Monday, May 21st 2012
My early years are replete with memories of the wisdom contained within the Irish seanfhocal. My mother, a fluent Irish speaker, enjoyed nothing more than a good natter as Gaeilge with a seanfhocal at her fingertips for every eventuality. A particular favourite, whenever a cold or any other ailment made its appearance, was ‘Is fearr [...]
Is aviation security mostly for show?
Bruce Schneier is the United States' foremost security expert and also a voice of sanity and reason in the debate on anti-terrorism measures. Here he correctly argues that terrorism is rare while conceding the value of 'security theatre' in reassuring a concerned public. Schneier is also convinced that the best [...]
Anne Enright | Ireland’s Recession
From the most recent London Review of Books, Irish novelist Anne Enright provides a sort of diary of Ireland’s recession.
Telling the truth was, in the circumstances, not just boring, it was also unlucky, hexed, taboo. It might even be unclean. Careless talk costs jobs. If the bubble burst it would be [...]
The top ten for the decade - or, as the more observant will notice, a top 12 - a miscalculation resulted in there being more left at the end than I originally thought. But none of these films could be left out and there’s no obligation to stick too closely to the rules. So here [...]
Turbulence 5: Left-wing Political Magazine | Editorial: And Now For Something Completely Different?
Issue 5 of Turbulance, a British Left-wing magazine provides plenty of interesting articles on the various crisis' across a range of issues:
"Until recently, anyone who suggested nationalising the banks would have been derided as a ‘quack’ and a ‘crank’, as lacking the most [...]
Böhm/Dabhi | Upsetting the Offset | mayflybooks.org
Something for the Xmas stocking, I seriously doubt, unless you take the contrary notion of giving it to the aspiring carbon-neutral person in your life with an energy sponge e-reader. Upsetting the Offset is available as an e-book. Still post-Copenhagen 09 it is worth reading.
“Upsetting the Offset engages critically [...]
Did you not get chips with it?
Baby Jesus, meek and mild
Bless the faithful with your smile
Holy Jesus, sacred child
Keep us safe from all things vile
Down from heaven, into manger
Out from slick and slimy thighs
Blood and mucous, lots of danger
Herod’s communist atheist spies
Masturbators, fornicators
Dirty Muslim, Filthy Jew
Double daters, weak dictators
Split their bestial skulls in two
The latest Socialist Register, which was published in October 2009, is called Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitialism. As one of the editors, Colin Leys says, the aim was to show that health is a subject that currently isn’t but needs to be considered as part of Political Economy and should be something that is an [...]
New Data on Residential Mortgage Arrears and Repossessions | Financial Regulator
The Financial Regulator today published new data on mortgage arrears and repossessions. The data show that as at end September 2009 there were 791,634 private residential mortgage accounts to a value of €118.6 billion. Of these 3.3%, were in arrears for more than 90 days [...]
The latest CSO Earnings and Labour Costs Survey
The CSO Earnings and Labour Costs Survey shows that average weekly earnings fell overall by 1.1% from €706.03 in Q2 2008 to €698.43 in Q2 2009. However, while there was a fall in the average unit cost of labour in the private sector, connected principally to the [...]
