Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category
“Everything is amazing and no one is happy”
February 26th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
Many thanks to my friend Dominic Ridley for drawing my attention to this amusing clip from Louis CK on the Conan O’Brian Show. We should all moan less and be happier. How? Check out my advice here.
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A new kind of hero
February 21st, 2009 by Roger Darlington
If this story is true (check out the photo), then Indian Babu Sassi is a new kind of hero. Certainly he has a top job.
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What have you been up to?!?
February 16th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
As you know, this blog is called NightHawk so, if you’re a regular visitor, I guess that you are a Nighthawker. But, thanks to my friend Nick Hobson, I find from this article that, in a very different context, “nighthawking” is a bad thing. It seems that: “Nighthawking is defined as the search and removal […]
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Happy Chinese New Year
January 26th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
Around one in five of the world’s population – but I’m sure less than that proportion of my blog visitors – today celebrates the Chinese New Year [more information here]. This is the Year of the Ox or Ji Chou 己丑 or year 4706 in the Chinese calendar. So, to all my Chinese visitors – […]
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What should we fear?
January 8th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
“As we wrote in Freakonomics, most people are pretty terrible at risk assessment. They tend to overstate the risk of dramatic and unlikely events at the expense of more common and boring (if equally devastating) events. A given person might fear a terrorist attack and mad cow disease more than anything in the world, whereas […]
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The history of Scrabble
December 30th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
I confess that I’m not one for games of any kind – but I make an exception at Christmas when it’s fun to play something with family members after a big meal. This year, it was Scrabble and afterwards I thought that I would check out the history of the game. It’s an interesting story.
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Playing the name game
December 30th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
I’m really interested in naming practices and name popularity around the world because one can learn so much about a country’s culture or a person’s background just from names. That’s why I’ve constructed a comprehensive look at naming practices around the globe with a special emphasis on the position in the UK – you can […]
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Try this Christmas quiz
December 21st, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Two of my very clever friends scored 25/30 but I confess that I only managed 19/30. Try it yourself here.
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The moon tonight
December 12th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
You might want to check out the moon tonight – because this evening’s full moon could appear up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons this year. How come? Well, the moon’s orbit is not circular but elliptical which means that the distance between the moon and the Earth is not constant […]
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Get a letter from Santa
December 10th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
As it’s the festive season, I thought I’d tell you about BT’s letter-to-Santa initiative. As part of the company’s partnership with ChildLine, for a suggested donation of £5.00 to the charity you can order a personalised letter from Santa to be sent to the child or children of your choice. We’ve arranged for two young […]
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