Historically September 1st is famous for...

Posted September 4, 2010

Emma NuttSeptember the 1st is probably most well know for being the date in 1939 when the Nazi's invaded Poland, bombed Westerplatte and kicked off events that would begin World War II.

However, depending on which period in history you prefer it might also be noted that several other things happened in history on this date.

In 1532 Lady Anne Boleyn was made Marchioness of Pembroke by her fiance King Henry VIII. He created this title for his mistress, who would become his second wife. He had her beheaded in 1536 after she was investigated and found to be guilty of high treason.

This date in 1715 saw the death of King Louis XIV of France. He died of gangrene at age 76 and had ruled for 72 years (+110 days). The longest recorded reign of any European monarch.

Emma Nutt became the worlds first female...

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Tagged as history, september 1st, emma nutt, gaddafi, anne boleyn, louis xiv, henry viii, beslan, and finland

A tale of society now

Posted August 7, 2010

Many of you may have read today about the mass shooting in Cumbria, England that results in the deaths of 12 people and left 8 people in hospital and many others injured.

The shooter was a taxi driver called Derrick Bird who, according to many people, was not someone who had any interest in guns, who was a nice guy. Something tipped him over the edge and created this tragedy today.

However, what caused Mr Bird to begin this spree is not what I'm talking about at the moment.

I'm more concerned about the fact that this tragedy happened and I didn't know about it until I was searching through news websites a couple of hours ago.

That fact is I remember exactly where I was in 1996 when the news first broke of the shootings at Dunblane Primary School. I remember that the radio was on and the programme was interrupted with a bulletin about it. Details were sketchy at the time but they soon filtered through. Thomas Hamilton had gone on the rampage killing 16 pupils and a teacher.

The news was dominated by this for days. Yet I find that no one I was working with today even mentioned this. Events have been unfolding since it happened with new information coming from here there and everywhere yet not one person mentioned this.

At work where people have constant access to the news or Internet not one person spoke of this incident.

So what does this tell us?

Well, I'm assuming that people saw this on the news sites and TV news but it just didn't register to them as anything major. In 1996 Dunblane was a major incident but now, in 2010, the news is told and then it fades. Sky News still has a ticker along the bottom of the screen with various bits of information but they've moved on.

So now this is normal in society? A multiple shooting is something that drops interest after a few hours?

It wouldn't surprise me if that was how it was. What used to be horrific now is normal. We take it all with a "yeah that's terrible" and move on.

I find that a terrible reflection on society. I am someone who loves the news. In 2001 I watched hours and hours and hours of news coverage as the events of September 11 unfolded. I only took a break when the news began to repeat itself as new information was hard to come by and the USA closed down.

I can't accept that a multiple shooting becomes dead news after only a few hours.

We spoke about Dunblane for months and years afterwards. What about Cumbria?

HugPages

 

What happened to manners?

Posted August 7, 2010

Going about my daily life I've noticed more and more recently the absolute lack of manners that many people seem to have these days.

Has anyone else noticed this?

This may sound more like a rant but it's a genuine observation of people as they go about their day.

Simple things, like holding open a door, seem to have fallen by the wayside in younger generations. I've noted that doors only seem to be held open for me by men or women of an older generation.

It seems like there is now a culture of only looking out for yourself. If you observe people as they walk along a busy street they're not interested in looking or paying attention to any one else and this often results in people walking into each. Do they apologise to each other? Well, sometimes but often there are glares exchanged and they move on. Why not simply apologise? They don't want to because they don't want to be blamed for something and often an apology is seen as an admittance of blame.

I notice that people of an older generation give each other a lot of eye contact and not only that, they actually talk to each other too, stopping on the street to exchange pleasantries or moan about the weather. Either way, they're communicating.

I asked a woman over the age of 60 her thoughts on someone giving her a friendly smile in the street even if she didn't know them. She said it was just friendliness. I asked someone in their early 20's the same question and got the answer that they would find it weird if someone did that.

Surely it's just good manners to acknowledge another human being? Receiving a smile from someone I don't know actually makes me feel good. It also feels pretty good to smile at someone else and have them acknowledge that with a return smile.

Queueing is something else that seems to have suffered from lack of manners. I use public transport and nowadays many people seem to have forgotten how to queue up for a bus. What I notice is that when the bus pulls up to the stop people appear from everywhere and try to barge onto the bus ahead of people who have queueing politely, sometimes for a long while.

Last week I was on the bus and the man in front of me reached into his pocket to get out his iPod. In doing so he knocked a packet of pills from his pocket and they landed in the aisle of the bus. He didn't realise this but I did and so did several people who actually looked over at him and at the packet of pills.

