Tag: future

Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Need To Volunteer Abroad

If you are coming to the end of your studies, most of you will soon be busy checking job websites, scanning the local papers and trying to find that perfect first position. However, given the tough economic climate, more and more young people are finding it tough to get a job at all – let alone find the perfect one.

With that in mind, here’s seven reasons why we think now’s the right time to volunteer abroad.

1. You Develop As A Person. By far and away the biggest benefit to you by volunteering abroad is that you yourself will develop as a person. You will meet people from across the world you’re unlikely to have met if you’d stayed at home. You’ll develop skills and nurture friendships that will last a lifetime, and once you return you will have stories to tell. Whatever it is you do, you will develop into a more well-rounded person.

2. You See The World. By volunteering abroad you can choose the country which you’ve always dreamed of visiting. You could go to Africa and work in an orphanage, visit India and deliver life-saving medication to slum dwellers or work on a conservation project saving turtles in South America. Whatever you do or wherever you go, seeing majestic mountains or crystal clear seas is by far and away more appealing than a rainy Redditch.

3. You Change Lives. One of the major benefits of volunteering abroad is to change lives. By volunteering abroad the time and effort you give on your project will make a difference to peoples’ lives. For example, if you help dig a well for a water pipe, it could keep a village stocked with clean drinking water for years. Even if your volunteering work is just looking after children, the time you spend volunteering will help – it all adds up.

4. You View A Culture From The Inside. By spending time in a country different from the one you grew up in, you will be given a unique learning experience by interacting with a new culture. You may learn a new language, try new foods, have to dress differently. Wherever it is you go you will view a culture from the inside – helping to challenge proposed “norms” and making you a more well-rounded person.

5. You Meet New People. You will not be alone when you volunteer abroad. For years you have probably surrounded yourself with the same friends and same family members, without branching out and meeting new people. What could be better than jetting off abroad and interacting with people from all four corners of the world? People who work abroad make friends for life – and, with the advent of Facebook, keeping in touch with them and reminiscing about the time you spent together is easier than ever.

6. You Can Influence Your Future Career. You might have spent years studying accountancy. You may know everything there is to know about English Literature. But two weeks spent abroad helping orphans afflicted by AIDS can put it all into perspective. You may come back and decide you don’t want to photocopy spreadsheets or write email marketing newsletters for a company which sells lawnmowers. Volunteering abroad really can influence your future career.

7. You Boost Your CV. But finally, the biggest benefit for volunteering abroad is that it will boost your CV. Jobs nowadays are few and far between. Spend a few weeks abroad making a difference to people’s lives, meeting new people, trying new things and having new experiences and you will have something to put on your CV which stands out. You will not only stand out from the competition when you go for an interview, you’ll be showing prospective employers you’re motivated, you’ve got guts and interpersonal skills far and above your peers.

Author Bio: Original Volunteers is a provider of voluntary work opportunities across the world. For information on how you can work abroad please visit the website.

May 3, 2012
Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Should Be Thinking About Long Term Memory Loss Now

Are you thinking about your long term memory today? You should be. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and if you wait too long you won’t have any mind left to waste. Here’s why you shouldn’t go another instant without thinking about it.

1. You Won’t Be Able to Do it Later. Once your long term memory starts to go, you will no longer have the option of thinking about your long term memory. In fact, you’ll have difficulty thinking about anything at all. Once your memory starts to go, it’s awful hard to commit to thinking about anything in particular, least of all what you can do to improve your long term memory issues.

2. Your Brain is Falling Apart. Sorry, but as soon as you hit your mid twenties your brain is already on its way out. You know how as you get older you stop caring so much about what other people think? How you march to your own beat and feel comfortable with being an oddball? You might be telling yourself that it’s because you’re not a member of the pack, that you think for yourself. In reality, it’s the brain damage. Your frontal lobe, which gives you the ability to control your actions and reign in your impulses, starts to deteriorate. Better do everything you can to slow this process down.

3. You’ll Have Trouble Using Facebook. Imagine when you are older and you try to check your Facebook status. It’s going to become really difficult because you won’t remember your password, your email address, or who your friends are. You’ll try to contact the Facebook support team but you’ll discover that they don’t exist anymore because Facebook went extinct decades ago. Oh, and that the internet is now an amorphous cloud that people navigate using their scent glands.

