Rainmaking (ritual)

Rainmaking is a weather modification ritual that attempts to invoke rain.

Among the best known examples of weather modification rituals are North American rain dances, historically performed by many Native American tribes, particularly in the Southwestern United States. Some of these weather modification rituals are still implemented today.

Examples

North America

Julia M. Butree (the wife of Ernest Thompson Seton) describes the rain dance of the Zuni, along with other Native American dances, in her book The Rhythm of the Redman. Feathers and turquoise, or other blue items, are worn during the ceremony to symbolize wind and rain respectively. Details on how best to perform the Rain Dance have been passed down by oral tradition. In an early sort of meteorology, Native Americans in the midwestern parts of the modern United States often tracked and followed known weather patterns while offering to perform a rain dance for settlers in return for trade items. This is best documented among the Osage and Quapaw Indian tribes of Missouri and Arkansas.

Stevie Stone

Stephen Williams better known by his stage name Stevie Stone is an American rapper from St. Louis, Missouri. He is signed to Tech N9ne's Strange Music record label. He has released three studio albums, with his most recent being Malta Bend which was released on June 30, 2015.

Career

Stone, who grew up in Columbia, Missouri, is based in St. Louis. He discovered a love of music through his mother, a singer and choir director who introduced the rapper to gospel, blues, and soul at an early age. As he grew up, Stone had his feet in the worlds of music and sports, pursuing a basketball career and playing piano and drums. Though he received an offer to play ball for a junior college in Iowa, he was asked to open at a show just weeks before he would leave for school, and he chose to focus on his rap career. In 2007, Stone signed with Ruthless Records, which released his debut, New Kid Coming, on September 29, 2009. Not long afterwards, the MC left the label to sign with Tech N9ne's Strange Music. On June 12, 2012, his second studio album Rollin' Stone was released. On October 23, 2012, he released an EP titled Momentum. On August 13, 2013, his third studio album 2 Birds 1 Stone was released.

Tech N9ne

Aaron Dontez Yates (born November 8, 1971), better known by his stage name Tech N9ne (pronounced Tech Nine), is an American rapper. In 1999, Yates and business partner Travis O'Guin founded the record label Strange Music. He has sold over two million albums and has had his music featured in film, television, and video games. In 2009, he won the Left Field Woodie award at the mtvU Woodie Awards.

His stage name originated from the TEC-9 semi-automatic handgun, a name given to him by rapper Black Walt due to his fast-rhyming Chopper style. Yates later applied a deeper meaning to the name, claiming that it stands for the complete technique of rhyme, with "tech" meaning technique and "nine" representing the number of completion.

Early life

In 1971, Yates was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He began rapping at a very early age, and would rap the letters of his name in order to remember how to spell it. He never met his father, and his mother suffered from epilepsy and lupus when he was a child, which emotionally affected him and inspired him to "search for God". He would explore abandoned buildings with his best friend, hoping to catch a ghost on film. He attended Southwest High School in Kansas City.

Ulnar nerve

In human anatomy, the ulnar nerve is a nerve that runs near the ulna bone. The ulnar collateral ligament of elbow joint is in relation with the ulnar nerve. The nerve is the largest unprotected nerve in the human body (meaning unprotected by muscle or bone), so injury is common. This nerve is directly connected to the little finger, and the adjacent half of the ring finger, supplying the palmar side of these fingers, including both front and back of the tips, perhaps as far back as the fingernail beds.

This nerve can cause an electric shock-like sensation by striking the medial epicondyle of the humerus from posteriorly, or inferiorly with the elbow flexed. The ulnar nerve is trapped between the bone and the overlying skin at this point. This is commonly referred to as bumping one's "funny bone". This name is thought to be a pun, based on the sound resemblance between the name of the bone of the upper arm, the "humerus" and the word "humorous". Alternatively, according to the Oxford English Dictionary it may refer to "the peculiar sensation experienced when it is struck".

Got Talent

Got Talent is a talent show television format conceived and owned by Simon Cowell's SYCOtv company. A pilot was made in the United Kingdom in 2005, hosted by Paul O'Grady, but after O'Grady's split with ITV, the series was postponed, resulting in America's Got Talent – the first full series of the format.

It has spawned spin-offs in over 58 countries (as of April 2014), in what is now referred to as the Got Talent format, similar to that described by FremantleMedia of the Idol and The X Factor formats. In April 2014, the format was named the world's most successful reality TV format ever by the Guinness World Records.

History

Got Talent was an invention by The X Factor creator Simon Cowell, with comedian and talk show host Paul O'Grady producing a pilot for ITV in 2005 under the provisional title Paul O'Grady's Got Talent. O'Grady left the network after disputes with ITV, resulting in Cowell moving the concept to the United States while he and ITV searched for a new show host.

Due to these issues, the Got Talent franchise ended up debuting first as America's Got Talent on NBC on 21 June 2006, with judges David Hasselhoff, Brandy Norwood, and Piers Morgan. The show's original series was hosted by Regis Philbin. In 2016, the judging panel consisted of Howie Mandel, Heidi Klum, Melanie Brown, and Simon Cowell, and hosted by Nick Cannon, who has been the presenter since 2009. The grand prize on America's Got Talent is $1 million, and, since season 3, a chance to headline a show on the Las Vegas Strip. America's Got Talent proved extremely successful for NBC, pulling in high ratings in both total viewers and the younger 18-49 demographic. The show's initial success in America is credited with the eventual launch of the British series, and the overall global launch of the Got Talent franchise.