How does the death toll from Covid-19 compare with that for the Spanish flu?
May 27th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I did an earlier posting comparing the current coronavirus pandemic with the so-called Spanish flu.
We don’t know the death toll from the Spanish flu. It is usually estimated as between 20 – 50 million, but the lowest estimate is 17 million and the highest is 100 million. The current pandemic is far from over, but currently the death toll stands at just over 3.5 million.
The situation for Britain is interesting. The death toll from Spanish flu was 228,000. So far, the official death toll for Covid-19 is nearly 128,000 – one of the highest per capita rates in the world.
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How many people die from HIV/AIDS?
May 27th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
As we begin to see a way of eventually eliminating Covid-19 when the global death toll is around 3.5M and still rising, we should remember that HIV/AIDS is still a global killer and so far we do have a vaccine for it.
Around 700,00 people die from HIV/AIDS each year; in some countries it is the leading cause of death. HIV/AIDS is one of the world’s most fatal infectious diseases – particularly across Sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease has had a massive impact on health outcomes and life expectancy in recent decades.
According to the World Health Organisation, it is estimated that 33 million people have died of HIV since the beginning of the epidemic. Some 40 million people are living with HIV today.
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A review of the new film “Sound Of Metal”
May 27th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Ruben (British Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed) is a drummer and Lou (Olivia Cooke) is the guitarist and singer in a punk-metal duo called Blackgammon. Both are recovering addicts in a loving but complicated co-dependent relationship. They seem to be on the cusp of some professional success when Ruben suffers a sudden and catastrophic loss of hearing.
What can he do? He wants to go for cochlear implants but they are incredibly expensive and not always successful. An alternative – espoused by Joe (Paul Raci) who runs a small rural deaf community – is that Ruben should learn to live with his deafness: “the belief that being deaf is not a handicap. Not something to fix.”
I haven’t seen a film which puts deafness front and centre since the 1986 movie “Children Of A Lesser God”, but “Sound Of Metal” actually places the viewer in Ruben’s world with brilliant sound design by Nicolas Becker (and, in the cinema where I saw the film, there are closed captions to further give us the perspective of the deaf community).
It is a remarkable directorial début by Darius Marder who co-devised the story with Derek Cianfrance and co-wrote the script with his brother Abraham Marder and, in part, he was inspired by the experience of his grandmother who dramatically lost her hearing.
A large number of the cast were hired from the deaf community and, although Raci is not deaf, he is a native ASL (American Sign Language) user. Of course, the beating heart of this film is the wonderful performance by Ahmed who has come a long way since the “Star Wars” spin-off “Rogue One”. For this role, he learned to play the drums and to use ASL.
“Sound Of Metal” is often a disturbing film to watch, partly because of the distorted and discordant sound, partly because of the pain and anger in Ahmed’s performance, and party because of the hard message that disability should be embraced. But it is definitely a must-see work.
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There are so many ways to die – linguistically, that is
May 24th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Check out this list.
I rather like the expression “to kick the bucket” – but there is no certainty around the explanation of the origin of this expression.
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Word of the day: pareidolia
May 22nd, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Pareidolia is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous visual stimulus (so that one sees an object, pattern or meaning where in fact there is none).
Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations, or lunar pareidolia like the Man in the Moon or the Moon Rabbit. The concept of pareidolia may extend to include hidden messages in recorded music played in reverse or at higher- or lower-than-normal speeds, and hearing voices (mainly indistinct) or music, in random noise such as that produced by air conditioners or fans.
Pareidolia was at one time considered a symptom of psychosis, but it is now seen as a normal human tendency. Scientists have taught computers to use visual clues to “see” faces and other images.
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A review of the new film “Nomadland”
May 19th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
By the time restrictions had eased on the third lockdown in pandemic Britain and I was able to see this film on the big screen, it had already received three Academy Awards, winning Best Director (Chloé Zhao), Best Actress (Frances McDormand) and Best Film.
It is a remarkably original work, mixing a fictional story of widowed 61 year old Fern (McDormand), who makes a life for herself in a recreational vehicle (RV) travelling to wherever she can find casual work, with what is in effect a documentary about the life of such nomads in modern America featuring a cast of real-life characters who fit into the story while telling their own stories. The cinematography is amazing with shot after shot looking like a photograph or painting.
This could have been a depressing critique of an America for whom the dream has become a nightmare, but instead there is a moving sense of solidarity and community between people who have so little materially but so much in spirit.
