James Vs Joshua

Last week I tried my hand at downloading films and TV programmes legally with iTunes but you cannot buy them from the iTunes Ireland store. So I emailed customer support about this. All I got was this ridiculously cheerful, but perfectly useless, response from a chap called Joshua, my new friend. I've boldened the weirder elements of his e-mail.

Dear James,

Hi there Joshua here again from Apple iTunes and unfortunately my friend (Kebab restaurant employees are the only people I ever allow to address me in this way. ) the only store you will be able to make your purchases from is the Ireland store . I know how this could be frustrating for you. Me being from the U S A (I've never seen it spelt this way, maybe on the side of space shuttles. What's with the spaces between the letters? i would love to purchase from other countries myself (Doubtful, to say the least.) but Apple just hasn't made that option possible yet. But rest assured Apple is a huge company (irrelevant) and Im (Obviously your huge company never taught you how to use an apostrophe. By the way, when you write the first-person singular pronoun how come you think it's acceptable to write a small i sometimes in other parts of this e-mail?) sure somewhere in the future we might be able to purchase from other countries. Let me know if you have any other question i would be happy them for you. (Now you're just talking jibberish.)

Happy New Years. (How dare he wish me happy new years when Christmas hadn't even been reached yet. Bear in mind he sent this email on Friday, BEFORE, and I add BEFORE Brian Haugh's Christmas party which always takes place a few days before Christmas. Seriously, who trains these people.)

Marathon des Alpes-Maritimes: Nice-Cannes

Marathon des Alpes-Maritimes: Nice-Cannes

---

A Review

This marathon starts off on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice and winds its way westwards along the Mediterranean coastline taking in five other towns before finishing up on the prom in Cannes just outside the Palais des Festivals, where the Cannes Film Festival is held. This year about 10,000 runners took part.

The race was won by one Jacob Kitur of Kenya who crossed the finishing line in 2h11'12'', so a bit slower than the Dublin Marathon. Not sure if that tells us if it's a fast marathon or not.

There are pacemakers too for people with objectives from 3hours to 4hrs30 and every 15 minute time in between. At the marathon expo (open from Thursday to Saturday before the race on Sunday) you could get these colour-coded wrist-bands, depending on your objective they broke down the race into what your time should be at different distances. The marathon expo in a park beside the starting line seemed very impressive, lots of bells and whistles laid out under a 2,000 square metre canopy. Also a nice computer animation taking you through the course. Good stalls too promoting other marathons, reminded me a bit of doing my Leaving Cert again heading to the Higher Options day. Impressive goody bag, featuring a backpack and an energy gel, got a medal and t-shirt on finishing.

Very well-supported by the public as you pass through the different towns. Quite a number of bands playing along the route, ranging from bongo drums, jazz, the solo saxophonist playing the James Bond theme tune in Antibes, to the death metal lads at 40km on the way into Cannes who nearly made me collapse with their noise.

The best bits:
Pretty reasonably priced: depending on how early you register, for the 2008 one it could cost you from €35 (if you registered 10 months before the race) to €70 (10 days before the race.)

The start numbers also had the runner's first name printed on it. I hadn't come across this in a race before and found it led to encouraging shouts of "Allez James" from the crowd. Unfortunately for my friend, the French spectators seemed to struggle with pronouncing "Eoghan".

Logistics were top notch. The starting city, Nice, is very easy to get to with regular flights from Dublin with both Ryanair and Aer Lingus. Free trains back from Cannes to Nice for the runners (God help the ordinary non-sweaty passengers). As it is held in November, the off-season for seaside towns like Nice, hotels near the starting line are in plentiful supply and offer good value for money.

18 to 20 degrees, gorgeous coastline scenery, deep blue sea, palm tree-lined course, made all the more sweeter when I found out from my sister that it was 3 degrees and raining horizontally back at home. Apparently last year it was much colder. (Though the website seems to indicate that this was the first time the marathon was held.) However the warm weather seems to last longer in the South East of France than in the rest of the country.

Race passes through 7 towns, so a nice bit of variety. Good support from spectators in the towns themselves.

Got myself a personal best, 3:54:40, knocking nearly 20 minutes of my first and only other marathon, the Connemarathon earlier this year.

