1.
Denver
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Denver, officially the City and County of Denver, is the capital and most populous municipality of the U. S. state of Colorado. Denver is in the South Platte River Valley on the edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The Denver downtown district is immediately east of the confluence of Cherry Creek with the South Platte River, Denver is nicknamed the Mile-High City because its official elevation is exactly one mile above sea level, making it the highest major city in the United States. The 105th meridian west of Greenwich, the reference for the Mountain Time Zone. Denver is ranked as a Beta- world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. With a 2015 estimated population of 682,545, Denver ranks as the 19th-most populous U. S. city, and with a 2. 8% increase in 2015, the city is also the fastest-growing major city in the United States. The 10-county Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area had an estimated 2015 population of 2,814,330 and ranked as the 19th most populous U. S. metropolitan statistical area. The 12-city Denver-Aurora, CO Combined Statistical Area had an estimated 2015 population of 3,418,876, which ranks as the 16th most populous U. S. metropolitan area. Denver is the most populous city of the 18-county Front Range Urban Corridor, Denver is the most populous city within a 500-mile radius and the second-most populous city in the Mountain West after Phoenix, Arizona. In 2016, Denver was named the best place to live in the USA by U. S. News & World Report and this was the first historical settlement in what was later to become the city of Denver. The site faded quickly, however, and by the summer of 1859 it was abandoned in favor of Auraria, Larimer named the townsite Denver City to curry favor with Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver. Larimer hoped the name would help make it the county seat of Arapaho County but, unbeknownst to him. The location was accessible to existing trails and was across the South Platte River from the site of seasonal encampments of the Cheyenne, the site of these first towns is now the site of Confluence Park near downtown Denver. Larimer, along with associates in the St. Charles City Land Company, sold parcels in the town to merchants and miners, Denver City was a frontier town, with an economy based on servicing local miners with gambling, saloons, livestock and goods trading. In the early years, land parcels were often traded for grubstakes or gambled away by miners in Auraria, in May 1859, Denver City residents donated 53 lots to the Leavenworth & Pikes Peak Express in order to secure the regions first overland wagon route. Offering daily service for passengers, mail, freight, and gold, in 1863, Western Union furthered Denvers dominance of the region by choosing the city for its regional terminus. The Colorado Territory was created on February 28,1861, Arapahoe County was formed on November 1,1861, Denver City served as the Arapahoe County Seat from 1861 until consolidation in 1902. In 1867, Denver City became the territorial capital, with its newfound importance, Denver City shortened its name to Denver
2.
Colorado
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Colorado is a state in the United States encompassing most of the Southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is part of the Western United States, the Southwestern United States, Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 21st most populous of the 50 United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Colorado was 5,540,545 on July 1,2016, the state was named for the Colorado River, which Spanish travelers named the Río Colorado for the ruddy silt the river carried from the mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28,1861, Colorado is nicknamed the Centennial State because it became a state in the same year as the centennial of the United States Declaration of Independence. Colorado is noted for its landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers. Denver is the capital and the most populous city of Colorado, residents of the state are properly known as Coloradans, although the term Coloradoan has been used archaically and lives on in the title of Fort Collins newspaper, the Coloradoan. Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are the states which have boundaries defined solely by lines of latitude and longitude. The summit of Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet elevation in Lake County is the highest point in Colorado, Colorado is the only U. S. state that lies entirely above 1,000 meters elevation. The point where the Arikaree River flows out of Yuma County, Colorado and this point, which holds the distinction of being the highest low elevation point of any state, is higher than the high elevation points of 18 states and the District of Columbia. A little less than one half of the area of Colorado is flat, East of the Rocky Mountains are the Colorado Eastern Plains of the High Plains, the section of the Great Plains within Nebraska at elevations ranging from roughly 3,350 to 7,500 feet. The Colorado plains were mostly prairies, but they have many patches of forests, buttes. Eastern Colorado is presently covered in farmland and rangeland, along with small farming villages. Precipitation is fair, averaging from 15 to 25 inches annually, corn, wheat, hay, soybeans, and oats are all typical crops, and most of the villages and towns in this region boast both a water tower and a grain elevator. Irrigation water is available from the South Platte, the Arkansas River, and a few other streams, however, heavy use of ground water from wells for irrigation has caused underground water reserves to decline. As well as agriculture, eastern Colorado hosts considerable livestock, such as cattle ranches. Roughly 70% of Colorados population resides along the edge of the Rocky Mountains in the Front Range Urban Corridor between Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Pueblo, Colorado. This region is protected from prevailing storms that blow in from the Pacific Ocean region by the high Rockies in the middle of Colorado. The Front Range includes Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Loveland, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Greeley and other townships, on the other side of the Rockies, the significant population centers in Western Colorado are the cities of Grand Junction, Durango, and Montrose
3.
