Badges of the United States Air Force
Badges of the United States Air Force are specific uniform paraphernalia authorized by the United States Air Force that signify aeronautical ratings, special skills, career field qualifications, serve as identification devices for personnel occupying certain assignments. Most Air Force badges are awarded in skill levels. Aeronautical rating badges for pilots, combat systems officers and air battle managers are awarded at basic and command levels. All other aviation badges are awarded at the basic and master levels. Occupational badges are issued in basic and master level for officers. Enlisted wear the basic badge after completing technical school, the senior badge after award of the 7-skill level, the master badge as a master sergeant or above with 5 years in the specialty from award of the 7-skill level. A star and wreath system, worn above the Air Force badge, denotes which degree or skill level a service member holds. Chaplain, space and missile operations badges, along with the Air Force Commander's Insignia are mandatory for wear on Air Force uniforms.
With the most recent changes to Air Force uniform regulations, restrictions have been lifted on the wear of other service's skill badges that Airman have earned. Unless otherwise stated, the badges listed below are presented in order of precedence. Precedence of badges within the same category depends on the airman's current assignment; the Air Force is the most restrictive service with regards to which Air Force badges may be worn on the uniforms by other branches of the US Armed Forces. Most badges issued by the Air Force may only be displayed on Air Force uniforms; the exception to this rule is the Space Operations Badge. The Air Force authorized continued use of a number of aviation badges issued by the U. S. Army during World War II; such badges are now categorized as obsolete badges. Sources: As of 17 January 2014, Airmen are authorized to wear any qualification/skill badge they have earned on Air Force uniforms; the qualification badges listed below are joint badges that are awarded by the Air Force as well as other services.
An Air Force Occupational Badge is a military badge of the United States Air Force, awarded to those members of the Air Force community who are engaged in duties “other than flying”. The purpose of the Air Force Occupational Badge is to denote and recognize training and qualifications received in a particular career field and to provide recognition in an outwardly displayed badge; the first Air Force Occupational Badges began appearing on Air Force uniforms in the late 1950s. Prior to this time, the only Air Force badges authorized were the Pilot Badge and other aeronautical rating badges, such as the Navigator Badge and Flight Surgeon Badge; the following operations insignia are worn as flashes or crests on unique Air Force berets instead of the left breast of Air Force uniforms. Both the breast insignia and the following flashes/crests signify the same thing, an Air Force specialty. Sources: Phoenix RAVEN: awarded to Security Forces Airmen who complete the Phoenix RAVEN course at McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey DAGRE: Deployed Aircraft Ground Response Element, awarded to AFSOC Security Forces Airmen who complete the course at Hurlburt Field, Florida Sources: U.
S. Air Force Aeronautical Ratings Air Force Specialty Code Military badges of the United States Obsolete badges of the United States military
Artisan
An artisan is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates things by hand that may be functional or decorative, for example furniture, decorative arts, clothing, food items, household items and tools or mechanisms such as the handmade clockwork movement of a watchmaker. Artisans practice a craft and may through experience and aptitude reach the expressive levels of an artist; the adjective "artisanal" is sometimes used in describing hand-processing in what is viewed as an industrial process, such as in the phrase artisanal mining. Thus, "artisanal" is sometimes used in marketing and advertising as a buzz word to describe or imply some relation with the crafting of handmade food products, such as bread, beverages or cheese. Many of these have traditionally been handmade, rural or pastoral goods but are now made on a larger scale with automated mechanization in factories and other industrial areas. Artisans were the dominant producers of consumer products before the Industrial Revolution. In ancient Greece, artisans were drawn to agoras and built workshops nearby.