The pasta served at the end of the race. Did it hit the spot or did it hit the spot.

A television helicopter hovering over the starting line and following the race for the opening 3km or so.

The worst bits:
As is the case with all French races and some other overseas races, you have to get a medical certificate from a doctor saying you're race fit. While I can see the merits of this rule, it makes entering the race maybe 1% more hassle than entering races that don't have this requirement.

Seemed to be pretty big queues for the post-race massages in the recovery tents. Not something I've gone for before anyway, so didn't bother me.

Realising that the television helicopter hovering over us at the starting line didn't stop tracking the race after 3km, it was actually there to film the elite runners, who were now miles ahead. Can't really think of many other negatives to be honest.

Difficulty: 2/5

Beginner suitability: Yes. Very flat race. Total ascent is 34m spread out over 42.195km. Most of this ascent takes place as you go around the Cap d'Antibes, a promontory sticking into the sea just after the town of Antibes, offering great views of the bits of the course you've already completed. There is a cut-off point of 6 hours.

Drinks: Water stations every 5km. Served in plastic cups, something some runners have a gripe about. At every water station there were apricots, bananas and orange slices too. Think there were two stations serving energy drinks, and a couple with cola as well as water. One sponge station located about 2km after each water station.

Top Tip: Don't order the chicken kebab from Kebab King up by Nice train station the night before unless you REALLY have to. Also there is a fairly steep but thankfully fairly short hill after 25km, take things handy coming up it.

I'd highly recommend this marathon, more details are on their website:
http://www.marathon06.com/AN/index.htm

Who would Limerick vote for next Tuesday?*

A short vox pop, conducted on the streets of Limerick, last Tuesday, in which folk were asked which US presidential candidate they would vote for if they had the chance to do so.

On a related note, below is a still from the excellent music video over at JibJab.com of the Bob Dylanesque song "Time for some Campaigning". Check it out.


*Clue: His first name has more than four letters.

Not the best advertisement for long-distance running

In most normal sports, when an athlete comes off the pitch after a victory or fine performance, normally they offer platitudes expressing their delight and elation. Not so Galwayman Michael O'Connor, best of the Irish in last Monday's Dublin Marathon. In an immediate post-race interview reported by the Irish Times, O'Connor was quoted as saying:

"It's my last run," the father-of-two declared. "I've arthritis in both feet and I'm sick of it. It's time to go playing football with the young lad I think, and drink a few pints."

I just really can't imagine the such a frankly downbeat reaction coming from the winner of a national title in rival sports, such as Gaelic Football or soccer. Hardly the best advertisment to get youngsters into the marathoning, but then again I reckon if you've just run 26 and a bit miles in 02:21:00 you're pretty much entitled to say whatever the hell you want to say.

Blatter gets tough on fat cats in football just for the money

"There are national laws in Switzerland, for example, when you buy property or make an investment, you must prove yourself," he explained. "You have to prove your link with the area.

"We must ask ourselves about what motivates these owners and are they really interested in the game or just making money?

So said FIFA President Sepp Blatter at a meeting at the European Parliament yesterday, in which he expressed alarm over foreign ownership of football clubs in Europe.

Interesting that ice hockey-loving Sepp could say this with a straight face, considering his own rather tenuous links with the canton in Switzerland where he was registered as a resident in order to cut his tax-bill, as detailed in Andrew Jennings' 2006 book, Foul!: The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals.

America has a lot to answer for

And I'm not talking about the rights and wrongs of leaving the world's financial system in a holy mess through wreckless lending by American banks and lacklustre enforcement of financial regulations. No, it's far more serious than that.

If my understanding of this Runner's World article is to be believed, and I'm not sure if it should be, it appears that some American Universities allow their students take modules in marathon training.

No wonder high-skilled jobs are being outsourced east faster than Haile Gebreselassie last Sunday in Berlin.

The exit polls are... pretty meaningless, in this case

The Economist, in their ever-increasing drive to make their recently revamped website more interactive, have launched a Global Electoral College, to see how the world would vote in the US Presidential Election.

Needless to say, of the countries whose residents have voted, all of them have ended up a very Democrat shade of blue on the world map.

