An Píopa/The Pipe

The Pipe, The Film website

Update: the video has been removed from YouTube for copyright reasons

#ge11 is the Twitter tag for the Republic of Ireland’s general election 2011

Boards.ie 2011 General Election Poll Brilliant take on the ballot paper, allowing you to make a virtual vote, and better, to acquaint yourself with your candidates in your constituency. Its current overall vote appears to be closely tracking conventional polls in newspapers etc, which is interesting in itself. Whether it is accurate for each constituency remains to be seen.

Some candidates you might not have been aware of (with links to boards.ie/vote)

Declaration of interest: I’m a friend and Aosdána colleague of Mannix Flynn. I follow Kate Bopp on twitter.

. Vote Mannix Flynn. running in Dublin South East
It has become a universal truth of General Election 2011 that “the people want change”, but, as citizens, we need to reflect on the nature of that change. Do we merely want to “modify” the way we are governed with a tired reshuffle of the personnel and values that have served us so badly? Or do we want “transformation”? Transformation requires courage and hope. Don’t do the same thing, expecting a different result

Mick Wallace, running in Wexford

We need political reform to bring a new politics, an end to political donations which separate the electorate from the legislature by allowing those with the most money to have greatest influence, a smaller Dáil with accountability and transparency in all its workings, a genuine effort to provide a decent State Health System for all, a greater emphasises on education including access to pre-school education, an end to expenses and pension abuse, and real local Government that works.

Kate Bopp running in Tipperary North

I believe we must pass power & responsibility to local Government at local level. Introducing directly elected mayors and giving local councils more executive powers. This will allow national legislators to focus on National Issues. The identification and abolition of cronyism is a top priority. I will also strive for shorter terms in office allowing for a regular influx of fresh knowledge and ideas. I will promote a greater accountability of those in office.

Gerry Kinsella and Pat Kavanagh of Fís Nua, running in Wicklow

Fís Nua is an all-Ireland federation with a political structure that seeks to bring together, under one umbrella, all those disaffected with the corruption in politics and government and who feel that they have been left without a voice within the political arena in Ireland.

Egypt

Perhaps, and perhaps not, relevant to #ge11, but a thought-provoking essay nonetheless. The Egyptian Revolution: First Impressions from the field. , a deeply moving essay by Mohammed Bamyeh.

At this moment, out of the deadweight of inwardness and self-contempt, there emerged spontaneous order out of chaos.

Quantum Art

I wish that Julian Voss-Andreae had made some of these sculptures when I was in school. While we can’t really claim that they represent quantum physics concepts accurately, they still would’ve made reading about Bosons and Fermions more pleasant.[Gizmodo]
The artist: Julian Voss-Andreae

Some architecture I like
Kärsämäki Shingle Church in Finland by Lassila Hirvilammi Architects

‘De Valera was a British spy’
Book claims national hero was ‘turned’ after 1916 Irish Independent

Fine erotic writing
The Demure Lemur

Roll Up Notebook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H0K1k54t6A

orkin-design.de
Can’t wait. via Treehugger for full description

Michael O’Brien. Probably the most admired man in Ireland right now.
Q&A May 25th – response to question on Ryan Commission Report YouTube Link

‘It was murder of the soul’ A terrible legacy is born. What emerges from the publication of the Ryan Commission’s report on the penal system in which thousands of Irish children were incarcerated for long periods of their lives, is that Church and state are still one, still arm in arm, and that they will protect each other, no matter what. Mannix Flynn, Sunday Business Post.

Mannix Flynn interview on Newstalk.ie (sound file only)

A harsh history of the horror MANNIX FLYNN reviews The Irish Gulag: How the State Betrayed its Innocent Children By Bruce Arnold. The Irish Times

Passing the shame from victim to State WHEN A society is shocked into recognising its own ugliest face in the mirror, as ours has been with the Ryan report, it needs a lot of things to happen. Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsOn2zCF9fg

Mannix Flynn’s Ghosts (direct Youtube link

InTune hopes to be an Irish Nokia Firm’s plan to make fibre-optic communications infrastructure more efficient could create thousands of jobs here, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON, The Irish Times

The New Socialism Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online. Wired.

