1.
Parody
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A parody is a work created to imitate, make fun of, or comment on an original work—its subject, author, style, or some other target—by means of satiric or ironic imitation. As the literary theorist Linda Hutcheon puts it, parody … is imitation, another critic, Simon Dentith, defines parody as any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice. Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, music, animation, gaming, the writer and critic John Gross observes in his Oxford Book of Parodies, that parody seems to flourish on territory somewhere between pastiche and burlesque. According to Aristotle, Hegemon of Thasos was the inventor of a kind of parody, in ancient Greek literature, a parodia was a narrative poem imitating the style and prosody of epics but treating light, satirical or mock-heroic subjects. Indeed, the components of the Greek word are παρά para beside, counter, against, Thus, the original Greek word παρῳδία parodia has sometimes been taken to mean counter-song, an imitation that is set against the original. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, defines parody as imitation turned as to produce a ridiculous effect, because par- also has the non-antagonistic meaning of beside, there is nothing in parodia to necessitate the inclusion of a concept of ridicule. Old Comedy contained parody, even the gods could be made fun of, the Frogs portrays the hero-turned-god Heracles as a Glutton and the God of Drama Dionysus as cowardly and unintelligent. The traditional trip to the Underworld story is parodied as Dionysus dresses as Heracles to go to the Underworld, roman writers explained parody as an imitation of one poet by another for humorous effect. In French Neoclassical literature, parody was also a type of poem where one work imitates the style of another to produce a humorous effect, the Ancient Greeks created satyr plays which parodied tragic plays, often with performers dressed like satyrs. In classical music, as a term, parody refers to a reworking of one kind of composition into another. The term is sometimes applied to procedures common in the Baroque period. The musicological definition of the parody has now generally been supplanted by a more general meaning of the word. In its more contemporary usage, musical parody usually has humorous, even satirical intent, in which familiar musical ideas or lyrics are lifted into a different, often incongruous, context. Musical parodies may imitate or refer to the style of a composer or artist. For example, The Ritz Roll and Rock, a song and dance performed by Fred Astaire in the movie Silk Stockings, parodies the Rock. Conversely, while the work of Weird Al Yankovic is based on particular popular songs. The first usage of the parody in English cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is in Ben Jonson, in Every Man in His Humour in 1598, A Parodie. The next citation comes from John Dryden in 1693, who also appended an explanation, suggesting that the word was in common use, in the 20th century, parody has been heightened as the central and most representative artistic device, the catalysing agent of artistic creation and innovation
2.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
3.
Television in the United Kingdom
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Television in the United Kingdom started in 1936 as a public service which was free of advertising. There are six main channel owners who are responsible for most viewing, there are 27,000 hours of domestic content produced a year at a cost of £2.6 billion. Since 24 October 2012, all broadcasts in the United Kingdom are in a digital format. Digital content is delivered via terrestrial, satellite and cable as well as over IP, set-top boxes are generally used to receive these services, however integrated digital televisions can also be used to receive Freeview or Freesat. Most TVs sold in the UK come with a DVB-T tuner for Freeview – a rare thing in Europe, BT TV and TalkTalk Plus TV, both based on YouView, utilise hybrid boxes which receive Freeview as well as additional subscription services. Households viewing TV from the internet are not tracked by Ofcom, the UKs five most watched channels, BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, are available from all providers. Digital terrestrial television launched in 1998 as a service named ONdigital. Since October 2002, the broadcaster is Freeview, with BT TV providing additional subscription services. In all cases cable TV is a subscription service normally bundled with a phone line, smallworld Cable is available in south-west Scotland and north-west England. Pricing ranges from £10.50 to £80 per month, wightFibre is available in the Isle of Wight. Virgin Media is available to 55% of UK households, pricing ranges from £11 a month to £30.50 a month, with additional fees for premium services such as Sky Sports. Virgin also market V+, a video recorder and high-definition receiver. Virgin Media is the cable provider to supply high-definition television and video on demand. There are three distinctly marketed direct-broadcast satellite services, Sky is a subscription service owned by Sky plc. It is the satellite provider to offer premium channels with the largest total number of channels compared to all other television providers. As of January 2017, subscriptions starts at £22 per month for the basic package, there is an upfront cost of £15 on sign up. Sky TV markets SkyQ Silver & SkyQ boxes as well as SkyQmini boxes, Sky TV also provides video on demand branded as SkyTV On Demand. As of October 2016, Sky UK stopped offering there aging Sky+HD hardware, Freesat from Sky, is a free satellite service owned by Sky plc
4.