4. It will be 2051 Tomorrow. If you don’t start thinking about your long term memory today, you might end up a few decades in the future tomorrow. It’ll be exciting to take a trip to the future at first, but you won’t actually have the option of coming back home, and you’ll be a lot older than you are now. Everybody will keep telling you what a great person you used to be and how wise you once were, but all that knowledge will be gone and they’ll be talking about some stranger that you’ve never met. At least you’ll be able to take the credit.

5. You Won’t Be Able to Hit On Anybody Anymore. You’ll discover that most of the people you are attracted to are now several orders of magnitude younger than you are, which will make it very difficult to date them. The only upside is that you won’t be able to remember all of the rejections you face. Sadly, you may also find yourself asking somebody out on a date only to discover with horror that they are related to you.

6. You’ll Forget to Water Your Plants. And that you had them in the first place. It won’t take long before your plants start to shrivel up and die, depositing themselves on the floor. You’ll look at the mess on your floor and wonder who put it there, and why. Then you will become self conscious and wonder if you did it. Pretty soon you’ll start condemning yourself for being such a lazy slob, or worse, you’ll blame somebody else who wasn’t responsible. Then you’ll tell yourself you need to hire a maid, and forget to call them.

7. You Will Forget How to Make Bacon. Can you imagine a world without bacon? Well you won’t have trouble imagining it after you lose your long term memory, because you will be incapable of fixing it for yourself. And don’t start saying that you’ll just go to a Denny’s and ask them for bacon, because you’ll forget what bacon is. That’s right, you’ll never know the joy of having a slice of thick cut, crispy, peppered bacon. It will be gone from your memory.

Now stop, and imagine eating a piece of bacon. Notice how your mouth starts watering in anticipation. Now imagine how much you would judge somebody who saw a piece of bacon and didn’t want to eat it. That person will be you, if you don’t start thinking about long term memory issues, today.

Author bio: Brenda Ankley is an avid blogger and contributes to a number of publications, including Assisted Living Today, a leading provider of information on a variety of elder care topics such as assisted living in Iowa.

February 15, 2012
7 Reasons A Cravat Is The Way Forward

With just nine months to go until I become a man, I have been looking at what I shall wear on the day. My cricket whites were voted out in the first round so it looks like I will be going the top hat and tails route. With the cravat. It’s the way forward. Not just for marriages, for all time.

1. Sophistication. When you see a man in a cravat, you can tell exactly what sort of man he is. Debonaire, suave, handsome, wealthy, intelligent and affable. You see how easy it can be to fool people.

2. Silk. No, not the fabric kind, the Robert Kilroy kind. When he founded the now largely unheard of Veritas Political Party in 2005 he set out his vision using the immortal line, “An end to cravats!”. A rather odd call given that the country was then being led by Blair and Prescott. Hardly two men who were in a rush to don a necktie before breakfast. Anyway, since then Veritas and Kilroy-Silk have done little but go backwards which surely suggests one needs a cravat to go forwards.

3. Achievement. The last time I wore something around my neck – apart from a tie and a forearm while playing rugby at Loughborough University – was when I was a cub. And, as I may have said previously on 7 Reasons, I was a bloody good cub. I had badges and woggles and wiggles and dobs and dibs all over my room. I was that good. And really, the only thing that stopped me continuing as a cub, was that I got old. And as soon as I got old I stopped achieving things. Well, badges anyway. Until now I couldn’t work out why. Then I realised. It’s because I am not wearing anything around my neck. If I want badges again, I need to wear a cravat.

4. Handkerchief. The difficulty with a tie is that when you wipe your nose on it, the remnants are there for all to see. There’s really no where to hide it. A cravat though is tucked inside the shirt, which means if you wipe carefully with the edge of the material it can easily be hidden from view.

5. Present. A cravat is the kind of item that can easily be presented to your father, uncle or grandfather should you forget that it is his birthday. You could hardly whip off your trousers and hand them to him could you? But a cravat, of course you could.

6. Unbuttoned Shirt. The problem with a tie – apart from the fact that one in every four features a button that when pressed plays Jingle Bells – is that they are not very practical when it comes to allowing you to breath. It’s not necessarily the tie that has the strangling effect, it’s the shirt. When the top button is done up and the collar closes in around the neck breathing becomes a chore. Either that or the shirt is so big that it makes you look like you’ve been very ill recently. A cravat, though, allows you to keep the shirt unbuttoned. It allows you both to breath and not look ill. And that has to be the way forward. If you want to live.