Stand-up comedy
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Stand-up comedy is a comic style in which a comedian performs in front of a live audience, usually speaking directly to them. The performer is known as a comic, stand-up comic, stand-up comedian. In stand-up comedy, the comedian usually recites a grouping of humorous stories, jokes and one-liners typically called a monologue, routine, some stand-up comedians use props, music, or magic tricks to enhance their acts. Stand-up comedy is often performed in clubs, bars and pubs, nightclubs. Outside of live performance, stand-up is often distributed commercially via television, DVD, CD, in stand-up comedy, the feedback of the audience is instant and crucial for the comedians act. Audiences expect a stand-up comic to provide a stream of laughs. Will Ferrell has called stand-up comedy hard, lonely and vicious, a stand-up comedy show may involve only one comedian, or feature a headline or a showcase format. This is followed by one or two middle or featured acts, who perform 15- to 20-minute sets, followed by a headliner who performs for longer, a showcase format may still feature an MC. Bringer shows are another opportunity for amateur performers, the performer must bring a specified number of paying guests in order to get stage time. The guests usually have to pay a charge and there is often a minimum number of drinks that must be ordered. These shows usually have a showcase format and this type of show gives comedians better exposure than open mics because there is usually better audience turnout and industry professionals sometimes go to watch. Different comedy clubs have different requirements for their bringer shows, gotham Comedy Club in New York City, for example, usually has ten-person bringers, while Broadway Comedy Club in New York City usually has six-person bringers. As the name implies, stand-up comedians usually perform their material while standing, stand-up comedy has its origin in classic Parrhesia in 400 BC used for cynics and epicureans in order to tell the reality without censorship. Stand-up comedy in the United Kingdom began in the halls of the 18th and 19th centuries. The heavy censorship regime of the Lord Chamberlains Office required all comedians to submit their acts for censorship, the act would be returned with unacceptable sections underlined in blue pencil. The comedian was then obliged not to deviate from the act in its edited form, the rise of the post-war comedians coincided with the rise of television and radio, and the traditional music hall circuit suffered greatly as a result. By the 1970s, music hall entertainment was virtually dead, alternative circuits had evolved, such as working mens clubs. The alternative comedy scene began to evolve
4.
Film
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A film, also called a movie, motion picture, theatrical film or photoplay, is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images due to the phi phenomenon. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession, the process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry. The word cinema, short for cinematography, is used to refer to the industry of films. Films were originally recorded onto plastic film through a photochemical process, the adoption of CGI-based special effects led to the use of digital intermediates. Most contemporary films are now fully digital through the process of production, distribution. Films recorded in a form traditionally included an analogous optical soundtrack. It runs along a portion of the film exclusively reserved for it and is not projected, Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures. They reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them, Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment, and a powerful medium for educating—or indoctrinating—citizens. The visual basis of film gives it a power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles to translate the dialog into the language of the viewer, some have criticized the film industrys glorification of violence and its potentially negative treatment of women. The individual images that make up a film are called frames, the perception of motion is due to a psychological effect called phi phenomenon. The name film originates from the fact that film has historically been the medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for a motion picture, including picture, picture show, moving picture, photoplay. The most common term in the United States is movie, while in Europe film is preferred. Terms for the field, in general, include the big screen, the screen, the movies, and cinema. In early years, the sheet was sometimes used instead of screen. Preceding film in origin by thousands of years, early plays and dances had elements common to film, scripts, sets, costumes, production, direction, actors, audiences, storyboards, much terminology later used in film theory and criticism apply, such as mise en scène. Owing to the lack of any technology for doing so, the moving images, the magic lantern, probably created by Christiaan Huygens in the 1650s, could be used to project animation, which was achieved by various types of mechanical slides
5.
