Walhalla

bad timing on the house front

2009-11-24T03:10:00.001-08:00

I can now see that my original instinct not to view houses before selling our own one was sound. It's just frustrating. I've seen a place that is seemingly ideally situated, in beautiful condition, detached (huge benefit), and I'm pretty sure I could stretch my finances to buy it. Sadly, I suspect I'm wasting my time, because such a prize is surely going to be snapped up before I'm mobile. Our house has been on the market since May and not one offer have we received. On the other hand, we've had a large number of viewings. For a while it was close to two a week, and even with a recent slowing down, we're still getting expressions of interest. I'm not giving up yet, but it is a slow, tortuous process, and although I still think our house is fantastic, looking at others just makes me see aspects of it that people don't like. For example, most of the places we have looked at have at least one en suite bathroom, one guest bathroom, and downstairs toilet. They have off-street parking, plenty of storage, and decent windows. They lack the character and position of our house, but these are minor compensations in a materialistic society that takes more account of function than spirit. I know our sale will come, and only has to occur once, but will it be in time to bag me my first dream house?

blasphemy in Ireland

2009-07-11T06:37:00.000-07:00

Because it's in the Constitution of the Irish State, so, its' argued, it has to be in the new Defamation bill, which has just passed into law. There is now a fine of €25,000 for blasphemy. My reaction is, of course, anger. They should ignore the Constitution, since a legal case under it is well nigh impossible, and get a referendum amending the Constitution. Now there is a much greater chance that somebody will offend some religious nut case and end up €25,000 worse off (they are incredibly easy to offend). Ireland will, even more than it is now, look pathetic and stupid, and civil liberties will be at an all time low.

Here is my modest contribution: if God exists and was responsible for all the things attributed to him in the Bible, including genocide, ethnic cleansing, the merciless persecution of women, and programming humanity with a built-in flaw that dooms many to an afterlife of continual torture, He is an evil bastard.

the Celtic Tiger in 2009

2009-05-20T15:40:00.000-07:00

I have to confess that my experience of the so-called Celtic Tiger was chiefly vicarious. I saw people getting wealthy, I saw massive building projects (none of architectural merit, so far as I could tell), and I loved the vibrancy of the country as it experienced many luxuries other European countries take for granted. I also lamented the loss of civility and compassion in Dublin as the city lost its tender centre in favour of a hard-headed commercial demon nobody seems to have fully understood.

That we now live in a different Ireland is manifested in the unemployment figures, which make truly horrific reading. They reinforce the point that the recession in Ireland is deeper and less likely to heal quickly than in other countries (they have to be read in conjunction with the unimaginable shortfall in government income and 'toxic' debt). In April 2008 unemployment stood at 5.4% of the population, seasonally adjusted. In April 2009 it is a truly shocking 11.4%.

Every day we hear of the greed and recklessness of business tycoons whose rapacious acquisitiveness lacked any moral dimension or social accountability. One tycoon borrowed €700,000,000 to develop sites that have now been denied planning permission or been blocked in other ways. Unable to pay back the debt his problem, and the banks', has become ours. We have to pay for his greed.

Which brings me back to my main point. I watched as the Celtic Tiger pranced around the world stage, preening itself and inspiring envy in other European countries. I partook of very little of that wealth. I saw little improvement in my environment, in healthcare, in the university in which I teach, or -- to consider purely selfish matters for a moment -- in my pay packet, which limped along a few points behind inflation most years. Now any extra income I did acquire has gone: so far public employees have lost around a month's salary across the year and are struggling, though self-evidently less so than the unfortunates who've lost their jobs.

I'd love to end on a positive note and talk about light at the end of the tunnel, but so far the only glimmer is the suggestion that the economy might be back in reasonable growth in five years time. Dutch comfort!

Ireland goes from bad to worse, but blasphemy?

2009-05-16T07:35:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid I'm well past the stage of thinking that anything good could come out of Ireland, but I had expected a delicate equilibrium between the extremes of good and bad. Nothing prepared me for the news that Ireland is preparing to bring out a law on blasphemy to back up an unenforceable clause in the nation's constitution.

The clause Dermot Ahern wishes to add to the Defamation Bill states: "A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000."

Can anyone seriously support such a draconian and unnecessary curtailment of freedom of speech? Are we really regressing to the miserable state of Ireland in the 1930s with its total submission, in lieu of the Brits, to the Catholic Church?

These religious folks who assert they have to be protected from other people's verbal attacks really are pathetic. In spite of believing they will have eternal life and various other rewards for their beliefs, they have to be protected from ridicule and insult. We mustn't upset their cosy, sanctimonious smugness. Why the hell not? We (by which I mean free thinkers, agnostics, atheists, humanists, and others) are the ones who need protecting. We've been burnt, tortured, denied basic human rights, ridiculed, sidelined, and cast out, etc., etc. by religious monstrosities since time immemorial. We're constantly criticised by them. Let's have legislation protecting us from religious institutions that want to deny women equality with men and reproductive rights, exterminate homosexuals, etc.; the list is endless. Why shouldn't I say that I think that if the God of the Bible exists, for example, he is a sadist of the first order? He created mankind with a built-in flaw, so the holy writ runs, that predisposes us to sin, so He has his fun when we sin because then we burn forever in excruciating agony. If this is the Christian God, I want none of Him and I want the right to make fun of everything to do with the religions created in his name. (It's also worth remembering that the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center did so for their religious beliefs. Am I really to be prevented from ridiculing these beliefs, even if it offends more moderate brethren?)

If Ireland passes this bill with the blasphemy clause, it will not only be a laughing stock, it will also make Ireland a profoundly dangerous place for anyone with real independence of mind and spirit.

picture taken without permission from http://atheistnexus.org/profile/JamesMMartin

selling our house

2009-05-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

After several frantic and, it has to be said, largely unpleasant weeks, we finally have our house packaged and ready for the Dublin market. Every aspect is unreal and painful, with the possible exception of the space clearing. This part is achieved by the simple expedient of renting storage and moving as much unnecessary, space-consuming stuff as is humanly possible. We've also touched up the decor and made the place what it should have been while we were actively engaged in living there. It's a really wonderful home. No matter: a new age is dawning for both of us as we look forward to new directions, and we have every faith in the attraction of our beautiful house in its gorgeous location next to Phoenix Park and the Liffey.

Costa coffee and rip-off Ireland

2009-03-10T10:38:00.000-07:00

I always thought Costa's Irish price of 5.99 euro for a pack of their house-blend coffee was a bit steep, but I didn't realise how steep it was until I visited Costa in Brighton, where exactly the same product retails for 3.24 euro (£2.99). The Irish price is almost double the UK one. Rip-off Ireland strikes again. What is wrong with this damn country?!?

O2 mobile-broadband pay as you go (brief review)

2009-03-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

Desperate for some sort of broadband when I stay with my parents in Brighton (England), I bought a pay-as-you-go dongle from O2, which allows you to buy a day, week, or month's broadband. This uses the mobile-phone system, not wi fi, so I wasn't expecting much. The signal where I stay varies from low to good, and in the morning the speeds are just about tolerable provided all memories of a good wi fi connection are forgotten. By late afternoon we are well below my worst memories of dial-up Internet. Even a google text search may hang or take minutes; pages are often blank; and sometimes I get an error message. Much of the time gmail simply cannot see the server, which gives one an idea just how poor O2's service is.

O2 makes no promises, of course. But I do have a signal, so the problem seems to be one of bandwidth, which is clearly extremely limited. At present mobile broadband is primitive and only worth having because it's better than nothing.

If that's not damning with faint praise, I don't know what is!

Lush and rip-off Ireland

2009-02-05T09:45:00.000-08:00

I'm so sick of being fleeced in the Republic of Ireland. Almost everything I buy here seems vastly overpriced in comparison with the UK and other countries in Europe, and I'm not earning more than similarly qualified people elsewhere. Today was typical. I'm fond of Lush cosmetics and today treated myself to the 500g bottle of Daddy-O shampoo. I felt a slight reluctance on the part of my wallet to open when she named the price: an eye-watering €23.50, but I handed over my money and left. Out of curiosity I checked Lush's UK site to find out what the same bottle would have cost had I the good fortune not to live in this ridiculously overpriced country. The answer? €14.78 at today's exchange rate. That's 2/3 the Irish price.

2009-01-20T10:24:00.000-08:00

"Ten-year-old girls are ready for marriage, according to Saudi Arabia's most senior cleric.
Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al Sheikh, the country's grand mufti, told Al Hayat newspaper that those saying ten or 12-year-old girls are too young to marry are being 'unfair' to them." Daily Mail

Here's another instance of the seemingly overwhelming evidence that the world would be a better place if a great many of its clerics were to be exiled to some distant island and left there to rot. It's not enough that we have a Pope who believes in purging the world of homosexual men and women, we have a senior Muslim cleric who believes in taking away the childhood of young girls and forcing them into marriage at the age of ten. Civilised people call this statutory rape. Is it not obvious that the world would be a kinder, more reasonable, happier place if we set aside the religions that have so long disfigured it?

thank heavens for the BBC

2009-01-17T06:33:00.000-08:00

Every week BBC Radio 4 broadcasts a phone-in programme called 'Any Answers', which allows listeners to respond to the panel-show 'Any Questions', which features politicians and other prominent people airing their views on topical subjects. 'Any Answers' was dominated by Israel and its depravity in Gaza. For the 20 minutes of the programme I heard, one listener or e-mailer after another condemned unreservedly Israeli's brutal suppression of the Palestinian people. They talked of the occupation of Palestinian lands, the settlements and the daily humiliation of Palestinians in their own lands that they have occupied for millenia. They spoke of the awful power of the US Jewish lobby, which dominates lobbying in the States and is responsible for making Israel the superpower it undoubtedly is. They wondered how Obama could possibly be free from this lobby. They spoke of the perfect right of Iran to act as a balance to Israel in the Middle East. They pointed out that Iran has not made a point of invading its neighbours or bombing other countries. Israel and the US have a long history of invading and bombing whoever they feel like. As superpowers they can value their security beyond the lives and rights of others, so they do. They can bomb a country simply for their own security needs.

I could go on, for this programme, which is committed to broadcasting a balanced range of views, threw up many fascinating perspectives, not one of which condoned Israeli brutality.

I have tried repeatedly to understand Israel and my latest theory, for what it is worth, is that it is comparable with the abuser of children (for which read the 300 or 400 children it has killed in Gaza). Abusers are frequently people who have themselves been abused. The Jews were more abused than most other races in history, but now they have themselves become the abuser. Their behaviour has awful parallels with the Nazis, a point amplifed by a senior Vatican spokeman who compared Gaza with a concentration camp: the people there are denied jobs, movement, basic supplies, their houses are raised to the ground, UN compounds supplying water, etc. are deliberately targeted. In what way was this spokesman wrong to say what he did?

Israel is a country we should all condemn. It is barbaric, cruel, imperialistic, intolerant, self-righteous, messianic. We should also condemn America for creating this monster.

the astonishing stupidity of motorists

2009-01-12T05:37:00.000-08:00

The road on which I live has cars parked on both sides: the houses are terraced so there are no drives. Recently, Dublin parking officials banned people from part-parking on the pavement, so the road has become very narrow for cars passing through. As I approach the road last night, I noticed the headlights of two cars coming in the opposite direction, so I pulled into the kerb to let them pass. Another motorist coming round the corner came up behind me and starting blasting her horn. Unmoved, I held my ground, so the idiot overtook me and almost collided with the oncoming cars. It took them several minutes to find room to pass each other and she had to back up. Horns were heard ...

I never cease to be astonished at the impatience, crass stupidity, and selfishness of people when they get behind the wheel. This one was classic case. If she had waited just thirty seconds we would all have passed through without a hitch. (I notice she drove into the housing estate on our road, so she could well be local.)

Israel and a chink of light

2009-01-09T13:42:00.001-08:00

Israel aircraft dropped thousands of leaflets on areas of Gaza near the Egyptian boarder, telling ordinary Palestinians to leave their homes as they were about to destroy them. More refugees, though quite where they're supposed to go nobody knows. A school is destroyed and thirty people killed because its grounds were once used by a mortar team from Hamas (we can see a video of it on youtube, accompanied by mind-boggling Israeli propaganda). No doubt if terrorists used Westminster Abbey grounds to attack the Houses of Parliament the RAF would raise it to the ground, plus any unfortunate people within.

We are past expecting civilised conduct from Israel.

