There’s no longer any arguments about whether cracks have appeared, it’s now a matter of how far they will spread. The once gravity-defying Irish property market is finally showing that it is not immune to Newton’s axiom. So, the Irish Independent reports today that “The price of new houses fell last month in the most […]

What’s this? “Troubled” 80s pop icon George Michael involved in another scrape with the forces of law and order?(Oh… it’s only released killer and talented Sunday painter, Michael Stone, after throwing a “suspect device” into the main reception area of Stormont.)

I see that over the weekend the Irish Internet Association’s Net Visionary 2006 Awards singled out the awful Twenty Major as Best Blogger. One wonders what it was about that blog that won over the judges: Was it Twenty Major’s hilarious “conceit ” of building a “colloseum” to watch Travellers fight to the death (“the […]

George Lee, RTE’s chief economics correspondent, appears to see himself as the Savonarola of our times, castigating the citizenry for their wicked ways (buying outdoor Jacuzzis, for example) and generally pointing out that we’ve all lost the run of ourselves. Although Lee is probably right, it’s sometimes difficult to avoid reaching for the car radio’s […]

The nation’s favourite carrot-top pop-sociologist…well, the nation’s only carrot-top pop-sociologist, David McWilliams, has scored quite a coup with the telegenic regurgitation of his smash book, The Pope’s Children. According to newspaper reports, about 500,000 people have tuned in to watch themselves be lampooned as Decklanders, HiCos (Hibernian Cosmopolitans, natch), and Breakfast Roll Men (I eat […]

One of the first reviews of Thomas Pynchon’s 1,085-page novel, Against the Day, has appeared in Time. Richard Layco’s tone is that of a green-faced dinner who ordered something “adventurous” in, say, an authentic Cantonese restaurant and is now having trouble lifting up another spoonful of the undifferentiated pottage to his lips: More than in […]

Who is Brian Atene? A month ago, apparently, if you Googled his name, all you would turn up was a school photo from the late 1970s. Now, thanks to the star-making power of You Tube, the Google query “Brian Atene” triggers an avalanche of 49,900 results. The sudden prominence is all down to a YouTube […]

Following the rout of the Republicans at the polls, sub-editors across the globe have, perhaps gloatingly, dubbed President Bush and his Secretary for Defence as “casualties of war.” Perhaps I’m being too literal-minded, but I didn’t see the president being medivaced from the White House lawn or hear of Donald Rumsfeld being injured in the […]

At the risk of sounding like one of those warbling thesps who bang on about the “dangers” of the stage and the “high-wire act” of live theatre, I suggest that going for a fancy style in prose can also be a risky undertaking. One textual faux pas can put the whole enterprise in jeopardy. For […]

When writing, or even reading, history there is always an inclination to interpret the past teleologically–that is to assess the importance of events according to how they contributed to some apparently pre-ordained outcome. This inclination veers into overwhelming impulse when the history in question is that of Germany’s. Given that the Third Reich’s reign of […]