FEAST OR FAMINE

  World Television Day is celebrated annually on 21 November. It commemorates the United Nation’s first World Television Forum on this day in 1996. The television was recognized as a symbol of communication, education, and information.   In 1927, Philo Taylor Farnsworth was 21 years old when he invented the world’s first electronic television. His idea was of a system that could capture moving pictures, change them into a code, and them move those images with radio waves to different devices.    Phil Farnsworth (1906-1971) was born in Utah in the United States of America. His greatest moment was in 1969 when he watched the moon landing on his own television in his own home. NASA’s Apollo 11 landed on the moon on 20 July 1969 when Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, and Michael Collins remained in the shuttle. It was televised in real time to millions of viewers all over the world.    In July 2020, IMDb, the Internet Movie Database, ...

In Central Park in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, is an old carousel. The ‘Vekoma-Wood Design’ carousel is a Vekoma Rides Manufacturing product. The Dutch amusement ride manufacture also makes roller coasters. The name Vekoma is derived from the first two letter of each word of the Veld Koning Machinefabriek, which was established in 1926 by Hendrik op het Veld.  The company originally made farm equipment, which led to steel constructions for the coal mining industry in the 1950s. After the closure of the Dutch mines in 1965, the company made steel piple for the petro-chemical industry. Since the 1970s, Vekoma manufactured amusement rides.  In 2018, Vekoma was acquired by Sansei Technologies, the parent company of the American ride manufacturer S&S Sansei. MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life:...

Mother of Invention (2018) is set in Silicon Valley, America, in the future. Wealthy forty-four-year-old executive Tessa Callahan, founder of Loop Industries, is monitoring the innovative Seahorse Solution project, a procedure that accelerates human pregnancy from nine months to nine weeks. Shorter pregnancies empowers women in the workforce is the Seahorse Solution mantra. Tessa’s personal beliefs include: don’t be a pleaser; embrace unlikability; practice confrontation.  Tessa’s husband Peter Grandwein is a minimalist, a rock-climbing and swimming coach, and a qualified nutritionist. He wants to be a full-time father, but Tessa thinks she is ‘way past peak fertility’ and has an aversion to childbearing. She develops the concept of accelerated pregancies, but she is not a scientist. Luke Zimmerman designed the medical miracle and was invested in its success.   Two years later, in 2021, Tessa  is supervising the testing phase, Cohort One – the...

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author of:-  Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author of:-  Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).