Colette McNamara has posted a clever set of photoshopped images, the best of which feature her teddy’s adventures in space.

“When animals breathe out their breath sinks to the ground but when a human breathes out their breath rises up to heaven, so obviously the evolution theory is wrong and God really did create the world in seven days.”
So a student told Conortje , who explains at his blog that the Dutch aren’t always as progressive as we think.

The first sighting of a book on the Joe O’Reilly trial comes courtesy of Crime Always Pays. Jenny Friel’s The Suspect will be on the shelves next month. How much more can you read on this subject? Well, several Irish publishers have been touting for books on this subject, so it’s unlikely to be the last.

On Saturday, the Sun did a great job of turning a British non-story into an Irish non-story when telling readers that a great white shark has been spotted off Irish waters. Brilliant stuff, except for the trifling fact that it probably wasn’t a great white. And it was 200 yards off the Cornish coast.

Today, Morning Ireland treated the Carrick-On-Suir fight with a mixture of “what about the children” tut-tutting, and a bizarre nostalgia for a time when you get in a drunken brawl but only get beaten up instead of stabbed. Plus, the FF councillor twice suggested that the legal age for buying alcohol be raised to 23 “like in America”. When being plain daft, you might as well be factually incorrect as well.

Meow. Or maybe that should be ‘woof’.

There are plenty of ways to jazz up a political debate, but a snowman asking a question about global warming is about as novel as they’ve come.

On Monday night, the interminable US presidential contest got surreal when the Democratic nominees faced off against each other over questions asked by the public, through YouTube. Of the 3,000 questions posed, 39 were selected by CNN. The animated snowman was among them. (more…)

How to discuss books you have never read

An Spailpín Fánach on what to read on the train

Three weeks ago Seamus Heaney’s limited edition The Riverbank Field was released at €100 a copy. This week, Kenny’s is selling it for €295. Nice mark up, but there’s been a copy sitting unsold on eBay since publication. And it’s a bit cheaper.

New Zealand’s parliament “bans satire”. Jon Stewart comes to the rescue of joke-deprived Kiwis.

Not for the first time, I found myself watching the Tour de France highlights on TG4 last night. The commentator was describing it as a “soap opera”, loved by viewers. It’s a soap opera, alright. One of those cheap Mexican ones with the same predictable plotlines, recurring characters and bad actors.

Why, then, should TG4 keep showing the Tour? Why should the press continue to cover it as a sporting event, when it is only a spectacle - something now acknowledged by French newspaper Liberation, which has dropped reports from its sports pages. Instead, it will treat it as a chronicle of doping until the paper feels it has cleaned up. It is a cavalcade of suspected cheats. Covering the Tour de France is pointless. TG4 should stop doing so.

Went to The Simpsons Movie last night, eager to see it, but scared of what I might get. There’s no great reason for the greatest television show of all time to splash itself all over the big screen. It smacks of an enterprise trying to reclaim its status as a vital bit of modern culture.

Indeed, the movie has something about it that suggests it is the beginning of the end for The Simpsons, that it may actually work better as a movie franchise than an ongoing television series. (more…)

American bloggers have been aflutter over the arrival there of an 800-page monster of a book, The Atlas of Creation by a Turkish Islamist Adnan Oktar (going by the name of Harun Yahya). It is an Islamist attack on Darwinism, and an argument in favour of the idea that animals haven’t actually changed in the millions of years since God put them here. The tome landed in The Irish Times in March, slumping on my desk for the few minutes it took me to realise that while it might be ornate, colourful and superficially impressive it was proof only that the Islamic world can be prone to just as much pseudo-scientific, theological hokum as the Christian West.

Examining the fossil record, we see that living things are exactly the same today as they were hundreds of millions of years ago—in other words, that they never underwent evolution … This demonstrates one indisputable fact: Living things did not come into being through the imaginary processes of evolution. All the living things that have ever existed on Earth were created by God.

