Why men lose their friends – and how they can make more

June 2nd, 2023 by Roger Darlington

“In the UK, research by the Movember Foundation in 2018 found 27% of men said they had no close friends at all. They also found that friendships become less strong as men get older, with 22% of men aged 55 and over saying they never see their friends. It would seem there is, for men at least, a friendship recession.”

But:

“… studies have shown, the single biggest predictor of our psychological health and wellbeing, our physical health and wellbeing, and even how much longer we’re going to live, is the number of close friendships and family relationships we have.”
These are quotes from an interesting article on male friendships, especially in later life. The article explains why so many men have few meaningful friendships, but why it’s so important that they have such friendships.

Now I’m a man who is 75 this month. I don’t support a football team; I don’t play golf; I don’t go to pubs. By rights, I shouldn’t have any close friends. But I do and I know that they’re very important to my mental and physical health. However, most of these friends are women because I find that they understand better than men the importance of strong social networks and are more willing to invest the time in them.

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A review of the odd film “Harold And Maude”

May 30th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

I was chatting with an American friend and conversation turned to funerals. He mentioned a film from half a century ago – it was released in 1971 – that, in spite of being something of a film buff, I’d never heard of, let alone seen – so I looked it up.

Harold (Bud Cort) is a young man in his late teens who has had a privileged but dysfunctional life which has resulted in him having a passion for (fake) suicide, an obsession with (yes) funerals and (understandably) a depressed personality.

At one of these funerals, he meets Maude (Ruth Gordon), a woman coming up to 80 who is even more eccentric than him but has an infectious exuberance for life. Somehow this movie manages to be both a black comedy and a love story with a life-affirming message.

When it was released, “Harold And Maude” was a critical and commercial flop, but it seems that, over the years, it has become something of a cult work. It’s certainly a curio. You might like to give it a go.

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What is colour and is yours the same as mine?

May 30th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

“For a long time, people believed that colours were objective, physical properties of objects or of the light that bounced off them. Even today, science teachers regale their students with stories about Isaac Newton and his prism experiment, telling them how different wavelengths of light produce the rainbow of hues around us.

But this theory isn’t really true. Different wavelengths of light do exist independently of us but they only become colours inside our bodies. Colour is ultimately a neurological process whereby photons are detected by light-sensitive cells in our eyes, transformed into electrical signals and sent to our brain, where, in a series of complex calculations, our visual cortex converts them into “colour”.

Most experts now agree that colour, as commonly understood, doesn’t inhabit the physical world at all but exists in the eyes or minds of its beholders. They argue that if a tree fell in a forest and no one was there to see it, its leaves would be colourless – and so would everything else. To put it another way: there is no such thing as colour; there are only the people who perceive it.”

This is a quote from a fascinating article about how we perceive colour. Indeed the piece comes to the conclusion that there is no such thing as (objective) colour. It seems that colour is in the eyes of the beholder.

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A review of the classic “Three Colours” film trilogy

May 28th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

“Three Colours: Blue” (1993)

This was the first of a trilogy of films directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski and written by him and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Taking their titles from the colours of the French flag and loosely inspired by the French national motto of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, “Blue” represented liberty and is regarded as a classic. Set in Paris, the work is in the French language. Among the colour references, there is a sparkling glass hanging ornament.

Slow and portentous, this is a moving and poignant work. As Julie who loses her famous composer husband and young daughter in a car accident, Juliette Binoche is rarely off the screen and gives a wonderful performance. Music is central to her life and is used very effectively in the storyline. She proves to be an enigma, who herself has a discovery, and the main themes are those of loss, grief, and reconciliation.

“Three Colours: White” (1994)

This was the second of a trilogy of films directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski and written by him and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Taking their titles from the colours of the French flag and loosely inspired by the French national motto of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, “White ” represented equality and, while interesting, is not regarded as highly as “Blue” and “Red” which are genuine classics. Set predominantly in Warsaw, the work is mainly in the Polish language. Among the colour references, there is a recurring scene of a wedding.

“White” is very different in tone from “Blue” and “Red”. It is a black comedy with an element of romance that satirises the corruption of post-communist Poland where anything can be bought (even a body). Another difference is that the main character is male: Zbigniew Zamachowski as Karol, initially a simple-minded soul who finds that he is ready to do anything to win back his ex-wife (Julie Delpy).

“Three Colours: Red” (1994)

This was the third of a trilogy of films directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski and written by him and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Taking their titles from the colours of the French flag and loosely inspired by the French national motto of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, “Red” represented fraternity and is regarded as a classic. Set in Geneva, the work is in the French language. Among the colour references, there is a huge billboard advertisement for a brand of chewing gum.

There are two male/female interactions here, one intergenerational and non-sexual and the other more conventional and romantic, and the narrative intersects the two in an immensely moving and somewhat mystical manner. Valentine (Irène Jacob) is a good-natured young model and Joseph (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a cynical retired judge brought together by an injured dog and a spot of spying and this unlikely couple change each other’s lives in ways that are unpredictable.

Note 1: Narratively there are only very small overlaps between the three films. In “Blue”, we briefly see a court scene featuring two of the main characters who will be in “White”. The very ending of “Red” has an incident involving the main characters of all three films.

Note 2: Each of the three films has a scene in which an elderly person attempts to place a bottle in a glass recycling bank. In the last film, the old person is helped by the lead character.

Note 3: Kieślowski announced his retirement from filmmaking after the premiere of “Red”. He died two years later.