7. In The Club. Despite extensive research I have not been able to find a single Cravat Club or Appreciation Society in the world. I have found the Odd Sock Society, the Anstey Nomads Underwear Supporters (ANUS) and the Cod Piece Collective, but nothing through which you could celebrate the cravat. How can that be? Well the answer is simple. It’s because the cravat hasn’t had its time yet. It’s ahead of its time. To wear a cravat now is to be a trendsetter. You could be like the guy who bought a Betamax player. Or a Sinclair C5. Get ahead now.

September 21, 2011
7 Reasons T’ Talk Like A Pirate

Avast, me hearties! ‘Tis Long Jon Gold. T’day, as if you needed remindin’, be International Talk Like A Pirate Day. And here be seven o’ t’ finest reasons why you should be channelin’ Johnny Depp at this very moment. And while you be readin’ this I be off t’ make Marc ‘Fish Fin’ers’ Fearns walk t’ plank. Yarrr!

1. Bury Bad News. T’day be t’ perfect day t’ tell people that thar be goin’ t’ have t’ be redundancies. Or tell your beauty that you no longer want t’ be with them. Or announce that Nick ‘Smell-O-Panties’ Griffin has moved in next door. No one will ever be able t’ understand you, but your aft be covered.

2. Abuse. It’s a brilliant excuse t’ abuse people you don’t like under t’ pretext that it be just how pirates talk t’ each other. You may have long thought that your colleague be an ol’ scurvy dog, but only now can you actually tell her. You may think you’re best-bucko’s beauty be a complete twazzock, now be t’ time t’ tell him. And her. Just get it off your treaaye*.

3. Innuendo. Of course t’ alternative be that you fancy t’ pants off your colleague and you need an excuse t’ flirt. Talkin’ like a pirate offers you t’ perfect opportunity. What lass wouldn’t be won over upon hearin’, “Ahoy, me beauty! I’d love t’ drop anchor in your lagoon” or, “Ahoy, me lovely, would you let me come aboard?”? And obviously, if you be lass after a bloke, send them an email sayin’ this, “Me porthole, your six pounder, one jolly rogerin’? Meet me in t’ toilets in five.” I promise you it will work.

4. Dress Up. While talkin’ like a pirate be good fun, why not go one step further and dress like one too? T’ be honest, you’d just appear weird if you sat in t’ meetin’, in your tailored suit, talkin’ pirate. It would be much better t’ be dressed as one too. Take George ‘Skull & Cross-Fingers’ Osbourne as an example. At t’ moment he be borderin’ that fine line between bein’ a genius and a fool. Were he t’ be filmed in a cabinet meetin’ just talkin’ like a pirate, those who think he be a fool would have more evidence to support that claim. On t’ other hand, were t’ to be dressed like Hook and accompany his curls with t’ spiel, not only would his credibility shoot through t’ roof, he’d probably also get himself doin’ pantomime in Weston-Super-Mare. And that’s go t’ be a good thin’ for everybody..

5. The Future. If you’ve been wonderin’ whether you be in t’ starboard career, spendin’ a day talkin’ as a pirate will tell you once and for all what your next move should be. If your pirate burr slips in t’ West-country farmer more often than not, it’s definitely time t’ up sticks, invest in a combine ‘arvester and join T’ Wurzels. You’re a natural.

6. Sick Days. After a day o’ talkin’ like a pirate t’ chances be your throat will be so sore you won’t be able t’ talk at all. So, take t’ day off. Make aye you phone your boss up and breath heavily done t’ phone t’ him/her first, that way they can’t complain that you didn’t try and report in.

7. T’ Alternative. T’ alternative be t’ write like a pirate. That, I asaye you, takes time. I started this post in August. I finished it about ten minutes ago. So based on me experiences, if you were t’ write like a pirate for t’ day you would end up bein’ three weeks behind. And that’s not a good place t’ be. I should be writin’ a mid-October post today. Instead, I’m still writin’ this. One can only assume I will be celebratin’ Christmas, by meself, on 15th January. So, unless you want t’ join me, ignore t’ email for t’ day and get on t’ dog and bone instead. Yarrr!

