Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red.

So I know that I've been really bad about posting recently, and I'm sorry. It's just that last term was super busy, what with coursework and essays and tests and university applications... I'm already 100% done with this term and we don't even go back until tomorrow. Also, I have a HUGE coursework deadline on Tuesday that I'm nowhere near ready for, as well as a Spanish presentation tomorrow morning that I haven't even started.

But I'm going to be good and post because I know I've been neglecting you. Sorry.

The Geography of Birthdays

Guess what: IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY. WOOHOO! So I thought it was appropriate to have a look at the geography of where the day of your birth is celebrated and when.

Sam Pepper and the It's On Us campaign *TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual Assault/Rape*

So by now most of you will have seen Sam Pepper's new video. Now, I don't watch him, I'm not subscribed, I've never seen one of his videos. Until today.

Sleeping Tips and Why they're Helpful

Image: Clipart

Sleep /sli:p/
noun
A condition of body and mind which typically recurs for several hours every night, in which the nervous system is inactive, the eyes closed, the postural muscles relaxed, and consciousness practically suspended.(Google definition)

Sleep. We spend a third of our lives doing it. But what actually is it and how can we make it even more beneficial?

How Does Water Create Conflict?

Water shortages are becoming increasingly important as there is no alternative for our survival, and the locations of the remaining sources have caused many conflicts, making the problem worse. For example, the Tigris and Euphrates river basin in the Middle East has caused disputes over the ownership of their water supply. Iraq have accused Turkey and Syria of holding back water supply through the construction of dams in the upper course of both rivers, which escalated hostilities particularly in the 1970s, but has also been related to the threat of the countries' national security today.

Movie Review: Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain

Released in the UK as simply 'Amélie', this 2001 French-language rom-com features Audrey Tautou as Amélie Poulain, a young Parisienne waitress who one day finds a small box of toys hidden behind a tile in her apartment. She decides to locate the owner of the box, and anonymously leaves it for him. She decides that she wants to continue to help people, and when she finds a photo album dropped by a childhood friend, Amélie follows both her heart, and the guidance of her neighbour Monsieur Dufayel, in order to return it.

Catalan Identity in Pyrénées-Orientales

Coat of Arms
Image Credit

The Pyrénées-Orientales département in south-west France (Catalan: Pirineus Orientals) is the southernmost département of France aside from the island of Corsica, and is part of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, which also encompasses the départements of Aude, Gard, Hérault and Lozère.

How Popular Games are Viewed by Different People

Video games are a way of life for some people, for some they're played for pure enjoyment, others just don't really care one way or the other. However, we all have opinions on them, and in this post I hope to show you another opinion on two popular games compared to the general consensus.

The Wind is Blowing

As part of my wider reading for my university personal statement I read an article from Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, about the controversy surrounding wind turbines and was moved to write about the issue here.

Image: Symscape

Just to be clear, onshore wind farms are located on land, whereas offshore ones are found either in the sea or in freshwater.

Did you know? Onshore wind energy supplied just under 2% of the UK's total electricity in 2010, and by 2020 it's expected to produce 5.6GW, which, along with 2.7GW from offshore farms, could power 4.6 million homes.

Books in Translation

Harry Potter, Roald Dahl, Twilight, Divergent... Things all these books/authors have in common? They've been translated into other languages. Think about how many books you've read recently - most of them will be/will have been translated at one point. The Harry Potter series has been translated into 73 languages, as of July last year (x) and it undoubtedly will be translated into many more.

So Many Music Streaming Apps!

Music streaming apps are becoming ever more popular as the desire to have everything in one place becomes more apparent. For a set amount each month, you can log in to a huge database of music using the internet which you can then listen to at your leisure. It's great for the consumer, though how does it actually make money?

What I look for at University Open Days

This time of year is the time for university open days if you're around sixth form age in the UK. Yesterday I went to Leeds, and to Exeter last week, so now I've had a little bit of experience of them and am starting to get an idea of what I'm looking for when I go to the next ones.

How the English Education System Works (at the moment!)

I've had many a discussion with Americans over the internet as to how our education system works, and as I've seen from the stats that many of you are, in fact, American, I thought I'd make a post about it.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet: My Spanish Essay (Translated)

I'm now also going to be bit lazy and pop in some Spanish work, but don't worry, it's all translated into English. If you want to see the original essay in Spanish, it's on my personal blog. Please bare in mind that it isn't very well written as my Spanish is most definitely not my first language.

