What could have been

There is a lovely article in several online newspapers today.  Here is one.  Apparently, around 50 years ago the French (!) PM proposed, secretly, that England and France should merge, thereby forming an Anglo-Francais European superpower sort of thing.

What a fascinating thought, although I’m not at all sure the French or the English people would have been too enthusiastic.  The French have never been too keen on the English and vice versa, although I do believe that both peoples have quite similar characteristics, fundamentally.  Both are nationalistic, both are suspicious of foreigners and of the EU and both seem to be quite down to earth people.  Yes, there are lots of differences too, but I think there are possibly more similarities than either country would like to admit.  And the English have always enjoyed a good holiday in the land of wine and snails.  Not to mention all the houses the Brits have been doing up over there too.

Not surprisingly this radical proposal for a merger between the too countries never made it out of cabinet offices and references to it remained buried amongst piles of official documents.  Personally, I quite like the idea.  It’s so daft, it would probably have worked…..

Climate change – Have we gone too far?

This is one odd winter. It is not really cold in Milan, nor was it last year. Not too long ago Milan got regular snow falls in winter. Not now. It was the same in the UK too around Christmas and we were in northern Britain at that. Remarkably mild for the time of year. Last summer it was incredibly hot during summer in the UK. My mum moaned about not being able to stand the 35°C heat.

Temperatures seem to be increasing at an alarming rate. The North Pole is melting away. Italian bears have been annoying skiers because they don’t want to hibernate.

I hope this is no more than a climatic cycle, but there many other elements which would seem to indicate it is not. More cars on the roads than ever before, massive increases in production and thus pollution in what were developing countries, more planes in the air and a thirst for electrical power that is becoming unquenchable. Not to mention all our past escapades (industrial revolution, second world war production levels) which probably started everything rolling before we really knew what the consequences would be. It’s not looking too good is it?

I can’t help feeling that we are not really being told everything about the rate of climate change. Maybe it is too late, or possibly we will be able to live with all the warmer weather. But how warm will it be for our childrens’ children?

I wrote a short story about this not too long ago. Let’s hope that it remains fictional.

Sorry to sow doom seeds, but I was just thinking about this this evening.

Italian TV yet again

I heard it on the news last night.  Recent audience figures from the Auditel TV monitoring body have confirmed that Italians want better quality TV.  Goody, goody.  The brain numbing effect of all the low quality trashy TV programmes has finally made Italians vomit their feelings.  Good for them.  Berlusco will not be a happy bunny as his companies may actually have to forgo some pocket money and pay up to make some real interesting programmes.  Might mean an end to the dreadful Real TV program which shows other peoples video footage that has been ‘introduced’ by a half dressed nubile, but talentless, model. I’d like to say bye bye Big Brother too.

Forza Italiani!  P p p people power!! Good stuff and yah boo sucks to the silly commenters who left daft comments on my original post on Italian TV a while ago.

Getting confused

I’ve been preparing some material on sentence composition and managed to confuse myself after trying to understand the difference between adjuncts and adverbials.  Adverbials can be adjuncts apparently, but not always.  Then there is presenting all these nuggets of grammatical knowledge to students in a manner which will actually improve their written (and spoken) English in an effective and, preferably, non-confusing manner.  Fun, fun, fun.
I shall have to test this material thoroughly and monitor its long term benefits.  All I need are a few willing victims, sorry, er, guinea pigs.

Wifi woes, again

Blasted Dell 6400 does not do wifi too well.  It keeps dropping the signal.  I upgraded the Intel wifi management software, but had the pc’s fan go mad because the Intel software put something in my pc which kept the cpu working away far too hard, and it got so hot and bothered that another memory parity error reared its confusing head.  I’ve dumped the Intel stuff, except for the wifi card driver, but I had a little problem getting the software off my pc.  I had to open the task manager and shut down the Intel zero configuration .exe file before the uninstall would complete.  This it not something I like doing.

For the moment all seems to be OK, although under Windows wifi management the wifi signal is still intermittently being dropped.  My access point works fine, though, as my Dell pocket pc picks up and holds a signal until its battery runs down.  Just as well I had the pocket PC, I might well have changed the access point by now, if it was not for its ability to latch on to and maintain the wifi connection.

Hi-tech, don’t you just love it sometimes! Not.

Digicams again

I’ve got it in for Di at the moment!  I’ve decided that the photos that she shoots with her Canon EOS 350d are far too good, so I want a Canon EOS 400d now!  Have to save up my pennies/Eurocents though, but it will be worth it because the dSLRs have something called ‘bulb’, which means you can leave the camera shutter open for eons, especially if you have a nice little remote control too.  This is much better for those night shots I hanker after.  Plus, you can change/upgrade lenses when you want/have the cash.  I did have a Canon EOS 1000fn, I think it was, which was a smashing camera, only it was not digital.  The digicams I was looking at can only hold their shutters open for between 15 to 30 seconds, which is just not enough, I’m afraid.

Italy (and my son) is far to photogenic for me not to have a good camera.  Well that’s my excuse!