While I like magazine's the idea, the results of the survey are pretty pointless for obvious reasons. In any event, the 77% showing of support from US Economist readers for Obama contrasts with the much more balanced split of support for the two candidates as can be seen in this wide collection of American polling and media agency polls.

One wonders would international surveys like this, in favour of Obama, have the effect of bolstering support for the Republican candidate? Could support for McCain be increased because Americans, just like Irish voters in the Lisbon Treaty Referendum, according to Charlie McCreevy, don't like to be "bullied" by external forces into delivering the right result?

Public Prone to Preach Public Sector Reform

Terry Prone is to be commended for her recent article in the Irish Examiner defending civil service administrators, who she feels have been made scapegoats for the current ills of the economy. They are a soft target, and Ms Prone is quite right in pointing out how unfair it is to smear a large numbers of workers in this country because of the source of their pay cheque.

While she is correct in stating that the public service may not have caused the recession, the question must be asked, why has the public sector been made a scapegoat in the first place? There can be no doubt that there is a widespread perception of waste of resources within the public service. Another commentator in the same newspaper's opinion pages, Fergus Finlay, has written recently about the large sums of money civil servants can claim in unwarranted travel expenses.

Regarding the "parallel function" served by administrators that Ms Prone writes about, I wonder is she referring to the exasperation felt by many over the duplication of public servant positions brought about by the failure of the decentralisation programme?

I don't think, as Ms Prone writes, that the public feel it is OK to have gardai and teachers, but no administrators. Rather, I think people resent the fact that ground-level public staff, are unfairly compensated in comparison to their senior administrators. The December 2007 Report of the Public Service Benchmarking Body recommended increases in earnings, ranging from 1 per cent to 15 per cent, for public servants at senior levels. No such increase was recommended for rank and file nurses, teachers, gardaí, civil servants, local authority and health sector staff.

It is natural that in the current economic circumstances, the calls for public sector reform are getting louder by the day.

EDIT - Saturday 1st November: Just found out from a neighbour today that The Irish Examiner saw fit to publish the above on their letters page on Monday the 22nd of September, a fortnight after Terry Prone's article. Pure rapid.

War

Russia claim their forces have killed 2,000 Georgian military and civilian personnel. Such is war. In what other area of human endeavour could you get away with "claiming" to have killed so many people? In day to day life killers do all they can to avoid being blamed for their killing: arrests are evaded; are criminal indictments are defended vigorously.

Such is war, which has a habit of turning normal conceived wisdom up on its head, which is why it should be avoided at all costs.

Benicassim Festival 2008: Some reflections

It may have been pretty much impossible to get a proper sleep(-in) in the tents, as curled up underneath a sheet of polystyrene is not the best place to be when tempertures climb into their thirties first thing in the morning. However the good thing about the Festival Internacional de Benicassim was that acts not starting til the evening was there was plenty of time to catch up with the kip at the beach during the day.

Saying that, the walk to the beach was a hell of a trek and the shuttle buses that were advertised between the venue and the town seemed few and far between. We rented bikes which were very handy. Wouldn’t have liked to have been in Benicamp though - it seemed that before the festival many people had the impression from various internet forums that this was the best place, and indeed it filled up by Monday. From what I heard it was short of facilities and I wouldn’t have fancied the walk back there after the concert each night.

Had a great time, not sure if I would come back though, it would depend on the line-up really. It is a great idea though having the concerts start in the evening as it means your days are completely free. There was plenty in Benicassim to do, by plenty I mean the beach or the water park, which is fine by me.

Onto the music:

i) Sigur Rós were very good on the Thursday night. However, there seemed to be too many people in the crowd where we were acting up to the Brits Abroad Chelsea Dagger-loving stereotype, many of them acting way too rowdy for a Sigur Rós gig which was disappointing.

ii) Raconteurs were bloody fantastic. Very bounce-along-toable stuff out of the charisma-filled Jack White and his Nashville band. Old school rock and roll as it should be.

iii) Hot Chip were amazing. I was also amazed when I heard from my friend that soon after their set I gave him my pint, mumbled something to the effect of NO MORE and ran off. Next thing I could remember was waking up on the tarmac very close to where we had watched them at 6.30 - bear in mind they finished playing at midnight and Josh Wink and others were pounding out the choons 50 metres from me.

iv) Calvin Harris - did exactly what a very good dance artist should do, that is get the crowd hopping, not a beat was out of place.

v) Leonard Cohen - a true gent, highlight of the weekend. Very humble man, thanked all the members of his band individually, also repeatedly told us how it was a privilege to play for us. Pete Doherty, The Zutons, Amy Winehouse and others could learn from his refreshingly gracious attitude. Hallelujah alone made the trip worthwhile. As did chilling out by the beach all day, of course!

