realitycheck(dot)ie

The Predatory Wasp of the Christian Fundamentalists is Out to Get Us!

2007-01-09T21:16:00.001Z

Maman Poulet is fact finding again.

Based on her previous attempts at this, I wasn’t expecting any great emphasis on facts.

For example she dismissed Professors Patricia Casey and Linda Waite as wingnuts not so long ago – a difficult claim to make in isolation, as at the time, one of their “opponents” in the Zappone-Gilligan case was Professor Daniel Maguire, a man well known for his own brand of fictional moral theology. She also dismissed Dr Finola Kennedy for being a mouthpiece of the Legion of Mary, ignoring her academic and professional qualifications for her appointment to the Working Group on Domestic Partnership – I was expecting a similarly detailed post on each member of the working group but was destined to be disappointed.

This time, in what is fated to be one of the most boring “watches” in the Irish blogsphere, she is letting loose with the “David Quinn watch”.

David Quinn, like most journalists, has moved between 4 papers in the last 6-7 years - not exactly a flighty career trajectory. Unusual among many Irish commentators (Vincent Browne, for example) he has principles based on a world view and remains fairly true to them. Quinn has now moved on to a new venture – the Iona Institute. The Iona Institute is fairly upfront about its aims - it’s dedicated to the strengthening of civil society by making the case for marriage and religion. It also helpfully provides a list of patrons and directors with minibiographies.

Hardly nation threatening stuff.

Suzy of course disagrees – she’s expecting Michael McDowell to go after Iona with a big stick. Why?

Well, as any self-respecting Irish liberal knows, anything resembling a conservative view point is always funded by American christian fundamentalists. (And of course the funding is always secret)

The possibility that something like Iona might be funded by Irish donors – business people or ordinary people – is simply inconceivable (although in this case, I suspect, very true)

It’s funny how seldom we see claims that oganisations like the KALcase fund or the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (picked at random!) are being funded by shady revenues from an Elton John single.

Suzy also stoops to easy (and lazy) ridicule describing the research Iona intends to do in inverted commas and mentions the word “fiction” a lot.

Her hysteria about a new Irish organisation, honest about its aims and structure, headed by a man, David Quinn, whose opinions are well known and to my mind, well articulated seems rather excessive. Especially when dialogue about the issues the Iona Institute are interested in, is pointless in the echo chamber that Suzy seems to prefer.

(post title is a tribute to the great Sufjan Stevens – whose Christmas albums are still keeping me enthralled)

The Vatican Embraces Wilde

2007-01-06T19:32:00.000Z

Father Leonardo Sapienza, head of protocol at the Vatican embraces Oscar Wilde's literary and Catholic legacy in a new book entitled "Provocations: Aphorisms for an Anti-conformist Christianity. The author says he wanted to “stimulate a reawakening in certain Catholic circles”. Christianity was intended to be a radical cure, not a humdrum remedy for the common cold: “Our role is to be a thorn in the flesh, to move people’s consciences and to tackle what today is the No 1 enemy of religion — indifference.” I love Oscar Wilde's work and find his life fascinating. It'll be interesting to see the reaction of more "conservative" catholics to this development.

Sad News

2007-01-03T22:06:00.000Z

Whien I read that Elizabeth Fox-Genovese had died, I was saddened that I would not be reading any more fantastic books like "Feminism is Not the Story of my Life".
Robert P. George says this about her in NRO -

"Elizabeth Fox-Genovese was a scholar as notable for her bravery as for her brilliance. After what she described as her “long apprenticeship” in the world of secular liberal intellectuals, it was careful reflection on the central moral questions of our time that led her first to doubt and then to abandon both liberalism and secularism. Needless to say, this did not endear her to her former allies."

Not Santa's Little Princess

2006-12-27T20:18:00.000Z

If my mother wrote this article on Christmas Eve, I'd have low hopes for getting what I want for Christmas. Peggy Ornstein wrote this fantastically feminist piece for the New York Times on Christmas Eve. And by fantastically, I mean fantasy. It's such shrill scaremongering that it's quite hilarious. Apparently Disney's fastest growing franchise is "Princess", a generic pink royal character that every girl wants to be. Or at least, play dress up to look like one. And Peggy's outraged."More to the point, when my own girl makes her daily beeline for the dress-up corner of her preschool classroom — something I’m convinced she does largely to torture me — I worry about what playing Little Mermaid is teaching her. I’ve spent much of my career writing about experiences that undermine girls’ well-being, warning parents that a preoccupation with body and beauty (encouraged by films, TV, magazines and, yes, toys) is perilous to their daughters’ mental and physical health. Am I now supposed to shrug and forget all that? If trafficking in stereotypes doesn’t matter at 3, when does it matter? At 6? Eight? Thirteen? On the other hand, maybe I’m still surfing a washed-out second wave of feminism in a third-wave world. Maybe princesses are in fact a sign of progress, an indication that girls can embrace their predilection for pink without compromising strength or ambition; that, at long last, they can “have it all.” Or maybe it is even less complex than that: to mangle Freud, maybe a princess is sometimes just a princess. And, as my daughter wants to know, what’s wrong with that? "
I particularly like the my-3-year-old-as-intentional-princess/patriachary-annoyance theme. Well, Peggy's very quick to sweep all the perceived ills of modern girls to the feet of the Princess and lay the blame right at her twinkle toes -There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs — who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty — are more likely to be depressed than others and less likely to use contraception. What’s more, the 23 percent decline in girls’ participation in sports and other vigorous activity between middle and high school has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine. And in a survey released last October by Girls Inc., school-age girls overwhelmingly reported a paralyzing pressure to be “perfect”: not only to get straight A’s and be the student-body president, editor of the newspaper and captain of the swim team but also to be “kind and caring,” “please everyone, be very thin and dress right.” Give those girls a pumpkin and a glass slipper and they’d be in business.
Of course, there are no studies declaring princess=bad. Common sense (if we’re allowed to use such a commodity when discussing princesses), would dictate that the very women who have realised the feminist dream of independence played with dolls. And didn’t need feminist reconditioning to forget the experience. Foisting feminist interpretations every game played by preschoolers and the colours of their dress up is madness – can you imagine a pink Batman to remove the violent, masculine tones of the current black?

Peggy shares her great fear, a rather rare fear among parents, I would imagine - that by denying the princess, you'll run the risk of messing up their "gender constancy"  - What if, instead of realizing: Aha! Cinderella is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of all women, another example of corporate mind control and power-to-the-people! my 3-year-old was thinking, Mommy doesn’t want me to be a girl?.....By not buying the Princess Pull-Ups, I may be inadvertently communicating that being female (to the extent that my daughter is able to understand it) is a bad thing.
Of course, no article about children's toys would be complete without celebrating the toy-serial-killer that lurks in every princess -  There is spice along with that sugar after all, though why this was news is beyond me: anyone who ever played with the doll knows there’s nothing more satisfying than hacking off all her hair and holding her underwater in the bathtub.

Then there's a rather long section about superhero princesses who have "grit and grace" and princess that resuscitated the fantasy of romance that that era of feminism threatened, the privileges that traditional femininity conferred on women despite its costs — doors magically opened, dinner checks picked up, Manolo Blahniks. Frippery. Fun. Why should we give up the perks of our sex until we’re sure of what we’ll get in exchange? Why should we give them up at all? Or maybe it’s deeper than that: the freedoms feminism bestowed came with an undercurrent of fear among women themselves — flowing through “Ally McBeal,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Sex and the City” — of losing male love, of never marrying, of not having children, of being deprived of something that felt essentially and exclusively female.

Peggy, selflessly on our behalf, braves the world of children's toys - from the innocent pink of princess to the hot, sexy pink of the porn star slut waiting to burst forth your average 8 year old.  She faces the dilemma – early sexualistion of children or the early patriarchal pink brainwashing? I would choose the innocent pink, but then again, unlike the children featured in the article, I didn’t get to go on trips to toystores or demand every toy I saw on TV. My mother, in her wisdom, exerted full control over what toys got brought into our house. Such a discipline almost seems too simple a solution to the quandary Peggy’s warring feminist notions poses.

But Peggy's story has a happy ending - no doubt, through Peggy's careful questioning and constant feminist scrutiny, her daughter wants to be a fireman. Is this the moral of this (long) story? If you're a good enough feminist mother, ever on the watch out the devious anti-feminist Disney consumerist moves, you can let your little princess wear pink and she'll turn out alright? Alright is defined by Peggy as " I still hope she’ll find her Prince Charming and have babies, just as I have. I don’t want her to be a fish without a bicycle; I want her to be a fish with another fish. Preferably, one who loves and respects her and also does the dishes and half the child care."

Is Peggy making the point that the alternative is the truly frightening vista? That the pink princess marks the decline of womanhood as we know it - the next generation of women will be pink wearing, alternately obese and anorexic, non-softball playing, depressed, pregnant “little women at home"? Men will take over the world again and professional feminists like Peggy will be able pinpoint Matteo and Disney as the great architects in the mass exodus of the most well-educated and long-living female generation back to their cage at the kitchen sink? Rest assured though, we'll have always have women like Peggy, author of the forthcoming book "Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, An Oscar, An Atomic Bomb, A Romantic Night and One Woman’s Quest to Become a Mother", to point out the traps and the obvious (non-research based) "atomic bombs" placed in the princess's path to becoming a fireman.

Pondered Them In Her Heart

2006-12-27T18:10:00.000Z

Christmas was short as I was back at work today. I hope all of you had the laidback, indulgent and peaceful Christmas I had.
One line from midnight Mass has been playing in my head over the last few days.
Luke 2:19 - And Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.
Regardless of what way you look at it, the Bible is a remarkably succinct and blunt book to read – if you believe the birth of Jesus was truly God becoming man, the plain words contrast the fanfare one intuitively expects for such an event and if you think it’s a load of codswallop and a great conspiracy to extend power through centuries, it’s hardly a gripping page-turner.
But the quiet introspection of a young woman, who, contrary to all her dreams, has just given birth among animals in a cave to a baby that an angel told her was the Son of God, seems unrealistic in this day and age.
I was trying to imagine myself in Mary’s place – fair enough she headed off fairly quickly to spill the beans to Elizabeth, but I can’t imagine pondering such things in my heart. First of all, I’d expect a digital camera to be somewhere in the vicinity to capture any moments I might have missed out on (probably because I was trying to get the zoom right on the camera). More than likely, there’d be some video footage for youtube too. Most of my friends know me as a rather bitchy venter, so the mobile would start hopping and the story would be told with gasps and soundbite wisdom. I’d probably blog about it and look up virgin births on wikipedia. Then Jesus would be sent to a crèche in Lucan, I’d be commuting to the city every day and the next time I’d sit down to have good think about the whole thing is during an ad break.
I recently heard a priest talk about giving retreats to married couples – one of the exercises he had them do was to sit in silence with each other for 20 minutes. Most of them found the time interminably long and afterwards, were amazed at the power of that silent togetherness to rediscover something about their relationship.
I must confess to a disturbing lack of pondering and silence in my life – probably the only time I regularly do anything in total silence is when I clean the toilet as there’s no last.fm in there and wearing one’s iPod while using Domestos just seems wrong.
I used to go on a weekend silent retreat once a year – by the time I got into the silent thing, it was time to go home again (which reminds me to book one for next year).
I regularly crave silence, and appreciate it but often feel like I’m missing out on some indefinable action. And yet when I’m buzzing about the place, accompanied by friends, music and radio, I feel like I’m a spectator with no time to appreciate, to savour, to understand – to ponder.
From the perspective of the Christian, Mary was spectacularly gifted, blessed among women for many things, but from my current perspective, the gift of unadulterated pondering seems the sweetest.

The Year of The Inkifada

2006-12-27T17:30:00.000Z

Back in Feburary, I vacillated between being for and against those cartoons. I was rather conflicted and confused.

Reason's blog Hit & Run links to an interview with the editor of the magazine responsible for the cartoons, Flemming Rose.
They exercept this interesting point from him -
I think the left has betrayed its own ideals in this case, because the publication of the cartoons is exactly about what the left has been fighting for in the past 150 years—free speech and the right to challenge religious authority and to challenge a religion that, in fact, favors the oppression of women. [Muslim extremists] do not accept the equality between the sexes. They do not accept equality from representatives of different religions. They specifically say, "Our religion is better and should have favorable treatment compared to other faiths."

But I think it has to do with the fact that the left—at least in Europe, I can't speak about the left in the United States—views the Muslims as the new proletariat. They're the new oppressed minority that they have to defend. It shortcuts all rational thinking. [Islamic radicals] can say and do almost anything, and it will be explained away by saying, "These people are victims."

It also has to do with the legacy of the Second World War and the Nazis and the establishment of the United Nations and the fact that it became taboo to speak about cultural differences in Western Europe because of the imperial legacy. It's very sensitive to be critical toward a culture. It's taboo, no matter how oppressive that culture might be in itself.

They left out the next 2 paragraphs -
It was once an underlying understanding in the West that when these immigrants come to our part of the world, they would become like us. If they just stay long enough, they will become like us. But that changed. OK, if they can't become like us, then we'll have to accept and acknowledge them as they are. And so the West developed this ideology of multiculturalism—that you have to accept and recognize any culture on its own terms, no matter how oppressive it might be.

The left is trapped in that position. It's very counterproductive toward the Muslim community, because by treating them like a weak, victimized minority, they in fact make it far more difficult to Muslims to integrate.

Best of 2006 Albums (according to me)

2006-12-20T19:25:00.000Z

Making my “Best of this year” list is always a rather difficult chore for me (check out my 2005 version which featured 19). This year out of the 127 2006 albums I’ve got I’ve picked 25, with notable others bringing the total list up to 54.
The Irish blogosphere’s best ofs - Sinead Gleeson ; In Fact Ah; Fergal @Tuppenceworth.

Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

I listened to this so much when I bought first that when the 3 concerts in the Point came around last month, I didn’t think I’d be able to listen to it again. The concerts were amazing and the album withstood the fatigue test.

The Decemberists - The Crane Wife

The first song, Crane Wife Part 3, is possibly the best rock/indie song of the year.

The Weepies – Say I Am You

Deb Talan’s delicate voice brings their lyrics to perfection – “Thunder rumbles in the distance, a quiet intensity / I am willful, your insistence is tugging at the best of me / You're the moon, I'm the water / You're Mars, calling up Neptune's daughter / Sometimes rain that's needed falls / We float like two lovers in a painting by Chagall”

Cat Power - The Greatest

It’s certainly her greatest album.

Alejandro Escovedo – The Boxing Mirror

I was a little bitter with Alejandro after I bought a fairly standard tribute CD to him to support him with his Hepatitis C. The Boxing Mirror has assuaged that bitterness and more.

The Gossip – Standing in the Way of Control

Missed them in the Temple Bar Music Centre, and while I don’t like the politics, the energy on this album is amazing.

The Minus 5 – The Minus 5 (Gun Album)

The Minus 5’s “Down With Wilco” album didn’t prevent Wilco and REM bandmembers from singing Scott McCauughey’s songs. (That version sounds better than mentioning that Wilco of course played on “Down with Wilco”)

Hem – Funnel Cloud

I love Hem. I know not many people have heard of them, but they’re making some of the most consistently beautiful music today.

Seth Lakeman – Freedom Fields

I blogged about this album back in April - But unlike Damien Rice, Dempsey or any other of these new folk/acoustic/singer-songwriters from these islands, Lakeman is an original, singing his own songs about, well, “Freedom Fields” is about the 1643 Civil War. And he sings about it like he was there. (I doubt Damien Rice could even spell 1643.) He plays the violin like he means it. The production is immaculate and the album was made in his Devon kitchen. The drums are reminiscent of red-coated garrison men, marching with the sun reflected in their brass buttons, before their canons explode. He sings about mermaids, mariners, riflemen, soldiers who came “a courtin a maid, took her home, stole her beauty, took no gold” and the like.

Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins – Rabbit Fur Coat

Rising up with fists.

Isobel Campbell with Mark Lanegan – Ballad of the Broken Seas

A surprising duo delivering the goods.

The Killers - Sam’s Town

From track 5 on, it’s superb. Pity about the first few songs.

The Blood Arm – Lie Lover Lie

Almost standard 2006 indie rock, but as the track 7 says “Do I Have Your Attention?”, one is tempted to throw fists to the wind and scream wildly.

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - The Letting Go

Unless he developes a latent ambition to become 6th member of Boyzone or record a duet with Red Hurley, The Prince, will always be on my top albums list
.

Beirut - Gulag Orkestar

It’s a standard choice for 2006 best albums list, and it deserves it.

Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

A great album. And a great concert in Crawdaddy a few months ago.

M. Ward - Post War

An Americana triumph.

Shooter Jennings – Electric Rodeo

My effusive praise back in May still applies - This album inspires me to get to a greasy bar stool in Carolina with a large bottle of Jack Daniels before driving away in a beat up pick up truck with Shooter beside me and playing loud on the stereo. “You can’t see the tears behind my aviators” and his heartfelt admissions of caninicide – I’m in love. Or lyrical lust or something. My holidays are over, so I’ll have to settle for the next best thing. Men of the Red Cow Inn watch out

Amos Lee – Supply and Demand

His sophomore album seems to be more lyrically memorable and RnB tinged than his first – and is way better. Night Train is simply gorgeous.

Kelley Stoltz – Below the Branches

Introduced to me by Sinead, she’s dead on about this one.

Eric Church – Sinners like Me

Probably the only artist on this list that I wouldn’t mind having a poster of in my bedroom – Eric Church is a pretty gorgeous country singer – and what’s a rightwing girl to do but swoon when she hears lines like this – I believe that gas is too damn high / The tax man and the devil share the same address / I believe dogs are better than cats / And I believe that Jesus is comin' back before she does”. He’s even got Merle Haggard singing a tribute song to himself. As he sings himself - I know where I come from: How 'bout you?

Old Crow Medicine Show – Big Iron World

Perhaps the most raucous bluegrass band around, this album is faithful to a tradition that deserves the creativity and virtuosity of this group and their producer, David Rawlings.

Ollabelle – Riverside Battle Songs

Gospel, bluegrass, country – it’s all here with fab vocals.

Bob Dylan – Modern Times

Better than some of the new stuff, not as good as some of the old stuff, but holding it’s own.

The Wailin’ Jennys – Firecracker

Named after Waylon Jennings, these girls know how to sing folk.

