I don’t like calling him “boss”. That aside, I had a conversation with him earlier.

Me: Did you meet [the architect] this week?
Him: Yes.
Me: I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me about this kind of thing. There have been some changes.
Him: Yes I know.
Me: We’re moving [some technical facilities] downstairs.
Him: Yes, you remember I told you we were going to do that.
Me: No, I told you.
Him: Same thing.
Me: No, it’s different.

I didn’t want to finish the conversation with “You see how I tell you what’s going on, so you can do your job. It would be nice if you’d tell me what you’re doing, then I can do mine.”

He’s also very good at the cartoon behaviour of saying what you said ten seconds ago preceded by the phrase “Or how about if…”

Add your own!

Thanks Yahoo! for yet another great headline: Anger at instant fines for violent criminals. What do they expect from violent criminals? Polite acceptance?

Huh. I didn’t realise the College Tribune already has a website. Initial thoughts:

• Jesus it’s one of the most badly-designed things I’ve ever seen. They must have gone to a lot of effort to make it this user-unfriendly
• Putting whole issues online as PDFs is a good move.
• Especially since it saves you trying to find stories by negotiating their nightmarish Flash-riddled navigation system.
• The design of the actual paper is at least colourful, if a bit mental.
• ‘Paralysis Analysis’ (page 23 here) is a brilliant idea
• I guess they’re not going to be interested in my world-conquering UCD super-portal idea now

The Crouchinator strikes again:

Alex Allen asked the right question: if Osama really is dead, will typhoid get the prize money for killing him? I’m not sure that would work - perhaps Bush will instead call off all government funding for anti-typhoid treatment and research in exchange for this blow for freedom.

Dystopian visions of the future are ten a penny. It seems any hack can come up with a shadowy, manipulative government that drugs/feeds on/dupes/steals the books off of the ordinary, decent folk who just happen to live in Futuretown, The World.

Beavis and Butthead creator Mike Judge has another, more plausible, dystopia: one where stupidity wins.

The idea of a future full of idiots is long overdue, and Judge’s film explains the dumbing down of our culture through both hilarious narration and accompanying visual gags. Given the idiotic course that modern culture seems to be taking and the fact that we’ve evolved beyond natural selection, Judge suggests that it’s only a matter of time before such conventions as proper grammar, reading and writing are derided for being “faggy� and the meek-brained inherit the earth.

Hugo Chavez, everybody’s favourite future leftie dictator (but hopefully not) called George Bush the ‘devil’ at the UN the other day.
Mainstream whoring, I know, but see how many you get wrong:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,,1878041,00.html

An ad with a link to this appeared (paid for) in a free commuter tabloid yesterday.

Does the this global corporation hold the solution to Dublin’s spiralling problems?

Watch the video:

http://www.dublincoastaldevelopment.com/

The Ryder Cup opening ceremony has gotten underway at the K Club. Let’s just take a look at the latest satellite weather map.

Brilliant.

Thankfully, Jackson is a reknowned fantasist. But still.

Michael Jackson’s latest business plan reportedly revolves around building a leprechaun theme park on the Emerald Isle. “He loves the whole idea of leprechauns and the magic and myths of Ireland,” a source tells the Irish Daily Mirror. “He’s always wanted to open his own theme park and he thinks Ireland is the perfect place and it will all be built around the leprechaun theme.”

Ghostcyle
“There are thousands of active cyclists in London, and facilities are gradually improving in most boroughs of the capital. The aim of this project is to identify and make visible accident spots around the city, as well as attempting to collate some form of statistical information regarding bicycle accidents.”

The Organic City
“The Organic City is a community storytelling project focused on the downtown Oakland areas surrounding Lake Merritt. We encourage you to
find and tell stories about local places through this website. These stories form the basis for mobile media that can be experienced while walking around the city”.

German ReggaeMap
It does exactly what it says on the tin.

LA Times via Artsjournal.com: News Corp.’s Fox Filmed Entertainment is launching a new offshoot - FoxFaith. The aim is to cash in on the supposedly huge Christian market revealed by the success of The Passion of the Christ.