¡Adios amigos!

Three, actually four, observations on Lisbon

1. It suffered a horrific earthquake in 1755, during Voltaire's lifetime - a poster depicting said earthquake lives on to this day in one of the language labs in UL.


2. It is the capital city of one of the darker horses of Euro 2008, who are looking very dark at the moment, if darkness equates to looking incredibly impressive indeed after tonight's performance. Less can be said about Football365's sub-editor for the opening paragraph of their report on the game.

3. The Lisbon Treaty campaign, if you were to believe some of the more hysterical analyses of it, has been a mixture of either misinformation from the No campaigners, or bullying/guilt-tripping from the Yes campaigners, and plenty of patronising from all concerned - so which ever offends you less, being bullied or lied to, vote with them. See, for instance, some of the comments responding to David McWilliams' rather excellent commentary on the makeup of the Yes and No camps in today's Irish Independent.

4. On the Lisbon Treaty Referendum Count Centre in Limerick: this will be the University of Limerick Sports Arena. In other words the arena where I was due to play indoor soccer this evening, which was to my first game back after a prolonged absence - I believe March was the last time I kicked a luminous yellow ball in anger. Why should hundreds of (possibly apolitical) sportspeople be put out because of a treaty that doesn't really worry all that many of them? Surely there are other disused buildings in Limerick that could have been chosen - how about the former Microtherm factory building in Bruff Co Limerick, whose ex-employees featured in a recent RTE documentary, Where's My Job Gone? Or would that be sending out the wrong signals?

Do as we say, not as we do

This morning's UK Independent ran a front page story about a secret deal to keep Iraq under US control indefinitely.

Rewind to February 2003. I believe President Bush said one of the reasons for the invasion of Iraq in the first place was to foster democracy there.

Interesting then that the Independent's Patrick Cockburn wrote this morning that:

"The US is adamantly against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be voted down."

Even a teenager wouldn't expect to be treated by their parents with these levels of hypocrisy. No wonder it is predicted that the deal, the terms of which include 50 US military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors, will lead to yet more explosive conflict.

Image: US Marines in Iraq, Wikimedia Commons

Economic Aches

Last Saturday night I was told by a friend me that The Economist told him that Ronald Reagan once told whoever would listen that inflation is “as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit-man.” In these gloomy economic times, with FÁS predicting losses of 55,000 construction sector jobs by the end of 2009, when the credit crunch seems to be to property portfolio-holders and young house-buyers what “Post 9/11” was to civil liberties fans and Guantanamo Bay detainees, it is worth spending some time mulling over some of the grimmer scenarios for the Irish economy.

The construction boom, upon which much of Ireland's recent economic growth was based on, according to some commentators, appears to be over. The country is dotted with housing estates that appear to be left unfinished as their builders go bust. Anecdotally, I know of one auctioneering firm whose staff size has fallen to a third of what it was last year while their monthly sales income has decreased by a factor of nine.

One point I took from May 24^th's lead story in The Economist is that while inflation per se may not be all that high, employees' perceptions of inflation can become higher and this in turn leads to higher wage demands. As there is no sign of us seeing any decrease in the number of inflation related headline stories between now and the national pay talks, it is a near-certainty that public and semi-state sector employees will push for wage increases. They may even be granted the rises, with the help of collective industrial action. Joe Private Sector Employee will see what his public sector counterpart was doing and will naturally follow suit.

And how will the multinational employer of JPSE react when himself and his colleagues begin to strike? Will they negotiate? Maybe. Will they accede to the JPSEs' demands? Doubtful. You can bet your bottom devalued dollar that JPSE's job will be outsourced offshore to a land with lower wages and less collective bargaining power. Even though according to the European Restructuring Monitor only 8% of EU jobs lost to restructuring between 2003 and 2006 have involved offshoring, this figure is likely to rise, at least in Ireland's case.