The internet has changed how we learn, communicate and relate to each other in the world. There are many advantages to this new way of life, but also disadvantages. Like the majority of things, I think that we should only use the internet in moderation.

Cool Crown Jewels: More English Coursework

I KNOW THIS IS REALLY LAZY. But to be honest I don't really care. A-levels are happening and also it's 10pm on a Sunday night. So. Behold my Horrible Histories-esque piece about the crown jewels. It's written for younger readers, but don't be put off. It's interesting and also I tried to be funny. Featuring art by my awesome friend Eva Morley (Twitter) (Instagram).

Interesting Channels on YouTube

I've been spending a lot of my limited free time on YouTube recently, and thought that instead of talking about what I've been watching, I should tell you about some of the awesome science channels that are on there (in no particular order).

1. Veritasium - this is a channel that tries to explain so many things about the world around us by showing us cool things. For example:

This explains what a kilogram actually is and how the definition is changing. Now I had never even thought about this before but found it incredibly interesting to watch!

2. Vsauce focuses more on mind blowing facts. This video completely blew my mind!

To think that we're all at least 50th cousins! Say what?!?!?

3. Crash Course - This channel is by the awesome John and Hank Green but is more to teach us about things than to make our minds explode.

This video may be a little bit on the controversial side for anyone who's religious, but I find this stuff very interesting, although Hank did use a bit too many long words!

4. Sci Show - Yes, another channel from the Green brothers, this time focusing more on science news.

Now Blogger has decided to stop embedding videos, so here's the link to a video about why we lie - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX3Hu8loXTE&list=TLMW6oE4I-1m_n7IyNkSrmOSaAFRcusjXZ.

As you can see, there are so many different aspects to our world that can all be explained using science! Hopefully in the future I'll be able to discuss things like these on here. I know this has been a bit of a lazy post, but revision has just taken over recently - luckily within two weeks they'll all be over!

Why Ballerinas Like Roundabouts: My A-Level English Coursework

So my English Language coursework has just been moderated and as it's written in a similar style to these blog posts, I thought I'd like to share it with you. Enjoy!

The Origins of "May Day"

So tomorrow (May 5th) is the May Day bank holiday here in the UK, and as I wasn't really sure about how it came about, I thought I'd do some research and tell all of you guys!

According to this wikipedia article, May Day had its origins in pre-Christian society, and is closely linked to the celebration of Walpurgis Night, a Germanic festival (originally 'Walpurgisnacht'), whcih was celebrated on the 30th April. This is the eve of the feast day of St, Walpurga, an 8th-century German abbess, and is said to be the night of a witches' meeting.

The Origins of the Easter Egg

**MASSIVE DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT CHRISTIAN, SO I AM RESEARCHING THIS AS I GO. I DO NOT INTEND TO OFFEND ANYBODY.**

Ok, so now that's out of the way, I'm sorry this is late, but I had some technical problems. As you all know, Easter has just passed, and so I figured that I should do an Easter-related post. I wasn't sure what to write about until my friend's sister asked: "Why do we have chocolate at Easter?" So that's what this is going to be about.

TFiOS Soundtrack

Yesterday, the soundtrack for the TFiOS (or The Fault in Our Stars) film was released. Here's the lineup:

Ed Sheeran – All Of The Stars

Jake Bugg – Simple As This

Grouplove – Let Me In

Birdy & Jaymes Young – Best Shot

Kodaline – All I Want

Tom Odell – Long Way Down

Charli XCX – Boom Clap

STRFKR – While I’m Alive

Indians – Oblivion

The Radio Dept. – Strange Things Will Happen

Afasi & Filthy – Bomfallarella

Ray LaMontagne – Without Words

Birdy – Not About Angels

Lykke Li – No One Ever Loved

M83 – Wait

Birdy – Tee Shirt (Bonus Track)

Divergent Movie!

So I appreciate that  lot of people will have already seen Divergent; but in the UK (where I live), it only came out on Friday (4/4). I went to see it with two of my friends and I LOVED it!

For those of you who don;t know, Divergent is about a 16-year-old girl named Beatrice (or Tris), who lives in a futuristic, dystopian Chicago, where society is split into five factions based on personality traits: Abnegation, the selfless; Erudite, the intelligent; Amity, the peaceful; Candor, the honest; and Dauntless, the brave. Tris was born into Abnegation, but at 16, all teenagers take an 'aptitude test' which tells them which faction they are best suited for - but this test doesn't work on everyone, and Tris's results come back inconclusive. She is Divergent.