Yahya sent out thousands of copies to scientists and journalists, but what rational mind could possibly be attracted by such intellectually substantial gaudiness?

Step forward Kevin Myers. (more…)

Here’s a link to a page of famous poems re-written as limericks (via Boing Boing).

I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud

There once was a poet named Will
Who tramped his way over a hill
And was speechless for hours
Over some stupid flowers
This was years before TV, but still.

Some weeks after it promised to return, Blogorrah has once again promised to return. But it’s done so with new jokes. Not great jokes, perhaps, but what should we expect from something waking up from a coma?

The Joe O’Reilly verdict is the obvious lead for all the Sunday papers. Looking at page after page of pre-prepared articles you can see that it was a gift to the Sundays, whose newsdesks must have been getting a little nervy as 7pm approached on Saturday evening. They were bursting to break the stories that hadn’t been put before the jury, which is why most ignore the straightforward news reporting of the fact that he’s been found guilty (except for one of the red tops, which includes a front page line about the now letting the “bastard rot”. Nice touch.) Most instead go with news of a previous affair. Desperate for an exclusive, the Mirror goes with an blurred-beyond recognistion picture of O’Reilly in handcuffs. They’ve circled the handcuffs, but you’d still be hard-pressed to recognise them as such. The Star has a clear photo of the same shot, making the Mirror’s look even worse. (more…)

If you have bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows since its release a few hours ago, would you please turn to page three of the book. Are the first words on that page: “eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light”? If so, then it was indeed leaked a few days early. (more…)

Finally, The Sopranos ended here - weeks after it did so in the States - and viewers could face the world again knowing that, unless they’re a Harry Potter fan, they don’t have to put their fingers in their ears while the planet discusses a big cultural finale.

It’s a bit after the fact, having a conversation that much of the western world has been having for several weeks now, but what can you to do. The Bobby Bacala flashback in last week’s episode (”You probably don’t even hear it when it happens”) might have related to Tony not knowing when death would come - or the viewer not knowing when the end would come. Either way, it kept to a tradition of Sopranos’ series ending in somewhat anti-climactic fashion, although this, at least, leaves you with so much to think about that it hurts the brain.

Anyone looking for closure should have looked elsewhere. Ultimately, The Sopranos refused to indulge us, and that is a final stamp of its greatness. Likewise, why should we expect a tidy resolution from something which has spent years weaving story lines that sometimes go somewhere, sometimes don’t, and sometimes aren’t even witnessed (the last episode’s ‘Carlo flipping’ being a final example). This ending was maddening, confusing and unsatifactory - but it will linger well beyond those final ten seconds of black.

Having said all that, when it happened I did think my screen was on the blink.

The New York Times has run its online review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows having, it claims, bought the book from a New York store on Wednesday. (more…)

The scale of the BBC’s problems with phone-ins has been staggering; rife with the use of false names or production staff posing as winners. (more…)

Dulce Pinzón’s photographs put immigrant Mexicans into the uniforms of American superheroes. In a piece in today’s Guardian, the New York-based photographer says: “I realised that these people are trying to both blend in and stay true to their identities, and most of the time the rest of the city is hardly even aware they exist.”

Link: Dulce Pinzón

Jim has posted a critique of the Barbra Streisand “debacle” (passim: every caller on Liveline). I used to work for MCD, begging people like Jim to write extensive articles on such important bands as, for example, the Australian Pink Floyd. I was young. I needed the money. I got the money, and I left. (more…)

People arriving into Dublin city centre on Monday morning were met by an eerie sight: muck-caked Wellington boots, abandoned in groups, as if an army of visiting farmers had been struck by a mass outbreak of spontaneous combustion. (more…)

A new festival is created/announced/held in Ireland on average every 14.3 seconds. But the Flat Lake Literary & Arts Festival is worth a mention. Taking place in Hilton Park in Clones on the weekend of August 25th/26th, it’ll feature: an auction of 40 paintings, of which one will be a Damien Hirst- although people won’t know which; Pat McCabe will be running his own radio station; Colm Toibin and Eugene McCabe will be going head-to-head in some kind of literary death match.