'Inflation' photo by Joshua Davis

Futbol Mondial's FIFA 2008 Fanatics

Futbol Mondial is a great programme at the best of times, with the offering from the Trans World International stable normally bringing us such delights as the Asian Champions League, how an Ecuadorian footballer copes with life at Wigan Athletic and Tomas Brolin – life after football. However, I was left feeling a little disturbed by the last item they ran on tonight's show. After running a perfectly pointless, if perfectly enjoyable and fairly nostalgic story about a Romanian all star select playing against the World in a charity match organised by Gheorge Hagi and Gica Popescu in Bucharest recently, they went and spoiled it all by bringing us a report on, wait for it, the FIFA Interactive World Cup held in Berlin at the end of May. The competition featured 32 young men (they were all young men) each of whom possessed a pair of eyes normally only seen on ordinary people at the end of a very long week of caffeine-fuelled exam cramming. Their skin complexions paled in comparison.

Some of the player profiles left me genuinely bowled over. A certain Mr Smit from the Netherlands, the reigning champion, claimed to spend 70 hours a week practicing. From the cut of him I'd say this was a gross underestimate.

Anthony Baffoe, the second Ghanaian to play in the Bundesliga according to Wikipedia (after Ibrahim Sunday, if you needed to know) and the patron of the competition, was heard justifying to the interviewer his own brood’s obsession with football video games as opposed to the real-life version of the 11-a-side game. ‘My kids, they play them all the time, and you know, they learn the names of 600 real life players, which is great.’ So there you have it – spending hours and hours developing arthritis of the thumbs and playing a game of Russian Roulette with an epileptic seizure as the prize is preferable to reading the German equivalent of Shoot! and gleaning their useless soccer trivia that way.

The narrator noted that for some reason Barcelona v Barcelona matches proved to be very popular with the competitors. A Spaniard won the blasted competition in the end – the young Real Madrid supporter opting to be, surprise surprise, Barcelona. An omen for things to come in Euro 2008, asked the voiceover guy to no-one in particular. Actually no, the antics of these FIFA 08 fanatics have absolutely no bearing on the outcome of this summer’s tournament. Gott sei Dank!

Why I'm glad I'm not a British taxpayer

Just spotted this entertaining stream of consciousness on the ever insightful, always amusing, Football365 Mediawatch page.

Thought For The Day
Joey Barton plays for Newcastle, Newcastle are sponsored by Northern Rock. 'The Rock' are now owned by the taxpayer - in other words, us. Therefore we pay Barton's wages. In addition to this he is now being held at Her Majesty's Pleasure so not only are we paying his wages, but we are also paying for his accommodation.

Above: Joseph when he was still a free man, a model athlete it has to be said.

Out of Africa: not much hope, but a good read all the same

The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence

Martin Meredith
A Book Review

Of all the regions in the world, Africa is one were economic reports regularly show that standards of living have actually decreased there in the past thirty years rather than increased. Right now there are more armed conflicts there than in any other continent. It seems that the news reports to emerge from that region, be they about famine in the 1980s, resource wars in the 1990s or tales of the scourges of AIDs and election manipulations more recently, are reports of misery. In this expansive history, Martin Meredith, an academic who previously worked as a journalist with the Times of Zambia and has published an acclaimed biography of Robert Mugabe, chronicles the events over the past fifty years that have brought this sorry state of affairs into being.

The task is an ambitious one – to chart the history of a whole continent over fifty years. While the book may not go into the same level of detail as a history of an individual country or historical figure, it nonetheless illuminates trends that were common to one degree or another in many of the countries in the years following independence.