I absolutely loved both the film and the book, and I'd recommend the rest of the series to anyone. Be prepared for tears though, there are some very heart-wrenching scenes! I also loved the music used, and thought that it fitted perfectly with the action. Shailene and Theo were a perfect Tris and Four, and I can't wait until we get Insurgent, and eventually Allegiant (although I'll be an emotional train wreck!)

~ Tess

Universities are Confusing!

Recently my sixth form attended a UCAS event to find out all about what universities and other opportunities are out there for us after we finish compulsory education. For me personally, it was basically an exercise of picking up prospectuses so you don't have to sign up for emails from the universities. If you didn't know already, I want to study Geography at university in two academic years time, preferably to do with climate change and with a year abroad so that I can keep my Spanish up. The trouble is, most universities do Geography, and all the degrees are very similar.

Playlist Live 2014 (and why I want to be there!)

¡Hola! This weekend will be the annual Florida YouTube conference that is Playlist Live, and I'm not gonna lie, I wish I was there - much better than the world of mocks and coursework deadlines that I live in now. Most of YouTube's 'most subscribed' will be there, including Zoella, the Holy Trinity (Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart and Mamrie Hart), Miranda Sings and Charles and Alli Trippy.

We Could See the Northern Lights!

This post was ready in time, I just forgot to click publish, sorry!

On the 28th February, many Brits could see the Northern Lights in Scotland and surprisingly England and Wales too! I could go all cultural on you about their history and whatever, but that's Tess' job and it's a science post this week. Did you know, the Northern Lights' Latin name, Aurora Borealis, is as it is because Aurora was the goddess of dawn (ie. red skies), and borealis meant northerly?

"The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable."

 - Phillip Pullman, The Northern Lights

A Travel Guide to Segovia, Spain

Last week, I went to Segovia, a smallish city about an hour north-west of Madrid, and these are some of my favourite places to go there (in no particular order).

1. El Acueducto (The aqueduct, for those of you who don't speak Spanish). Segovia's most famous landmark is probably the Roman aqueduct that spans the Plaza de Artillería. It was built in the 1st century AD and originally stretched all the way from the mountains of the Sistema Central. It's magnificent and the fact that the stones are held together by nothing but gravity and their own pressure makes this even more impressive.

Wake Up Call

Before I write anything, I'd like you to watch this video that recently caught my attention:

Camp Takota, Friendship and Community Spirit

So I don't know if you've heard, but a film called Camp Takota came out on Friday, and it was kind of a big deal, for me at least. Now, I know that some of you might not know anything about Camp Takota, and that's okay, I'll fill you in.

Our Memories are Lying to Us!

Psychology has always interested me - how the brain works, the processes we go to just to calculate 1 + 1. But the thing that I will focus on today is how we store information we're given to be used later; how me remember things.

Photo from ImageSource (royalty-free)

We normally think of memory as a jumbling mass of ideas in our brain that we delve into when we need to, perhaps for an exam, or an important speech. However, I'm here to tell you that what we remember is not actually what happened.

TSWGO and TFiOS Trailer

A week of acronyms and initialisms! I'm going to talk about two things this week, both broadly related to Nerdfighteria (and if you're a nerdfighter, chances are you know what the title of this post actually means!)

Firstly, the book by the late Esther Earl, a committed nerdfighter who died of thyroid cancer in 2010 aged 16, came out this week. It's called "This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl", and is a collection of entries from her journals, as well as letters, emails, drawings and anecdotes, collated by her parents and introduced by the author John Green, with whom she had a close friendship. The phrase "This Star Won't Go Out" was thought up by one of Esther's friends in the months before she died as a sort of protest against the idea that death erases a person - "Esther" means "star", and so it fundamentally means that even after her death, Esther will continue to live in the memories of those whose lives she touched - and her commitment to Nerdfighteria makes that an awful lot of lives.

The Most Unsociable Generation of All Time: The Impacts of Video Gaming

Having flicked through a couple of ideas, I thought "hey, why not talk about video gaming?" and the first topic that popped into my head was this. As I am typing this, my new game (Just Cause 2) is downloading to my computer so I can play it very soon. I am able to do this, write on here, have Facebook open and other research tabs - the wonders of modern technology, eh? These wonders have brought us into a new world of virtual gaming, where computers form a large part of the industry. In 2010, 1 in 3 Brits considered themselves gamers. That alone shows the impact gaming has had already. But I'm not here to spew out facts about how video gaming has become more and more popular, but to talk about some of the accusations the industry has been subject to with regards to the impacts on young people.

