Archive for April, 2009


Swine flu outbreak (4)

April 30th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

I saw my first face mask on the streets of London today. Is this where we’re all going? Has this happened where you live? The mask wearer was clearly a newcomer (he was pulling a suitcase on wheels) and from Asia (he looked Japanese to me). It reminded me of when my wife and I […]

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Swine flu outbreak (3)

April 29th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

Of all the reams already written about the outbreak, for me the best piece has been this column by Mike Davis, the author of “The Monster At Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu”. He points out graphically: “In 1965, for instance, there were 53m US hogs on more than 1m farms; today, 65m […]

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Obama’s first 100 days

April 29th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

For those of us who supported Barack Obama’s candidacy for so long and so enthusiastically, his first 100 days have been heady stuff. As this piece puts it: “Although only a short way into his first term, Obama has already committed trillions to lift the country out of recession, discarded some of the most unpopular […]

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Swine flu outbreak (2)

April 28th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

The Israeli health minister has decided that, for reasons of religious sensitivity, the outbreak should not be called swine flu but Mexican flu. That let’s the pigs off but will probably upset the Mexicans. More information here. Incidentally why did God take against pigs? Didn’t he create them? If he thought they were so offensive, […]

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Art nouveau in Prague

April 28th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

As regular readers of NightHawk will know, I was in Prague for Easter. Now this city is an architectural gem and it has some especially fine buildings in the art nouveau style. One of the best examples in the Municipal House and, on this occasion, we went on a guided tour of the interior of […]

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This Sunday (1)

April 27th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

Vee and I spent the day with our Chinese ‘family’ celebrating the second birthday of little Joshua. We all drove over to the Cotswold Wildlife Park which is ideal for young children. He was able to view large animals like rhinos, zebras, camels, and lions and to stroke smaller animals like sheep and goats – […]

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This Sunday (2)

April 27th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

While we were strolling gently round a wildlife park, 35,000 others were pounding the streets of London in the marathon in an attempt to cover 26.2 miles as fast as possible. One of them was Vee’s nephew, David, who ran it in an amazing 3 hours 19 minutes 46 seconds. Well done, David! Once he […]

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Swine flu outbreak (1)

April 27th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

Who’s responsible? The bizarre conspiracy theories have started – see here.

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If God became Man ….

April 26th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

Since it’s Sunday, I thought that I’d offer a blog posting with a Christian theme. Imagine that you were present in Heaven at a discussion between God and some of his leading angels at the point at which God is about to send his son to Earth to show them his divinity. What would you […]

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Just how fat can one get?

April 25th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

We rightly worry about the explosive epidemic of obesity in the developed world, especially among children. But, of course, excessive weight has been exhibited by unusual people in the past. I was reminded of this earlier this week when I spent a day in Leicester with my sister. We visited the Newarke Houses Museum which […]

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