The chink of light is Obama. I know we all have great hopes of him after the vengeful, self-interested, militaristic policies of his born-again-Christian predecessor, but on Israel I had the impression from his election website that he favoured the country and planned to pour huge sums of money into it. Fortunately, the latest information is that he intends to open lines to Hamas, though not through direct diplomatic channels. If this is indeed true it is welcome. Israel is incapable of rational or intelligent thought where its security is concerned, but in the end it is only by talking and negotiation that the future of the Middle East can be settled. This is how Britain ended the so-called Troubles in Northern Ireland. Not by laying waste to Irish towns and villages, occupying southern Irish land, building settlements, laying siege to Donegal, humiliating Irish people on their way to work, imprisoning politicians, etc.

Tomorrow the people of Dublin have a chance to voice their protest against the genocide in Gaza. I do hope the march is well attended. It starts at 1.00 p.m. at the Central Bank in the centre of Dublin. It will end at the Israeli Embassy (122 Pembroke Broad, D4). There are similar actions throughout Ireland this week.

new Ryanair scam

2009-01-07T12:25:00.000-08:00

I arrived at Gatwick today to fly Ryanair FR117 to Dublin. I queued at the desk and prepared to check in. Imagine my shock when, for the first time in thirty-five years of air travel, I was told I would have to pay £10 for checking in. They informed me this was evident in the small print of my Internet booking form, but I hadn't seen it. Given that it signals a major change, I think Ryanair is up to its old tricks of tacking on charges and not making it too obvious to the beleaguered customer until it's too late. This view was confirmed by a large queue of people at the Servisair desk parting with £10 for the same outrageous scam.

No wonder Ryanair is a byword in devious charging. Please, please don't let them get Aer Lingus, an airline with some vestiges of decency left.

more on the Hitler Youth Pope and homosexuality

2008-12-26T02:19:00.000-08:00

There are claims that Catholic explorations of faith and the nature of humanity are behind his latest assault on homosexuals and transsexuals. Perhaps this clarification from the Daily Mail will help dispel this lame attempt to moderate the full horror of what the Pope is up to:

'This month the Vatican opposed a proposed UN declaration, backed by all 27 European Union states, calling for an end to the practice of criminalising and punishing people for their sexual orientation.

The declaration was seen as an important condemnation of countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality can be punished by death.' Daily Mail (23 Dec 2008)

In other words, the Vatican believes in the criminalisation of people for their sexual orientation. (Amazingly, it no longer supports capital punishment.) Compared to the evils visited on the world by the Catholic church over the centuries, homosexuals seems a remarkably benign 'group', not to mention a very large one if the received estimates of people predisposed to homosexuality are reliable. Is it not time to stop respecting the Catholic church (and other churches similarly disposed) and treat it as the divisive, cruel, power-obsessed institution it really is?

reactions to the homophobic Pope

2008-12-24T07:49:00.000-08:00

In my last blog I commented on the Pope's repulsive homophobia. Since writing this I have read many reactions in the press and on the net, a large number of which begin 'Gay and lesbian groups disgusted, etc.' This is all very well, but surely the whole community should be repulsed by the Pope's neo-Nazi comments, not just the subjects of his disgusting views. I would feel greatly relieved to read comments like 'The Prime minister and members of Parliament are disgusted, etc.' Casting the burden onto the oppressed groups is a failure of morality. It's like saying 'Jews and Jewish groups horrified at the incarceration and murder of Jews in concentration camps'.

the Pope is disgusting

2008-12-23T02:07:00.000-08:00

At his end-of-year address to senior Vatican staff 'Pope Benedict XVI . . . said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.' [BBC] So instead of a message of love and compassion, instead of words of comfort for those without jobs this Christmas due to the economic crisis, instead of a call for peace in the world's many war zones, this despicable man has come out with a message of bigotry and prejudice. Eradicating a huge group of people, or at least forcing them out of sight (people do not choose to be homosexual, 'God' decides for them in the womb), from the planet is as important as saving the forests. With so little evidence in the Bible, especially the parts dealing with Christ's teaching, to support his pronouncements on homosexuality and transsexual behaviour, we must assume that he is simply falling back on the entrenched homophobia and the urge to control human sexuality that have characterised Catholic teaching down the centuries. It is becoming easier by the day to discover what this man learnt from the Nazis.

His contribution, direct or indirect, to the already superabundant intolerance and hatred in the world makes him an evil man. The sooner people realise this the better. When they do, I hope they will line up outside Catholic churches around the world to denounce their Pope, bishops, and priests.

This Pope is disgusting.

health hazards at Spinelli's Coffee House, Kemp Town, Brighton

2008-08-14T06:01:00.000-07:00

I was in the basement of the Spinelli Coffee House in Kemp Town, Brighton, UK, enjoying good coffee and an almond croissant when an employee came over, kneeled beside me, and started spraying a large plant right behind me. I was incredulous and didn't say anything. I really wish I had, but I was so shocked I was lost for words. He wasn't using water as there was a chemical smell. He sprayed for a long time and then left without acknowledging my presence at all. I felt unwell and moved to a different seat. I'm still feeling unwell. Can you believe it?

If this is the way they treat customers I wonder if their coffee's safe. The worst thing is that in every other way it's a nice cafe, but who on earth would go back after being treated like this?

Love and Other Demons at Glyndebourne

2008-08-08T08:54:00.000-07:00

I’m afraid Glyndebourne has a turkey on its hands. The new opera by Peter Eötvös is thin and unfocused. Was it even finished? Stories that the composer was working on the opera rather late in the rehearsal period are not limited to Love and Other Demons, of course. Mozart was just as culpable. The difference is that Don Giovanni sounds finished, it knows what it’s about on hundreds of levels, and its music is involving. In every respect Love and Other Demons is the opposite. The musical fabric is dull. Vocal lines unfold with a monotonous up-and-down, slow delivery that fails to impress a single motive on the consciousness. In fact the opera sounds like a sketch, the orchestration awaiting filling out and completion. The story doesn't seem to know where it's at. highly varied images pour off the stage and from back projections, but quite what the substance is meant to be I could never decide. There are some sterling performances, but this awful tale of a 12-year-old girl allegedly possessed by demons, imprisoned in a convent, subject to exorcism, the turning of the tables so that by the end the girl is the only one not possessed, and her ambiguous death, if that's what it is, doesn't seem to know what it is doing or why.

I give just one instance of how annoying this piece is. Needless to say, a priest falls in love with the girl and they have a love scene. He sits miserably on a bench next to her, stripped to the waist. She gets up and removes the flimsy slip she's wearing and is nude for the first time in the opera (though we get various nude back projections that may be her). At this point the lights are dimmed so we don't see anything (and besides her very long, Melisande-like hair has been prudishly arranged to cover a large part of her front, so the slip is amply replaced). As soon as she has finished circling around the priest, not doing very much, she puts the slip back on and the lights go back up. Now I'm not denying that I wouldn't have enjoyed a glimpse of an unclad body: I would. I was so bored Gordon Brown would have sufficed. But a less erotic, more pointless and half-hearted gesture than this lighting performance is hard to imagine. (It turned to comedy later when she was tied up in a highly symbolic crucifixion position, a lot of blue lighting was used, which made the slip almost invisible. Shocked, the lighting engineer hastily rebalanced the lighting to restore decency.)

The performances were great, especially the girl (not 12, I'm sure), whose ludicrously stratospheric part was sung by the understudy Allison Bell. Felicty Palmer was good as the abbess and almost all the men were impressive. But what a wasted effort.

what the church is really about

2008-07-07T13:42:00.000-07:00

Once again the Church of England and its many sister congregations around the world seem set to tear themselves apart. The Christian church bears the name of Christ and allegedly models itself on the teachings of Christ. Curiously though, the things that you would expect to matter on the evidence of Christ's teaching, such as poverty, war, torture, corruption, the destruction of the planet (God's creation), globalisation, intolerance, hate, etc., etc. never seem to set Christian pulses racing quite as much sexuality and gender. The latest schism or possibly schisms is or are founded on two distantly related themes. One is homosexuality and the ordination of gay bishops in the States; the other is women and the ordination of women bishops in the United Kingdom. These are the matters that the Church really cares about. The oddest thing about, say, the homosexual debate is that the Bible barely mentions homosexuality; Jesus doesn't, that's for sure, and everything in his teaching suggests that, unlike many of today's Christians, he would have been compassionate and inclusive. In order to get an anti-gay message from the Bible, you really have to dig for it and make personal decisions about fiercely debated language and stories, and while you're digging you conveniently overlook matters on which the Bible doesn't hold back, including:

DEUTERONOMY 22:13-21
If it is discovered that a bride is not a virgin, the Bible demands that she be executed by stoning immediately.
DEUTERONOMY 22:22
If a married person has sex with someone else's husband or wife, the Bible commands that both adulterers be stoned to death.
MARK 10:1-12
Divorce is strictly forbidden in both Testaments, as is remarriage of anyone who has been divorced.
LEVITICUS 18:19
The Bible forbids a married couple from having sexual intercourse during a woman's period. If they disobey, both shall be executed.
MARK 12:18-27
If a man dies childless, his widow is ordered by biblical law to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bears her deceased husband a male heir.
DEUTERONOMY 25:11-12
If a man gets into a fight with another man and his wife seeks to rescue her husband by grabbing the enemy's genitals, her hand shall be cut off and no pity shall be shown her.

(from the site What the Bibles says - And Doesn't Say - About Homosexuality)

The sad truth about the Church is that its subtext is more important than its publicly proclaimed text. This subtext over many centuries has been the subjugation of women and the control of people's sexuality. Merged with this is the homophobia and misogyny of those now opposed to the presence of gays, lesbians and women bishops.

Let's not automatically respect the Church. By all means give credit to members who genuinely mean and do good, but let's name the rest for what they are: dishonest, deeply flawed, and an open inducement to every cruelty and neurosis in the human psyche.

You are my Sunshine.jpg

2008-06-23T10:16:00.001-07:00

You are my Sunshine.jpg
Originally uploaded by wotanseyepatch

This is classy street art and even classier photography from London. I love it.

San Francisco Dawn

2008-06-23T09:37:00.001-07:00

San Francisco Dawn
Originally uploaded by Wiggum03

And there's more! Who says cities can't rival nature in mystery and beauty?

Golden Gate Morning

2008-06-23T09:27:00.001-07:00

Golden Gate Morning
Originally uploaded by Wiggum03

I'm dying to see this bridge in the flesh. Images like this, albeit the work of very good photographers, just get the old feet itching. And to think I was, a good few years ago, just half a mile or so away from this wonderful spectacle.

say something nice

2008-06-22T02:12:00.000-07:00

I'm racking my brains. I've written several fairly tetchy blogs in the past few weeks and now I need to find the good things in life. Positive outlook and all that. Think on the right side and things will go right. Wish for things and they will come to you. Moan and they'll get worse. Yesterday was my birthday and I enjoyed it (I was well looked after!), in spite of the weather, and in spite of our first attempt at brunch, which took us to the Arc at the Liffey Valley Centre (Dublin) where the tables weren't cleared, we were ignored, and customers (all six of them) were complaining of cold food. Getting out of there as quickly as our legs would carry us, we found something more civilised round the corner in the Clarion Hotel, but we paid €16 each for a cooked breakfast that was, in spite of the fairly lush setting, cheap food. And so we both made comparisons and thought of our last Bob Evans in Delaware State, which cost $8 or so and was about 100 times nicer. Later we went to the National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks, which epitomises many of the things I hate about Ireland: its lack of flair and design skills, its cheapness, shoddy workmanship, indifference, lack of pride in what it does, fairly limited offerings, unfriendliness, complacency, etc. We then drove towards and into the Dublin Mountains where one's eyes are constantly affronted by tawdry, horrible new housing and office developments, and beyond them the serried ranks of non-native spruce plantations ruining a once lovely rolling rural landscape. Yet the view of Dublin Bay -- what little we could see through the rain and cloud as we ate our picnic in the car -- is as thrilling as ever. There is still hope for this sad little country, but it's fast running out and I've lost the power of positive thought where it's concerned. Very sad but true.

tedious pun.JPG

2008-06-21T07:43:00.001-07:00

Puns like this are a form of spiritual death. The sheer tediousness of their witless play with words, the dullness of the joke -- if there is one, and the resulting damage to the English language are an affront to all of us. Here we find some jackass at the National Museum of Ireland proudly proclaiming his pun in a major exhibition with a bracketed 'Am I not clever making this amusing concession to popular culture in a serious cultural context?' Well let's be absolutely clear about this: puns like this are deeply irritating. They hurt language, they insult our intelligence, and they betray the utter vacuity and vanity of the perpetrator. Leave the puns to the gutter press and genuine humorists and let us, please, get on with life minus this verbal terrorism.

longest day blues.JPG

2008-06-21T07:34:00.001-07:00

longest day blues.JPG
Originally uploaded by musical photo man

There's something mercilessly inevitable about this view, I feel. The weather on the longest day of the year is execrable and Collins Barracks, tastelessly adapted to the needs of the National Museum of Ireland, is gloomy and uninviting. Ireland needs the sun, but failing that it desperately needs flair.

mint marzipan.JPG

2008-06-15T14:10:00.001-07:00

mint marzipan.JPG
Originally uploaded by musical photo man

When I'm in the mood, I can see marzipan in all things.