Google Book Search Settlement Agreement

Spirit of Ireland To make wind usable on a large scale, it must be stabilised and become immediately available when required. The way to do this is to have a cost-effective means of storing its energy. There is a solution. By building large Hydro Storage Reservoirs, we can store Natural Energy from the wind.

Howard Gardner. Photo Credit Harvard Graduate School of Education

U.N. Panel Says World Should Ditch Dollar A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on the dollar. Reuters.

Eruption in South Pacific March 19, 2009
NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga – Scientists sailed Thursday to inspect an undersea volcano that has been erupting for days near Tonga (MSN, with video ) and also from Boston.com

First Tongue: An Ancient Global Language

Can we build a world with open source? (Victor Keegan. The Guardian)

Life Size Blue Whale. WDCS (requires flash)

Alternative Energy Revolution clever comic from XKCD

Let Me Chew My Coca Leaves By EVO MORALES AYMA (New York Times – may need registration)

Poetry is the cornerstone of civilisation
Thoughts of scrapping the post of poet laureate must be quelled as we should revere the likes of Seamus Heaney and Wendy Cope. AA Gill. The Times

Drunk Dialling for Change . [MacDaddy World.] Hiliarious. But touching, somehow.

Hopes for a happy ending: Literary voices on the American Election [The Independent]

Overwhelming evidence that Hospice Care saves money. It doesn’t take a commission to suss that, not to mention the quantum increase in quality of life at the end. [The Irish Times]

Copper door handles and taps kill 95% of superbugs in hospitals [The Daily Mail] Many, if not most, Irish hospitals, please note.

Google’s Copyright Case: Settlement Is A Wake Up Call [Tech Check]

…writers are indeed seeing the writing on the wall: their world is going digital in the same way music and movies did before them.

El vínculo de Juan Ramón Jiménez con América
Cuatro muestras reviven en Huelva la relación del poeta con el continente [El País]

Cesare Pavese, el solitario de las colinas
El centenario del escritor revela la permanente actualidad de su literatura [El País]

10 Fun Facts About Pablo Picasso [Neatorama]

The Things He Carried Airport security in America is a sham—“security theater” designed to make travelers feel better and catch stupid terrorists. [Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic]

Bunachar Logainmneacha na hÉireann/Placenames Database of Ireland, arna fhorbairt ag Fiontar (DCU) i bpáirt leis an mBrainse Logainmneacha (An Roinn Gnóthaí Pobail, Tuaithe agus Gaeltachta) / developed by Fiontar (DCU) and The Placenames Branch (Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs).

Another Venice Carnival video on YouTube by Aisling Eyre
Are they men or women? Who cares.

Authors to profit from library scheme

Draft regulations which are currently being finalised are expected to cap the maximum yearly payment to an author to about €8,200, the sum currently payable under the UK scheme. The minimum payment is expected to be as low as a few euro a year. -
The Irish Times

Peter K Austin’s top 10 endangered languages
The linguistics professor and author shares a personal selection from the thousands of languages on the brink of disappearing. The Guardian

Intellectual work induces excessive calorie intake
I knew it!

Ireland Uncorked
National Geographic’s story behind Aill Na Serracht (Cliff of the Foals), off Co Clare, where world class surfers come to surf the great way of the same name, Aill Na Serracht, which breaks about 20 times a year. Text by Gregory Mone Photographs by Alex di Suvero

Be Good or Be Gone, Fionn Regan
Very witty young Dublin singer songwriter. Nifty guitar, too. YouTube video.

Aurora Concept Video

Aurora is a concept video presenting one possible future user experience for the Web, created by Adaptive Path as part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series. Aurora explores new ways people could interact with the Web in the future based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios.