Best of the Rest –  (kind of in order)
Sparklehorse - Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain
Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones
The Be Good Tanyas – Hello Love
Amy Milan – Honey from the Tombs
The Duhks – Migrations
Crooked Still – Shaken By A Low sound
Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
Joanna Newsom  - Ys
The Pipettes – We Are The Pipettes
The Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
Drive by Truckers – A Blessing and A curse
The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
Calexico – Garden Ruin
T Bone Burnett – The True False identity
TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain
The Subdudes – Behind the levee
Howe Gelb – ‘Sno Angel Like you
Lambchop – Damaged
Ray LaMontagne – Till the Sun turns Black
Paul Simon – The Surprise
Damien Jurado – Now That I’m In Your Shadow
Matisyahu – Youth
The Little Willies – The Little Willies
Josh Ritter - The Animal Years
Islands – Return to the Sea
The Mountain Goats – Get Lonely
Slaid Cleaves – Unsung

The Leftovers = (I had them all typed up to make the list so here they are) =
ALO – Fly Between Walls / Muse – Black Holes & Revelations / Ben Harper – Both Sides Of The Gun / Regina Spektor – Begin To Hope / Imogen Heap – Speak For Yourself / Joan As Police Woman – Real Life / Built to Spill – You In Reverse / Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris - All the Roadrunning / Tom Waits - Orphans / Yo La Tengo-I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass / Allison Moorer - Getting Somewhere / Rosanne Cash - Black Cadillac / Van Morrison – Pay the Devil / Tom Petty – Highway Companion / Thom Yorke – the Eraser / Shearwater – Palo Santo / Sarah Harmer – I’m A Mountain  / Leonard Cohen – I’m Your Man Soundtrack / Roseanne Cash – Black Cadillac / Lou Rhodes – Beloved One / Carrie Rodriguez – Seven Angels on A Bicycle / Josh Rouse – Subtitulo / Jolie Holland – Springtime Can kill you / Jerry Lee Lewis – Last man standing / Hem – No Word From Tom / The Elected – Sun, Sun, Sun / Cara Dillon – After the Morning / Califone – Roots and Crowns / Bonnie Prince Billy/Tortoise  - The Brave and the Bold / Beth Orton – Comfort of Strangers / Pajo – 1968 / Band of Horses – Everything All the Time / Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Etiquette / Centro-Matic – Fort Recovery / Dave Alvin – West of West / Deftones – Saturday Night Wrist / Elvis Costello / Allen Toussaint – The River in Reverse / Emily Haines – Knives Don’t Have Your Back / Fionn Regan – End of History / The Fratellis – Costello Music / G. Love – G. Love’s Lemonade / Johnny Cash – Personal File / John Legend – Once Again / Jolie Holland – Springtime Can Kill You / Julie Roberts – Men and Mascara / Kasey Chambers – Carnival / Lindsey Buckingham – Under the Skin / Magic Numbers – Those the Brokes / Mary Lorson & Saint Low – Realistic / Mindy Smith – Long Island Shores / Peter Bjorn and John – Young Folks / Rhett Miller – The Believer  / Rhonda Vincent – All American Bluegrass Girl / Shawn Colvin – These Four Walls / Shawn Mullins – 9th Ward Pickin Parlor / Teddy Thompson – Separate Ways / Tom Russell – Love and Fear / Willard Grant Conspiracy  - Let It Roll / Willie Nelson – Songbird / Jens Lakeman – Oh You’re so Silent Jens / Brigitte Demeyer – Something After All / Richard Buckner – Meadow / Chatham County Line - Speed Of The Whippoorwill /

How Many Albums Did You Get in 2006?

2006-12-17T23:54:00.000Z

Attempting to do a best of 2006 album list. I got a little confused with 2005 albums I listened to in 2006 and 2006 albums so I decided to make a list of the 2006 albums in my itunes.

I’ve 127.

Heard Harry Crosbie talking about music and property on Eamonn Dunphy’s RTE radio 1 show on Saturday morning and he discussed how there is simply too much music/books/TV/films and now quantity has replaced quality.

I know there are several albums in that 127 I’ve long dismissed, but still, I think I might have an addiction.

Blog Binge

2006-12-17T22:40:00.000Z

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged. Work, sick sisters (who are fully recovered now – thanks for all your caring comments), socialising and that common blogger complaint – the editor that lives in your psyche and tells you not to post that crap, have all contributed to my radio silence.

However, I have been fairly up-to-date with my reading of other blogs. Unfortunately many of the blogs that I once looked forward to reading have fell into disrepair – Richard Waghorne, Fiona deLondras, alt tag, Gavin, Disillusioned Lefty while I have began to read some newer ones – Cedar Lounge Revolution, Fatmammycat and Semperidem.

So here’s a little binge – a compilation of posts that I have clipped over the last few weeks….

It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I disagree with the lowering of the age of consent or the recent case of the couple who fought over their IVF embryos in the High Court. Cedar Lounge Revolution has a good post on embryo research, even though I disagree with them - especially in light of the news that umbilical stem cells have been used to grow mini-livers, currently used in drug testing.
The other heart wrenching case involving parents fighting over children was the Baby Ann case – Sarah Carey had a good post on it.

I’m not that big a fan of David McWilliams, and wasn’t overly impressed with his tv series – Sarah wasn’t either. And An Spailin Fanach highlights the case of the celtic tiger mums who can’t “bake” Rice Crispie buns.

Rainy Day by Eamonn Fitzgerald is one of my favourite blogs – his posts on “Lord Baker” and “In the Well Below the Valley” are typical.

Irish Eagle links to an article that I found thought provoking – John O’Sullivan on how dictators are judged – Pincochet bad, Castro not quite so bad (Well, Gerard Depardieu’s certainly fond of him).

David Quinn and Richard Dawkins had a fantastically robust debate about God on Ryan Tubridy in October – transcript and mp3 here. While Quinn beat Dawkins there in my opinion, Damien Mulley links to YouTube video of Dawkins having a go at a Christian college student.

There was a “storm in a 32AA cup” as infactah blogger, Colm put it. He summarises it, but essentially it’s about female bloggers. I won’t go into my I’m-not-a-feminist-and-therefore-don’t-care-if-women-blog diatribe again (but you know I’m thinking it). I appear on the pro-female version of the expert list under Health as a student doctor. Thankfully I’m a student no longer.

Which brings me onto my must-read-every-day blog – NHS Blog Doctor – I’m just after filling out my IMO survey on the role of doctors in Ireland. The HSE is planning to implement a “hospital at night” policy similar to the 1 run rather unsuccessfully by nurses in the NHS. Dr Crippen produces a frightening read - especially about nurse practitioners - useful in small doses but very dangerous when they turn into “quackitioners” – prepared to be scared when you read these posts - quackitioners; what New Labour is doing to the NHS and a houseman’s tale.

The Democratic party’s performance at the recent midterms, while unsurprising, disappointed me a little – however this article perked me a little – Jonah Goldberg on the GOP - The GOP came to power in 1994 promising lean government, and became the party that needed to unbuckle its pants and loosen its belt two notches after every lobbyist-paid meal. The GOP once had the reputation of being able to run government like a business and wars like a finely tuned machine. But under compassionate conservatism, government became a faith-based charity….. It's to the Republicans' electoral advantage to take positions that shock the conscience of Rosie O'Donnell. It's also true that the Iraq war is unpopular; that's because it's not going swimmingly. If it were otherwise, Iraq would be a political boon to the GOP. Now, you might say, "Yeah, and except for the brief unpleasantness, Mrs. Lincoln had a wonderful time at the theater." But it is not the conservative position to botch wars. And contrary to the slanderous codswallop you've heard for the last year, conservative principles do not require flooding New Orleans. While we're on this point, corruption and cronyism aren't core planks in the conservative platform either. Rep. Don Sherwood (R., Pa.) lost his seat because of an alleged personal scandal, but I can assure you there's nothing in the works of Edmund Burke that says a good conservative should try to strangle his mistress.In other words, just as Democrats insisted, the GOP's drubbing had more to do with incompetence and scandal than program and ideology. Indeed, if the conservative base hadn't been disgusted with Republican management, and if so many Democrats hadn't run as social conservatives, the GOP might have done just fine in this election.Republicans lost because they behaved like self-indulgent politicians, not purists. Conservatives care a lot about ideas, so that's where we'll try to assign blame. But the ideologues aren't to blame. The Republicans are..
And Richard Delevan lays out the bad news for the Irish when the Dems win.

And to probably the most important current affair recently – Britney’s underwear, or lack thereof = Cathy Young links to a Hit & Run post by Kerry Howley on vaginofascism. As she said - Appeasement is futile; the only proper response to vaginofascism is total war.

If You’ve A Few Extra Euros this Week…

2006-11-02T21:04:00.000Z

Please pass them on to the Meningitis Research Foundation.

I have spent the last few days in ICU with the baby sister who developed meningococcal septicaemia despite being vaccinated against meningitis C. 4 days later she’s off the ventilator, lost the central line and now has the strength to brush her own teeth – and is coming to terms with how lucky she is to be alive.

She’s 17 and if my mother hadn’t recognised the symptoms of meningitis and convinced the locum GP who saw her to give penicillin, she’d probably be dead today.

I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if Monday wasn’t a bank holiday and she would’ve been back up in college.

So – please support the Meningitis Research Foundation.

Not Prostitutes, Styrofoam Helmets

2006-10-23T00:43:00.000+01:00

Was how Ryan Adams described the meaning of his song “Starlite Diner” (I think!) tonight in the Olympia. One could also use the line to describe the vast character difference between the 2 live Ryan Adams – the one I was disgusted with after his last concert - an hour long, Jack Daniel’s fuelled narcisstic “Rock n’ Roll” performance – and this one – the sensitive, witty, intense songwriter/musician with the Cardinals, his tight and talented, if slightly ugly band.

He played right up to 11, playing everything from old favourites such as Firecracker, New York, To Be Young, Shakedown on 9th Street, Bartering Lines – sounding like fantastic covers of his own songs to new stuff – Peaceful Valley, A Kiss Before I Go, Let it Ride and The End.

The old Ryan has returned – the one who invented Whiskeytown and stole my heart with that delightfully sexy photo on Heartbreaker – indulgently lying back with a cigarette clamped between his lips. He ended the concert by saying “text me later, we’ll talk”. With a performance like that, I don’t want to talk – I just want to hear it all again. And soon.

Crazy Animal Lovers Watch

2006-10-17T17:42:00.000+01:00

I wish I had time to make a series out of crazy animal lovers - I've posted before about some nutty animal rights activists.
Fatmammycat has a beautifully ranted post on PETA's new ad campaign -"FEEDING KIDS MEAT IS CHILD ABUSE!". No it's not, it's common sense and good parenting.
Those animal rights activists do my head in, they do.

Came So Far For Beauty

2006-10-05T01:54:00.000+01:00

Was a very long concert – after 4 hours of some beautifully arranged Leonard Cohen songs, I’m fatigued in a happy-tired way. Some were not so good and I wonder if Hal Willner had adhered more tightly to the adage “leave them wanting more” would I think it was a better concert.
Beth Orton was amazing as was Nick Cave, Teddy Thompson, Antony (minus the Johnsons), Perla Batalla, Jarvis Cocker and the Handsome Family – actually, Separate Ways by Teddy Thompson and Through The Trees by the Handsome Family are playing as I type!
The highlight was of course Cohen’s writing – stunningly beautiful as ever, even in the arrangements I didn’t like – Gavin Friday + Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Hallelujah or Robin Holcomb’s Closing Time. Gavin Friday is a person I can barely stand – but slouched with his hands shoved in his pockets, warbling through a surprisingly good version of Everybody Knows, I briefly liked him. He dedicated it to Bertie Ahern – meet Dermot Ahern on the way into the concert – I don’t know if he was still there to hear it.
IF you can get tickets for Thursday night – go along, it’s a great evening.

(And if you can’t, here’s a link to Teddy Thompson’s superb cover of “Tonight Will Be Fine”)

I’m Voting for this Tory Toff

2006-10-03T23:18:00.000+01:00

Just saw Jacob Rees-Mogg on Newsround, discussing the Conservative Party’s selection process. When asked about the Tory’s ability to represent a cross-selection of British society, he answered (and I paraphrase) “you are elected to govern not to merely represent”.

I like it. Unadulterated disgust for politically correct notions of quota based political parties – and apparently he carries “a copy of the European Union's Directive relating to the shape of Bananas with him at all times.”

Go On, Shows Us Your Boobies

2006-10-02T22:58:00.000+01:00

Despite the impression the title of this post might give, I have not turned into some mad breast fetishist – I’m referring to the 5th annual blogger Boobiethon – an online fundraising initiative for breast cancer.

Apparently “"If they're worth looking at, they're worth saving!" and the way this bare breasted gang of bloggers are going about raising money it is to post pictures of breasts – covered ones for free and naked ones in a paid members section.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually agreed with a feministing.com post (with not being a feminist and all that) but I found myself in the unusual situation of nodding along to this post- I don't like the implication that certain parts of women's bodies are "worth saving" because they're sexy. Boobiethon is sending a message that breast cancer should be stopped because it claims beautiful breasts as its victims-- not because it's a horrible disease that's killing women. I'd almost prefer a website that featured women naked from the belly button up, and showed their faces. Because at least then you can see that this disease affects real women, not just disembodied breasts.

I disagree with this campaign for number of reasons – the feministing reason above would be one.
Others would be that the objectification of breasts can’t be a good thing simply because it’s for a good cause.
Breast cancer is not about breasts, sexy or otherwise, it’s about women (and the small number of men) who get cancer. And cancer affects your body, your physiology, your person in a holistic way – it spreads, it attacks, it can kill all of you.
I’m nearly anti-breast cancer campaigns because they’ve become so woman/breast focused. I’m all for breast awareness, in the same way I’m all for young men knowing that lumps in their testicles should be checked out and middle-aged men with dribbling and hesitancy should be worried about their prostate – or smokers with heavy coughs, their lungs. Cancer awareness is about knowing the symptoms of early cancer that we can do something about – not just about standing up for breasts.

There are many other cancers that people get and their pictures aren’t as sexy – I doubt all but the most intense gastroenterologist could get excited at a picture of healthy pink colonic mucosa with normal glandular architecture – unfortunately live video footage of colonoscopies aren’t going to make every person who spends a little too long straining on the loo wear a little brown ribbon and walk for rectal cancer. Nor would pictures of healthy cervices make women run out for Pap smears.

Breast cancer is not a gender issue, it’s not a political issue. It’s a health issue. The funding of cancer research is something public and private interests are occupied with – ordinary people’s involvement with cancer research allows relatives and “survivors”/patients to contribute something. Saving women should become before saving boobies and fighting cancer as a disease entity should come first – which should translate in to things like urgently trying to reduce the number of women smoking as lung cancer kills more women than breast cancer, even though breast cancer is more common.

Sorry to disappoint, but my boobies are remaining covered and offline.

Johnny Cash's Worst Mistake

2006-10-02T20:58:00.000+01:00

will be released on DVD at Hallowen entitled "Johnny Cash In Ireland – 1993".

Forget drink and drugs, as all Irish Johnny Cash fans know Sandy Kelly was his worst mistake.

I'm Not the Only One

2006-10-02T00:08:00.000+01:00

who is against PDAs.

Not the Personal Digital Assistant thingies (am a newly proud owner of a little Dell one) but Public Displays of Affection.
I realise that I'm fairly weird but it really irritates me to see couples swooning over each other in Coast in Dundrum Shopping Centre, for example. Yes, man with spiky hair, your girlfriend looked nice in that white skirt with black patterns, but you didn't have to snog her in front of the mirror while other people (namely me) wanted to see how they looked in a nice black coat (for those of you interested, not nice enough to justify the 400euros).
Also, most people don't lose the capability to use table cutlery to feed themselves when they enter relationships - so you don't need to feed your significant other wilting potato salad in Brambles in Dundrum at 3pm on a Sunday.

And in a general note to the increasing number of people I know personally who read this blog, (even though I'm blogging less) my reluctance to hug you merely stems from an acuter awareness of my entitlement with regard to personal space than most. I don't need to hug you, nor do I need to be hugged/kissed/patted unless I'm crying.

I am therefore very gratified to read the online source of record, the Onion's report on Dave Petrun and Julie DeSimone, "the happiest goddam couple in the whole world"....

Though their initial May 30 joint outing went largely unnoticed, public opinion toward the couple dramatically shifted after it was revealed that DeSimone spooned frozen yogurt into Petrun's mouth during their second date three days later.

By the second week of June, their approval rating dropped below 40 percent in most national polls, after Petrun and DeSimone were spotted wedging their hands into each other's back pockets as they walked through an Oak Park neighborhood. By July, the rating plummeted even further after DeSimone asked Petrun which of her physical attributes he found cutest, and Petrun responded with a detailed list.

According to a Sept. 25 Zogby poll, 36 percent of Americans grimaced when Petrun playfully nudged DeSimone for no evident reason last Thursday, and 45 percent emitted a loud, annoyed sigh after Petrun sent flowers to DeSimone's workplace last Tuesday. One in three Americans characterized the way Petrun touched the small of DeSimone's back as he led her into the backseat of an awaiting taxi on the evening of Sept. 19 as "completely unnecessary."

On Wednesday, support lines across the country were flooded with calls complaining of moderate or intense nausea after DeSimone refused, and then eventually accepted, Petrun's hooded sweatshirt during an evening walk.

Online anti-canoodling blogs, such as the popular davejuliebarf.typepad.com, are buzzing with rumors that Petrun and DeSimone broke into a brief, spontaneous slow dance near a Lake Street fountain on Sept. 20.

Unavailable for comment, Petrun and DeSimone are reportedly making plans to go backpacking across Europe during their six-month anniversary in November, prompting fears that their demonstrativeness could escalate international tensions.

May I add that my singleness has nothing to do with sense of deep empathy I share with those in daily contact with Dave and Julie.

Killing Me Quickly

2006-10-01T23:42:00.000+01:00

I have yet to actually hold my Killers tickets for the Point but I know the friend who has them is minding them carefully. Up to this evening, based on “When We Were Young”, I wasn’t overly excited at the prospect of the concert, the new album, the whole “we think this is our best album” thing that every interview with them seems to have.
Now I have “Sam’s Town” in my sweaty paws and have spent the evening making Nigella Lawson’s Brownies (which makes 48 brownies, a fact I didn’t realise until I saw the mixture in the tin) and then eating same brownies, all while listening to it. Unlike the cool kids among you, my brownies have only 1 chemical substance – chocolate – and despite being 72% solid, it’s not enough to make me this excited. Sam’s Town, however is a different prospect – discounting “When We Were Young” and “Sam’s Town” – the album is brilliant – complete with enterludes/exitludes (we hoped you enjoyed your stay…) – especially from track 5 (For Reasons Unknown”) onward.
I’m very excited – about the concert, about listening to this album over and over again, about the rest of my life. It’s that kind of album.

I just want to move to Stockholm

2006-09-18T20:50:00.000+01:00

With my husband and invent a currency for cats and dogs to use. – Ali G’s character in Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

I never thought I’d say it – mainly as a stand against all the socialists who want to get their heart attacks in Sweden – but I could live in Sweden.

