How high can inflation go? Pity the people of Venezuela.
July 28th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Currently I’m doing a short course at the City Literary Institute on the Weimar Republic of Germany from 1919-1933. A defining feature of that country at that time was the hyper inflation experienced in 1923.
At the start of the crisis in July 1922, one American dollar could be bought for 493 German marks. By the height of the crisis on 20 November 1923, one dollar required 4,200,000,000,000 marks. More information here.
I live in Britain where generally inflation is around 2%, but I was working for the Labour Government of the time when in 1975 inflation hit an historic peak of 25%. More information here.
These days, the country with the worst inflation problem in the world is Venezuela. The International Monetary Fund has just issued a warning that inflation in that country could top 1,000,000% by the end of the year. In 2018, Venezuela’s economy is likely to contract by 18% which would be the third consecutive year of double-digit decline. More information here.
Posted in History, World current affairs | Comments (0)
How many story types are there in the movies and which make the most money?
July 26th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Researchers at the University of Birmingham have categorised the movies according to six emotional profiles or clusters, which were previously applied to novels.
These are: rags to riches – an ongoing emotional rise as seen in films such as “The Shawshank Redemption”; riches to rags – an ongoing emotional fall (“Psycho”); man in a hole – a fall followed by a rise (“The Godfather”); Icarus – a rise followed by a fall (“On the Waterfront“); Cinderella – a rise followed by a fall followed by a rise (“Babe”); and Oedipus, a fall followed by a rise followed by a fall (“All About My Mother”).
Apparently, the analysis showed that man in a hole movies with their happy-sad-happy trajectory were the most financially successful movies across all genres, costing an average of $40.5m to produce and earning an average of $54.9m.
You can learn more about this research here and, if you’re interested in seeing good movies, check out my film reviews here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Have you had a lot of really hot weather recently? You’re not alone.
July 23rd, 2018 by Roger Darlington
“Across much of the northern hemisphere, intense and prolonged heatwaves have triggered disruption and devastation as North America, the Arctic, northern Europe and Africa have sweltered in record-breaking temperatures. In Africa, a weather station at Ouargla, Algeria, in the Sahara desert, recorded a temperature of 51.3C, the highest reliable temperature ever recorded in Africa.
In Japan, where temperatures have reached more than 40C, people were last week urged to take precautions after the death toll reached 30 with thousands more having sought hospital treatment for heat-related conditions. And in California increased use of air conditioning units, switched on to counter the scorching conditions there, has led to power shortages.”
This is an extract from an article on the website of the “Guardian” which discusses the likely causes – that include not just global warming.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
The life and legacy of President Ronald Reagan
July 19th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
This summer, as usual, I’m attending some short courses at the City Literary Institute in central London. The first one was a two and a hall hour session on US President Ronald Reagan delivered by college principal Mark Malcolmson who is incredibly knowledgeable and very fluent. These are some of my notes:
Presidents tend to come from poor or rich backgrounds. Reagan was from a poor family in Illinois. Known as Dutch because of Dutch boy haircut as youth. At college, very clubbable. Became sports commentator on radio in Iowa. Signed up for seven years to Warner Brothers as a B movie actor (“Bedtime For Bonzo”)
Following scandal involving other officers, President of the Screen Actors Guild for five years. Until then, a New Deal Democrat – he claimed Dems went Left but actually he went Right. Then became face of General Electric Theatre on television and spoke at company’s factories -> became a very effective public speaker.
By 1964, Republican Party in disarray (Barry Goldwater presidential candidate). “The Speech” – Reagan came out as Republican and declared for Goldwater. In 1966 and again in 1970, elected as governor of California. Tough on law & order but he raised taxes in order to balance the budget. Signed abortion and no-fault divorce laws and opposed bill to ban gays as teachers.
Reagan ran against Gerald Ford for the presidential candidacy but narrowly lost. This weakened Ford who then lost to Jimmy Carter. For next four years, Reagan was the leader in waiting. Then in 1980 he won the Republican primary against George Bush and the following presidential election in a rout against Carter.
He became the oldest president in history at that time (almost 70). Put together a strong cabinet and left detail to his team. Three months into his presidency, he was the subject of an assassination attempt which gave him a fillip in the polls and a huge amount of poltical capital during a shaky first two years in office.
He supported small government and low taxes, but he massively increased spending on the military and ran a huge deficit. Unemployment rose to over 10%. Republicans hammered in the mid terms. But then economy improved.