It promises music, a film festival and events with Conor McPherson, Claire Keegan, Rhys Ifans, Hugo Hamilton and Eoin McNamee, and a few other people it’s trying to entice, such as Howard Marks and Neil Jordan. There’ll be room for 1,000, at €35 a head per day (€90 for weekend camping pass), although it’s promising a freebie to volunteers.

Latest edition of The Stinging Fly, especially a creepy short-story by Philip Ó Ceallaigh involving jumpsuits, torchure and white picket fences. It’s Stinging Fly Cafe is a good forum too.

Also Reading The Irish Landscape by Frank Mitchell and Michael Ryan, which neatly explains the lumps and bumps of the land around us. I’m reading it for work reasons, but it’s been a surprise treat.

Because a part of me seems to have been left behind in a corner of Columbia Mills in 1995, I have been listening to the following: (more…)

Here’s a trippy bit of short animation, Dusk To Dawn in Dublin. Best bit: turning the Happy Ring House into an altar of psychedelia.

Link: Dusk To Dawn in Dublin by Mánus Goan

AN Wilson has had a go at Seamus Heaney in the Telegraph, in a piece asking which Nobel prize-winning writers will stand the test of time. From an Irish point of view: Yeats - yes; Heaney - a big no no.

At the worst of the troubles in Northern Ireland, international liberalism was looking round for a Roman Catholic (preferably non-practising) poet from that violent province.

Charles Monteith, Protestant publisher of genius from Faber, produced Seamus Heaney from his top hat, a minor versifier who in quieter times would scarcely have made it into The Oxford Book of Provincial Verse.

Cripes, Wilson, some of us have just spent €100 for two Heaney poems. That’s our nest egg you’re messing with.

Every time Bank of Ireland’s elf ad (top) comes on the television, I ask myself: “why did they get Chris Cunningham (below) to make this?” (more…)

Trevor Sargent has just got delivery of the Toyota Prius sold by the Green Mayor of Galway, Niall O’Brolcháin. There were 10 bids, by unidentified bidders, but Sargent - by incredible coincidence - got in there at the end. His eBay name is a bit boastful: Minister of State, but not as showy as O’Brolcháin’s “greenmayorofgalway”. (more…)

1. It featured some of the most inappropriate celebrity endorsements of our time, such as Penelope Cruz telling us to stick on an extra jumper and turn the thermostat down. So, where does Cruz live? (more…)

They walk among us. They may be your neighbours, your work colleagues, your hedge fund administrators. They have come here in their hundreds of thousands, and now form Ireland’s biggest immigrant group. Yet, you would hardly notice them on the street, as they go about their day. Are their thoughts still on the homeland they left behind? Are they wondering when they’ll next see it? Perhaps they’re deciding it will have to wait until Ryanair’s next sale.

They are the British. And, according to the census, there are 112,548 UK nationals resident in Ireland. One in 37 of us is British. Although, that figure should probably be adjusted upwards when addressing readers of The Irish Times. (more…)

Following up on the Steorn “free-energy” demo of a couple of posts ago, the latest is that it’s been cancelled. Endgadget is getting quite a kick out of it. As is Good Morning Silicon Valley. As is pretty much everyone. Not a good day for Steorn. The cameras have been switched off and they’re going to try for another date. The laws of physics remain safe for a few days more.

… is sold out before most people have even heard about it. The Riverbank Field, consists of only two new poems - ‘The Riverbank Field’ and the 12-section ‘Route 110′ - that are to feature in an upcoming Faber & Faber collection. They are accompanied by suitably earthy paintings and pen drawings by Martin Gale, commissioned for the book. Published by Gallery Press it came in 500 numbered and signed copies, 450 of which were for sale at €100 each. They sold out almost immediately, and have been fending buyers off ever since, despite it arriving completely under the media radar.

