That was 1998!
The Reeling in the Years for 2016 will be an eye-opener, but I bet 2019 will be even crazier.
The Supernova in the East
The latest episode of Hardcore History is another amazing audio tour through history, even if Dan Carlin himself says he is unqualified and it might not be completely accurate. He’s a great story teller. This one covers the rise of Japan in the early twentieth century and beyond.
Dan’s coverage of the Manchurian Incident reminded me I have to re-read the Tintin story, “The Blue Lotus“. Hergé definitely applied his imagination when recounting how the train track was blown up but I’d never have known about that period of time if I had never read that book.
And similarly, I wouldn’t have known the railway track was barely damaged if I hadn’t listened to Hardcore History!
Stephanie Shirley: Software Pioneer
I’d never heard of Stephanie Shirley until I heard this BBC interview with her. As a five year old she escaped the Nazis in Germany, escaping to Britian in a Kindertransport. She founded a software company in 1962 that only hired women. It allowed employees to work from home, a practise that is much more common now than it was then. At the time women were not always welcome in the workplace, especially after they married or had kids, so this was an exceptional change. Ironically, equality legislation years later forced them to hire men!
In her personal life, her son Giles was autistic. Caring for him caused her to have a nervous breakdown as she tried to run her business too but she has poured huge sums of money into autism research and in her retirement has given away most of her £150m wealth.
To help Giles and others like him, she first established the Kingwood Trust to support young adults with autism, and more recently started the Prior’s Court School in Berkshire. “It is actually the biggest single project,” she says. “It took five years of my life. That’s the one I dreamed about.” It aims to help autistic children into mainstream education or some form of employment by using innovative techniques in art, music and sport.
The Shirley Foundation has spent or allocated around £50m in recent years – putting it among Britain’s top grant-giving foundations – with 70% going to autism-related work, from the first online conference on autism to yet another start-up, the Welsh support network Autism Cymru.
She also spoke at TED which she talked about her life.
If you want to hear about a remarkable woman, listen to this podcast and watch her on the TED stage.
Xeer
Many moons ago I wrote about where my handle xeer came from. A planet in the classic 8-bit game Elite was called Xeer. Unknown to me, Xeer is also the polycentric legal system of Somalia!
Back in 2003 someone asked to use my hotmail account of the same name but I declined and found out it was something to do with the constitution of Somalia. That Wikipedia page dates from 2009 so at least I can read up on the part of Somali heritage now!
Cork blog – all about Cork City and County
Now, this is interesting. The Cork blog covers topics related to, you guessed it, Cork!
For some reason I found the entry about busses around Cork fascinating, possibly because busses are such a major part of urban life!
2007-11-01 – Bah, looks like the domain is gone. An MFA site is there now so I’ve mangled the links above. What a shame.
