Cool background

Cool background

Cool is an aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance, style and Zeitgeist. Because of the varied and changing connotations of cool, as well its subjective nature, the word has no single meaning. It has associations of composure and self-control (cf. the OED definition) and often is used as an expression of admiration or approval.

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Cool background

Cool background

Cool background

Cool background

Cool background

Cool background

Cool background

Pretty backgrounds

Pretty backgrounds

For the song sometimes known as "Pretty Woman", see Oh, Pretty Woman.

Pretty Woman is a 1990 romantic comedy film. The film centers around the titular character, down-on-her-luck prostitute Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) who is hired by a wealthy businessman and corporate raider, Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) to be his escort for several business functions, and their developing relationship.

Pretty Woman was initially intended to be a dark drama about prostitution in Los Angeles but was reconceptualized into a romantic comedy. The film was a critical success and became one of 1990's highest grossing films, and today is one of the most financially successful entries in the romantic comedy genre, with an estimated gross of $464 million USD. Roberts received a Golden Globe Award for her role, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Screenwriter J. F. Lawton was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and a BAFTA Award. The film was followed by a string of similar romantic comedies, including Runaway Bride, which teamed up Gere and Roberts under the direction of Garry Marshall once again.

Pretty backgrounds

Pretty backgrounds

Pretty backgrounds

Pretty backgrounds

Pretty backgrounds

Pretty backgrounds

Pretty backgrounds

Christian backgrounds

Christian backgrounds

A Christian (listen) is a person who adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament and interpreted by Christians to have been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.

Christian backgrounds

Christian backgrounds

Christian backgrounds

Christian backgrounds

Christian backgrounds

Gothic backgrounds

Gothic backgrounds

Gothic architecture is a style of architecture which flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture.

Originating in 12th-century France and lasting into the 16th century, Gothic architecture was known during the period as "the French Style" (Opus Francigenum), with the term Gothic first appearing during the latter part of the Renaissance as a stylistic insult. Its characteristic features include the pointed arch, the ribbed vault and the flying buttress.

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Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great cathedrals, abbeys and parish churches of Europe. It is also the architecture of many castles, palaces, town halls, guild halls, universities, and to a less prominent extent, private dwellings.

It is in the great churches and cathedrals and in a number of civic buildings that the Gothic style was expressed most powerfully, its characteristics lending themselves to appeal to the emotions. A great number of ecclesiastical buildings remain from this period, of which even the smallest are often structures of architectural distinction while many of the larger churches are considered priceless works of art and are listed with UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. For this reason a study of Gothic architecture is largely a study of cathedrals and churches.

A series of Gothic revivals began in mid-18th century England, spread through 19th-century Europe and continued, largely for ecclesiastical and university structures, into the 20th century.

Gothic backgrounds

Gothic backgrounds

Background music

Background music

Music is an art form in which the medium is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture.

Background music

To many, music is a way of life, such as Native Americans, who used their music to pray, or still to people today, who have found their hearts in the melodies. Greek philosophers and ancient Indians defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as "the harmony of the spheres" and "it is music to my ears" point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to, but the opinion of the listener does not necessarily help music theorists formulate a precise definition of music. Like the notion that visual arts must be beautiful to behold, the tacit notion that music need be pleasant to listen to has been questioned.

Background music

Background music

Background music

Background music

Valentine's day backgrounds

Valentine's day backgrounds

Valentine's Day or Saint Valentine's Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14. In the Americas and Europe, it is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other by sending Valentine's cards, presenting flowers, or offering confectionery. The holiday is named after two among the numerous Early Christian martyrs named Valentine. The day became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished.

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The day is most closely associated with the mutual exchange of love notes in the form of "valentines." Modern Valentine symbols include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten notes have largely given way to mass-produced greeting cards. The sending of Valentines was a fashion in nineteenth-century Great Britain, and, in 1847, Esther Howland developed a successful business in her Worcester, Massachusetts home with hand-made Valentine cards based on British models. The popularity of Valentine cards in 19th-century America was a harbinger of the future commercialization of holidays in the United States.

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The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately one billion valentines cards are sent each year worldwide, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas. The association estimates that women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.

Valentine's day backgrounds

Valentine's day backgrounds

Valentine's day backgrounds

Star background

Star background

A star is a massive, luminous ball of plasma. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth. Other stars are visible in the night sky, when they are not outshone by the Sun. For most of its life, a star shines due to thermonuclear fusion in its core releasing energy that traverses the star's interior and then radiates into outer space. Almost all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were created by fusion processes in stars.

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Astronomers can determine the mass, age, chemical composition and many other properties of a star by observing its spectrum, luminosity and motion through space. The total mass of a star is the principal determinant in its evolution and eventual fate. Other characteristics of a star are determined by its evolutionary history, including the diameter, rotation, movement and temperature. A plot of the temperature of many stars against their luminosities, known as a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (H–R diagram), allows the age and evolutionary state of a star to be determined.

