When the smoking ban in enclosed places was introduced in Ireland, many remarked that such a prohibition would never even be mooted in Southern Europe, with its bars and cafes perpetually wreathed in tobacco fumes. Well it’s happened in Italy and my fellow Three Monkey’s blogger “The View from Bologna” reports on how the new […]

American radio isn’t all shockjocks and foaming-at-the-mouth evangelicals–National Public Radio (NPR) is sort of like an American version of BBC Radio 4, which makes it an object of fear-and-loathing among those who think Ann Coulter is a rational human being. (Her latest musings ooze under the rubric “Liberals Love America Like O.J. Loved Nicole“.) But […]

Here are three things, tenuously connected, I’d like to mention today:*Contrary to previously expressed hopes that the Indian Ocean disaster might encourage a new generation of sceptics, this Washington Post headline doesn’t bode well: ‘In Angry Waves, the Devout See an Angry God.‘ *As the Economist pointed out, this is not the worst loss of […]

To that appalling spectacle of woe,Will ye reply: �You do but illustrateThe iron laws that chain the will of God�?Say ye, o�er that yet quivering mass of flesh:�God is avenged: the wage of sin is death�?What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceivedThat lie, bleeding and torn, on mother�s breast?Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink […]

In those happy years before background checks and random drug tests become the norm, the ranks of store Santas in the US came from a far richer and diverse cross-section of humanity. At least if the evidence of these photos is any guide. (And what can you say about the rheumy-eyed character in this slide?)Well, […]

In the great software development tradition of asking Joe Public to help out for free, I’m asking anybody who might be interested to check out a modest app I’ve developed. Mainly created to learn about C# and .NET deployment, History Tester 1.0 is available from www.download.com–I know I’ve gone ahead and given it a full-blown […]

In his column in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post, David McWilliams convincingly restates why the toll bridge on the M50 is perhaps the crowning glory of “rip-off Ireland.” Many people may not be aware of it, but the toll operator built only the bridge while the rest of the gridlocked M50 was paid for out of […]

Although the web version of the New Yorker does not appear to mention it, the Ian McEwan short story “The Diagnosis”, which appears in this week’s issue, is almost certainly the opening chapter of the writer’s forthcoming novel, “Saturday“.My first encounter with McEwan’s work came through reading what, in my view, is still his best […]

Europeans never miss an opportunity to mock Americans’ grasp of geography; we chortle with glee when some poor hick stopped in the street points to west Africa when asked the location of Iraq. (One wonders whether a similar Vox Pop in, say, Dublin’s Grafton Street would elicit more precise directions).Well, here’s a chance to see […]

A propos of nothing in particular, I offer this link to a fascinating record of a family’s birth, growth, and maturation. You can find out more about the Argentinean photojournalist behind the project, Diego Goldberg, here. What is interesting is that the stark portraits of this attractive family encourage speculation about the lives led between […]