An extraordinary untold story unearthed from the archives by BBC Radio 4 - how British fascists released from internment after WWII started up again and were fought in the streets of Dalston (near where I used to live) and elsewhere by Jewish militants who styled themselves the 43 Group. The initial group included (mostly) ex-servicemen, five women, and a 17-year-old Vidal Sassoon. That fascists in Britain continued to spout poisonous anti-semitism (extracts were included on the program) even after the details of the holocaust began to be revealed is truly shocking to me.

A depressing New Yorker article The Water Cure reveals that water torture was being perpetrated by Americans during wartime and debated more than a century ago - in this case, in the Phillippines. In a number of ways the debate then echoed what we hear today about waterboarding.

Thanks to a BBC programme, Costing the Earth, I just heard about Desertec, a proposal to provide 10-25% of Europe’s electricity via solar power panels in the deserts of North Africa. What I thought was particularly impressive is the claim that the solar panels could provide a three-fold benefit for these African nations. They’d sell the power, of course, but they would also get desalinated water (because this is needed to run the power plants) and they could grow crops in the shade of the giant mirrors! I always thought that the problem with remote electricity generation like this would be the losses in transmission over long distances but the people behind this concept claim that by using High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) these losses would only amount to 10-15% of the power generated.

I have no idea whether this would be feasible, technically, politically or economically, (one critic says it would cost 0.15-0.20 euros per KWh - about double what we pay for power currently) but it sure sounds appealing on the face of it.

All over the Christian world on street corners, in homes and in churches, choirs are starting to sing carols - usually for free (I’ll be doing it myself on the 15th at Crouch End). So why is it so hard to find traditional christmas carols in the public domain? Most of the creative commons databases had just modern music, the public domain classical music archive I found didn’t have much and the Creative Commons Christmas Songs list on a blog didn’t have much in the way of traditional stuff sung traditionally, and had several broken links. Can anyone suggest a good source?

I love articles that question conventional wisdom - particularly if in doing so they refer to scientific evidence instead of just anecdotes. This New York magazine article suggests that the connection between increased exercise and weight loss is dubious (because exercise tends to lead to greater appetite as well) and posits a decrease in carbohydrate consumption as the best way to lose weight. Admittedly the author has written a popular book on this subject, but if he’s really onto something, why not?

According to a York University study.

Half of the volunteers came from Canada and spoke only English. The other half came from India and were fluent in both English and Tamil. The volunteers had similar backgrounds in the sense that they were all educated to degree level and were all middle class. The researchers found that the people who were fluent in English and Tamil responded faster than those who were fluent in just English. This applied to all age groups. The researchers also found that the bilingual volunteers were much less likely to suffer from the mental decline associated with old age.

I hope the same benefits apply to those like myself who are only semi-fluent in my second language /
J’espere que les memes benefices sont applicable aux personnes comme moi que ne sont que demi-courant dans le deuxieme langue!

Thanks to the rather handy Edwin C Bolles collection of historical and topographical London documents I just read this rather cheering quotation about my neighborhood (Highgate) from a 129 year old guide:

[John] Norden, whom we have quoted above, bears testimony to the healthiness of this locality. He writes: “Upon this hill is most pleasant dwelling, yet not so pleasant as healthful; for the expert inhabitants there report that divers who have long been visited by sickness not curable by ` physicke ‘ have in a short time repaired their health by that sweet salutary air.” Indeed, the place is still proverbially healthy, and therefore has been chosen from time immemorial as the site of hospitals and other charitable institutions. It is worthy of note that Defoe, in his “History of the Plague,” records not a single death from that fearful visitation having happened here, though it extended its ravages into and beyond the northern suburbs, and even as far as Watford and St. Albans; and his silence is corroborated by the fact that during the continuance of the plague only sixteen deaths are recorded in the register.

Epicenter started as a look at those who found themselves contaminated by the radioactivity from early nuclear tests but as this trailer demonstrates his curiosity and journalistic zeal soon encouraged him to broaden his investigation and, from the looks of things, turn up all kinds of interesting stuff about the history of nuclear weapons development. Danny has sent me a DVD so once I get it I’ll tell you more…

Yes it turns out Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, did some early promotion material (nearly 20 years ago!) selling Macs to students.

So much about The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids was interesting and/or rang a bell. It covers a lot of ground but the key take-away point for me was that you should be very cautious about telling your kid that s/he is smart - you should be praising them for putting in effort and/or for specific aspects of what they did. It sounds rather puritanical but apparently there’s evidence that praising a kid’s capability can be harmful - they can end up avoiding things that are challenging.