A subtle price increase...

2008-06-15T04:43:00.001-07:00

A subtle price increase...
Originally uploaded by eatsShootsAndLeaves

I love this (and love the screen name of the photographer).

I'm going to vote Tory

2008-06-12T14:01:00.000-07:00

I was brought up in the faith by Conservative parents. My maternal grandparents read The Daily Mail. I cast my first for the local Tory candidate Andrew Bowden and when I first arrived in Oxford to become a fearful snob -- for a short while at least -- I joined the Tory party. A few months later I was a fully fledged Labour supporter and have tended to vote for them ever since. However, I have now witnessed the most depressing subversion of political ideals in the history of the Labour party. The story hardly needs retelling: Iraq, the abolition of the 10% tax band, the ruination of the English education system, the destruction of countryside and Victorian houses, and now the proposed suspension of habeas corpus for the astonishing period of 42 days. How came this party, which used to represent liberty, the poor, the pursuit of peace, and other wholesome values to be corrupted in this manner? Blair and Bush! Gordon Brown and Oswald Mosely? So here I am, poised, assuming the Tories still undertake to reverse this disgusting legislation (and assuming it survives their lordships and others), to vote Conservative for the first time since I was 18.

a most endearing cat

2008-06-04T07:18:00.000-07:00

Helen Henschel writes in her autobiography: 'The first performance in England of Wagner's Symphony conducted by my father [George Henschel] . . . reminds me of the famous Wagner cat which inhabited St. James' Hall. This animal is said to have walked on to the platform at rehearsals whenever any work by Wagner was being played -- and at no other time. I believe it was always shut up during Wagner concerts, but managed to escape once or twice and stalk majestically to the centre of the platform. Whether or not in time to the music, history does not relate. When Soft Voices Die, p. 84

films from hell

2008-05-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

There are quite a few things that I really, truly hate in films. Ranking high on a long list are fake Irish accents and all the crap that goes with American exhibitions of Oirishness. American movie moguls seem to have no idea what spoken Irish-English sounds like. Moreover, they think the Irish all live in quaint cottages and dress like latter-day peasants. They assume the Irish stand around drinking Guinness and Jamesons and are all jolly friendly, except when they're bullying and drunk. And to make the whole thing so ghastly that Dante's circles of hell seem inviting in comparison, films exhibiting this crass cultural stereotyping are accompanied by the tedious drone of Celtic wailing music in all its self-pitying mediocrity. All these faults have been assembled in the truly atrocious film PS I Love You, which now rivals my only night exercise with the Combined Cadet Force (on which I got lost) back in the days of my schooling in Brighton as one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. And no, I didn't subject myself to the whole film, but I daresay I suffered 40 minutes or so of it. Now I'm going pull a few nails out with pliers, listen to Barry Manilow, wash my eyes with bleach, and clean the bath, all incomparably more pleasurable than Gerard Butler's Irishness.

I love optimists

2008-05-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

Somebody on the local Dublin cheapcycle is offering a laptop with this specification:

128 MB Ram

5.5 gb HD

CD Rom

Floppy

V Good Battery

The strange thing is that he or she thinks it's worth €100. Don't you just love people who can always see the positive side of things. Frankly, I suspect such an outdated machine is about as much use for today's computing as a cucumber or park bench.

Eating out in Dublin: The Farm, Dawson St., Dublin 2

2008-05-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

Eating out in Dublin has improved considerably since I arrived in the city over 20 years ago. In those days it was Hugo's Pizzeria in Temple Bar (long since gone, alas) or Burger King. Dublin was a wasteland, a miserable experience for those who love food. Since then things have changed almost out of all recognition, but I still think that the city is grossly overpriced and unreliable. The Farm in Dawson Street, over the road from Trinity, is a good example. It looks great. It advertises green food (eco-friendly rather than mouldly in the old Dublin style). And the menu includes burgers, pizzas, focaccia bread, organic bangers and mash with onion gravy, and other good things. It augurs well, but my meal last Sunday, 4 May, was lousy. I opted for a Mexican pizza with onions instead of sweetcorn. It arrived without either, which wasn't a good start, but I couldn't be bothered to send it back (I was too hungry). My next mistake was to try to cut a piece off. Not a good move. I almost injured my arm doing battle with the tough old base. When I finally managed to transfer a section to my mouth I found it doughy, uninteresting in flavour, and simply lifeless; poor ingredients might be to blame. It was a very dull, badly cooked pizza. My wife fared better: she enjoyed her burger with cheese and bacon, so it may not be all bad.

However, it wasn't just the pizza I disliked. The staff were charming and highly efficient. The man I took to be the owner or manager, on the other hand, was distinctly not to my taste. Within hearing of our table he kept on dressing his staff down in the most demeaning way. 'You can't just be standing around like that when the tables over there haven't been cleared.' And so it went on. It was embarrassing. It's certainly not the way to motivate your staff or warm the hearts of your customers.

I have no great desire to return to The Farm, though I like the decor and the changing colours of the lighting. The menu, conceptually, is appealling too, but I don't want to have to work through dishes in the hope I'll find one they do well. If they offer pizza they should know how to cook it. Basta!

death of a beloved cat

2008-05-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting in my living room next to a beloved cat who died yesterday. Later we will take him back to the vet, who will arrange for his cremation. For almost 18 years Scamp and Pucci graced our house and our lives, but now they are both gone, Pucci having predeceased Scamp by just a few months (in February). The pain of their deaths is excruciating to both of us. Almost the first thing we did when we moved into our house in Chapelizod was to find ourselves a pair of kittens, Pucci and Scamp, who therefore grew into the house with us (to be joined by three others), where we still live. They were its heart and soul: every moment of every day we felt their presence and their mixture of independence and dependence. They, or rather Scamp (Pucci was as close to perfect in his general behaviour as I can conceive a cat being), could be exasperating, and during the last two years, illness meant that we had to devote quite a lot of time and money to their care, which occasionally I questioned or griped about. We also couldn’t travel away together for more than a few hours. Twice a day Scamp would need to receive fluids, which necessitated a bit of preparation and then three minutes of his not always totally willing company in the bathroom (Pucci also needed fluids, but – typical Pucci – he was a lovely patient). There were times when I wished we didn’t have to do this, but as I sit beside his still, cold body now, I would give anything to feel his warm fur under my hand and put up with a little hassle for the love and attraction he showed us.

Scamp was really my cat. He seemed to attach himself to me from quite early on, just as Suzie attached herself to my wife. He put up with a lot from me, and in his prime would often race into the living room in the hope that my lap would be his for a while. As he grew older and feebler I had less contact with him – something I intensely regret – but we did a great deal to give him a good quality of life in the later days, so there were periods when he was almost back to his old self and I could again enjoy a few minutes of his wonderful company on my lap or beside me in the living room. When Scamp’s health started failing in the summer of 2006, we took him to our old vet, where he stayed overnight. I vividly recall visiting him on the second day and coming into the waiting room, where my wife had already arrived (I came from College). As soon as I spoke there was a loud squawk from his cage in another room: his lordship had spoken and demanded my attention, which he quickly got.

People who don’t own pets, and some who do, have strange ideas about the animals we let into our lives. They attribute the closeness and love that grows up between us to projection or anthropomorphism. They argue that cats have no consciousness or soul, let alone personality, just a collection of instincts that some gullible or needy humans misinterpret. Having known many cats, done some reading, spoken to others, and so on, I know that the doubters are wrong. I don’t suspect it, I am as certain about it as I am about anything in my life. Some humans, I’m sure, are completely lacking souls, but not cats. They have an intricate consciousness that they use to establish a complex and often highly responsive relationship with their human servants. The value to the cats is obvious, for we give them food, shelter, warmth, and love, all of which they need and demand. The value for humans goes even deeper, for most of us live in towns and cities with minimal contact with other living creatures: cats (dogs, rabbits, etc.) are our communion with the living world beyond humanity. They are the medium through which we take our first faltering steps into a relationship with the infinite living riches of our beautiful planet.

Pets are not baby substitutes for us. They fulfill quite different needs. I have never wanted children but I’ve always loved pets. The death of three of our cats in under a year has been traumatic. The rent in the fabric of our existence will never be entirely repaired. I cannot imagine myself forgetting the two black beauties we let into our lives in 1990, one of whose ashes rests in our living room opposite the body of the other on the settee next to his grieving owner.

We are left with two lovely tabbies, Freddie and Jessica, who tended to play second fiddle to the others for many years. They will now claim the full attention they always wanted and deserved. Some may think it remiss that we allowed our love to be shared out unequally, but I think Freddie and Jessica knew the score soon after settling in: they were uncommonly deferential to Pucci and Scamp when they arrived and kept themselves to themselves quite a lot of the time (the arrival of Suzie was another matter, but that was a few years off). After the passing of Suzie and Pucci, they have stepped forward and made it quite clear that it’s their turn. Nothing could be less ambiguous. They will now take centre stage.

But what I wouldn’t give just to see Pucci and Scamp coming into the yard from the garden together as they so often used to do. They weren’t close, but every so often they would acknowledge each other and show that no matter how independent they seemed, there was a deep fraternal bond that allowed each of them to derive strength from the character of the other. Scamp could never be wholly Scamp without Pucci; now, perhaps, they are together again in the only heaven I can really bring myself to believe in: the one for cats.

derelict boats on the Liffey

2007-03-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

I didn't take this picture of three boats on the River Liffey at Chapelizod for their inherent beauty, but even derelict boats on water look picturesque if the composition is OK. I had been trying for several days to get out in bright light to experiment with my first digital SLR, but the tupperware light continued to be unrelieved by even a glimmer of sunshine. So I went with the leaden-grey skies and had a great time.

Chapelizod old village centre

2007-03-25T10:17:00.000-07:00

This is the village sqare of Chapelizod, Dublin. The pub is the Villager and behind it you see the medieval tower of the Church of Ireland church. This is Isolde's tower and by far the most important single structure in the village. At present the square is little more than a glorified car park and roadway for thousands of cars passing from the city centre to the suburbs and beyond (and vice versa), but plans are afoot to smarten it up and create a feature that recognises the importance at one time of Chapelizod's military connections. Let's hope they can do something to stop all these cars passing through the village at the same time (other than road pricing it's hard to know what options are available).

ruined trees

2007-03-24T16:03:00.000-07:00

This once-handsome tree has been butchered by a brutal process known as topping. It's a form of 'pruning' that's all too common in Ireland, the country with the fewest trees in Europe. There are so few properly qualified tree surgeons in the country that total charlatans are entrusted with the job of making trees a little ‘neater’. The one pictured above is in a neighbour’s garden here in Chapelizod. It was for many years a most handsome, mature tree. Now for reasons that eternally elude me, its beauty has been raped by this most ugly deformation. Moreover, its chances of survival have also been curtailed: it is now much more likely to become diseased. It will also need more maintenance rather than less. All over Dublin and indeed Ireland we see this awful treatment of trees. Simply on aesthetic grounds it is unacceptable, but for a whole host of environmental reasons it is criminal. They say the Irish are visually illiterate – a point so obvious to any visitor here it hardly needs repeating – but this disregard for trees seems to me to indicate a deeper dysfunction in this strange, often wilful society. To single out only the Irish for blame is unfair, however (for all that the shortage of trees in Ireland and the widespread incompetence in their pruning makes it a greater problem than in other countries): even a casual amble along the Thames embankment in London reveals whole rows of mutilated trees, the work, presumably, of London council. See the excellent website http://66.165.117.218/topping.asp for a detailed discussion of what they describe as 'perhaps the most harmful tree pruning practice known'.

gun madness in America

2006-10-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

I suppose it shouldn't be necessary for an appalling tragedy, such as the indiscriminate murder of Amish schoolgirls, to remind us that America makes it insanely easy for its people to own guns. While the God-fearing Bush and his delightful party continue to advocate gun ownership, many Americans fiercely oppose this freedom. According to the Department of Justice, 34,040 people were killed in America by guns in 1996, for example. Of these deaths 14,037 were homicides. Things don't seem to be improving. According to Philadelphia statistics, a handgun in the home is 22 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. Each year in the city $128 million is spent caring for victims of gun crime. And so it goes on. America has a horrific murder rate, and most of it is down to guns. Yet the National Rifle Assocation seems to dominate national policy, in spite of strong, and presumably well-founded, protests from law-enforcement organisations. Will this great country, which prides itself on its intellectual achievements, ever see reason? In Britain and Ireland gun ownership is not a possibility for most people, and these countries are a great deal safer as a result. America should outlaw guns from all homes and limit possession to safes in gun clubs. Clearly farmers and a few others should be granted exemptions. Hunters presumably need access to hunting rifles, but if these could be managed through gun clubs or other institutions with secure access, so much the better.

