How to be happy by Pharrell Williams
June 11th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
I’ve just bought the “GIRL” CD by Pharrell Williams and enjoy listening to it while working on the computer. The best track is “Happy” which you can watch here:
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (2)
Carl Sagan on the pale blue dot that is the planet Earth
June 10th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
These words, taken from “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space” (1994) by Carl Sagan, were repeated in the 13th and last episode of the wonderful series “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” which has just been broadcast.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
The remarkable story of the Czech wartime politician Ladislav Feierabend
June 9th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Vee and I enjoy having friends of different ages and backgrounds. Everyone has a story but some have very special stories to tell.
We recently had lunch with a dear Czech friend of 84 whom we have know for around 30 years. Hana Ludikar is the widow of Marcel Ludikar (1920–2003) who flew with the Czechoslovak 311 Squadron as a component of the Royal Air Force during World War Two. As then part of Coastal Command and flying Liberators, Marcel was wireless operator/air gunner in the aircraft which sunk the “Alsterufer” [an account here], an exploit regarded as the biggest success of the squadron during the war.
Many years later in the early 1980s, Marcel was of great help to me in my researches for the book I was writing on the life of Karel Kuttelwascher, the Czechoslovak fighter pilot with the greatest number of victories in the war and Vee’s father [see more information here].
But, if the war record of Hana’s husband was distinguished, the story of her father was remarkable. Dr. Ladislav Feierabend (1891-1969) was an economist who led the co-operative movement in inter world war Czechoslovakia. He was swept into politics by President Beneš after the Munich Accords of 1938, becoming Minister of Agriculture. When the Nazis occupied his country in 1939, he remained in the government but also became a prominent member of the resistance.
Discovered by the Gestapo in 1940, Feierabend fled in a dramatic escape and joined Beneš’ government in exile in London where he served as the Minister of Finance. Most of his family was sent to concentration camps but miraculously survived. His father was in his 80s when released but died a few days after returning home. His wife – Hana’s mother – was in Ravensbruck.
Feierabend represented the Czechoslovak government in July 1944 at the International Financial Conference in Bretton Woods in the USA, where the post war global monetary system was designed. Having returned to Czechoslovakia at the end of the war, he refused to serve in the post-war government because of the influence of the Soviet Union and, when the Communists seized power in 1948, Feierabend again narrowly escaped arrest and fled into exile with his wife and children. The family ended up scattered across Europe and America.
Hana has three children and four grandchildren, living in Britain, Canada and the Czech Republic. After the ‘velvet revolution’ and the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989, the family finally had their property restored to them and Hana now spends several months each summer back in Prague in the home where she was born.
Ladislav Feierabend wrote his memoirs which were published in three volumes in Czech. Hana herself has handwritten a private memoir in English for her children and grandchildren. It is an amazing story.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
Should Ed Miliband be replaced by Frances O’Grady as Leader of the Labour Party?
June 8th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
My good friend Eric Lee thinks so. I believe his case is fantasy politics – there is no chance and no need.
You can see his case and my answer here.
Feel free to comment on Eric’s blog or mine or both.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
Some interesting facts and figures about the world’s 7,000 languages – and how we’re losing languages fast
June 8th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
- Around 7,000 languages are spoken in the world, 90% of which are used by fewer than 100,000 people.
- Languages are grouped into families that share a common ancestry. English is related to German and Dutch, and they are all part of the Indo-European family of languages. Romance languages, which include French, Spanish and Italian, come from Latin.
- 2,200 of the world’s languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has 260.
- The world’s most widely spoken languages by number of native speakers and as a second language are: Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French.
- Some of the oldest languages known include Sanskrit, Sumerian, Hebrew and Basque.
- Around 2,500 languages are at risk of extinction. One-quarter of the world’s languages are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people.
- The United Nations uses six official languages to conduct business: English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Arabic.
- Communities isolated from each other because of mountainous geography sometimes develop multiple languages. Papua New Guinea has 832 different languages. In Mexico, there are 68 different indigenous languages, further subdivided into 364 variations.
- At least half of the world’s population are bilingual or plurilingual. While there are “perfect bilinguals”, who speak two languages equally well, most bilinguals do not.
- South Africa has 11 official languages – the most for a single country.
- The pope tweets in nine languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, Arabic, Portuguese and Latin.
Those facts are taken from an article in today’s Observer” newspaper which explains how one in four of the world’s 7,000 spoken tongues is now at risk of falling silent for ever as the threat to cultural biodiversity grows.
On my web site, you can find:
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
The seven digital deadly sins.
June 7th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Find out what pride, lust, greed, gluttony, envy, wrath and sloth mean in the digital world – and cast judgment on the guilty.
Check it out here.
Posted in Internet | Comments (0)
Eight lessons on the use of social media
June 7th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Do you use social media? Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn …
Well, Tom Phillips who is a senior writer at Buzzfeed, has some lessons for us social media types which you can check out here.
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My first experience of a webinar: talking about a water company’s prices and performance
June 6th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Ever heard of a webinar?
A webinar is an online event that is hosted by a company and broadcasts to individuals through their computers via the Internet. A webinar allows a presenter/speaker from the hosting company to share PowerPoint presentations (or other multimedia content) with audiences that can be located anywhere.
A webinar also allows the hosting company to interact with the audience. The audience can ask the presenter/speaker, who is leading the webinar, questions in real-time through an instant messaging tool.
This week, I took part in my first webinar in my capacity as the independent Chair of the Customer Challenge Group at South East Water which supplies drinking water to 2.1 million customers in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire.
The event was ably facilitated by Jane McLaughlin, a PR professional with a lovely Edinburgh accent, with me giving a PowerPoint presentation, commenting on polls of the participants, and answering questions from the participants. Jane and I sat in an office in the company”s head office in the delightfully-named town of Snodland, while the 14 customers who took part sat at home in front of their computers.
The audio was one way: from Jane and me to the customers. The text was one-way: questions from the customers to me. It only lasted three-quarters of an hour, but we covered a lot of ground and I found it intense but fun. Certainly I commend South East Water for trying a new approach to engage customers in an interactive way and hope that the company will develop this approach further.
You can check out how the webinar looked and sounded here.
Posted in Consumer matters, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
The 70th anniversary of D-Day: remembering how it happened and the price that was paid
June 6th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
The D-Day landings at Normandy on 6 June 1944 was the largest maritime invasion in world history. It was a success but at a heavy cost in lives.
The “Mirror” newspaper has a summary of the timeline of the invasion and a map showing the locations of the attack and the death toll at each beachhead – see here.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
Is Britain still really a Christian country? And, if not, how can we be good?
June 5th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
According to the research by Peter Brierley, whose second edition of “UK Church Statistics” is due to be published soon, in 2013, there were 5.4 million church members in the UK, a mere 10% of the adult population, taken as 15 and over, 300,000 fewer than five years previously in 2008, when it was 12%. This low proportion is likely to continue to decline at about the same rate for the next 12 years, reaching 9% by 2020 and a mere 8% by 2025, if present trends continue.
Further information here.
Does this decline in Christian church membership matter? Can one be good if one is not religious? I think so, as I have argued in this short essay.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)