The book is broken up into four sections. The first tells the story of the immediate post-independence era, when the rhetoric of the politicians of the newly independent countries was full of optimism. Meredith paints vivid biographies of leaders such as Kwame Nkumrah of Ghana and Nasser of Egypt, in which their confidence shines through. This honeymoon period did not last for long though – the optimism of the early 1960s soon faded when it transpired that the freedom fighters, once they had gained power, where not all that keen on holding free elections, risking losing that power. In the second part of the book the author writes of the various schemes used by ageing leaders across the continent to stay in power, from repressive measures to political cronyism. He writes about the vast prestige projects leaders invested in, such as Ghana's national airline whose only passengers were the politicians who had sanctioned setting it up even there was no demand from the public. One trend that seems to be common to nearly all of the newly independent countries was the setting up of huge state bureaucracies – not with the intention of delivering effective governance to their citizens – rather to provide cushy jobs for the ruling parties' supporters. In one depressing statistic he provides, there was one stage when the government of Angola were spending more money on sending family members of the ruling party abroad to private medical clinics than the proportion of that country's GDP was being spent on its national health system.

As the book moves into the 1980s, the picture becomes bleaker. There are stories of coups and counter-coups from Nigeria to Uganda. Economic growth rates declined, as countries struggled to pay off debts that had been acquired in the 1970s. Indeed, in his chapter on the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s, he notes that that decade is often referred to there as “The Lost Decade.” From the 1990s to the present day it seems that time and time again the people of Africa have been let down by those in power: the genocide in Rwanda, the South African government's inept response to its AIDs crisis and recent bloodshed in Darfur are all examples Meredith cites.

While there are some grounds for optimism Meredith outlines, on a whole this is quite a depressing book. However, the author's straightforward, logical and chronological style provide a great context for Africa's current problems. Essential reading for anyone who wants insight into the politics and current affairs of Africa.

Did I go to any of the gigs mentioned below?

No.

Why not?

Because the best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men gang aft agley. Also I forgot about the Utah Saints gig.

Thou Shalt Always try to go to good gigs...

...if you have the time, money and interest I suppose.

The good people at the Limerick Post dropped a copy of their paper in our letterbox today. It informed me that there are three gigs over the coming weeks that I might like to go out and see. Feel free to come along if you want to too.

1. Dan le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip
Friday 9th May at 9.00pm
Seomraí na Trionóide, Cathair Luimnigh.

They brought us "Thou Shalt Always Kill" last year, which enjoyed a spell as my bebo flashbox a few months back, after I saw same on the page of one Will Storan, who has an ear for decent music if I may say so. Which brings me to the whole reason for me creating this post: the chance to put the video for "Thou Shalt Always Kill" on my blog.

More info should be on the Trinity Rooms' website. Incidentally, I'm really fond of the track that plays when you open their site. Does anyone know what it's called?

They come from the same Essex town that Joseph "Heart of Darkness" Conrad once lived in. This brings me nicely to the main reason I have for posting this evening, basically to try and embed a youtube music vidjo into my blog for the very first time. Here goes, ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Thou Shalt Always Kill" by Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip:

2. Utah Saints
Saturday 3rd May also at 9.00pm
And also at the Trinity Rooms, Limerick.

The lads from the days of X-Worx jeans, Petro Motion jeans and grafitti stating the equation "XTC=NRG" will hopefully have a great set, 1992 style.

3. Rufus Wainwright
Sunday 8th of June at 8.00pm
University Concert Hall

The Montreal Minstrel of Misery brings his show to UL, should be good. I'm sure there's a lot more to him than that - I have one cousin and had one taxi-driver who were mad into him, so I'm sure with a bit of pre-concert homework I should be able to form an opinion on him.

Surprise Sur-Bloody-Prise

It appears that the first results of the recount have gone to Robert Mugabe.


Suppose Martyn Turner was spot on, as he often is, when he sketched this cartoon a few weeks ago:




Speaking of inflation, here's a bit of trivia:

Zimbabwe currently has an inflation rate of 150,000%, but this is moderate compared to historical figures. For example in Hungary at the end of the Second World War, inflation was 41,900,000,000,000,000% which meant that prices doubled every 15 hours...

(E-mail received from Bolger, D., 26 February 2008).