During the Middle Ages, the term "artisan" was applied to those who made things or provided services. It did not apply to unskilled manual labourers. Artisans were divided into two distinct groups: those who operated their own businesses and those who did not; those who owned their businesses were called masters, while the latter were the journeymen and apprentices. One misunderstanding many people have about this social group is that they picture them as "workers" in the modern sense: employed by someone; the most influential group among the artisans were the business owners. The owners enjoyed a higher social status in their communities. Shokunin is a Japanese word for "artisan" or "craftsman", which implies a pride in one's own work. In the words of shokunin Tashio Odate:Shokunin means not only having technical skill, but implies an attitude and social consciousness... a social obligation to work his best for the general welfare of the people, obligation both material and spiritual. Traditionally, shokunin honoured their tools of trade at New Year's – the sharpened and taken-care of tools would be placed in a tokonoma, two rice cakes and a tangerine were placed on top of each toolbox, to honour the tools and express gratitude for performing their task.
Applied art Artist Arts and Crafts movement Caste — Tarkhan Guild Handicraft Tradesman Artian.com /Prezzy The dictionary definition of artisan at Wiktionary History of Artisans
Germany
Germany the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north and the Czech Republic to the east and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to the west. Germany includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,386 square kilometres, has a temperate seasonal climate. With 83 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous state of Europe after Russia, the most populous state lying in Europe, as well as the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is a decentralized country, its capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while Frankfurt serves as its financial capital and has the country's busiest airport. Germany's largest urban area is the Ruhr, with its main centres of Essen; the country's other major cities are Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Bremen and Nuremberg. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity.
A region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation. After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation was formed in 1815; the German revolutions of 1848–49 resulted in the Frankfurt Parliament establishing major democratic rights. In 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the revolution of 1918–19, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic; the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to the establishment of a dictatorship, the annexation of Austria, World War II, the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, Austria was re-established as an independent country and two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American and French occupation zones, East Germany, formed from the Soviet occupation zone.
Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990. Today, the sovereign state of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic led by a chancellor, it is a great power with a strong economy. As a global leader in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the world's third-largest exporter and importer of goods; as a developed country with a high standard of living, it upholds a social security and universal health care system, environmental protection, a tuition-free university education. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the European Union in 1993, it is part of the Schengen Area and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G7, the G20, the OECD. Known for its rich cultural history, Germany has been continuously the home of influential and successful artists, musicians, film people, entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors.
Germany has a large number of World Heritage sites and is among the top tourism destinations in the world. The English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine; the German term Deutschland diutisciu land is derived from deutsch, descended from Old High German diutisc "popular" used to distinguish the language of the common people from Latin and its Romance descendants. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz "popular", derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- "people", from which the word Teutons originates; the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a coal mine in Schöningen between 1994 and 1998 where eight 380,000-year-old wooden javelins of 1.82 to 2.25 m length were unearthed. The Neander Valley was the location where the first non-modern human fossil was discovered.
The Neanderthal 1 fossils are known to be 40,000 years old. Evidence of modern humans dated, has been found in caves in the Swabian Jura near Ulm; the finds included 42,000-year-old bird bone and mammoth ivory flutes which are the oldest musical instruments found, the 40,000-year-old Ice Age Lion Man, the oldest uncontested figurative art discovered, the 35,000-year-old Venus of Hohle Fels, the oldest uncontested human figurative art discovered. The Nebra sky disk is a bronze artefact created during the European Bronze Age attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, it is part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme. The Germanic tribes are thought to date from the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From southern Scandinavia and north Germany, they expanded south and west from the 1st century BC, coming into contact with the Celtic tribes of Gaul as well
George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, best known by her nom de plume George Sand, was a French novelist and socialist. One of the most popular writers in Europe in her lifetime, being more popular than both Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s, Sand is recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era. George Sand – known to her friends and family as "Aurore" – was born in Paris and was raised for much of her childhood by her grandmother, Marie-Aurore de Saxe, Madame Dupin de Francueil, at her grandmother's estate, Nohant, in the French province of Berry. Sand used the estate setting in many of her novels, her father, Maurice Dupin, was the grandson of the Marshal General of France, Comte de Saxe, an illegitimate son of Augustus II the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, a cousin to the sixth degree to Kings Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X of France. She was more distantly related to King Louis Philippe of France through common ancestors from German and Danish ruling families.