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A star begins as a collapsing cloud of material composed primarily of hydrogen, along with helium and trace amounts of heavier elements. Once the stellar core is sufficiently dense, some of the hydrogen is steadily converted into helium through the process of nuclear fusion. The remainder of the star's interior carries energy away from the core through a combination of radiative and convective processes. The star's internal pressure prevents it from collapsing further under its own gravity. Once the hydrogen fuel at the core is exhausted, those stars having at least 0.4 times the mass of the Sun expand to become a red giant, in some cases fusing heavier elements at the core or in shells around the core. The star then evolves into a degenerate form, recycling a portion of the matter into the interstellar environment, where it will form a new generation of stars with a higher proportion of heavy elements.

Star background

Binary and multi-star systems consist of two or more stars that are gravitationally bound, and generally move around each other in stable orbits. When two such stars have a relatively close orbit, their gravitational interaction can have a significant impact on their evolution.

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Star background

Spring backgrounds

Spring backgrounds

According to an astronomical definition, spring begins on the vernal equinox (usually September 21 in the Southern Hemisphere, and March 20 in the Northern Hemisphere), and lasts until the summer solstice (usually December 21 in the Southern Hemispherre and June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere). According to this definition, therefore, the day called Midsummer's Day in some traditions, is close to the first day of Summer. An alternative tradition is to calculate Spring as starting on March 1 in the Northern Hemisphere and September 1 in the Southern Hemisphere. The lower (cooler) latitudes are more inclined to start with the later date, vernal equinox, while the higher (warmer) latitudes, where the biological indicators of spring arrive earlier, are more inclined to run with the 1st of the month. According to a less used solar term, spring begins on February 4 and ends on May 4, and calendars may give the first, but the second and third are more used with this tradition.

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The phenological definition of spring relates to bioindicators, the blossoming of a range of plant species, and the activites of animals, or the special smell of soil that has reached the temperature for microflora to flourish. The first swallow to arrive or the flowering of lilac may be the indicator of spring. A number of meterological stations have planted Syringa rothamagensis, and the date of full flowering, as determined by defined means, is used as a more precise indicator of the date of start of spring for agricultural activities associated with spring and the passing of frosty weather. It therefore varies according to the climate (as in 'Spring comes late to the north-east'), and according the to specific weather of particular years (as in 'this was an unusually early spring for our area with all these extra days of warm winds, fewer frosts at this time of the year, and with the early flowering of the lilac, and early arrival of the swallows; we therefore planted longer season varieties to extend our growing season and get greater yields.')

Spring backgrounds

Spring backgrounds

Spring backgrounds

Spring backgrounds

Spring backgrounds

Romantic backgrounds

Romantic backgrounds

Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature, and was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature.

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The movement stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror and awe—especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic categories. It elevated folk art and custom to something noble, and argued for a "natural" epistemology of human activities as conditioned by nature in the form of language, custom and usage.

Our modern sense of a romantic character is sometimes based on Byronic or Romantic ideals. Romanticism reached beyond the rational and Classicist ideal models to elevate medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be authentically medieval, in an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban sprawl and industrialism, and it also attempted to embrace the exotic, unfamiliar and distant in modes more authentic than chinoiserie, harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape.

Romantic backgrounds

The ideologies and events of the French Revolution, rooted in Romanticism, affected the direction it was to take, and the confines of the Industrial Revolution also had their influence on Romanticism, which was in part an escape from modern realities; indeed, in the second half of the nineteenth century, "Realism" was offered as a polarized opposite to Romanticism. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas.

Romantic backgrounds

Romantic backgrounds

Romantic backgrounds

Romantic backgrounds

Religious backgrounds

Religious backgrounds

A religion is a set of tenets and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature, and often codified as prayer, ritual, or religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.

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In the frame of western religious thought, religions present a common quality, the "hallmark of patriarchal religious thought": the division of the world in two comprehensive domains, one sacred, the other profane. Religion is often described as a communal system for the coherence of belief focusing on a system of thought, unseen being, person, or object, that is considered to be supernatural, sacred, divine, or of the highest truth. Moral codes, practices, values, institutions, tradition, rituals, and scriptures are often traditionally associated with the core belief, and these may have some overlap with concepts in secular philosophy. Religion is also often described as a "way of life" or a life stance.

Religious backgrounds

The development of religion has taken many forms in various cultures. "Organized religion" generally refers to an organization of people supporting the exercise of some religion with a prescribed set of beliefs, often taking the form of a legal entity (see religion-supporting organization). Other religions believe in personal revelation. "Religion" is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system," but is more socially defined than that of personal convictions.

Religious backgrounds

Religious backgrounds

Religious backgrounds