iPod part 2: overrated gadgets

2006-09-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

In my former assault on the sacred iPod I decried the gap inserted between tracks in playback when listening to an iPod and iTunes. The new version of iTunes now features 'gapless playback', heralding it as a major advance, of course, though the gap should never have been there in the first place. The only problem is – and this is typical Apple – the gapless feature is only supported on the latest iPods, i.e. generation 5. So get your wallets out if, like me, you regard the gap as irritating and unmusical.

the Pope and Muslims

2006-09-16T07:13:00.000-07:00

In his speech at the University of Regensburg on Tuesday, Benedict quoted criticism of Islam and the Prophet Mohammad by 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who wrote that everything Mohammad brought was evil and inhuman, 'such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.' CNN

It would be gratifying to find the Pope's words actively contradicted, but given a Muslim propensity to violence when they're offended, it is hard to associate Muslims with peace. No doubt the majority do indeed prefer peace, so it would be reassuring to find greater volumes of protest every time Muslims demand the death of somebody they perceive to be against them. Perhaps too we might hear greater condemnation of suicide bombers, the brutal treatment of Muslim women in some Muslim countries, hideous forms of punishment and deplorable legal systems, and just perhaps someday we might see hard evidence of a love for peace when Iran abandons its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Frankly I think actions speak louder than words, and I've yet to see a mass progression towards peaceful co-existence from some (obviously not all) Muslim countries and populations. And do Muslims show respect for other religions of the sort they react so violently to not getting themselves? How easy is it to practice Christianity or convert to Christianity in many Muslim countries?

Dublin, Ireland, if you please

2006-09-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

UK subjects, American citizens, and many others speak of Dublin as part of the UK -- some vague place that's in the vicinity of England and therefore under the dominion of the UK parliament. Well it isn’t. After centuries of struggle against Britain, Ireland finally broke free in 1920 under the Government of Ireland Act. This made Dublin the capital of a more-or-less independent country, which became a republic in the full sense in 1948. As part of the settlement by which Ireland came into being, the island was partitioned with a significant portion in the north remaining under British rule; this is known as Northern Island (see map). So ‘Ireland’ as a political term refers to the Republic of Ireland, the capital of which is Dublin. Geographically Ireland is part of the British Isles. The first evidence that the UK and Ireland are not the ‘same’ dawns on the alert tourist when he or she makes his or her first cash transaction: Ireland has joined the Euro, so it has the same coins and notes as France, Germany, Italy, and others. The UK, concerned that the loss of currency might entail loss of national identity (!), has hung onto its own currency, which is now vastly overpriced on international exchanges and a source of great inconvenience to the many thousands of Irish who do business with, or have family in, the UK. Dublin is NOT in the UK; its ties to London are similar to other European nations such as France and Germany. On the other hand, unlike them it is supposedly a neutral country, like Switzerland, though Ireland’s participation in the war against Iraq has brought this into question. map from http://mike.eire.ca/graphics/ireland.gif

fatuous sentences

2006-09-15T10:28:00.000-07:00

The media, radio, TV, magazines, etc. give us abundant examples of fatuous sentences. I'm sure I've done my bit as well. By any standards, this sentence, which accompanies a CD issue of Elgar conducted by Eduard van Beinum on Beulah 2PD15, must rank highly among fatuous and just plain stupid sentences. Writing about the conductor, author Malcolm Walker makes this insightful comment:

'His health, never particularly robust in his last years, must have contributed to his early death.'

Well I never!

Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

2006-09-15T09:22:00.000-07:00

Pretty much my last view outside the car (or airport) was the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge of 1964. One of the most spectacular bridges in the world, it joins Brooklyn and Staten Island; the towers are 4260 feet apart. The many bridges of America I crossed are among my fondest memories of the time there.

last visit to Longwood, PA (for a while)

2006-09-15T09:12:00.000-07:00

Our last days in the US were pretty hectic, but we managed to squeeze in a brief final visit to Longwood Gardens, PA, where the glorious fountains were brought to life at midday (almost in our honour, I felt). I'm going to miss the place. Now I'm now trying to adjust to being back in Ireland after three very happy months (and several extended visits in 2005 and 2006) in a country I've come to admire a great deal.

the American dream?

2006-09-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

The American Dream goes like this. Any man or woman, no matter how common, can make pots of money and have a mansion. He or she can rise to the top from the most humble origins and make a mark. So you may be black, you may be raised in N. Philadelphia, you may go to public school, but if you work hard you will rise like a cork in the Dead Sea to the top of the pile.

This is the theory. The practice is different. In America you are more likely to remain within the income group in which you are raised than in almost any other developed country. Only the UK is worse. America is not a meritocracy. Not at all. In fact, it is a land in which the divide between rich and poor is vast and only rarely can one cross. Colleges and universities recruit largely from the affluent middle classes. Government tax breaks for tuition fees benefit the wealthy more than the poor. Incredible but true.

Research confirms this gloomy outlook, but one doesn’t in fact have to look any further than the White House for evidence. Does anyone seriously believe that a man as mediocre, stupid, narrow, and inadequate as Bush could become the most powerful man in the world without vast wealth and influence pushing him up?

If the American Dream ever meant anything, it is a hollow sham now. America is anything but a meritocracy, and America and the world will pay a severe price for this failure of idealism.

richest countries

2006-09-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

Somebody recently told me that Ireland was the richest country in the world. Somewhat confounded I took this on trust, only having lived there for over 20 years and not seen any indication of it (poor infrastructure, 3rd world funding of education, awful quality of new housing, one of the highest levels of adult illiteracy in the developed world, vast tracts of poverty, no opera most of the year, lousy arts funding, etc.). Eventually I decided to check the statistics and it appears that Ireland is nowhere near the top, not even in Europe, if GDP per capita is the measure, which I assume it ought to be. By this measurement Ireland comes 8^th in Europe and is nowhere in sight in the world’s top 20, which has Luxemburg on top, followed by Norway, USA, San Marino, and Switzerland. That’s more like it.

It had occurred to me that Ireland might at least have one claim to fame, that of being numbered among the most expensive countries to live in, which is the impression you get when you live there, but again I was wrong. Ireland doesn’t figure in the top 20. Japan tops the list with the USA 13^th and UK 16^th. So there. What is Ireland good at? Stupid pubs in foreign lands? The most clever marketing of a nationality in the history of marketing?

Windozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2006-08-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

One of the few times I've ever consciously succumbed to advertising was when Microsoft emerged from the dark ages and started to make computers act a bit more like my Mac. I really wanted a slice of the action and so I tried to run Windows on the Mac using a PC emulator. Several hours later I dropped the idea, aghast at the leaden progress of the loading process, but, considerably angered by the poor value of Macs compared with PCs, I made the great transition. Which is where I am now, typing on a PC laptop. I still think Macs are poor value in many ways, though they've improved a lot, and they do have some nice things going on in their operating system. After all this time I would expect Windows to be better than it is. After all, most of the world uses it; it's an immense operation; it's worth billions; and yet Windoze and Microsoft’s applications are really not much better, on the surface, than a Big Mac. They really do lack flair. One example struck me lately -- and I'm no computer nerd. When I want to search for a word in Internet Explorer I have to bring up a separate window, hunt for the word, and then close the window. Two windows. Boring! In Firefox the search window is part of the main window, and it starts searching as soon as you type; there’s no window to close. Exhilarating.

Then there are the little things. I bought an ancient Vaio recently to use in libraries. It’s light and portable, and it’s fine for a bit of Internet and typing. Sometimes I connect a USB device and every single time I get a little box that opens at the bottom of the screen saying something like, ‘I notice that this is a 1.1 USB port. Would you like me to look for a 2.0 port, which would be so much faster and altogether a better computing experience for you. Have a nice day.’ So I click on the box and the computer splutters and wheezes for a short while and it comes back with the message, ‘I’m so sorry. There simply isn’t a faster port on this computer. So you’re stuck with a really crappy transfer speed until you get rid of this rotting heap. Have a nice day.’ And I don’t see these messages again until next time I plug in a USB device. Well really, you think it would learn, don’t you.

And then there’s the trash. Every time I go to empty the bin I get an irritating message that asks me if I’m absolutely, 100% certain that I really want to empty the trash. Imagine what this would be like in real life. You go downstairs with your black bags and Bill Gates is standing beside the bins asking you if you’ve really thought the matter through. Are you sure? You’d strangle him. Whether you check or uncheck the box that’s supposed to switch this warning option on or off, you still get the box. Most annoying.

And why does Word keep reverting to US spelling? I’m not going to write ‘color’, not now, not ever. Is this a little piece of cultural imperialism? Why doesn’t the spelling occasionally skip from UK to French or Croatian? It would be a nice change. Ideally though, the Word document would stay with the default setting you think you’ve chosen in the first place. After all, it makes enough of a fuss at the time you make this life-changing decision.

I really do think it’s time somebody else designed our operating system and software. Too much of one company is never a good thing.

university libraries in Ireland and US, part 2

2006-08-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

It's been suggested that I wasn't totally fair to Ireland and Britain when I compared private US institutions with the publically funded ones in the British Isles. So I did a quick check to see if the state-funded University of Washington in Seattle and University of California, Berkeley were as impressive as Princeton and others when I did an author search for the great Viennese theorist, philosopher, editor, analyst and much more, Heinrich Schenker. Here are the results:

Washington: 29 hits

Berkeley: 50 hits

(compared to the previous highest of 46 hits, Cambridge, England, and lowest of 2, University College Cork; the averages from four libraries in each area were Ireland 9.5, UK 36.5, US 45.25)

I rest my case. Ireland appears to have very little interest in proper provision for third-level education and scholarship, as is shown in the pitifully stocked university (and other) libraries. Britain does pretty well, in spite of awful funding in some areas. America is in a different league. If you are in one of the great population centres in the US, you may be pretty sure that most books in your subject area are available locally or via inter-library arrangements.

Bush: plunderer and rapist of America

2006-08-23T17:06:00.000-07:00

I quote: 'In a stunning, relatively overlooked area of the southern Sierras, just east of California Hot Springs and the south valley town of Porterville, the Forest Service is facilitating one of the most rotten deals in the recent, rotten history of logging on public lands. And these are not just any public lands but a National Monument established in 2000 to protect giant Sequoias, in large part by prohibiting timber cutting and restoring the lands to their primeval condition.'

And: 'The Forest Service's proposal calls for 180 clearcuts of up to two acres in size, in the belief that sequoias benefit from sunny openings in the forest. But studies by the University of California on a state forest have found far, far fewer seedlings on logged sequoia stands than in areas subject to normal wildfires.'

This forest houses two thirds of the world's oldest trees. The trees require heat from fires to release seeds, so the reasoning behind the Bush administration's proposal is flawed, but then science has not been a great influence on this Texan grandee and his jesters, as the global-warming and evolution debates have shown.

Is there going to be a single, decent bequest from this appalling administration? Will people look back on this period and be able to think of one fine achievement that had future generations in mind? The war on terror? Hardly. It's worse now than it was in 2001: Bush has done little on the home front. Fewer wars? Iraq, Lebanon ... A safer, more beautiful environment? Probably not. Bush has only ever contributed to one cause: the ever-increasing prosperity of a tiny number of the wealthiest people and corporations the world has ever known. And yet still some of the poorest people in America believe that he is a moral, God-fearing man. What more do Bush and his administration, who for me are the epitome of greed and self-interest, have to do?

paranoia, bigotry, and stupidity in the air

2006-08-21T17:03:00.000-07:00

flyMonarch.com, the site for Monarch Airlines, encourages you to buy their product with the byline 'expect more, pay less'. Well, two arab gentlemen certainly got more than they expected, because they were turfed off the aircraft by Monarch. Apparently some passengers saw the two men behaving 'suspiciously' (i.e. speaking in what they thought was Arabic), acted up, and forced the captain of the flight to have them removed. The plane was then cleared and searched for explosives. But of course, who is better qualified to judge these matters than Joe Public. What an invaluable repository of knowledge the common man is. Just wave a terrorist under his nose and all the x-rays, body searches, passport monitoring, liquid exclusion, etc. of the security staff is revealed as the hollow sham we've always believed it to be. In the future let's invite the non-arab, English speaking, white-skinned public to do the screening and leave all that technical stuff at home.

