What to Ask for Christmas

It's that time of year again when everyone is running out and buying gifts for their loved ones. But what exactly are they buying, anything educational like books or just video games?
You can get gifts that are actually fun and yet educational at the same time. For example the new line of tablets offer you online reading. It may bot be the hard copy that we have used over the years but an online version of a book nonetheless .
Furthermore, there is the Kindle Fire, IPad, Nexus 7 . Name brand tablets that offer you apps that allow you to download your favorite novels. But with these tablets you can take more than one book with you by downloading them all on your tablet.
In the end when doing shopping for your loved ones try to give them something fun yet educational. Something they maybe read a book on, do some research for school and maybe write a story.

Dante's The Inferno

It seems as though the human race as a whole has always been really curious about the afterlife. If thete really is a heaven and help then what's it like. Is heaven peaceful and a place where God reigns over all and everythong? Is Help cruel and full of punishment inflicted upon the gruesome Devil himself?
Dante does a great job painting ten image of Hell. It's just a walk through Hell, Dante is your guide, and your along for the ride. You travel through what Dante defines as the nine circles of Hell and witness first hand the fates of sinners.
For the first time we have an understanding of what one part of our afterlife could be like. Each circle with its own terms of punishment and sinners. The circles are described all in vivid detail and incorporate details from history. Like people such as Virgil, Odysseus, Homer, the Pope etc...
Dante even uses mythical creatures such as the Cerberus and Minos. Both creatures told about through history. Dante even uses terra rima all throughout his book which is a fork of rhyming. In the end Dante paints a picture if the most feared place in afterlife, Hell.

Extra! Extra! Read All About it!

It's those very words above that back in the day, as one might say, were quite common to hear. A young boy would stand on the corner of his town, yelling Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Simply handing out the local news paper. Typically featureig articles, practically the same as recent times, such as the current election, a murder trial, or maybe a war.

News papers were a convient source of information for people to connect with what was going on in the world, simply because they were more accessible than a TV was or even perhaps even a radio. Times were tough and not everybody could afford one, but a newspaper was inexpensive, a dime a dozen.

As the years went on though people began going to stores to buy their paper or even had it delivered on a paper route. People were still trying to get on touch with the world, but got into lazy habits. Eventually TV became more popular, and more and more people could afford them. Why read when you could watch the TV?

Furthermore, the newspaper industry still holds its own and people continue to purchase it. But as people become busier they desire an easy way out. Now you can watch the news channel, listen to the news channel via radio, or go on the internet and read articles that interest you. The need to buy a newspaper is no longer a necessity, when there are so many other ways to access it.

Less and less people want to read the news the old fashioned way, and rather than purchase a whole paper. They will research what interests them. Slowly but surely the newspaper business is changing, but for good or bad, that's a question that only time can answer.