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
6.
Western Michigan University
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Western Michigan University is a public research university in Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States. The university was established in 1903 by Dwight B, waldo, and as of the Fall 2014 semester, its enrollment was 23,914. WMU has one of the largest aviation programs in the United States, the universitys athletic teams compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and are known as the Western Michigan Broncos. They compete in the Mid-American Conference for most sports, on May 27,1903, Michigan Governor Aaron T. Bliss signed a bill authorizing the creation of the States fourth teacher-training facility, the three other normal schools were in Ypsilanti, Mount Pleasant, and Marquette. Kalamazoo was chosen as the new location on August 28,1903. Other locations considered included Allegan, Muskegon, Grand Rapids, Decatur, Three Oaks, the first building, then known as the Administration Building, and now known as East Hall, was constructed in 1904. The University was first officially known as Western State Normal School, the first principal and president was Dwight B. Waldo, who served from 1904 until 1936, the school was renamed several times throughout its early history, beginning with Western State Teachers College in 1927, Michigan College of Education in 1941, and Western Michigan College in 1955. Most of the oldest and original WMU buildings and classrooms are known as East Campus. Access to the East Campus site was an issue because of the steep grade elevating it above the city, the Western State Normal Railroad was established in 1907 to carry students and staff up and down the hill via a funicular. WMUs campuses encompass more than 1,200 acres and roughly 150 buildings, many of the residence halls are found scattered throughout West Campus, while other dormitories are adjacent to West Campus in Goldsworth Valley. The Bernhard Center is a centrally-located multi-purpose student union that provides student, waldo Library and the attached University Computing Center are on West Campus, as is the Dalton Musical Center. Recently constructed buildings on West Campus include the Western Heights dormitory and the Chemistry Building, West Campus is also the site of Miller Auditorium. A large entertainment venue seating nearly 3500 people, it is Michigans fourth largest auditorium, Miller Auditorium hosts events ranging from popular musicals and concerts to graduation commencements and film screenings. The Gilmore Theater Complex is directly next to Miller Auditorium, the Richmond Center for Visual Arts was added to the Fine Arts Complex in 2007, followed by South Kohrman Hall being renovated into the Kohrman Hall Studios in 2008. Both buildings house the Gwen Frostic School of Art, East Campus is the original development dating from the universitys founding in 1903. It contains many of the historical buildings including, East Hall, West Hall, North Hall, Walwood Hall, Spindler Hall, Vandercook Hall
7.
Central Michigan University
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Central Michigan University is a public research university located in Mount Pleasant in the U. S. state of Michigan. Established in 1892, Central Michigan University is one of the largest universities in the state of Michigan and it has more than 20,000 students on its Mount Pleasant campus and 7,000 students enrolled online at more than 60 locations worldwide. The universitys neuroscience program was ranked first in the nation by the Society for Neuroscience and CMU has also established a College of Medicine, CMU competes in the NCAA Division I Mid-American Conference in six mens and ten womens sports. Central Michigan University is governed by a Board of Trustees, whose eight members are appointed by the Governor of Michigan, the Board of Trustees appoints and reviews the President of Central Michigan University, currently George E. Ross. The president administers the policies set by the board and serves ex officio on the board as a non-voting member and it names facilities and groups and accepts gifts from large donors, among several other duties and powers it possesses. Members of the Board of Trustees serve without compensation, but are reimbursed by the university for expenses related to their official capacity, such as travel. CMU has eight divisions, The College of Business Administration The College of Communication and Fine Arts The College of Education and Human Services The Herbert H. Park Library which holds one million books and can seat up to 2,655 patrons at a time, the school owns and operates the Brooks Astronomical Observatory. The Central Michigan University College of Graduate Studies provides over 70 graduate degree programs at the Masters, Specialist, Harold Abel Endowed