Over at the BBC, Evan Davis, the slightly-less-barking economics correspondent, has blogged about a book by Stuart Sutherland. He cites the example of the lost theatre ticket, which is an infuriating piece of narrow thinking, made more annoying by the fact that it tries to point out a “logical fallacy”. I was going to point out its many flaws, but the responses to the post on the BBC did that already.

The notion of irrational systems, if you can call them that, is interesting though. I quite like the idea of the unthinking general throwing more troops at something that isn’t working, which seems quite apt these days.

The question is, though, whether or not you can really understand irrationality rationally. Since to look at the causes of irrational behaviour, we would find it becomes rational by the mere fact that it has causes. I suppose that’s where the theatre ticket example falters. In trying to show the irrationality, it strips away the legitimate motivations for the decision to walk away, which make the decision very rational.

Dunno what it is about him but I love Alan Arkin. Maybe it’s because he specialises in playing the rational crazy man, which made him a good choice for Yossarian in Catch 22. Not that I’ve seen all his stuff, but my favourite part of his might be in Mother Night, a fairly unknown but fairly brilliant adaptation of the Vonnegut novel.

About an hour ago, I went to the supermarket, and while getting a piece of barbequed chicken from the cooked meats counter, the old Indian gent spooning the chicken into the tinfoil container said something. I didn’t hear, and leaned in, presenting my ear for improved listening, he said it again, and I still didn’t hear, leaning further in I finally caught the words “I respect you from my heart, sir.”

He smiled broadly. I thanked him, and moved on to the frozen foods aisle.

Clearly someone at the BBC didn’t get the memo. We now have a new metric for size comparisons, so that chart showing squids and buses on the same scale is incomplete. Thankfully, Conor has set them straight:

This is marvellous:

Approaching life in the London garden centre: acquiring entities and providing products

Russell Hitchings, Environment and Planning A 39(2) 242 – 259

Abstract: For some geographers, the world has become imaginatively alive with arrays of new nonhumans. Yet how well these vocabularies actually adhere to personal practice is something which could be better explored. Recent accounts of consumption, meanwhile, are committed to closely observed contextual experience. Yet, physical things can seem somewhat subdued in these accounts. With these ideas in mind, in this paper I align a geographical embrace of material vitality and an in-depth approach to practised consumption. I report on a period of ethnographic work with seven garden centres in London to reconsider the ways in which contemporary urbanites encounter the items on sale there. In the London garden centre there are some different ways of approaching life and some changing cultures of control, as the rumbling agencies that certain products purvey are both openly enjoyed and nervously negated. Exploring the unease associated with this situation and its impact upon personal behaviour and physical format, I reflect, in particular, on the current experience of plants. The conclusion that follows is potentially perverse as, although we can benefit from being with life, it seems that, in certain city spaces at least, we now deal better with that which is more dead.

I’ve uploaded a bit of a Flann O’Brien rarity as a picture on Flickr: it’s a map of “An Domhan Mór” drawn by Seán O Sullivan for An Béal Bocht (but not included in its translation as The Poor Mouth, apparently) which I think I scanned from UCD Library’s copy about ten years ago. It’s a great illustration of the unique world-view Flann / Myles was describing in the book, with Chorca Dorcha pretty big, Sligo Jail a prominent landmark and special care taken to describe the location of money order offices, poteen deposits, the Buoys of Wexford, and George Bernard Shaw. The far-flung Gaelic diaspora is also well represented in its two principle homes, De Odar Saighd and Thar Lear.

The delusion, I mean, not the murderousness. From an NYT article on the reaction in Uganda to the film of “The Last King of Scotland”:

The Amin family, meanwhile, is not so happy. Relatives said that the former president, who called himself the “Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea� and “The Last King of Scotland,� among other things, was not the madman that Mr. Whitaker portrayed him as being.

“I don’t care what people say,� said Taban Amin, the eldest of Amin’s more than three dozen children. “Whitaker doesn’t look like my father. He’s too short and his teeth are wrong.�

As for the festivities on Saturday, Taban Amin seemed a little hurt that he was not invited.

“I mean, we’re family after all,� he said.

Also, considering that one of the themes of the story is how a smug elite were blinded by luxury and Amin’s shallow pan-Africanist propaganda to the cruelty and suffering under his rule, this makes me a bit uncomfortable:

Ugandans got a taste of Oscar extravagance on Saturday when a public relations firm from South Africa organized a day of over-the-top festivities at the Garden City Cineplex, the only multiscreen theater in the country. There were preparties and after-parties, with Uganda’s elite tipping back Champagne over zebra-print tables and young musicians pounding goatskin drums.

Even Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, made an appearance, strutting down the red carpet, which his security staff had supplied specifically for the event, along with three truckloads of soldiers …

Here he is scoring a hat-trick at the weekend against some very accommodating defending. Think he’s got about 10 to go before he hits 1,000 career goals (according to his own count).