The sense of positivity is captured in Fern’s comment: “I’m not homeless, I’m just houseless. Not the same thing, right? Don’t worry about me.” The narrative is sparse and episodic and underlined by the understated music of Ludovico Einaudi. The ending of the fictional part of the film is unresolved and enigmatic. My viewing companion and I had very different ideas about Fern’s future.
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A review of the new film “Ammonite”
May 19th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I had expected a celebration of the talent of an under-appreciated female scientist (like “Radioactive”) but instead found a tender tale of a lesbian relationship between a talented woman and her mentee ( a bit like “Portrait Of A Lady On Fire”). The reality is that there is absolutely no evidence of a relationship between early 19th century palaeontologist Mary Anning (Kate Winslet), known later as ‘The Fossil Finder’, and Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan).
I would have preferred either a fuller biographical representation of a real life scientist or an exploration of a fictional 19th century lesbian friendship but, if we overlook the conceit of writer and director Francis Lee (who is himself gay), we have a powerful piece of film-making.
This was my first visit to a cinema in many months after the third lockdown of pandemic Britain and it was a sheer joy to experience a large screen, wonderful sound and an audience in a dark theatre. The last time that I saw Lyme Regis in a film was “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” and since then I’ve actually visited this historic town with its nearby ammonite-rich Jurassic coast.
Although the slow and languid treatment is more art house than might be expected, the cinematography – all muted colours and atmospheric sound – is a delight and Winslet and Ronan are magnificent with a script that often involves repressed body language and sparse dialogue. At the end of it all, one longs to visit the British Museum and see some of Anning’s spectacular finds.
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A review of the 2019 film “Animals”
May 17th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
British writer Emma Jane Unsworth wrote the screenplay for this film adaptation of her novel “Animals” which is relocated from Manchester to Dublin and examines the close but complex relationship between two best friends of a decade who live together are now in their late 20s: Irish Laura (Holliday Grainger), who aspires to be a writer but cannot start her story, and American Tyler (Alia Shawkat), who is even more unconventional and feminist.
The two young women live an hedonist lifestyle with an excess of cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs and a fair bit of sex. There is little suggestion that this lifestyle is in any way fulfilling which makes one wonder why they persist with it. But Tyler seems to have lots of money from her family and Laura apparently finds her writing voice. Australian director Sophie Hyde tries to give the movie some style and the lead actors are watchable enough, but the whole episode leaves one feeling flat.
Footnote (and – only slight – spoiler): This is the only film that I’ve seen in which a woman’s pubic hair catches fire – resulting in the wonderful line: “Sorry, girls, didn’t mean to get all holy on you with my burning bush”.
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Word of the day: peng
May 15th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I’ve only just discovered this word which shows how uncool I am. It’s a London slang word meaning:
very beautiful or attractive: I saw a girl – she was peng.
extremely good: That burger looks peng.
More examples
- That jacket is peng!
- I’d go out with that boy, he’s well peng.
- There was an online page called “Britain’s pengest teens“.
So where does the word come from?
I understand that ‘peng’ was originally a term used in Jamaica to describe high quality weed. It then came to mean someone who is really good looking. A lot of the London slang words are Jamaican in origin. They become popular through music and black Londoners links with the Caribbean.
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A review of “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig
May 14th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
As we know from Matt Haig’s non-fiction work “Reasons To Stay Alive”, at the age of just 24 he had a major depressive breakdown in which he contemplated suicide. It took him many years to recover and writing was one of the things that helped him cope. He has now become a best-selling author of both non-fiction and fiction for adults and children and this novel is clearly influenced substantially by his personal experience.
Nora Seed is a 35 year old woman living in Bedford who managed to obtain a first class degree in philosophy (Henry David Thoreau was her favourite thinker), but suffers from serious depression and feels that her life has been a series of failures. She attempts suicide – but then she finds herself in a strange kind of huge library where she is given the opportunity to visit other versions of her life based on different decisions that she has made in her so-called root life – a version of the multiple universes theory of quantum physics. She explores many other lives, eight of which are described in some detail, but which does she choose and why?
Nora is told by the librarian” “you can choose choices but not outcomes”. Of course, when we make our choices, we don’t know the outcomes which can lead to a life of regrets. This novel is hardly a work of great literature but it is very readable storytelling with insightful observations on life and an uplifting message. It has been a major bestseller and it is bound to be made into a film.
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