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A flexible library service for the 21st century?
Following Alan’s piece on libraries, I picked this ‘advertorial’ from Google plus this evening… about how a US county library system is cutting costs and improving flexibility in their free at the point of delivery services by enabling the whole library service act as a functioning unit as opposed to the one discrete library… read our review » -
The lost art of reading (or drowning in too much information)…
Here’s a great review of a fascinating book (H/T reader Rory) on how the Internet is destroying our capacity for intelligent, focused and critical thought. It opens thus: …here is the news that Ulin brings in this slim, meandering book: that reading is “an act of contemplation”; that such an act becomes more difficult in [...] read our review »
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…if University education were universally available and availed of, the country would collapse in one generation
The words of Brian O’Nolan, variously Brian Ó Nualláin, Myles na gCopaleen, Myles na Gopaleen and, of course, Flann O’Brien. That O’Nolan was referencing his own dissolute student days at UCD only mildly distracts from the prophetic undertone of his words: I paid no attention whatsoever to books or study and regarded lectures as a [...] read our review »
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Comment on Euro crisis: When “earth’s proud empires pass away”…
on 20 May 2012 at 1:25 am
Of course the danger in over-reaching on the taxation is :
1) if people are not onboard as community it feels like unjustified robbery which will further corrode community
2) it further cuts economic wealth creation which compounds the debt problems and the wealth available to re-distribute.
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Comment on Community silence starting to break over abuse in Lancashire?
on 15 May 2012 at 6:49 am
Harry you probably agree Chesterton’s poem is also apt.
The Judgement of England
‘Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey
Where Wealth accumulates and Men decay.’
So rang of old the noble voice in vain
O’er the Last Peasants wandering on the plain,
Doom has reversed the riddle and the rhyme,
While sinks the commerce reared upon that crime,
The thriftless towns litter with lives undone,
To whom our madness left no joy but one;
And irony that glares like Judgment Day
Sees Men accumulate and Wealth decay.
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Comment on Community silence starting to break over abuse in Lancashire?
on 13 May 2012 at 12:46 pm
Quite right. I have my authors mixed up.
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
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Comment on Community silence starting to break over abuse in Lancashire?
on 13 May 2012 at 11:41 am
Addendum – the bidding got up to 12,000 dollars (8,000 pounds).
Apparently yesterday’s slut is today’s modern, enlightened liberated woman. If morality is a show of hands by an evolving corrupt political class, is it any wonder some groups are not going to pay respect to transitory Western progressive law?
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Comment on Community silence starting to break over abuse in Lancashire?
on 13 May 2012 at 11:35 am
I agree with Harry (again).
When the centre cannot hold, things fall apart – Evelyn Waugh.
Those self described enlightened individuals have spent the last 50 years attacking the centre which holds Western civilisation together. It is not going to hold.
In Australia there was a recent auction by a brothel for the virginity of an 18 year old Australian school girl. The Asian managers of the brothel withdrew the auction because of public outrage. They were quick though to point to the fact that they were in no way breaking the secular law.
Men indeed make the world, but not as they would wish – Karl Marx.
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Comment on Euro crisis: “Europe will be lucky if it ends up in stagnation like Japan for the next ten years”
on 10 May 2012 at 8:06 am
Re-distributing income you don’t have is never a comprehensive and sustainable fiscal policy.
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Comment on Obama endorses gay marriage
on 10 May 2012 at 8:03 am
Once you ditch one morality you are forced to create an alternative.
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Comment on How will the long slow secularisation of Ireland affect NI’s future politics?
on 20 April 2012 at 11:04 am
Hi Scáth Shéamais,
i agree with a separation of Church and state but for me it is like the separation of powers which separates the government and the judicial system. It is a good idea to keep these separate where one formulates the law and another interprets it in society.
It would be wrong for one to try and replace the other through legal or budgetary constraints. The whole idea is that they work together as pillars for the benefit of community.
I would not want to risk descending into a secular humanist fascism.
All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.
Benito Mussolini
It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.
Benito Mussolini
I think we can both agree that we have different definitions, concepts and attached histories to very important words phrases such as secular, separation, welfare, charity, science, religion and faith etc.
I would suggest that it is important to have somewhat more common understandings before we risk the possibility of fragmenting into irreconcilable, permanent sectarian groups who will paralyse progress due to continual argument.
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Comment on Sinn Fein move up 6 points in latest Irish Times poll…
on 20 April 2012 at 10:39 am
Very interesting figures. It will be interesting also to watch progressive movement in the future polls.
Alias has a point regarding the time to the next election and the relevance of present figures.
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Comment on How will the long slow secularisation of Ireland affect NI’s future politics?
on 19 April 2012 at 6:27 am
If we look at governments around the world today many of them are secular and work with Christianity to provide services.
Many poorer countries use Christianity because these services are supplied cheaper to the populace by use of Christian groups. Even (formerly) communist Russia and China are starting to do this.
In the Western sphere of politics where monetary budgets are under huge pressure there has been a shift back to working with Christianity to supply these services.
In Australia the government supplies Catholic sector Education with funding. This of course makes sense since the Austrlaian government is supposed to be working for the Australian people in all its diversity. About 21% of children are educated in the Catholic system. A further 9% are educated in other private systems. For every child in the Catholic system the government spends $4000. For every student in the government sector it spends $9000. The Catholic sector is showing much better results and many non Catholic parents send their kids there and are willing to pay fees in favour of the ‘free’ government schools.
The Australian government cannot ignore the fact that every student that moves from the government to the Catholic sector saves them $5000 and is more likely (on average) to have a better educational outcome. This is the hard economics of the government being in education and other services. It sees the economic and social benefit in working with Christianity.
In certain U.S states the goverment will now give ‘problem students’ money to go and spend on private education which is largely Catholic. The state school boards are saving a lot of money under these schemes. Research shows that these ‘problem students’ have better outcomes in the U.S. Catholic schools.
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/931014/bryk.shtml
Because of better results in Catholic schools and because it actually costs less money, there is a debate in the States now on whether they should directly fund Catholic institutions such as they do now in Australia.
Further, I can’t stress how wrong it is for one section of the population to use state secular schools to promote their own philosophy. This is the antithesis of what secular is supposed to be.
Secular was supposed to mean government working with different groups within the community, not one section of the community taking over the philosophy of government and then that philosophy trying to push out other communities that do not share that philosophy.
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