Archive for February, 2011


Word of the day: concatenation

February 28th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

I kid you not. I had a conversation today in which the word ‘concatenation’ was used (thanks, Nick). I had to ask what it means. In this case, it was being used in the context of a computer language (Objective-C, if you must know) where apparently it means ‘to arrange strings of characters into a […]

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My offer to become a London Ambassador (2)

February 28th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

As I explained in an earlier posting, I have applied to be a London Ambassador for the 2012 Olympics. The closing date for applications is in fact today. The Mayor is looking for 8,000 London Ambassadors. It was hoped that 25,000 would apply but apparently some 34,000 have done so which shows a wonderful level […]

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“And the winner is …” (2)

February 28th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

A couple of weeks ago, I did a posting about the  British Academy film awards.  Last night, it was the turn of the American Academy awards, popularly known as the Oscars. I recorded the highlights on television and will watch the programme this evening. You can see the full list of nominations and winners here. […]

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What (or where) is Cobra?

February 26th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

It is reported that British Prime Minister David Cameron has convened meetings of Cobra in order to plan the emergency evacuation of UK citizens out of strife-tern Libya. Cobra sounds really exciting. It evokes images of a venomous snake or – if you’re a movie fan like me – the 1986 Sylvester Stallone action film […]

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The importance of resources in international relations

February 25th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

I continue to attend my evening class in International Relations led by our lecturer Dr Dale Mineshima-Lowe. Normally we look at particular countries or regions. This week, however, we took a cross-cutting theme and discussed the impact of resources on international relations. What sort of resources? Obviously oil, gas, and mineral resources (such as uranium) […]

Posted in World current affairs | Comments (1)


Which democratic nation is launching an assault on collective bargaining by trade unions?

February 25th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

It’s the United States – see here.

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It’s an international world

February 25th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

This evening, Vee (half Welsh and half Czech) and I (half English and half Italian) drove over to Muswell hill in north London to have dinner with close friends. On the way, we stopped off at Brent Cross to buy a rail for the wall carpet that we purchased in Iran. Our friends are both […]

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Baby Catrin: progress report (5)

February 24th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

My granddaughter Catrin is now just over five weeks old and I called in to see her for an hour this afternoon. It was my eighth time with her but, for a variety of reasons, I won’t now see her for a few weeks. Of course, I’ll be keeping in touch with her mum & […]

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What’s in a name – and a title? (1)

February 23rd, 2011 by Roger Darlington

He’s in trouble for allegedly plagiarising material for his PhD so he’s decided to stop calling himself Doctor. He’s the German Defence Minister – at least for the moment. His friends call him simply KT. His full name is Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester, Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. Check out […]

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Can dreams predict the future?

February 22nd, 2011 by Roger Darlington

One of my favourite social scientists Richard Wiseman has just written a book on the paranormal which examines this question and explains why many people are convinced by the predictive power of dreams. It is the subject of an article in today’s “Guardian” newspaper.

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