Lecture Series in the Study of Dictatorship, Democracy and Genocide. Focuses on the impact of events such as the Holocaust and mass murders in Africa, Southeast Asia. Named in honor of former CMU President Harold Abel, Philip A. Hart and William G. Milliken Endowed Speaker Series for Integrity in Politics. Senator Philip Hart and Michigan Governor William Milliken, focuses on intellectual discussions for future leaders both in the military and across the campus and community. Named in honor of Army Colonel William Nolde, the last official casualty of the Vietnam War. Focuses on bringing world-class mathematicians to campus, speakers include Fields Medal winners Terrence Tao, Sir Timothy Gowers, and Cédric Villani and Abel Prize winners S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan and Louis Nirenberg. Named in honor of mathematics professor Richard Fleming, the schools athletics programs are affiliated with NCAA Division I. For football, the school is in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, almost all Central Michigan teams compete in the Mid-American Conference, the one exception is the womens lacrosse team, newly elevated from club to full varsity status for the 2016 season. CMUs football team won the second NCAA Division II national championship in 1974 by defeating the University of Delaware 54 to 14, the team was voted national champion in the Associated Press College Division poll. The Chips have also been national runner-up twice, in 1958 the mens swimming and diving team was runner-up to North Central College at the second annual NAIA national meet, which was held in Muncie, Ind
8.
Marriage
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The definition of marriage varies according to different cultures, but it is principally an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually sexual, are acknowledged. In some cultures, marriage is recommended or considered to be compulsory before pursuing any sexual activity, when defined broadly, marriage is considered a cultural universal. Individuals may marry for several reasons, including legal, social, libidinal, emotional, financial, spiritual, whom they marry may be influenced by socially determined rules of incest, prescriptive marriage rules, parental choice and individual desire. In some areas of the world, arranged marriage, child marriage, polygamy, conversely, such practices may be outlawed and penalized in parts of the world out of concerns for womens rights and because of international law. These trends coincide with the human rights movement. Marriage can be recognized by a state, an organization, an authority, a tribal group. It is often viewed as a contract, Marriages can be performed in a secular civil ceremony or in a religious setting via a wedding ceremony. The act of marriage usually creates normative or legal obligations between the individuals involved, and any offspring they may produce, some cultures allow the dissolution of marriage through divorce or annulment. In some areas, child marriages and polygamy may occur in spite of laws against the practice. For example, the number of marriages in Europe decreased by 30% from 1975 to 2005 and these changes have occurred primarily in Western countries. The word marriage derives from Middle English mariage, which first appears in 1250–1300 CE and this in turn is derived from Old French, marier, and ultimately Latin, marītāre, meaning to provide with a husband or wife and marītāri meaning to get married. The adjective marīt-us -a, -um meaning matrimonial or nuptial could also be used in the form as a noun for husband. Anthropologists have proposed several competing definitions of marriage in an attempt to encompass the wide variety of marital practices observed across cultures, even within Western culture, definitions of marriage have careened from one extreme to another and everywhere in between. The anthropological handbook Notes and Queries defined marriage as a union between a man and a such that children born to the woman are the recognized legitimate offspring of both partners. In recognition of a practice by the Nuer people of Sudan allowing women to act as a husband in certain circumstances, Kathleen Gough suggested modifying this to a woman, none of these men had legal rights to the womans child. Economic anthropologist Duran Bell has criticized the definition on the basis that some societies do not require marriage for legitimacy. He argued that a definition of marriage is circular in societies where illegitimacy has no other legal or social implications for a child other than the mother being unmarried. In 1955 article in Man, Leach argued that no one definition of marriage applied to all cultures and he offered a list of ten rights associated with marriage, including sexual monopoly and rights with respect to children, with specific rights differing across cultures
9.