Oh, and one other thing, let's not pay less and expect more. Given this example of Monarch's judgement, do we really want to fly with these people? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/5269106.stm)

Americans friendly?

2006-08-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

I went into Acme this morning, one of the most common supermarkets around these parts (PA), and I couldn't find a basket. I went up to a guy with the right badge and asked for one. He accompanied me into the lobby and found one, explaining on the way why they were so short. Apparently they keep getting stolen because people use them to shoplift. Pretty brazen. By the time I took my basket and had been told I was 'very welcome' (after thanking him), I felt pretty uplifted, I have to say. Later I went into Brew Ha Ha! in Trolley Square, Wilmington, a favourite haunt, to get coffee. The woman serving was mortified when she misremembered my usual order, the cup for which she had produced the instant I stepped into the cafe. Once again my spirits, which had been waning at the thought of term, supplemental exams, national wage agreements, the Middle East, GWB, Blair, Ahern, credit-card balances, hoovering, and goodness knows what else, started to rise. Yesterday a girl cheerfully put up with my endless indecision at a superb ice cream and custard store in New Jersey, helpfully enumerating her own favourites and accurately describing the contents of each of their infinitely wonderful and varied creations.

What more can I say? You will find this sort of response from time to time in Ireland, but you absolutely cannot count on it, and it often seems pretty grudging. Many other times the body language (and sometimes the spoken language!) in Ireland is telling you to go f**k yourself as you have the confounded cheek to ask for some service that in America is provided with a smile which, more often than not, seems perfectly sincere. And don’t even get me started on what you get when you enter these places where service is so cheerily provided. The ice cream, the selection, the value, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. God Bless America indeed!

blogging those damn spammers

2006-08-15T06:02:00.000-07:00

Spammers are vermin, as we all know. Sadly and very annoyingly they've started using the anonymous-comment facility on this and other blogs to spread their fetid presence yet more widely. Since I already encounter more than enough SPAM, I've switched off anonymous comments, so I hope people will be willing to go through the registered route to correct my mistakes and challenge my views (or perhaps even agree with me). If you want to write to me by email, please do so: my address is simon.trezise@gmail.com.

university libraries rated

2006-08-14T06:34:00.000-07:00

One of many reasons why I’m not jumping up and down in ecstasy at the prospect of my imminent return to Ireland is the quality and quantity of university libraries in the US. This is partly a matter of funding: whereas some of the American universities I’ve looked at have pots of money, Ireland has almost third-world funding levels for its universities, which have left them strapped for such luxuries as books. Even so, I rarely get the impression that university administrations in Ireland, let alone the government (Irish universities depend on public funding), fully appreciate the importance of properly stocked research libraries (one university in Philadelphia has an annual purchasing fund for music around 360 times greater than the sum made available for music at Trinity College Dublin, though Trinity’s resources are boosted by the automatic deposit of all books published in the British Isles). In America the message has got through loud and clear: libraries are vital. It really shows.

In order to explore the point I investigated various library holdings of one seminal author, Heinrich Schenker, who is generally regarded as one of the most important writers on music of the 20^th century (on theory, analysis, performance, editing, and philosophy of music). The results were, to say the least, revealing. In the light of experience I think these results are representative. The number of relevant hits an author search yielded are shown below, with multiple holdings not included.

[British Library: 37

Library of Congress: 36]

Four Irish universities, within about 0 to 3 hours commute of Dublin:

Queen’s University Belfast: 8

Trinity College Dublin: 21

University College Cork: 2

University College Dublin: 7

Four US universities, within 0 to 2 hours commute of Philadelphia:

Princeton University: 42

Rutgers University: 32

Temple University: 30

University of Pennsylvania: 38

Four English universities, within 1/2 to 2 hours commute of central London:

Cambridge University (Newton Catalogue): 46

Royal Holloway College (London University): 17

Southampton University: 22

Sussex University: 31

England comes out of this pretty well, and if one is working in London there are many more alternatives to the libraries randomly picked out above, not least the British Library itself. Consider too that London colleges have a very fine central library, Senate House, in addition to their own holdings. Philadelphia is superb, as not only are there institutions in the city with magnificent holdings (including the main public library), there are several more within easy commuting distance, such as the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, etc. Moreover, Inter-Library Loan is free in many of these places, and you can also use a pooling system in which several institutions, including Yale and Princeton, share books and journals (it’s called Borrow Direct). Ireland is diabolical. With no library anywhere near the best England and America have to offer, the hapless researcher has either to use Inter-Library Loan, which is expensive, or travel abroad, which is also expensive (Berlin, London, and Paris are the obvious destinations). Neither solution is satisfactory, even if there were adequate funding to make them a genuine alternative to a functional library. Electronic resources are irrelevant for the brief survey I undertook, but as it transpires, Irish universities have not implemented the full range of electronic resources that are routinely available in American libraries.

flying for your life

2006-08-10T03:30:00.000-07:00

British intelligence has foiled an attempt to blow up planes bound to the US from London, it seems. The terrorists were apparently intending to bring their explosives on in hand luggage. (I have seen no information about how advanced these plans were.) The fallout for passengers is disturbing. They are being refused permission to bring liquids onto flights in hand luggage, including, I assume, water. There are serious health implications, as plentiful water is essential when one's flying long distance, as doctors repeatedly tell us. It's now up to the airlines to supply the large quantities passengers require to avoid dehydration, and not to charge for it. If they don't, the health risks of flying will multiply exponentially.

Orthodox Jews Demand End to Zionist Atrocities in the Middle East

2006-08-09T14:08:00.000-07:00

One of the most reassuring and moving websites I've encountered since Israel's depravity was revealed in its most naked and brutal form in the horrific bombing of Lebanon and Palestine is this protest site from Orthodox Jews, whose voice has long been stifled in Israel. Their obvious compassion and humanity are a welcome relief from the violent rhetoric emanating from much of America and Israel. I sincerely hope that their initiative will get through to somebody. At the very least it tells us that Israel's bloodlust does not represent the aspirations of all of the Jewish people. If their protests are heard, it will surely stem the waves of anti-Semiticism that Israel seems determined to encourage at the moment. This is just a brief quote from http://www.nkusa.org/ (the picture is from their site too -- I hope they don't mind my using it).

'The brutal and indiscriminate attack upon the people and infrastructure of Lebanon by the Zionist State "Israel" is a crime against all basic standards of decency and humanity.

The excuse given for this murderous invasion was the attack by Hezbollah on the IDF. What this might have to do with the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese innocent men, women and children, who are subjected to an ongoing living hell, is beyond comprehension.'

caravans on the Blue Ridge Parkway

2006-08-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

We arrived at a lovely overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina and found the second picnic table unoccupied. A middle-aged couple was unloading copious supplies onto the other and looked delighted with the glorious view and feast in prospect. As we sat down to enjoy our much more modest feast, the caravan (Michigan number plate B30***6) pictured above pulled into the exact centre of the overlook and parked. The driver jumped out and had a quick cigarette whilst his wife (or partner, sister, transvestite significant other) scurried into the caravan, barely pausing to glance at the view. One cancer stick later the driver joined her and they proceeded to eat lunch in the cloistered environment of the caravan. Having blocked our view, they didn't even have the grace to engage with their environment. There's a word for people like this: tossers. Oblivious to the world around them, they devote themselves to their own comfort and to hell with the rest of humanity. Tossers indeed.

environmental consequences of Israel's aggression

2006-08-03T05:39:00.000-07:00

I have been shocked to discover the environmental impact of Isreal's aggression in Lebanon. This is typical of numerous reports I have encountered of the oil spill caused Isreal's attack on a power plant in Lebanon:

' "Up until now 10,000-15,000 tonnes of heavy fuel have spilled out into the sea," after Israel's bombing of the power station in Jiyeh two weeks ago, Lebanese Environment Minister Yacub Sarraf told AFP Saturday.

"It's without doubt the biggest environmental catastrophe that the Mediterranean has known and it risks having terrible consequences not only for our country but for all the countries of the eastern Mediterranean."

Israeli forces bombed the tanks at the power station on July 14 and July 15, just days into their offensive on Lebanon which has seen blistering air strikes across the country and a bloody ground incursion in the south.' www.breitbart.com

Increasingly as we review the impact on people, infrastructure, culture, and environment of Isreal's gross overreaction to the kidnapping of two soldiers (as opposed to the hundreds or indeed thousands of Palestinians 'abducted' by Israel, including elected politicians), it becomes clear that Israel has catastrophically blundered. It is fighting a war that it cannot hope to win, terrorism being what it is. The real casualty is humanity itself, not just in Lebanon and Palestine, but in Israel itself, because the torturer corrupts his own soul, not his victims'.

China and dogs

2006-08-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

It's often said that we can judge a nation's quality and development by its treatment of animals and approach to animal welfare. In response to an outbreak of rabies in a Chinese province, 50,000 dogs were culled. The people charged with this cruelty went out at night, caused a commotion that started the dogs barking, and then dragged the dogs out from under their owners' horrified gaze and beat them to death. China is a terrible country in many ways. It is the opposite of so much that Americans and Europeans are supposed to value. Its treatment of Tibet is one of the most distressing stories of the post-war years. This episode with the dogs gives us horribly graphic evidence of the monstrous nature of the regime that will doubtless supplant America as the world's superpower in years to come.

Mel Gibson

2006-08-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

I have mixed feelings about Gibson's outrageous behaviour. The first reaction I had to the news was disgust that he should have been driving a car with so much alcohol in his system. That way manslaughter lies, and surely anyone who drinks himself into this state, gets out and drives, and kills somebody deserves to spend a very long time behind bars. Sadly, Americans don’t seem to get as worked up about drinking and driving as we do in Ireland and Britain, more’s the pity. As to what he said to the policeman, if he said all that’s reported, it’s very offensive. Of course. But would the media reaction have been quite so outspoken if he’d cursed Arabs, blaming them for the world’s troubles? Because of the Holocaust there is greater sensitivity to anti-Semitism, which is easy to understand, but surely all racism is objectionable.

What Gibson said is awful, but was it the ‘drink talking’? An ugly darkside is drawn out by alcohol that is not necessarily a viable reflection of the person whom we encounter in society. Lurking behind many happy, smiling faces are fears, irrational hatreds, and so on. History tells us that for some unaccountable reason a lot of this gets dumped onto groups of people that white, non-Jewish people like Gibson irrationally mistrust or fear. Presumably his outburst was also fuelled by anger at Israel’s brutality in the Middle East, but confusing anger at the behaviour of a superpower, a political state, with the actions of Jews as an ethnic or religious group is, to my mind, profoundly wrong.

I don’t want this episode to derail Gibson’s career, because I think he’s got a lot to offer. He’s a fine actor and a good director. As to it forcing a re-evaluation of his film The Passion of Christ, I really think this is nonsensical. The film has to be assessed in its own right, without reference to any episode in a man’s life. Gibson is right to go for treatment, however, and his decision to talk to members of the Jewish community seems excellent, assuming it's sincere.

lovely Cape May

2006-07-30T16:18:00.000-07:00

Having experienced the vulgarity and sheer excessiveness of Atlantic City, I was bracing myself for another gaudy resort as I braved the heat and crowds down in South Jersey. Experience has taught me that seaside resorts are usually either brash and tawdry or faded and dull. Brighton, England is another matter, for it manages to be all these things and several more, but Bray in co. Dublin is typical of a resort that has seen better times and only survives by providing gruesome amusement arcades and the like. So I was wholly unprepared for Cape May. Not only is it un-vulgar, it is also remarkably un-faded. How and why I cannot say. For it must surely be a much-favoured resort and place to live, and yet all I saw was indescribably lovely. Streets of quiet, dignified Victorian timber houses line the popular beaches, and the beaches themselves have resisted most of the dross that I thought was part and parcel of a successful resort. The sand and sea were more than adequate, and the temperature was a great relief from the 95+ inland. I loved it and I want to go back. What more can I say?

failures in the US educational system

2006-07-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

I have grown very fond of the local transit in my SE corner of Pennsylvania where it connects with Delaware. Usually within a few minutes of its published schedule it gets me in and out of Philadelphia every day, and I love the fact that we see real conductors: they've almost ceased to exist on many British and Irish trains, and they do make the train feel so much safer. However, turning up at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, I suffered a severe shock. After learning that the train to Thorndale PA departed at 1705 from platform 4, I walked towards the platforms, which you have to climb up to. First you encounter platform 1, then platform 2 -- am I boring you? -- and then ... platform 5. I turned round, wondering if I'd strolled into a Harry Potter movie, but no, behind me was platform 2. So I wandered on a bit to discover platform 6 and THEN ... platform 3 followed by platform 4.