*’Treaaye’ is pirate slang for ‘chest’. Who knew? Apart from pirates obviously.

September 19, 2011
Russian Roulette Sunday: In Conversation With Jonathan Lee

In an interview that is still being talked about fondly in at least one corridor in Nottingham University’s halls of residence, the co-founder of 7 Reasons, Marc Fearns, was interviewed by another co-founder of 7 Reasons, Jonathan Lee. If you missed it you still have time to check it out. It won’t be coming down until yesterday at 6pm when the world ended. This link will take you there. Do come back though because this week the tables have been turned. Or at least the sofa has. Or at least it was going to turn. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, Marc can’t be here. Being the creative chap Jon is though, he has decided to press ahead with the interview. So, here is Jonathan Lee in conversation with himself.

JL: Thanks for coming Jon.

JL: No problem.

JL: I like what you’re wearing.

JL: Ah, thanks. Claire doesn’t wear it much these days so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

JL: You can pull it off.

JL: I can, but not right now. We have an interview to do.

JL: Yes, sorry. So, 7 Reasons, how much longer are you going to keep doing it for?

JL: Who knows. At present working for myself means I can take time out to think of and write posts as well as all the other admin that goes into making it a ‘success’. That’s not going to last forever though. At some stage in the near future I expect to be working for someone else again and that means time for 7 Reasons will be heavily reduced.

JL: So 7 Reasons might come to an end soon?

JL: I didn’t say that.

JL: It’s what you intimated.

JL: It’s always a possibility and Marc and I both know this can’t last forever.

JL: So, this time next year, will 7 Reasons be around?

JL: It’ll be around, in what form I don’t know. You’ll see a slow down in the number of 7 Reasons posts we churn out before we say goodbye permanently. I would be surprised if we are posting every single day this time next year. But I thought that last year too. We’ll be two years old in a few months and writing every single day in the same format for two years is hard work.

JL: Are you tired then?

JL: Very.

JL: Is there anything you want to achieve with 7 Reasons before you shut the door on it?

JL: We’re working on a couple of things outside of the 7 Reason website. I’d be surprised if we don’t make at least one of those happen. Certainly from my point of view I would like the 7 Reasons concept to be able to exist without the website.

JL: So are we talking about an Edinburgh Fringe show?

JL: Maybe.

JL: When you look back, what one moment stands out for you?

JL: England winning the Ashes in Australia, just fractionally ahead of winning the Rugby World Cup.

JL: I really meant within or because of 7 Reasons.

JL: Oh. I don’t have one. When people say they’ve enjoyed reading a post that’s very gratifying, unless it’s a Marc Fearns post in which case it’s a bit sickening to watch to be honest.

JL: Is there a rivalry between you?

JL: I’m not sure. I think we drive each other to try and be better writers, but there is no jealousy if the other’s post is picked up by Umbro or The Guardian or whoever. We know that 7 Reasons is the sum of its parts and it simply wouldn’t work if one of us wasn’t there.

JL: That’s nice.

JL: Next question.

JL: What’s the worst post you’ve ever written?

JL: Anything that attempted to drive audience participation. Whether there was our quest to find the ‘8th Reasoner’ or our challenge for readers to ‘Pimp Our Sofa’. I completely misjudged just how lazy our audience was. And the ideas were rubbish. We had entries – some good ones – but ultimately they didn’t inspire the majority.

JL: And the best?

JL: Probably the posts that I have ghost written for other people.

JL: You do that?!

JL: For a fee.

JL: How much did SirStraussy pay you?

JL: He wrote that himself.

JL: And finally, you’re getting married next year. Is there going to be a 7 Reasons theme?

JL: No chance.

JL: Why not?

JL: You’ll have to read this forthcoming Tuesday’s post to find that out.

JL: Thanks for talking to us. I had fun.

JL: I’m glad one of us did.