Family
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In the context of human society, a family is a group of people affiliated either by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence or some combination of these. Members of the family may include spouses, parents, brothers, sisters, sons. Members of the family may include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces. Sometimes these are considered members of the immediate family, depending on an individuals specific relationship with them. In most societies, the family is the institution for the socialization of children. As the basic unit for raising children, anthropologists generally classify most family organizations as matrifocal, conjugal, avuncular, sexual relations among the members are regulated by rules concerning incest such as the incest taboo. The word family can be used metaphorically to create more inclusive categories such as community, nationhood, global village, the field of genealogy aims to trace family lineages through history. Family is also an important economic unit studied in family economics, one of the primary functions of the family involves providing a framework for the production and reproduction of persons, biologically and/or socially. This can occur through the sharing of material substances, the giving and receiving of care and nurture, jural rights and obligations, thus, ones experience of ones family shifts over time. From the perspective of children, the family is a family of orientation, from the point of view of the parent, the family is a family of procreation, the goal of which is to produce and enculturate and socialize children. Christopher Harris notes that the conception of family is ambiguous. Diverse data from ethnography, history, law and social statistics, reveal the human family as a social institution, the different types of families occur in a wide variety of settings, and their specific functions and meanings depend largely on their relationship to other social institutions. Sociologists have a special interest in the function and status of family forms in stratified societies, much sociological, historical and anthropological research dedicates itself to the understanding of this variation, and of changes in the family that form over time. Levitan claims, Times have changed, it is acceptable and encouraged for mothers to work. The way roles are balanced between the parents will help children grow and learn life lessons. There is great importance of communication and equality in families, in order to avoid role strain, the term nuclear family is commonly used, especially in the United States of America, to refer to conjugal families. A conjugal family includes only the husband, the wife, sociologists distinguish between conjugal families and nuclear families. Other family structures, such as blended parents, single parents, a matrifocal family consists of a mother and her children
10.
Everyday life
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Everyday life, daily life or routine life comprises the ways in which people typically act, think, and feel on a daily basis. Everyday life may be described as mundane, routine, natural, habitual, human diurnality means most people sleep at least part of the night and are active in daytime. Most eat two or three meals in a day, working time mostly involves a daily schedule, beginning in the morning. This produces the daily rush hours experienced by millions. Bathing every day is a custom for many, beyond these broad similarities, lifestyles vary and different people spend their days differently. Nomadic life differs from sedentism, and among the sedentary, urban people live differently from rural folk, differences in the lives of the rich and the poor, or between factory workers and intellectuals, may go beyond their working hours. Many women spend their day in activities greatly different from those of men, Everyday life is a key concept in cultural studies and is a specialized subject in the field of sociology. Other theorists dispute this argument based on a history of writings about daily life which can be seen in works from Ancient Greece, Medieval Christianity. In the study of everyday life gender has been an important factor in its conceptions, some theorists regard women as the quintessential representatives and victims of everyday life. It is the reality that exists amongst all social groupings without discrimination and is an unavoidable basis for which all human endeavor exists. Daily life is studied by sociologists to investigate how it is organised. A sociological journal called the Journal of Mundane Behavior, published 2000 -2004, daily entertainment once consisted mainly of telling stories in the evening. This custom developed into the theatre of ancient Greece and other professional entertainments, reading later became less a mysterious specialty of scholars, and more a common pleasure for people who could afford books. During the 20th century mass media became prevalent in countries, creating among other things a daily prime time to consume fiction. Many people have increased their daily use of the Internet. These concerns did not prevent the progressively wider popularity of these innovations, peoples everyday lives are shaped through language and communication. They choose what to do with their time based on opinions, much of the dialogue people are subject to comes from the mass media, which is an important factor in what shapes human experience. The media uses language to make an impact on everyday life
11.