Sweden has rejected the Feminist Initiative, who failed to get the 4% necessary to join the parliament, a feminist party who had Jane Fonda and Eve Ensler fly in to rally the troops prior to the election.

I could learn Swedish. I think.

Sometimes Sorry is the Wrong Word

2006-09-18T20:38:00.000+01:00

I’m not a theologian but…. (yes, any sentence beginning with one’s admission of lack of expertise followed by a “but”, is not a very promising start)…I don’t think Benedict should have apologised.

No doubt God would like us all to apologise when we’ve been wrong or hurt someone (even the other “Oh wise one” sings about “Sorry seems to be the hardest word”), but there are times when we should just resist.
In this Pope-versus-Islam celebrity deathmatch type showdown, Benedict 16 should have stood his ground. Admittedly his apology doesn’t actually retract the substance of what he said, he merely expresses sorrow at being taken out of context in the middle of large scholarly speech, but he shouldn’t apologise. It may be hard to stand your ground in the face of burning effigies and angry mobs killing nuns and the like – but dialogue about religion can’t be stopped every time someone of 1 faith disagrees with someone of another.

In the age of spiritual people and candle burnings, tenets of religious life have been reduced to morsels of love, peace, forgiveness, acceptance, tolerance and deep-breathing. You can be a tepid Buddhist or a “modern” Catholic nun (or like my grand-aunt, a nun, be both) and still have a bit of “whatever you’re having yourself”. But away from our birth crystals, there exists the structured nuances of religions – the Bible for Christians, the Catechism, Councils and Crinkly Old Church Fathers of Catholicism, the Koran for Muslims etc. While the reason of the 2nd millennial babies is vastly different to the Reason of Thomas Aquinas, both exist in our hearts as part of the continual questioning of our personal faiths. And when those faiths meet head on in the public arena of the world, stark dogmas must fight it out. Islamic thought unashamedly carries a by-the-sword ideology, while Christianity, despite a robust defence/just war exception beats those swords into ploughshares. We all can’t go home crying to Mammy everytime someone challenges something about our religion. While it’s trite to say, as some Christians do, “look at me, I didn’t burn pictures of Crucifixes in Urine when my faith was defiled in museums”, there is a contrast in our experiences of perceived disrespect. Democracy is something that is fully compatible with the Christian person, the “imago Dei” notion of all us, and with the recognition of our human nature, we’re more than happy with the whole Western democracy set up. Fair enough, not enough people want to go to Mass on Sundays, but we’re not going to round them up with swords or Bazookas (most parishes attempt more lethal versions of “This little light of mine”) or even subject them to capital punishment as one London based Islamic cleric called for.

To bridge these differences, robust debate is called for, where religious voices dialogue with the confidence of their convictions, from which respect is built. Having to apologise for statements of fact or having to hide out under couch from fear of fatwas is not advancement. The onus lies not on the Christian religions, and by extension the Western world to step up to the mark, but on leading political and religious figures in the Islamic tradition, particularly in Western countries to engage without fear and quick recourse to the “you’ve to say sorry” rallies.

For a few interesting articles on the whole point of the speech – religion and rationality – Thomas Madden in NRO; the Cedar Lounge Revolution (disagreeing) and the Anchoress has a comprehensive round-up post.

How to Behave in Class

2006-09-14T22:53:00.000+01:00

Before Miss Abigail Time Warp Advice became the cool blog it is now, I was a big fan.

In this installment from Abigail's massive collection of vintage advice books, this post, featuring excerpts from the little known classic "Everyday Manners for American Boys and Girls by the Faculty of the South Philadelphia High School for Girls (New York: MacMillan Company, 1923)" deals with behaving in school.

This post is aimed both at Northsiders (the Disillusioned Lefties) and at Culchies (the baby sister) who are starting college in coming days/weeks.

The traffic rule, Keep to the right, applies to classrooms as well as to streets and corridors. If you keep to the right, and leave a passageway at your left, you will make entrances and exits easy.

When you enter a classroom go at once to your own seat. Put into your desk everything you will not need for that period. Nothing looks worse than a roomful of desks littered with piles of books, packages of lunch, baseball gloves, and oranges.

Never borrow books, inkwells, pens, or pencils from the teacher's or a pupil's desk without asking permission. Never sit in the teacher's chair unless the chairmanship of the lesson has been given over to you. Never stand close behind a teacher's desk, except when talking to her. The books and papers on her desk are her private property. You have no more right to examine her papers or read any writing there than you have to read other people's letters.

Interruptions of any sort are just as rude in the classroom as anywhere else. If you raise your hand while another pupil is reciting, you interrupt him. Often the sight of hands waved madly in the air breaks one's train of thought and makes it impossible for one to go on. If you wish to ask or answer a question, wait until the one who is reciting has finished and until the teacher recognizes you. Try to break the hand-waving habit.

Never ask a new question until the one perviously asked has been answered. That, too, is an interruption. Do not answer a question addressed to some one else.

If you do correct some one, do it tactfully. It is often the manner in which the correction is made, not the correction itself, that hurts. The one who is corrected should accept the criticism courteously.

Do not make fun of other's mistakes. To laugh reasonably at an amusing remark or happening is natural, but it is rude and unkind to make a boy or girl feel ridiculous.

At the end of the period, do not gather up your books until the signal for dismissal has been given. Never rattle paper or stand poised for flight while some one is talking.

If you are the first one to leave the room, fasten the door back. If it cannot be fastened, hold it open for the person behind you. He should hold it open for himself as soon as he reaches the door. Doors should never be slammed, but always closed quietly.~~

New Music

2006-09-13T23:40:00.000+01:00

I've put up some of the newish albums I'm listening to at the moment in the side bar. Will try to review some of them soon.
There's something for everyone there, except for fans of Backstreet Boys - there's this (or the ever touching real thing.

Common Sense about Rape

2006-09-13T23:22:00.000+01:00

Fatmammycat.com a blog I read a lot and should link to more has a very interesting piece on date rape , slutty behaviour and that red-light trigger word "deserve".

Drinking until they pass out, acting with sexual aggression, celebrity pole notching, kiss and tells, dressing like porn stars and taking more and more risks.
It is an unpopular thing for a woman to say-I know I always get slated by my female friends whenever I say it- and sister of my friend gets particularly angry about it, but while yes, every woman has the right to be safe and not assualted or raped, those rights must go hand in hand with good sense.
If you are a young woman, staggering down a dark street, blind drunk, with hardly any clothes on, in the middle of the night, it does not mean you 'deserve'(I am really starting to hate that word) to get raped, far from it. But if you do get raped following the above scenario, you do need to ask yourself, did I practice good judgment? I don't deserve this, but was there anything I could have done to minimise the danger I put myself in.
At the end of the day rapists doesn't give a fiddler's fuck about rights, girl power, deserve, Sun campaigns, bloggers or consent. What the rapist is looking for is vulnerability. And that is something where we women can hold the upper hand.

Camille Paglia's opinions on date rape have had a similar ring of common sense about them -
"...feminism, which has waged a crusade for rape to be taken more seriously, has put young women in danger by hiding the truth about sex from them.
"In dramatizing the pervasiveness of rape, radical feminists have told young women that before they have sex with a man, they must give consent as explicit as a legal contract's. In this way, young women have been convinced that they have been the victims of rape."

(happily culled from Wendy Elroy's site - tried finding a different quote from Sex, Art and American Culture but my paperback version doesn't have a search function)

Blood Red Circle on the Cold Dark Ground

2006-09-11T23:32:00.000+01:00

I hadn’t listened to Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising in a long time – then last week when I was reodering the CD shelf (well, shelves, stacks and bendy free standing holder thing), I decided to put it on again.

While some part of my mind registered the 911 anniversary bit, I was struck with emotion hearing it again – of all the post-911 stuff I have, The Rising speaks directly to the heart of the matter, “tears on the pillow darlin' where we slept”. The prosaic agonies of loss – “your house is waiting for you to walk in”, those left behind when their loved ones act on honour - “I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher somewhere up the stairs into the fire”, the sense of a shifting centre “God's drifting in heaven, devil's in the mailbox I got dust on my shoes, nothing but teardrops” .

While on holidays in New York in May (and following a particularly disastrous experience of American baseball), I took the subway back into Manhattan from Yankee stadium. Standing beside me was a tall well built guy, chatting to his friends about his job as some sort of financial analyst. I know I shouldn’t eavesdrop on other people’s conversations, but I just can’t help it – he spoke about his best friend who was lost in the WTC and how this was the 1st subway ride he taken since 911 – he just wasn’t comfortable with the subway since.
While reading the plaques around ground zero a random business man approached us – he was from Chicago and everytime he came to NYC he came to appreciate the “nothingness” where “everything once was”.

I’m one of the few who supported, and supports various wars on terror and damning of evil axes, but regardless of where you stand, things were “forever changed in a misty cloud of pink vapour”.

And I’m A Junior Doctor

2006-09-11T22:27:00.000+01:00

After a 36 hour shift – my 2nd Sunday on call in a row – with less than 3 hours sleep. And I’m watching other doctors do the same on the TV. And blogging about. Why am I not in bed?

More importantly, what do you, my readers (the few that’s left!), think of the Junior Doctors show and the life of the pond scum in the hospital, the junior doctor?
The main thing I’ve learnt so far in my internship is that I have to do what no one else will do – wheel patients down for scans, run to pathology, carry stuff from one place to another because porters don’t seem to “port”, nurses aren’t “certified” to do anything and no ECG machine ever seems to work. And in some bizarre twist of fate, the most reluctant of medical students has become 1 of the few interns in the hospital who’s actually enjoying the 80odd hour week.

Next week promises to be good – the interns fight back.

I’m a Ronseal Politician

2006-09-11T22:18:00.000+01:00

Direct quote from Michael McDowell, the shiny new leader of the PDs on the 6.01 News.
As anyone who read this post will know, I am more fond of Michael McDowell, than I would be of say, Liz O’Donnell or Tom Parlon – and honestly, did they even think they could win the leadership contest?
But what does McDowell mean? He used the line in relation to his straight open, up and down persona he has created. Equally though it could mean that he identifies with the layer of noxious slime that you spend ages rubbing on to bits of wood that protects against wind, rain and liberals.

Tut, Tut Readers

2006-08-30T20:09:00.000+01:00

I am most disappointed with you, my readers – I go out of my way to provide a time wasting fun music quiz and you all only get 1 correct answer – coming from NineMoons. Those marked with an * are the easiest – song title comes from the first line! Come on people, I expected more from you.

Mercy on the Fallen - Dar Williams = Oh my fair north star I have held to you dearly

Hold on, hold on - Neko Case = The most tender place in my heart is for strangers

*Johnny Cash/Nick Cave – Running Kind = I was born the running kind

*Susan Tedeschi – Security = Security…I need some security

The Saw Doctors - Never Mind the Strangers = It takes 2 to get together and time to make it last

Buddy Miller – Quecreek =At the Quecreek mine the miners went down

*Loretta Lynn – Don’t think = (Well you thought) I’d be waiting up when you came home last night

The Highwaymen (Woody Guthrie) - Deportee = The crops are all in and the peaches are rotten

Bruce Springsteen - Part man, part monkey - They prosecuted some poor sucker in these united states

Dixie Chicks – Wide Open Spaces = Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about?

Neil Young – Walk On = I hear some people been talking me down

*Dashboard Confessional - Picture = Carry this picture for luck

*Whiskeytown – Well, excuse me while I break my own heart (..tonight)

Richard Shindell – By Now = Window open wide blowing through the north woods

Alejandro Escovedo – Sex Beat = Johnny’s got a lot on his eyes, Shirley’s got a lot on her lips

Billy Bragg and Wilco - Way over yonder in a minor key = I lived in a place called Okfuskee

Jayhawks - Come to the river = My heart is tuned to the morning wind

Wolf Parade - This hearts on fire = She tells you rock and roll

**Gomez - Love is better than a warm trombone (It’s the 1st line and the title exactly!)

Vashti Bunyan - Here Before = Once I had a child and he was wilder than moonlight

Caitlin Cary/Thad Cockrell - Something less than something more = It’s a pretty tired story now it happens all the time

Bob Dylan - Just like a woman = Nobody feels any pain

Minus 5 – Out there on the maroon = I had 6 white Russians tonight and 2 of them were people (Dealga’s fantasy! Great band)

Willie Nelson - Big Booty = She said I ain’t gonna fix you no more sausage

Gretchen Peters - Circus Girl= I work the highwire in the centre ring

That wasn’t that hard! (was it?)

Why Victor Davis Hanson WON'T Get An Irish Times Slot

2006-08-08T22:00:00.000+01:00

VDH nails his colours in this NRO article.
"It is now a cliche to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government - and never more so than in the general public's nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel.

These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the "quarter-ton" Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs.

Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground; yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress.

In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around."

(It's not as if his position would have been anyway ambiguous anyway....)

While not in the same issue, but my NRO reading session, Claudia Rossett, Oil-For-Food expert, discusses Hezbollah's non-terrorist UN designation - But without a clear definition of what terrorism entails, U.N. member states — including the liveliest terror sponsors — pay no penalty for interpreting these measures in any warped way they might choose, or effectively ignoring them altogether.
This gridlock goes far to explain why Annan, apparently forgetting his reform pitch of last year, has been calling with the regularity of a cuckoo clock for an immediate “ceasefire” in the current conflict. In doing so, he ignores the desperately lopsided setup of any deal in which Israel would be constrained by U.N. words on paper while the terrorists — by definition, if only the U.N. had one — can be reliably stopped only at gunpoint. That asymmetry is pretty much the arrangement that incubated this war in the first place. Israel complied with U.N. rules and withdrew six years ago from Lebanon. Hezbollah violated the rules, expanding its protection rackets and stockpiling illicit weapons under the terror-neutral gaze of U.N. “peacekeepers,” until it was ready to strike.

Irish Bloggers Blogging the Blogging

2006-08-08T20:14:00.000+01:00

It's something we seem to do a lot of - today
Sicilian Notes has some thoughts and the great-grandaddy of Irish blogging, Gavin Sheridan "bows out" (When I say shut down, I mean leave it online, but simply let it slide and move on to pastures new.)

It will be interesting to see how mainstream blogs get here, if it at all.
I bought www.realitycheck.ie about 6 months ago and blacknight are still waiting for my letter to say I am me and want to use the domain - I'm the slowest internet/broadband type going - after a little break from blogging (mainly because everytime I tried to write something I found problems with and deleted it - this non-editing approach works best!) I feel rejuvenated. Like I had a blogonic irrigation, or something.

It’s A Pretty Tired Story

2006-08-07T23:00:00.000+01:00

Now that my 80hour plus working week has become a little more like a routine than just a hellish way to spend my time, this blog will shortly resume proper blogging (well, the kind of stuff I did before becoming a working girl).
In the meantime – try this little test out. Fence introduced me to this meme – put ipod on random – first 25 “firstlines” and no googling – get the song and artist. I was surprised at how they actually form quite a nice little playlist (deleting the instrumental trad/swingle singers numbers that don’t lend themselves to such exercises)
Here’s mine – they’re quite hard (and some are the title of the song) I doubt I would have gotten many of them and they are biased towards the alt.country/folk side of things - but have a go! I’ll provide answers on Friday.

1. Oh my fair north star I have held to you dearly
2. The most tender place in my heart is for strangers
3. I was born the running kind
4. Security…I need some security
5. It takes 2 to get together and time to make it last
6. At the Quecreek mine the miners went down
7. Well you thought I’d be waiting up when you came home last night
8. The crops are all in and the peaches are rotten
9. They prosecuted some poor sucker in these united states
10. Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about?
11. I hear some people been talking me down
12. Carry this picture for luck
13. Well, excuse me while I break my own heart
14. Window open wide blowing through the north woods
15. Johnny’s got a lot on his eyes, Shirley’s got a lot on her lips
16. I lived in a place called Okfuskee
17. My heart is tuned to the morning wind
18. She tells you rock and roll
19. Love is better than a warm trombone
20. Once I had a child and he was wilder than moonlight
21. It’s a pretty tired story now it happens all the time
22. Nobody feels any pain
23. I had 6 white Russians tonight and 2 of them were people
24. She said I ain’t gonna fix you no more sausage
25. I work the highwire in the centre ring

Canadian Bacon

2006-08-05T17:14:00.000+01:00

The Torydiary blog has a post on Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his recent speech to the Canada-UK Chamber of Commerce. Canada is not a place I think about much at all, no offence to all the lovely Canadians I know. I like what he has to say about the "war on terror" -
It is a conflict without borders. A conflict fought abroad and at home. A conflict in which the aggressor stands for nothing yet seeks to impose its will. Through the destruction of terrorism. Through the slaughter of the innocent. And through the perversion of a faith. So once more we face, as Churchill put it “gangs of bandits who seek to darken the light of the world. And once more we must appeal to our values, marshal our resources and steadfastly apply our will to defeat them. This war on terror will not be easy. Nor will it be short. But it must be won. And Canada’s new national government is absolutely determined, once again, to stand shoulder to shoulder with our british allies, to stay the course and to win the fight."
I never realised that Canada was so "big in oil" -
Even now, Canada is the only non-OPEC country with growing oil deliverability. And let’s be clear. We are a stable, reliable producer in a volatile, unpredictable world. We believe in the free exchange of energy products based on competitive market principles, not self-serving monopolistic political strategies. That’s why policymakers in Washington – not to mention investors in Houston and New York – now talk about Canada and continental energy security in the same breath. That’s why Canada surpassed the Saudis four years ago as the largest supplier of petroleum products to the United States. And that’s why industry analysts are recommending Canada as “possessing the most attractive combination of circumstances for energy investment of any place in the world.”

Want to Know How Medical Research REALLY Works?

2006-07-26T20:41:00.000+01:00

Read about it in The New Yorker -
I was sifting through all of these data, and I said to myself, ‘It can’t be this obvious,’ ” he recalled. “ ‘It can’t be the predominant factor in preeclampsia, because people would have discovered it by now.’ This couldn’t be just waiting for me.”
It's an article about the potentially very serious pregnancy disease, preeclampsia and a young non-obstetrician medical researcher, Ananth Karumanchi.

