Saturday, January 26, 2008

Five Amazing Things

What I love about the new house is the south facing aspects. Hopefully from now on I will always live in such a house. It means that you know what the weather is. If you have a north facing window then you sometimes don't know if the sun's shining.

The history of dementia is progressing well. I'm trying to narrow down my question/s to something like 'How has the definition of dementia changed?' so I've been to Leeds University Library which was great. Nobody really says 'Senile dementia' any more so I'm trying to find out when that happened, if anyone prefers using 'Alzheimers' as it can only be diagnosed at postmortem, when 'senility' went out, if it has. So far I've found one book referring to Aging and Senile Dementia from 1977. Apparently Churchill had it.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Five Amazing Things

1) I'm still enthusiastic about the social history of dementia
2) Still enjoying the MA in Contemporary British History
3) Sitting in south facing rooms full of sunshine
4) Sunshine glinting off a clean dishwasher
5) Telling your husband to turn down the sound on 'Call of Duty'

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Did death become taboo in British discourse as a result of the Great War?

Is writing this essay a fate worse than death? How many questions can a seemingly inncocent question about death generate? Is it helpful to get obsessed about death especially ones 90 years ago? Were there a load of other reasons that in fact made British society obsessed with death? Was the Great War instrumental in causing my own death (hopefully) at least 90 years after it? What isn't taboo? Is eating horrible sandwiches on National Express trains causing them to die a death of taboo? Is it helpful for something to be taboo? Why aren't more things taboo? What is the point of investigating taboo things and what happens when you discover they aren't? Were beastiality, incest and sex more of a taboo than death yesterday? How do you measure changes in attitudes and is there any point to it?