Ethelbert Woodbridge Nevin (born near Pittsburgh, November 25, 1862; died in New Haven, Connecticut, February 17, 1901) was an American pianist and composer. He is remembered for a small number of romantic songs and piano pieces which became extremely popular in the early 20th century.
Nevin was born in 1862, at Vineacre, on the river Ohio, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He grew up there. His father was a newspaper editor and he taught the young boy most subjects. His mother played the piano. The family bought a grand piano, which was the first grand piano ever to be taken across the Allegheny Mountains.
Ethelbert showed musical promise when he was very young. His brother and cousins were also musical. When he was four he was playing the piano with cushions on the floor so that he could reach the pedals. His father took him to Dresden for two years to study music. He also studied in Pittsburgh and in Boston.
He started his career giving piano lessons. When he had earned enough money he went to Berlin where he had lessons from Karl Klindworth, who was a good teacher for him. He showed Nevin how important it was to have a good general knowledge, and not just to spend hours and hours practising the piano. This helped Nevin, who had good tastes in literature and he chose some good poems to make into songs.
In 1885 he was invited to join a group who had lessons from Hans von Bülow. He played works by of Brahms, Liszt, and Raff. Cosima Wagner and Joseph Joachim often came to the concerts given by this group.
In 1887 he went back to America and lived in Boston, where he taught and played in some concerts. He asked Richard Strauss to teach him composition but Strauss did not accept him.
In 1892 he went to Paris, where he taught singing, and helped many American and French opera singers to learn their parts for singing in operas. He worked very hard and his health got bad. He spent his last years in several European places and then he went back to America. He died in 1901.
Nevin's music is romantic, and sometimes rather sentimental for modern tastes. His best known piece is "Narcissus" from "Water Scenes". These pieces were used by the dancer Isadora Duncan to dance to. He also wrote a famous song called "The Rosary" and "Mighty Lak' a Rose".
Nevin was pictured on a 1940 ten cent U.S. postage stamp.
Eucalyptus regnans
Eucalyptus regnans, also called Mountain Ash, Victorian Ash, Swamp Gum, Tasmanian Oak or Stringy Gum, is a species of "Eucalyptus" from Victoria and Tasmania. It can grow to more than and is the tallest flowering plant in the world.
It is an evergreen tree, the tallest eucalyptus tree, growing 70–120 m (230–400 feet) tall. It has a straight, grey trunk with smooth bark. The leaves are narrow, curved, and end in a point, like a sickle. They grow up to long and wide. They are green to grey-green with a red stalk. The flowers are in groups of 9-15 together, each flower about 1 cm (0.5 in) diameter with a ring of many white stamens. The fruit is a hard nut, up to 9 mm (0.5 in) long and 7 mm (0.4 in) wide.
Mountain Ash are found in cool, deep soiled, mountain areas to above sea level, with high rainfall of over each year. They grow very quickly, at more than a metre (3 feet) a year, and can reach in 50 years. They live for an average life-span of 400 years. The fallen logs continue supporting a rich variety of life for centuries more on the forest floor.
Unusually for a eucalypt, Mountain Ash does not regrow after fire. They grow only from seed which are released from their woody gumnuts by heat. The seedlings need a lot of light, much more than reaches the forest floor normally when there are mature trees blocking the sun. Severe fires can kill all the trees in a forest, which causes a massive release of seed to take advantage of the nutrients in the ash bed. Up to 2.5 million seedlings per have been recorded after a major fire. Competition and natural thinning slowly reduces the number of mature trees to about 30 to 40 per hectare. Because it takes roughly 20 years for seedlings to reach become old enough to make seeds, repeated fires in the same area can cause local extinctions. If, however, there are no fires to release seeds, the trees die off after about 400 years and are replaced by other species.
"Eucalyptus regnans" is the tallest of all flowering plants, and possibly the tallest of all plants, although no living trees can make that claim. The tallest tree, named "Centurion", stands 99.6 metres tall in Tasmania. There are 16 living trees in Tasmania that have been measured taller than 90 metres. The tallest tree ever found was the "Ferguson Tree", at 132.6 metres, found in the Watts River region of Victoria in 1872. It had fallen over and was measured by William Ferguson, the Inspector of State Forests. The top of the tree had broken off, but the trunk was still more than one metre in diameter. Ferguson guessed the tree would have been more than 152 metres in height.
"Eucalyptus regnans" is valued for its timber, and large areas of trees have been cut down. The main uses are building timber and woodchipping. It also used for newsprint in the 20th century. Most of the woodchips are sent to Japan. While the area of natural stands with large old trees is rapidly decreasing, large areas of new trees exist. It is increasingly grown in plantations where the long, straight, fast growing trunks are more valuable than the old growth timber.
The timber is rather rough (stringy) in texture. It is easy to work and the grain is straight with long, clear sections without knots. The wood works reasonably well for steam-bending. It is used for furniture, flooring, woodpanelling, veneer, plywood, window frames and general building.
Bahía Lomas
Bahía Lomas is a protected wetland area in Chile. It was declared as a legal measure of protecting the site, which is expected to be nominated as a Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve under the RAMSAR Convention.
Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon
Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon is the 4th Destroy All Humans! in the series first released December 1, 2008 in North America for the Xbox 360. The game is made by THQ's Sandblast Games studio for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon has around 30 story missions, 20 side quests, and multiplayer modes. As with previous games in the series, most story missions can be played in any order. Creative director Jon Knoles said that the side quests would have something to do with the story.
The player plays as Crypto, an alien. He can shoot humans, use the jet pack, and use Psychokinesis at the same time. There are now flying enemies, like helicopters and Nexo UFO's that can attack Crypto while he is in his UFO. Buildings can be destroyed and scarred in different ways when attacked with different weapons. The game has a new alert scheme with police, SWAT, military awareness, and Nexo alert. Electricity goes through power lines when damage is caused to them. The player can exit and enter some buildings during some missions.
The game was given 34/100 by the site Metacritic.
The Simpsons: Hit &amp; Run
The Simpsons Hit & Run is an action-adventure video game based on the animated sitcom (comedy TV show) "The Simpsons". It was released for the Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Windows in the United States on September 16, 2003 and in Europe on October 31, 2003. The game was developed or made by Radical Entertainment and published or was put out to be sold by Vivendi Universal. To make the game harder and more fun, the story and dialogue were written by the writers of the TV show. The voices were supplied by the cast of "The Simpsons".