From where I was sitting I couldn't tell what kind of pills they were, they may have just been paracetamol or they may have been for angina or a migraine, I don't know so neither did anyone else. They all looked and then went back to their own worlds.

I reached down, picked up the pills and tapped the guy on the shoulder, handed him the pills and he thanked me. He then put them in his pocket, turned round and thanked me again, which made me think they were more than simple painkillers.

So why was I the only person to do this? What has happened to basic manners and just simply looking out for and acknowledging our fellow humans?

 

 

 

Tagged as manners

Why is there a taboo about Internet dating?

Posted August 7, 2010

Ever hear the saying "it's a small world"? It's most often used when two people realise they know the same person or in similar circumstances.

However, the saying is starting to change meaning. Thanks to the Internet the world literally has become a small place with people all over the world logging on to chat and share their knowledge in chat rooms or forums. Or indeed on blog sites such as Hub Pages.

Millions of people around the globe log on daily to read their news on-line or to catch up with their favourite bloggers, to post on forums related to their interests, or, increasingly, to see if they can meet someone they'd like to date and possibly have a relationship with.

Previously dating meant being set up by your friends, maybe going out with someone you worked with or trawling the adverts placed in local newspapers, which was often considered "desperate". Sadly, these are the taboos we place on certain methods of dating.

Now though we're in 2010 and in the middle of a massive technological revolution. (I say middle but it may just be the start). With millions of people spending millions of hours on-line it seems only logical that the new way to meet a prospective partner is to join one of the many on line dating sites that spring up almost daily, it seems.

The advantage of on line dating? Well, join sites like Match.com and you'll find you don't just sign up and start trawling through page after page of single men or women, many of whom won't even cause you to give them a second glance. Sites like this ask you to fill out a pretty comprehensive questionnaire that will take more than a few moments to do. They ask some very in depth and often personal questions and it's within the applicants best interests to answer these truthfully because the reason behind it is that the sites database takes this information and then gives you a list of the people it thinks you'd be compatible with based on yours and their answers.

After that it's up to you who from that list you contact. You do pay a fee for the sites services .

Ask the many thousands of people who have found love by Internet what they thought of on line dating sites before they joined one and they'll likely tell you that they thought it was a "desperate" way to find love and that they never told their friends they'd joined because they'd be teased.

That is one reason Internet dating is seen as taboo.  Despite the fact that people use the Internet every day to find out information, to email, phone, play games and work on there is still the idea that using the Internet to find love is "geeky", "desperate" and "sad".

Ever used on-line dating and been told by friends to get out to a club, socialise and meet a man that way? Ever been told you'll never meet a partner by sitting in front of the computer all the time?

Another reason it's taboo is because of the negative press that the Internet gets when it's abused by people who use it to groom children or other illegal activity.

From this the Internet gets it's 'dirty old man' image and that leads many people to believe that anyone who is on the Internet looking for a relationship must be lying about their age, looks, personality and also the reason why they're looking for love.

He's not 24, he'll be a dirty old man of 60 sitting in his underpants pretending to be your age.

Sadly there are cases where teenagers have been fooled by older men into believing they were their own age and in some cases this has not had a happy outcome.

All of this does give people the wrong idea about finding love on the Internet.

First of all, if your idea (or someone you knows idea) of Internet dating is chatting to people on a chat site and arranging to meet up then you need to change that.

In 2008 the UK's 8 million singles went on 24 million first dates and 69% of them were arranged through on-line dating sites. A staggering percentage isn't it? But not a surprising one.

Today's busy life style doesn't allow people enough time to visit pubs and clubs to meet partners and who wants a half drunk stranger slobbering all over you anyway?

If you have a doubtful friend and they're single too then why not join a site likemysinglefriend.com where you and your friend join together and help each other find people to date. Your friend may be surprised how easy it is to find people they might be interested in and how simple it is to contact them and arrange a date.

Don't hide that you're looking for a date on-line and be open about where you're looking. Tell people you're not stupid enough to try to find a date in a chat room but that you've joined a legitimate site. Show them it. Talk them through it, you mind find that you pique their interest more than they'll let on. Especially if you've already had a few dates through the site.

Be harsh if you need to. Friends might still laugh at the fact that you're searching through dating sites for a partner but if you've had any dates from those sites then tell that to your friends. When did they last set you up on a date? Was it successful? Did you only go because they kind of forced you into it? Ten first dates through an Internet site might not have led to a second date but you went because you wanted to.