May 22, 2011
In Conversation With Marc Fearns

In something of an oddity, we’re both on the sofa this Sunday. Usually it’s just Marc and his spam fetish, but this week we thought we’d bring Jon into the equation to give things a little more substance. 7 Reasons has been going on twenty months now. Given our success we would have thought we’d at least have been interviewed on Yorkshire based radio station Whippet FM by now. Sadly, we haven’t. And that’s really disappointing. But, being innovators of great stature, we have decided to do what Whippet FM hasn’t. We are going to interview ourselves. In this two part special we are going to be sitting on the sofa talking to each other. Via the medium of email. This week, it’s Jon interviewing Marc. Here we go.

JL: Hello Marc. Nice baby/glasses. Why did you feel it necessary to involve me in 7 Reasons?

MF: Hello Jon. Nice fiancé/biscuits. It seemed logical. I realised that with someone else on board, I would only have to come up with three and a half reasons per day and – I’ve been told – that doing things on your own is less fun. The first seven reasons piece that I wrote (which was on my own blog, before the provisional concept of the site came to me in the bath) was also partially your idea, so it seemed like the thing to do. It does have its drawbacks: Not being the best writer on my own website occasionally irritates me and I’ve learned more about Whitstable than I ever wanted to but, those minor matters aside, time has proved that it was the right decision. It’s a bit like a variant on infinite monkey theory: If there are two thoroughly daft people in the world with roughly compatible interests and skill-sets, eventually they’ll end up running a website together. Or annoying a woman. Or both. I’m also a big fan of the writing of Jonathan Lee. This way I can see it more often (and get to remove the rogue apostrophes).

JL: It’s nice to hear you’re such a fan, but let’s talk about you more. Almost two years ago you quit the wine industry to start 7 Reasons and redesign the whole of your house. Which do you feel has been more successful?

MF: Well, I do now have a library, a loft, a working roof and a big muddy hole in the front garden but parts of the house are still pink. 7 Reasons, on the other hand, isn’t pink at all. It is also visible from Rio de Janeiro. Definitely 7 Reasons.

JL: We’re approaching our 500th post Birthday. That’s a lot, especially when you consider we use the same formula every single day. Have you ever been tempted to call it a day and go back to fearns.blogspot.com?

Oh, most days. Usually when I’m stuck on five reasons. But other than that, no, not really. I test myself occasionally just to ensure that I retain the ability to write without counting to seven, but 7 Reasons is much more fun and some days it just seems to write itself. Saturdays, mostly.

JL: Obviously an ability to write and count up to seven are essential requirements for a 7 Reasons writer – and may I just say on one of those counts you succeed admirably – but are there any other skills that you feel lend themselves favourably to being part of the 7 Reasons team?

MF: Yes. Anyone can write seven reasons for something, but to make it entertaining requires some sort of minor unhinged-ness, eccentricity, neurosis, and perhaps a soupçon of Francophobia. Most people, for example, on hearing the captivating tones of the woman next door singing lullabies to her children would think no more of it and carry on. A member of the 7 Reasons team would have a different thought process:

That’s the woman next door singing a lullaby. Wow, she’s got lovely pitch and an impressive range. I wish my child’s mother could sing this well to him. Perhaps I could convince the woman next-door to sing to him occasionally, he’d like that… Wait! What am I doing? I’m coveting my neighbour’s wife! I’m not supposed to be doing that, the Bible says not to (possibly). And I’m not even coveting her out of lust! I’m coveting her for her parenting skills, which is probably an even worse betrayal of my child’s mother than coveting a woman for more conventional reasons. Or is it? Does this mean I’m going to hell? Can I get a 7 Reasons post out of it?

That’s the sort of mindset that the 7 Reasons team bring to the plate every day.

JL: What about the need to have a thick skin? You recently wrote a piece about the M&S Dine In For £10 deal. On reading the article, Mark Spencer (probably not his real name) suggested that you were a complete idiot and proffered that you were someone who moans about anything and everything. He then called you an idot. An improvement on idiot though one suspects not overly complimentary. How do you deal with the personal insults?

MF: Before he(she?) called me an “idot”, which as a fan of irony, I heartily approve of, he(she?) also complained (semi-literately) that I wrote a full article on the subject. Presumably he(she?) inhabits a world where people that disagree with him(her?) can only do it in that arcane and obscure form, the partial-article. Either that or Mark Spencer (or, more accurately, Anonymous-From-The-Internet) is a bit unhinged and should really be ignored by right-thinking people. After all, if you have to resort to abuse where there is room for debate and opinion, you’ve really already marked yourself out as not worthy of anyones’ consideration or attention. Generally, I’m happy that I write fair-mindedly, and if people choose not to read things in that manner, that’s really up to them. And most people do, which is heartening.