Tool
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A tool is any physical item that can be used to achieve a goal, especially if the item is not consumed in the process. Tool use by humans dates back millions of years, and other animals are known to employ simple tools. Tools that are used in fields or activities may have different designations such as instrument, utensil, implement, machine, device. The set of tools needed to achieve a goal is equipment, the knowledge of constructing, obtaining and using tools is technology. Anthropologists believe that the use of tools was an important step in the evolution of mankind, because tools are used extensively by both humans and wild chimpanzees, it is widely assumed that the first routine use of tools took place prior to the divergence between the two species. These early tools, however, were made of perishable materials such as sticks. Stone artifacts only date back to about 2.5 million years ago, however, a 2010 study suggests the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis ate meat by carving animal carcasses with stone implements. This finding pushes back the earliest known use of tools among hominins to about 3.4 million years ago. Finds of actual tools date back at least 2.6 million years in Ethiopia, one of the earliest distinguishable stone tool forms is the hand axe. Up until recently, weapons found in digs were the tools of “early man” that were studied. Now, more tools are recognized as culturally and historically relevant, as well as hunting, other activities required tools such as preparing food, “…nutting, leatherworking, grain harvesting and woodworking…” Included in this group are “flake stone tools. “Man the hunter” as the catalyst for Hominin change has been questioned, based on marks on the bones at archaeological sites, it is now more evident that pre-humans were scavenging off of other predators carcasses rather than killing their own food. Mechanical devices experienced an expansion in their use in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome with the systematic employment of new energy sources. Their use expanded through the Dark Ages with the addition of windmills, machine tools occasioned a surge in producing new tools in the industrial revolution. Advocates of nanotechnology expect a similar surge as tools become microscopic in size, one can classify tools according to their basic functions, Cutting and edge tools, such as the knife, scythe or sickle, are wedge-shaped implements that produce a shearing force along a narrow face. Ideally, the edge of the needs to be harder than the material being cut or else the blade will become dulled with repeated use. But even resilient tools will require periodic sharpening, which is the process of removing deformation wear from the edge, other examples of cutting tools include gouges and drill bits. Moving tools move large and tiny items, many are levers which give the user a mechanical advantage
12.
Santa Claus
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Some maintain Santa Claus also absorbed elements of the Germanic god Wodan, who was associated with the pagan midwinter event of Yule and led the Wild Hunt, a ghostly procession through the sky. This image has been maintained and reinforced through song, radio, television, childrens books, films and he accomplishes this feat with the aid of his elves, who make the toys in his workshop at the North Pole, and his flying reindeer, who pull his sleigh. He is commonly portrayed as living at the North Pole and saying ho ho ho often, Saint Nicholas of Myra was a 4th-century Greek Christian bishop of Myra in Lycia, a province of the Byzantine Empire, now in Turkey. Nicholas was famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they would not have to become prostitutes. He was very religious from an age and devoted his life entirely to Christianity. In continental Europe he is portrayed as a bearded bishop in canonical robes. The remains of Saint Nicholas are in Italy, in 1087, the Italian city of Bari mounted an expedition to locate the tomb of the Saint. The reliquary of St. Nicholas was conquered by Italian sailors, a basilica was constructed the same year to store the loot and the area became a pilgrimage site for the devout. Sailors from Bari collected just half of Nicholas skeleton, leaving all the fragments in the grave. These were collected by Venetian sailors during the First Crusade and taken to Venice, where a church to St. Nicholas, the patron of sailors, was built on the San Nicolò al Lido. This tradition was confirmed in two important scientific investigations of the relics in Bari and Venice, which revealed that the relics in the two Italian cities belong to the same skeleton. Saint Nicholas was later claimed as a saint of many diverse groups, from archers, sailors. He is also the saint of both Amsterdam and Moscow. During the Middle Ages, often on the evening before his day of 6 December. So Saint Nicholas changed to Santa Claus, martin Luther first suggested the Christkind as the bringer of gifts. But Nicholas remained popular as gifts bearer for the people, Father Christmas dates back as far as 16th century in England during the reign of Henry VIII, when he was pictured as a large man in green or scarlet robes lined with fur. He typified the spirit of good cheer at Christmas, bringing peace, joy, good food and wine, as England no longer kept the feast day of Saint Nicholas on 6 December, the Father Christmas celebration was moved to 25 December to coincide with Christmas Day. The Victorian revival of Christmas included Father Christmas as the emblem of good cheer, in the Netherlands and Belgium the character of Santa Claus has to compete with that of Sinterklaas, Santas presumed progenitor
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