Archive for January, 2013


The music of Emeli Sande and Ellie Goulding

January 31st, 2013 by Roger Darlington

I may be a 64 year old man but I try to keep up with at least some popular music. My most recent CD purchsaes have been music by the Scottish Emile Sande and the English Ellie Goulding. So I’m listening to “Our Version Of Events” (special edition) and “Halcyon” respectively – really enjoyable.

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Aleppo: then and now

January 30th, 2013 by Roger Darlington

Aleppo in Syria is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world with origins dating back to the early second millennium BC. Until recently, it was a thriving urban community of some 2.3 million. Today it is a city ravaged by civil war. Less than two years ago and just a week or two […]

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Word of the day: paraprosdokian

January 29th, 2013 by Roger Darlington

A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected and frequently humorous. Winston Churchill was keen on the concept. A few examples are: 1. Where there’s a will, I want to be in it. 2. Since light travels faster than sound, some people […]

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Why do so many Americans believe so much nonsense?

January 28th, 2013 by Roger Darlington

According to results from a recent Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind Poll, 63% of registered voters in the United States buy into at least one political conspiracy theory. The nationwide survey of registered voters asked Americans to evaluate four different political conspiracy theories: 56 % of Democrats and 75 % of Republicans say that at least one is […]

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Word of the day: pallant

January 27th, 2013 by Roger Darlington

Vee and I are spending the weekend in West Sussex visiting her twin sister and brother-in-law. In the course of our time here, we’ve been over to the lovely town of Chichester where Vee and I married 31 years ago. As we wandered round Chichester, for the first time I noticed four streets called North, […]

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How much greater is the American gun murder rate than that in Britain?

January 26th, 2013 by Roger Darlington

Twice? Three times? Four times? You may find this hard to believe but the answer is 32 times. Don’t believe me? Check out the graph on this web page. Time for stronger gun controls in the US. Go for it, Barack.

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The Munich Agreement and my short story

January 23rd, 2013 by Roger Darlington

I am currently reading *The Killing of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich” by the late historian Callum MacDonald  which was published in 1989. Reading about the betrayal of Czechoslovakia in the Munich Agreement of September 1938 reminded me of a short story I wrote several years ago set on the eve of that agreement. You can […]

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A snow man, a snow dog, and a very lifelike snow girl

January 22nd, 2013 by Roger Darlington

That one in the middle looks just like my granddaughter Catrin

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President Barack Obama’s second inauguration speech

January 22nd, 2013 by Roger Darlington

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A review of “Django Unchained”

January 21st, 2013 by Roger Darlington

One of the earliest films I can remember seeing was called “Hercules Unchained”. It was released in 1959 when I was 11. Quentin Tarantino is so knowledgeable about the movies he may have had the earlier film in mind when he titled his latest offering “Django Unchained”. Tarantino is not to everyone’s taste, but I […]

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