New Year’s Eve celebrations across Italy are being hastily changed, from traditional noisy and riotous affairs to quiet vigil like ceremonies, to show respect for the victims of the South East Asia Tsunami disaster. Here in Bologna, for example, the city council have cancelled all fireworks and are urging the public to follow suit. The […]
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 […]
On the day that the European Parliament debated the opening of accession negotiations with Turkey, parliamentary party members of the Lega Nord unfurled a banner in the Italian parliament which read “no to Turkey in Europe”. Berlusconi has been one of Turkey’s biggest allies in its attempts to receive the green light for accession talks. […]
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 […]
The competition to become the first Irish person in space is becoming ever more bemusing. First, Bill Cullen, professional self-made man and memorialist of Dublin in the rare ole times (see here for his musical tastes), announced he would be the first Irishman to be launched into (sub)orbit via the services of Virgin Galactic (which […]