Low (Flo Rida song)

"Low" is the debut single by American rapper Flo Rida, featured on his debut studio album Mail on Sunday and also featured on the soundtrack to the 2008 film Step Up 2: The Streets. The song features fellow American rapper T-Pain and was co-written with T-Pain. There is also a remix in which the hook is sung by Flo Rida rather than T-Pain. An official remix was made which features Pitbull and T-Pain. With its catchy, up-tempo and club-oriented Southern hip hop rhythms, the song peaked at the summit of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

The song was a massive success worldwide and was the longest running number-one single of 2008 in the United States. With over 6 million digital downloads, it has been certified 7× Platinum by the RIAA, and was the most downloaded single of the 2000s decade, measured by paid digital downloads. The song was named 3rd on the Billboard Hot 100 Songs of the Decade. "Low" spent ten consecutive weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100, the longest-running number-one single of 2008.

X-Dream

X-Dream are Marcus Christopher Maichel (born May 1968) and Jan Müller (born February 1970); they are also known as Rough and Rush. They are some of the cult hit producers of psychedelic trance music and hail from Hamburg, Germany.

The latest X-Dream album, We Interface, includes vocals from American singer Ariel Electron.

First work

Muller was educated as a sound engineer. Maichel was a musician familiar with techno and reggae, and was already making electronic music in 1986. In 1989 the pair first met when Marcus was having problems with his PC and someone sent Jan to help fix it. That same year they teamed up to work on a session together. Their first work concentrated on a sound similar to techno with some hip hop elements which got some material released on Tunnel Records.

Trance

During the early 1990s they were first introduced to the trance scene in Hamburg and decided to switch their music to this genre. From 1993 they began releasing several singles on the Hamburg label Tunnel Records, as X-Dream and under many aliases, such as The Pollinator. Two albums followed on Tunnel Records, Trip To Trancesylvania and We Created Our Own Happiness, which were much closer to the original formula of psychedelic trance, although featuring the unmistakable "trippy" early X-Dream sound.

Radio (Ky-Mani Marley album)

Radio is the fifth and latest studio album by Jamaican reggae and hip-hop artist Ky-Mani Marley, released on September 25, 2007. It topped the Billboard Reggae Charts at #1 in October 2007. The album features much more hip hop influences than his previous releases.

Track listing

References

External links

Fifty State Initiative

The Fifty State Initiative, often referred to as simply The Initiative, is a fictional governmental plan that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics, in particular those related to The Avengers. Its purpose is to provide a superhero team in every state of the United States after the conclusion of the 2006–2007 "Civil War" storyline.

History

The Initiative plan is #41 on the list of 101 items that Mister Fantastic, Iron Man and Yellowjacket came up with to ensure the increased security of super-human activities, following the Stamford tragedy that helped pass the Superhuman Registration Act. Registered superhumans are sent to Camp Hammond to train before they are assigned to an Initiative team.

Three comic books were directly launched as a result of this Initiative: Avengers: The Initiative, Mighty Avengers and The Order. These have since been followed by three different mini-series: The Last Defenders focusing on the first team assigned to New Jersey, Patsy Walker: Hellcat about the sole hero allocated to Alaska, and Marvel Zombies 3 which in its first issue centered on the team in Florida defending the Marvel Universe from zombie invasion.

Initiative 200

Initiative 200 was a Washington State initiative to the Legislature promoted by California affirmative-action opponent Ward Connerly and filed by Scott Smith and Tim Eyman, a mail-order salesman from Mukilteo, Washington. It sought to prohibit racial and gender preferences by state and local government. It was on the Washington ballot in November 1998 and passed with 58.22% of the vote. It added to Washington's law (but not its constitution) the following language:

(1) The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

History

Initiative 200, a Washington State statute passed as the first major civil rights law enacted by direct public vote took place in November 1998. The voting took place statewide, with approximately 1.9 million voters taking to the polls. The enactment was inevitable with a 58.2 percent, or a grand total of 1,099,410 voters saying "yes". Statewide, all counties passed the statute, with only one exception, King County, in all places but Seattle. The law reads "All state agencies, boards, departments and commissions are prohibited from using any equal opportunity programs that grant preferential treatment in hiring. Initial consideration of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin may continue through outreach efforts. No comparable aggressive action to end equal opportunity programs that grant preferential treatment".

Andersen v. King County

Andersen v. King County, 138 P.3d 963 (Wash. 2006), formerly Andersen v. Sims, is a Washington Supreme Court case in which eight lesbian and gay couples sued King County and the state of Washington for denying them marriage licenses under the state's 1998 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. The court ruled that banning same-sex marriage is constitutional since the legislature could reasonably believe it furthers the government interest in promoting procreation.

The state enacted same-sex marriage in 2012. Opponents forced a referendum on the issue, and voters approved the legislation on November 6.

Lower court decisions

In the case, King County Superior Court Judge William L. Downing ruled that the state law prohibiting same-sex marriages, or DOMA, was unconstitutional, finding for the plaintiffs on August 4, 2004. The judge ruled that restricting the institution of marriage to opposite sex couples "is not rationally related to any legitimate or compelling state interest." The ruling was appealed to the state Supreme Court.