Europe - Vyoos

25 followers

331 daily readers

rank of 32

E-mail Subscription

Receive an e-mail notification of new posts on this site:

Phyllis Diller once said, "When I go to the beauty parlor, I always use the emergency entrance. Sometimes I just go for an estimate." This sort of honest appraisal of oneself is something the winner of the 2010 Miss Cornwall beauty pageant has yet to learn.

The rules of the annual Miss Cornwall beauty pageant are simple: entrants must be aged 17 to 24 and must live or work in Cornwall, the picturesque county in England's south-west.

Laura Anness, this year's winner, is 27, and she lives and works in Devon.

Laura managed to win the title - at her fifth attempt - by claiming she was a Cornwall resident and that she was aged 22. Her deceit was discovered when one of the pageant administrators noticed, while cleaning old files out of her office, that Laura's age was given as 22 on the entry forms for each of the five years she had entered the contest.

Now Laura has been stripped of the title she tried so long to win. She has also lost the chance to compete for the title of Miss England and forfeits a 12-month modelling contract.

When Laura looks back on her beauty pageant career, she can take satisfaction at least from making the final of the 2009 Miss Universe competition. It is believed there were no questions over geographical qualification for that one.

178

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Europe, UK, Human nature

Email this Post to a Friend

British school bans short skirts

June 23rd 2010 13:13

VYOOS EDITORIAL

A British school has banned teenage girls from wearing skirts.

St Aidan's Church of England High School in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, has decreed that all girls aged 15 and younger must from now on wear trousers.

The reason given by the school is that it wishes to save the girls from attracting unwanted attention. “Very young children, and even more disturbingly, special needs children are clearly wholly unaware of the signals they are giving out,'' it said in a statement

We wish to inform St Aidan’s School that the attention is not unwanted. It is entirely wanted. We would also like to notify St Aidans that becoming aware of the signals sent out by our actions is a crucial part of growing up.

Short skirts were shocking in the early 1960s. They have been part of the fashionscape ever since. That one group of teachers in a small town in Yorkshire should decide to impose a minority, blinkered view and say short skirts are unacceptable is to fly in the face of 50 years of conventional western acceptance.

More important, however, is finding the balance between tolerance and guidance in dealing with teenagers.

The school is saying it doesn’t like the decisions its teenagers are making. It is missing the point that all decisions have repercussions, and we all learn from those repercussions. It’s a fundamental of life in a community. That process is more important for teenagers than any other age group. They stand on the threshold of adulthood, and it is crucial that they be given the freedom, within the relative safety of their home and school environments, to interact with the world and, thereby, learn what works and what doesn’t.

Schools are for learning. If teenagers can not learn there how to think for themselves, they will have to learn later in a less-forgiving environment.
news.com.au

193

Vote

Comments (2)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Bureaucracy, Europe, UK, Fashion, Vyoos Editorial

Email this Post to a Friend

Questions about the afterlife

April 19th 2010 11:38

A remarkable story has unfolded today about the near-death experience of a three-year-old boy in Germany.

The story has three extraordinary levels. The first is that Paul Eicke, of Berlin, revived three hours and 18 minutes after drowning. The child fell into a pond at his grandfather's house and is thought to have been in it for at least several minutes before he was noticed and pulled from the water.

Efforts to resuscitate him failed. The boy's father gave him heart massage and mouth-to-mouth for 10 minutes until a medical helicopter arrived. The paramedics on board continued resuscitation procedures during a 10-minute flight to hospital, where doctors then took over and tried for "hours" to save the child. Just after they gave up, however, Paul Eicke's heart decided to start beating again.

The second remarkable fact is that it appears Paul will make a full recovery, suffering no brain damage because of the coldness of the water he fell into. His core temperature after being pulled from the pond was measured at 28 degrees, compared to a normal human body level of 37 degrees. It is known that cold temperatures slow the metabolism and allow the body to survive longer without oxygen, but Paul's case is still exceptional. "When children have been underwater for a few minutes they mostly don't make it," said Professor Lothar Schweigerer, director of the clinic to which Paul was taken. "This is a most extraordinary case." That view is supported by an American study which showed that, of children who survive drownings, 92 per cent are found within two minutes of submersion.

The third remarkable aspect of the story surfaced after Paul was well enough to speak — when he was able to tell those around his hospital bed what he had seen and done during the three hours and 18 minutes he was thought to be dead.

Remember, this is the story of a three-year-old, someone unlikely to have woken and recognised the reality TV and sensationalist magazine possibilities.

