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I'll let you know when I've managed to cut through these issues. My IT adviser may be able to help:
Friday, 4 May 2012
New Buttons and Feedback Gadgets
I hope some of you have noticed that I have finally added some new buttons, gadgets, widgets and what-have-you to this blog, at the same time as I am being told that I have reached my upper limit of photo storage.
I'll let you know when I've managed to cut through these issues. My IT adviser may be able to help:
I'll let you know when I've managed to cut through these issues. My IT adviser may be able to help:
National Personality Differences, Greece and England
I have been re-reading a 1978 paper on "National Differences in Personality: Greece and England" by E.C. Dimitriou and S.G.B.Eysenck, which contains the 101 question Eysenck Personality Questionnaire as an appendix.
It includes questions on people's attitudes towards insurance and safeguarding their future with savings and insurances, and on whether they lock up their houses carefully at night.
The Greeks responded very differently from the British, the Greeks not showing much approval of insurance policies in the 1970s.
"The explanation may be that Greeks do not believe in insurance due to their turbulent recent history (more than 10 coups and five wars in the past 25 years). (Statistics are available to the effect that per 1,000 people there are 2.77 insurance policies in Greece as opposed to 253.8 in England in 1968, the latest date for which statistics are available.)"
On the question of locking the house carefully at night, the responses again were very different between the British and the Greek samples.
"Here again national habits are quite different- in Greece very few people lock up their houses at night, security locks are almost unknown, and in any case during the long, hot summer, windows are almost invariably left open, nullifying any attempts to lock the house."
I wonder how different the results would be these days, if the same questionnaire were to be administered again.
There has certainly been a huge increase in the number of car insurance policies taken out in Greece (there are still around one million uninsured drivers, according to insurance brokers- roughly one in ten in Greece as against one in twenty in the UK). Attitudes towards saving to safeguard the future must also have changed significantly. I suspect many more Greeks lock their doors and close their shutters at night.
Perhaps this is partly a result of globalisation?
It includes questions on people's attitudes towards insurance and safeguarding their future with savings and insurances, and on whether they lock up their houses carefully at night.
The Greeks responded very differently from the British, the Greeks not showing much approval of insurance policies in the 1970s.
"The explanation may be that Greeks do not believe in insurance due to their turbulent recent history (more than 10 coups and five wars in the past 25 years). (Statistics are available to the effect that per 1,000 people there are 2.77 insurance policies in Greece as opposed to 253.8 in England in 1968, the latest date for which statistics are available.)"
On the question of locking the house carefully at night, the responses again were very different between the British and the Greek samples.
"Here again national habits are quite different- in Greece very few people lock up their houses at night, security locks are almost unknown, and in any case during the long, hot summer, windows are almost invariably left open, nullifying any attempts to lock the house."
I wonder how different the results would be these days, if the same questionnaire were to be administered again.
There has certainly been a huge increase in the number of car insurance policies taken out in Greece (there are still around one million uninsured drivers, according to insurance brokers- roughly one in ten in Greece as against one in twenty in the UK). Attitudes towards saving to safeguard the future must also have changed significantly. I suspect many more Greeks lock their doors and close their shutters at night.
Perhaps this is partly a result of globalisation?
London Mayor and Local Elections, Live Coverage (and elections in France and Greece)
The Guardian has live coverage
Boris Johnson was elected by a narrow majority (51.5%).
Almost as interesting as the French and Greek elections.
Hear Nina-Maria's interview in Brussels about the French elections.
The Telegraph
BBC
Bagehot on elected mayors
Kathimerini on the IIF Report, concerning the Greek elections, and post-election scenario
Venizelos warning (BBC)
Boris Johnson was elected by a narrow majority (51.5%).
Almost as interesting as the French and Greek elections.
Hear Nina-Maria's interview in Brussels about the French elections.
The Telegraph
BBC
Bagehot on elected mayors
Kathimerini on the IIF Report, concerning the Greek elections, and post-election scenario
Venizelos warning (BBC)
Thursday, 3 May 2012
John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's
The clergy of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, are (is?) very open-minded, it would seem.
John Donne (1572-1631) became Dean of St.Paul's in 1621 (until 1631).
One of his finest youthful poems (if still controversial) is "The Indifferent":
I can love both fair and brown,
Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays,
Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays,
Her whom the country formed, and whom the town,
Her who believes, and her who tries,
Her who still weeps with spongy eyes,
And her who is dry cork, and never cries;
I can love her, and her, and you, and you,
I can love any, so she be not true.
Will no other vice content you?
Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers?
Or have you all old vices spent, and now would find out others?
Or doth a fear that men are true torment you?
O we are not, be not you so;
Let me, and do you, twenty know.
Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go.
Must I, who came to travail thorough you,
Grow your fixed subject, because you are true?
Venus heard me sigh this song,
And by love's sweetest part, variety, she swore,
She heard not this till now; and that it should be so no more.
She went, examined, and returned ere long,
And said, Alas! some two or three
Poor heretics in love there be,
Which think to ’stablish dangerous constancy.
But I have told them, Since you will be true,
You shall be true to them who are false to you.
(hear Belgian singer Jean-Paul Billes interpretation)
A rather more sincere, and less cynically witty poem:
Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, 'tis best
To use myself in jest
Thus by feign'd deaths to die.
Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here today;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way:
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.
O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!
But come bad chance,
And we join to'it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o'er us to'advance.
When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind,
But sigh'st my soul away;
When thou weep'st, unkindly kind,
My life's blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lov'st me, as thou say'st,
If in thine my life thou waste,
That art the best of me.
Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfil;
But think that we
Are but turn'd aside to sleep;
They who one another keep
Alive, ne'er parted be.
Richard Burton, Go and Catch a Falling Star
Listen to more Richard Burton readings on Spotify
John Donne (1572-1631) became Dean of St.Paul's in 1621 (until 1631).
One of his finest youthful poems (if still controversial) is "The Indifferent":
I can love both fair and brown,
Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays,
Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays,
Her whom the country formed, and whom the town,
Her who believes, and her who tries,
Her who still weeps with spongy eyes,
And her who is dry cork, and never cries;
I can love her, and her, and you, and you,
I can love any, so she be not true.
Will no other vice content you?
Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers?
Or have you all old vices spent, and now would find out others?
Or doth a fear that men are true torment you?
O we are not, be not you so;
Let me, and do you, twenty know.
Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go.
Must I, who came to travail thorough you,
Grow your fixed subject, because you are true?
Venus heard me sigh this song,
And by love's sweetest part, variety, she swore,
She heard not this till now; and that it should be so no more.
She went, examined, and returned ere long,
And said, Alas! some two or three
Poor heretics in love there be,
Which think to ’stablish dangerous constancy.
But I have told them, Since you will be true,
You shall be true to them who are false to you.
(hear Belgian singer Jean-Paul Billes interpretation)
A rather more sincere, and less cynically witty poem:
Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, 'tis best
To use myself in jest
Thus by feign'd deaths to die.
Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here today;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way:
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.
O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!
But come bad chance,
And we join to'it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o'er us to'advance.
When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind,
But sigh'st my soul away;
When thou weep'st, unkindly kind,
My life's blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lov'st me, as thou say'st,
If in thine my life thou waste,
That art the best of me.
Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfil;
But think that we
Are but turn'd aside to sleep;
They who one another keep
Alive, ne'er parted be.
Richard Burton, Go and Catch a Falling Star
Listen to more Richard Burton readings on Spotify
Sleeping Rough in Dorset
Some information about an important project, Out in the Open: Sleeping Rough in a Dorset Town
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