He made three nominations to the Supreme Court, including the first woman member of the Court (Sandra Day O’Connor), and tilted Court to the Right.
In 1984, Reagan re-elected president against Walter Mondale in a massive landslide – biggest Electoral College vote in history.
Foreign policy:
Sent troops into Lebanon with no clear objective and went catastrophically wrong. Then he ordered invasion of Grenada which went down well with US electorate. He was a staunch supporter of apartheid South Africa. He thought that detente had failed and Soviet Union should be opposed everywhere and American allies – however unpleasant (Chile and Nicaragua) – were supported.
He launched the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) to counter “the evil empire” of the Soviet Union which would have ended the notion of “mutually assured destruction”. New Soviet leader Gorbachev responded with series of summits. Many historians claim that Reagan broke the Soviet Union and won the Cold War. Others argue it would have happened anyway because the USSR was economically unsustainable.
Major scandal was his support of the Contras in Nicaragua by selling arms to Iran to raise the funds. It should have brought Reagan down. Was he already senile? Most doctors think not. Democrats were reluctant to impeach because it would look like a second removal of a landslide president (after Nixon).
Two blind spots:
He was opposed to civil rights with no understanding of race relations.
He refused to have any concern about AIDS for a long time.
Two major pluses:
Response to the “Challenger” disaster.
Managed to have election of his Vice-President (Bush snr).
Posted in History | Comments (2)
Commemorating the centenary of the birth of Nelson Mandela
July 18th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Nelson Mandela was born 100 years ago today on 18 July 1918 in the village of Mvezo in Umtata, then part of South Africa’s Cape Province. So today is a good time to remember this remarkable man and his wonderful achievements.
You can learn a lot more about Mandeal’s life from his excellent biography “Long Walk To Freedom” which I have reviewed here.
Mandela spent 17 years in jail on Robben Island and you can read about my visit to the island here.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
A review of the new movie “Sicario 2: Soldado”
July 17th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
In the taut and exciting original movie, the action began with FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), but slowly and inexorably shifted to Columbian ‘adviser” Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro) who – with support from CIA black ops expert Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) – emerged as the ‘sicario’ (hitman) of the title. In this accomplished sequel. there is no Kate, Alejandro is front and centre, and Matt’s position is more conflicted than ever.
This time, the action does not centre on drugs but people smuggling, while the intention is still the same: to create a war between the Mexican cartels so that the Americans have some kind of cause to intervene in a most brutal fashion. The inclusion of a couple of young characters – neither virtuous but both with their own vulnerabilities – adds texture to the tale.
There is a different director (Stefano Sollima of “Gomorrah”) and cinematographer (Dariusz Wolski of “The Martian” but, with the aid of the original scriptwriter (Taylor Sheridan), the sequel has the same gritty feel as the original with bleak landscapes, lots of tension, and frequent bloody action. The only real reservation is an unexpected ending which clearly sets us up for a third film. If the third act builds successfuly on the two other films and if it is a finale rather than just another money-maker, the “Sicario” trilogy will have been a triumph.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)
Perhaps we are alone in the universe after all – the outcome of the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation
July 15th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
So many science fiction books, films and television series involve other life forms – often lots of of them – but what are the scientific chances that we are, or we are not, alone in this huge (and expanding) universe? Two of the greatest thinkers on this subject have been the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi and the American astrophysicist Frank Drake.
The first of these men posed what is known as the Fermi paradox which can be summarised as follows:
- There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun and many of these stars are billions of years older than the Solar system.
- With high probability, some of these stars have Earth-like planets and, if the Earth is typical, some may have developed intelligent life.
- Some of these civilisations may have developed interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now.
- Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.
And yet, as Fermi noted, there has been no convincing evidence of other life forms, leading him to ask: “Where is everybody?”
The second of our thinkers devised what is known as the Drake equation. This equation attempts to calculate the likelihood of life outside our planet using seven variables:
- The average rate of star formations in our galaxy,
- The fraction of formed stars that have planets,
- For stars that have planets, the average number of planets that can potentially support life,
- The fraction of those planets that actually develop life,
- The fraction of planets bearing life on which intelligent, civilised life, has developed,
- The fraction of these civilisations that have developed communications, i.e., technologies that release detectable signs into space, and
- The length of time over which such civilisations release detectable signals,
The first attempt to put figures into the Drake equation in 1961 resulted in the conclusion that there were probably between 1,000 and 100,000,000 civilisations in the Milky Way galaxy. But the most recent attempt to populate the variables in the equation in 2018 – by three philosophers at Oxford University – has come to a radically different conclusion.