What I learnt today

Michael O'Leary has some Neck. I didn't learn that today, that fact has been in the public domain for long enough. However I did learn about what he did in the wake of the Aer Lingus flights for a fiver fiasco, courtesy of this snippet from Sue Denham/pseudonym in today's Sunday Times:

Ryanair's Michael O'Leary couldn't wait to dump on Aer Lingus when it was forced to do a PR u-turn and honour the bookings of customers who had taken advantage of a pricing error to buy €5 tickets to New York. O'Leary dispatched a flight crew to Dublin airport carrying placards reading "champers for unhappy campers" to hand out flutes of champagne to passengers waiting to board an Aer Lingus flight. Unamused Aer Lingus staff called airport security who ordered Ryanair's photographer to delete all images as it breached Aer Lingus's copyright. Spoilsports.

Would have loved to see the photos. Just goes to show that the company who have brought us this:


... and who last August put this on their homepage to protest the introduction of strict anti-terror procedures:


...and who this February had to pay damages to Monsieur et Madame Sarkozy for this:


... have not changed one jot. Interestingly the Advertising Standards Authority dismissed complaints about the Martin McGuinness ad - topical humour was allowed to be topical humour.

Thanks to larryni.me.uk for the images.

Sympathy for the Duvel

Bernard Werber is a French science fiction writer. He used to be a journalist. According to Wikipedia, son œuvre fait se rencontrer mythologie, spiritualité, philosophie, science-fiction, biologie, futurologie, logique ainsi que des données scientifiques peu connues.

Some of his books take the form of mini-encyclopaedae (is that the plural? how am I to know?), where he basically just takes a rake of random enough topics (but usually in some way connected with mythologie, spiritualité, philosophie, science-fiction, biologie, futurologie or logique) and writes articles on said topics. Not necessarily definitions, just articles/essays that are in some way linked to them.

In L'Encyclopédie du Savoir Relativ et Absolu, this is what he had to say about Solidarité, and I'd happen to think that he is pretty much spot on in what he says:

Solidarité

La solidarité nait de la douleur et non de la joie. On se sent plus proche de quelqu'un qui a subi avec vous une épreuve pénible que de quelqu'un qui a partagé avec vous un moment heureux.

Le malheur est source de solidarité et d'union alors que le bonheur divise. Pourquoi? Parce que, lors d'un triomphe commun, chacun se sent lesé par rapport a son propre mérité. Chacun s'imagine etre l'unique auteur d'une commune réussite.

Combien de familles se sont divisées a l'heure d'un héritage? Combien de groupes de rock and roll ont pu rester soudés malgré leur succes? Combien de mouvements politiques ont éclaté, le pouvoir pris? Étymologiquement, le mot sympathie provient d'ailleurs du grec sumpatheia qui signifie souffrir avec. De Meme compassion est issu du latin compassio signifiant lui aussi souffrir avec.

C'est en imaginant la souffrance des martyrs de son groupe de référence qu'on peut un instant quitter son insupportable individualité. C'est dans le souvenir d'un calvaire vécu en commun que résident la force et la cohésion d'un groupe.

With a bit of copying and pasting and Google Translating what we get is this:

Solidarity

Solidarity is born of pain rather than joy. You feel closer to someone who has been with you a painful ordeal as someone who has shared with you a happy event.

The tragedy is a source of solidarity and unity while happiness divides. Why? Because, in a triumph, everyone feels compared lesé has its own deserved. Everyone imagines to be the sole author of a common success.

How many families were divided at the time of an inheritance? How many groups of rock and roll have been able to remain united despite their success? How many political movements have erupted, the power taken? Etymologically, the word sympathy also comes from the Greek meaning sumpatheia which means to suffer with. Similarily, compassion comes from the Latin compassio, which also means to suffer with.

In imagining the suffering of the martyrs of the reference group for a moment that we can leave her unbearable individuality. It is in the memory of the suffering endured in common than residents of force and cohesion of a group.

Wise words, je pense.

Running

A sport of no great skill. Just plain hard work, from what I can see.

Why I like The Economist

For a while now I have subscribed to The Economist. There are numerous reasons why. In this post I will attempt to outline some of them.

