Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County in the U. S. state of California. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Santa Barbara's climate is described as Mediterranean, the city has been promoted as the "American Riviera"; as of 2014, the city had an estimated population of 91,196, up from 88,410 in 2010, making it the second most populous city in the county after Santa Maria. The contiguous urban area, which includes the cities of Goleta and Carpinteria, along with the unincorporated regions of Isla Vista, Mission Canyon, Hope Ranch and others, has an approximate population of 220,000; the population of the entire county in 2010 was 423,895. In addition to being a popular tourist and resort destination, the city economy includes a large service sector, technology, health care, agriculture and local government. In 2004, the service sector accounted for 35% of local employment.
Education in particular is well represented, with four institutions of higher learning on the south coast. The Santa Barbara Airport serves the city, Santa Barbara Aviation provides jet charter aircraft and train service is provided by Amtrak the Pacific Surfliner which runs from San Diego to San Luis Obispo). U. S. Highway 101 connects the Santa Barbara area with Los Angeles to the southeast and San Francisco to the northwest. Behind the city, in and beyond the Santa Ynez Mountains, is the Los Padres National Forest, which contains several remote wilderness areas. Channel Islands National Park and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary are located 20 miles offshore. Evidence of human habitation of the area begins at least 13,000 years ago. Evidence for a Paleoindian presence includes a fluted Clovis-like point found in the 1980s along the western Santa Barbara County coast, as well as the remains of Arlington Springs Man, found on Santa Rosa Island in the 1960s. An estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Chumash lived on the south coast of Santa Barbara County at the time of the first European explorations.
Five Chumash villages flourished in the area. The present-day area of Santa Barbara City College was the village of Mispu. Portuguese explorer João Cabrilho, sailing for the Kingdom of Spain, sailed through what is now called the Santa Barbara Channel in 1542, anchoring in the area. In 1602, Spanish maritime explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno gave the name "Santa Barbara" to the channel and to one of the Channel Islands. A land expedition led by Gaspar de Portolà visited around 1769, Franciscan missionary Juan Crespi, who accompanied the expedition, named a large native town "Laguna de la Concepcion". Cabrillo's earlier name, however, is the one; the first permanent European residents were Spanish missionaries and soldiers under Felipe de Neve, who came in 1782 to build the Presidio. They were sent both to fortify the region against expansion by other powers such as England and Russia, to convert the natives to Christianity. Many of the Spaniards brought their families with them, those formed the nucleus of the small town – at first just a cluster of adobes – that surrounded the Presidio of Santa Barbara.
The Santa Barbara Mission was established on the Feast of Saint Barbara, December 4, 1786. It was the tenth of the California Missions to be founded by the Spanish Franciscans, it was dedicated by Padre Fermín Lasuén, who succeeded Padre Junipero Serra as the second president and founder of the California Franciscan Mission Chain. The Mission fathers began the slow work of converting the native Chumash to Christianity, building a village for them on the Mission grounds; the Chumash laborers built a connection between the canyon creek and the Santa Barbara Mission water system through the use of a dam and an aqueduct. During the following decades, many of the natives died of diseases such as smallpox, against which they had no natural immunity; the most dramatic event of the Spanish period was the powerful 1812 earthquake, tsunami, with an estimated magnitude of 7.1, which destroyed the Mission as well as the rest of the town. The Mission was rebuilt by 1820 after the earthquake. Following the earthquake, the Mission fathers chose to rebuild in a grander manner, it is this construction that survives to the present day, the best-preserved of the California Missions, still functioning as an active church by the Franciscans.
After the Mexican government secularized the missions in the 1830s, the baptismal and burial records of other missions were transferred to Santa Barbara, now found in the Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library. C-SPAN has produced a program on the mission archive-library; the Spanish period ended in 1822 with the end of the Mexican War of Independence, which terminated 300 years of colonial rule. The flag of Mexico went up the flagpole at the Presidio, but only for 24 years. Santa Barbara street names reflect this time period as well; the names de le Guerra and Carrillo come from citizens of the town of this time. They were instrumental in building up the town, so they were honored by having streets after them. After the forced secularization of the Missions in 1833
Humour
Humour spelt as humor, is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours, controlled human health and emotion. People of all ages and cultures respond to humour. Most people are able to experience humour—be amused, smile or laugh at something funny—and thus are considered to have a sense of humour; the hypothetical person lacking a sense of humour would find the behaviour inducing it to be inexplicable, strange, or irrational. Though decided by personal taste, the extent to which a person finds something humorous depends on a host of variables, including geographical location, maturity, level of education and context. For example, young children may favour slapstick such as Punch and Judy puppet shows or the Tom and Jerry cartoons, whose physical nature makes it accessible to them. By contrast, more sophisticated forms of humour such as satire require an understanding of its social meaning and context, thus tend to appeal to a more mature audience.
