10 popular misconceptions of the British public
July 10th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Are crime levels rising or falling? What is the scale of benefit fraud? What proportion of the population is immigrant? What proportion of the population is Muslim?
A new survey by Ipsos MORI for the Royal Statistical Society and King’s College London shows just how wrong public opinion can be on key social issues such as crime, benefit fraud and immigration.
You can check ou the ‘top ten’ popular misconceptions here
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
My meeting with the British Member of Parliament for Kurdistan
July 8th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I’m thinking of taking a holiday in Iraq. Not immediately but perhaps in the spring. Not to Baghdad but to the Kurdish north.
So today I was at the House of Commons to see my friend Gary Kent who is the Administrator of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Kurdistan Region in Iraq and has been to Iraq 12 times.
By chance, he was able to introduce me to the only Member of Parliament with a Kurdish background. Nadhim Zawawi, who is Conservative MP for Stratford-upon-Avon and Co-Chair of the All-Party Group, was born in Baghdad to Kurdish parents who fled Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s rise to power.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
A review of the film “Before Midnight”
July 7th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
First, there was “Before Sunrise” (1995); then there was “Before Sunset” (2004); now there is “Before Midnight” – each nine years apart, each with the same directors and stars.
The three films are the best trilogy of my half decade of movie-going.
You can read my reviews of all three films here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (3)
Family birthday reunion in Leicester
July 6th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
My sister always ensures that the extended family is brought together at least once a year – usually around Christmas. This year, however, we have a summer of birthdays with a ‘0’ or a ‘5’ in the date, so today she convened an extra gathering at her home in Leicester.
The weather was brilliant. But, for Vee and me, our time on the M1 motorway was not so fun. On the way up, there was a four-car shunt which delayed us. On the way back, there was a serious accident involving several cars and a minibus, a section of the M1 was closed, and we had to divert to the M40 instead.
The celebration in Leicester brought together 26 of us related by blood or marriage. The age range was from 2 to 75 (and we had the announcement of a pregnancy).
One is 75 this summer; one (me) is 65; two are 45; one is 35; one is 30; one is 10; and one is 5. We all shared the same homemade cake but let the littlest ones blow out the candles. Much food was consumed and many photographs were taken.
Huge thanks to my wonderful sister Silvia for a splendid day.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
My latest short story: “The Storyteller Of Damascus”
July 5th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
It’s six months since I wrote a short story, but this week I crafted my 30th. It’s called “The Storyteller Of Damascus” and you can read it here.
I’ve had the story in mind since I visited Syria just over two years ago and I was prompted to write it now by the news that the death toll from the Syrian civil war is now estimated to be around 100,000.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
Will we ever find a theory of everything and will a version of string theory be the explanation?
July 4th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Is it possible to combine the theory of relativity (which explains the movement of large bodies) with quantum mechanics (which explain the action of sub-atomic particles) into a Grand Unification Theory (GUT) that would account for everything from the big bang to black holes? Currently the best bet for such a GUT or Theory of Everything (TOE) is a version of string theory called M-Theory which unifies all five string theories.
If this seems complicated, wait till I tell you that a fundamental ingredient of M-Theory is the p-brane (not the pea brain!). A brane is an object that can have a variety (p) of spatial dimensions, so a 1-brane is a string, a 2-brane is a surface, and so on. The real problem occurs with the news that the latest theories suggest that there are 10 or 11 p-branes or dimensions and not just the four dimensions that we know.
Science author Jim Baggott has written:
“The discovery of the Higgs boson was a triumph for the standard model of particle physics. This is the theory that describes reality at the level of elementary particles and the forces between them and which helps us to understand the nature of material substance. But we know the standard model can’t be the whole story. There are lots of things it can’t explain, such as the elementary particle masses, the existence of dark matter or dark energy, and it takes no account of the force of gravity.
There are no clues in the available scientific data about how these problems might be solved, and theorists have been obliged to speculate. But, in Farewell to Reality, I argue that in their ambition to develop a “theory of everything”, some theorists have crossed a line. The resulting theories, such as superstring theory (or M-theory), are not grounded in empirical data and produce no real predictions, so they can’t be tested.”
Is he right? Professor of theoretical physics Mike Duff thinks not.
You can read an exchange between Baggott and Duff here.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (1)
My introduction to the Great War
July 3rd, 2013 by Roger Darlington
For my recent birthday, some friends gave me the box set of the groundbreaking 1964 BBC series on “The Great War”. There are 26 episodes and I have already viewed six.
As I watched these pictures of the outbreak of a war that the Germans planned would last a mere 40 days, I was reminded of my first impression of this mammoth conflict.
In the early 1960s when I was in my early teens, I used to visit and stay with my paternal grandmother who lived in Sedgley, just outside Wolverhampton, a village where I was born. I often slept in the front bedroom which was dominated by a large framed reproduction of a dying horse in the First World War with the caption underneath “Goodbye old man”.
Over half a century later, I was wondering if I could find an image of that painting and perhaps an explanation of its origin. Of course, we now have the Internet and Google and the search took seconds.
This is the icture.
I now know that “Goodbye Old Man” was a watercolour by Italian artist Fortunino Matania showing a British soldier saying farewell to his dying horse. The painting was commissioned in 1916 to raise money for The Blue Cross Fund and now hangs in the charity’s animal hospital in Victoria, London.
Posted in History, My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
A review of the film “Once”
July 2nd, 2013 by Roger Darlington
A very small film has become a major musical. Does it deserve the hype? See my review here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Can we make ourselves happier?
July 2nd, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I think so. Professor Ruut Veenhoven, Director of the World Happiness Database and Emeritus professor of social conditions for human happiness at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, thinks so too and his study suggests factors which are likely to increase happiness and I’m delighted to say that all of them feature in my own life.
Check out the BBC report on the study here.
If you want more detailed advice on happiness, I have a guide to “How To Be Happy” here.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
Have many books have you read?
July 1st, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Today, I started reading a long book: the near-600 page work entitled “A History Of The World” by Andrew Marr.
In his Introduction, he states: “I calculate that around two thousand books, never mind pamphlets and journals, have been read for what follows.”
As I have kept a diary for 50 years, I know how many books I have read. It is just over 700 – an average of a book a month.
But Marr has read around 2,000 just for this project. Wow!
What about you? Do you read more or less than a book a month?
Posted in Cultural issues, History, My life & thoughts | Comments (2)