A member of the Fatal Five.

Ray Sah of Rimbor is the real name of the villain Flare. Born a mutant with the ability to project solar radiation in the form of heat and light, Ray Sah used her unique abilities to lead a life of crime.

The Emerald Empress began reforming the Fatal Five after the death of Tharok and the disappearance of Validus. She offered Flare a place within the new Fatal Five, which Flare accepted. This put Flare in conflict with the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Flare is a term used to describe those annoying little light patterns across a photograph. It reduces contrast and washes out colors. It leaves either the blackest part of the picture gray or else a line of ghostly rings. It's a problem encountered when the photographer is shooting into the sun.

Flare is caused by non-image forming light getting into the lens. The easiest way to avoid this is to fit a hood to the lens to protect the front element from stray light or else to shade the lens with your hand. Change your position so the sun is outside of the viewfinder. Also keep the lens spotlessly clean.

Breaking (breakdancing) exhibitions can easily enchant an observer. The graceful manipulation of the human body, incorporation of creativity in styling original and standard elements, and its freestyle nature comprise an ever dynamic breaking display. While breaking moves are performed equipment-free on any clear floor or ground, some originated on the pommel horse, like the flare.

The first flare, performed by Canadian gymnast Phillip Delassal in the mid-1970s and adapted by American Kurt Thomas at the World Gymnastics Championships, was a modification of the double leg circle (DLC) element on the pommel horse. The DLC, typically done with legs together, becomes a flare when it is done with legs apart. The DLC is a movement in which legs held together perform an elevated circle in a plane parallel to the ground, while the body is suspended on two hands. Contrastingly, in the flare, widespread legs appear to have pendular motion. During flares, the spread of the legs along an elliptical path help performers attain maximum amplitude with relatively small efforts.

Even though the flare may sound simple, it is difficult for most. It involves the performer kicking his/her legs up into a V in front his torso then bringing them all the way around without touching the ground, while hands alternately give the body support. While there are many ways to start or segue into a flare, here is a simple method for a counterclockwise flare:

  1. Stand with legs spread.
  2. Place the left hand down on the ground, far in front, then kick the left leg under the right one, sweeping it all the way around to the front. When doing so, kick forward, not upward.
  3. When body weight shifts to the left arm, the right hand should come down close to the body, as is its natural tendency in this circumstance.
  4. When body weight shifts to the right arm, temporarily lift the left arm so that the legs can pass beneath it.
  5. At this point, both hands should be on the ground. Leaning forward and keeping arms stiff, move legs to the back.
  6. Lift the right arm so that the legs can pass beneath it.
  7. Keep the right leg high and close to the head while swinging the left leg under it towards the front.
  8. At this point the flare can be repeated. After much practicen, series of flares can be performed with small efforts.

In all, what began on the pommel horse was taken to the floor exercise by gymnasts then to the dance floor by breakdancers (b-boys/b-girls). Along with hip-hop, Capoeira, and African cultural dances, gymnastics lies at the heart of breaking.

Sources:
"Air-Legs", The Origin of the Flare, http://home.planet.nl/~loon0070/Bboyflar2.html.
Bboy Gallery - The art of break dancing, http://www.sphereofhiphop.com/bboy.htm.
Thanks to a generous friend, "Pin-lock" for showing me how to flare repeatedly, though I'm still too weak to do it myself.

Flare is set to be the world's first annotative programming language. As in some dialects of LISP, programs and data are represented as linked lists, in Flare programs and data are represented as XML. XML is extensible and annotative, meaning new sub-elements can be added to parent elements without interfering with the integrity of existing data. Flare programs and data share these properties.

In Flare, you will be able to add metadata to existing data easily. While in some languages you can accomplish this with key/value pairs, all data in Flare can be annotated by adding metadata. This is one of the fundamental idioms of the language.

As well as annotation, Flare will support introspection and two-way references. You will be able to obtain a complete list of references to any Flare object. This is beyond garbage collection - trying to delete an object when references still exist to it will throw an exception. Introspection means you can query any object to see if a given property exists on it.

One final planned feature of Flare that is worth a mention is parallelism. The programmer will be able to give the interpretor the option of carrying out instructions in parallel rather than serially. For instance - foo@.bar()@.baz() will call bar() on each element of list foo, then baz() on each result as it arrives.

This sort of parallelism may not be much use on today's computers, but if the computers of the future have multiple CPUs as standard and the software exists to take advantage of it, huge speed increases could ensue.

One final thing to note - writing Flare is not a case of typing in XML, it is a case of writing in FlareSpeak.

Flare (?), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Flared (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Flaring.] [Cf. Norw. flara to blaze, flame, adorn with tinsel, dial. Sw. flasa upp, and E. flash, or flacker.]

1.

To burn with an unsteady or waving flame; as, the candle flares.

2.

To shine out with a sudden and unsteady light; to emit a dazzling or painfully bright light.

3.

To shine out with gaudy colors; to flaunt; to be offensively bright or showy.

With ribbons pendant, flaring about her head.
Shak.

4.

To be exposed to too much light. [Obs.]

Flaring in sunshine all the day.
Prior.

5.

To open or spread outwards; to project beyond the perpendicular; as, the sides of a bowl flare; the bows of a ship flare.

To flare up, to become suddenly heated or excited; to burst into a passion. [Colloq.] Thackeray.

 

© Webster 1913


Flare, n.

1.

An unsteady, broad, offensive light.

2.

A spreading outward; as, the flare of a fireplace.

 

© Webster 1913


Flare, n.

Leaf of lard. "Pig's flare." Dunglison.

 

© Webster 1913


Flare, n. (Photog.)

A defect in a photographic objective such that an image of the stop, or diaphragm, appears as a fogged spot in the center of the developed negative.

 

© Webster 1913

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