UPDATE: Pete at Slugger O’Toole has been good enough to scan pages of his copy and out them online. Hope it didn’t damage the spine…

Here’s a page as found on the Kenny’s site, where a copy is for sale for an unsaid price.

If you’re going to claim to have invented a perpetual motion machine, it doesn’t do things much good if it stops working. (more…)

Following Wedneday’s shooting in Stillorgan, Olivia Mitchell, Fine Gael TD for South Dublin, was quoted in Metro as saying:

“It’s everywhere now, we are living so close to it. Leafy suburbia is the last place you would expect to find drugs and guns, and where there’s drugs and guns, there’s disaster.”

Firstly: the last place? In a city in which people move around freely and regularly, and where drugs are taken in every part of it? It’s as if there’s an expectation that the leafiness of the trees should prove a resourceful barrier against criminals. The rectory of St Patrick’s Cathedral - now that might be the last place you’d expect to find drugs and guns.

And secondly: there’s always this extra horror when the gangsters intrude on the suburbs. It’s bad enough that a man can be shot in the head outside a creche in broad daylight, but in a middle-class suburb? That’s just barbaric. They should go back to shooting people in the head outside creches in working class areas. It’d put you right off your Americano.

The Telegraph (always best for the obituaries) has a truly magnificent obit of a fellow called Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who died at 44 after a life of impressive debauchery which, the print edition points out, “disgraced the family name”. How about these for opening paragraphs:

Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies.

The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany’s Iron Chancellor and architect of the modern German state, the young von Bismarck showed early promise as a brilliant scholar, but led an exotic life of gilded aimlessness that attracted the attention of the gossip columns from the moment he arrived in Oxford in 1983 and hosted a dinner at which the severed heads of two pigs were placed at either end of the table.

When not clad in the lederhosen of his homeland, he cultivated an air of sophisticated complexity by appearing in women’s clothes, set off by lipstick and fishnet stockings. This aura of dangerous “glamour” charmed a large circle of friends and acquaintances drawn from the jeunesse dorée of the age; many of them knew him at Oxford, where he made friends such as Darius Guppy and Viscount Althorp and became an enthusiastic, rubber-clad member of the Piers Gaveston Society and the drink-fuelled Bullingdon and Loders clubs.

(more…)

Heart-warming Al-Jazeera clip in which a secular guest takes on Islamic fundamentalism (via Graham Linehan)
Link

Poster boy of intelligent design writes new book. The New York Times asks Richard Dawkins to review it. Ouch.
Link: The Edge of Evolution

Conservapedia explains the dinosaur. Sample line: “Descriptions of dragons are widespread and match descriptions of dinosaurs, suggesting that dragons were real creatures and were actually dinosaurs.”
Link

Visit the creationist museum of natural history. “The Bible speaks for itself at the Creation Museum.” It sure does.
Link: Creation Museum

Bishop of Carlisle says British floods are a result of turning away from the Bible. Which is odd, because Gerald Fleming never mentioned it on the weather forecast
Link: Recent Floods are God’s Punishment

Bruce Springsteen sings Thunder Road, live at Hammersmith Odeon, 1975
Link

The guy behind Yo Sushi has created the first Yotel. The 46-capsule hotel, based on the Japanese model, is at Gatwick airport. With premium and standard capsules (10 and 7 square metres), they feature “everything you’d expect from a comfortable hotel in a small space and cabin for two, both with en suite bathrooms, cabin entertainment and room service”. The photos look good, although it does look a little like sleeping inside a wardrobe. Or what it would look like if you put a double bed inside one of Irish Rail’s Arrow train toilets.

The Yotel’s Premium Room, though, has what it calls a “techno wall”, as it features internet connection, lighting, power, suit hangers and a Teasmade (ok, maybe there’s no Teasmade).

It’s €37 for a four-hour stay. Although, it’ll never quite match up to George Contanza’s under-desk sleeping system that he had built in Seinfeld episode The Nap.