To celebrate our new-found fame, I’ve updated the blog to the newest version of Wordpress, the only noticeable changes being a nicer look to the admin pages and, apparently, a fix to the problem that was blocking some comments but not others (hopefully Justin is de-blacklisted now!).

Speaking of the upgrade, there are some problems with the accompanying Wordpress documentation. When you’ve downloaded and extracted Wordpress 2.1, the readme file tells you (in part):

Upgrading

Before you upgrade anything, make sure you have backup copies of any files you may have modified such as index.php.
Upgrading from any previous WordPress to 2.1:

1. Delete your old WP files, saving ones you’ve modified.
2. Upload the new files.
3. Point your browser to /wp-admin/upgrade.php.
4. You wanted more, perhaps? That’s it!

Sorry, but that first step is vague to the point of recklessness. Also, the readme doesn’t tell you that more detailed instructions are available online. These are much more helpful, but still include some less than helpful bits, like

WARNING: WordPress Version 2.1 requires PHP version 4.2 or greater, and MySQL version 4.0 or greater! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO UPGRADE if your server does not meet the minimum requirements!

without actually telling you how you’re meant to check your PHP and MySQL version. Sure, you’re meant to know this if you’re a webmaster and I eventually worked out how to check the MySQL version, but if you’re a clueless amateur like me and I suspect many other Wordpress users you could do with a bit more info. It just wasn’t fool-proof enough for this fool.

Who nominated us in the best group blog category in the Irish Blog Awards?

http://www.jason-roe.com/blog/blog-awards-voting-opens/

http://www.awards.ie/vote/

Unfortunately at the moment they’ve got us down as .com but they’ve been told.

Meanwhile, you could do worse than vote for http://caitriona.net in best photo blog category.

This site is, well, fascinating. Entirely dedicated to a love affair between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.

http://www.thyla.com/

Here’s a few pictures:

Mr. Spock dressed as a Can-Can girl.

This picture is called At the Rennaissance Faire on Shore Leave.

Which begs the question… do Kirk and Spock have such a in-depth love affair that they attend Medieval festivals with eachother?

I liked this bit from The Wire so much I uploaded it to YouTube:

Uploadin’ to YouTube is one complicated bidness, so I got much love for those who been there before me. Here’s McNulty and Bunk going about their work, and here’s the bit where Bodie learns chess. And I suppose I have to mention this Wire piss-take, which is mostly so-so but has a great interrogation scene: “Here, fifty glamorous getaways - places you won’t be going!”.

As of quarter to 11 tonight, the Wikipedia page on Stephen Staunton reads:

Stephen Staunton (born 19 January 1969 in Drogheda, Republic of Ireland) was a professional footballer who enjoyed a distinguished career with Liverpool and Aston Villa, he also became the Republic of Ireland’s most capped player. He is currently the Republic of Ireland manager.It was considered to be a strange decison as it is regarded that Staunton couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. He was only hired because he was a drinking mate with the chief executive of the FAI John Delaney. He just doesn’t have clue. He should go back to coaching fucking Walsall.

It’s always good to be reminded about Flann O’Brien. Here’s a great bit from this essay I stumbled across on themodernword.com.

There is scarcely a single word in the Irish…that is simple and explicit… Here is an example copied from Dinneen and from more authentic sources known only to my little self:

Cur, g. curtha and cuirthe, m. – act of putting, sending, sowing, raining, discussing, burying, vomiting, hammering into the ground, throwing through the air, rejecting, shooting…the act of inflating hare’s offal with a bicycle pump…a hawk’s vertigo…a wooden coat, a custard mincer…a stoat’s stomach-pump…

In Donegal there are native speakers who know so many million words that it is a matter of pride with them never to use the same word twice in a life-time.

Inspired I’m told in part by this post, here’s page 3 of yesterday’s Metro.

Key quote:

The claims were dismissed by Cathal Gaffney, television producer and co-founder of Brown Bag.

‘In 12 years of business we have never been accused of anything’, said Gaffney, who described Bears 3 as an ‘obscure’ piece of animation which has ‘never been broadcast’.

‘I find these remarks distressing’.

Hmmm. While he was certainly trying to dismiss the accusation, he doesn’t seem to have actually denied it.

There has also been some more comment over at creativeireland.com, which apparently got the lawyers out:

editor: For legal reasons I would ask that Creative Ireland members post no more topics in relation to this issue, or Brown Bag Films.

Solicitors acting on behalf of Brown Bag Films are currently in contact with Creative Ireland.

Creative Ireland takes any issue of defamation very seriously and our moderators and myself act as swiftly as possible to deal with any such issues that may arise once contacted.

I’d be surprised if BB thought they could actually win any such case, but such a threat is a useful way of shutting down further discussion.