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A poem for the day – Launching the Whaler Juan Peron
A Belfast epic, and one of my oldest poems, the opener of my first collection, Grub. The gist of the story was found in Moss & Hume’s Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff, Belfast, 1861-1986, which tells how Eva Peron was due to launch a huge whaling vessel in Belfast, built [...] read our review » -
Do Words Matter?: Book Review of Political Discourse and Conflict Resolution – Debating Peace in Northern Ireland
I share many of the concerns of Andy Pollak, whose recent post ‘My Response to the Slugger Begrudgers’ zeroed in on the ‘relentless flow of negativity’ of some Slugger commentators. Pollak’s post was largely concerned with the medium of the blog. Indeed, I think the anonymity of the online world encourages extreme discourse and allows [...] read our review »
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“You can see Newton’s mind at work…”
To add to the open access treasure trove at the Royal Society, Cambridge University Library is putting online some of its collection of books, maps, manuscripts and journals. We have called the first phase of our work on the Cambridge Digital Library the Foundations Project, which runs from mid-2010 to mid-2013 and has been made possible [...] read our review »
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Comment on A smashed in face – blame the parents?
on 23 June 2010 at 9:34 pm
Why allow your daughter to put herself in danger? We all there are nutters out there.
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Comment on A smashed in face – blame the parents?
on 23 June 2010 at 9:13 pm
Simple. No 13 year old girl should be walking the streets at midnight.
I’ve a 13 year old daughter so I know the normal worries any parent has when they go out. But it would be complete abdication of being a parent if she was allowed to roam the streets at that age.
Had the parent(s) exercised even a modicum of control the child would not have been put into danger.
The class analogies are well off the point. I grew up in a working class area and even then 13 year olds were out late. But most working class families do exercise care of their children. There isn’t a different standard just because you are on low income.
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Comment on Cowen: No obstacle to Queen Elizabeth II visit
on 23 June 2010 at 9:01 pm
Indeed I do. Since HM visits Ulster.
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Comment on Cowen: No obstacle to Queen Elizabeth II visit
on 23 June 2010 at 8:59 pm
Yes really.
There is absolutely no evidence to back up your assertion or any campaign (other than the Daily Express desperate to change its headline) to unseat them;. I would classify myself as a republican when it comes to the Royal hangers on, but the deep seated support within England and the English is very strong.
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Comment on Cowen: No obstacle to Queen Elizabeth II visit
on 23 June 2010 at 7:42 pm
You clearly know nothing of the ‘Brits’ to believe that.
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Comment on Cowen: No obstacle to Queen Elizabeth II visit
on 23 June 2010 at 7:40 pm
The usual predictable responses and no doubt the first of many others draping themselves in the tricolour and shouting not an inch …
It’s a pretty rum state of affairs that the Head Of State of the nearest country hasn’t visited before. Of course its fed into the ourselves alone mythology (read the above ‘responses’ for the kneejerk reaction) which seems to believe Ireland is in some perpetual revolution.
Boys, I’ve news for you. It ain’t. Eire is a very settled semi-prosperous and basically quite harmonious state that’s outgrown the clarion call of dead end ourselves alone republicanism. Look at SF’s vote share for proof positive.
If anyone in the rest of the world even notices (in fact the rest of the world lost interest in Ireland 20 years ago) it’ll only be to wonder why the Republic has been so childish for so long.
So yet another hallmark of dead republicanism ends. It’s still sad that some believe they will ‘win’ a united Irealand without accepting the views of 25% of the population as equal and valid. If the last 40 years has not taught you that you can’t and won’t then god help you.
The visit is a good sign that we moving on.
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Comment on Photograph of the Day – You say tomato
on 21 June 2010 at 9:01 am
Was a mite alarming to hear this all American kid this morning.
But since the Yank accent has its roots in Norn Irn is it surprising we so easily pick it up?
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Comment on “A funny thing happened to us on the way to the future.”
on 21 June 2010 at 8:37 am
The key skill for the future isn’t learning huge amounts of data but being able to find the answer you need to an immediate problem.
There’s an old canard about the client visiting his lawyer. He asks a question and the lawyer goes over to a wall of books, picks one out and reads out the answer.
“I could do that” wails the client when presented with the bill.
“But I know which book to pick and were to look” says the lawyer.
We have an education system built around the idea of rote learning mounds of utterly irrelevant info because we are still stuck in the Tudor period. But the skills for survival are now totally different.
My younger daughter mastered the concept of using strings to find obscure facts on Google when she was 6. Of course she wrote long sentences. But the result was the same. She got the correct answer. Like her generation, they do know where to look.
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Comment on “A funny thing happened to us on the way to the future.”
on 20 June 2010 at 9:25 pm
Worth reading if you are involved in IT.
I helped launch the first private email service in 82. We charged £1 an email as we targeted at being a cheaper Telex. It was the only analogy we had. Ten years later email was free. All those early email companies are long gone.
One of the problems in playing in these markets is that conventional accounting doesn’t work. Look at the recent sale of Bebo for yet another case of a once appreciating service collapsing. And despair that Friends Reunited was effectively facebook but didn’t see the next step.
I’m waiting for next the thing to trump Twitter and Facebook. It’s out there somewhere and so bloody obvious we’ll kick ourselves for not seeing it.
Bit like one MD I had. I was trying to launch an internet service in the UK six months before Demon went live. He killed the project with:
“This internet thing…it’ll never take off”
Needless to say his company was dead with two years.
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Comment on “He then lapsed into petulant silence, refusing to speak during the rest of the plane journey”
on 18 June 2010 at 3:53 pm
In the 1980s I once had an opportunity to push Big Ian off the plane at Heathrow. The plane was late and as he was going to the EU parliament on some important vote, BA had arranged for a car to pick him up and get him on the outgoing plane.
The plane’s door opened and there he was standing at the open entrance before me with no steps underneath, just hard concrete…there was a bag carrier with him but he was trying to chat up a stewardess.
So here’s the moral dilemma. Do you give the big man a push and
a) hope he goes down head first
b) hope you land on him and bounce
c) spend 20 years in jail as a result
but
d) maybe change history
or
e) don’t on the basis that you don’t like his views but it does represent a lot of people and there is that nagging doubt that underneath it all he’ll do some deal.
Clearly e) occurred in more ways than one. Was there really anyone else who could have brought the Troubles to an end on the loyalist side?
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