The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (1): two book reviews

September 8th, 2016 by Roger Darlington

This weekend sees the release in Britain of the film “Anthropoid” which tells the true story of the assassination of the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich in Czechoslovakia in 1942. I’ll certainly been going to see it. But first I want to revisit an earlier film on the same subject: it was called “Operation: Daybreak” and issued in 1975.

On several occasions, I have visited the church in Prague where the parachutists who carried out the assassination were besieged by the Germans. Also I have read quite a lot about the operation, especially in the books “The Killing Of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich” by Callum MacDonald [my review here] and “HHhH” by Laurent Binet [my review here].

If you’re interested in the assassination and its consequences and especially if you think you might see the new film, you might like to read my book reviews.

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Consumer empowerment in the digital economy

September 7th, 2016 by Roger Darlington

The German government has committed to using their presidency of the G20 in 2017 to address the issue of consumer empowerment in the digital economy. Consumers International, the international federation of consumer organisations, and its German Member organisation (VZBV) are leading partners in the initiative.

One of the key activities that the German government is funding is a piece of research and polling that will form a major input into the G20 discussions. This research will be instrumental in helping shape the focus and approach of the G20 initiative.

The research will consist of two parts:
– An indicator study that highlights the key areas where governments can take action to support consumers in the digital age. This will be based on desk research and interviews with CI members and other stakeholders.
– International polling in six G20 countries to understand consumers’ perspectives on issues of consumer empowerment and protection (the proposed countries are Argentina, China, Germany, France, South Africa and the United States).

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Remembering the Prague Uprising of 1945

September 6th, 2016 by Roger Darlington

I’ve just returned from a visit – my 27th in almost three decades – to Prague. The occasion this time was a wedding of some dear young friends and but, on the last day, I took the opportunity to go on a two-hour walking tour with a World War Two theme.

A major part of the tour was an account of the Prague Uprising of 5-8 May 1945. Hitler’s Germany was almost totally defeated but the Czech capital was still under German control. The Soviet army was a short way to the east but halted when the Czechs rose up against their occupiers because Stalin did not want to support a rising by democrats (the same thing happened in Warsaw in 1944). The American army in the west was even closer and Patton wanted to liberate Prague but Eisenhower insisted that the Allied powers had agreed that the Soviets would take the city.

So, for four days, local Czech forces – poorly armed – battled against some crack German forces. On 9 May, the Soviet Army formally liberated the city but, for all practical purposes, the Czechs has done the job themselves. Over the four days of fighting, some 1,500 Czechs lost their lives, while around 700 Germans were killed. The headquarters of the uprising was in the Old Town Hall which was 80% destroyed by German shelling and our tour concluded in the tunnels under the remainer of the building.

Incidentally the military leader of the uprising was General Karel Kuttelwascher who was a distant relative of Vee’s father of the same name.

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Another visit to the beautiful city of Prague

September 2nd, 2016 by Roger Darlington

i blog so regularly on NightHawk that, if I miss a couple of days, some of my faithful readers worry that I might have been kidnapped. So this is a short note to explain that I’m making a short visit to Prague and won’t be blogging much For a few days.

Over the last three decades, I’ve visited this wonderful city, where I have friends as close as family, many times and this is in fact my 27th visit. This trip is especially joyous because I came for the wedding yesterday of my dear Czech friend Kaca to her New Zealand beloved Hamish.

It was a very informal event with the actual ceremony at 3 pm taking mere minutes in the open air in blazing sunshine. But the fun went on until midnight. Hamish had compiled a great soundtrack of upbeat music and, once all the children had done, we danced – yes, dear reader, I danced – until the place closed at 12.

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A review of the Spanish film “Julieta”

August 31st, 2016 by Roger Darlington

You may be reluctant to see sub-titled films but you should make an exception for the latest work from Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. “Julieta” is an admirable work and you can read my review here.

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A review of the Quentin Tarantino film “The Hateful Eight”

August 30th, 2016 by Roger Darlington

This is a slow-burning movie but it has many of Tarantino’s trademarks including fine acting, clever dialogue and lots of blood. Check out my review of “The Hateful Eight” here.

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Did you know that the United States has a Flag Code?

August 29th, 2016 by Roger Darlington

I’d always thought that the practice of Americans in placing their right hand over their heart for the raising of the flag and the singing of the anthem was simply tradition. But, as this piece from the BBC site explains, there is actually a Flag Code.

The code was first drawn up only in 1923, under the auspices of the American Legion, and only became law, when the USA was at war, in 1942. It seems that the code is never enforced, however, and there is no punishment for breaching it.

Amazingly the full Flag Code runs to 14 pages and you can check out the text here.

All this reminds me of my visit to Fort McHenry near Baltimore, the location for the crafting of the US anthem ‘The Star-Spangled Banner” – check out my short account here.

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Word of the day: femtosecond

August 28th, 2016 by Roger Darlington

This is an unimaginably small unit of time. One femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second.

I came across the term in an obituary of the Nobel prize-winning scientist Ahmed Zewail which opens as follows:

“Before 1990, all students of chemistry and adjacent sciences were taught that it was impossible to determine the precise atomic rearrangements that occurred during the course of any chemical reaction at the instant when some chemical bonds are ruptured and others formed. The timescale for such events is around femtoseconds, and one femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second.

The major contribution made by Ahmed Zewail, who has died aged 70, was to break through this barrier. At the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), he developed ultrafast lasers which delivered pulses of femtosecond duration, thus making it possible to “photograph” the fundamental process of bond rupture and bond formation. For this outstanding work, he was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1999.”

Posted in Cultural issues, Science & technology | Comments (0)

The day they invented the Internet

August 27th, 2016 by Roger Darlington

“If you had walked into Rossotti’s beer garden on 27 August 1976, you would have seen the following: seven men and one woman at a table, hovering around a computer terminal, the woman typing. A pair of cables ran from the terminal to the parking lot, disappearing into a big grey van.

Inside the van were machines that transformed the words being typed on the terminal into packets of data. An antenna on the van’s roof then transmitted these packets as radio signals. These signals radiated through the air to a repeater on a nearby mountain top, where they were amplified and rebroadcast. With this extra boost, they could make it all the way to Menlo Park, where an antenna at an office building received them.

It was here that the real magic began. Inside the office building, the incoming packets passed seamlessly from one network to another: from the packet radio network to Arpanet.”

This is an extract from an article published in the “Guardian” six weeks ago describing a pivotal point in the evolution of the Internet – arguably the day it was invented 40 years ago today.

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