• Its highly divisive, yet eloquently expressed opinions.
• The fact that it consistently refers to itself as "this newspaper", and does so in the third person.
• The random one-off articles it contains, such as the state that picture-book publishing is in at this moment in the UK, how the poker world is becoming more dominated by youngsters who have only ever played internet poker, or the trials faced by Native Americans who want to go into business in Native American nations in the US of A. In other words, the kind of articles that you won't really find elsewhere, yet if you met someone who had a particular interest in whatever topic was the focus of the article, you would be able to hold a 10-15 minute rational conversation on said topic with the aforementioned someone.
• The fact that they rarely use words like aformentioned.
• And the fact that most of their articles concerning actual economics go way over my head.
• Their blatant anti-EU bias, at times.
• The photos they choose, and the captions therewith. An example: in an article a while back on declining suicide rates in the UK, they featured a picture of some cliffs. The caption: "Not seeing much action lately."
• The ads. Either in the recruitment section: "You will be qualified to a PhD level and have up to 10 years experience managing some ridiculously high-level other people at some really high level in another organisation so why you would want to bother seeking a job in the recruitment section of a magazine is beyond most people. The other ads, that just presume the entire readership is made up of top-level executives who wouldn't know what to fly economy was if it hit them in the face. A tad ironic that, given the fact that it's called The Economist.
• The fact that the Middle East is lumped in with Africa. And Canada is lumped in with Latin America. Is this an indication of the level of respect "this newspaper" holds said regions/countries in?
• Their choice of fonts/page layouts.
  

Ovestating the Case

While much has been said in the media, both locally and nationally, about the regeneration of certain troubled areas of Limerick on foot of the Fitzgerald Report's findings, less column inches have been given to the rejuvenation of Thomas Street in the city centre. Well at least that was the case until this evening, when it made the front page of the Limerick Leader.

Apparently, Thomas St traders are not too happy with the construction works, the proprietor of a health food shop said her turnover for this month is down 14% compared to January 2007. In actual fact, as I walked up the street towards college this morning, watching the shopkeepers set up shop for the day, I couldn't help thinking that they were due for a very quiet day indeed. That is the consequence of your whole street undergoing a temporary dredging as part of the construction process I suppose.

However, I found the article to be somewhat unclear, if not misleading. The paper reports that shop owners have said that the pedestrianisation of the street has badly affected trade in the area. In the article itself, all the shopkeepers quoted run businesses on upper Thomas Street, in other words the part of the street where roadworks are ongoing at the moment, rather than the lower part of the street, where it has been fully pedestrianised for some months since work finished last year. I found no indication in the article whether the retailers were referring to the pedestrianisation in progress or the area with completed pedestrianisation as being what hinders their trade. Regarding the latter area, I have found that most people I meet, both from Limerick and further afield have greeted its development with nothing but positive comments.

This brings me down to the subject of the post's heading. 'It would be easier to run a business in Beirut than Thomas St' was a comment ascribed to one particular trader. How? Beirut is a city engulfed in violence at the moment - at least eight people have been killed in deadly riots over power and water cuts in recent days; on 15 January a bomb exploded near the US Embassy, killing three people. I think to try to compare their temporary plight while their street is being spruced up by City Council to that of their Lebanese counterparts in this time of strife is a bit disingenuous.

As I say in this post's title, the person who made those comments was simply overstating the case.

Viva la Resolution, thanks to Nike and iPod!

The market leaders in mp3 portable music players, Apple iPod, have teamed up with sportswear giant Nike, to bring out the latest piece of technology for the gadget-savvy jogger. Known simply as the ‘Nike + iPod Sport Kit’, it consists of a pair of Nike runners that have been modified to contain a pedometer with a wireless sensor, and a sensor that this communicates with which is attached to the jogger’s iPod. As you go on your run, you will hear periodic progress reports through your headphones, telling you your pace and distance of your run. Users can also get the player to select specially chosen motivational music to go the extra mile. It will even congratulate you when you reach your personal best!

The device went on the market before Christmas. According to a Nike spokesperson, the manufacturers hope to appeal to both the seasoned runner and the novices who will be setting out on their New Years Resolution-inspired first forays this January.

The gadget review website, Engadget.com, was glowing in its review, saying that the product matches up to its advertisements’ glowing descriptions, and, ‘it actually motivated the reviewers to run harder and more often than normal.’

Runners can buy the device directly from Apple’s website, although another blogger, who professes more than a respectful admiration for all things ipod-relatd, advises that with a tiny bit of DIY know-how and some Velcro, you can forego shelling out for a new pair of Nike runners!