ethiopia is nehas, which also means "brass".

Phyciodes, commonly but ambiguously called the "crescents" or "crescentspots" (like some related genera) is a genus of butterflies of the subfamily Nymphalinae in the family Nymphalidae.

Species

References

Crescent is the fourth full-length studio album released by Japanese solo artist Gackt on December 3, 2003. It is conceptually linked to its predecessor Moon and comes with booklets for both records (Moon did not originally contain one). Crescent also features a duet with L'Arc-en-Ciel vocalist Hyde for "Orenji no Taiyou" with whom Gackt co-starred in the 2003 movie Moon Child.

The album is seen as a turning point in Gackt's career. An lyrically emotional and musically varied record, it is often seen as Gackt's strongest release and when he finally mastered his style of poetically romantic lyrics set against an artsy rock music background.

Release

The album was released on December 3, 2003, by Nippon Crown. In the third counting week of December it reached number five on the Oricon charts, with sales of 75,561 copies. It charted for 11 weeks. Since its release the album has sold more than 250,000 copies, being not certified Gold due to change of criteria, but Platinum by the RIAJ.

The crescent is a Pictish symbol of unknown meaning, that is generally found in combination with an overlaid V-rod on Class I and Class II Pictish stones and infrequently without (as is the case on the Drosten Stone). The symbol is found in various combinations with other symbols, notably with the double disc and z-rod.

Gallery

References

Carpentry is a skilled trade in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. Carpenters traditionally worked with natural wood and did the rougher work such as framing, but today many other materials are also used and sometimes the finer trades of cabinetmaking and furniture building are considered carpentry. Carpentry in the United States is almost always done by men. With 98.5% of carpenters being male, it was the fourth most male-dominated occupation in the country in 1999, and there were about 1.5 million positions in 2006. Carpenters are usually the first tradesmen on a job and the last to leave. Carpenters normally framed post-and-beam buildings until the end of the 19th century; now this old fashioned carpentry is called timber framing. Carpenters learn this trade by being employed through an apprenticeship training—normally 4 years—and qualify by successfully completing that country's department of labour competency test in places such as the UK, USA and South Africa. It is also common that the skill can be learnt by gaining work experience other than a formal training program, which may be the case in many places.