Sand's mother, Sophie-Victoire Delaborde, was a commoner. Sand was one of many notable 19th-century women. In 1800, the police issued an order requiring women to apply for a permit in order to wear male clothing; some women applied for health, occupational, or recreational reasons, but many women chose to wear pants and other traditional male attire in public without receiving a permit, they did so as well for practical reasons, but at times to subvert dominant stereotypes. Sand was one of the women who did not apply for a permit and did sport men's clothing, which she justified by the clothes being, firstly less expensive, far sturdier than the typical dress of a noblewoman at the time. In addition to being comfortable, Sand's male dress enabled her to circulate more in Paris than most of her female contemporaries, gave her increased access to venues from which women were barred women of her social standing. Scandalous was Sand's smoking tobacco in public. While there were many contemporary critics of her comportment, many people accepted her behaviour until they became shocked with the subversive tone of her novels.
Those who found her writing admirable were not bothered by her ambiguous or rebellious public behaviour. As Victor Hugo commented, "George Sand can not determine whether she is female. I entertain a high regard for all my colleagues, but it is not my place to decide whether she is my sister or my brother.” In 1822, at the age of eighteen, Sand married Casimir Dudevant, illegitimate son of Baron Jean-François Dudevant. She and Dudevant had two children: Solange. In 1825 she had an intense but platonic affair with the young lawyer Aurélien de Sèze. In early 1831, she left her husband and entered upon a four- or five-year period of "romantic rebellion." In 1835, she was separated from Dudevant, took custody of their children. Sand had romantic affairs with Jules Sandeau, Prosper Mérimée, Alfred de Musset, Louis-Chrysostome Michel, Pierre-François Bocage, Charles Didier, Félicien Mallefille, Louis Blanc, composer Frédéric Chopin. In her life, she corresponded with Gustave Flaubert, despite their differences in temperament and aesthetic preference, they became close friends.
She engaged in an intimate friendship with actress Marie Dorval, which led to widespread but unconfirmed rumours of a romantic affair. Sand spent the winter of 1838-1839 with Chopin in Majorca at the Carthusian monastery of Valldemossa; the trip to Majorca was described in her Un hiver à Majorque, first published in 1841. Chopin was ill with incipient tuberculosis at the beginning of their relationship, spending a cold and wet winter in Majorca where they could not get proper lodgings exacerbated his symptoms, they separated two years before his death for a variety of reasons. In her novel Lucrezia Floriani, Sand used Chopin as a model for a sickly Eastern European prince named Karol, he is cared for by a middle-aged actress past her prime, who suffers a great deal through her affection for Karol. Though Sand claimed not to have made a cartoon out of Chopin, the book's publication and widespread readership may have exacerbated their antipathy towards each other; the tipping point in their relationship involved her daughter Solange.
Chopin continued to be cordial to Solange after she and her husband, Auguste Clésinger, had a falling out with Sand over money. Sand took Chopin's support of Solange to be disloyal, confirmation that Chopin had always "loved" Solange. Sand's son Maurice disliked Chopin. Maurice wanted to establish himself as the "man of the estate" and did not wish to have Chopin as a rival. Chopin was never asked back to Nohant. Chopin was penniless at that time; the funeral was attended by over 3,000 people, including Eugène Delacroix, Franz Liszt, Victor Hugo and other famous people. George Sand was notably absent. George Sand died at Nohant, near Châteauroux, in France's Indre département on 8 June 1876, at the age of 71, she was buried in the private grave
France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Australia
Australia the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area; the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea and East Timor to the north. The population of 25 million is urbanised and concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, its largest city is Sydney; the country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians for about 60,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, it is documented. After the European exploration of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, who named it New Holland, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national day; the population grew in subsequent decades, by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Being the oldest and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils, Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east. A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world. Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications and manufacturing. Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Australia is a developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy.
It has a high-income economy, with the world's tenth-highest per capita income. It is a regional power, has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the world's ninth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 26% of the population. Having the third-highest human development index and the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks in quality of life, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative livability surveys. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum and the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism; the name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts; the name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". The first time that Australia appears to have been used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known by that name; the first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office. Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under". Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", "the Wide Brown Land".
The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country". Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia; these first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth. At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest. Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime; the Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited s
