Archive for January, 2009


Forgotten World (160): Malawi

January 16th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

The central African nation of Malawi was a British colony until 1964 and previously known as Nyasaland. For three decades, Malawi’s destiny was tied to the whims of its totalitarian president-for-life, Kamuzu Banda, who enjoyed being surrounded by dancing women and who encouraged people to betray relatives who criticised his rule. In the mid-1990s, he […]

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How many members should there be in Parliament?

January 15th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

The British House of Commons currently has 646 seats which will increase to 650 seats at the next General Election (the number varies slightly from time to time to reflect population change). This is a large legislature by international standards. For instance, the House of Representatives in the USA has 435 seats but, of course, […]

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Forgotten World (159): Guyana

January 15th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

The only English-speaking country in South America,the former British colony of Guyana became independent in 1966. Around half of the population of around 850,000 are the descendants of indentured Indian agricultural workers brought in by the British after slavery was abolished. A third is descended from African slaves, imported by the Dutch to work on […]

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Forgotten World (158): Papua New Guinea

January 14th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

Papua New Guinea (PNG) occupies the eastern part of the world’s second largest island (the western part of the island called New Guinea is part of Indonesia) and it is prey to volcanic activity, earthquakes and tidal waves. A very small proportion of the land can sustain cash crops, including coffee and cocoa, but abundant […]

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Forgotten World (157): Austria

January 13th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

Once the heart of one of the largest and longest-lasting empires in Europe (the Austro-Hungarian Empire), along with Switzerland, Austria now forms Europe’s neutral core. After annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938 and then Allied occupation, Austria’s 1955 State Treaty declared the country “permanently neutral”. The capital, Vienna, is home to key international organisations, including […]

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Remembering the Black Death

January 12th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

I’ve been reading a book entitled “Medieval Britain: A Very Short Introduction”. The most dramatic event of this period was the arrival in England in 1348 of what later historians called the Black Death (at the time, it was known as “the great mortality”). At a stroke, the Black Death reduced the population of England […]

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Forgotten World (156): Qatar

January 12th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

It’s time to have another week of postings in my long-running series called Forgotten World – a look at parts of the world that hardly feature in our media or thoughts. You can check the previous 155 entries here. Dominated by the Al-Thani family for almost 150 years, the mainly barren country of Qatar was […]

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Back to Babylon

January 10th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

This week, my wife and I visited the British Museum in central London to see the exhibition “Babylon: Myth And Reality”. While not having the scale and grandeur of the “Byzantium” exhibition at the Royal Academy [see my comment here]. it is still an interesting and impressive exhibition as this review from the “Observer” newspaper […]

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Palindromes and Semordnilaps

January 9th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

You might know that a palindrome is a word, a phase or a sentence that reads backwards exactly the same way as it reads forwards. For some examples, see here. But have you ever heard of a semordnilap? This is a name coined for a word or phrase that spells a different word or phrase […]

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Is UFO report a wind up? (1)

January 8th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

It’s everywhere from the “Sun” newspaper to BBC on-line. It is simply astonishing that the media can give so much space and credibility to the utterly absurd notion that a wind farm turbine at Conisholme was damaged by a UFO. These aliens are supposed to have fantastic technology that enables them to traverse vast distances […]

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