I have to say I found this disturbing. They do say that numeracy and literacy are in steep decline, and as a university lecturer, I cannot deny it, but this?

America supporting war in the Middle East

2006-07-23T17:26:00.000-07:00

I suppose it was foolish to expect America to try to stop Israel's excesses in the Middle East.

When you look at the tens of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese lives Isreal has blighted, and has been blighting for many years, and when you consider the level of provocation offered, the extraordinary violence of the Israeli reaction has to be condemned. I do not defend for one moment rocket attacks on Israel, but I do see them against the background of Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and constant atrocities in these lands, including bombing, shelling, bulldozing homes, destroying government buildings, etc. Israel has every right to exist, but not in this way. If Israel continues with its 'nobody messes with us' approach to terrorism, it will go down in history as one of the most brutal democratic regimes of recent years. It will also inspire so much hatred in the region that the extremists in the arab world will usurp the moderates (in Lebanon, for example), which will be even less congenial for Israel, not to mention the rest of the civilised world.

But are the Israeli people bothered? 95% of them support the violence. Even now Bush's deplorable administration is sending bombs and rockets to help the Israelis slaughter civilians and spread misery through the Middle East (Israel is the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid and the only country in the world that can buy directly from U.S. arms corporations without the oversight of the U.S. government; it is also allowed to use US aid to purchase from non-U.S. firms). If America refused to export weapons and stopped pouring money into Israel, the peace process might stand a better chance. America has incalcuable power to do good, but with Bush it seems that war and arms suppliers matter most (which is great coming from a born-again Christian).

Longwood's Centennial

2006-07-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

This was the scene on 22 July at Longwood an hour or so before their amazing fireworks and fountains display. The non-stop disturbed weather this summer meant that storms alternated with hints of sunlight and everything in between. The fireworks and fountains accompany music, which included a patriotic American medley, Stars and Stripes, and the last movement of Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony (No. 3), which was extraordinarily impressive. I don't think I've seen a better matching of music and image, and the precision with which pyrothechnics and music were co-ordinated was extraordinary. This was the third big display of fireworks I've seen since I came over in June and it was by far the best.

What I'll miss in the States

2006-07-23T16:30:00.000-07:00

I'm less than halfway through my summer in Delaware and I'm already thinking about the things I'm going to miss when I return to Ireland. Certainly part of the rhythm of life for me here is a grocery store by the name of Trader Joe's. TJ's is a very modestly sized store (part of a chain) on Concorde Pike (R202). Compared with Giant and Acme it is a tiny foothill on the shopping landscape most people traverse at weekends, and yet it is amazing how many areas it covers. They have good shampoos, pretty fair cat food, all the fruit juices I ever need, fruit, veg., carbonated drinks of all sorts, meats, prepared meals, and so on. They have an unusally nice root beer (a drink that hardly exists at all in Ireland). It takes just a couple of minutes to walk around it, compared with SuperG nearby, which takes the better part of a week. The store is quirky, favours organic and unprocessed foods, and the prices of most things are below the monsters.

Frankly there's nothing in Ireland remotely like this. The supermarkets back home are pretty useless in terms of choice and price. Places favouring organic produce and so on tend to be up market and expensive. There are no really larger supermarkets with the range of value found in the UK and, much more, here in the US. I guess I'm just going to have to persuade TJ's to open in Ireland. Somehow I don't see it happening, alas.

Israel-Lebanon

2006-07-20T12:11:00.000-07:00

When confronted by Israel's excesses I sometimes can't find the right words. I think in this instance it's sufficient to quote an Irish Times report (a paper with no disernible political bias, it has tended to express a belief in the rights of Israelis and Palestinians to secure homelands, a view I'm wholly in sympathy with), which says it all. Others, considering the extreme violence Israel is inflicting on the civilian population of Lebanon, are speaking in terms of ethnic cleansing, a process that Israel has employed in the past. So, over to the Irish Times:

'The civilian toll continued to mount in Lebanon yesterday as Israeli planes struck dozens of targets. Nine civilians, including two children, were killed when they were hit by a missile that struck a bridge in the southern port city of Sidon . In the southern city of Tyre , rescue workers pulled nine more bodies from the civil defence building that was hit on Sunday in an Israeli strike. Close to 200 civilians have been killed in Lebanon since the Israeli offensive began last week, when Hizbullah attacked an Israeli border patrol, killing three soldiers and capturing two. Five more soldiers were killed when they gave chase into Lebanon .'

the land of plenty?

2006-07-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

It's Wednesday morning around 11.00 a.m. I'm experiencing the not unusual need for coffee and doughnuts. Being in rural Pennsylvania there's only one thing to do: drive through the land of plenty until I find what I want. It's not quite instant gratification, but it's not that far away. Ten minutes or so later I'm in Thorndale, which has an endless string of commercial premises with parking lots offering all sorts of consumer treats. Not being a fan of Dunkin' Donuts' coffee (it's hard to tell what it is) I decide to get the black stuff from Starbucks after securing the doughnuts. If only I had known then what I know now ...

So I drive up to Dunkin', Krispy Kreme being nowhere near, and look at the shelves. Not a doughnut in sight. The customer before me in line is gazing in disbelief at the naked shelves and asking the unpopular guy behind the counter 'Is that all ya got?!?' So I get back into the car and drive a short distance to Starbucks, the land of the espresso brownie, which is housed in Acme. I ask for a grande brew and am told there is none. So I reconsider and ask for a grande americano. Nothing doing. I can have iced latte or iced coffee. Hot coffee, it seems, is not on the menu, so I would have to have yesterday's refigerated leftovers. Lovely. And I don't like iced tea and coffee anyway.

Mortified I go back home with exactly what I left with: nothing. Coffee and doughnuts never did enter my mouth on that memorable day in July.

People blame all this on the violent storm that ravaged the area on Tuesday night, but I don't believe them. This is another manifestation of a conspiracy to recreate the Soviet Union on US soil. It's only a short step from aggressive security measures at airports and gulags to food shortages. Just wait until all those stars and stripes start sprouting hammers and sickles.

Feuding footballers and fisticuffs

2006-07-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

Without wishing to sound prissy, I wonder if we really have to look for excuses for the likes of Rooney and Zidane. Doubtless they were wound up, but so what? If they learnt a bit of self-discipline they would know how to walk away when an opponent is being verbally offensive. Stamping on a player's balls and head butting another don't really sound to me like things we want to see in sporting events. There's a bit too much of the school playground in this for my taste. Perhaps I also show my age a little when I say that I can't imagine the 1966 World Cup was played with so much shoddy behaviour on the pitch. The French were wrong to attempt to vindicate their sporting hero on his return home. Ideally we should see long exclusions for players who cannot control their aggression. That or teach them meditation.

Guantanamo Bay

2006-07-10T09:50:00.000-07:00

It doesn't matter how much people wriggle or attempt to justify it, Guantanamo Bay is an obscenity. It's America doing precisely what it condemned in Iraq -- imprisoning people without representation and legal process, torturing them, etc. America insists it is at war, which is fine, albeit pretty stupid. If these are enemy combatants give them the rights of the Geneva Convention. If they are criminals and not enemy combatants try them in a court of law. Don't make up this grey middleground and claim you are entitled to deny basic human rights. Given the miserable performance of the intelligence services in the US and UK, it is very likely that most of the people held in Guantanamo Bay are innocent. Terrorists are not stupid and are unlikely to have been found so easily. If all they were doing was defending their country from an invading force, make them prisoners-of-war. Or try them. Or let them go. Even if you accidently let a terrorist go free, the good will engendered will far outweigh the harm. At present a large part of the world is very angry with America, and this is nurturing terrorism. Let them go and you will deflate some of this anger and diminish support for terrorist groups.

It's not rocket science. But Bush and his supporters are so very, very stupid. They cannot see that the way to stop terrorists involves thought and science, cunning even, not the cowboy mentality of the twats displaying 'Support our Troops' on their car posteriors.

It really is time America stood up and proclaimed its greatest assets, which could yet rule the world: its constitution and respect for freedom.

'Palestinian militants'

2006-07-07T13:32:00.000-07:00

It's interesting how we use language, isn't it? In many of today's papers armed Palestinians fighting Israelis in Gaza are called 'Palestinian militants'. I was puzzled by this use of language until I imagined another scenario. Let's suppose Canada invaded New York state in response to the kidnapping of a Canadian soldier by an American organisation (e.g. a CIA extraordinary rendition). Let's think about this one carefully, shall we. Ah yes, I've got it. It all makes sense now. Armed Americans fighting back the Canadians would be called 'American militants'. Excellent. So we do use language in a democratic, accountable, unbiased way.

Delaware: the minimum wage and Rep. Smith

2006-06-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

State Rep. Wayne Smith was unhappy with raising the state's minimum wage from $6.15 to $7.15, citing this awful consequence for him and his family (see photo): 'Lisa took the kids to McDonald's tonight because this may be one of the last times they will be able to get anything off the dollar menu," he said, referring to his wife and their youngsters. "Make no mistake about it: This bill will act like a tax and raise prices for consumers.' We must therefore keep people in abject poverty so that Smith's family can eat junk food off the dollar menu! I can hardly recall a more immoral or offensive statement: this is America not pre-revolutionary France. Or shall we just call him Louis XVI? But let's not linger in the past. Let's see how we can move on.

I have a practical suggestion for Mr Smith and others who oppose raising the minimum wage. Let Mr Smith spend one year of his life on $6.15 for each and every hour he works. We'll include the time he spends at home reading reports, working on the Internet, and the like. Not everyone gets this benefit, but we'll be generous to the poor soul, because we know how his family will suffer if they don't get their $1.00 McShite. Of course, all benefits cease. No health plan other than what he can scrape together, no luncheon vouchers, no travel grants, just $6.15 before tax and deductions.

Mr Smith: 'Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.' (King Lear) If after that you're still convinced that your McCrap at a dollar a piece is more important than clothing, feeding, and generally looking out for the poorest people in this country, I'll personally take you out and buy you a burger. But not just any burger: it'll be a Big Mac at the very least. I, at least, am not a cheapskate.

just in case the words Pizza Hut made you feel hungry ...

2006-06-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

The last time I ate at Pizza Hut was 11 months ago and it was bland, unmemorable, and not as cheap as I'd expected; but it was all there was and at least I wasn't hungry afterwards. If, immediately after eating the stuff, I'd been told what I've since learnt, the parking lot would have been lavishly embellished with my meal. I have it on excellent authority from people who have worked at Pizza Hut that it was and perhaps still is common practice to add additional toppings to Pizza Hut's already generous provision. According to my sources, they include saliva, bogeys (lumps of mucus from somebody’s nose), urine, and possibly two or more other bodily excretions, which decency forbids my mentioning. It is, I suppose, possible that Pizza Hut is not the only one of these chains offering such culinary variety, but it is to this restaurant that my attention has been drawn, so I won't be eating there again. Ever! The reason given for this revolting behaviour, by the way, is dissatisfaction with the management. Bad treatment and, I assume, bad pay. It's not really very nice of them to penalise the poor old public, but it was ever so. There's not much point in taking it out on the management after all.

Israel and Ireland

2006-06-28T06:25:00.000-07:00

As Israel gears up for more hell and damnation in Palestinian terrorities, this time in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, it is interesting to ponder what the world's response might have been to Britain had she decided to behave towards Ireland's militant element in the same way as the Israelis deal with the Palestinians. The circumstances are different of course: N. Ireland exists by virtue of an international treaty, so British armed forces there cannot be deemed an army of occupation. On the other hand, Israel occupies large slices of Palestinian land and restricts economic activity and so on elsewhere. We can, using Bush's terms, refer to the Irish militants, loyalist and republican, as terrorists, but Palestinians fighting an occupying power in their own land might rather be referred to as freedom fighters, the resistance, and other terms that had such resonance in the Second World War. When their activities enter Israeli land it is harder to be so clear, for their methods are plainly those of terrorists, but would we have thought so badly of members of the French Resistance entering Germany and blowing up a train or two?

My point, however, is that if Britain, instead of relying on intelligence, aggressive policing, military checkpoints, and finally political compromise, had invaded parts of the Republic of Ireland, there would have been uproar. And yet the conditions are similar. People in the Republic supported the IRA. Indeed, people in America, S. Africa, Libya, and other countries were most generous to the terrorists. The British could have bombed Dublin. They could have interned, tortured, and massacred hundreds of Irish people they thought were concealing terrorists. They could have 'taken out' Charles Haughey's limo and killed the man known to have helped the IRA. They could have bulldozed houses and even entire villages. They could have engaged in ethnic cleansing. They could have made life unbearable for the Republic by restricting the flow of people in and out of the country and closing sea lanes. We could go on.

