The Power of forgiveness
Nelson Madela image BBC
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
December 6, 2013Light blogging
September 11, 2013
I shall be travelling till the end of next week in foreign parts.
Blogging will be necessarily very light.
A week’s hiatus
July 8, 2013Off on an assignment in monsoon country.
Very light blogging for a week or so.
Title – apostrophe added for the pedantic!
Light blogging
April 20, 2013I’m off on an assignment in Asia and blogging will be light for the next week or so.
I wish
Noted in passing 25.12.2012
December 25, 2012Notre Dame de Paris prepares to celebrate 850 years since its first foundation stone was laid in 1163.
Dozens of Jews who claim to be the descendants of a lost biblical Jewish tribe emigrated to Israel on Monday from their village in northeastern India. … The Bnei Menashe say they are descended from Jews banished from ancient Israel to India in the eighth century BC. An Israeli chief rabbi recognized them as a lost tribe in 2005, and about 1,700 moved to Israel over the next two years before the government stopped giving them visas. Israel recently reversed that policy, agreeing to let the remaining 7,200 Bnei Menashe immigrate.
Rape protests in India claim their own victim. A 47-year-old Delhi Police Constable, who suffered serious injuries during violent protests at India Gate on Sunday, died on Tuesday after battling for life in a city hospital.
Piers Morgan – he of telephone hacking fame – is for once on the right side of the argument but has angered the NRA and other gun-lovers.
While more than 600 people have died in the European freeze, the Bayern region is basking in warm weather and the city of Munich enjoyed over 20°C on Christmas Eve.
Since language is merely a tool for communication and develops and evolves entirely in response to the need to communicate, most attempts to invent new languages for human use fail because they cannot accurately predict or define the required needs. This is in contrast to the invention of machine languages where the needs can be much better defined. But this fascinating story of Ithkuil – an invented language – shows what a dedicated individual acan achieve even without formal academic credentials. And this piece about New York as the graveyard of languages which misses the point that languages die simply when they no longer fulfill the need for communication or are superceded by another which does.
“How is it that elves can see further than humans? Are hobbits evolutionarily related to humans? And so on. My mind raced ahead of the inquiries, so that I found myself asking (and answering) such questions as – how could dragons breathe fire? What would life be like for a walking tree? How do all those elves live beautiful, healthy lives without any obvious means of support?” On the science of Middle Earth.
Mobile phones on aircraft have no impact on aircraft operation. “The truth is that the FCC never was concerned about the possibility of electronic interference when, in 1991, it banned the use of mobile phones on board aircraft. All it was really worried about was their impact on cellular networks on the ground”.
Svante Paabo’s work on the Neanderthal genome is to be covered in a documentary.
British People Problems and 10 Reasons British Comedy Is Better Than American Comedy
Prolonging problems to keep selling the solutions?
December 12, 2012While going through security checks at a number of airports this week, I got to wondering whether once a “commercial” solution to a “problem” has been “found” there is a tendency to keep the problem alive long after it is no longer a problem – just to keep the sales of a commercial solution alive. I was then sitting through a presentation by a start-up company in the carbon sequestration business and was struck by the fact the entire marketing strategy is built on building up a fear of carbon emissions and the strategy collapses if this false premise is abandoned. The questions then started piling up:
- Airport Security – Is the vested interests of the security industry (manufacturers of scanning machines, security manpower companies etc.) such that the perceptions of security risks will never be allowed to diminish?
- Computer security – Is there a vested interest of the virus protection software suppliers to ensure that perceptions of risks are never allowed to diminish? and does it extend as far as – directly or indirectly – helping the production of damaging viruses?
- Renewable energy: All the billions spent in subsidising the development and deployment of wind and solar power are in the pursuit of a solution to a problem that does not exist but where the vested interest is too strong to allow the perception of the problem to diminish or disappear.
- Carbon sequestration: As with renewable energy subsidies, the billions milked from tax money for the development of carbon sequestration systems now creates a vested interest in first denying that carbon sequestration is uselss for its stated objective and second that reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is irrelevant to trying to control climate (if at all such control is possible).
- Influensa vaccines. The benefits of vaccination against flu are dubious but the vested interest of the sellers of the vaccines in maintaining the fear of flu every winter are obvious.
I feel sure there must be many cases where solution providers work to keep the problem alive and well.
Blogging will be light and sporadic
October 17, 2012I am on the road on an assignment and shall then be attending a family wedding.
Blogging will be light and sporadic for 2 weeks or so.
Prince Philip gets it right – for a change
November 21, 2011Wind power has its place and, especially in small isolated circumstances, can even be a useful additional source of energy.
It is not a universal panacea and it is expensive. It is intermittent and when the wind will blow within the minimum and maximum limits for a wind turbine to operate is unpredicatable. Wind power capacity must be backed up by other capacity. In large electrical grid systems it is fundamentally flawed in meeting the requirements to have a continuous and instantaneous balance between electricity supply and demand. Electricity cannot be stored – except in some few cases in the form of pumped water into reservoirs to be later recovered as hydro-power.
The Duke of Edinburgh is known for often being politically incorrect and not always for his wisdom. But the mirage that is wind power owes much to political correctness. And this time he gets it right:
Clive Aslet writes in The Telegraph:
You have to hand it to the Duke of Edinburgh. At 90, he is still as incisive as ever. Once again, the Royal Family has articulated what ordinary people, without the ear of the media, have long felt. His son might have called the wind farms that are besmirching our mountains and waving their giant arms inanely out at sea “a monstrous carbuncle”. Prince Philip chose “disgrace”. So they are. The politicians who foisted them upon us should be put in the stocks.
Midsommar
June 26, 2011Light blogging during the Midsommar holidays which I am spending on the west coast of Sweden.
RIP Seve Ballestersos
May 7, 2011Severiano Ballesteros passed away this morning.
He was only 54.
He won five major events- the British Open three times and the Masters Tournament twice among his 87 titles worldwide, including a record 48 on the European Tour. For me he has represented European golf for over 3 decades.
RIP.
The k2p blog 