JL: 7 Reasons is very much concept driven, in a marketplace full of content driven websites do you think the 7 Reasons approach has helped or hindered its growth?

MF: No. Or yes. Or, more accurately, I don’t know. I think it adds a nice hook to the titles of pieces and gives the potential reader some sort of inkling of what to expect. If you imagine the titles of our pieces without the prefix 7 Reasons, what you might expect to see when clicking on that link would be far less clear. I think people realise that they’re not going to get some dull, sprawling, ranty tract that will take all day to read when they see that there are a fixed number of reasons. Plus it gives people that have failed to observe the name on the link or the website’s header the chance to say of any given post, “What, only seven?” and wear their own ignorance as a badge. They seem to like doing that.

On balance, I think the concept helps to attract an audience, but it isn’t the key to retaining them. That’s the role of the content. And all I need to do now is add the phrases “evolve viral experiences”, “synergize leading-edge web-readiness” and “drive front-end bandwidth” to this paragraph and then I can draw a cock on my own back and beat myself to death with an iPad. Great question, Jon. Thanks.

JL: They don’t call me the young Michael Parkinson…actually, that sentence stops there. They don’t call me the young Michale Parkinson. In what will hopefully be a more enjoyable question to answer, which three posts, from the 500 plus that have been published, stand out in your mind?

MF: 7 Reasons Not to Write on a Train stands out. I really enjoyed writing that one, though it really sticks in my mind as a result of the epic battle I had to upload it from Essex the next day. The friends that we were staying with had a broken internet connection that I could have fixed but they couldn’t remember their password. Then it turns out that no establishment in Essex (apart from one place) had working WiFi. Then the working WiFi in the place with the working WiFi stopped working just as I started using it, and many of the places that advertised WiFi weren’t there any more. After six hours of trying to upload the piece from Essex I had to abandon my wife and friends to go to London to use the internet. And to have a beer.

7 Reasons We Love Propaganda Posters also stands out. Just because there are websites out there that have accepted our posters and explanations as historical fact and there’s a part of me that finds that very funny.

7 Reasons Sports Personality 2009 Was A Joke also stands out, mostly for the debate about sport in the 1990s that ensued in the comments section. I don’t think you’ve ever researched anything as thoroughly as you did the sporting year of 1994 during that debate. And then someone else we knew turned up and commented thinking that our website was The Guardian. Fun all round.

JL: And finally, what hopes do you have for 7 Reasons in the future?

MF: Untold riches, tiramisu, world domination and minions; it’d be great to have some of them. Oh, and a book deal.

JL: Well best of luck with that Marc Fearns. Thank you for talking to us.

MF: We’re welcome.

Next week: In Conversation With Jonathan Lee!

May 15, 2011
Russian Roulette Sunday: Blimey! It’s The Future. Now.
Last week, 7 Reasons took a step backward. We went back in time to the antediluvian age of print when our words – if not our names – appeared in Esquire magazine. How can we top that, we wondered. The present will just seem humdrum now. So we decided to ignore the present and plan for the future.

In historical envisaging of the future, it’s all hoverboards, cars that fly and spangly jumpsuits. But it’s fast becoming clear that the true instrument of the future will be the Kindle. That’s how things will be read in years to come. We determined that the way forward for 7 Reasons was to embrace the Kindle and prepare for it. Well, Jon thought that we should wear spangly jumpsuits and LED watches, but fortunately he lost the coin-toss.

So we’ve got together with the people at Amazon and we’ve made it happen. From today, we have a new thing:

That’s right Kindlers, 7 Reasons is now available on your Kindles. So when you’re out there Kindling in your futuristic world of the future, you need never miss a single 7 Reasons post. They’ll just appear on your Kindle via the combined mediums of witchcraft, space-age jiggery-pokery and the wireless internet. You can subscribe to 7 Reasons : Kindle Edition here; you can even have a free 14 day trial. For the rest of us backward peasants there’ll still be the old-fashioned website but you, Kindlers, the beautiful people of the future, will be experiencing 7 Reasons in many amazing ways.

