Merry Christmas

Living in hotels and guest houses for so long changes habits and perspectives. So for everyone who comes here let me say Merry Christmas.

Christmas is not guaranteed to be perfect for everyone but it's a chance to be calm, enjoy life at least for a day or two and be with friends and family if possible.

Reflections on the meaning of the festival ought to be a must too.

Merry Christmas everyone.

DW


Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

The Man of Steel!

A few years ago I took part in an online discussion and I mentioned that there were people in the former Soviet Union who revered the memory of Joseph Stalin. Stalin's time was the days when things worked, everyone respected each other ...

I told the truth, I met and worked with people who thought that so it was a matter of fact.

I was then subjected to a torrent of abuse from three or four people. One of them was a student at Oxford University who threatened me with physical violence if ever I was in Oxford. I wrote to him and told him that as I worked in Oxford it is highly likely that we could meet and that unless he withdrew the threat I would take matters further. I got a full apology in writing.

Another student, of English at Durham University, joined the fray saying the most ridiculous things. He burst forth with an entreaty that if I loved communists so much why didn't I go and live with them? When I wrote to him off list and asked him what he was really worried about he told me that what I had said made no sense! Hmm, how does a simple statement of fact expressed in very clear language make no sense?

The third student, a the LSE this time, proudly boasted that as he had worked in an office in Washington USA for two weeks during which time he was reading and dealing with papers from projects being undertaken in Central Asia, he knew I must have been telling lies.

So why did I tell you all of that? Take a look at page six of today's UK edition of the Financial Times newspaper and you will see rather a lengthy parade of "Russian communists queuing to lay flowers at Joseph Stalin's grave in Red Square, Moscow on the 130th anniversary of his birth yesterday." As I said before and can say again, as a matter of fact, there are many people in the former Soviet Union who hold Stalin in high esteem. Just a fact. Just reporting a fact. Not all of the people in that queue are old enough to have lived under Stalin either.

DW

Let's lighten the load a little

The teacher asks his students to write a short story in as few words as possible. The instructions were: the short story had to contain the following three things:

• Religion
• Sexuality
• Mystery

Below is the winning story:

"Good God, I'm pregnant; I wonder who did it."

Whoever wrote that, thanks!

DW

Far be it from me ...

Well I'm shocked! Here I am about to sing the praises of Microsoft. I downloaded and installed Office 2010 Beta version last night and I have to say there are some stunning advances there. I've not had much of a chance to play with everything new but in Excel, of note, there are

• sparklines
• data slicer

PowerPoint looks a bit niftier.

Outlook promises things that I haven't explored at all yet and the same with Word.

Worth a look I'd say.

DW