Barack Obama’s complete Nelson Mandela memorial speech
December 11th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (1)
The 31st “How To …” guide on my web site
December 10th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
A popular section of my web site is the one called Life Skills. It now has 31 items of advice on “How To …” do all sorts of things and you can access them all here.
The very latest item – which I have just composed – is “How To Get a Good Night’s Sleep”. Check it out here.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
A review of the film “This Is 40”
December 9th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Remember the comedy “Knocked Up” written and directed by Judd Apatow? Well, he and some of his characters are back in this painfully funny movie which I’ve reviewed here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Why is gold so valuable?
December 8th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I don’t possess any gold. Even my wedding ring is white gold. But many people love gold and for centuries it has been a source of value to so much of humankind.
On the BBC web site, Justin Rowlatt offers this explanation for the metal’s appeal.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
Are men really from Mars? Are women really from Venus?
December 8th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Or are both genders shaped by their cultural experiences on planet Earth?
“Yes, men and women probably do have differently wired brains, but there is little convincing evidence to suggest these variations are caused by anything other than cultural factors. Males develop improved spatial skills not because of an innate superiority but because they are expected and encouraged to be strong at sport, which requires expertise at catching and throwing. Similarly, it is anticipated that girls will be more emotional and talkative, and so their verbal skills are emphasised by teachers and parents. As the years pass, these different lifestyles produce variations in brain wiring – which is a lot more plastic than most biological determinists realise.”
This is an extract from an article by Robin McKie in today’s “Observer” newspaper commenting on research which has featured in other media this week.
Posted in Cultural issues, Science & technology | Comments (1)
Can you send an e-mail? Then you’re cleverer than a Nobel Prize winner.
December 7th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
He’s never sent an e-mail or even browsed the web. He’s never made a mobile call and he doesn’t own a television.
Yet he has recently won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his prediction of the existence of the Higgs boson particle.
He is the brilliant but eccentric scientist Peter Higgs. See an interview with Higgs here.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (1)
Madiba, we thank you for inspiring us
December 6th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Although expected for so long, the news is still so sad. In my lifetime, I have never known the death of anyone to affect so many people so deeply as the loss of Nelson Mandela.
On 11 June 1988, Vee and I attended a concert in (the old) Wembley Stadium in London to mark Mandela’s 70th birthday and to call for his release from prison.
In 2004, during a holiday in South Africa, we visited Robben Island and saw the prison cell occupied for so long by Mandela [my account here]. It was at the prison that I bought his autobiography “Long Walk To Freedom” [my review here] which has now been turned into a film which is just about to go on general release.
Only once did I have the opportunity to see Nelson Mandela but I made sure that I took it. It was on 3 February 2005 in London’s Trafalgar Square when he was visiting the UK to put pressure on the forthcoming G7 summit to Make Poverty History. I wrote in my diary:
“He is almost 88 and he was frail, but I wanted to see the man I most admire on the planet before he leaves us all.”
For decades now, Mandela has been a kind of secular saint. I always knew that, once he died, the revisionism would start because all heroes are flawed. In fact, the criticisms have commenced already. But, for a few days at least, can we just mourn his loss and treasure his memory.
Posted in My life & thoughts, World current affairs | Comments (1)
An evening with the film critic Mark Kermode
December 5th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
This week, I went to hear a talk by the “Observer” film critic Mark Kermode.
The venue was the “Phoenix” cinema in East Finchely in London. This was Mark’s local cinema when we grew up. It has recently celebrated its 100th anniversary and claims to be the longest running cinema in the country. Ironically, when I first moved down from Manchetsre to London, I lived behind the cinema – then called the “Rex” – and went to it quite often.
Mark was there to promote his new book, “Hatchet Job”, and many of the themes and the anecdotes in his totally unscripted and very amusing talk come from the book. He has now spent around a quarter of a century as a film critic and sees around 13 films a week. He claimed that he praises as many films as he disparages, but insisted that readers (and directors) always remember his critical reviews. He was clear, however, that bad reviews had little impact on a film’s performance at the box office.
Mark spoke for almost an hour and then answered questions for almost another hour. In that time, he referenced lots of films and, although I see quite a lot films myself, I had only seen about half of the ones he mentioned (he enjoys horror movies and I don’t). Films he spoke of warmly included “Blade Runner”, “The Shawshank Redemption”, the “Twilight” movies, “Gravity” and “Saving Mr Banks”. He hated “Breaking The Waves”.
Posted in Cultural issues, My life & thoughts | Comments (2)
As President Obama attacks the inequality of wealth in America, what is the size of the problem and the scale of the injustice?
December 5th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
How do children in your country do at maths, reading and science?
December 4th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Every three years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conducts its Programme for Internenational Student Achievement (PISA) and it has just published the results for 2012. The testing of 15 year olds is in mathematics, reading and science and this time 65 countries and regions took part.
How did the UK do? We came 21st for science, 23rd for reading and 26th for maths. When the results for the UK were broken down by nation, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland showed results that were very similar. But Wales dipped further down compared to 2009, dropping from the equivalent of 20th in science to 36th and from 27th in reading to 41st.
At least the UK did better than better than the USA which had the humiliation of seeing its performance in reading, maths and science surpassed by Vietnam, which entered PISA for the first time.
You can find the UK results for 2009 and 2012 and the 2012 results of the 34 OECD countries here.
You can access the full OECD report and results here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (1)