Colored

Colored or coloured is a term used in the United States, especially in the South during the racial segregation era, to describe people who do not have White skin or a Caucasian appearance (non-white) or those with mixed racial heritage. Most commonly, the term was used to refer to black African Americans, although it can be applied to members of other non-white races as well. Since desegregation, colored has been widely replaced in the United States by alternative terms. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word colored was first used in the 14th Century, but with a meaning other than race or ethnicity.

In other English-speaking countries, the term has varied meanings. In South Africa, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the name Coloured (often capitalized) refers both to a specific ethnic group of complex mixed origins, which is considered neither black nor white, and in other contexts (usually lower case) to people of mixed race, including African Americans; in neither context is its usage considered derogatory. In British usage, the term refers to "a person who is wholly or partly of non-white descent" and its use may be regarded as antiquated or offensive, and other terms are preferable, particularly when referring to a single ethnicity.

Nursery rhyme

A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the late 18th /early 19th century. In North America the term Mother Goose Rhymes, introduced in the mid-18th century, is still often used.

History

Lullabies

The oldest children's songs of which we have records are lullabies, intended to help a child sleep. Lullabies can be found in every human culture. The English term lullaby is thought to come from "lu, lu" or "la la" sound made by mothers or nurses to calm children, and "by by" or "bye bye", either another lulling sound, or a term for good night. Until the modern era lullabies were usually only recorded incidentally in written sources. The Roman nurses' lullaby, "Lalla, Lalla, Lalla, aut dormi, aut lacta", is recorded in a scholium on Persius and may be the oldest to survive.

Many medieval English verses associated with the birth of Jesus take the form of a lullaby, including "Lullay, my liking, my dere son, my sweting" and may be versions of contemporary lullabies. However, most of those used today date from the 17th century. For example, a well known lullaby such as "Rock-a-bye, baby on a tree top", cannot be found in records until the late-18th century when it was printed by John Newbery (c. 1765).

Color

Color (American English) or colour (Commonwealth English) is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, blue, yellow, etc. Color derives from the spectrum of light (distribution of light power versus wavelength) interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. Color categories and physical specifications of color are also associated with objects or materials based on their physical properties such as light absorption, reflection, or emission spectra. By defining a color space colors can be identified numerically by their coordinates.

Because perception of color stems from the varying spectral sensitivity of different types of cone cells in the retina to different parts of the spectrum, colors may be defined and quantified by the degree to which they stimulate these cells. These physical or physiological quantifications of color, however, do not fully explain the psychophysical perception of color appearance.

The science of color is sometimes called chromatics, colorimetry, or simply color science. It includes the perception of color by the human eye and brain, the origin of color in materials, color theory in art, and the physics of electromagnetic radiation in the visible range (that is, what we commonly refer to simply as light).

For Children (Bartók)

For Children (Hungarian: A Gyermekeknek) is a cycle of short piano pieces composed by Béla Bartók. The collection was originally started in 1908 and completed in 1909, and comprised 85 pieces which were issued in four volumes. Each piece is based on a folk tune, Hungarian in the first two volumes (42 pieces), and Slovakian in the last two (43 pieces). In 1945, Bartók revised the set, removing six pieces which used tunes which had been inaccurately transcribed or found not to be original folk tunes, and substantially changing the harmonisation of a number of others; the cycle, now of 79 pieces, was reissued in two volumes (of 40 and 39 pieces).

The pieces were written as student works, and progress slightly in difficulty through each half of the cycle. However, in modern times, some concert pianists (notably Zoltán Kocsis) have begun including some of them on their recital programs, citing their musical value even apart from their pedagogical origins.

See also

Mikrokosmos

Talking Tom and Friends

Talking Tom and Friends is the flagship franchise of multinational entertainment company Outfit7 Limited. As of August 2015 there are six characters (Talking Tom, Talking Angela, Talking Ginger, Talking Ben, Talking Hank, and Talking Pierre) and 15 apps within the Talking Tom and Friends umbrella brand. Since June 2010 the apps have achieved more than 3 billion downloads.

The characters

Talking Tom

Talking Tom is the lead character in the Talking Tom and Friends franchise. Tom is a wisecracking, adventure-seeking anthropomorphic cat, described as the "world’s most popular cat."

Talking Tom is a fully animated interactive 3D character that users can tickle, poke and play with in the apps. Users can also get Tom to repeat what they say. The original Talking Tom Cat app was launched in July 2010 for iOS, closely followed by Talking Tom 2 in 2011.

The My Talking Tom app was launched in November 2013. This interactive app sees users raise their very own Tom from a kitten to a fully-grown tomcat, caring for him and customizing his fur, clothes and home. My Talking Tom had over 11 million downloads and was the top games app in 135 countries worldwide within 10 days of its launch.