Latin America
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Latin America is a group of countries and dependencies in the Americas where Romance languages are predominant. It is therefore broader than the terms Ibero-America or Hispanic America—though it usually excludes French Canada and it has an area of approximately 19,197,000 km2, almost 13% of the Earths land surface area. As of 2015, its population was estimated at more than 626 million and in 2014, Latin America had a combined nominal GDP of 5,573,397 million USD and a GDP PPP of 7,531,585 million USD. The term Latin America was first used in 1861 in La revue des races Latines, a further investigation of the concept of Latin America is by Michel Gobat in the American Historical Review. The term was first used in Paris in an 1856 conference by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao and this term was also used in 1861 by French scholars in La revue des races Latines, a magazine dedicated to the Pan-Latinism movement. Latin America is, therefore, defined as all parts of the Americas that were once part of the Spanish. By this definition, Latin America is coterminous with Ibero-America and this definition emphasizes a similar socioeconomic history of the region, which was characterized by formal or informal colonialism, rather than cultural aspects. As such, some sources avoid this oversimplification by using the phrase Latin America, the distinction between Latin America and Anglo-America is a convention based on the predominant languages in the Americas by which Romance-language and English-speaking cultures are distinguished. Latin America can be subdivided into several subregions based on geography, politics, demographics and it may be subdivided on linguistic grounds into Hispanic America, Portuguese America and French America. *, Not a sovereign state The concept of Latin America has been criticized by a number of intellectuals, the earliest known settlement was identified at Monte Verde, near Puerto Montt in Southern Chile. Its occupation dates to some 14,000 years ago and there is disputed evidence of even earlier occupation. Over the course of millennia, people spread to all parts of the continents, by the first millennium CE, South Americas vast rainforests, mountains, plains and coasts were the home of tens of millions of people. Some groups formed more permanent settlements such as the Chibcha and the Tairona groups and these groups are in the circum Caribbean region. The Chibchas of Colombia, the Quechuas and Aymaras of Bolivia, the region was home to many indigenous peoples and advanced civilizations, including the Aztecs, Toltecs, Maya, and Inca. The Aztec empire was ultimately the most powerful civilization known throughout the Americas, with the arrival of the Europeans following Christopher Columbus voyages, the indigenous elites, such as the Incas and Aztecs, lost power to the heavy European invasion. Hernándo Cortés seized the Aztec elites power with the help of local groups who had favored the Aztec elite, epidemics of diseases brought by the Europeans, such as smallpox and measles, wiped out a large portion of the indigenous population. Historians cannot determine the number of natives who died due to European diseases, due to the lack of written records, specific numbers are hard to verify. Many of the survivors were forced to work in European plantations, intermixing between the indigenous peoples and the European colonists was very common, and, by the end of the colonial period, people of mixed ancestry formed majorities in several colonies
5.
Howard Stern
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Howard Allan Stern is an American radio and television personality, producer, author, actor, and photographer. He is best known for his radio show The Howard Stern Show, Stern has broadcast on Sirius XM Radio since 2006. Stern first wished to be on the radio at five years of age and he landed his first radio jobs while at Boston University. C. Stern worked afternoons at WNBC in New York City from 1982 until his firing in 1985. In 1985, Stern began a 20-year run at WXRK in New York City, his morning show entered syndication in 1986 and aired in 60 markets and attracted 20 million listeners at its peak. He became the most fined radio host when the Federal Communications Commission issued fines totaling $2.5 million to station owners for content it deemed indecent, Stern became one of the highest paid radio figures after signing a five-year deal with Sirius in 2004 worth $500 million. In recent years, Sterns photography has featured in Hamptons. From 2012 to 2015, he served as a judge on Americas Got Talent, Stern has described himself as King of All Media since 1992 for his successes outside radio. He hosted and produced numerous late night shows, pay-per-view events. His two books, Private Parts and Miss America, entered The New York Times Best Seller list at number one, the former was made into a biographical comedy film in 1997 that had Stern and his radio show staff star as themselves. It topped the US box office in its week and grossed 1 trillion dollars domestically. Stern performs on its soundtrack which charted the Billboard 200 at number one and was certified platinum for one million copies sold and his parents are Jewish, and their families are from Poland and Austria-Hungary. Ray was a clerk in New York City before she became a homemaker and later took up work as an inhalation therapist. Stern described his older sister Ellen as the complete opposite of himself, in 1955, the family moved to Roosevelt, New York on Long Island where Stern attended Washington-Rose Elementary School followed by Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School. Stern also attended Hebrew school where he was given the name Tzvi, as a youngster Stern took five years of piano lessons and took an interest in marionettes, using them to entertain his friends with explicit shows. He formed a band with two friends, the Electric Comicbook, on vocals and keyboards. From the age of nine to his year at university, Stern spent his summers at Camp Wel-Met, a youth camp in Narrowsburg, New York where he worked camper, kitchen. He recalled his time there as the greatest experience, Stern wished to be in radio at the age of five
6.