Things the beautiful-future-people will be able to do with their Kindles:
- Read 7 Reasons in direct sunlight.
- Read 7 Reasons for hours and hours without straining their eyes.
- Spot 7 Reasons spelling-mistakes with their built-in dictionary (but not as a drinking game, a post by Jon could prove fatal).
- Be better than the rest of us.
- Think of a witty and brilliant fifth thing.
Things that the rest of us will be able to do without Kindles:
- Stand in mud.
- Eat a raw turnip.
- Point at the beautiful-future-people.
- Lick a fetid dog.
- Wail with despair and cry until our souls hurt.
So, that’s the future: Available now. 7 Reasons will return tomorrow in many forms. Like the Devil.
January 16, 2011
7 Reasons They Were Very Wrong

It’s the 3^rd of December and, to save you wondering why that’s significant and making you worry that you’ve forgotten your birthday or Easter or something, we’ll tell you. On this day, in 1929, U.S. President, Herbert Hoover, delivered the first State of the Union Address since the Wall Street Crash to Congress. But this wasn’t your run of the mill State of the Union Address where nothing much of interest gets said. Well, it was, but in the middle of all of the traditional consciousness-bothering guff, Herbert Hoover said something so obviously, epically and unarguably wrong that he has inspired us to bring you seven of our favourite examples of wrongness.

President Hoover. Talking.

1. Herbert Hoover. “While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced that we have now passed the worst and with continuity of effort we shall rapidly recover.” And following those fine, rousing, confident words, America and the rest of the world plunged into The Great Depression, which saw American production fall by 46%, foreign trade fall by 70%, unemployment rocket by 607% and shanty-towns filled with the homeless spring up around every major U.S. city. They called them Hoovervilles.

2. Dr Dionysius Lardner. “Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” The professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College London was wrong on two levels here. One; trains don’t actually reach high-speed in this country because there is always a poxy cow on the line, and two; if passengers unable to breathe did get on a train, they would already be dead.

3. Glenn McGrath. The great Australian bowler predicted Ashes whitewashes in 2005, 2009 & 2010/11. With England on the receiving end. He was wrong. The fact that he got it right in 2006/7 is more a testament to infinite monkey theorem than to any logical analysis*. And to the fact that England were rubbish.**

4. Sir William Preece. The chief engineer of the British Post Office said in 1876, “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” So in Victorian Britain, not all boys were up chimneys or in the workhouse; they were carrying messages which, according to Sir William Preece, is the ideal way to have a chat with your mother who lives a hundred and fifty miles away. “Hello Mother, how are you?”, you would write, before summoning one of the multitudinous boys to bear your message to her. And when he returned, breathlessly, a mere fortnight later with the reply, “Fine, thank you,” you would send him straight back again with a note inscribed, “And how’s Father?”. In the Preecian vision of the future of communication, Americans could have a ten-minute-long conversation with their mothers while the British would have a forty-two-week-long one which would cost the lives of approximately nine urchins. Perhaps to make his idea more marketable to the communications industry he considered the slogan: The future’s bright, the future’s boys. Or perhaps not.

5. Newsweek, In an issue looking into the future of travel, Newsweek magazine carried this prediction of popular holiday destinations for the late 1960s. “And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam.” Erm…yeah. Now Newsweek weren’t totally wrong here. Vietnam did receive a massive influx of American tourists with rifles in the late 1960s, it’s just that they weren’t there to safari. Or to sit by the pool.

6. Lord Kelvin. In 1883, the President of the Royal Society, said, “X-Rays will prove to be a hoax”. To this day, I bet he wishes he had said the ‘X-Files’. It’s a shame though really, because if X-Rays were a hoax then that cracked fibula I suffered could also have been a hoax. As would be the inevitable snapped fibula. And all the surgery. In fact, my whole life would have been a hoax. But it’s not. Because X-Rays are real. And so am I.***

7. Major General John Sedgewick. While directing artillery placements, Sedgewick and his corps came under fire from Confederate sharpshooters about a thousand yards away. As his officers and men ducked and scurried away, General Sedgewick loftily dismissed the notion of taking cover saying, “What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…”. They were his last words.

*Glen McGrath is an infinite monkey. You heard it here first.

**Except Ian Bell.

***Jonathan Lee is real. You heard it here first.

December 3, 2010