Many theories exist what social function it serves. The prevailing types of theories attempting to account for the existence of humour include psychological theories, the vast majority of which consider humour-induced behaviour to be healthy; the benign-violation theory, endorsed by Peter McGraw, attempts to explain humour's existence. The theory says'humour only occurs when something seems wrong, unsettling, or threatening, but seems okay, acceptable or safe'. Humour can be used as a method to engage in social interaction by taking away that awkward, uncomfortable, or uneasy feeling of social interactions. Others believe that'the appropriate use of humour can facilitate social interactions'; some claim. Author E. B. White once said, "Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." Counter to this argument, protests against "offensive" cartoons invite the dissection of humour or its lack by aggrieved individuals and communities.
This process of dissecting humour does not banish a sense of humour but begs attention towards its politics and assumed universality. Arthur Schopenhauer lamented the misuse of humour to mean any type of comedy. However, both humour and comic are used when theorising about the subject; the connotations of humour as opposed to comic are said to be that of response versus stimulus. Additionally, humour was thought to include a combination of ridiculousness and wit in an individual; the French were slow to adopt the term humour. Non-satirical humour can be termed droll humour or recreational drollery; as with any art form, the acceptance of a particular style or incidence of humour depends on sociological factors and varies from person to person. Throughout history, comedy has been used as a form of entertainment all over the world, whether in the courts of the Western kings or the villages of the Far East. Both a social etiquette and a certain intelligence can be displayed through forms of wit and sarcasm.
Eighteenth-century German author Georg Lichtenberg said that "the more you know humour, the more you become demanding in fineness." Western humour theory begins with Plato, who attributed to Socrates in the Philebus the view that the essence of the ridiculous is an ignorance in the weak, who are thus unable to retaliate when ridiculed. In Greek philosophy, Aristotle, in the Poetics, suggested that an ugliness that does not disgust is fundamental to humour. In ancient Sanskrit drama, Bharata Muni's Natya Shastra defined humour as one of the nine nava rasas, or principle rasas, which can be inspired in the audience by bhavas, the imitations of emotions that the actors perform; each rasa was associated with a specific bhavas portrayed on stage. The terms comedy and satire became synonymous after Aristotle's Poetics was translated into Arabic in the medieval Islamic world, where it was elaborated upon by Arabic writers and Islamic philosophers such as Abu Bischr, his pupil Al-Farabi, Persian Avicenna, Averroes.
Due to cultural differences, they disassociated comedy from Greek dramatic representation, instead identified it with Arabic poetic themes and forms, such as hija. They viewed comedy as the "art of reprehension" and made no reference to light and cheerful events or troublesome beginnings and happy endings associated with classical Greek comedy. After the Latin translations of the 12th century, the term comedy thus gained a new semantic meaning in Medieval literature. Mento star Lord Flea, stated in a 1957 interview that he thought that: "West Indians have the best sense of humour in the world. In the most solemn song, like Las Kean Fine, which tells of a boiler explosion on a sugar plantation that killed several of the workers, their natural wit and humour shine though." Confucianist Neo-Confucian orthodoxy, with its emphasis on ritual and propriety, has traditionally looked down upon hu
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction set in a fictional universe inspired by real world myth and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which became literature and drama. From the twentieth century it has expanded further into various media, including film, graphic novels and video games. Fantasy is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes though these genres overlap. In popular culture, the fantasy genre is predominantly of the medievalist form. In its broadest sense, fantasy consists of works by many writers, artists and musicians from ancient myths and legends to many recent and popular works. Most fantasy uses other supernatural elements as a main plot element, theme, or setting. Magic and magical creatures are common in many of these worlds. An identifying trait of fantasy is the author's reliance on imagination to create narrative elements that do not have to rely on history or nature to be coherent; this differs from realistic fiction in that realistic fiction has to attend to the history and natural laws of reality, where fantasy does not.