Classify These As Good Times

2006-07-26T20:28:00.000+01:00

Well, for me anyway. The rest of the world isn’t having it so good at the moment.
And the classification was at its strongest 2 weeks when I blogged my last post and went on holidays.
And now after spending 47 hours out of the last 60 hours at work – and I started work on Monday 8am and went straight from my front door to my bed last night for 9 hours sleep - I’m classifying my current mood as “about to fall over” (I’m home 90 minutes and have yet to move from my sofa – the laptop is, for the first time, actually on my lap). The thing is, I’ve 2 more full days of work – which is another 23-24 hours at least, that brings my weekly total to 80 hours approx (I actually had to use calculator function to figure that out!) in 5 days.
Enough whinging about the sad life of a NCHD – because the bizarre thing (and I mean this is really really bizarre as I kinda hated studying medicine) I love my work. While I posted sympathetically about IVDU (intravenous drug users) here before, I am becoming a little more cynical – for example – I was called at 5am to re-site a cannula in a patient who has no veins left anywhere – except the side of her foot where she can’t reach to inject – so I spend ages putting it in for her urgent antibiotics – at 10am I walk by – see security removing a man from the ward – turns out he’s the boyfriend, he brought her in heroin – she shot up through MY line in the toilet and then proceeded to have rather noisy intercourse with him in same eerily blue lit toilet before being interrupted by security. Thankfully I was off call and did not have site another cannula at that stage – I might have self-combusted at that point.
Vienna, where I was last week, is fantastically beautiful sunny, edifying, expensive for ice and lemon (2.40 for tap water!) and has a marvellous array of audioguides. I’m a bit of an audio guide demon – I insist on listening to all pieces about every single painting/sculpture/side door/staff toilet that is on them. I did the really really cool “Mozart was here” audio-walk – everything was great – I meant to post properly – and my hotel (the very brill K+K Maria Theresa which is now my favourite hotel chain) had free internet so I had no excuse for not posting, especially when I did check in occasionally on other blogs.
There’s a load of other posts I want to comment on or flag but given I spelt “or” “r” and couldn’t understand why it looked funny, I might go to bed now and do it tomorrow!

I’m Just A Blogger

2006-07-12T17:20:00.000+01:00

I was originally posting this as a comment to my post below but it got too long.

Do I believe that the opposition have policies? Yes.  Do I believe they’ve good policies? Some, I’m sure. Are those policies enough to convince me to vote for them? No.
I apologise to those who expect flawless use of the English language in every sentence I write – it may have been intemperate and fuzzy to say Voting for change is not enough – we must be voting for something, for an approach based on more than “not being the government”. From what I can see Labour/FG have been pulling shapes** about these issues rather than offering constructive alternatives – and in reality there aren’t always alternatives.
And as tedious as it is to repeat myself, I basically meant that MY intertreptation (as far as I can see) from watching Q&A, The Week in Politics and reading the papers like any other average Irish voter is that there seems to be more emphasis on being not-FF/PD than carving out distinct policy identities. That is not to say that they don’t have policies, just that one gets the impression they don’t matter as much when one is urged to “voting for change”. As for copernicus’s assertion that I have not fully engaged with those policies  - depending on his definition, I might not have –– I haven’t sat down and read all their press releases and policy documents. I did attend one of Enda Kenny’s meeting-the-people public meetings and while Enda isn’t all that engaging, I was attentive.
I’m just a blogger, I write this crap because I enjoy it. I don’t pretend I’m Gene Kerrigan or a political philosopher. Correct when I’m wrong, argue with me ‘til the cows come home, but please don’t expect me to know everything about all political parties in Ireland. This is not a cop-out, but how I use my vote is not contigent on indepth knowledge of the footnotes of  Sinn Fein’s economics documents.
As I stated below I’m not voting for change because “I simply do not trust Enda Kenny or  Pat Rabbit to not make any more bad decisions or to improve on what we already have.”

It’s also worth remembering that most people don’t vote in favour of 100% of a party’s policies. In the vast array of issues that political parties form positions on, only a few really matter to each individual. If the candidate or party ticks that particular box, less important issues are ignored. As far as I’m concerned voting for the idea of change is not enough – and if the nebulous concept of change is what matters to some voters, it’ll be interesting to see how exactly Labour/FG/etc will harness that as well as presenting unique identities to the rest of us.

As much as I’d love to stay and discuss this more, I’m off for the next week. In the meantime, buy the Pipette’s new album – they’re good fun or see Stacy Earle and Mark Stuart in Whelans on Sunday. .

Update – a few more bloggers on this – Damien Mulley, Richard Waghorne and Colm@InFactAh.

It’s All Black and White for Me, Baby*

2006-07-10T22:11:00.000+01:00

Simon McGarr at tuppenceworth.ie has written a summons of sorts, a wail into the greyness of Irish politics - he wants to us to vote for change, to vote for the opposition.
The phrase “vote for change” has been forever sullied for me by Puff-Daddy-Diddy-Combs-Sean (or whatever he calls himself), REM, Bright Eyes, and Bruce Springsteen and their musical rabble-rousing in the run up to the last US election. It now just sounds trite and reminds me of John Kerry windsurfing.
That unfortunate association aside, Simon has a point – not one I agree with, but a point nonetheless – “I don’t have any illusions about the opposition but they have a single shining advantage- they represent a change. They can make new decisions, go in new directions. And they can reverse the bad decisions and wrong directions we’ve taken.”
He takes a number of issues that as a 30 year old aware of the temporal power of some political decisions to outlast his lifespan, he feels quite strongly about: MRSA; “officially sanctioned programme of torture”; road deaths; crooked housing developers; Luas/Metro problems; Bertie’s non-existent Bowl; e-voting and Fianna Fail’s tendency to attract megalomanical sorts that are more loyal to the Executive’s wishes rather than the nation’s need.
I’m not exactly happy with all these things either but I think I will be voting for the coalition again – not because I agree with their sometimes bad decisions, but I simply do not trust Enda Kenny or Pat Rabbit to not make any more bad decisions or to improve on what we already have.
Voting for change is not enough – we must be voting for something, for an approach based on more than “not being the government”. From what I can see Labour/FG have been pulling shapes** about these issues rather than offering constructive alternatives – and in reality there aren’t always alternatives.
Simon rightly expresses his frustration with those who state that changes in “life and death” areas like MRSA infection rates will come slowly. I’m at a loss though to see what else can be done in hospitals that haven’t already been started – hand and hospital hygiene have been major priorities in any hospital that I have worked in. There are definitely many where this must be improved on, but Liz McManus as health minister is going to change anything, except give us higher tax bills – the changes that still need to be instituted can only come from the bottom. In fact, I had to undergo a 3 hour session on hand hygiene (washing your hands is simply not official enough a term) as part of my induction as a non-consultant hospital doctor, this on top of several such sessions as a medical student. MRSA and other such antibiotic resistant infections are an unfortunate side effect of modern antibiotic use – VRE is equally worrying as is VRSA in the emerging resistance fields. C. Dif, the severe diarrhoeal infection that is killing more than MRSA, is literally a side-effect of life-saving antibiotics that kill off other organisms allowing C. Dif to multiply.
I have absolutely no problem with Shannon airport’s use by American troops or with Luas/Metro issues – again I have yet to be convinced that the opposition can offer anything more.
The road deaths issue is an interesting one to leave at the government and Gay Byrne’s feet – Gaybo’s appointment does seem stupid but is this not an issue about personal responsibility? The government can not sit in our cars with us and tut-tut at crazy overtaking – in fact I nearly feel that we have too many gardai pointing their phallic like speed cameras at us from behind bushes. If I was going to vote on road safety, I would vote for the party who would make all straight roads 100kmh zones instead of just looking at where the road goes to give it a ranking. For example the Ring of Kerry is a 100kmh zone. Those who attempt to kamikaze-drive that very scenic part of our landscape at 100kmh deserve the pile-up that’s coming to them. However, the perfectly safe, straight and wide roads of the midlands that lead you from one small hamlet to the next village need not be passed at a measly 80kmh.
No political party is going to come out and say that speed cameras don’t work and we’d be much better depending on well trained drivers with a strong sense of personal responsibility. But personal responsibility and civic duty can’t be solved by the government; they can’t even be learned by example from our public figures.
I’m not going to go through the rest of Simon’s list – I agree with him that these are important problems – but their existence is not enough of an incentive to vote Bertie and co out of office. Simon wants a discussion – let’s do it. But let the basis of the discussion not be the need for a change of votes, but a change of solutions.

[From my recent music listening = *”Black and White” by the Upper Room and **”Pull Shapes” by the Pipettes]

Embryo Custody Case Starts in High Court

2006-07-03T22:19:00.000+01:00

But will probably go further.
Here’s a few previous posts about this case –

The More You See The Less You Know
More on the IVF Case (my title-creativity just gets worse and worse)
Never Promised You A Rose Garden (Just about adult vs embryonic stem cells.)

My Metro Crashed – 30 Dead But I’m Grand

2006-07-03T22:09:00.000+01:00

Yet another entry in the “text messages you don’t want to get” series. This time from the baby sister on her holidays in Valencia.
My pulse shot up to 500 or thereabouts on receipt of the text. Rang the parents and they had just talked to her and she and all her friends were all grand – this was before it was on the news so it was kinda confused – I think she was on the metro that crashed or was waiting for it on the platform.
Last year my parents and herself were held hostage in our home overnight – my mother sent a similarly short, sweet and to her ears, reassuring text – “Held hostage after break-in. Fine now. Ring when you get a chance”.
I have just instituted a new family rule – no text messages about disasters without my prior permission over a phone call.

Virginity or Death or Same Old Feminist Delusions

2006-07-02T11:07:00.000+01:00

Ana Marie Cox of wonkette fame reveiews Katha Pollit's new book, "Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time" in today's The New York Times.
She ends with -
If self-described feminists choose to wear 'excruciatingly high heels' and submit to Botox, Pollitt sees a charade: 'Women have learned to describe everything they do, no matter how apparently conformist, submissive, self-destructive or humiliating, as a personal choice that cannot be criticized because personal choice is what feminism is all about.'
This may be the book's most cogent statement, though a headline in The Onion put it better: 'Women Now Empowered by Everything a Woman Does.' But there's a world of difference between choosing to wear heels that require foot-soaking and choosing to cut your toe to fit your shoe. When women dress up damaging choices as empowerment, it weakens feminist argument. But when feminists start lecturing about wrong choices, it lessens their numbers. I wish I had an easy answer about how to navigate between stridency and submission. Then again, I wish Katha Pollitt did too.

The NYT gives access to the first chapter as well. Pollitt laments the lack of "grassroots" among women who have had abortions - apparently they are unwilling to campaign. Of course that could be that they regret their decision, something Pollitt would never dare factor in, or maybe they just have not fully processed their feelings about it.
She describes the serious business of feminism as daycare, abortion, equal pay as being interlinked with sexual self expression (and darlings, of course we express that through the Vagina Monologues) - How can you see yourself as an active subject, the heroine of your own life, if you think you're an inferior being housed in a shameful, smelly body that might give pleasure to others but not to you?
In honour of EWI's sensibilities, I won't discuss my views on vaginas again, but I find this aging feminist obsession with them interesting. To the casual observer of young women, shame about their bodies is not so much tied up with sexuality as the self image, control and emotional issues of anorexia. Porn has even become mainstream, fun and cool.
Perhaps feminists should worry about their ideaologies and hobby-horses and realise that they will never again regain the conformist "revolution" of the 70s - women will make bad choices and feminists, like the patriarchs of old, simply cannot dictate to a population created by sex, which choices they deem acceptable. Realistically, wearing stilettos is not exactly the worst choice a woman could make.
And to be honest, there are times when I would rather a Victorian "man of the house" who occupied himself with the mundane realities of making money, allowing his wife to devote herself to the exalted domestic sphere to a radical feminist interested in making all women market commodities, trading fertility for abortion, child-rearing for day care and refusing to accept that equal pay is already here.

George Bush sings "Sunday Bloody Sunday"

2006-07-01T12:34:00.000+01:00

Honestly.
And it's weird.

I Want to Thank Phil Lynott for Letting Us Open the Show

2006-06-28T23:59:00.000+01:00

Out of Control – a few blogs have picked up on the indymedia report of the story of a peace activist, Conor Cregan, placing some wandering American soldiers in Shannon under citizen’s arrest.
Twenty Major’s succinctly titled “Gobshite of the Week” links to the TCAL post.
Obviously I agree with twenty’s moniker and disagree with Cregan’s actions and motives, but love the sheer delusion of his “after assuring the men were not in jeopardy” line – as I commented at TCAL - like what was he, as a peace activist, going to do? Knock them out with a ploughshare?
But my favourite blog post, for sheer stupidity goes to the Irish Bulletin (who I criticised before and then rejoined with a patronising sneer of my religious practices)
While disagreeing with Cregan’s probable political stance - Granted this chap is, politically, probably from the far-left of the same materialist dialectic which has the world in the state it's in, but this took cajones nonetheless; his actions are fully endorsed because the Irish Government has committed, and continues to commit, acts of war against its own people.
Anyone who honestly believes the Irish government commits acts of war against its people – and can somehow equate American troops on their way home from Iraq, after liberating a people from a really warful (is that a word or do we have to use warmongering? Warring?) dictator – I really think they should leave the country for their own good. Fair enough not believing it is legal or moral, but if this is an act of war they’ll really be incensed beyond belief when actual bad stuff happens – and their patriotic hearts just might not be able to withstand it all.

(the title is from Bono’s Slane DVD introduction to “Out Of Control”, the best description of those believing in “acts of war” and also the best version of the song)

These things they go away replaced by every day

2006-06-28T21:49:00.002+01:00

Disillusioned Lefty has an excellent review of Suite Francaise (posted about here).

Bruce Springsteen's website doesn't mention it, but according to ticketmaster, he's back again for TWO nights in the Point in November.
I'm not able for all this excitement - the tickets are on sale Wednesday - how will I get them with my Bruce-fan-friends decamped?
This can not be good for my constitution - annual concerts followed by a 6 monthly interval. I think I need to go blow into a brown bag.

Watching the Convent at the moment - it's almost as good as the Monastery.
Despite being the dreaded "reality television", these series have given me loads to crunch on. There is a fascination with what happens behind closed doors, especially the community that locks themselves in. Both the nuns and the monks have shown an acute awareness of the world in which we all reside - from their altar they pray for the world and from their hearts they welcome the seekers with generosity and love. From my limited personal experience of the monastic life, silence seems to breed wisdom and prayer humility. Hopefully these programs expose more to the value of both. From a pure entertainment point of view, women struggling with virtue, sin, emotions, tears and the meaning of life beats chavtastic idiots battling with each other's vanity in mirrors and big brother's cameras. It also beats Charity Queens (reviewed here by Laura), Marty Whelehan's lacklustre attempt at being the Richard Attenborough of Dublin's "ladies who lunch" and the PR piranhas who feed off their Four Seasons addiction. I continued watching mainly to monitor Tara O'Connor's hair which managed to remained fixed in an unusual formation that blended with her seemingly huge collection of dangly earings. According to Social Dublin, the blogging answer to VIP or Heat, she runs Intrepid PR, a PR company without a website, but does " 1/3 of our work pro bono", which she pronouces in a mangled D4 accent. Not quite as bad though as Deirdre Kelly, of Angel Quest, who despite doing fantastic work on behalf of respite homes, was completely incapable of pronouncing "respite" correctly.

{Those not interested in so-called personal blogging, move on, nothing to see here folks}
In other bitching - today has been thoroughly crap - I have been diagnosed with latent TB and have the worst holidays in the hospital - the middle 2 weeks of July -that's holidays after just 1 week of work. And the sales in Brown Thomas yesterday were not good.

Doctors on the Dole

2006-06-26T21:37:00.000+01:00

Today was my first day at work (induction).
Here's my worst nightmare - more doctors on the dole - from NHS Blog Doctor.
A friend just got 1 place out of 10 on a Dublin training scheme that had 110 applicants.
Unlike the NHS, hopefully, the Irish government won't start shutting down training schemes - it's hard enough as it is.

Edit - By "just got", I mean recently. On re-reading "just got" might suggest he only received 1 place as if he needed extra places for surplus personalities. Given it's a psych training scheme, one can not clarify enough.

How Ireland Became the Celtic Tiger

2006-06-26T21:16:00.000+01:00

Just in case you didn't know.
From the American think-tank, the Heritage Foundation by Sean Dorgan, head of the IDA.

Sex, Lies and Feminism

2006-06-22T23:50:00.000+01:00

Suzy at Maman Poulet asks us to think about the increase of domestic violence associated with the World Cup. Given the increase in alcohol consumption, an increase in all violence is probably to be expected.
But as the feminist story goes, men ravaged by the evil testosterone lose the run of themselves while watching rarefied soccer players kick a ball round a field. This then leads to the normally restrained male acting out his true nature and beating any woman unfortunate enough to be in his vicinity, usually his wife.
Soccer is not the only sport that unleashes such violent demons in our brothers, fathers and husbands – American football, the Super Bowl Sunday in particular, was also attributed with such an alarming rise in domestic violence.
While such phenomena seem intuitive to believers of such balanced works as Dworkin’s Intercourse, the rest of us remained unconvinced, especially in light of the complete absence of evidence to back up such claims.
The shameless padding of statistics and gross lies of the feminist establishment with regard to sports and domestic violence was reported by Christina Hoff Sommers in her book “Who Stole Feminism?” It is very sad that the feminists involved, though admitting their lack of data, felt justified in their deliberate inaccuracy.
I don’t however – domestic violence is too serious to be lied about. It doesn’t do anyone any favours – those who peddle the inflated claims are discredited and we all get the impression that inside every ordinary man lurks an unrepentant wife batterer.
The Women’s Aid website just mentions “evidence” and “research” and “findings from America” without any actual references, as do many of the local British police sites and news articles. I’m presuming they’re acting on anecdotal evidence from their localities, though over the years the US has proved that even such anecdotal evidence is hard come by.
The American group “The National Online Resource Center on Violence Against Women” has an information pack on domestic violence and sports, which emphasises no substantive link between sporting events and domestic violence and exhorts those working in the area when contacted by media to stress the everyday prevalence of domestic violence.
A quick pubmed search (on dial-up so this is taking aaaages) on domestic violence and sports reveals only 1 article – the famous 1992 article that guesses “that viewing the successful use of violet acts may give the identifying fan a sense of license to dominate his surroundings” . This is the article that has given rise to the hyperbole and has since been discredited. Even wider research into sporting events and general accident and emergency admissions has shown no increase.
I posted a few days ago about the worrying actual trends in female violence – this is just as serious an issue and one which shouldn’t need a sporting event and some innuendo to popularise it.
When I first saw Suzy’s title “Sex, Violence and the World Cup”, I presumed she was talking about another sex, violence and soccer story – that of the increase in human trafficking to assuage the demand for prostitution in Germany for the World Cup. If you are concerned about you might want to sign this petition from the Coalition of Trafficking Against Women.

