Archive for February, 2009
What is the oldest cinema in the world?
February 6th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
In a blog posting last summer, I reported that the Phoenix cinema in north London first opened in 1910 as “The East Finchley Picturedrome”, offering ‘the world’s finest picture plays’, it has been open as a cinema ever since, and it claims to be the oldest purpose-built continuously serving cinema in the UK – it […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (6)
The despair of Darfur
February 6th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
Five years after the peak of the violence in the Darfur region of western Sudan, some 2.7 million people remain scattered in camps and dependent on an international community that has no clear idea what to do with them, no sure way of protecting them, and no practical plan for a solution. “We have created […]
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
How many died in World War Two?
February 5th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
As I’ve mentioned in a couple of recent postings, I’m reading a book entitled “The Nazi Holocaust: Its History And Meaning”. Of course, it is widely known – if not accepted by Holocaust denialists – that some six million Jews perished in the Shoah. Without in any way wanting to diminish the uniqueness and the […]
Posted in History | Comments (0)
Do you know where your ancestors came from?
February 4th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
I’ve always thought that racism was not just morally repugnant but logically absurd since, if you go back a few generations in most people’s families, you find yourself in a different race or ethnicity or nationality. Ultimately, of course, we can all trace our ancestry back to tribes in Africa. In the case of the […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (4)
Do you know what your name means?
February 3rd, 2009 by Roger Darlington
My first name Roger was brought to England by the Normans – it comes from two Germanic words ‘hrod’ and ‘gar’ meaning respectively ‘fame’ and ‘spear’. My family name Darlington came originally from the English place name ‘Deornothingtun’ in the north-east of England. Working backwards, ‘tun’ (our ‘ton’) is found in hundreds of English place […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (6)
Snow blankets Britain
February 2nd, 2009 by Roger Darlington
Readers of NightHawk in Britain don’t need telling this but my many readers outside the UK might be interested to know that we are experiencing our heaviest snow in 18 years. The last time that we had so much of the white stuff was 7-9 February 1991 – that’s before we had the Web and […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (3)
“Charles Darwin And The Tree Of Life”
February 1st, 2009 by Roger Darlington
I confess that I’ve never had a biology lesson in my life because, for most of my school years, my school did not have a biology teacher. But, of course, over the subsequent years I’ve read things around the subject. I’ve always been utterly unpersuaded by the notion of creationism – it makes no sense […]
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (1)