But how does Fox extract cash from viewers repulsed by its small-screen offerings? It’s simple. They invite the audience to laugh at the very idea!

“The approach we took was … ‘At Fox, you may know us for our quality family programming,’ ” Yordy said he told the audience, against a backdrop of video clips from Paris Hilton’s “The Simple Life” and the reality show “Temptation Island.”

“The room just died laughing,” he said. “I said to them, ‘That is exactly what you expect from Fox. But that is not what we at FoxFaith are.’ “

Pope Benedict’s apology for quoting from a bigoted mediaeval text was typical of modern media-driven apologies. In that, it wasn’t one.

At this time I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims…

Good, isn’t it? He is sorry… for the reactions. He regrets… your whinging. He wishes… you would shut the fuck up. The passages were considered offensive… by the most easily-offended people in the world.

The BBC reports that the Pope is “sorry for offending Muslims“. I think it’s nice that the BBC thinks so.

Caroline once called flickr “Home of 1,452,905 sunsets, each more unique and beautiful than the last”. Well, it’s more like 864,269 (and being added at a rate of ~2,000 a day), but anyway … I like what this guy has done with 15,000 of them, arranging them all onto a grid according to date and time taken to produce a Milky Way-like stream that dips gently down as sunsets get later in summer. He’s got a few more meta-flickred time graphs here, including this one showing when people take pictures of people eating breakfast, lunch and dinner. Thing is, cram that many unique images together and you get a kind of brown mush - just like my breakfast, in fact.

Looking at this kind of thing - or any collection of personal experiences on a huge scale - feels like looking out of an airplane window onto a huge city - slightly awe-inspiring, slightly cosmic, slightly lonely. The more superficial facts you know about millions of strangers, the closer you seem to get to their lives, the more you realise how important is the gap that remains. And that’s probably the signal that it’s time to stop staring at photos and maps online and go meet someone for lunch.

On Monday came the news of ‘co-ordinated swoops’ revealing ‘widespread social welfare fraud’ by asylum seekers and other foreign nationals.

The report by Conor Lally in the Irish Times made it clear that this was no ordinary dole scrounging.

Sources close to the investigation, called Operation Gull, said they have been “staggered” by the level and nature of abuses being detected.

I’ve never been on the dole, but I bet ’staggered’ isn’t a word that social welfare officials just hand out like application forms.

It is only the second time in the history of the State that welfare officials have been seconded to a Garda unit. The first case involved the Criminal Assets Bureau.

Eh? I suppose that little factoid is for the civil service wonks among us. But for everyone else, the message is clear: CAB = murderous drug dealing thugs = I think you know what I’m saying.

The savings to the State work out at close to €7 million - and that’s only so far. Good work, right? Especially coming into winter when the SVP will surely be calling for funds to help families who are actually struggling.

But like Columbo, Mary Raftery begs your indulgence for just one more thing:

…what was not mentioned was that it represents something less than one percent of the €800 million total fraud within the social welfare system for the same period. This of course is fraud perpetrated almost entirely by Irish people.

Spooky and surprising news.

Man ordered to remove comments from website

A Clare man, alleged to have defamed a lawyer by posting offensive remarks on the internet, has been told by a High Court judge that he must do all he can to have them removed from the website.

Dublin barrister Jayne Maguire claimed John Gill, Drumline, Newmarket-on-Fergus, had posted grossly defamatory statements about her “of the most offensive and damaging nature both personally and professionally” at rateyoursolicitor.com.

A wonderful idea that can’t possibly have any drawbacks. Here are some of the many cowboys operating in Dublin.

There is a huge current of dissatisfaction with the legal profession in Ireland, culminating in a Prime Time report  earlier this year.

The main reason why solicitors are suspected of widespread dishonesty would appear to be the widespread nature of the instances of their dishonesty.

Poor thing beached in Sligo

Well, if a surgeon can get insurance for performing an integral part of his job – for instance surgery – why not CIA agents for an integral part of theirs?