An author applies his or her imagination to come up with characters and settings that are impossible in reality. Many fantasy authors use real-world mythology as inspiration. For instance, a narrative that takes place in an imagined town in the northeastern United States could be considered realistic fiction as long as the plot and characters are consistent with the history of a region and the natural characteristics that someone, to the northeastern United States expects. Fantasy has been compared to science fiction and horror because they are the major categories of speculative fiction. Fantasy is distinguished from science fiction by the plausibility of the narrative elements. A science fiction narrative is unlikely, though possible through logical scientific or technological extrapolation, where fantasy narratives do not need to be scientifically possible. Authors have to rely on the readers' suspension of disbelief, an acceptance of the unbelievable or impossible for the sake of enjoyment, in order to write effective fantasies.
Despite both genres' heavy reliance on the supernatural and horror are distinguishable. Horror evokes fear through the protagonists' weaknesses or inability to deal with the antagonists. Elements of the supernatural and the fantastic were a part of literature from its beginning. Fantasy elements occur throughout the ancient Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh; the ancient Babylonian creation epic, the Enûma Eliš, in which the god Marduk slays the goddess Tiamat, contains the theme of a cosmic battle between good and evil, characteristic of the modern fantasy genre. Genres of romantic and fantasy literature existed in ancient Egypt; the Tales of the Court of King Khufu, preserved in the Westcar Papyrus and was written in the middle of the second half of the eighteenth century BC, preserves a mixture of stories with elements of historical fiction and satire. Egyptian funerary texts preserve mythological tales, the most significant of which are the myths of Osiris and his son Horus. Folk tales with fantastic elements intended for adults were a major genre of ancient Greek literature.
The comedies of Aristophanes are filled with fantastic elements his play The Birds, in which an Athenian man builds a city in the clouds with the birds and challenges Zeus's authority. Ovid's Metamorphoses and Apuleius's The Golden Ass are both works that influenced the development of the fantasy genre by taking mythic elements and weaving them into personal accounts. Both works involve complex narratives in which humans beings are transformed into animals or inanimate objects. Platonic teachings and early Christian theology are major influences on the modern fantasy genre. Plato used allegories to convey many of his teachings, early Christian writers interpreted both the Old and New Testaments as employing parables to relay spiritual truths; this ability to find meaning in a story, not true became the foundation that allowed the modern fantasy genre to develop. The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, a compilation of many ancient and medieval folk tales.
Various characters from this epic have become cultural icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin and Ali Baba. Hindu mythology was an evolution of the earlier Vedic mythology and had many more fantastical stories and characters in the Indian epics; the Panchatantra, for example, used various animal fables and magical tales to illustrate the central Indian principles of political science. Chinese traditions have been influential in the vein of fantasy known as Chinoiserie, including such writers as Ernest Bramah and Barry Hughart. Beowulf is among the best known of the Nordic tales in the English speaking world, has had deep influence on the fantasy genre. Norse mythology, as found in the Elder Edda and the Younger Edda, includes such figures as Odin and his fellow Aesir, dwarves, elves and giants; these elements have been directly imported into various fantasy works. The separate folklore of Ireland and Scotland has sometimes been us
Hawaii
Hawaii is the 50th and most recent state to have joined the United States, having received statehood on August 21, 1959. Hawaii is the only U. S. state located in Oceania, the only U. S. state located outside North America, the only one composed of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean; the state encompasses nearly the entire volcanic Hawaiian archipelago, which comprises hundreds of islands spread over 1,500 miles. At the southeastern end of the archipelago, the eight main islands are—in order from northwest to southeast: Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe and the Island of Hawaiʻi; the last is the largest island in the group. The archipelago is ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. Hawaii's diverse natural scenery, warm tropical climate, abundance of public beaches, oceanic surroundings, active volcanoes make it a popular destination for tourists, surfers and volcanologists.
Because of its central location in the Pacific and 19th-century labor migration, Hawaii's culture is influenced by North American and East Asian cultures, in addition to its indigenous Hawaiian culture. Hawaii has over a million permanent residents, along with many visitors and U. S. military personnel. Its capital is Honolulu on the island of Oʻahu. Hawaii is the 8th-smallest and the 11th-least populous, but the 13th-most densely populated of the 50 U. S. states. It is the only state with an Asian plurality; the state's oceanic coastline is about 750 miles long, the fourth longest in the U. S. after the coastlines of Alaska and California. The state of Hawaii derives its name from the name of Hawaiʻi. A common Hawaiian explanation of the name of Hawaiʻi is that it was named for Hawaiʻiloa, a legendary figure from Hawaiian myth, he is said to have discovered the islands. The Hawaiian language word Hawaiʻi is similar to Proto-Polynesian *Sawaiki, with the reconstructed meaning "homeland". Cognates of Hawaiʻi are found in other Polynesian languages, including Māori and Samoan.