Not If He Opened the Gates of Heaven For Me

2006-06-22T23:47:00.000+01:00

would Judge Neilan share a platform with Justice Minister Michael McDowell, according to yesterday’s front page Longford Leader story. (dated tomorrow!)
The story relates to the proposed opening of the renovated Longford Courthouse and the district court judge’s refusal to attend if McDowell was there.
Residents of Longford are used to such bizarre outbursts from our local law keeper – apparently this particular animosity towards the justice minister stems from Judge Neilan’s 2004 statement that he would jail all drunk drivers for 1 week pending sentence. Predictably the justice minister pointed out the illegality of such an act and such comments were dubbed by Neilan as being made to “intimidate and humiliate him”.
Of all the Neilan stories, and there are many, my favourite was his threat to rescind all pub licences in Ballymahon during the foot and mouth disease crisis to help curb the spread of the agrarian disease. Thankfully he didn’t get a chance to try the legality of such an extreme, but no doubt well meaning, measure to protect the agricultural interests of the locality.

In which Fellatio is Discussed

2006-06-20T17:11:00.000+01:00

For someone who attended chastity speaker Pam Stenzel’s loud talk last night in Liberty Hall, I probably shouldn’t be interested in fellatio today.
But, despite the influence of my Valentine’s Day reading, I’ve been reading quite a few articles about fellatio in recent months.
The most recent, Christopher Hitchen’s discussion in Vanity Fair is a rather interesting history of the “blowjob” as a specifically American sex act (which is a little odd, they didn’t invent, did they?)
Starting with Vladimir Nabokov’s reluctance to name the act, Hitchens discusses the queer monopoly on blowjobs was the result of male anatomy, Victorian prostitutes and the below-job, marines, Puzo’s the Godfather and Deep Throat - Deep Throat was financed and distributed by members of New York's Colombo crime family, who kept the exorbitant bulk of the dough. Mario Puzo, then, had been prescient after all, and without his deep insight the Sopranos might still be sucking only their own thumbs. Needless to say, Mr Clinton’s activities are mentioned.
And it is in the light of Mr Clinton’s amorphous definition of the sex act, that people like Pam Stenzel worry about American teens. Last night, Stenzel talked about the line that defined sex (genital contact) and the problems she has in talking to teens who don’t think oral sex is actually sex – despite the STD risk etc.
I saw an episode of Oprah a while back where a group of mothers and teens sat in a circle and talked about the oral sex epidemic – Oprah even had some grainy security camera footage from school buses and the like.
Back in January, I got a little excited in linking to a Caitlin Flanagan article in the Atlantic entitled “Are You There God? It's Me, Monica”, where she asks the question How did we go from a middle-class teenage girl (fictional but broadly accurate) who will have sex only if it's with her boyfriend, and only if her pleasure is equal to his, to a middle-class teenage girl (a gross media caricature reflective of an admittedly disturbing trend) who wants to kneel down and service a series of boys?. Flanagan acknowledges that the media seems obsessed with teen oral sex and wonders about what the girls are almost certainly losing: a healthy emotional connection to their own sexuality and their own desire. In this context all the unflinching medico-sexual naughty talk is but a cowardly evasion of a more insidious problem -- one resistant to penicillin.
And then last month, in Reason, Cathy Young thinks it’s all a big scare with the usual suspects - feminists saw girls as victims of male dominance, while conservatives blamed feminists and Clinton, whose bad example supposedly sent kids the message that fellatio was OK.
She points to the statistics from the CDC from September 2005, that found 25 percent of 15-year-old girls and half of 17-year-olds had engaged in oral sex and the slightly less well known fact from the study Girls and boys, it turns out, are about equally likely to give and to receive. Actually, at least among younger adolescents, boys overall reported more oral sex experience than girls, but both boys and girls were more likely to report receiving oral sex than giving it—which suggests a lot of respondents are fibbing.
Young then says Are some kids having sex too soon, and with too many partners, for their own emotional and physical well-being? Almost certainly. But the majority do not inhabit the sexual jungle of worried adults’ imaginations. The teenage fellatio craze exists mainly among adults. To those in the audience who are not worried parents, it provides both sexual and moralistic thrills; it plays both to the prurient fascination with teenage girls gone wild and to the paternalistic stereotype of girls as victims.
Young has a point about the stats, Flanagan about the emotional consequences of sexual promiscuities among teens and Hitchens thinks it has become, in the words of a book on its technique, The Ultimate Kiss.
Am I the only one who finds this really sad? Hitchens is fascinated with the “job” part of the act and the beautiful dentistry rampant in the land of the free – I am more interested in the “blow”. Casual oral sex seems more about blowing in the face of intimacy, reducing sexuality to instant gratification, given on the knees, if Hitchens is to be believed, on the first date than any mutually fulfilling “love”. (Just watched Nell McCafferty on last night’s Questions and Answers – she must have made a record for the number of times the word “love” was said on it).
Bruce Springsteen in his controversial song Reno from Devils and Dust, which deals mainly with anal sex, ends with “It wasn't the best I ever had, not even close.” I wonder how the teens in the CDC study rank it, especially the girls.

Chomsky plays fast and loose

2006-06-19T16:36:00.000+01:00

Peter Beaumont in Sunday's Observer on Chomsky's new one - Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (his titles, like his rhetoric, are becoming so predictable!)
"Reading Failed States, I had an epiphany: that by applying a Chomskian analysis to his own writing, you discover exactly the same subtle textual biases, evasions and elisions of meaning as used by those he calls 'the doctrinal managers' of the 'powerful elites'. The mighty Chomsky, the world's greatest public intellectual, is prone to playing fast and loose.
It is important to recognise this fact because the Chomskian analysis has become the defining dissident voice of the blogosphere and a certain kind of far-left academia. So a sense of its integrity is crucial. It is obsessively well-read, but rather famished in original research, except when it is counting how often the liberal media say this or that in their search for hidden, and sometimes not-so-hidden, bias. Crucially, it is not interested in debate, because balance is a ruse of the liberal media elites used to con the dumb masses. Chomsky is essential to save you, dear reader, from the lies we peddle.".....
and.....
But then there is an awful lot conveniently missing from Chomsky's account of the crimes of his own country. In attempting to create a consistent argument for America as murderous bully, going back to the Seminole Wars, he edits out anything that could be put on the other side of the balance sheet. I could find no mention of the Marshall Plan, although there is enough about American crimes in Guatemala, to which he returns repeatedly. He can find enough to say about America's misdemeanours during the Cold War; but nothing about the genuine fear of the Soviet Union, one of the most brutally efficient human-rights-abusing states in history.

And if you have absolutely nothing else to do you can read the 146+ comments at the Observer blog.

They Only Hit Until You Cry

2006-06-19T12:06:00.000+01:00

A new study at Glasgow University found that 60% of female students interviewed approved of husbands hitting their wives. 35% said they have assaulted their partner, 8% injuring them. 41% of english women in the study have assaulted their partner, with 5% injuring them.
The worldwide study found that out of 6,500 female university students interviewed, 4,800 female students approved of assaulting their partner and 2,000 admitted to pushing, shoving, slapping, throwing objects and twisting their partner's arms or hair.
One of the authors of the study said - The bottom line is that we need make the same 'big deal' about violence by women as we do about men who behave violently.

Odds and Ends

2006-06-19T01:16:00.000+01:00

Richard Waghorne has post criticising Shane Coleman’s Irish Times review of Harvey Mansfield’s Manliness.
Maybe Mansfield didn’t mention Bush by name in the book, but I’m sure Shane will be delighted to learn that Mansfield said the following in an interview with NRO back in April –
Lopez: Who's the most manly politician today?
Mansfield: George W. Bush. Bush is bold and determined, two manly qualities, and his critics consider him over-manly, not unmanly. But don't forget that manliness is not all of virtue.
I blogged about Kay Hymowitz and Christina Hoff Sommers’ reviews about it a while back. I didn’t buy the last time I was in the States – must buy it now.

[Correction - as pointed out by copernicus at the Midnight Court, Shane Hegarty wrote the IT article, not Shane Coleman.]

Sarah Carey has a link to an article on the Evils of School, while a little strong, it is worth mentioning with regard to my previous post on homeschooling.
And with reference to my other previous post on title-as-motif blogging, I will now add the next line of Bob Dylan’s Odds and Ends - Lost time is not found again – I guess that’s what motivates many homeschooling parents.
In the comments, Simon mentions social skills and Treasa creationism and state curricula.
The National Home Education Research Institute has some “scholarly” articles about socialisation and home schooled children – apparently they don’t have a problem.
Henry Cate, who also commented on the post, runs a homeschooling blog.
I did my Junior Cert Home Economics Childcare project on homeschooling – I don’t really know why (my teacher thought I was mad and that homeschooling was illegal). The following year my aunt began homeschooling her children for a year – they are both gifted children and the teachers in their school didn’t understand them. The amount of cool stuff they did that year as 8 and 6 year olds made me madly jealous.
The homeschooling families I contacted as part of that project were not crazy Christian types (but I have met them too) but parents who felt they could offer their children more. One of them didn’t teach their children to read until they were 6 or 7 and “felt ready for it”. Within a year their children were reading the newspapers perfectly. That sort of free and easy upbringing with loose timetables and organic curricula certainly appeals to me. Even the self-directed learning appeals after 6 years of occasional PBL projects and lecturers using it as a some magic cure-all buzzword.
The Irish homeschooling group is Home Education Network. This Farmer’s Journal article features a family, whose schoolteacher mother decided on homeschooling because “school socialises children at the cost of their uniqueness, and that some children are just not suited to being educated in large groups”.
As for creationism – the sort of evangelical Christian who believes in creationism (Catholics shouldn’t as faith and reason are never at odds – the search for the Truth through theology or science is all the same) is hardly going to be affected by what children are taught in school. Should parents have to teach their children certain basic things? I suppose they should, but given that all homeschooled children have to do the Leaving Cert or other state exams to enter further education, they’ll probably learn what they need to know, along with more. Guidance from the state should be welcome, but forcing the children back to school if they’re not taught something as nebulous as respecting the respect for the fundamental human rights and the cultural values of the child itself and of others is hardly sensible.

Never Promised You A Rose Garden

2006-06-18T21:17:00.000+01:00

On Friday night, while bloglines browsing in a ball gown, I spotted this entry from head potato at Planet Potato.
I then had to head off to a ball, held in the same hotel as the refreshments of Charlie Haughey’s funeral (there were quite a number of interesting characters spotted) so I left an admonishment comment and a promise.
So, never let it be said that I don’t deliver my promises….
Potato said (it’s funny how you can only type something like that. If I actually spoke aloud the words “potato said” to another person, I doubt I would be taken very seriously)
Those of you with some of the following ailments or know someone with one of the following ailments might be interested to know that only two of our MEPs (De Rossa & Avril Doyle) voted in favour of embryonic stemcell research in the EU parliament today.
You see, the funny thing about all this, is that all the conditions mentioned (Parkinsons; Alzheimers; Spinal injuries; Stroke; Heart disease; Arthritis; Burns; Leukemia; Lymphoma) have benefited from stem cell research.
Potato doesn’t want a religious argument – neither do I. The scientific and ethical ones stand alone.
The science – adult stem cell research is making huge progress, new discoveries threatening to change the face of medicine on a nearly hourly basis – they’re hugely successful. And delightfully free from ethical controversy.
In fact, every time I think about adult stem cells, I get to throw out all my old references – they’re just so many new applications.
Stem cells from adult tissue are easier to obtain, don’t carry the risk of tumours,
have immune tolerance when obtained from the patient and have shown the ability to be “reprogrammed” to grow into most cell types. In fact, only on Thursday, Nature published results from Edinburgh where they have identified Nanog, a molecule involved in the pluripotency of stem cells. Scientists are already predicting the use of Nanog, and other undiscovered molecules as being involved in the conversion of normal fully differentiated adults cells back into stem cells.
Unlike embryonic stem cell research they don’t depend on “leftover” human embryos or cloning to be obtained. They don’t require the destruction of nascent human life to effect cures, which so far are still in the “potential” stage versus the more “actual” cures of adult stem cell research.
Doyle and De Rossa’s stand is not particularly admirable – the hope they claim to offer remains merely a wish, while adult stem cell research is already moving into a reality. If we are serious about advancing medical science and offering the chance of cure to those affected with the conditions listed above, we ought to increase funding for what is already working, for what is acceptable to everyone and for what remains true to the dignity of human life throughout the process from stem cell harvest to the wish to cure.
I could post reams and reams of stuff on adult stem cell successes and applications, but in the interests of brevity and sanity, I won’t – but here are a few pubmed abstracts –
Bone marrow cells in heart failure
Parkinsons
Alzheimers (stem cell therapy mightn’t be enough in AD as its pathogenesis has not yet been fully elucidated)
Spinal injuries and Stroke – I find this particularly fascinating – olfactory neuroepithelium – the highly specialised and unusual lining of our noses can possibly be used to grow nerves. Cool, or wha?
Blindness

P.S. A science writer from the Seoul Times changes his mind about embryonic stem cell research. Watching my new favourite programme Grey’s Anatomy now so haven’t fully read it. (Despite having seen most of series 1 on digital, I’m rewatching due to love of neurosurgery. Well, 1 neurosurgeon in particular)

P.P.S. The title of the post from Lynn Anderson's song is relevant - adult stem cell research is less sexy than embryonic - embryonic stem cell research promises the sun, moon and stars. Adult is more steady and stealthy, but has a rosy present, unlike embryonic's rosy future.
How's that for clumsy title-as-motif blogging?

Update - Disillusioned Lefty and Planet Potato both have posts up and I've commented at them.

Home or School?

2006-06-15T11:42:00.000+01:00

The editor of The Brussels Journal has been threatened with prosecution over the homeschooling of his children in Belgium.
He refused to sign an official "declaration of homeschooling" which would allow inspectors to decide if the parents are "respecting the respect for the fundamental human rights and the cultural values of the child itself and of others" - and if not, force the parents to send their child to a government recognised school.
He refused to sign as he felt the criteria was entirely arbitrary.
Now, he has been questioned in the police station.
This new declaration sprung from a bill based on the UN declaration on the rights of the child.
Will this happen here as well?
Parents are the first educators of their children, and reasonable parents who homeschool their children strongly feel they are acting in their child's best interests.
Why should the state interfere?

The Book You MUST Read This Summer

2006-06-14T23:32:00.000+01:00

is Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith.
It is amazing - flawlessly written, moving and poignant.
I'll just quote the Amazon review summary thingie - Celebrated in pre-WWII France for her bestselling fiction, the Jewish Russian-born Némirovsky was shipped to Auschwitz in the summer of 1942, months after this long-lost masterwork was composed. Némirovsky, a convert to Catholicism, began a planned five-novel cycle as Nazi forces overran northern France in 1940. This gripping "suite," collecting the first two unpolished but wondrously literary sections of a work cut short, have surfaced more than six decades after her death. The first, "Storm in June," chronicles the connecting lives of a disparate clutch of Parisians, among them a snobbish author, a venal banker, a noble priest shepherding churlish orphans, a foppish aesthete and a loving lower-class couple, all fleeing city comforts for the chaotic countryside, mere hours ahead of the advancing Germans. The second, "Dolce," set in 1941 in a farming village under German occupation, tells how peasant farmers, their pretty daughters and petit bourgeois collaborationists coexisted with their Nazi rulers. In a workbook entry penned just weeks before her arrest, Némirovsky noted that her goal was to describe "daily life, the emotional life and especially the comedy it provides." This heroic work does just that, by focusing—with compassion and clarity—on individual human dramas.

I wanted to read from the time I read the New York Times review a few months ago - I blogged it here.

I normally gorge on books in one sitting but I just couldn't on this one - it needs digestion. I cried on the train at the emotional punch delivered by the personal correspondence between Nemirvosky and her family and her husband's subsquent attempts to locate her when she was taken to a concentration camp, before they both perished in Aushwitz.
Her notes for the final cycles are a fascinating insight into how a novelist works, in her case, with an apple sitting on some leaves in a forest far way from her home and security, on the run from Nazis.

Please read it. We need to never forget what happened.

Good Pancreas Music

2006-06-14T23:12:00.000+01:00

The New York Times have an article on "While in Surgery, Do You Prefer Abba or Verdi?"
I hate surgery with a passion, so despite having to work as surgical intern for 6 months (and being the cunning dosser that I am, I'm only doing 3 months of actual surgery!), the chances of me having to choose music for theatre are very slim. Which is unfortunate as I own a rather extensive CD collection.
As a student, I avoided theathre as much as was feasible - I never heard music in a Dublin OR, but my personal study would carry very little statistical significance.
(Please note smooth segue from medical news to album endorsements)

New Music in my life includes -

Shearwater - Palo Santo
I originally got into Okkervil River because I liked the cover of their album Black Sheep Boy. I bought it on the impulse and really enjoyed it. But Shearwater, Okkervil River's side project, is excellent. Well worth checking out.

Paul Simon - Surprise.
Simon and Garfunkel in the RDS 2 summers ago was one of the best concerts I've ever been to. There's nothing surprising about Surprise - Father and Daughter the song that's been played a lot on the radio is probably my favourite.

Johnny Cash - Personal File.
As if I could find fault with the great man.
I organised a musical wake for him when he died.
I'm officially a fan for life.

The Wreckers - Stand Still, Look Pretty.
Mindy Smith joins up with some other girl (I'm too lazy - you know where google is yourself) to make an album that's pleasing to any country fan's ear.
Certainly beats the Dixie Chicks for those of us who have bailed out of their meandering long way.