Photo Credits: The Guardian

The most well-known impacts of the gaming industry's increase in popularity are those with negative connotations, particularly to do with social isolation and violence. To address the former, I would like to say that many people do in fact talk to people online. Stop. Isn't that a bit dangerous I hear you say? Talking to people you don't know ('los desconocidos' in Spanish)? Yes, it's true that some people take advantage of the system, but that is only a small minority that make the headlines. For the most part the typical person online is aged 13-17 and just wants to innocently have a chat about the game they're playing. Obviously you can never be too cautious, but there are so many young people socialising online with many ways to report someone that this should not be such a worry any more. On the other hand, I do get some adults' point that these young gamers are less confident at making conversation in the real word, because in many cases it's true. In the gamers' defence the games do create a good topic of conversation that can last for hours on end. Furthermore, 79% of parents from the US place limits on gaming time their children have, which I believe is good to stop complete social isolation. There are strategies out there, you just have to find them.

Unscheduled but VERY IMPORTANT!

Ok, so I know I only posted earlier today, but a news article has appeared on the BBC website that ties together the first two posts on this blog (believe it or not), and is THE BIGGEST AMOUNT OF BULLS**T THAT I HAVE EVER HAD THE MISFORTUNE TO COME ACROSS IN MY LIFE.

"WHAT THE F**K DOES THIS EVEN MEAN?" you might be asking yourself. Well here's a link to the story.

I know we said "no politics", but this utterly astounded me and I felt I had to share it.

~ Tess

Why Modern Foreign Languages are useful

I've been trying to work out what to write about for a few days, and while I told Jenni I'd do something about fandom, I changed my mind at the last minute - sorry. (Fandom will come in due course).

I remember being confused when I was in French in year 7 as to why no-one in my class was finding the subject as interesting as I was, or at least as simple: there were at least four people other than me who had had three years' worth of French lessons beforehand!

And so that's what I'm writing about today - why so few people like learning languages. I was thinking about this because this week I've had to give GCSE options talks to the year nine students at my school studying 2 modern foreign languages - why it's good to carry on their second foreign language to GCSE level.

Why Should We Protect (or Not) the Somerset Levels?

So this seems to be my first post on this site; better make it a good one then.

You may or may not know that the South West of England is experiencing the most severe series of rainstorms it has had in many years. It has caused many homes to be terribly damaged by the large volumes of water that has rained down on the land, and the boats have had to be used.

First, some geographical background, with a homemade diagram:

A Crude Representation of Air Streams in our World.

Notes about the diagram: I know the UK isn't that small, but otherwise it wouldn't work as well on the map. No offense has been meant by these quick drawings, and I am sorry if any has been caused. This is just as the caption says: a crude and NOT SCIENTIFIC representation of the current weather system.

To the explaining! Warm air is directed at North America, but that has collided with a cold air stream from the Arctic - now, one has to win, and at the moment the cold air is beating the warm stuff. So the warm air has to go somewhere, and due to many things, including the rotation of the earth (which goes to the right on the diagram), it is deflected towards Europe, into the path of our wonderful jet stream. This accelerates it, making it much more wonderful by adding even more rain and stormy weather, which occur when it reaches the land of the UK. That's the main reason why there have many so many storms in quick succession, making the ground saturated and more at risk to flooding.

Many coastal villages have been asked to evacuate, and on Monday, even after the majority of the storms, there were still 3 severe warnings in the South of England, which means there is a threat to life. Many people have had to be rescued as the roads and railways are impassable, and there have been many homes without power for days over the holidays.

The Controversial One: Gay Marriage

So I was talking to Jenni and we thought that we'd start with a bang, so here it is: my views on same-sex marriage.


Most of you will be aware that "same-sex marriage" or "gay marriage" has been a frequently discussed issue recently, and as a result has been "legalised" in 16 countries including the UK, Belgium, Canada, Denmark and South Africa, as well as in 16 US states, which is a start, but not where we want to be at this stage. Homosexuality is still punishable by death in far too many countries.

So that was the facts. Now time for the rant.

I don't understand why people have an issue with same-sex marriage. They can say that 'marriage is a religious ceremony' or that it 'diminishes the role of the Church', but that doesn't stop thousands if not millions of un-religious heterosexual marriages taking place across the world - my parents got married in a registry office.

People who say that "homosexuality is a sin because it says it in the Bible' need to go and read the Bible again. Leviticus also condones slavery. Make of that what you will.