According to linguists Pukui and Elbert, "lsewhere in Polynesia, Hawaiʻi or a cognate is the name of the underworld or of the ancestral home, but in Hawaii, the name has no meaning". A somewhat divisive political issue arose in 1978 when the Constitution of the State of Hawaii added Hawaiian as a second official state language; the title of the state constitution is The Constitution of the State of Hawaii. Article XV, Section 1 of the Constitution uses The State of Hawaii. Diacritics were not used because the document, drafted in 1949, predates the use of the ʻokina and the kahakō in modern Hawaiian orthography; the exact spelling of the state's name in the Hawaiian language is Hawaiʻi. In the Hawaii Admission Act that granted Hawaiian statehood, the federal government recognized Hawaii as the official state name. Official government publications and office titles, the Seal of Hawaii use the traditional spelling with no symbols for glottal stops or vowel length. In contrast, the National and State Parks Services, the University of Hawaiʻi and some private enterprises implement these symbols.
No precedent for changes to U. S. state names exists since the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1789. However, the Constitution of Massachusetts formally changed the Province of Massachusetts Bay to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1780, in 1819, the Territory of Arkansaw was created but was admitted to statehood as the State of Arkansas. There are eight main Hawaiian islands; the island of Niʻihau is managed by brothers Bruce and Keith Robinson. Access to uninhabited Kahoʻolawe island is restricted; the Hawaiian archipelago is located 2,000 mi southwest of the contiguous United States. Hawaii is the southernmost U. S. the second westernmost after Alaska. Hawaii, like Alaska, does not border any other U. S. state. It is the only U. S. state, not geographically located in North America, the only state surrounded by water and, an archipelago, the only state in which coffee is commercially cultivable. In addition to the eight main islands, the state has many smaller islets. Kaʻula is a small island near Niʻihau.
The Northwest Hawaiian Islands is a group of nine small, older islands to the northwest of Kauaʻi that extend from Nihoa to Kure Atoll. Across the archipelago are around 130 small rocks and islets, such as Molokini, which are either volcanic, marine sedimentary or erosional in origin. Hawaii's tallest mountain Mauna Kea is 13,796 ft above mean sea level; the Hawaiian islands were formed by volcanic activity initiated at an undersea magma source called the Hawaii hotspot. The process is continuing to build islands; because of the hotspot's location, all active land volcanoes are located on the southern half of Hawaii Island. The newest volcano, Lōʻihi Seamount, is located south of the coast of Hawaii Island; the last volcanic eruption outside Hawaii Island occurred
Adventure fiction
Adventure fiction is fiction that presents danger, or gives the reader a sense of excitement. In the Introduction to the Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction, Critic Don D'Ammassa defines the genre as follows:.. An adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life accompanied by danger by physical action. Adventure stories always move and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization and other elements of a creative work. D'Ammassa argues. Indeed, the standard plot of Medieval romances was a series of adventures. Following a plot framework as old as Heliodorus, so durable as to be still alive in Hollywood movies, a hero would undergo a first set of adventures before he met his lady. A separation would follow, with a second set of adventures leading to a final reunion. Variations kept the genre alive. From the mid-19th century onwards, when mass literacy grew, adventure became a popular subgenre of fiction. Although not exploited to its fullest, adventure has seen many changes over the years – from being constrained to stories of knights in armor to stories of high-tech espionages.
Examples of that period include Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas, père, Jules Verne, Brontë Sisters, H. Rider Haggard, Victor Hugo, Emilio Salgari, Louis Henri Boussenard, Thomas Mayne Reid, Sax Rohmer, Edgar Wallace, Robert Louis Stevenson. Adventure novels and short stories were popular subjects for American pulp magazines, which dominated American popular fiction between the Progressive Era and the 1950s. Several pulp magazines such as Adventure, Blue Book, Top-Notch, Short Stories specialized in this genre. Notable pulp adventure writers included Edgar Rice Burroughs, Talbot Mundy, Theodore Roscoe, Johnston McCulley, Arthur O. Friel, Harold Lamb, Carl Jacobi, George F. Worts, Georges Surdez, H. Bedford-Jones, J. Allan Dunn. Adventure fiction overlaps with other genres, notably war novels, crime novels, sea stories, spy stories, science fiction and Westerns. Not all books within these genres are adventures. Adventure fiction takes the setting and premise of these other genres, but the fast-paced plot of an adventure focuses on the actions of the hero within the setting.
