Berek's New Writeups

Monty Roberts (person)

2009-06-01T20:09:30Z

Monty Roberts is an intriguing character. He is an undoubted bestselling author, and a successful horse trainer and showman. His success is due to his winning ways in communicating with horses, enabling wild horses to be saddled and ridden in record times, usually half an hour or so, and taming or helping many troubled horses. He claims to have learned many of his communication skills by observing mustangs in the wild, and eventually learning to tame them. He has displayed his talents before royalty, both Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Princess Benedikte of Denmark, and claims to have performed as a stunt rider for many famous stars, to have trained many successful thoroughbred racehorses, and he was undoubtedly a successful rodeo rider. His relationship with his father can best be described as uneasy, and he claims he was beaten by the man. It is here where we start to question and read between the lines, however, for this portrayal of his father is not…

Omaha Beach (event)

2009-03-24T21:41:08Z

Of the five D-Day landing beaches in Normandy (Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword), the battle for Omaha beach would prove the bloodiest, with 3,000 US troops and 1,200 Germans killed, wounded or missing. The beach was crucial to link British troops on Gold with US troops on Utah to provide a long Normandy beachhead.

The operation met problems from the start. Poor visibility and navigation led to troops landing hundreds of metres away from their intended arrival points, making it difficult or impossible for them to carry out their assigned tasks. The expected naval and aerial bombardment of the beach and its defences had overshot their mark, fearful of hitting friendly forces, and the defences were thus left largely intact. Landing craft were met by a hail of machine-gun fire and mortars as soon as they started down the ramps. Engineers took heavy casualties as they tried to remove beach obstacles, leaving few channels for later waves to move up the beach. Landing…

World War I Timeline: 1918 (thing)

2009-01-18T22:48:41Z

1918 finally saw the end of the "war to end all wars" with the signing of the armistice on November 11,1918. Germany's harsh treatment at the hands of the Allies would lead to further problems in the future, however.

1918
Return to the World War I Timeline
Backward

Jan 9 - Wilson announces 14 points for peace

US president Woodrow Wilson today spoke to Congress, outlining his 14 points that America wished to achieve with the war. Among the points are open diplomacy, free trade and national self-determination - all points which have been on the wish list of British and American liberals for some time. The speech followed an unsuccessful Inter-Allied conference which failed to agree on war aims.

Jan 28 - Lenin creates Red Army, security police…

Tiddler (review)

2008-12-06T21:01:21Z

Tiddler? Tiddler? TIDDLER'S LATE!

Tiddler is a modern children's classic of a book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Sheffler, the pair who provided us with the wonderful The Gruffalo and Gruffalo's Child stories, as well as many more.

The story revolves around the eponymous Tiddler, a little fish famed for his story-telling which he uses as excuses for being late for school. The tales get more and more fanciful, and less and less believable, but as they grow in popularity, they spread around the undersea world.

The tale has a wonderful rhythmic cadence when read aloud, redolent of The Cat in the Hat and We're Going on a Bear Hunt. We also have the famous pantomime chorus of "Oh, no he didn't!" "OH, YES HE DID!", and wonderful, colourful illustrations by Sheffler, depicting all the undersea fish and other creatures. I particularly like the classroom scenes, where "Miss Skate" calls the…

Wntrmeet 2008: A Birthday Noder Gathering in Edinburgh (event)

2008-11-09T16:42:07Z

I'd like to say a big thank you to Wntrmute and Gin Soaked (La Petite Mort and The Debutante) for a great Edinburgh nodermeet, breaking my duck as it was my first one. I arrived about lunchtime on Saturday, meeting Wntrmute, Gin Soaked and Dtal at the flat. The girls were soon hard at work in the kitchen, and I did my best to help by washing dishes, etc. Once Sam512 arrived, laptops and Iphones were much in evidence, and we were treated to a viewing of Wntrmute's robot. It was a little strange using everyone's real names, while having their e2 names in the back of your head. Dtal and I had a short pillow fight at one point - no real blood drawn!

Gradually more and more people arrived, including a few of Wntrmute's mathematician friends, Oolong, Diotina, and Pavlovna. Dtal's incense-sticks were eventually replaced by scented candles. The Ninjagirls served up delicious mini-pizzas catering to all dietary tastes (…

Brain tumor (personal)

2008-10-31T23:27:47Z

God, this one has been hard to write. Go gently on me with this one, people.

I've known three people with brain tumors (or tumours, as we spell it in Britain). One was my parents' neighbour, mother of a girl I went to school with. She died. The second was my favourite uncle, a man I cared for very much. He also died.

And then there was me.

In 1981 I was in my first year of secondary school, just approaching my 13th birthday, when I had a mild headache during the morning, and thought I'd "bunk off", "skive" or "dog it" from school that afternoon. As the week went by, the headache stayed and I started vomiting, until I was sent to a Glasgow hospital for an EEG (electroencephalogram, a brain scan).

I was then sent to the Southern General hospital in Glasgow for neurosurgery (brain surgery). I woke from surgery with my head shaved and a plastic tube draining fluid from my head to my stomach…