If you want to read the Oxford paper of 19 pages, you can access it here. If you want to read a layperson’s summary, you can go here.
If you can’t be bothered to look at either analysis, I can tell you that the latest calculations suggest that, based upon the current state of astrobiological knowledge, there’s a 53 to 99.6 per cent chance we are the only civilisation in this galaxy and a 39 to 85 per cent chance we are the only one in the observable universe.
As an editorial in the “Guardian” newspaper put it:
“The Oxford paper shows that when you take these uncertainties into account and run hundreds of thousands of simulations exploring them, the probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps in the universe, rises to entirely reasonable levels. The Fermi paradox vanishes. There is quite probably no one out there to rescue or to care about us. What happens to our species is in our hands alone. We had better get on with it.”
My own view is that we are probably the only intelligent life in the universe because, if that were not the case, we should have detected radio waves from other civilisations by now. In any event, even if there is life out there, it is likely that the distances involved in communication would be so great that any meaningful interaction would be impossible. So, it’s just us guys.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (1)
A review of the recent film “Fences”
July 13th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
This is the film adaptation of the Pulitzer-winning 1983 stage play written by August Wilson who refused to have the work made for the big screen unless there was an African-American director helming it. It tells the poignant tale of Troy Maxson, a black waste collector in 1950s Pittsburgh who received no love from his own father and cannot find any for his own sons.
The challenge with any film of a play is to avoid the outcome being more of a play than a film. This danger is especially acute when the author of the play is also is the writer of the film’s script, when the two leading stars of the film – Denzel Washington as the truculent Troy and Viola Davis as his loyal wife Rose – are reprising their roles in a Broadway revival of the play, and when the main star (Washington) is also the producer and director for whom this was clearly a passion project.
So what we have here is a tour de force performance from Washingron and outstanding support from Davis (both received Academy Award nominations) in a work full of magnificent dialogue and scenes of considerable pathos, but the whole thing is just too reverential to the original play with too little movement and too many words for the different medium of cinema.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
The Royal Air Force’s 100th anniversary flypast
July 10th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
The wonderful flypast over Buckingham Palace at 1 pm today consisted of 100 aircraft of 23 types with nearly 200 aircrew from 25 different squadrons operating from 14 RAF stations and three civilian airfields. The highlight was a formation 22 Typhoons making out the number 100.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
What’s happening in Ethiopia? – and do you care?
July 10th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Two important books which I’ve read recently – “Enlightenment Now” [my review here] and “Factfulness” [my review here] – both make the fundamental point that most of the progress which is being made by humankind is not reported by the media because it is gradual and undramatic and therefore unnewsworthy. This is especially true of developments in Africa and Asia which seem to be of little interest to many people in Europe and America.
It appears to me that a good example of this is the advances being made in Ethiopia – a country you’ve never visited and you hardly ever read about.
I visited Ethiopia three years ago and the conclusion of my account noted:
“… for the tourist who wants something different and is prepared for some challenges, Ethiopia is a great destination. The exotic names of places we visited were themselves magical: Addis Ababa, Axum, Lalibela … But the history was so rich and fascinating, whether it was the skeleton of Lucy, the stelae of Axum, the rock churches of Lalibela, or the castles of Gondar and the terrain was awesome whether it was the mountains of the Simien National Park or the waters of Lake Tana. In fact, four of the locations we viewed are World Heritage Sites.”
In recent months, some significant political developments have been occurring in Ethiopia. As this article explains:
“Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, has accelerated a radical reform programme that is overturning politics in the vast, strategically significant African country.Since coming to power as prime minister in April, Abiy has electrified Ethiopia with his informal style, charisma and energy, earning comparisons to Nelson Mandela, Justin Trudeau, Barack Obama and Mikhail Gorbachev.
The 42-year-old – who took power following the surprise resignation of his predecessor, Haile Mmariam Dessalegn – has so far reshuffled his cabinet, fired a series of controversial and hitherto untouchable civil servants, reached out to hostile neighbours and rivals, lifted bans on websites and other media, freed thousands of political prisoners, ordered the partial privatisation of massive state-owned companies and ended a state of emergency imposed to quell widespread unrest.”
Ethiopia still has huge problems but there are reasons to be cheerful including a new accord between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (2)