Archive for November, 2022
Word of the day: Twiddlemuff
November 30th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
A Twiddlemuff is a double thickness hand muff with bits and bobs attached inside and out. It is designed to provide a stimulation activity for restless hands for patients suffering from dementia. I came across one today while volunteering in the Older Persons’ Unit of St Thomas’ Hospital in London.
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A review of the new superhero movie “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
November 27th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
After seeing two really heavy films in a row, I yearned for some straightforward entertainment and “Black Panther 2” delivered. Following the great success of the original “Black Panther” movie, its lead actor Chadwick Boseman, who was king of Wakanda T’Challa, died of cancer aged just 43 and so the sequel had both to pay […]
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A review of the 1982 classic film “The Draughtsman’s Contract”
November 24th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Most critics really admire the work of British writer and director Peter Greenaway and “The Draughtsman’s Contract”, his first major feature, is regarded as a classic. However, I always thought that I would find his films too odd and avoided them. Yet, when my brother recommended that I view a 40th anniversary re-mastered version, I […]
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Are we inching closer to a cure for dementia?
November 22nd, 2022 by Roger Darlington
This article offers some hope on the intractable and growing problem of dementia. For almost five years, I have been a participant in a long-term health study with the acronym CHARIOT PRO which has been studying the possible connection between dementia and a protein in the brain called beta amyloid. That study is about to […]
Posted in My life & thoughts, Science & technology | Comments (3)
A review of the new film “Living”
November 17th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Bill Nighy gives the best performance of his distinguished career as Mr Williams, an old-fashioned, straight-laced, middle-ranking official at the London County Council in the 1950s. When he receives life-changing news, he has to decide whether he can start living at last and whether he can leave any kind of meaningful legacy. The film centres […]
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The explosion in the global population
November 15th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
A sobering thought: in my lifetime, the world population has more than trebled. In 1948, it was about 2.5 billion. Today it is estimated to have reached 8 billion. Some further information, a graph and a short video here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the new film “The Good Nurse”
November 11th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
This Netflix film is not an easy watch because it is so dark, both literally (so many scenes are in shadow) and narratively (it concerns the deliberate killing of hospital patients by a nurse). The two American characters in the centre of this true life drama are played by Eddie Redmayne as the good nurse […]
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A review of the book “Border Wars” by Klaus Dodds
November 9th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Ever since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, we have seen an increasing dominance of the notion of the nation state in geo-politics. If you look at a globe or an atlas, every patch of land on the planet is claimed by (at least) one nation with neat black lines defining who owns what. The […]
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A review of a new film version of “All Quiet On The Western Front”
November 8th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I’ve not read the novel by Erich Maria Remarque (1929) or seen the Academy Award-winning film version (1930), but – following a recommendation from my brother – I was determined to see this new German-language adaptation on the big screen even though it is a Netflix production. I’m pleased that I did because the cinematography […]
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Thought For The Week
November 6th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
“Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some other object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the […]
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