There would have been international outrage and condemnation if Britain had behaved in this way.

Heaven knows, Britain did some terrible things during the Troubles, awful crimes were committed, but the fact is, Britain maintained more or less friendly relations with the Republic, and in the end it was a combination of high quality intelligence, political compromise, a willingness to make sacrifices, and maintenance of diplomatic ties that eventually ended terrorist violence in Ireland.

If we consider the brutality of Israel and its chronic inability to think its way out of a spiral of violence, we have to feel very sorry for the Palestinians who want their country back and to get on with their lives. Why isn't there greater outrage in America and elsewhere about what Israel does? In this David and Goliath situation, can people not see that Israel's actions are outrageous? They should try, just for a moment, to imagine a comparable situation in Ireland with British tanks rolling, not into Gaza, but into Dundalk in response to the kidnapping of a British soldier (which happened during the Troubles).

Biblical nonsense

2006-06-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

One of the many reasons why I'm highly sceptical about all the claims made for the Bible is that it contains so much offensive nonsense. So much, indeed, that it's no wonder Christians are responsible for so many wars, massacres, persecutions, oppressions, etc. in the world (as religions go, Christianity is probably no worse than several of the others). The Bible does a special line in misogyny. Here's a random sampling, which I have to confess I took from a great site called whywontgodhealamputees.com/bible.htm.

I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. [1 Timothy, chapter 2]

a squalid Starbucks

2006-06-24T18:52:00.000-07:00

I tend to think of Starbucks as a fairly predictable chain of coffee houses. I know what the coffee will be like, the espresso brownie is always delicious, and I expect a fairly decent area to sit and congregate in. But the Starbucks in Princeton, NJ (in the main street facing the university) is squalid. There's no other way to describe it. Of all the places for the franchise to get it wrong, this has to be the oddest. My seating area smelt of sick today. As you enter you see a vast dead area with no functional counter and rubber mats strewn over the floor. Cleaning materials are placed awkwardly in the way of customers. There's a smelly toilet (the cleaning materials are presumably decorative), the main queuing area is too narrow for comfortable movement, and I could continue, but I think I've said enough. This is a really shite Starbucks.

don't we love these Christians

2006-06-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

Shortly after that great human being G.W. Bush was reelected for a second term, a BBC reporter asked a voter in the born-again Christian's heartland what he was most celebrating. The voter replied that at least Bush would protect the institution of marriage, i.e. stop same-sex marriage. Wow! Isn't that nice and caring. The first thing this conservative Christian can come out with is this resounding 'up yours' to a large part of the American population. Nothing about love, compassion, spirituality, protecting the poor, working for peace, and the other things Jesus spoke of at length and Bush is so devoted to. But these barmy Christians really are out to get the gay guys and women. In a letter to yesterday's Delaware News Journal, Marriage is for man and woman under divine plan, we get the astonishing news that

'We redefine love according to our own lights at our own risk. The average life span for a normal American male is about 76 years. For those men practicing a disordered lifestyle, it is about 43 years.'

This letter is from the lovely, caring, compassionate G. Matt Matthews of Frankford. We can, fortunately, be clear about one thing: the Bible bans a great number of things, many of which Christians are only too happy to overlook. The few passages in the Bible that mention physical love between two men are in contexts where other issues are also under discussion, such as Jewish law, and as numerous books and articles have shown, they can be interpreted in several different ways. If some right-wing, evangelical Christians are seeking justification for their homophobia, let them discover it in their bitter, twisted, nasty, self-righteous, judgemental hearts, not in the teachings of the Bible they're so fond of quoting (when it suits them).

doughnut malaise

2006-06-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

When I arrived in Delaware, Krispy Kreme products were securely available on Concorde Pike, Wilmington. Acme also sold them, so I could enjoy these excellent pastries with their slightly crispy exterior and delicious fillings and coatings. The best doughnuts I've ever eaten were made fresh, on premises, near the Westgate Centre in Oxford (England). They came in just two flavours, namely jam filled and apple with cream (if there was another, I've forgotten it). Weekly trips to the public library at the Westgate acquired additional momentum thanks to this noble manifestation of the baker's art. I gather these doughnuts have long since vanished from Oxford. Now Concorde Pike has failed me, for Krispy Kreme has gone, suffering apparently from losses and all sorts of other problems. I now have to travel 68 miles to find a store. So for the regular doughnut there's not much choice: Dunkin' it is. Dunkin' Donuts opened in Ireland several years ago and, believe it or not, failed. I suspect Dubliners found the doughnuts too bland. Whatever the reason, I'm not happy with this new monoculture prevailing in Delaware. I want choice. These monocultures seem to be a serious problem in a culture that favours the big corporation. If America's not careful it could end up like the Soviet Union where there was presumably a state doughnut -- take it or leave it. Well, I'd sooner leave Dunkin'. I want Krispy Kreme back, please. Don't make me beg.

death penalty and terminal stupidity

2006-06-20T05:52:00.000-07:00

In today's The New's Journal (Wilmington DE) correspondent Sharon Brackin argues that convicted murderers should not be allowed another means of appeal. Rather 'their suffering should be equivalent to what they caused.' Or, as she writes, ' We should use methods comparable to what the murderer used.' Er, hang on Sharon, let's think about this, if you're capable of thought. Somebody commits a crime, namely taking away somebody's life. You are proposing that in response to the crime of murder you should commit the crime of murder, magnifying it by massive premeditation and the recreation of the original means of denying life to another human being employed by the murderer , such as slow suffocation, stabbing, beating, etc. Can you not see the illogicality of this (not to mention the barbarity!)? Are people on the right side of the law not expected to be a step or two up from the criminal? Apparently not. I hope you don't cross my tracks Sharon, because I dread to think what your 'eye for an eye' approach to human interaction entails in your day-to-day existence.

amazing prospect for Brighton & Hove

2006-06-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

Although I'm not much given to prayer or optimism, I'm trying to cultivate both in the hope it might encourage the city of Brighton and Hove to adopt this fabulous design for the prominent seafront site at the King Alfred. Past performance over the last 50 years gives absolutely no reason to think that anything attractive will ever again be built here, but we really have to have this one. It's gorgeous! (Needless to say, residents of the city seem determined to thwart Frank Gehry's genius.)

West Pier, Brighton & Hove, England

2006-06-18T08:56:00.000-07:00

Very sad to report, this is the last gasp of the once very beautiful West Pier. The finest of all Victorian piers it was neglected, vandalised, hit by weather, and finally subject to an arson attack (connected in some people's minds with the neighbouring Palace Pier's desire to be free from potential competition). In spite of galant efforts to restore the pier to its former glory, the picture shows what a forlorn hope this now is. You'd be starting from scratch with no guarantee that the project was viable. The West Pier Trust, which campaigned so bravely for its reinstatement, even after the arson attack left it as you see it now, seems to want to build a spectacular viewing spire at the site of the pier's former entrance. This has some merit, but I'd love to see a really exciting architect and engineer given a brief to design a new structure out to sea a bit that ran parallel to the beach. Maybe clubs, restaurants, viewing area, cinema -- whatever looks good and makes money. Something that really adds to the beauty of the city, which took such a knock for the loss of the West Pier and so many bad planning decisions that I cannot walk around the place without experiencing a doubling of my blood pressure.

Muzak

2006-06-16T03:42:00.000-07:00

Background music is the scourge of our modern world. It's hideous. It's damaging. It's irritating. It degrades our quality of life. Nowadays we carry music around with us and choose when and where we listen to it. Restaurants and pubs, supermarkets and railway stations, shopping centres and buses, hotels and even churches, etc., etc. should take note. We don't want your noise passing through our ears uninvited. GET RID OF MUZAK now and forever. It desensitises us to one of the greatest gifts of all: music. Please, I beg you, get rid of background music. Support the peer Lord Beaumont who has brought exactly the right legislation to the House of Lords. He is a national hero. I want to see him elevated to sainthood in his own lifetime. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5086054.stm.

England in Germany

2006-06-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

Not being a huge football fan and being largely indifferent to the jingoistic pressures it poses, I decided to support the underdog in the World Cup, in so far as I intended to support anyone. I would therefore have supported Trinidad and Tobago today had my mind not been changed first by the Scots and then the Irish. First I learnt that a favourite bet in Scotland was that England wouldn't get beyond the first round. Then I saw in today's Evening Herald, an exceedingly grotty Dublin newspaper, that half of one page was a flag of Trinidad and Tobago in full colour that readers were invited to place on top of their TVs during the match. That was enough for me. This tedious, mediocre, knee-jerk anti-English sentiment reflects more on the sad inadequacy of the perpetrators than on England. Well, here's my response: England 2, Trinidad and Tobago 0. Scotland and Ireland? Not even in the competition. Long may it remain so.

anti-social pubs (Brighton, E. Sussex, England)

2006-06-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

This pub in Brighton (south of England) likes well-behaved children at certain times but is less inclinced to behave well itself. Recently it apparently decided to host a 'DJ Night' at which noise was played at deafening levels while the pub's doors and windows were left open. The racket could be heard several blocks away and the following day more than a few people in this usually quiet, densely populated neighbourhood complained to the council (and presumably the police). I just wonder what people are thinking when they inflict their music on others. Have they no imagination? Is the 'me important, you fuck off' mindset so entrenched that they can't conceive of the impact on people in the vicinity. I don't get it. They are obviously vermin, but what do you do with them. Of course, we should boycott the pub, complain about noise, lobby councils, and so on, but I fear the battle is being lost. People have just no idea of the damage they inflict.

Above all else, I prefer to talk in pubs. If I go out for a drink, it's to socialise. In these circumstances I don't want loud music, I don't even want quiet music. I WANT SILENCE, apart, that is, from the sound of other people talking.

ignorant or what?

2006-06-09T04:53:00.000-07:00

I heard two Irish girls talking on the bus a couple of days back. From their coversation I gleaned they were students and that they had a problem with the English and Welsh students attending their classes. One of them reported this stupid Englishmen who had incurred her displeasure and censure by claiming that Ireland was a part of the British Isles. 'Will they never get it?' she rhetorically mused. Well the Englishman was right and merely exposed the ignorance of his Irish classmate: Ireland is indeed part of the British Isles, as is the Isle of Man and all of Great Britain. 'British Isles' is a geographical term, not a political one. The Republic of Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom, however, which comprises England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland (formally it is often referred to as the Province of Northern Ireland, and the BBC routinely labels it the 'province'). It's one thing for Irish people to bemoan English people's ignorance of the poltical status of their country, which is rampant and deplorable, but quite another for them to confuse political and geographcial nomenclature.

portamento in the performance of classical music

2006-06-09T04:19:00.000-07:00

Listen to old recordings of classical music and you will often hear notes connected to each other by a slide (sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes all the way, sometimes only part of the way). As the 20th century progressed this graceful means of phrasing became less and less common until it almost died out in string playing and vocal performance. Of course, it has to be there from time to time, often played very quickly so as not to be conspicuous, but it's not used freely and expressively in the way that was once ubiquitous. Some conductors actively discourage its use, including Roger Norrington, who also reduces vibrato in string playing in keeping with what he considers to be historic correctness. Sadly for him, portamento was extensively used in performances before the modern passion for 'clean' articulation, so his 'authenticism' is pretty random.

