A male politician to watch: America’s Cory Booker
August 25th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Could Cory Booker be a future President of the United States?
Check out this profile of the Democratic Mayor of Newark.
I spotted Barack Obama as Presidential material four years before he entered the White House, as I have blogged here.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
A female politician to watch: Britain’s Stella Creasy
August 25th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Could Stella Creasy be a future Leader of the British Labour Party?
Check out this profile of the Member of Parliament for Walthamstow.
I first spotted her two and a half years ago at this event.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
Is your place of work like this … or like that?
August 24th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Check out this short video.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
The growing potholes on the information superhighway
August 24th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
On 14 August, there was a the two-hour failure of the New York Times website , during which it resorted to publishing articles on its Facebook page. While a malicious attack was initially suspected, the problem was caused simply by a scheduled system maintenance.
On the same day, Microsoft customers began to report email failures. The outage was traced to problems with the Exchange ActiveSync service which serves email to many of the world’s smartphones. When Exchange hit a glitch, the sheer volume of phones trying to connect triggered a ripple effect that took three days to control.
On 16 August, many of Google’s websites, from email to YouTube to its core search engine, suffered a rare four-minute global meltdown. The episode, the cause of which Google has not explained publicly, served to illustrate the sheer volume of traffic its servers process. During its outage, one monitor put the drop in global internet traffic at 40%.
On 19 August, Amazon’s North American retail site went down for about 49 minutes, with visitors greeted with the word “Oops”. No explanation was given, but one estimate by Forbes put the cost to Amazon at nearly $2m in lost sales.
On 22 August, Apple’s iCloud suffered a blackout that affected a small number of its customers but lasted 11 hours. Storing the collections of photos, music, documents and address books that would once have been kept on shelves at home, iCloud now has 300 million users.
On the same day, there was a three-hour network shutdown that paralysed the operation of the Nasdaq stock market in New York on Thursday, on what should have been a quiet day of routine share trading on the exchange.
In this news piece, Jaron Lanier, the author and inventor of the concept of virtual reality, warns that digital infrastructure is moving beyond human control:
“When you try to achieve great scale with automation and the automation exceeds the boundaries of human oversight, there is going to be failure. That goes for governments, for consumer companies, for Google, or a big insurance company. It is infuriating because it is driven by unreasonable greed. In many cases, the systems that tend to fail, fail because of an attempt to make them run automatically with a minimal amount of human oversight.”
Posted in Internet | Comments (0)
Word of the day: quincunx
August 23rd, 2013 by Roger Darlington
It is the arrangement of five objects – such as trees – in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
I’d never come across the word before this week when it was ‘word of the day’ on the online dictionary I use on my iPhone.
You have to be careful how you say it and write it.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Who was the most destructive man of the early 20th century?
August 22nd, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I have spent recent weeks ploughing through the 600-page “A History Of The World” by Andrew Marr and I’ve now reached the early part of the 20th century. He suggests that “the most destructive man of his generation” is someone you’ve never heard of: a German bureaucrat called Arthur Zimmerman.
Marr writes:
“He was responsible for drawing America into the First World War [by proposing that Mexico invaded the south of the USA] , and thus for the ruinous postwar peace treaties dominated by President Woodrow Wilson [which directly led to the Second World War]. He formented the Irish Easter Rsing, with its tragically bloody consequences. He tried to have Islamic jihad against the British declared across the Middle East (but luckily failed). And he was also a key player in the German decision to send the revolutionary leader Lenin in a sealed train to Russia in order to make things worse there. That was undoubtedly a kind of success. Without the arrival of Lenin it is far less likely that his minority Bolsheviks would have been able to hijack the anti-Czarist revolution and create the Soviet state [which arguably led eventiually to the Cold War]. It is quite a charge sheet”.
Especially for someone unknown outside students of history.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
The top 10 jokes at the Edinburgh Fringe 2013
August 21st, 2013 by Roger Darlington
One-liners to make you laugh here
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)
Another lovely day with my granddaughter Catrin
August 21st, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Every few months, I like to see my young friend Jen with her son James who is almost exactly the same age as my granddaughter Catrin (they are both just over two and a half). This week, I wanted Catrin to join us and her parents allowed me to keep her out of nursery for the day.
I was at my son’s flat at 9 am so that he could go off to work (my daughter-in-law had already left), so Catrin & I played for a while – including her game where she climbs up me – before taking the London Underground to meet Jen & James at 10.30 am. The London Underground is the oldest in the world and has so many steps and escalators that it is not the friendliest public transport system for those with a young child or a disability, but people were always on hand to help.
We all met at the entrance to the Science Museum and began with refreshments in one of the cafes. Then we spent lots of time in the a basement section of the museum called The Garden which has all sorts of interactive play for children aged 3-6. The most popular feature is a water area which Catrin & James loved.
Next we strolled over the road to the Victoria & Albert Museum. The museum has a huge central courtyard with a large pool in which children can paddle and splash. Catrin & James got totally soaked before being changed for lunch in the open air of the courtyard.
Finally we crossed Exhibition Road again to visit the forecourt of the Natural History Museum. Here we found an ice cream van, so that we could all indulge in an ice cream cornet with chocolate flake. This was especially welcome because it was such a pleasantly warm summer day.
Catrin & James loved being together: they held hands, touched faces, shared food, laughed and shrieked, and were so well-behaved – as my grandma would have put it “as good as gold”. James does not have a midday sleep these days, but Catrin does at nursery. On this occasion, however, she was far too excited to sleep – until we left Jen & James about 4 pm and boarded an Underground train. Then she was out like a light and did not resurface for an amazing two and a half hours. Obviously all this excitement is tiring.
Rich & Emily were home around 7 pm so I left Catrin with them after we had spent a really lovely 10 hours together. At night, I slept like a log.
James & Catrin don waterproof jackets
for the wet part of the Science Museum kids section
Angelic Catrin looks skywards
before giving her Hippo a ride
Catrin has a splashing time
at the Victoria & Albert Museum
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
The future of humankind according to science fiction films
August 20th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Check out this fun infographic.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Congratulations to Elie Goulding on her first No 1 single
August 19th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
As I explained in this posting, early this year I bought and enjoyed the second CD from Ellie Goulding called “Halcyon”. Subsequently I obtained her first CD called “Lights”. I think that Goulding is a talented and accomplished singer/songwriter with a distinctive voice.
I was pleased by the news today that she has achieved her first number one single. It’s called “Burn” ,but it’s only avaible on the de luxe version of “Halcyon”, so I’ve just downloaded it from iTunes onto my iPhone and iPad. It’s really good. Check it out here:
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)