Oprah Winfrey
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Orpah Gail Winfrey, better known as Oprah Winfrey, is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, several assessments rank her as the most influential woman in the world. In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama and honorary degrees from Duke. Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teens and became pregnant at 14, her son died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school, by the mid-1990s, she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. From 2006 to 2008, her endorsement of Obama, by one estimate, Winfrey was named Orpah on her birth certificate after the biblical figure in the Book of Ruth, but people mispronounced it regularly and Oprah stuck. Winfrey was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to a teenage mother. She later said that her conception was due to a sexual encounter. Her mother, Vernita Lee, was a housemaid, Winfreys biological father is usually noted as Vernon Winfrey, a coal miner turned barber turned city councilman who had been in the Armed Forces when she was born. However, Mississippi farmer and World War II veteran Noah Robinson, a genetic test in 2006 determined that her matrilineal line originated among the Kpelle ethnic group, in the area that today is Liberia. Her genetic makeup was determined to be 89% Sub-Saharan African, 8% Native American, however, the East Asian may, given the imprecision of genetic testing, actually be Native American markers. Her grandmother taught her to read before the age of three and took her to the church, where she was nicknamed The Preacher for her ability to recite Bible verses. When Winfrey was a child, her grandmother would hit her with a stick when she did not do chores or if she misbehaved in any way. Around this time, Lee had given birth to daughter, Winfreys younger half-sister. By 1962, Lee was having difficulty raising both daughters so Winfrey was temporarily sent to live with Vernon in Nashville, Tennessee, while Winfrey was in Nashville, Lee gave birth to a third daughter who was put up for adoption and later also named Patricia. Winfrey did not learn she had a second half-sister until 2010, by the time Winfrey moved back in with Lee, Lee had also given birth to a boy named Jeffrey, Winfreys half-brother, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1989. When Winfrey discussed the alleged abuse with family members at age 24, Winfrey once commented that she had chosen not to be a mother because she had not been mothered well
7.
NPR
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NPR produces and distributes news and cultural programming. Individual public radio stations are not required to broadcast all NPR programs that are produced and its content is also available on-demand via the web, mobile, and podcasts. The organizations legal name is National Public Radio and its brand is NPR. Is NPR has been used by its hosts for many years. However, National Public Radio remains the name of the group. National Public Radio replaced the National Educational Radio Network on February 26,1970 and this act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which created the Public Broadcasting Service in addition to NPR. A CPB organizing committee under John Witherspoon first created a Board of Directors chaired by Bernard Mayes, the board then hired Donald Quayle to be the first president of NPR with 30 employees and 90 charter member stations, and studios in Washington, D. C. NPR aired its first broadcast in April 1971, covering United States Senate hearings on the Vietnam War, a month later, the afternoon drive-time newscast All Things Considered began, on May 3,1971, first hosted by Robert Conley. NPR was primarily a production and distribution organization until 1977, when it merged with the Association of Public Radio Stations, NPR suffered an almost fatal setback in 1983 when efforts to expand services created a deficit of nearly US$7 million. After a congressional investigation and the resignation of NPRs president, Frank Mankiewicz, NPR also agreed to turn its satellite service into a cooperative venture, making it possible for non-NPR shows to get national distribution. It took NPR approximately three years to pay off the debt, delano Lewis, the president of C&P Telephone, left that position to become NPRs CEO and president in January 1994. In November 1998, NPRs board of directors hired Kevin Klose, NPR spent nearly $13 million to acquire and equip a West Coast 25, 000-square-foot production facility, NPR West, which opened in Culver City, Los Angeles County, California, in November 2002. C. In November 2003, NPR received US$235 million from the estate of the late Joan B, Kroc, the widow of Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds Corporation. This was the largest monetary gift ever to a cultural institution, in 2004 NPRs budget increased by over 50% to US$153 million due to the Kroc gift. US$34 million of the money was deposited in its endowment, the endowment fund before the gift totaled $35 million. NPR will use the interest from the bequest to expand its news staff, the 2005 budget was about US$120 million. In August 2005, NPR entered podcasting with a directory of over 170 programs created by NPR, by November of that year, users downloaded NPR and other public radio podcasts 5 million times
8.