Talk about it when you meet up with friends. When they ask about your week tell them you had a date with Roger from the Internet dating site you're on. Eventually they'll become more comfortable chatting about it and it won't seem so desperate. Single friends may even be secretly wishing they were going on as many dates as you.

When you finally meet that person on the site who you form a longer relationship with don't hide where you met them. When people ask say that you met on the Internet but don't leave it at that, tell them what site, how you came to be interested in each other.

If people still don't get it then the chances are they never will, but as long as you're happy that's what matters.

HubPages

 

 

 

 

Tagged as internet dating, taboo, and computer

My life with books

Posted August 7, 2010

When I was born my parents didn't have much money.  Previous to my birth they had moved into their flat with barely a piece of furniture and built it up from there with the odd chair, table, cutlery set from mostly family members.

So after my birth they didn't have a lot of spare cash but they managed to dress me nicely and make sure I had toys and, as I grew to toddler age, they made sure I played outside often and they also made sure I knew how to read.

Reading was always an important part of their lives as children.  My mother, dux of her school, was given books as a prize.  My father was an avid reader.  So as a child, before I was able to read they read to me and as I got a little older they encouraged my reading.  Books were something that didn't need to cost money as they could be obtained at the library.  Book were something that I loved and even before I started school I could read.  

Reading books, fiction mostly, became a way for me to escape from life.  Not that life was bad but it could be boring, even as a child.  Although I loved being outside and in the air playing at times it wasn't possible and books filled in the gap. 

As a child, without the pressures and knowledge that adults have, fiction is a way to expand the mind and the fantasies that the young mind has.  Yes wardrobes can lead to other lands.  Yes chairs can fly and grant wishes.  Yes groups of young friends can solves mysteries that even the local constabulary puzzles over.

Even after finishing a book I would spend a few minutes with my eyes closed, going over the book in my mind.  I recalled the good bits, the bad bits and if the book was good enough I made plans to obtain the next book written by that author.

If ever there was a time when I would discard books it would be in my teenage years as boys, friends, fashion and shopping were supposed to take over my mind.  There probably was a time as a teenager when I read less but I never completely discarded books.  I was always reading something.

A few authors stick in my mind from my teenage years.  Judy Blume, Paula Danziger and Anne M. Martin are three.  Anne M. Martin wrote a series of books about the The Babysitters Club and I still have many of the books. 

However, I would say that during my teenage years I read literally hundreds of books and in those years I found a friend who didn't think reading was stupid but who enjoyed it as much as me and we would spend hours in her room reading, reading, reading.  We read everything from Virginia Andrew to Danielle Steele onto Point Horror, Sweet Valley High and more.  We just read and read and read.

y love of books has never waned.  At times I find it difficult to complete a book within the time that I did as a teen.  In those days I could read one or more in a day.  Now it's sometimes a month but usually never longer.

In my early twenties I read a series of books called Making Out by an author called Katherine Applegate.  There were 28 titles in that series and I read every one more than once.  I still have the collection and I'll never give them away.

In my twenties my tastes changes and I began to prefer reading crime/thriller.  So I read book after book.  I really couldn't estimate how many books I've read in my twenties but it must be in the hundreds without a doubt. 

Reading has got me through some tough times in my twenties and I can't imagine what I might have done if I had not had a book to escape into.  Being able to drop myself into another reality has meant that I haven't dwelt on situations that I might have otherwise. 

Now I don't just read fiction, I read a lot of factual books but if I am perfectly honest it is the fiction that I prefer.  I deal with enough fact every day that when I relax I want to escape to another life, another set of circumstances.  I want to follow characters through their tough times, their enlightening moments, their loves and trials and tribulations.

I can't imagine life without fiction.

Really the best time to curl up with a novel is when the weather is at its worst.  When the rain is crashing down outside and I have no reason to step outside.  That's the time stay in my pyjamas, to fill the kettle, make a cuppa and curl up on my bed or in the arm chair with a fleece blanket and just read and read.  There is something about bad weather that takes away the guilty feeling of not going out.

A summers day is also nice if you can find a quiet spot that isn't in direct sunlight.  A lounger or blanket spread on the grass, a cool drink and peace and quiet. 

In reality just managing to sneak a few minutes here and there to read a chapter or two  is great.  Coming home from work and just relaxing for ten minutes with a cup of tea before beginning the chores.  Waiting for the computer to start-up.  Sitting on the bus or train. 

Any time is a good time to read.

Enjoy your books...

 

From my HubPage

 

 

 

Tagged as fiction, books, teenage, and reading

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