Charles J Haughey and the Sacred Heart

2006-06-14T12:45:00.000+01:00

As you’re probably well aware, Charles J Haughey, former Taoiseach of Ireland died yesterday.
After thinking that a panting Charlie Bird telling Ryan Tubridy the news, followed by a “News At One” at 11 would be a spotty day of radio – some very good, some very bad, I thought of the Sacred Heart, open hearths and TK red lemonade.
I had nearly forgotten about my childhood visits with my father to a retired farm labourer of my grandfather’s. We used to visit Billy and May every so often, bringing Mikado biscuits and a packet of Golden Virginia tobacco – because that was what my grandfather used to bring them when visiting after Billy retired.
They lived in a 2 room cottage perched atop a steep hill – the kind that you’ve to go in first to get your car up, with a rusty green pump across the road for water. There was always a few fat hens running around and the whitewash gleamed in contrast to the green gates and the red half door.
My sister and I would hide behind my father, half hoping we wouldn’t have to go in while secretly wishing for the Mikado biscuits – which we wouldn’t get at home.
Billy and May still had the open fire and used it for their cooking. While they had electricity, they had no fridge, no main light bulb – there were 2 lamps at both sides of the room. So the main room was relatively dark, lighted mainly from the sunshine outside. The room was always smoky and smelt of damp turf and something else I never quite figured out – probably the thatched roof.
Despite the hospitality, the Mikado biscuits, the warm and barely fizzy TK red lemonade, I never really felt comfortable.
For on one side of the room was the picture of the Sacred Heart, lit by the 3rd electrical item in the room, a flickering orangey red bulb illuminating the compassionate stare of the Sacred Heart as He kept a merciful eye on the house and its occupants. In the relative darkness, the Sacred Heart, who also thanks to my granny, hung more discreetly in my home kitchen, took on a whole new orange neon appearance – one that was not too settling.
On the other side of the room, exactly in parallel with the Sacred Heart, Charlie stared down on this bucolic scene. Thankfully his picture wasn’t lit up with a red bulb, but his place in that home as a political saviour was as important as the spiritual saviour he looked over at.
To Billy and Mae, Charlie Haughey represented something. His picture meant something to them, so much so it was the only other face that adorned their walls.
Charlie Haughey on the other hand, means very little to me. Every time we visited we were warned not to repeat anything my father or grandfather had said about him, none of it complimentary, their Blueshirt roots ensuring no charity for the man. So Charlie Haughey represented a barely irresistible temptation to blurt out something atrocious about the hero of an elderly childless couple, someone I was brought up to believe as being the sort of person you didn’t admire and definitely didn’t vote for.
I’m not sure exactly what Charlie represented to a farm labourer and his wife, whose life circulated between their vegetable garden, the wireless, Mass on a Saturday evening and a trip to town on Thursday for the Mart and groceries. I don’t if it was free ESB or the television licence they didn’t need, or his republicanism, his Parisian fashion, his charisma or economic acumen that attracted them and kept them loyal. I never had a chance to ask.
It’s too easy to divide a man’s legacy into neatly consigned black and white boxes – none of us live our lives in such elegant moral starkness. I simply do not have the historical appreciation for what he did and am too young to remember him in any meaningful way as a politician – I was 9 in 1992 when he resigned – I don’t know what quite to think of him.
But this outpouring of commentary, no doubt practised in front of many a retired politico’s bathroom mirror for the inevitable day of his passing, reinforced one thing for me.
As a nation, we lack a clearly defined sense of right and wrong. Sure we know how to act decently and honestly, but unfortunately have sometimes tended to stop morality at the sexual. But we all have a keen sense of the trick, the shortcut, the not-so-legal way out of things – and while many of us no doubt have the moral strength to resist the temptations that Haughey succumbed to, there is a part of us that cheers on the gangster, the man who took the risk and won - until he was caught out. And that part of us mourns the man and the politician that was the Boss – a patriotic, energetic servant of the people who willingly took was given to him, be it love, loathing, loyalty, controversy or cash.

Are Speed Limits Targets?

2006-06-03T11:52:00.000+01:00

I hope not.
I'm just about to leave Longford and drive to Kerry now. According to the AAroadwatch route planner it will take 4 hours 24 minutes.
It'll be fun as my first solo drive in my new car with my iPod and my (illegal) iTrip.
What is not so fun is the late arrivals of fellow holidaymakers who are leaving me alone for 2 days in Kerry.
So I'll be back next week and given I got a digital camera in New York I might even have a few photos!

Song of the Week

2006-05-31T17:15:00.000+01:00

has to be Reconnect by Director, a band from Malahide.
You can hear it (and watch video) at their myspace site or their main website, where they stream a few more songs.
I downloaded a few weeks ago after myspace slowed up after about 12 listens.
Didn't listen to again until this morning and according to itunes am now at play number 34 (in 6 hours).
Must buy album in next few days before I overdose on Reconnect.

GROLIES? or SIROLIES? Which one are YOU?

2006-05-29T22:25:00.000+01:00

This is the sort of thing that has me tossing and turning at night, punching pillows and counting sheep.
Thankfully my sleep tonight will be blissful, oiled by the conclusion that I am neither.
GROLIES was introduced to me by Dr Phil Hammond on tonight's repeat of last weekend's Have I Got News for You.
He first heard it from a medical guy (otherwise known as a doctor, but because I'm still I'm on holidays, I shall not refer to him as such) who used it in relation to the sort of people who partake in alternative therapies.
It stands for Guardian Readers Of Limited Intelligience in Ethnic Skirts.
SIROLIES is my version for people who read the Sunday Independent. But off the top of my head the only SIROLIES I can identify now are the blondes who write for the Sunday Independent, Siobhan O'Connor in particular. Perhaps her skirt is not so much ethnic as epigrammatic.

Did you ever get the urge to defend an Archangel?

2006-05-27T01:00:00.000+01:00

It's a question I never thought I'd ask, but after reading The Irish Bulletin, a new Irish blog I came across via irishblogs.ie, I suddenly have the urge to grab Saint Michael the Archangel, wrap him up in some bubble wrap and whist him away to some undisclosed location.

Their political policies encompass the Christian, the conspiracist and the cracked.
I even feel uncomfortable calling it Christian.
The Irish Family seems to serve as the newspaper of the disenchanted, nationalist Catholic who holds a hodge podge of barely formed anti-war, pro-life/pro-family, anti-EU views, with a nostalgic view for the way it was before Vatican II.
I guess this blog is attempting to serve the internet in the same barely coherent way.

It continually amazes me how this particular species of Irish Catholic holds all these things together with such anger. I have met too may of them in real life to understand - for the more you know about them, the more confused you become.
From the EU to the illegal state of Israel to the great bogey man of Freemasonry, their politics run the spectrum from shaggy haired socialist to conspiracy theorist back to your local parish priest. No one is safe from their deluded world view.

Saint Michael the Archangel is asked to bless the site as the "armour of Truth in a world full of lies". The only way the Archangel could do that is to smite the site.

Tempest in the Teapot Blues

2006-05-26T20:40:00.000+01:00

The totally unnecessary protest at Minister McDowell’s speech at the Equality Authority’s conference causes EWI to ask the question “The Catholic Church protesting against gays or Law'n'Order? Such a dilemma!” with regard to which side Richard Waghorne will take in this debate (he also describes Richard as an uberCatholic and is on tenderhooks waiting for the answer – if only the rest of us bloggers had such a loyal following!).
Speaking for myself, as a someone who opposes gay marriage, an ordinary practising non-ultra/uber Catholic (and who once held a tendre for Michael McDowell) there is really no such question. There is no dichotomy that pits one against the other.
It’s quite simple - people who throw jugs of water, copies of the constitution and pens at anyone should not be taken seriously and be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Every movement, every ideaology, every issue that inspires activism inspires some form of extremist. The kind of extremist that foams at the mouth everytime their “issue” is mentioned and somehow manages to integrate and relate their seemingly disparate crankologies in to a conversation about the weather. The anti war gang have those who attack airplanes, those who oppose gay marriage have protestors who are not only wrong in their actions, but lack the imagination to do anything else except use whatever was beside them in a conference as projectiles.
According to Suzy, who live blogged the event, it was a combination of Mother and Child and the Ancient Order of Hiberians.
Mother and Child have long been at the fringes of every single issue that they allied themselves to. While they have right to do whatever they want as Catholics and as citizens of a free democracy (even though they’ve yet to grasp the accepted democratic behavioural norms), they speak neither for the Church nor those who agree with them. Youth Defence/Mother and Child/AOH are well organised small groups of people who get a thrill out of being the martyrs persecuted for their views in, what they no doubt describe, as the “so-called liberal Ireland”. To gain the respect of their fellow travellers, no event is too small not to warrant some spotlight grabbing stunt – the more random, aggressive and utterly pointless the better. Results make no difference to this small group of activist-tourists, it’s the fight that counts. And once their little stunts are publicised, they clap each other on the back – they need do no more now. They need not actually educate themselves or anyone else properly. They need not make coherent submissions to the relevant State bodies that investigated whatever the issue of the day is. They need not discuss their concerns rationally with politicians or the media or those that disagee them. Their work is done.
I really hate how these sort of lunatics colour everyone who broadly agrees with them with the same dark shade of crazy red.
Dossing Times wonders if those who normally love to throw stuff at McDowell will stand up for him now that he is being attacked by their opposites.
I normally agree with a lot of what McDowell says – the civil partnership idea is not something that I’m going to excited about. Part of me agrees that certain rights (property, inheritance, next of kin issues etc) should be extended to all couples in long term relationships but I disagree with marriage being anything other than 1 man, 1 woman.
I have yet to throw a jug of water at anyone (I think, I’m trying to remember all the water fights I’ve been in – mainly balloons or hoses) but I doubt the quiet questioning of the many more who don’t want gay marriage will ever be described as how the “Catholic Church” thinks or acts.

(BTW, the post title is also the title of a song by Johnny Irion from his album “Unity Lodge”)

Conservative Top 50 Songs

2006-05-26T00:09:00.000+01:00

The New York Times cogs National Review's list, saving me money on resubscribing today. (which I'll do once I start earning money!)
I posted about the list here a few days ago and have gotten loads of google searches about it. It's the first time I've checked my stats in ages. There's some interesting search terms there that will probably merit a post when I'm back in the land of broadband.

Australian Winds Blow as Strongly as Ever

2006-05-23T20:09:00.000+01:00

Treasa at Winds and Breezes is gallivanting around Australia. Unlike some other bloggers reading her reports, I am not bitter, merely jealous.
I am so glad she posted on Lyric FM (see last post). Like Treasa I have very broad taste in music and have attended as many NCH concerts and John Fields room gigs as I have alternative rock ones.
I wanted to post on the nature of music and snobbery but now I'm just going to quote Treasa.
"Richard has finally noticed that they occasionally play Irish traditional music on the breakfast show. I have to say, what in the name of God took you so long Richard? Because this is one of the most positive features of the station. It is not totally elitist. Sure I get annoyed when they play that Gilbert and Sullivan stuff I don't like, but 1) I applaud them for playing it 2) I recognise that no one else plays it and 3) the world does not revolve around my taste in music and frankly, I think mine is probably broader than most people's. "

and

What is the problem with many classical music fans? Why do they assume that only classical music is a valid and acceptable form of musical entertainment? What in the name of all that is holy would Richard do if classical music didn't happen? Would he be listening to the music of Hildegard von Bingen for his whole life because music only went in one direction?

I would also like, in the interests of transparency, to admit to owning CDs of Hans Zimmer, and having spent many enjoyable hours at the piano working through some of his scores.
I would also like to recommend Martin Hayes and Denis Cahill to anyone who's interested. Their concert in the NCH about 2 years ago was even better than Yo-Yo Ma's. And in Richard's eyes, given their nativist fiddling, this could be considered reverse snobbery.

Tall people, men to be precise

2006-05-23T20:00:00.000+01:00

My previous post on My Broken Social Scenery offended some tall people.
I do not want to offend tall people.
I want applaud them, especially the men, and have them regularly meet up in similar concentrations as they did at Broken Social Scene.
At 5'7 and a half, I want to meet men taller than me. Most Irish men are too small.
They might annoy me by standing in front of me in concerts, but at least I know they reside in the country, even though they are not in my life.

The Common Folk and The Conservative

2006-05-22T13:55:00.000+01:00

One of the things I like about Richard Waghorne is his ability to take himself very seriously. Given that I agree with him a lot of the time, this blog has seldom anything to say about him.
Today, though, I'm laughing.
His blog Sicilian Notes tells us, with regard to Lyric FM , that “Those who consider nativist fiddling to be a taste of some sort could then listen to their peasant music on their own frequency without disrupting the balance of my carefully calibrated working environment.” (How can one express a catty screech in computer language? Is there a modified smiley to say "Ewwww"?)
Those little throw away comments from Richard are akin to Ann Coulter's trademark quotes - almost witty, but empty and sometimes downright intolerant.
Richard has disabled comments and recommends we email him. This is a public email. First off, I recommend that Richard buys an iPod or a CD player, thereby ensuring his work environment remains perfectly “calibrated” and free from those pesky peasants with fiddles.
Irish traditional music is not just peasant music nor does its worth an artform stem from its "nativist" quality. Calling it as such just makes Richard look uber-snobby and exclusive. But I think that's exactly how he wants us to think about him.
He's right about radio licensing here, but unfortunately his reliance on the old Tory image of conservatism just doesn't convince.

Karl Rove Indicted

2006-05-22T02:39:00.000+01:00

Well, no, not really, as we all know at this stage.

The best response to Jason Leopold's original story and subsquent non-retraction (we erred in getting too far out in front of the news-cycle) is the most predictable, really.
Jonah Goldberg at The Corner
At about 11:15 this morning I thanked her for a fabulus dinner. When she looked at me funny, I simply explained I was out in front of the news cycle. By 1:00 PM I was already quite cross about my three year-old daughter's not taking her studies in college seriously

Goldberg links to Protein Wisdom who describes Leopold's reporting as - "advancing the Rove indictment story, which Truthout reported on in a way that has (to date) refused to correspond with either a) their enthusiasm for said indictment, or b) any ostensible connection to reality.
But—because there is always still the chance Rove will be indicted— Truthout reserves the right to re-claim the scoop, even if they miss the date by, oh, say, months."

Protein Wisdom offers complicated reportage on Carmen Electra's ultimate demise involving nipple rings and homemade raspberry scones.

Any takers for Irish before-the-news-cycle-reportage?
While I accept that "FF out of goverment" maybe a runner, "Enda Kenny is now Taoiseach" is going too far, even for non-traditional manipulation of time, space and the news cycle continium.

Update - United Irelander reports on a press release from Minister O'Donoghue congratulating Brian Kennedy on winning the Eurovision.
While that's definitely ahead of the news cycle, I don't think it qualifies as an example becuase truthout used the line in the hope that their story will someday be true. Brian Kennedy's innate musical ability, or lack thereof, ensures that a Eurovision win will never be on the news cycle.

Jesus = A Dead Rabbi with A Girlfriend?

2006-05-22T01:11:00.000+01:00

The title is from Mark Shea's interview with Matt Cooper on the Last Word about the Da Vinci Code, where he rubbishes the notion that the Council of Nicea voted that Jesus was divine.
As a blog title it's useless, as it tells nothing about the post's content, but as a line it's fantastic.
I actually want to talk about the top 50 conservative rock songs of all time - John Miller lists them in this month's National Review.
I'm no longer a subscriber to National Review, simply because I forgot to renew my subscription. But now I'm getting increasingly bored with what passes for conservative analysis in the States - I feel I've heard it all before. I think this stems from relying on bloglines to read blogs more so than the magazines/sites that I used to. So I'm unsubscribing from a rake of blogs that are currently preventing me from reading (and blogging about) interesting things.
Most of my recent blogging output has been about music, but now that my life is slowly returning to a semblance of a routine, I'll hopefully have more serious stuff.
But the top 50, as introduced by John Miller - On first glance, rock ’n’ roll music isn’t very conservative. It doesn’t fare much better on second or third glance (or listen), either. Neil Young has a new song called “Let’s Impeach the President.” Last year, the Rolling Stones made news with “Sweet Neo Con,” another anti-Bush ditty. For conservatives who enjoy rock, it isn’t hard to agree with the opinion Johnny Cash expressed in “The One on the Right Is on the Left”: “Don’t go mixin’ politics with the folk songs of our land / Just work on harmony and diction / Play your banjo well / And if you have political convictions, keep them to yourself.” In other words: Shut up and sing.

But some rock songs really are conservative — and there are more of them than you might think

Number 1 goes to the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again".
The Volokh Conspiracy provides the dirt. Might re-subscribe to NR digital over the next few days to get the rest of it.
"The conservative movement is full of disillusioned revolutionaries; this could be their theme song, an oath that swears off naive idealism once and for all"

Bon Jovi to become the UN and Richie Sambora to take over

2006-05-21T15:38:00.000+01:00

I wish.
The highlight of last night’s Croke Park gig was Richie Sambora’s solo version of “I’d Die for You”.
Not being a Bon Jovi fan at all at all, until last night I always thought Sambora was a mildly unattractive and rather good guitar player. After seeing pictures of him on the beach with Charlie Sheen’s wife Denise Richards last week, I revised that impression to “rather unattractive and mildly good guitar player”.
Now I’m on the brink of organising an internal Bon Jovi shake up. Let Jon and his nice teeth show his dancing skills to one side and the keyboard player shake his golden curls as if he was in a Pantene ad – but bring Richie forward, give him a mic (and a haircut and maybe a mask like those Finnish guys at Eurovision) and let him entertain us.
It’d be better than Jon Bon Jovi’s profoundly astute theological and political insights – that God is a woman and the UN should move home to a Bon Jovi concert.
Actually, given the UN’s appalling record in recent times, they might learn something from such classics as “Bad Medicine” (oil for food scandal?); “Wanted Dead or Alive” (oppressive dictators?) and “It’s My Life” (the US response to International Courts).
The Heritage Foundation has a new Progress Report on UN reform that’s worth a read.

My Broken Social Scenery

2006-05-20T02:18:00.000+01:00

Like some other bloggers, I spent last night in Vicar Street at the Broken Social Scene gig.
For the BSS fans out there this might border on heresy - I barely enjoyed the gig. It could have been that I was jetlagged and hadn’t slept in ages and was standing in the back being rugby tackled by every rude BSS fan who seemed determined to leave a little bit of their pint on me.
Bitterness at the tiny woman beside me who kept whacking me and screaming into my ear aside, it wasn’t that great a gig. Perhaps if I had listened to BSS in the last 2 months I might have appreciated them a little more but I didn’t. Listening to the albums again this afternoon (after an impressive 17 hours non-stop sleep) I still like them a lot.
I brought 2 friends along – they said “I like songs” and “I like melodies” respectively and found BSS deficient in both. I didn’t, but wasn’t overly impressed.
I was amazed at the amount of tall guys at the gig. Where do these guys hang out when Broken Social Scene is not in town soliciting 300 people massages?

Related musical notes – have gotten a free ticket to Bon Jovi in Croke Park tomorrow which should be fun, I suppose.

Album of the week goes to Shooter Jennings’ new one – “Electric Rodeo”. (mp3 here)
His first one “Put the O Back in to Country” was a little hit and miss, but this is hard and solid.
I’m loving his Southern/country rock and have a tremendous urge to tie my blouse tails under my chest and hit a honky tonk a la “Some Rowdy Women”.
Despite my outer conservative appearance (and inner conservative thoughts), I’m a sucker for cigarette smoking, long haired, funky sun glasses wearing, guitar playing country singers with upside down American flags in their liner notes. This album inspires me to get to a greasy bar stool in Carolina with a large bottle of Jack Daniels before driving away in a beat up pick up truck with Shooter beside me and playing loud on the stereo. “You can’t see the tears behind my aviators” and his heartfelt admissions of caninicide – I’m in love. Or lyrical lust or something.
My holidays are over, so I’ll have to settle for the next best thing.
Men of the Red Cow Inn watch out

Summer Holidays

2006-05-08T20:31:00.000+01:00

I have been thinking about you, my valued reader in my small cohort of valued readers in recent days while I have not been blogging.
This is in part due to the lack of Broadband in my small town in the Midlands (check out Damien for coverage map and other stuff )but mostly due to my new daily routine which involves a tiny bit of farming, some reading of frivolous non-medical books and a lot of languid lounging on the couch.