Paranormal
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A paranormal phenomenon is different from hypothetical concepts such as dark matter and dark energy. Unlike paranormal phenomena, these concepts are based on empirical observations. The most notable paranormal beliefs include those that pertain to ghosts, extraterrestrial life, unidentified flying objects, psychic abilities or extrasensory perception, the term paranormal has existed in the English language since at least 1920. The word consists of two parts, para and normal, the definition implies that the scientific explanation of the world around us is normal and anything that is above, beyond, or contrary to that is para. On the classification of paranormal subjects, Terence Hines in his book Pseudoscience, what sets the paranormal apart from other pseudosciences is a reliance on explanations for alleged phenomena that are well outside the bounds of established science. Thus, paranormal phenomena include extrasensory perception, telekinesis, ghosts, poltergeists, life after death, reincarnation, faith healing, human auras, the explanations for these allied phenomena are phrased in vague terms of psychic forces, human energy fields, and so on. This is in contrast to many pseudoscientific explanations for other nonparanormal phenomena, in traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is a manifestation of the spirit or soul of a person. Alternative theories expand on that idea and include belief in the ghosts of deceased animals, sometimes the term ghost is used synonymously with any spirit or demon, however in popular usage the term typically refers to a deceased persons spirit. The belief in ghosts as souls of the departed is closely tied to the concept of animism, as the 19th-century anthropologist George Frazer explained in his classic work, The Golden Bough, souls were seen as the creature within that animated the body. Although the evidence for ghosts is largely anecdotal, the belief in ghosts throughout history has remained widespread, the possibility of extraterrestrial life is not, by itself, a paranormal subject. Many scientists are engaged in the search for unicellular life within the solar system, carrying out studies on the surface of Mars. Projects such as SETI are conducting a search for radio activity that would show evidence of intelligent life outside the solar system. Scientific theories of how life developed on Earth allow for the possibility that life developed on other planets as well, the paranormal aspect of extraterrestrial life centers largely around the belief in unidentified flying objects and the phenomena said to be associated with them. Early in the history of UFO culture, believers divided themselves into two camps, the first held a rather conservative view of the phenomena, interpreting them as unexplained occurrences that merited serious study. They began calling themselves ufologists in the 1950s and felt that logical analysis of sighting reports would validate the notion of extraterrestrial visitation, the second camp consisted of individuals who coupled ideas of extraterrestrial visitation with beliefs from existing quasi-religious movements. These individuals typically were enthusiasts of occultism and the paranormal, many had backgrounds as active Theosophists, Spiritualists, or were followers of other esoteric doctrines. In contemporary times, many of these beliefs have coalesced into New Age spiritual movements, both secular and spiritual believers describe UFOs as having abilities beyond what are considered possible according to known aerodynamic constraints and physical laws. The transitory events surrounding many UFO sightings also limits the opportunity for repeat testing required by the scientific method, acceptance of UFO theories by the larger scientific community is further hindered by the many possible hoaxes associated with UFO culture
9.