From The Telegraph:

Torture insurance plan for CIA agents

WORRIED CIA agents are taking out torture insurance as fears grow that they will be targeted by alleged terrorists and their victims in American courts, writes Francis Harris.

The £160-a-year (E234) policies will provide the spies with about £106,000 (E155,000) in legal costs and about £530,000 (E777,000) towards awards made by the courts if they are sued and lose.

The rush for policies, which cover suits lodged for torture, human rights abuse and professional failings in the lead-up to the September 11 atrocities, was confirmed by CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield.

In the event of legal action, agents would normally be provided with government-funded legal cover, but many worry that in cases of alleged severe wrongdoing, assistance could be withdrawn.

Spar’s new wine promotion caught me off guard. Tom Doorley is plastered over the door, along with the following blurb:

I invite you to borrow my taste buds and find a great value…

I’ll stop right there - right at the point where the clumsy metaphor forced me to imagine tonguing Tom Doorley. Naturally there was nothing for it but to self-assemble a cup of hot, sweet tea.

Steve Irwin has died:

‘Crocodile Hunter’ Irwin killed

Australian environmentalist and television personality Steve Irwin has died during a diving accident.

Mr Irwin, 44, was killed by a stingray barb to the chest while he was filming an underwater documentary in Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef.

Paramedics from the nearby city of Cairns rushed to treat him at the scene but were unable to save him.

Mr Irwin was known for his television show The Crocodile Hunter and his work with native Australian wildlife.

Police in Queensland confirmed the naturalist’s death and said his family had been notified. Mr Irwin was married with two young children.

“It is believed that Mr Irwin collapsed after being stung by a stingray at Batt Reef off Port Douglas at about 1100 (0100 GMT),” a police statement quoted by AFP news agency said.

“His crew called for medical treatment and the Queensland medical helicopter responded. However Mr Irwin had died.”

The stingray is a flat, triangular-shaped fish, commonly found in tropical waters.

It gets its name from the razor-sharp barb at the end of its tail, coated in toxic venom, which the animal uses to defend itself with when it feels threatened.

Although deadly, such attacks on humans are a rarity. David Penberthy, editor of the Sydney Daily Telegraph, told the BBC he had never heard of anyone in Australia being killed by a stingray before.

“You know we still at this early stage don’t know what type of stingray it was, or, you know I guess given the bloke’s track record, whether he was getting up close and personal with it as well,” Mr Penberty said.

Maybe he jammed his thumb somewhere he shouldn’t have? Poor Steve, he was a lot of fun while he lasted.

Isledon, Ysendon, Isendune, Yseldon, Eyseldon … For hundreds of years the neighbourhood we now know and love as Islington was either so obscure or such a zany party town that nobody could agree what it was even called, according to this local church history site.

And this panoramic map of how Islington might have looked in Elizabethan times is rather good:

That’s St Mary’s Church on ‘The Upper Street’ circled (’The Lower Street’, now Essex Road, is on the right). Comparing with this fairly similar view from Google Earth, I think a few of the big inn-like buildings from the old map correspond to the sites of some of the area’s oldest pubs - obviously they go back a long way.

This is quite cool, though perhaps not for the reasons they think:

Put very simply, Bikely helps cyclists share knowledge of good bicycle routes.

It can be quite tricky traversing a car dominated city by bicycle, particularly when you need to travel an unknown route to a new destination.

But the chances are, someone has cycled that way before you. Bikely makes it easy for him or her to show you the best way

I dunno, people’s routes tend to be very specific - they’ll need a lot of routes submitted before someone really logs on to find exactly the right route across Hamburg they needed, for example. I suppose if it takes off they might manage it, but in the meantime it’s fun just plotting out your own routes (here’s my commute to work, here’s someone else’s swing round Donnybrook and Killiney), plus you can view them in Google Earth (by saving as a .gpx file) and, which I found just as nifty as Tom, you can view a cross-section which shows you the change in elevation along the route. How long before someone plots the entire route of the next Tour de France?