In Britain, the weather in December was crazy
January 6th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
December was the wettest month ever recorded in the UK, with almost double the rain falling than average, according to data released by the Met Office this week.
Last month saw widespread flooding which continued into the new year, with 21 flood alerts in England and Wales and four in Scotland in force on Tuesday morning.
The record for the warmest December in the UK was also smashed last month, with an average temperature of 7.9C, 4.1C higher than the long-term average.
Climate change has fundamentally changed the UK weather, said Professor Myles Allen, at the University of Oxford: “Normal weather, unchanged over generations, is a thing of the past. You are not meant to beat records by those margins and if you do so, just like in athletics, it is a sign something has changed.”
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
What does the new periodic table look like?
January 5th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
A lot has changed since I did my Chemistry ‘A’ level 50 years ago and the periodic table now looks rather different. This week, four new elements were confirmed. You can view the new periodic table with a look at selected elements here.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
A review of the recent movie “Million Dollar Arm”
January 5th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
You may never have heard of this film – I hadn’t until it was recommended to me. But I enjoyed it and you can read my review here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A calculation of the new year
January 5th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
(10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6)/(5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1) = 2016
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
U.S. presidential election (16): and they’re off …
January 4th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
I wrote my first posting on the American presidential election of this year just over a year ago and this is now the 16th posting in the series (there will be more!). So far, it’s been all town hall meetings, television debates, and media storms – with no voter actually voting for anyone. Over the next few weeks, the race gets real with caucuses and primaries.
The Democrats still have three runners in the race: Hillary Clinton, who is still odds-on to win her party’s nomination and the actual election to the White House, Bernie Sanders, who has done remarkably well and may win some of the earliest primaries, and Martin O’Malley.
The Republicans have had as many as 16 runners in the race and the field still has a dozen riders. Donald Trump has headed the polls for many months but he hasn’t actually won a caucus or primary yet because, of course, there haven’t been any. His strongest challengers are likely to be Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas, and Marco Rubio, a senator from Florida.
Some of the key dates are as follows:
1 February – Iowa caucuses
9 February – New Hampshire primary
20 February – South Carolina Republican primary and Nevada Democratic caucus
1 March – so-called Super Tuesday when there are primaries in southern states plus Massachusetts and Minnesota
15 March – Florida and Ohio primaries
7 June- the last five primaries including California and New Jersey
18-21 July – Republican Party convention in Cleveland Ohio
25-28 July – Democratic Party convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvannia
8 November – presidential election (plus all the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate)
If you want to know more about how the American political system works, check out my short guide here.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
Have you ever read “War And Peace”?
January 3rd, 2016 by Roger Darlington
No, neither have I – although from somewhere I do have a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s mammoth novel on my bookshelves. My copy of the book is a 1967 edition and runs to 1,344 pages. I can’t imagine ever reading the book – at my age, I’m reluctant to start a long work in case I don’t finish it.
But I did once see a film version of “War And Peace”. It was the 1966 Russian movie directed by Sergey Bondarchuk. I viewed this eight-hour epic in a single sitting in a cinema (but thankfully it was dubbed). I remember very little except some battle scenes.
Now I will see the television version of “War And Peace” which will start being broadcast by the BBC this evening and consists of six one-hour episodes. However, I will record the series and try to watch all the episodes in a couple of sittings to help me follow the plot.
Meanwhile I’ve come across someone who has not only read “War And Peace”, but consumed it four times. In this article, Sarah Hughes explains how, each time she has read this huge novel, she has seen it in a different light with different characters coming to the fore.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (6)
Series 2 of “Homeland” – we’ve finished it
January 3rd, 2016 by Roger Darlington
I recently did a posting explaining that, in the dark nights of winter, Vee and I had started watching the box set of series 2 of “Homeland”. In fact, we completed it in just three sittings of four episodes at a time, but this had to be over a period of 8 days because we had visitors and then a few days away.
As the series went on, the plotting became increasingly unbelievable, but it was very well done with excellent acting and sustained tension. In effect, series 2 was the working out of series 1 and, if we move on to series 3 down the line, I expect and hope that we will move into new territory.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (1)
It’s never been easier to find a statistic – but so many of us are still massively confused when it comes to basic figures
January 2nd, 2016 by Roger Darlington
If you want to know what proportion of the UK population is obese or immigrant, as with so many questions, you just have to Google it. You might be offered a variety of statistics, but you will certainly have a clear order of magnitude and you will be able to source each and, with a little effort, find out the basis of the calculation. Yet so many of us have a massively distorted view of figures including proportions and percentages.
As this “Guardian’ newspaper editorial puts it:
“If 50% of the population doesn’t know what 50% means, then it’s no surprise to discover that the public often goes wrong in placing numbers on social concerns. Ipsos Mori recently published a cross-country report that established that Britain thinks of itself as thinner, more diverse and older than it really is. That is to say, we underestimate the proportion of overweight or obese adults (guessing 44%, rather than a real figure of 62%), overestimate the immigrant population (25% in the imagination, 13% in reality), and also our average age, put at a decidedly senior 51, when the real middle Briton is only 40.”
In many cases, people’s distorted view of figures reflects their political and social prejudices:
“In other contexts, warped perceptions feed back to warp reality. John Hills of the LSE has collected a number of myths around social security that have shaped the debate about UK welfare reform. The share of the welfare budget going on unemployment benefits? Estimated at 40%, when the reality (depending on precise definitions) is closer to 1%. Fraud? Estimated at around 20%, when the official figures stand at 0.7%. The proportion of new jobseekers who it is presumed will be still signing on a year down the line? 50%, compared with a reality of less than 10%. All of these myths, of course, encourage hostile ideas about a lazy under-class subsidised by others.”
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
Whatever happened to Corbynomics?
December 31st, 2015 by Roger Darlington
When Jeremy Corbyn ran for the leadership of the Labour Party, he argued for a radically different approach to the austerity imposed by the Conservative Government. Many of his proposals were borrowed from economist Richard Murphy who was allowed effectively to speak on behalf of the campaign as regards economic issues.
Yet, now that Corbyn has been elected and in post for three months, we hear nothing from Murphy who – as explained in this piece – has been totally ignored by the new leadership team. So what is Labour’s alternative economic strategy and when are we going to see it articulated? Too much of the news about Labour is about process and personality. What we need is policy, opposition, and above all hope.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
The wonderful song “Hello” by the singer Adele
December 30th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
As I explained in this posting, for Christmas I received the album “25” by Adele and I have been listening to it a lot. The opening track – the best known – is “Hello” and you can see Adele singing it here:
You can find the text of the lyrics here.
Thanks to my son who is currently working in Kenya, I’ve come across this version of “Hello” sung in Swahili by Dela. Enjoy.
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