But I'm off to the Big Apple now for some sightseeing, shopping and baseball. Thanks to Eagle's recommendation I going to see the New York Yankess and the Boston Red Sox tommorrow in Yankee stadium.
I will not be blogging from New York because it would be a mere gushing about New York and a sharing of my ignorance of baseball - I told an American friend that I was going to see a baseball match between the New York Sox and the Boston Yankess.

I'm off now to download some podcasts and listen to them on the plane - the Leviathian podcast, an tImeall (obviously not bringing the little blue and orange Irish dictionary, so I'll be free-interpreting - which is so much more fun), Virgin Atlantic's New York podcast guide and maybe some of the Irish radio stations I never listen to.

But when I come back, I'll be all up for blogging loads.

In my absence, I urge you to read my favorite New York magazine - the City Journal, and think of me, a poor hapless tourist navigating the streets of gold of the Big Apple.

Bruce Springsteen – This is NOT an Objective Review

2006-05-06T02:14:00.000+01:00

There are at least 2 things that this blog simply can not be objective about.
The first is Cillit Bang, cleaner extraordinaire that actually works (I know it sounds like I’ve been sucked in by those happy people on the ad saying “Cillit Bang it really works” but it does, honest).
The second is Bruce Springsteen’s music. Just his music – I will always say it’s brilliant, even the songs I don’t like are brilliant in their own indomitable Springsteen way (Born in the USA and Dancing in the Dark). I’m not a big fan of the Bruce-as-John-Kerry’s-supporter-numero-uno nor the posting entire 3 million word Al Gore screeds on his website phase, but other than that everything the man does can be classified as perfect in my book.
Last year I thoroughly enjoyed my Springsteen in the Point evening, which is becoming a delightful annual event.
Therefore, the 2 and half hours I spent in the Point listening to him tonight was perfect. Made more perfect by the presence of both Dr Cox from Scrubs and John Kelly in the balcony to my right (well, they didn’t actually improve my listening enjoyment at all, but a girl’s gotta do some name dropping)
We Shall Overcome is an amazing album – the kind of album that you just want to keep listening to. Every song is uplifting, multi-layered and thoughtfully arranged and fantastically compelling. It still doesn’t reach the lofty heights of “Auds’ Favourite Springsteen Album” which remains The Ghost of Tom Joad but it’s catching up.
I listened to We Shall Overcome before each of my clinical exams last week and was inspired by lines like “Keep your eyes on the prize / Hold on”; “We shall overcome”; “Brothers and sisters don’t you cry / There’ll be good times by and by”; “we’re climbing higher and higher”; “My Oklahoma woman blowed away / Mister as I bent to kiss her / She was picked up by a twister” (giggle); “Pay me my money down” (after 6 years of unpaid undergrad-ism that should be self-explanatory) ; “Low bridge everybody down” (it’s not inspirational as such – I just like it).
There were moments of lyric-induced panic – mainly to do with Old Dan Tucker’s unfortunate demise – I was afraid I would diagnose an ulcer or something as a “toothache in his heel”.
Anyway, the album’s great. And the Boss is the boss live. He owns the stage, strutting, swinging, singing, strumming. The man’s a genius.
Bruce is the sort of man that pleases a woman early on and keeps her there for the rest of the evening – last year I said I love my music and love evocative lyrics that I can really relate to and my emotional involvement in a song reached its zenith with Reason to Believe. Using Tom Waits type vocal distortion and harsh mouth organ accompaniment, Bruce transported my soul to a Depression era Mississippi church with a wizened preacher demanding relief from the dead dogs and hard earned days (not that I've ever been to Mississippi and at 22 years of age didn't get must Depression action!) His shiny worn cowboy boots raising dust from the plank of wood as he stomped in perfect time was just amazing. I felt like I was involved in some American Gothic Flannery O'Connor novel.....I had a reason to believe after this song and could have left the Point fully sated.....but I didn’t!
Well, this year, a stunning arrangement of Johnny 99 from Nebraska left me similarly fulfilled, only this time the Mississippi church was home to a foot stompin’, heart pounding, hand clapping revival where the congregation was high on the Lord (or something stronger). And the night was only getting started.
All the new songs were played roughly the same as the album (all except Shendadoah and Froggie which weren’t played). And it was the oldies that got me going – along with Johnny 99, Adam Raised a Cain was superb. Also from Nebraska, Open All Night was unrecognisable save for the lyrics – it became an Ooby Dooby, jivin’ rock n’roll extravaganza. From the Rising, City of Ruins got a good spin (I cried when he played this in the RDS, so my emotional involvement in the song had peaked a few years earlier) My sister was particularly chuffed with “You can Look, but you better not touch”.
Patti Scialfa (Mrs Springsteen) got a few lines at the mic for John Henry’s “red headed wife” and Bruce also acknowledged his fairly crap prounuication of “Mrs McGrath” – the only complaint I have is that he didn’t banter more.
“Erie Canal” is probably my favourite song from the album and it was done superbly, as was “When the Saints go marching in” – last song, wow.
Last year’s review had a dedicated curtain discussion – multicoloured with blue chandeliers and a movable scene thing which got a moon for “Buffalo Gals”.
I’m going to stop gushing now, it’s not very ladylike. I love Bruce. And it wasn’t me you saw til the wee hours standing outside the Merrion hoping to catch a glimpse of the great man. No, it just looked like me.

Check out my blog-twin Chris at alt tag, who like me enjoyed Springsteen@the Point and blogged about it late Friday night AND is in New York this week. And we're probably the only 2 Irish blogging gals who would have voted for Bush.....

It Is Accomplished

2006-04-28T09:57:00.000+01:00

While it’s definitely narcissistic and probably a little blasphemous to quote Jesus on the Cross in relation to my degree, but do it anyway.
It is accomplished.
This blogger is now the proud owner of a MB BCh BAO (Hons) degree from the venerable Trinity College Dublin.
This shall be my last introspective study rant post ever. EVER.
(well until my membership exams in 3 years, where 80% of candidates fail, but blogs will probably be obsolete by then)

Conservatives on Jane Jacobs

2006-04-27T12:17:00.000+01:00

While I haven't read any of her books, I read a chapter from The Death and Life of Great American Cities in Bill Buckley's American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century.
This National Review article about Jane Jacob's passing and her work, calls her a true Burkean.
And this other NRO article discusses her ideas "For Jacobs, population density plus diversity in skills and tastes generates, without too much fuss, dynamic economic development and entrepreneurial discovery. With that vision came a withering critique of intervention by all levels of government and in nearly all its forms — from urban renewal and zoning to price controls and monetary policy. She argued that these undermine the civic basis of economic and cultural creativity."

Blogging the Farm

2006-04-26T18:19:00.000+01:00

I complained a while back that I didn't know any Irish farmer bloggers when I posted about our first November born lamb and the Macra na Feirme nude farmer calender.
Last week Damien Mulley was looking for one too.

Well I found one - blogging about the lambing - Blog an Seanchai. The events of this post are very familiar to this blogger and to any one else who grew up on a farm.
I notice his site has a google ad for sheep's placenta - following the link, apparently it's used in making moisturiser. I'm quite glad there were no recipes. (this might be too much information, but I can understand hippy types frying and eating human placenta - as gross as it sounds, it actually looks vaguely meaty. Sheep's placenta does not.)

Don't Know Much Biology

2006-04-23T15:48:00.000+01:00

and I don't really know much about Venezuelan politics either.
I know that some Irish people are very fond of Hugo Chavez.
I also know that Chavez is ruthless in the suppression of those who dare disagree with him. I have 1 friend in Venezuela - she voted against Chavez and found her name in the paper a few months later. She's having some trouble in her university with regard to academic autonomy and freedom of speech. And she thinks her country is going to the dogs.

Anyway, I was looking up something entirely different and came accross this blog, written by a Venezuelan, describing what he sees as his country's decline - Venezuela News And Views.
It's worth a look.

Cardinal OKs Condom Usage for Married Couples?

2006-04-23T15:24:00.000+01:00

AmericanPapist is keeping an eye on the reaction to Cardinal Martini's statement, which seems rather confused at the moment.

Knowing Your Enemies is Sometimes More Important

2006-04-23T09:27:00.000+01:00

than just voting for someone you agree with.
The
New York Times has a summary article on the Pennslyvania Senate Race between current Republican senator Rick Santorum and Democrat contender Bob Casey, Jr.
I've posted on this race before - both are pro-life candidates.
For liberals, Bob Casey's father, governor Robert Casey Snr attempted to answer the question "How can we justify with our experience in this country - our tradition, our heritage, our history - how can we justify writing off the unborn child in a country which prides itself on leaving no one out and no one behind?". So in carrying on that tradition, the Democrats think they have a winner in Bob.
But Rick Santorum is more than just another pro-life politician - he has been a leader for the pro-life side in the Senate and the ease at which hardened pro-choice activists have backed Casey is telling.
I hope ordinary pro-life Pennslyvanians look at those who they disagree with (Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, Kate Michelman) and then weigh up their choice. When Barbara Boxer says that a pro-life candidate winning is actually a pro-choice victory, you've got to open your eyes.
Some Irish pro-lifers in the past, most noticeably in the last referendum, were unable to do so. This led to the bizarre picture of Dana, failed politician turned Irish dancer clapping and claiming victory alongside her natural enemies in the debate.
Her shortsightness and lack of political judgement was not just her downfall but a set back for pro-lifers here. She is still blissfully unaware of her blunder as she dances for Mna na hEireann in trousers to some naff popsong.
Those in Pennsylvania for whom abortion is an issue that decides their ballot will hopefully pick the candidate with the proven record on pro-life leadership. That said, I would dearly love to see Democrats for Life become a more mainstream part of the Democrat party. Unfortunately as history as shown here as well, pro-choice liberal parties have a remarkably small tent when it comes to abortion.

Advice from Doctors

2006-04-23T09:05:00.000+01:00

on how to play the (American) health system.
From
TIME Magazine but there are a few take-home points for us too.
Especially about the July thing - as one of those that will be newly responsible for your health on July 1st, I'm still waiting for a fairly sharp practical learning curve. The young vs old doctor debate seems universal.
The ligitious climate of the States, combined with managed healthcare leads to too many tests and ass covering; we're not quite at that stage yet, but we're getting there.

Myers Has Left the Building

2006-04-23T08:56:00.000+01:00

Dossing Times and Gavin have both pointed to the Sunday Tribune article about Kevin Myers’ impending employment with the Indo.
To my mind anyway, Myers is synonymous with “reason for reading Irish Times”. I don’t always agree with him, but he can be fun to read.
It will be interesting to see what he’ll be like in the Indo. I wonder will the Indo be as lax in their editorial review of what he writes – Geraldine Kennedy shouldn’t have let that bastard comment through. The Independent tend not have as many embarrassing columns up for discussion as the Times so maybe Myers might be forced to try the read-again-and-sleep-on-it-before-hitting-send columnist routine.
As I said back then about him - This incident illustrates what many find noxious about Myers - if you disagree with him fair enough, but when you broadly agree with some of his positions and feel that he should be muzzled there's something very wrong with him - if one takes a position on social issues, as Myers regularly does, it is expected that you believe enough in that position to convince your fellow citizens of its worth and hopefully integrate into public policy. Myers has no such desire - it seems that he would much rather stir up controversy with some carefully chosen insults and then run away from any real and meaningful discussion of the issues.
Cruiskeen Eile, a blog set up to survey the so-called “mad, bad, and hilarious world of Col. Kevin Myers” has a little analysis but promises more.
Other people are pimping for the job, we think.

Things I Hate More than Sports

2006-04-22T22:56:00.000+01:00

Are mainly things about people talking about sports.
Instead of studying I am becoming increasingly irritated at Tubridy Tonight.
Apparently Leinster vs Munster is a game where everyone is friends, they know each other very well, they’d die for each other on the pitch and there are 15 players against, well, 15. Shock, horror, someone mentioned hunger. The real life Ross O’Carroll-Kelly is wearing a pink shirt, apparently the Leinster supporters’ uniform.
Terrible is too small a word.
I hate sport – maybe it’s because I’m from Longford and we’ve never won anything at any level. My parish club won the county championship 2 years ago and it was like they’d won the world cup. There was a lorry up the town and all.
But I’ve remained above it all.
I didn’t realise the game tomorrow was a semi final, and when my former rugby playing sister informed me, I thought it was funny that 2 Irish teams were in the 6 nations. The sister, who no longer plays due to an unfortunate head injury incident, and still plays tag rugby in her actuary/corporate league thing now thinks I am fully certifiable. And she’s the one with the head injury. And plays tag rugby with other actuaries – self lobotomy sounds more interesting.
But I wallow in my ignorance. It’s blissful.
I simply can not understand sports and why anyone would be interested in them. Sure, they’re grand to look at for a while (sports, not male rugby players) but after a while it just bores me.
I have a mediocre collection of community games medals and the like for basketball and badminton. I could have more only I don’t have “the hunger”, according to my former PE teacher. This was illustrated acutely during a mixed doubles badminton game where I started arguing, as I’m wont to do, with my partner over where he should stand or something. The other team played on and scored several serves while we stood there arguing. They won. We kept fighting the whole way home.
My badminton partner, who also became my debating partner after we shared lifts all our lives to national school out the country (I didn’t go to national school in my small town and was vilified for it, but that’s another story) and fought all the time still blames me for this. He also thinks I don’t have enough hunger.
No I don’t. It was badminton for crying out loud.
And no, just because you argue with someone all the time doesn’t mean you secretly fancy him. I still hate his puny guts.

(Yes, I’m an embittered failed badminton Leinster finalist who has too much time on her hands, too much bile in her indignant common bile duct and too much study to do to be allowed near a blog)

The Dummies Guide to Illinois

2006-04-22T20:41:00.000+01:00

Sufjan Stevens' Illinois, that is.
From the torture garden.
It's rather detailed. And a fascinating way to procrastinate and not study.
I've only 36 hours to my surgery clinical finals at 8am on Monday morning. And 60 hours to medicine on Tuesday morning and then it's all over. You'd think I'd suck it up and go hell for leather for the last furlong.
But, no. I'm listening to Bruce Springsteen's We Shall Overcome. I'm quite overcome - a review will be forthcoming, maybe Wednesday - if I'm not drunk, for the first time in my life).
All of the album is for inclusion in the updated Study Playlist along with the corrections made by a fellow crossgenerational country music fan, Fergal Crehan - Harlan Howard wrote Streets of Baltimore, not Gram Parsons. My bad. Pause while I hang my head in shame.

Best of luck to all the other bloggers doing exams - Damien, Gavin and Copernicus.

The Sound of Perfect Silence

2006-04-14T21:25:00.000+01:00

I wasn't going to post anything about Easter. I was toying with a post on Bruce Springsteen's Jesus Was An Only Son, "Now there's a loss that can never be replaced, A destination that can never be reached, A light you'll never find in another's face, A sea whose distance cannot be breached / Well Jesus kissed his mother's hands Whispered, "Mother, still your tears, For remember the soul of the universe willed a world and it appeared." or maybe Gillian Welch's "By the mark where the nails have been / By the sign upon his precious skin / I will know my savior when I come to him.
I was reading First Thing's blog, On the Square and I like this reflection from Father John Neuhaus-
Holy Saturday, by contrast, is the sound of prefect silence. Yesterday’s mockery, the good thief’s prayer, the cry of dereliction—all that is past now. Mary has dried her tears, and the whole creation is still, waiting for what will happen next.
Some say that on Holy Saturday Jesus went to hell in triumph, to free the souls long imprisoned there. Others say he descended into a death deeper than death, to embrace in his love even the damned. We do not know. Scripture, tradition and pious writings provide hints and speculations, but about this most silent day it is perhaps best to observe the silence. One day I expect he will tell us all about it. When we are able to understand what we cannot now even understand why we cannot understand. Meanwhile, if we keep very still, there steals upon the silence a song of Easter that was always there. On the long mourners’ bench of the eternal pity, we raise our heads, blink away our tears and exchange looks that dare to question, ‘Could it be?’ But of course. That is what it was about. That is what it is all about. O felix culpa!O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!

So there you are - some regurgitated truncated spiritual ramblings.
Happy Easter. If you're not looking forward to the triumph of the resurrection, Easter eggs are always welcome.

Chick-Lit from around the World

2006-04-13T00:45:00.000+01:00

From the New York Times, a report on sorts of local chick lit available from India to Finland.
I like this line - While 'Le Journal de Bridget Jones' has been popular in France, the country hasn't produced many of its own chick lit authors. (Either readers are too sophisticated or, with a 35-hour work week, maybe they just can't relate.)

Music to do Exams By

2006-04-12T19:36:00.000+01:00

I had my 4 hour surgery written paper today and had medicine Monday. If you’re interested in what’s hot in Irish medicine as expressed in the MB, BAO exams – latent TB. Herceptin (draw a diagram question! Hello? I can’t draw a diagram of this – a monoclonal antibody against a breast cancer growth factor! My version looked a chocolate biscuit that was dipped in a mug of tea for too long and a whole lump just plonks off.) Treatment of MRSA positive patients. Prostate cancer screening and how’s it’s a bad thing. Resus of a young man in a road traffic accident.
Tomorrow is psychiatry, where we’re expected to know Freud along side the latest neuroleptic drugs. The joys.
So to get through this purgatory (hell starts in 2 weeks with clinical exams), I complied a play list. This was not procrastination but active stress management.
I’m so laid back I’m horizontal, as I’ve been told many times. This play list helped….

Breathe (2am) - Anna Nalick. A necessary part of any pre-finals night. 2am comes and the hyperventilation sets in. Listen to Anna. Breathe.

Porushkya-Paranya - Bering Strait. They’re a Russian bluegrass band and when I make vaguely phonetic sounding noises as “singing along” I convince myself of my superior linguistic talents. Look at me, I’m singing in Russian gibberish.

To Live is to Fly - Cowboy Junkies. Townes van Zandt wrote it, so it’s damn good – “shake the dust off your wings and the sleep out of your eyes”. Useful advice I should have followed and got out of bed at 645 this morning instead of falling back to sleep to 820 and barely getting breakfast and to the exam on time, without looking over all of orthopaedics, which I don’t know, and thankfully didn’t appear on the paper.

The Gambler – Kenny Rodgers. Who doesn’t gamble on what’s coming up?

Mercy of the Fallen - Dar Williams. Need I say more?

Hard Times - Eastmountainsouth. The self pity.

Death Came A Knockin’ – The Duhks. The nights are the worst.

Trouble and Care – John Gorka. Oh woe is me.

