In the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the shortest day of the year
December 21st, 2017 by Roger Darlington
It’s known as the Winter Solstice.
The shortest day lasts for 7 hours 49 minutes and 41 seconds in London, UK, where I live. This day is 8 hours, 49 minutes shorter than the June Solstice. After this point, the days start getting longer and the nights shorter. Hurray!
This information is taken from a fascinating piece on the web site of the National Maritime Museum. You can find the full article here.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
Why the UK’s international aid is so important
December 20th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
“UK aid has already done so much to change the lives of the world’s poorest children. British aid has educated 11 million children in the last five years. The UK’s investment in immunisation in the same period ensured 67.1 million children were protected against preventable diseases. That’s more than the population of the UK.
This year, the Department for International Development announced a plan to increase investment in family planning by 25% meaning 120 million more women and girls will be able to access contraception by 2020, giving them the power to plan their lives.
In spite of this amazing progress, aid is increasingly under attack from both the national press and backbench politicians. In this climate, it is not a given that our life-saving commitment to spend 0.7% of our national income on international aid is secure.”
If conversation over Christmas should turn to challenging this aid and that commitment, this short briefing will be helpful.
Posted in British current affairs, World current affairs | Comments (0)
Are you sending Christmas cards this year?
December 19th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
According to this short article:
- The first Christmas card was in 1843 but the idea took some 20 years to become popular.
- This year, in the UK we will send an estimated 900 million cards – around 100 million fewer than last year.
- Some 80% of people in a poll said that they would prefer a physical Christmas card to an e-card.
- In the UK, charities raise around £50 million a year from the sale of Christmas cards.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (1)
Among all the doom and gloom, some good news about our health prospects
December 19th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
It’s called gene editing.
As a BBC story puts it:
“Scientists are now able to edit genes from organisms. Gene editing has already been used for some devastating illnesses – with great success. However, it is often lengthy and costly.
Only five years ago a form of gene editing was discovered with great fanfare. It is called CRISPR Cas9, or CRISPR for short. Simply put, CRISPR uses “molecular scissors” to alter a very specific strand of DNA – either cutting it out, replacing it or tweaking it.
It is now used in labs all over the world, altering and manipulating the genes of plants and animals with the idea that it can soon be used to treat numerous human diseases.”
You can read the full article here.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
My review of “Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi”
December 17th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
The trouble with reviewing the latest episode of a galatic franchise like “Star Wars” is that expectations are so hign. Ever since I saw the first movie four decades ago as a 29 year old who had fairly recently become a father, I have approached each new chapter – usually with my son – with immense exitement and not a little trepidation. If there was no “Star wars” canon, this film would be judged a great success with lots of enjoyment and entertainment. Assessed as the eighth segment of a saga, however, the sum of the parts (too many parts) – often exhilerating – is less than the rather incoherent whole.
As with the previous episode, the same person writes and directs, but this time Rian Johnson has taken over the baton (or light sabre) from J J Abrams and, all things considered, has done a fine job, presenting a series of exciting action sequences in a rich palette of colours with some splendid cinematography to add to the dramatic scenery and clever CGI.
The best performances come from Mark Hamill as the eponymous final jedi and Adam Driver as Keylo Ren of the First Order, both of whom offer conflicted and emotional states of mind. Other convincing performances come from two new heroines: Laura Dern as a Vice Admiral commanding a Resistance space cruiser and diminutive Kelly Marie Tran as a Resistance soldier who brings more ethnic diversity to the cast. However, Daisy Ridley struggles a bit to bring the necessary gravitas to Ren’s more central role, while it is sad to see the late Carrie Fisher barely coping as Leia Organa (although she does have one of the best one-liners).
The real problem with “The Last Jedi” is that there are too many characters and too many strands to the plot with too many ‘endings’ and an excessive running time (at two and a half hours, the longest in the franchise). Also, like the previous film, it is often derivative, so we have another cantina sequence like “A New Hope” and another white planet like “The Empire Strikes Back” (Episode IX needs a new world). But, for all my quibbles, I savoured the movie and look forward to the final segment of the third triptych in the franchise.
You can find my reviews of all the “Star Wars” films here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Word of the year: youthquake
December 15th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
“Youthquake”, defined as “a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people”, has been selected by Oxford Dictionaries as the 2017 word of the year.
I like young people. I used to be one once.
You can see a fuller explanation of the choice, and the shortlist of other candidates for word of the year, here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
And the mega rich just become richer and richer
December 15th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
The richest 1% of the global population took 27% of the world’s wealth growth between 1980 and 2016, while the richest of the rich increased their wealth by even more. The top 0.1% gained 13% of the world’s wealth, and the top 0.001% – about 76,000 people – collected 4% of all the new wealth created since 1980.
Here in Britain, the richest 1% control 22% of the country’s wealth, up from 15% in 1984. The very richest in the UK have seen a huge increase in their wealth. The top 0.1% – around 50,000 people – have seen their share of the nation’s wealth double from 4.5% in 1984 to 9% in 2013.
These are just a few figures from the latest World Inequality Report published this week. You can access that report, with an executive summary in different languages, here.
Posted in British current affairs, World current affairs | Comments (0)
What images come to mind when you think of the Holocaust?
December 14th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
In this short article, my good friend Art Shostak writes:
“For more than 70 years, [the] narrative has been flawed by overreliance on the horror story of the Shoah, a painful focus on atrocious acts perpetrators committed against victims. At the same time, little or no attention has been paid to its inseparable counterpart, what I call the “help story” – an inspiring focus on admirable life-risking things victims tried to do for one another, kin and stranger alike.”
He explains:
“Accounts exist in survivor memoirs of high-risk efforts made by upstanders in the ghettos to staff forbidden schools, operate hidden mikvaot (Jewish ritual baths), and conduct clandestine b’nai mitzvah ceremonies, etc.
In the Nazi camps, some of these individuals secretly relieved the workload of exhausted peers. They smuggled in food and medicine “organized” (stolen) from the stored goods of doomed arrivals sent directly to the gas.
Long-timers schooled newbies in survival secrets. They punished informers and thieves, shielded “illegal” religious services, and did much more, scores of examples of which are included in my 2017 book, Secret Altruism: Forbidden Care as Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust.”
Posted in History | Comments (0)
A review of the Japanese film “Blade Of The Immortal”
December 13th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
Apparently Japanese director Takashi Miikwe now has a hundred movies to his credit but I’ve only previously seen one of them: “13 Assassins”. Like “13 Assassins”, “Blade Of The Immortal” is a stylish bloodfest – if that’s not an oxymoron – set in the Edo period of Japanese history (1603-1868), but this film tells a much more personal story, namely the relationship between a tormented samurai called Manji (Takuya Kimura) and the girl to whom he becomes bodyguard Rin who reminds him of his dead sister Machi (both played by Hana Sugisaki).
The reason for Manji survivability – and also his despair – is that, as explained in a black and white prologue, he has been infected by bloodworms which heal his wounds so that he cannot die. The growing friendship between Manji and Rin reminded me of the film “Leon”, but the deathtoll in this tale is many times more, with the blade of the title slashing into bodies and cutting off limbs with great speed and fluidity.
This is not a film to everyone’s taste and at 140 minutes it is somewhat overlong, but for me it was the perfect cinematic escapism between two challenging meetings on a cold December day.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Some good news from the United States for a change
December 13th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
Doug Jones has become the first Democrat to win any statewide office in the state of Alabama in decades after Republican candidate Roy Moore’s campaign for the Senate was marred by sexual assault claims.
More news here.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)