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“Roger And (Not) Out” – a memoir of my first 75 years

May 27th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

For the last nine months, I’ve had a major project: I wanted to produce a memoir in time for my 75th birthday on 25 June 2023. And I’ve done it. It was published this weekend.

For family and friends who will be attending my birthday celebration, a free, signed copy of the memoir will be given to you at the event. For everyone else, you can purchase a copy from Amazon at a very reasonable price.

I hope that you will find the memoir both informative and entertaining. If you like it, please post a short review. Thanks in advance.

You can buy “Roger And (Not) Out” here.

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A review of the 1989 classic movie “Do The Right Thing”

May 25th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

African-American Spike Lee is absolutely an auteur. In this, his most seminal film, he is writer, producer and director and takes the role of the viewpoint character.

Set on one, blisteringly hot day in Brooklyn, we follow Lee’s Mookie, a 25 year old delivery man for a local pizzeria run by an Italian-American family headed by Sal (Danny Aiello). From the very beginning with a hard-hitting song from Public Enemy, this is a film shaped by rap music and informed by righteous anger and the tension builds to an explosive and tragic climax. Yet there is humour and kindness too.

We are introduced to a whole range of colourful – in both sense of the word – men, women and youngsters who interact in a variety of ways that illustrate different views on race, religion and human nature. The background is literally the most colourful feature of the film with a a vibrant use of pigments from the palette.

The result is an immensely powerful and memorable work. Some have seen it as a ‘call to arms’ but Lee makes in clear, especially in his end quotes from Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, that ‘the right thing’ is to reject violence.

If you view the film on television, you might want to use the subtitles because the dialogue is fast and vernacular. Also be warned that a good deal of racist language is used and a particular four-letter word is almost ubiquitous.

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Is Thursday the new Friday?

May 25th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

I finally retired shortly before the Covid pandemic hit us, so I have no current experience of the workplace. However, I live in central London so I see a lot of office workers and I talk to a lot of people in hospitality.

It seems to me that, since the ‘end’ of Covid, many people have adopted a blended work pattern with several days in the office and several days working at home. There appears to be a common pattern of working in the office on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and working from home Monday and Friday to make a long ‘weekend’.

This means that, from the point of view of the hospitality trade, Thursday has become the new Friday with Thursday evening being the peak time for visits to the pub and the restaurant.

What I see in central London appears to be confirmed by this article which states:

“Office workers in central London are spending on average 2.3 days a week in the workplace, according to a report that warns against a wholesale switch to working from home.

The thinktank Centre for Cities carried out polling of office workers in the capital and found they were spending 59% of the time in their workplace compared with pre-Covid levels.

The study showed the most common working pattern was two days a week, accounting for 31% of respondents. Almost half of workers were in the office more often than that, however – three, four or five days a week.”

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Does Artificial Intelligence need a global regulator?

May 24th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

The leaders of the ChatGPT developer OpenAI have called for the regulation of “superintelligent” AIs, arguing that an equivalent to the International Atomic Energy Agency is needed to protect humanity from the risk of accidentally creating something with the power to destroy it.

In a short note published to the company’s website, co-founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever and the chief executive, Sam Altman, call for an international regulator to begin working on how to “inspect systems, require audits, test for compliance with safety standards, [and] place restrictions on degrees of deployment and levels of security” in order to reduce the “existential risk” such systems could pose.

You can read the company’s short statement here. We need to move fast.

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What are the strengths and weaknesses of humans as a species?

May 23rd, 2023 by Roger Darlington

“Humans are an exquisitely intelligent and capable species of ape. Our physiology has been fine-tuned for efficient long-distance running; our hands are elegantly dextrous for manipulating and making; and our throats and mouths give us astonishing control over the sounds we make. We are virtuoso communicators, able to convey everything from physical instructions to abstract concepts, and to coordinate ourselves in teams and communities. We learn from each other, from our parents and peers, so new generations don’t have to start from scratch. But we’re also deeply flawed, physically and mentally. In many ways, humans just don’t work well.

We’re also riddled with defects in our biochemistry and DNA – data-corrupted genes that no longer work – which means, for instance, that we must eat a diet more varied than almost any other animal to obtain the nutrients we need to survive. And our brains, far from being perfectly rational thinking machines, are full of cognitive glitches and bugs. We’re also prone to addictions that drive compulsive behaviour, sometimes along self-destructive paths.”

These are the opening paragraphs of a long read article in the “Guardian” on human use of recreational drugs with particular reference to the historic opium trade in China.

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A review of “All Quiet on The Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque

May 18th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

Having seen both the American (1930) and German (2022) film versions of this famous novel, I thought that it was time to read the original work (1929) in an excellent English translation (1994) by Brian Murdoch.

The novel contains less narrative but more reflection than the films and has lost none of its power and punch. Yet the book ends not with a bang but a whimper: “there was nothing new to report on the western front”. Indeed the title that we all know came from an English translation in 1929 which Murdoch has chosen to keep because it has “justly become part of the English language”, but he explains that a more literal translation of Remarque’s German title would be “Nothing new on the western front”.

The viewpoint is that of 19 year old student volunteer Paul Bäumer. Remarque describes the debilitation of lack of food, water and sleep, the ubiquity of rats and lice, and even the degradation of excretion. He presents a brutally graphic description of how bodies can be ripped apart in different ways by shells, shrapnel and snipers. But he highlights “the best thing that the war produced – comradeship in arms” and asserts that “you can cope with all the horror as long as you simply duck thinking about it – but it will kill you if you try to come to terms with it”.

After the publication of his stunning novel, Remarque was exiled from Nazi Germany and deprived of his citizenship, but today all German school children study his writing and honour his name.

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