I love portamento. I listen to historical recordings to optimise my chances of hearing it. It's both expressive and musical, for it enhances the connection of two notes and thereby helps reinforce a sense of line, which is crucial in much classical music. I've put up some historical recordings here -- http://www.tcd.ie/Music/audioarchive.htm#_Downloads -- which give some lovely examples of portamento in string playing. The Elgar Variations are especially good from this point of view. (image from www.feu-bleu.com)

World Cup 2006 misogyny

2006-06-09T04:02:00.000-07:00

Here we go again. Weeks of football mania. They are welcome to their football and I wouldn't even moan about it if sport wasn't such a misogynistic thing in our society. But with one or two exceptions, all we ever see is sport played by men and commentated on by men. Where do women squeeze in? Even sports they could share, such as darts, cricket, snooker, and others, they are excluded from or kept segregated with almost no coverage on TV. So we are now going to hear a group of barely articulate men spouting cliches and platitudes about another group of men running around a field kicking a ball. Tennis is an exception, to an extent, but at Wimbledon women are treated as second-class citizens: their games are shorter, they are referred to by their marital status, their prize money is less than the men's, and they have to wear skirts, whatever their inclination. All this is pure misogyny and discrimination backed up by TV and huge commerical interests. I find it totally dispiriting. (picture of English team arriving in Germany)

the iPod, the world's most overrated gadget

2006-06-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

This may be the world's favourite gadget at the moment, but it's not mine. In some ways I think it's a triumph of style over substance. For a start there was that awful battery on my mark 2 20-gig iPod. From around 6 hours the battery life had subsided to around 1 hours after two or so years of use. My wife's went from about the same to 30 minutes in an even shorter period. Thanks to iPodJuice I'm now back to full strength, but $40 or so is flashing at me on my VISA statement. Then there's the sound. To be fair, the AAC format (mpeg4) is better than most mp3s I've heard, but there is something slightly polite and drab about the overall presentation, regardless of my choice of headphones and EQ. Classical music is also too quiet, so I push it up a bit in the software and, lo and behold, it distorts! Wonderful! When the battery goes flat, which is quite often, all the settings are lost so you have to re-enter the time and date, contrast, backlighting, and so on. And then we have the dreaded silence! What's this about? Pure incompetence? Indifference? Every time the iPod encounters a new track it breaks off for a fraction of a second. Clearly it's all been designed for pop music, but for anything that plays continuously and requires track breaks, this is just bloody awful. Try listening to an act of Wagner with this infernal pause every few minutes. There's no solution other than joining up the tracks, which kind of defeats the purpose. As for iTunes, if you allow it to dominate your computer and don't tax it too much, it's good, but when you confuse it, it can go very wrong indeed. Finally, if iTunes is busy, don't expect your Pentium 4 to be up for anything else. I've seen the software taking up 98-100% of my processing power just staying awake. Opening it on a PC is also hard work: it can take the best part of a minute. I'm not running a slouch. Don't be fooled: the iPod is not all it's cracked up to be.

Trinity College Dublin and a rainbow

2006-06-05T09:03:00.000-07:00

This sort of photo opportunity doesn't come round too often. In this picture, apart from the rainbow you see part of Front Square, the Campanile, and the red-brick building is the oldest part of the university, the Rubrics.

J'accuse

2006-06-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

An excellent Channel 4 programme allowed art historians, journalists, musicians, and others to take a 'sacred cow' and dismantle it on TV. This ran in 1995 before Channel 4 started its love affair with fly-on-the-wall documentaries, reality TV, and other decidedly unsavoury programming. Some might question the idea of taking a much-loved building like St Paul's and the holy of holies in cinema Citizen Kane and trying to dismantle their reputations, but I enjoyed the exercise. For one thing, if you love St Paul's it's unlikely that an architect, no matter how good he is, is going to convince you otherwise. On other hand, if you feel, like me, that it's a somewhat suspect building, not to say grossly overrated, why not have a crack at its reputation. The architect in this episode felt that taste in Britain couldn't really progress much until people realised that the qualities that make St Martin in the Fields an incomparable masterpiece of English architecture are sadly lacking in St Paul's. It's also true to say that such an approach is rarely followed: we prefer to talk up works of art and enhance their stature, so a small dose of the opposite might be considered a healthy corrective. In this centenary year for Shostakovich I feel that a little scepticism might not go amiss. Having sat through all fifteen of the quartets in ideal surroundings with the world's leading interpreters to hand a few years ago, I feel that his music has been seriously overpraised. But self-pitying, tediously self-quoting, repetitive, ironic, conservative music has not always appealed to me very greatly.

Wagner

2006-06-03T03:26:00.000-07:00

It's pretty common to hear or read about Wagner as a 'pernicious' influence, even from those who have an unabashed enthusiam for the music. The view is so often encountered that it almost has a currency of its own. The implication seems to be that if you enjoy the music of Verdi, for example, you may do so without moral taint, but if it's Wagner that delights you, there is a danger of moral contamination. There's no doubt that Hitler was greatly affected by Wagner, but does that make Wagner or the person who was already disposed to evil before hearing the music the villain? Of course, for those who claim that Wagner incorporated his anti-semiticism into the music dramas, the evil is present in both Wagner's creations and in the people disposed to act on them. Frankly, I strongly believe they are wrong, chiefly because I am highly sceptical about the presence of anti-semiticism in the dramas (and music). There is a much better comparison to be made here, namely with Jesus and Christianity. Over many centuries, numerous branches of the Christain faith have perpetrated one act of cruelty and violence after another. Even now we have an American President waging war and claiming that heavenly voices told him to do so. Either we believe that Jesus was inherently evil or we excuse the Crusades, Inquisition, the Pope in World War Two, Bush, etc., etc., etc., etc., on the grounds that Jesus has been radically misrepresented and misinterpreted. The central themes in Wagner are love and redemption, which are not, in my most humble opinion, the root of all evil.

Dublin Spire

2006-06-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

This is the base of the Dublin Spire looking across O'Connell Street towards Henry Street.

architectural landmark

2006-06-01T09:57:00.000-07:00

This is Henry Street in Dublin, which has at one end an enormous spike, the Dublin Spire. It was planted in O'Connell St. in 2002 and completed in 2003. It's just visible at the centre of the picture. It replaced a much older monument, Nelson's Pillar (1808), which was blown up by republicans in 1966. To my eyes it is just about the most beautiful structure to appear in Dublin since the war. This may not be saying much given the repulsiveness of most recent architecture in the city, but it is a truly lovely example of art for art's sake, and a welcome relief from stuffy old monuments to famous men and events. I gather it's 120 metres tall and 3 metres wide at the base, tapering to 15 centimetres on top, but one hardly needs this information to know that it's the tallest structure in the low-rise city.

don't you know where you live?

2006-05-31T13:49:00.000-07:00

This is the unofficial name of a small estate in Chapelizod, Dublin. It is a large concrete block surrounded by flowers, which are most attractively maintained by locals. The only problem is that almost facing it is this:

the official Dublin City Council name plate. It doesn't take much to see that the two are contradictory. I don't understand such imprecision. Doesn't it bother people that they might not know the name of their street or grove? St Laurence Rd is often 'corrected' to St Laurence's Rd, perhaps because people have an overwhelming desire to identify something with somebody, just as the corner shop used to be Martin Smith's or just Smith's. Now it's more likely to be Tesco, but not quite so local, and nobody wants to call it that: it's 'Tesco's', probably written 'Tescos'.

Dublin and the Liffey

2006-05-31T13:31:00.000-07:00

Dublin central. This is looking east from the Halfpenny Bridge. The green-domed building is arguably the most important piece of architecture in the city, the Custom House (Gandon, finished 1791). It's now partly surrounded by fairly uninspiring new buildings, but if one gets up close its glory is still apparent. The interior and vast quantites of records were destroyed by the IRA during the Civil War (1921-2). The boardwalk on the left is recent and runs some distance along the north bank of the Liffey. The dock for water taxis is even newer.

Classical music concerts

2006-05-28T07:46:00.000-07:00

If classical music is in serious decline, one factor might be the unbelievably tedious programming policies of some orchestras. Masur is coming to Dublin with -- hold your breath -- a Brahms symphony and a Brahms concerto. Breath out. Noseda is doing three concerts for BBC Radio 3 this week and he's doing -- wait for it -- two Tchaikovsky symphonies in each programme. Numerous Proms this year will contain 'variations' on the overture, concerto, symphony plan. This is tedious. Classical composers wrote symphonic poems, arias, songs, short concerted pieces, dances, etc. Why not open a second half with a couple of Strauss waltzes, continue with the Litolff Scherzo (which is hardly ever played these days because it's not a symphony or overture, and we don't want to hear the whole work in which it occurs), and finish with a Liszt tone poem? Another programme could start -- when the audience is fresh and 'up for it' -- with a symphony and then, in the second half, we might like to hear something a little easier, such as the concert suite from Korngold's music for the film Seahawk. I see nothing infra dig in such programming. Far from it, I like a mixture of long and short works and would like to see contrast extended to include occasional solos or chamber groupings to give the orchestras a break. What I really don't want to see much more of is that dull dog Masur giving us endless concerts comprising a symphony and a concerto by the same composer. What a very unimaginative conductor he is (and not alone!).

Galway, Ireland

2006-05-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

Galway is an essential trip for anyone visiting Ireland. It has been extensively built up in the past few years -- another sign of Ireland's economic success -- often in the ugliest, most brutal and/or banal way (as the picture discretely shows), but the city has nature, its people, and its proximity to the beauties of the west coast strongly in its favour.

art nouveau in Wilmington DE

2006-05-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

I'm so used to standing speechless in front of masterpieces of the art deco style in America that I sometimes overlook the architecture that appeared just a few decades before. In some ways it's been overshadowed by the new, modernist styles that were appearing in the 1890s, and I'm sure a huge amount was torn down, but finding this attractive art nouveau bank in Wilmington was pure joy. I think that like most of the best architecture to survive in the downtown area it's in Market Street. (I would really appreciate a few suggestions of other buildings like this in the area.)

the Romans, Allies, and war crimes

2006-05-28T03:17:00.000-07:00

We shudder with horror when we read of Roman conquests, the legions burning and massacring their way up through Europe. Whole towns and villages were brutally wiped out, including men, women, and children. The Germans did the same when they invaded Russia. Surely the Allies had a far more civilised vision. Alas, they didn't. Around 1943 the Allies decided to stop bombing specific industrial and military targets and targeted whole areas of towns and cities instead. As the technology improved maximum force was used to ensure that these areas were completely destroyed and, concomitantly, much of the population with them. This policy culminated in massive raids on Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, and countless others. The men who sat down and planned these raids drew circles around areas that included thousands of people, their schools, hospitals, churches, shops, houses, etc. These men must have known that similar attacks on Coventry and London had made little difference to the war effort in England; in many ways they had stiffened people's resolve to fight on. The result of this policy was the massacre of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the destruction of irreplaceable cultural artefacts, and years of suffering and hardship for the often innocent victims of war (people are still dying as a direct result of these attacks). As we reflect on this brutality, which was later continued by America in Vietnam and elsewhere, are we really entitled to think of ourselves as any more civilised than the ancient Romans? (the image shows Tokyo in March 1945)

old houses in Wilmington DE

2006-05-28T03:00:00.000-07:00

With so much unimaginative office and multi-storey-parking development in Wilmington DE, it's a relief to see that the latest such development is at least going to keep a bit of historic Market Street by incorporating these buildings on one side of the block (plus a few others). Elsewhere downtown Wilmington is pretty grim with row upon row of car parks and architecurally dismal office blocks. Even the Dupont tower is disappointing, and the Dupont Hotel appears to have been remodelled in the post-war years in a pretty grim way. The neighbourhoods around the centre are, in contrast, gorgeous with lovely streets full of period terraces. Gilpin has a wonderful 19th century fire station and the area around the Delaware Art Museum is superbly landscaped and adorned with handsome town houses. It seems that wiser council now prevails in the downtown area, though I couldn't help but notice that five (?) period row houses at the bottom of the hill near Amtrak are slated for demolition. A great shame.

abortion in Ireland

2006-05-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

At a time when Amnesty International is considering whether it wishes to be proactively involved in advocating women's right to abortion, especially in rape and incest cases, it is salutory to remember that both N. Ireland and the Republic of Ireland ban abortion completely, even in cases of rape and incest. In theory it is possible for a doctor to perform an abortion if a woman's life is in danger, but the state hasn't legislated on this, so the prevailing view that abortion constitutes malpractice on the part of a doctor may still prevail. Until recently Ireland, i.e. the Republic, also banned making information on abortion available to women; it also reserved the right to stop people travelling to Britain for an abortion, which resulted in the notorious X case, when a young girl who had been raped and made pregnant by a close relation was taken off the ferry. Since then information has been made available and people are left to make the miserable journey across the Irish Sea. As a result, every year Irish women in their thousands travel to Britain for abortions and consequently cannot receive the aftercare and support that is needed. Ireland's rigidity in this is, of course, closely related to the still inescapable influence of the Catholic Church, which also prevented couples getting divorced until 1997 (!). Irish people in the 1990s showed their strong objection to abortion in a referendum. I wonder if the people feel the same in 2006. Perhaps it is time to face up to the fact Irish women are having abortions whether the state likes it or not. Abortion exists in Ireland the same as elsewhere.

peace vigil in Kennett Square PA

2006-05-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

Apparently this peace vigil occurs every Friday throughout the year, regardless of festivals, etc. in Kennett Square PA. More passing cars honked than didn't while I was there. I wonder how many more such protests are mounted thoughout the country. (Again we see the flag. It's not unpatriotic to oppose the war.)

cleaner, non-diesel public transport

2006-05-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

This Washington DC bus, alongside its hybrid cousins in NYC, indicates that rather more is happening across the pond to combat oil-related woes than here in Dublin (and probably London too, though I haven't visited the city for a while), at least in public transport. I hope that this situation might change some day. I also hope that organisations who try alternatives get the encouragement and attention they deserve.