What excuse can any American possibly have for voting for Donald Trump?
August 1st, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
We know that there is lots of life on Earth, but is there any lyfe on Mars?
July 30th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
For centuries, there has been speculation about whether there is any life on our nearest planet Mars. After all, there are those ‘canals’ and there is some kind of atmosphere.
Of course, it depends how you define “life” and, believe it or not, there is no absolutely agreed definition, but the American space agency NASA has a good working description: “a self sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution”.
On this basis, there may be no life on Mars – but maybe we should have a broader definition.
Stuart Bartlett, a complexity scientist at Caltech, and Michael L Wong, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington, have developed a new hypothetical concept: lyfe.
They define a “lyving” organism as satisfying four criteria: dissipation (the ability to harness and convert free energy sources); autocatalysis (the ability to grow or expand exponentially); homeostasis (the ability to limit change internally when things change externally); and learning (the ability to record, process and carry out actions based on information).
With this definition, life is just one specific instance of lyfe and there could be a higher probability of finding lyfe – rather than life – on Mars.
You can find a fuller exposition of this fascination idea here.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
A review of the NEW film “Clemency”
July 25th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
After four months of the coronavirus lockdown, I was desperate to visit a theatre and see a new movie on the big screen. So I went to view whatever was showing on the first evening of the first cinema to open in central London. “Clemency” is hardly the most uplifting choice for such an occasion, since it is a serious and slow-moving work dealing with capital punishment in the United States and the impending execution of a black prisoner innocent of the murder for which he was convicted.
But this is an important film. both for its provenance and its subject. The writer/director is Nigerian-American Chinonye Chukwu; the lead actor and excutive producer is African-American Alfre Woodard who is the prison warden; and most of the leading roles are black characters including Aldis Hodge as the prisoner awaiting death. We see how the death sentence can not only be a terrible misjustice but a corruption of all who find themselves part of the process.
The film was released at an inauspicous time but should garner an Academy Award nomination for Woodard’s wonderful performance and stimulate further debate on this horrific practice.
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A review of the 1944 movie classic “Gaslight”
July 23rd, 2020 by Roger Darlington
This is the film which gave rise to the term ‘to gaslight’, meaning to cause someone to doubt his or her sanity through psychological manipulation. In the film itself, a husband played by Charles Boyer seeks to undermine the sanity of his wife portrayed by Ingrid Bergman through – among other things – repeatedly dimming and brightening the gaslights in their 19th century London home.
Based on a play called “Angel Street” and the subject of an earlier British cinematic version in 1940, this American-made movie was directed by George Cukor. It is somewhat static in location, but finely acted with plenty of atmosphere, and it won an Academy Award for Bergman.
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What did you do in the coronavirus lockdown, granddad? Well, one of the things I did was deliver over 30 online history lessons.
July 22nd, 2020 by Roger Darlington
When the country was suddenly plunged into lockdown and schools had to close their doors to most of their students, I was asked if I would help out with my nine year old granddaughter by doing an online history lesson with her once a week. When a young friend heard about this, she asked if I would do the same with her son who is the same age as my granddaughter.
It was suggested that I cover Victorian history, so we looked at the life of Queen Victoria, the development of canals, railways and the factory system, and the lives of famous Victorians such as Florence Nightingale, Charles Darwin and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. But, after four weeks lockdown was still in place …
So, at the request of my granddaughter, we went back to Tudor times and we explored such monarchs as Henry VIII (and each of his six wives) and Elizabeth I, such characters as Thomas Cromwell and Francis Drake, and the importance of the Reformation. But, after another four weeks, we were still in lockdown …
So we moved on to Stuart history and discussed the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the Interregnum with Oliver Cromwell, and the Restoration with Charles II. But, after yet another four weeks, the kids could still not go back to school and we felt that we’d had enough of British kings and queens.
So, for the last four weeks, we’ve been talking about world history as it illuminates current events. Starting with the first humans in Africa and the earliest civilisations in the ‘lucky latitudes’, we moved on to European colonisation and the slave trade, before focusing on recent American history including the abolition of slavery, the civil rights movement, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
So, here we are: most of the lockdown restrictions have been eased, the school holidays have arrived, and we’ve ended our online history lessons.
At first, I was tasked to teach one child but then it became two. I had thought we might do three or four lessons but it turned out to be 16. Therefore, in the end, I delivered 32 lessons. Each was about one hour but, as any teacher will tell you, the preparation took twice as long. I was pleased to have YouTube as a resource because we broke up each lesson with a couple of short videos.
I don’t know how much my little friends learned from all this, but I learned a lot – and I hope that it gave the parents a bit of a break. I can’t imagine how tough it was for parents to do home schooling and my admiration for teachers is higher than ever.
Posted in History, My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
A review of the film “A Good Day To Die Hard”
July 21st, 2020 by Roger Darlington
After the considerable success of “Die Hard” (1988) and “Die Hard 2” (1990) and the more restrained reception for “Die Hard With A Vengeance” (1995) and “Die Hard 4.0” (2007), it must have been just too tempting to milk the franchise a bit more with this fifth (and surely final) outing in 2013 by independent-minded and bloody-vested and seemingly indestructible Bruce Willis (now in his late 50s) as New York cop John McClane.
I was never going to visit the cinema to this limp offering but, during the coronavirus lockdown, it turned up on television and I thought that I might as well complete the franchise.
This film has two differences fron the other four: all the action is set outside the United States (Russia – represented by Hungary) and Willis has to share the billing with (Australian) actor Jai Courtney who plays John McClane’s estranged son Jack. But we have the typical deployment of heavy vehicles and military helicopters plus a simply massive bullet-count.
