The Swiss made a rare incursion into the Irish mindset last Wednesday, when their football team’s stolid defense at Lansdowne Road denied the Irish team a place in the World Cup Finals, which will be staged next year in Germany. Given the woeful performance of the Irish team, some pundits have claimed that the Swiss […]
From the Washington Post:”In what may turn out to be one of the biggest free-falls in the history of presidential polling, President Bush’s job-approval rating among African Americans has dropped to 2 percent, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.”
According to the Swedish Academy, Pinter is a writer “who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms.” As with every Nobel Prize, one wonders at the political context–is the above comment a dig at the ongoing trial-free detentions at Gitmo?All in all, I think most people […]
From the deluge of stories about John Banville following his (conventional-wisdom alert!) surprising Booker Prize win, the most interesting nugget was offered up by John Boland, whose Saturday TV review in the Indo is always worth reading. According to Boland,”[…]since the day we first met as young subs in the ‘Irish Press’ until he [Banville] […]
OK, yesterday’s sunny post was an anomaly. Today, I want to beat up on Fintan O’Toole–his review of the book by former Irish Times editor Conor Brady, “Up With The Times”* was largely a snow job, focusing on the positive (breaking the Bishop Eamonn Casey story, for example) while glancing on the not-so-shining moments (when […]
Well it’s good to return after an unplanned, unannounced sabbatical from the blog with something unusually positive. (BTW, I’m writing this after deleting about 1380 spam comments–has anyone else noticed that in the last year or so the concerns of spam have shifted from porn, viagra, and, erm, “member enhancements” to focus mainly on offers […]
The Days of Abandonment, or I giorni dell’abbandono, while being the title of a captivating, strange and disconcerting novel by Elena Ferrante (soon to be reviewed in Three Moneys Online), is also an apt description for The View from Bologna of late. It’s not that things have been uneventful in this part of the world. […]
Cous cous is a typical and traditional staple in the western regions of north-Africa, the so-called Maghreb, and is made from durum wheat. From the north-African regions, it travelled to Europe (notably to Sicily, France, Spain) and to the Middle East. Cous cous is a basic food that is used to accompany vegetable or meat […]
Of all places, it is in the land of Parmigiano Reggiano (parmesan cheese) – Emilia Romagna – that I learnt how to make this simple and versatile Asian cheese. Simple, as it is really easy to make and is based on just two ingredients, milk and lemon juice. Versatile, as you can mix it with […]