Television
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Television or TV is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in monochrome, or in color, and in two or three dimensions and sound. The term can refer to a set, a television program. Television is a medium for entertainment, education, news, politics, gossip. Television became available in experimental forms in the late 1920s. After World War II, a form of black-and-white TV broadcasting became popular in the United States and Britain, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses. During the 1950s, television was the medium for influencing public opinion. In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the US, for many reasons, the storage of television and video programming now occurs on the cloud. At the end of the first decade of the 2000s, digital television transmissions greatly increased in popularity, another development was the move from standard-definition television to high-definition television, which provides a resolution that is substantially higher. HDTV may be transmitted in various formats, 1080p, 1080i, in 2013, 79% of the worlds households owned a television set. Most TV sets sold in the 2000s were flat-panel, mainly LEDs, major manufacturers announced the discontinuation of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-backlit LCDs by the mid-2010s. In the near future, LEDs are gradually expected to be replaced by OLEDs, also, major manufacturers have announced that they will increasingly produce smart TVs in the mid-2010s. Smart TVs with integrated Internet and Web 2.0 functions became the dominant form of television by the late 2010s, Television signals were initially distributed only as terrestrial television using high-powered radio-frequency transmitters to broadcast the signal to individual television receivers. Alternatively television signals are distributed by cable or optical fiber, satellite systems and. Until the early 2000s, these were transmitted as analog signals, a standard television set is composed of multiple internal electronic circuits, including a tuner for receiving and decoding broadcast signals. A visual display device which lacks a tuner is correctly called a video monitor rather than a television, the word television comes from Ancient Greek τῆλε, meaning far, and Latin visio, meaning sight. The Anglicised version of the term is first attested in 1907 and it was. formed in English or borrowed from French télévision. In the 19th century and early 20th century, other. proposals for the name of a technology for sending pictures over distance were telephote. The abbreviation TV is from 1948, the use of the term to mean a television set dates from 1941
10.
Steve Allen
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Stephen Valentine Patrick William Steve Allen was an American television personality, musician, composer, actor, comedian, writer and advocate of scientific skepticism. He achieved notability as the first host of The Tonight Show, though he got his start in radio, Allen is best known for his television career. He first gained attention as a guest host on Arthur Godfreys Talent Scouts. After he hosted the The Tonight Show, he went on to host numerous game and variety shows, including his own The Steve Allen Show, Ive Got a Secret and he was a regular panel member on CBS Whats My Line. From 1977 until 1981, he wrote, produced and hosted the award-winning show Meeting of Minds, Allen was a creditable pianist and a prolific composer, having written over 8,500 songs, some of which were recorded by numerous leading singers. Allen won the 1964 Grammy Award for Best Original Jazz Composition, Allen wrote more than 50 books, including novels, childrens books, and books of opinions, including his final book, Vulgarians at the Gate, Trash TV and Raunch Radio. In 1996 Allen was presented with the Martin Gardner Lifetime Achievement Award from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and he has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a Hollywood theater named in his honor. Allen was born in New York City, the son of Billy and Isabelle Allen, Allen was raised on the South Side of Chicago by his mothers Irish Catholic family. Milton Berle once called Allens mother the funniest woman in vaudeville, Allens first radio job was on station KOY in Phoenix, Arizona, after he left Arizona State Teachers College in Tempe, while still a sophomore. He enlisted in the U. S. Army during World War II and was trained as an infantryman and he spent his service time at Camp Roberts, California, and did not serve overseas. Allen returned to Phoenix before deciding to back to California. During a shows segment, Allen went into the audience with the microphone to ad lib on-air for the first time and his radio show attracted a huge local following, and in 1950 it replaced Our Miss Brooks, exposing Allen to a national audience for the first time. Allens first television experience had come in 1949 when he answered an ad for a TV announcer for professional wrestling and he knew nothing about wrestling, so he watched some shows and discovered that the announcers did not have well-defined names for the holds. When he got the job, he created names for many of the holds, now the boys go into a double pretzel bend with variations on a theme by Velox and Yolanda. After CBS radio gave Allen a weekly prime time show, CBS television believed it could groom him for national small-screen stardom, the Steve Allen Show premiered at 11 am on Christmas Day,1950, and was later moved into a thirty-minute, early evening slot. This new show required him to uproot his family and move from LA to New York, the show was canceled in 1952, after which CBS tried several shows to showcase Allens talent. Allen achieved national attention when he was pressed into service at the last minute to host Arthur Godfreys Talent Scouts because Godfrey was unable to appear. Allen turned one of Godfreys live Lipton commercials upside down, preparing tea and instant soup on camera, with the audience uproariously and thoroughly entertained, Allen gained major recognition as a comedian and host
