We Need To Talk About Kevin is an absolutely wonderful film I saw very recently in the cinema. The film concerns a mother who has a psychotic son who commits the heinous act of killing a large number of his class mates. The film is about the relationship between the mother and her son, whether it’s the mother’s fault that her son came out the way he did, or whether there is such think as being innately evil. The film begins with the mother’s life in ruins, we know something bad has happened but we know not what. The film tells the story in the form of memories that the mother, Eva, reflects upon. Through this way, we are shown the events that led up to her son’s violent criminal act, starting from before her son was born.
It is a fantastic film in which the time old question of nature versus nurture is called upon. The mother’s failure to bond with her son is evident from his very birth where she had post-natal depression and later could not stop him crying. Yet can one blame his violent actions on an absent relationship with his mother? I can’t wait till it’s released onto our televisions, I will go straight to sky.com/hd and watch it!
Yellow is a colour that lies between orange and green on the visible light spectrum and has a wavelength of 570 nm to 590 nm. The word “yellow” does not come from ‘gu10’ but from the Old English ‘geolu’ which derived from ‘gelwaz’, a Proto-Germanic word. The oldest known use of this word in the English language dates to the year 700 where it was included in The Epinal Glossary.
Yellow does not have fantastic connotations in the English language, mostly being associated with jaundice, cowardice, and ageing. In Italy, yellow, ‘giallo’, refers to fictional or non-fictional crime stories as the first series of crime novels published in the country bore yellow covers. In China, ‘yellow movie’ is synonymous to the English ‘blue movie’, meaning a film of a pornographic nature. Yellow journalism refers to sensational journalistic practices also. In nature, carotenoids are the organic pigments which give many objects their yellow colouring such as autumn leaves and egg yolks.
The Irish wolfhound is the tallest of all the dog breeds. Its original purpose was wolf hunting, hence its name. The Irish wolfhound is specifically, a sighthound. The American Kennel Club describes the breed as: "Of great size and commanding appearance, the Irish Wolfhound is remarkable in combining power and swiftness with keen sight. The largest and tallest of the galloping hounds, in general type he is a rough-coated, Greyhound-like breed; very muscular, strong though gracefully built; movements easy and active; head and neck carried high, the tail carried with an upward sweep with a slight curve towards the extremity".
With such a massive dog, one would have to purchase a very large dog lounger! Quiet by nature, wolfhounds are generally quite aloof with total strangers. However with their family, wolfhounds develop very strong bonds. Irish wolfhounds become morose or destruction when left alone for extended periods of time. They are not aggressive towards other dogs however they often course other dogs due to their hunting history.
The first lotteries held in colonial America were economically significant in that they helped finance national and private ventures. Between 1744 and 1774, 200 lotteries are recorded to have taken place. These lotteries facilitated the construction of churches, canals, bridges, libraries...etc. Princeton and Columbia Universities were founded on the finances generated by lotteries in the 1740’s just as the Academy Lottery financed the construction of the University of Pennsylvania in 1755. Many colonies during the Indian and French Wars appealed to lotteries to raise finances for fortifications and local militias. A prime example is the State of Massachusetts’s use of lottery money to finance the “Expedition against Canada”.
For the defense of Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin himself organised a lottery to finance the purchase of a cannon. George Washington managed Colonel Bernard Moore’s “Slave Lottery” in 1769 in which land and slaves were advertised in the Virginia Gazette as prizes.
Whilst there never did exist a vampire called ‘Dracula’, there did exist a man called ‘Dracul’ on whom the character was based. Vlad III Dracul (1431-1476), a three-time Voivode of Wallachia, was famed for his excessive cruelty both during his lifetime and after. Estimates place the number of his victims between 40,000 and 100,000, comparable to the entire number of executions performed during four century span of the European witch-hunts.
Vlad III was referred to most frequently as Vlad ‘Tepes,’ ‘Tepes’ translating to ‘impaler’, Vlad’s preferred method of torture. Reports have it that an invading Ottoman army fled Wallachia when they encountered a gruesome sight on the banks of the Danube; thousands of rotting corpses and r4i gold cards impaled. Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople famed also for excessive cruelty, returned home in disgust upon seeing 20,000 impaled bodies outside Târgoviște, Vlad’s capital.
Yet modern Romanian literature and folklore depicts Vlad Tepes as a hero, voting for him in the 2006 ‘Mari Romani’ television series as one of the ‘100 Greatest Romanians.’ This is due to 19th century patriotic literature in which Vlad Tepes was depicted as a geroic warrior protecting Wallachia from the invading Ottomans.