With a few notable exceptions adventure fiction as a genre has been dominated by male writers, though female writers are now becoming common. Adventure stories written for children began in the 19th century. Early examples include Johann David Wyss' The Swiss Family Robinson, Frederick Marryat's The Children of the New Forest, Harriet Martineau's The Peasant and the Prince; the Victorian era saw the development of the genre, with W. H. G. Kingston, R. M. Ballantyne, G. A. Henty specializing in the production of adventure fiction for boys; this inspired writers who catered to adult audiences to essay such works, such as Robert Louis Stevenson writing Treasure Island for a child readership. In the years after the First World War, writers such as Arthur Ransome developed the adventure genre by setting the adventure in Britain rather than distant countries, while Geoffrey Trease, Rosemary Sutcliff and Esther Forbes brought a new sophistication to the historical adventure novel. Modern writers such as Mildred D. Taylor and Philip Pullman have continued the tradition of the historical adventure.
The modern children's adventure novel sometimes deals with controversial issues like terrorism and warfare in the Third World. Lost world Men's adventure Nautical fiction Picaresque novel Robinsonade Thriller War novel
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories his tales of mystery and the macabre, he is regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. He is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction, he was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. Poe was born in the second child of actors David and Elizabeth "Eliza" Arnold Hopkins Poe, his father abandoned the family in 1810, his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, the child was taken in by Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia, they never formally adopted him. Tension developed as John Allan and Poe clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, the cost of Poe's secondary education.
He left after a year due to lack of money. Poe quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the Army in 1827 under an assumed name, it was at this time that his publishing career began with the anonymous collection Tamerlane and Other Poems, credited only to "a Bostonian". Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement after the death of Frances Allan in 1829. Poe failed as an officer cadet at West Point, declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, he parted ways with John Allan. Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism, his work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore and New York City. He married Virginia Clemm in his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845, Poe published his poem "The Raven" to instant success, but Virginia died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. Poe planned for years to produce his own journal The Penn.
He died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, at age 40. Poe and his works influenced literature around the world, as well as specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography, he and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today; the Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre. He was born Edgar Poe in Boston on January 19, 1809, the second child of English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe Jr, he had a younger sister Rosalie Poe. Their grandfather David Poe Sr. had immigrated from County Cavan, Ireland around 1750. Edgar may have been named after a character in William Shakespeare's King Lear which the couple were performing in 1809, his father abandoned the family in 1810, his mother died a year from consumption. Poe was taken into the home of John Allan, a successful merchant in Richmond, Virginia who dealt in a variety of goods, including tobacco, wheat and slaves.
The Allans served as a foster family and gave him the name "Edgar Allan Poe", though they never formally adopted him. The Allan family had Poe baptized in the Episcopal Church in 1812. John Allan alternately spoiled and aggressively disciplined his foster son; the family sailed to Britain in 1815, Poe attended the grammar school for a short period in Irvine, Scotland before rejoining the family in London in 1816. There he studied at a boarding school in Chelsea until summer 1817, he was subsequently entered at the Reverend John Bransby's Manor House School at Stoke Newington a suburb 4 miles north of London. Poe moved with the Allans back to Richmond, Virginia in 1820. In 1824, he served as the lieutenant of the Richmond youth honor guard as Richmond celebrated the visit of the Marquis de Lafayette. In March 1825, John Allan's uncle and business benefactor William Galt died, said to be one of the wealthiest men in Richmond, leaving Allan several acres of real estate; the inheritance was estimated at $750,000.
By summer 1825, Allan celebrated his expansive wealth by purchasing a two-story brick home named Moldavia. Poe may have become engaged to Sarah Elmira Royster before he registered at the University of Virginia in February 1826 to study ancient and modern languages; the university was in its infancy, established on the ideals of its founder Thomas Jefferson. It had strict rules against gambling, guns and alcohol, but these rules were ignored. Jefferson had enacted a system of student self-government, allowing students to choose their own studies, make their own arrangements for boarding, report all wrongdoing to the faculty; the unique system was still in chaos, there was a high dropout rate. During his time there, Poe lost touch with Royster and became estranged from his foster father over gambling debts, he claimed that Allan had not given him sufficient money to register for classes, purchase texts, procure and furnish a dormitory. Allan did send additional money and clothes, he gave up on the university after a year but did not feel welco
