Art, media, opinion and ideas
One of my favourite things about Irish myths and epics is the vastness of scale, the often surreal degree of exaggeration, particularly when it comes to feats of strength and of warfare. Thus, Fionn is described as having calves the size of a calf, widening to thighs the size of a cow, culminating in freakishly disproportionate shoulders the width of a mountain pass.
Some time ago I wrote on the double standard whereby communist iconography is still acceptable in pop culture, while fascist regalia is strictly beyond the pale. One of the examples I used was the Cork City of Culture promotional campaign which drew on the imagery of Maoist China. Up piped Kevin in the comments, to remind me of the restaurant Café Mao.
Special Recognition AwardOriginally uploaded by _Embarr_The Irish Blog Awards on Saturday night were the highlight of the nerd calendar they always are. However, there was a particular unexpected excitement this year, as Fergal has said. I was literally speechless as I walked up to pick up my award- a Special Recognition one.
It being poor form to expect him to blow his own trumpet, it falls to me to congratulate fellow tuppenceworthy Simon McGarr on his Special Recognition Award at last night's Irish Blog Awards. The gong was a well-deserved recognition of his many efforts in and on behalf of the 'sphere. His wife, I have no doubt, will be grateful of the champagne.
From the News and Gossip section of the Indo:The blogging culture has come under attack in recent weeks from the likes of Irish Times columnist John Waters, who branded the medium nonsense and asked on national radio if there was a blogger "who could string three sentences together". (Waters was subsequently challenged on radio by blogger and journalist Sarah Carey. )The game's up Fergal.
I've written before about Feedjournal, which takes RSS feeds and automatically generates a newspaper-like pdf from them. Well, it's now emerged from Beta testing. It even collects and prints the images accompanying the stories.
As some of you will have seen in today's Irish Times a laptop containing 171,324 blood donor records was stolen in New York. " donor records would include details such as name, address, date of birth, gender, blood group and contact phone number. The records on the laptop included any donor details that were updated between July 2nd and October 11th, 2007.
I will be on The Tubridy Show on RTE Radio 1 sometime shortly after 9am tomorrow morning, discussing YouTube and the legal questions arising therefrom. Update: Show now available.
What is it about suburbia that fills us with dread? Even if we live there, it somehow represents for us a kind of spiritual death. We reel out the clichés: identical, cookie-cutter homes; CD collection composed entirely of Norah Jones CDs purchased exclusively from Tesco; kids and a mortgage; middle age, middle class, middle of the road, boring, you might as well be dead.
UPDATE: You can now watch the survey results pour in. Feel free to do your own analysis on what we've found. Paul McGuinness may rest easy.
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