Helpless – k.d. lang. A poor student helpless in the face of the every changing face of medicine. Oh it’s exciting alright. But not before exams. It’s hard enough learning the old stuff let alone the new stuff. By old stuff I mean Hippocrates and co as well as dudes like Colles, Burkitt and Stokes, who apparently did things to actually deserve getting wards in Dublin hospitals named after them.

Not the Tremblin’ Kind – Laura Cantrell. Laura makes me snap out of above misery and say to the professors of medicine/surgery “You can play master but I won't wear your chains”

Old Fashioned Morphine – Jolie Holland. Better than a lot of the new stuff, I say.

Radiation Vibe – Hem. Apparently radiation is important in medicine. Or so I’m told. X rays and radiotherapy.

Nightingale / Alexander Leaving – Leonard Cohen A girl needs some Leonard love at times like this.

San Andreas Fault – Natalie Merchant. Yes, it’s all bloody Andreas’fault.

Tired of my Tears – Susan Tedeschi. Well I haven’t cried, yet. But I’ve all of Freud to study yet tonight, so it remains a possibility. Seriously, who cares if toddlers are anal?

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road – Lucinda Williams – I’m dreaming of going somewhere – heaven = “Cotton fields stretching miles and miles, Hank's voice on the radio, telephone poles trees and wires fly on by”

Theme from Emma – Rachel Portman – ‘cos it reminds of Mr Knightley. A girl needs some natural endorphins now and again.

Share the Darkness – Saw Doctors – my all-time fav SawDocs’ song – “When the world belongs to distant dogs / And the air is dark and still / And drunken conversations beneath the window sill / And there’s someone singing Elvis songs as they make their way back home and all your fears and worries attack when you’re alone”

Willie Stewart/Molly Rankin – Eddi Reader - from her album “Sings the songs of Robert Burns”. Really really good stuff.

By the Mark – Gillian Welch. The only Easter spiritual preparation I’m doing – “On Calvary mountain where they made him suffer so all my sin was paid for a long, long time ago”

Dance with me now Darling – Hem – Life will get better, I know.

Gotta Have You – The Weepies – New album. Very enjoyable – “No amount of coffee, no amount of crying, no amount of whiskey, no amount of wine, no no no no no nothing else will do I’ve gotta have you”. In this “you” stands for a medical degree.

I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight – Richard & Linda Thompson The only lights I’m seeing tonight is my bright study lamp.

Sing Me Spanish Techno – The New Pornographers. Sing me anything that doesn’t involve the words diagnosis, management, differential, multidisciplinary/multimodality, evidence base level 1 or monoclonal antibody against TNFalpha.

The Bag of Cats – Sharon Shannon. Description of my rather cantankerous personality at the moment.

Post Exam Wish list part of playlist. (Working on the carrot/stick principle here)
Sleeping is THE Only Love – the Silver Jews. How right they are.
Lived in Bars – Cat Power. If only. Given I don’t really drink it’s probably not the best plan, but still.
Streets of Baltimore – The Little Willies. A New York country band with Norah Jones as female vocalist, named after Willie Nelson. Song by Gram Parsons
Sailing to Philadelphia and Prairie Wedding – Mark Knopfler. Beautiful
Marching Bands of Manhattan – Death Cab for Cutie. Cannot wait for my NYC holiday.

Now that this exercise in narcisstic playlist making and sharing, pathognomic of my generation is over, I will go study. And listen to the playlist.

Are Women Human?

2006-04-12T17:24:00.000+01:00

Catherine McKinnon is probably the only woman left in the world who thinks that's a valid question. Well at least she should be in the western world.
Stuart Jeffries interviews her in today's Guardian about "Are Women Human?" her new book that attempts to answer the most redundant question of 2006.
Apparently she thinks we're not.
If women were human, would we be a cash crop shipped from Thailand in containers into New York's brothels? Would we be sexual and reproductive slaves? Would we be bred, worked without pay our whole lives, burned when our dowry money wasn't enough or when men tired of us, starved as widows when our husbands died (if we survived his funeral pyre)?

One of her many many many many gripes with the world is that, well, Sex with a dead body is necrophilia but it isn't regarded as rape.

I know this is just one part of her philosopy, but how can anyone take her seriously?

T Bone Burnett has an album coming out

2006-04-12T03:14:00.000+01:00

I don't know how many of this blog's readers will be as excited as I am over this news. (I'm guessing not many)
He's also doing a US tour with the Wallflowers' Jakob Dylan - but like Hem, he plays New York the week before I go on my holidays there. (Damn laws of time and physics squared)
I first heard of him when I became obsessed with Gillian Welch's music and I traced everyone she worked with on Hell Among the Yearlings, which he produced.
I then got the reissued version of his self titled album and I was hooked.
By right, everyone should own all Gillian Welch's albums and be holding their breaths for the next one (and the amazing live shows that should accompany it!)
So you should go buy them, and in the meantime, join me in watchful waiting for T Bone, who's delivering in a few weeks!

In defense of the inner housewife

2006-04-11T19:53:00.000+01:00

Interview with Caitlin Flanagan in The Boston Globe about her new book "To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife".
I feel the earliest kind of feminism demanded rights for all women. But I associate feminism now with women who are like me: white, educated, middle to upper-middle class, and who feel they are still getting the shaft. But, for heaven's sake, if anything, we have the privileges now; we are now the men of the '50s.

Q: You write that many contemporary feminists are hypocrites. Do you include yourself?
A: No. In the first place I'm not a feminist, so my hypocrisy is along other lines. I'm very grateful to all the women who fought for these rights before me, and I'm very disgusted by women who say ''But now I can't be a good mom and be partner in a law firm." That's just tough. Another thing about feminists: They're all unhappy

She's not unafraid to annoy people and this is not always a good thing. But I like her writing. Her book is added to the "read when exams are over" pile.

Sarah Carey linked to a very critical article about Flanagan in Elle a while back.

I think her voice is important in discussions about feminism. I also think pointing to her employment of personal organisers (which appears to be a job similar to a housekeeper) is irrelevant and doesn't stand as sufficient criticsm of her position on modern feminism (which for most part I agree with).

Update - nor do I think dismissing the book based on for congratulating herself on being the type of woman whose husband treats her well while she has cancer. Bad things do happen to good people, as well as to bad people, to feminists and anti-feminists, to women who forgo careers for their families as well as women who just pretend to. Flanagan's book is a sad and scary fable about fear of abandonment, and its supposed happy ending really isn't one. Another review from Salon.

The last thing I need

2006-04-11T14:55:00.000+01:00

before my exams (given I had my medicine final yesterday, it could have been worse) -
according to the
BBC drug companies are inventing diseases.
I suppose it's not too great for patients either!

John McGahern

2006-04-11T11:49:00.000+01:00

Empire State View has a gorgeous piece on John McGahern and her relationship with him.
After that interview, he and I began to write to one another. He would always reply immediately, his words etched hard into the paper, and his letters would ripple with stories, with snatches of news and of memory, with comedy…with life. Come and visit us, they would say, you’d be very welcome. Come for a drink or a bite to eat.
We became friends.
.....
And I remember that night as one that tumbled with stories, with laughter, with plans.With affection. He always signed his letters that way. It’s hard to believe that there will be no more.

Just because it's blue hat, doesn't mean that it's a boy's hat!

2006-04-11T11:34:00.000+01:00

Come on people get with the PC, blue is a gender neutral colour programme!
I came across this exchange of emails from parents in the apparently upmarket Park Slope in New York via the Corner.
Entitled the The Park Slope Hat Spat by the Gawker, it's worth a read if you want to be frightened by decontructing, sociological mumbo-jumbo spouting, sexism spotters. All over a mother who picked up an "adorable" blue hat and thought the owner would like it back and titled her email "boy's hat".

What Your Pen Says About You!

2006-04-11T11:22:00.000+01:00

Are you a chewed bic person? A fancy fountain pen? Does your pen advertise your dry cleaners?

Doing exams at the moment, my pens have become even more important to me.
While out I tend to use drug company pens, but when I'm at home, I write with my collection of favourite pens - a gold Cross with my name engraved on it (a random present from one of my aunts, that I thought was horrible at the time, but now like it)with a fine point blue in that one. I've a Cross fountain pen with black ink.
I have a 2 Tombow roller ball pens that I get refills for (black and red) and write all my exams with the black.
When I get depressed or have trouble getting down to study I'll go buy several pens and because I can't wait to try them out, before I know it I'll have lots of study done!

Virigina Postrel has an interesting article about pens and how they are getting more emphasis on the aesthetic.

Ouch!

2006-04-11T11:04:00.000+01:00

National Review Online now has loads of blogs at their site. One of them is Reconcilable Differences written by George and Kellyanne Conway. This is what that George has to say about the other George -
I've never voted for a Democrat in a general election in my life, and I don't expect to anytime soon, but it's been impossible for me over the past couple of years to get enthused about the Republican party. I voted for President Bush twice, and contributed to his campaign twice, but held my nose when I did it the second time. I don't consider myself a Republican any longer. Thanks to this Administration and the Republicans in Congress, the Republican Party today is the party of pork-barrel spending, Congressional corruption — and, I know folks on this web site don't want to hear it, but deep down they know it's true — foreign and military policy incompetence. Frankly, speaking of incompetence, I think this Administration is the most politically and substantively inept that the nation has had in over a quarter of a century. The good news about it, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's almost over.

And his wife, Kellyanne, of the Polling Company has an interesting post up about the Republicans' carry-on about Congresswoman Kathleen Harris running for Senate in Florida.

My newly reinstated favourite blogger, Jim Geraghty tells it like it is, as he sees it, in his own words, going forward, he says
Any administration is going to have its mistakes, and sometimes, they're going to be big ones. Let's be honest about where the current president and cabinet have botched things, but let's not fool ourselves into nostalgia for some golden age of political and substantive skill.

Handsome as a Magazine

2006-04-09T10:52:00.000+01:00

Playboy with clothes in Indonesia.
The piece of "moral terrorism" would not be acceptable even if the women were in burqas it seems, one of those interviewed said "we would still protest it because of the name."
I'm not a Playboy fan by any standard, but as a brand they are synonymous with Western sexual liberation, and I guess while the cartoons were one thing, Playboy is another kettle of women in underwear.

(The title of the post is a quote from "Hollow", one my favourite Hem songs - I've been listening to their new album of outtakes/rarities "No Word from Tom" loads and I guess the the chorus of Hollow is probably appropriate for the clash about civilisation that's happening "But it's a hard road that we follow / The saddest cities, and the darkest hollows")

A Book from the Darkness

2006-04-08T10:25:00.000+01:00

One of the first crimes of the Nazis was the obliteration of Jewish voices and words, through book-burning, censorship, and the imprisonment and murder of writers. Erasing the Jewish perspective from history was the necessary prelude to erasing the Jews themselves from history. That is why stealing back a manuscript from oblivion represents a decisive victory over Nazism, a reassurance that no evil is so powerful that it can shape history in its own image.

The New York Sun and The New York Times both review Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirvosky, a Russian-French novelist who died in Auschwitz. Her husband died there some time later, but her daughters managed to escape, one with her mother's handwritten notebook. She only was able to read this notebook in the late 1990s and decided to have the 2 novellas, Storm in June and Dolce, published.

Fully aware that she was living through epic events, she decided not to write about them epically. This was not just an aesthetic choice but an ethical one: In an age that seemed intent on abolishing the individual in favor of the mass, Nemirovsky focused on a handful of ordinary characters, showing grand events only as they impinged on humble lives. This method is a perfect complement to what seems to be Nemirovsky's "message," the moral code that her most sympathetic characters avow. Lucile states it most directly: "I hate this community spirit they go on and on about. The Germans, the French, the Gaullists, they all agree on one thing: you have to love, think, live with other people, as part of a state, a country, a political party. Oh, my God! I don't want to! I'm just a poor useless woman; I don't know anything but I want to be free!"

The New York Times review says she "wrote, for all to read at last, some of the greatest, most humane and incisive fiction that conflict has produced."

Want to hear some truly beautiful music?

2006-04-08T00:52:00.000+01:00

Download one of the songs from Hem's new album - "No Word from Tom" from The Rawking blog. It's Hem's cover of Rem's South Central Rain.
Give it listen and then go buy all their albums. This song barely does them justice.
And I've just realised that I'm in New York 2 days after they play the Bowery Ballroom with Josh Ritter. The only consolation is that I'll be listening to Bruce Sprinsgteen in the Point the same evening. But it's still upsetting.
Damn the laws of time and physics.

I Belong in Paris.

2006-04-07T19:11:00.000+01:00

According to the stupid What European City Do You Belong In? quiz -
"

You Belong in Paris

You enjoy all that life has to offer, and you can appreciate the fine tastes and sites of Paris.
You're the perfect person to wander the streets of Paris aimlessly, enjoying architecture and a crepe.

What European City Do You Belong In?

"

Paris. Not at all impressed, mainly because I don't get the Paris buzz.
Also "a crepe"...please, that'll be crepes, plural and Sister Assumpta from Father Ted reaction - smear over face, end of Lent pig out.

I know I belong in Rome, conventiently located between the nuns and heaven.
The "nuns" is a relgious run French restraunt complete with liturgical dance and heaven, contrary to popular belief, is in fact Della Palma, the best ice cream shop in the world.

Successes and Failures of the Blogosphere

2006-04-07T17:26:00.000+01:00

in the political sense, I guess.
Jim Geraghty thinks political bloggers have "gone sour" and expands this in a guest post at CBSNews' Blog.
I throughly agreed with his analysis of the blogger excessively horrible reaction to Jill Carroll - Debbie Schussel is still ranting in a post entitled Anatomy of an Extremist about her.
Geraghty says among other things -
Today, there are still some blogs out there going out and doing reporting, or drawing on well-grounded experience in non-journalism fields or providing insightful analysis. But many, many more blogs are forsaking fact-gathering for the venting of straight-up, raw anger.
The blogosphere has always had heavily ideological conversational posting boards like Daily Kos and Eschaton on the left or FreeRepublic and LittleGreenFootballs on the right, where no holds are barred and no shot at the opposition is beyond the pale. On those sites, there's always a crowd of peers cheering you on, and reinforcing the perception that those who disagree with you are so wrong, mendacious, stupid or evil that no criticism is over the top or out of line.
Perhaps the most illustrative example of the changing tone on the blogs was the reaction to the release of Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll from her captors in Iraq. Before returning to the protection of U.S. forces, Carroll issued a statement full of praise for her captors. Her comments were odd and disturbing to say the least – but a surprisingly large chunk of the blogosphere reacted to the news with a torrent of scathing hatred.
At their best, blogs can provide the mainstream media with competition, and pressure established organizations bring their A-game and put out their best work. But the MSM will have little reason to fear competition from blogs, if enough of them embrace the growing trend of denounce-with-spittle-flicking-fury-first-and-get-the-answers-later. Some readers new to the blogosphere will make distinctions between blogs; others will look at the high-profile worst of the lot and say, "to hell with them."
The Pajamahadeen have gone from fact-checking Dan Rather to speculating that Jill Carroll faked her tears on her hostage tape. This is not progress.

Ultimate Joy

2006-04-07T09:10:00.000+01:00

is getting 2 tickets for Bruce.
And my roommate got 2 using her credit card. Part of me is glad there's a 2 a person limit, which is fair. And another part of me is annoyed at the extended web of phoners/interneters that had to be arranged last night to ensure tickets.
Never mind. I'm going to Bruce.

From the liner notes of We Shall Overcome, by the great man himself -
It was a carnival ride, the sound of surprise and the pure joy of playing. Street corner music, parlor music, tavern music, wilderness music, circus music, church music, gutter music, it was all there waiting in those songs, some more than one hundred years old. It rocked, it swung, it rolled. It was a way back and forward to the informality, the freeness and the eclecticism of my earliest music and then some.

This is a LIVE recording, everything cut in three one-day sessions (’97, ’05, ’06) with no rehearsals. All arrangements were conducted as we played, you can hear me shouting out the names and instruments of the players as we roll. This approach takes the listener along for the whole ride, as you hear the music not just being played but being made. So, turn it up, put on your dancin’ and singin’ shoes, and have fun

Can Conservatives be Artists?

2006-04-07T08:52:00.001+01:00

A discussion has developed (well, just between Copernicus and me) on conservatism, liberalism and the arts at Damien Mulley's post on The Right Brothers.
We disagree.

Denis Donaldson, RIP

2006-04-07T00:16:00.000+01:00

I meant to post more on the sad murder of Denis Donaldson but I simply haven’t had the time to follow the story, most of which is speculation anyway.
This is mainly due to study.
And a fear of watching the news, just in case I’ll develop lust in my heart for Tommy O’Gorman (after my recent Minister McDowell infatuation, a girl can’t be too careful).
So here are blog(s) that are worth reading....
Slugger O’Toole - The first reports. (100s of comments.) The Republicans did it. The British did it. Shooting touts is always wrong. Gerry Adams.
A unionist perspective – no-one did it.
As you can see, my study break was extended due to the sheer quantity of stuff in these posts. I’ve yet to read yesterday’s papers, let alone today’s.
And the story of another Northern man who died during the week – Michael McGoldrick - Elblogador and Slugger. He was an incredibly impressive man who forgave his son’s LVF killers and asked that those who wanted retribution would “Bury your pride with my son”.

First Arab Catholic woman to be member of Israeli parliament

2006-04-06T13:03:00.000+01:00

An interesting character. Nadia Hilou is a member of the Labor party and is a woman's rights and free education activist.
From Catholic Online.
"First woman to do X" stories normally don't interest me, but her story does.

I think Environmentalists have Self-Esteem Issues

2006-04-06T12:49:00.000+01:00

Cathy Young at The Y Files discusses Eric Pianka, an ecologist who looks forward to the death of 90% of the world population.
According to Pianka, our biggest enemy is "anthropocentrism" - how's about that for self hating? I'd go as far as to say a little more anthropocentrism might go a long way.
While the rest of the world's talking about debt relief and clean water mechanisms and new ways of growing food to feed the starving, Pianka has found the one virus set to free us from our unfortunate existence.
Ebola. Oh yes, the joys of Ebola, the friendly, helpful virus.
Good terrorists would be taking [Ebola Roaston and Ebola Zaire] so that they had microbes they could let loose on the Earth that would kill 90 percent of people. AIDS is apparently not quick enough.
The Texas Academy of Science gave him their 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award. Hello?
The man's nuts. He wants to kill 9 out 10 Irish bloggers (and equivalent ratios of everyone else, but look at what's important!)
A few weeks I posted about Jerry Vlasak, a surgeon with similar aspirations for the future of the human race.

What's with these scientists, these environmentalists that move so far away from common sense?
Do they really hate their lives that much, their family's lives, that our existence as humans is secondary to that of mice, trees, woodlice and nettles, so secondary that the vast majority of us should be killed off?
Have they no self-esteem?

Pro-Test have a new blog. Check it out. Return to rationality.