Still 16,300 nuclear warheads, so world a long way from nuclear disarmament
June 17th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
All five legally recognised nuclear-weapons states – China, France, Russia, Britain and the US – are deploying new nuclear weapon delivery systems or have announced programmes to do so, according to an authoritative study.
India and Pakistan are also developing new systems capable of delivering nuclear weapons and are expanding their capacities to produce fissile material for military purposes. And there is an emerging consensus in the expert community that North Korea has produced a small number of nuclear weapons, as distinct from rudimentary nuclear explosive devices.
These are the conclusions of the latest annual survey by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), which says nine states – the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – possess a total of approximately 4,000 operational nuclear weapons.
More information here.
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A little look at the Big Bang
June 16th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
This weekend, I went on a one-day course at London’s City Lit to study the Big Bang with tutor Roger O’Brien. I was pleased that I have viewed a number of television programmes and read a few books [the most recent reviewed here] on the subject, because it is quite mind-boggling.
The tutor began by asking us: what is the most fundamental cosmological observation ever made? None of us came up with his answer: it gets dark at night. As he put it, this means that either the sun is the only strong source of light and heat or that all the other sources are immensely distant.
He then went on to explain how we know that these other suns or stars, and the galaxies that they make up, are not just distant but becoming more so. This is called red shift. Spectrum analysis of stars shows a shift towards the red end of the spectrum demonstrating that the star is moving away from us. As he put it, if the universe is expanding, it must previously have been smaller.
Next he explained the concept of isotropy which is the cosmological principle. On the largest scale, the universe looks very similar in all directions. This is further evidence for a Big Bang. Cooling from the Big Bang leads to what is called Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) and CMBR has now been detected, providing still further evidence off the Big Bang explanation.
The statistics are stunning. The period of the Big Bang known as inflation lasted an unbelievable fraction of a second – from 10 to the power of minus 35 to ten to the power of minus 32; since then, the universe has been expanding for around 13.8 billion years; and the process has created approximately 10 to the power of 24 stars (that’s a 1 followed by twenty-four zeros).
The tutor did not even speculate how the Big Bang actually started but he did explore theories about what might happen to the universe in the eons ahead.
Roger O’Brien is a very good teacher, clear and compelling, but he is somewhat sardonic and sceptical. For a long time, he was a supporter of the steady state view of the universe propagated by Fred Hoyle who coined the term Big Bang as a term of derision. Roger confessed that he does not really like the Big Bang theory but accepts that the evidence for it is now overwhelming. He questions the validity of the findings of primordial gravity waves by the Bicep2 project; he is not convinced that dark matter exists; he doubts the existence of worm holes; and he has no time for parallel or multiple universes.
So much to think about that my brain almost had a Big Bang,
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Reviewing Hollywood movies through the prism of genre
June 15th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
This weekend, I went on a one-day course at London’s City Lit to study Hollywood movies with tutor Jon Wisbey. We used the analytical tool of genre which could be described as a type of story or narrative.
There are broad genres like the western, the musical. the comedy, the action adventure, but there are countless ways of slicing and dicing genre. Our tutor referred us to an industry source that uses over 200 genres – see list with top-grossing instances here. And, of course, there are plenty of movies that mix genres – a recent classic being “Cloud Atlas”.
A major feature of the course was to look at how genres have changed in popularity over the years and how the same genre has been treated differently over time.
So genres like the melodrama, the western, the musical and the gangster movie, which were so popular in the 1930s and 1940s, have almost gone now. But sci-fi, fantasy and children’s films have grown massively in output and box office success. Meanwhile a genre like comedy has remained permanently popular, notably the romantic comedy.
Out tutor showed is a number of film clips and encouraged us to discuss how the same genre has been treated very differently in classic Hollywood, New Hollywood and modern times:
- For gangster movies, we looked at clips of “White Heat”, “Bonnie And Clyde” and “Reservoir Dogs”.
- For westerns, we looked at clips of “Stagecoach” and “Meek’s Cutoff”.
- For romantic comedies, we looked at clips of “The Awful Truth” and “Friends With Benefits”.
- For fantasy films, we looked at clips of “Frankenstein”, “Star Wars” and “Forrest Gump”.
I have seen seven of these 10 films.
I’m a great believer in lifelong learning and I always learn things on these courses. Today I learned the difference between diegetic sound and non-diegetic sound.
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A review of the new blockbuster movie “Edge Of Tomorrow”
June 14th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
If you like science fiction action movies (and I do), you’ll enjoy the latest Tom Cruise film “Edge Of Tomorrow” which will remind you of no end of other films. You can read my review here.
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What now for the Kurds of Iraq?
June 13th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
The speed of events in Iraq is astonishing and frightening. The actions of the Shia government in Baghdad have assisted the insurgents in the Sunni-dominated north of the country. Meanwhile the Kurds in the largely autonomous north-east have moved quickly to take over control of Kirkuk.
Some commentators have blamed “Western policy” for the present catastrophe, but my friend Gary Kent – who has visited Kurdish Iraq many times – has written on his Facebook page:
“Western policy…created the disaster facing the Iraqi people.” Fine but which one? Here’s a list of some options: Sykes-Picot [Agreement of 1916]; forcing the Kurds into Iraq; treating them like dispensable pawns in the Cold War; selling them out in 1975; siding with Saddam against the Kurds and Iran; ignoring or denying Halabja; liberating Kuwait but leaving Saddam in power; failure to enforce UN resolutions for 12 years; saving the Kurds with the no-fly zone; seeking the disbandment of the Peshmerga in 2003 and forcing the Kurds to leave Kirkuk; botched occupation; the surge that helped avert full-scale civil war; premature withdrawal of US forces in 2011; failure to uphold and promote federalism; non-intervention in Syria which allowed Assad to strengthen his grip; failure to punish his use of chemical weapons; failure to support moderate Syrian opposition.
All political problems have history and the problems of the Middle East have more of it than most.
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The growing polarisation of American politics
June 13th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
My American friends have long insisted to me that political opinion in the USA is more divided than at any time they can remember – and they are right.
As part of a year-long study of polarisation, the Pew Research Center has conducted the largest political survey in its history – a poll of more than 10,000 adults between January and March of this year. It finds that Republicans and Democrats are further apart ideologically than at any point in recent history. Growing numbers of Republicans and Democrats express highly negative views of the opposing party. And to a considerable degree, polarization is reflected in the personal lives and lifestyles of those on both the right and left. The report states:
“Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines – and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive – than at any point in the last two decades. These trends manifest themselves in myriad ways, both in politics and in everyday life. And a new survey of 10,000 adults nationwide finds that these divisions are greatest among those who are the most engaged and active in the political process.
The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10% to 21%. And ideological thinking is now much more closely aligned with partisanship than in the past. As a result, ideological overlap between the two parties has diminished: Today, 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican.
Today 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican. Partisan animosity has increased substantially over the same period. In each party, the share with a highly negative view of the opposing party has more than doubled since 1994. Most of these intense partisans believe the opposing party’s policies “are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being.”
You can read the full report here and the seven key findings here.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (1)
Correlation does not equal causation
June 12th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
This is well illustratedf by these remarkable examples.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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