The plot is simply risible, most notably when the two McClanes purport to drive overnight from Moscow to Chernobyl (the road distance between these locations is almost 1,000 kms or over 600 miles and they are actually now in different countries!). However, there is one consolation – this is shortest of the “Die Hard” movies (97 minutes).
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)
Was it right to have a local lockdown in Leicester?
July 20th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Here, in the UK, we have been easing lockdown restrictions for weeks now and, for most parts of the country, life is easier, although the coronavirus threat is still very real. However, for the people of Leicester, many restrictions have been reimposed rather than lifted.
This local lockdown – the first of its kind in this country – was imposed nationally without proper local consultation and agreement. We will almost certainly need to have further instances of local measures, so it is important that we learn lessons from Leicester.
The Labour City Mayor, Peter Soulsby, has told local citizens:
“Locking down Leicester was a political decision. The data didn’t justify it and Public Health England didn’t recommend it. The Tory Home Secretary announced they were ‘locking-down’ Leicester and the Health Secretary backed her. At this point PHE hadn’t even completed their report and, when they did, made very different recommendations to the Government.
It seems the Tories needed a City to make an example of – and picked on us. Now, Tory MP’s, the Tory County leader and the Government have agreed to draw yet another contrived boundary around Leicester. This one excludes the Tory-voting districts from lock-down – even though there’s no difference in Covid numbers inside and outside that boundary.
The Secretary of State has accused me of turning down his invitation to draw a line around an inner-city lock-down area. I refuse to draw a line that just stigmatises communities. Instead we need to focus work with our communities, neighbourhoods and families – especially the most deprived areas of the city – to fight the infection. The Government is still not handing over all the testing data we need to focus our work effectively.”
This report from Independent Sage sets out how badly the Tory Government has treated Leicester. It states:
“The lockdown in Leicester constitutes a foreseeable crisis of the Government’s own making. It has come too late and, by being imposed on the locality, rather than being developed and implemented with the locality, it risks creating uncertainty, dissent, and even disorder.
In the case of Leicester, and for future such cases, we advocate a response that is led by local government, supported by agencies such as PHE Health Protection Teams, the NHS and the Police and with additional funding from central government. The imposition of local restrictions should only be considered in the context of such an overall package of support, they should only be a last resort and used as a temporary measure.
Such an approach will maximise both the efficacy of infection control measures and public support for these measures.”
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the new film “Radioactive”
July 16th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
When was the last time that you saw a film devoted to the life of a distinguished female scientist? Exactly. And how many movies do you see directed by a woman? Far too few.
We need more stories about women told by women, so this bio-pic of Polish-French physicist/chemist Marie Curie, directed by the Iranian Marjane Satrapi (best known for “Perspolis”), is welcome and worthy but, as a piece of cinema, does not really work.
Curie was a remarkable person: the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields. She is portrayed by one-time Bond girl and “Gone Girl” British actress Rosamund Pike in feisty style.
The main problem is the script from Jack Thorne who normally writes for television. The narrative is rather dull and there are odd flashforwards to incidents such as the bombing of Hiroshoma and the explosion at Chernobyl which – while related to radioactivity, a word coined by Curie incidentally – have nothing to do with her.
In fact, “Radioactive” never made it to the cinema. Its release was caught by the coronavirus lockdown. But, of course, you can access it online.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
What happens when the world’s population stops growing?
July 15th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Most adults around the globe – me included – have contributed to the relentless rise in the world’s population which has devastated the planet. Today the world population stands at 7.8 billion and it is still growing – but this will not always be the case with huge consequences.
You can find a good estimate of the current population and observe the growth in real time here. But fertility rates are falling dramatically. As a result, researchers expect the number of people on the planet to peak at 9.7 billion around 2064, before falling down to 8.8 billion by the end of the century – as explained in this article.
Which countries will be most affected?
Japan’s population is projected to fall from a peak of 128 million in 2017 to less than 53 million by the end of the century.
Italy is expected to see an equally dramatic population crash from 61 million to 28 million over the same timeframe.
Some 23 countries – including Spain, Portugal, Thailand and South Korea – are expected to see their population more than halve.
For humankind as a whole, this fall in the world’s population will have major environmental benefits. But it will change geo-politics where often population size equates to political and market power. And it will change social structures because it will mean an ageing population with all sorts of implications from tax revenues to social care costs to voting patterns.
We need to start preparing now.
Posted in Environment, World current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernardine Evaristo
July 12th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
As a white, straight male, I might not be considered as an obvious reader for a polyphonic novel in which almost all the 12 voices are women of colour, several are lesbian, and one is trans gender. But this work by a Nigerian-British female author was (joint) winner of the Booker Prize in 2019 and it was clear to me that this was an important book.
I found it a wonderful read that presented a multilayered account of the black experience in Britain today. The women are of different ages and occupations with a variety of ethnic composition, occupational achievement, and sexual history over a period of decades and every story has its own fascination and illumination.
The style is interesting: there is limited capitalisation and, except for minimal use of commas, there is no punctuation, but instead a layout that isolates sentences, phrases, and even words and works very well. The dozen voices are grouped into four chapters, each of three characters who are connected, with looser links between all the women brought together in a fifth chapter featuring the after-party of a radical play by the first of the characters, with a striking epilogue which binds two of the personages. It might sound complicated but it is splendidly executed and enables a richly textured exposition of black (female) lives (that) matter.
In such an ambitious novel, there are many messages, but one powerful conclusion is: “we should celebrate that many more women are reconfiguring feminism and that grassroots activism is spreading like wildfire and millions of women are waking up to the possibility of taking ownership of our world as fully-entitled human beings”. But: ‘feminism needs tectonic plates to shift, not a trendy make-over”.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)