An LA Times article about bookshops in San Francisco being driven out of business by climbing rents and online competition got me to thinking about the state of the bookshop trade in my hometown, Dublin. Despite all the touristic guff about this being a writers’ town, the situation isn’t particularly good. It’s not that bookshops […]

To all those countless readers confronted with a blank page when trying to access the blog over the past few days, I offer apologies with all the sincerity of an Irish Rail station announcer. “Server issues” is the catch-all excuse this time. Posting will resume as normal this week.Meanwhile, to cheer up Irish-based readers this […]

When it comes to the field of history, what engages the “common reader” can be radically different from academics’ fare. Take the Roman Empire. Anyone who has read Tom Holland’s rollicking tale of the fall of the Roman Republic, Rubicon, will have been regaled with juicy tales of captured Roman governors having molten gold poured […]

A New York Times article on Ireland being the exception to the stereotype of aging European societies (“The Irish, Young in �Old Europe,� Strain Schools and Housing”), confirms two hunches I have long harboured:1) About 35% of Irish girls under the age of 6 seemed to be called Ella, Ellie, Evie, or some other two-syllable […]

Anyone who has stared with unseemly fascination at Charles Minard’s famous graphic charting the near-annihilation of Napoleon’s Grande Arm�e during its ignominious retreat from Moscow is likely to appreciate IBM’s new project, Many Eyes. It’s still early days, but the site provides you with a very simple way of transforming datafiles into “visualizations” that provide […]

The Economist, in a story about migration in Europe (the greatest wave since the end of the Second World War), includes an anecdote that, if accurate, provides an alarming insight into the intellectual skills of those occupying the lower tiers of the British economy:”ROBERT, the Polish-born head of a group of British removal men, can […]

Over the weekend I caught Children of Men, directed by Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También ). I liked that it took seriously the implications of its scenario (a world in which no baby has been born in 18 years) rather than treating it merely as a plot device used to get the hero up […]

For all those boys from Belvo / Gonzaga / Clongowes / Crescent who claim that the Jays made them the successes/borderline neurotics they are today, the BBC Radio 4 show In Our Time features an enlightening discussion on “The Jesuits–The School Masters of Europe.”

Tuesday’s New York Times featured an article (Anywhere the Eye Can See, It�s Likely to See an Ad) that provided a superficially breezy survey of advertisers’ increasingly invasive strategies for getting customers to eyeball their messages:”Supermarket eggs have been stamped with the names of CBS television shows. Subway turnstiles bear messages from Geico auto insurance. […]