How to be healthy
November 6th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
In my new Friday series revisiting the advice in the Life Skills section of my web site, today I invite you to consider “How To Be Healthy”.
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10 words of the year
November 5th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
“Collins English Dictionary” has chosen “binge-watch” as its 2015 Word of the Year. the word means “to watch a large number of television programmes (especially all the shows from one series) in succession”. Vee and I have done this most recently with series 1 of “Homeland”.
You can view all 10 of Collins’ words of the year here.
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BBC One to film “His Dark Materials” trilogy
November 4th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
It’s great news that BBC One is to produce a television adaptation of the brilliant “His Dark Materials” trilogy by Philip Pullman.
I really admired the books:
- “Northern Lights” – my review here
- ‘The Subtle Knife” -my review here
- “The Amber Spyglass” – my review here
The first novel was turned into a film called “The Golden Compass” [my review here], but it did not have critical success and the other two books were never filmed.
Also I saw the two-part stage production at London’s National Theatre.
So you can see I am a fan and excited about the planned television production.
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Word of the day: pabulum
November 3rd, 2015 by Roger Darlington
In the United States, former Florida governor Jeb Bush is really struggling to make an impact in his effort to become the Republican candidate in next year’s presidential election.
In an attempt to revive his campaign, he has gone on the attack in relation to his rivals, declaring: “The campaign trail is littered with candidates disguised as television critics. Politicians echoing poll-tested pabulum.”
I wonder how many American voters know what the word “pabulum” means?!? I had to look it up. Apparently it means “bland or insipid intellectual fare”.
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A short guide to the Canadian political system
November 2nd, 2015 by Roger Darlington
While I was in Kenya a couple of weeks ago, there was a General Election in Canada with a spectacular result. Having started out in third place, the Liberals stormed to a decisive victory, so that the new Prime Minister is Justin Trudeau, son of the two-time PM Pierre Trudeau.
As a result, I’ve updated my short guide to the Canadian political system which you can read here.
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A review of the novel “Dominion”
November 1st, 2015 by Roger Darlington
II you like your novels long and thrilling – and especially if you’re interested in recent history – then “Dominion” by C J Ransom could be for you. You’ll find my review here.
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A busy Halloween in Sudbury Hill
October 31st, 2015 by Roger Darlington
it’s been another busy Halloween evening in our crescent in north-west London. Over a period of three hours, our door bell went 14 times as we were visited by a total of 59 little horrors. Good job we had tons of Quality Street chocolates for them.
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The end of the world is not yet nigh
October 31st, 2015 by Roger Darlington
This Halloween just got a whole lot scarier with the discovery of a huge asteroid hurtling towards Earth. The space rock was discovered less than a fortnight ago by astronomers using the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii.
With the asteroid expected to come within the 7,500,000 km threshold of proximity to Earth, it has been classified as a potentially hazardous object. NASA is confident, however, that the asteroid will fly past our planet some 499,000 km away, while cruising at speeds of over 126,000km per hour.
Despite missing Earth, experts monitoring the space debris estimate the fly-by will be the closest an asteroid has come to our home planet in close to a decade. NASA expects it to be the largest known cosmic body to get near our planet until 2027. The new found asteroid is 28 times bigger than the Chelyabinsk meteor that penetrated the atmosphere over Russia in February 2013.
Happy Halloween!
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A review of the new film “Suffragette”
October 31st, 2015 by Roger Darlington
It is hard to believe that women in the UK – as elsewhere – were denied the vote for so long and had to fight so hard for the right. The story is told in the new movie “Suffragette” which I have reviewed here.
View the film and wonder why so many people – men and women – do not use their right to vote
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Notes on Nairobi – now a continuous narrative with links and photos
October 30th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
If you are a regular reader of NightHawk, you might have read a series of daily blog postings on my recent visit to Nairobi. I have now pulled all these postings in one continuous narrative, added a series of hyperlinks to relevant web sites, and included a selection of 19 photographs.
Check it out here.
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