Paul Eicke told his family, friends and assembled staff that he had been to heaven. And there, he said, he had seen his dead grandmother. "There was a lot of light and I was floating," Paul said. "I came to a gate and saw Grandma Emmi on the other side. She said, 'You go back to your mummy. I'll wait for you here'.''

He added, "Heaven looked nice, but I am glad I am back with mummy and daddy now." Mummy and daddy, no doubt, agree.

Near-death experiences like that described by Paul Eicke are not new. Popular interest in what are commonly termed NDEs was sparked by the book Life After Life, written by Raymond Moody and published in 1975, but NDEs have been studied for many years by people in a variety of fields, including psychology, psychiatry, parapsychology and hospital medicine.

All this leads to an Agence France Presse news story of two weeks ago which said NDEs are reported by between 11 and 23 per cent of survivors of heart attacks. The report used that fact to introduce what could be the fourth extraordinary level of this story. Or, perhaps, it proves that there was nothing extraordinary about the Paul Eicke story, nor about any other NDE.

AFP reported the findings of a study in Slovenia, published in the respected Belgian peer-review journal Critical Care, which investigated 52 heart attack cases, 11 of which reported NDEs. The researchers found no common link in terms of age, gender, education, religion, fear of death, time of recovery or drugs used to resuscitate the patients.

They did find one common link however — high levels of carbon dioxide, and to a lesser degree potassium, in the blood.

Can these things create hallucinatory experiences? Medical science isn't sure. The researchers say further work is needed. But it could be the beginning of the end for notions of premature visits to the afterlife.

Vote

Comments (2)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Europe, Happy Spot, Health, Psychology, Religion, Science

Email this Post to a Friend

What makes a soldier sexy?

April 8th 2010 11:09

VYOOS EDITORIAL
The official magazine of the British army is called Soldier. Imaginative.

[ Click here to read more ]

139

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Europe, UK, Fashion

Email this Post to a Friend

Bride misses her own wedding

April 3rd 2010 02:47

A drink with a friend before your wedding is a tradition Siobahn Watson was determined to follow. Now she wishes she hadn't.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Dating, Europe, UK, Human nature, Odd Spot, Romance, Sex

Email this Post to a Friend

Are women vain? The eyes have it

April 2nd 2010 01:32

For women confident enough to see it, glasses can be an elegant statement of self-assurance.

Scientists have produced evidence that just under 50 per cent of women are vain.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (8)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: UK, Fashion, Health, Human nature

Email this Post to a Friend

Doctor, doctor on the wall

March 30th 2010 10:13

VYOOS EDITORIAL
In 10 years, according to a British forecast, some important functions of your family doctor will be taken over by your bathroom mirror

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (2)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: UK, Technology, Vyoos Editorial

Email this Post to a Friend

The battle to save a language

March 12th 2010 04:25

Languages, like plant and animal species, can become extinct, a fact about which a lot of people care.

Well, so we thought

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (5)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Europe, UK, Wales, Language

Email this Post to a Friend

Dare to dream: a return of the Orient Express?

March 10th 2010 10:14

The old Orient Express had many incarnations but is associated mostly with the journey from Paris to Istanbul. The time the journey took varied, but it was at all times the stuff of legend, luxury and romance. It was mentioned in the literary works of Bram Stoker, Agatha Christie, Graham Greene, George McDonald Fraser and Ian Fleming.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Asia, China, Europe, History

Email this Post to a Friend

Today's news: woman fails to save the Earth

March 10th 2010 06:18

The Large Hadron Collider

A woman in Europe has failed to save the world after a court in Germany yesterday dismissed her claim that Earth is likely to be sucked into a black hole if scientists resume testing at the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest atom smasher.

The woman, who has not been named, was convinced a resumption of scientific work at the collider, which has had a checkered and controversial history, posed a serious threat to the planet. She was so worried, she took her case to the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (3)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Europe, Odd Spot, Science

Email this Post to a Friend

Bluehenge

October 4th 2009 03:18

Stonehenge

They've found Stonehenge's little brother. It's only half the size — or was, none of the stones remain now — but it's just down the road from big bro, giving tourists two mysteries to visit instead of one.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: UK, History

Email this Post to a Friend

Which type of lottery player are you?

October 1st 2009 00:10

There are only two types of lottery player: those who pick new numbers every week and those who always choose the same numbers. Some people like to chase luck while others like to stand still and hope luck catches them.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (11)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Europe, Bulgaria

Email this Post to a Friend

Acceptance Speech

September 9th 2009 00:05

Speech Debelle, a singer of the hip hop genre, has just won the Mercury Music Prize for best British album of the year. She won with her debut album.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Celebrity watch, Europe, UK

Email this Post to a Friend