I can’t wait.

How to properly embed a YouTube video
- with author’s warning.

Aurora Concept Video – a glimpse at the near future on your browser. I like it.

Top Ten superfoods – for the moment, at least

Obama’s VP candidate Joseph Biden Watch Video Highlights of his career. He calls himself an Irish Catholic. He’s good craic, anyway, and has a very moving life story.

But the geeks are not best pleased …
VP Candidate Biden Is No Friend to File Sharing, Net Neutrality Protection or Online Privacy

The Cat Flap
I’m no objectivist (I think!) but I really enjoyed
Peter Sirr’s review of The Poems of Charles Reznikoff, 1918 – 1975, and while I could take or leave some of the poems quoted, I thought this was marvellous.

Walk about the subway station
in a grove of steel pillars;
how their knobs, the rivet-heads–
unlike those of oaks–
are regularly placed;
how barren the ground is
except here and there on the platform
a flat black fungus
that was chewing-gum.
(Jerusalem the Golden, 18)

Rosemarie Rowley’s essays

ECT in the life and work of Sylvia Plath by Rosemarie Rowley

One of the characters in my novel The Water Star undergoes ECT and in trying to imagine it I could not see how it could be other than barbaric.
Rosemarie Rowley thoughtful and affecting essay convinces me that this is so.

Writing of the ECT as a ritual should not surprise us. It is a ritual, a modern one. The treatment is both profoundly humiliating, and barbaric, twin elements of torture. In a letter to the author of this essay, myself, Ted Hughes described it as an atrocity. He wrote to me that ECT was the crucial event in her writing

The Beckett Country Collection
The Beckett Country Collection is now online at Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive Project (IVRLA) at UCD.
The Beckett Country Collection is derived from
The Beckett Country: Catalogue of an exhibition for Samuel Beckett’s eightieth birthday. E. O’Brien and J. Knowlson. Black Cat Press. Dublin 1986... See Eoin O’Brien’s Samuel Beckett page.

Eoin O’Brien
Do further explore Renaissance Man Eoin O’Brien’s website.
Eminent cardiologist, friend and publisher of Samuel Beckett, he is also a considerable medical historian. See, for example, his Conscience and Conflict. A Biography of Sir Dominic Corrigan (1802-1880). The Glendale Press. Dublin 1983, which, as it has long been out of print, he is generously making available for free download under a Creative Commons licence, along with other medical history volumes of great value, such as The Charitable Infirmary, Jervis Street 1718-1987: A Farewell Tribute. Edited by E. O’Brien. The Anniversary Press. Dublin. 1987. pp.279. Illustrated..
Many of his voluminous papers and essays are likewise available. It’s quite a monument to a life’s work, and is still growing.

The Dublin Review of Books

The Dublin Review of Books is proving to be a most stimulating online review, allowing critics to flex their critical muscles in essays up to 7,000 words in length. Such reviews have only been available to tiny audiences in Ireland, and it’s a particular pleasure to see such intellectual stimulus online, for free. The Phantom of Exclusion, by Barra Ó Seaghdha’s review of Surveying Irish Poetry
Modern Irish Poetry, 1800-2000, by Justin Quinn, Cambridge University Press, 256 pp, £14.99, 978-0521609258, is a fine example of this.

Chris Singleton
Finally, he gets in this post as he writes fine lyrics, but Dublin solo artist Chris Singleton’s Rock and Roll and Hyperbole recently had a very interesting post on how musicians can track how and when their music is being listened to. Here’s an excerpt:

With the rise of social networks like Facebook, Myspace, iLike and Last FM, musicians now have a plethora of ways to measure how many people are listening to their music. For example, any band with a Myspace page will be able to see how many plays of their songs they are getting; which tracks tend to be more popular; and how many songs are downloaded (as opposed to just listened to).

The permalink for the full entry is here.