Category Archives: Misc

One Direction Fans: A Little Bit Scary

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One Direction Announce First UK & Ireland Tour (MTV)

It Doesn’t Add Up

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Eoin Lettice writes:

For €350,000 you can purchase this large city centre building [adjacent to the Mercy hospital] which was once home to George Boole (top) Queen’s College Cork’s first Professor of Mathematics and the ‘Father’ of modern algebra.
The house has been in a poor state of repair for some time and a structural collapse and ‘making-safe’ last year has led to significant damage to the roof and interior of the building.
Now the building is up for sale with Global Properties as an investment site – apparently failing to mention that the building is listed on the Cork City record of protected structures and as such, cannot be demolished.


For Sale: Ireland’s Scientific Heritage (Communicate Science)

George Boole (Wikipedia)

Shamrock: Another View

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Further to our disputed item (see comments under that post) on Ireland’s first female superhero, Shamrock (above).

Turns out she wasn’t that super after all.

From Laser Cola’s Top 10 Racially Insensitive Superheroes:

In 1982, Marvel set out to create a character that truly represented the pride and culture of Ireland, but instead they made this. Molly Fitzgerald was given “luck” powers and became the superhero known as Shamrock and she was as lame as she sounds. Though she supposedly has the real “luck of the Irish” as her super power, Marvel gave her a crap life. In one story she is even drugged by her own father, hoping to steal her powers – the shame. Later the character announced her retirement and became a hair dresser. They later brought her back to the Marvel Universe and she was then presented as having become overweight since retiring. Since Shamrock first made her appearance in Marvel Super-Heroes: Contest of Champions #1, she has been more of a filler for meeting a social quota then a true attempt at a culturally based character… and did I mention she is LAME?!!!

Jaysus.

The Wednesday Art Quiz: Win A Tin Of Nunn’s Beeswax

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Arts minister Jimmy Deenihan and AIB chairman David Hodgkinson within the last hour. AIB are handing over (ha!) 39 “major artworks’ to the state including the painting above.

Can you guess the artist and the name of the work?

Lines close at midnight.

The first correct entry ‘out of the hat’ wins a tin of Nunn’s Beeswax.

Nunn’s Beeswax (& Genuine Turpentine) is lovingly made in Kilkenny and favoured by those who enjoy fine wooden objects with a polished finish. After all “It cleans, it feeds, it glows.” Literally.

(Government Press Office/Photocall Ireland)

That’s No Economically Viable Moon

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The number-loons at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University economics blog have done some number crunching in an attempt to figure out the logistics and financial cost of actually building a 140km diameter steel Death Star. They figure the Earth contains enough iron for 2 billion of the things.

Now the bad news.

Scaling up to the Death Star, this is about 1.08×1015 tonnes of steel. 1 with fifteen zeros.

But, before you go off to start building your apocalyptic weapon, do bear in mind two things. Firstly, the two billion death stars is mostly from the Earth’s core which we would all really rather you didn’t remove. And secondly, at today’s rate of steel production (1.3 billion tonnes annually), it would take 833,315 years to produce enough steel to begin work. So once someone notices what you’re up to, you have to fend them off for 800 millennia before you have a chance to fight back. In context, it takes under an hour to get the steel for (the British aircraft carrier) HMS Illustrious.

Oh, and the cost of the steel alone? At 2012 prices, about $852,000,000,000,000,000. Or roughly 13,000 times the world’s GDP.

The second Death Star was 900km in diameter. So that’s even less of a runner.

Damn.

How Much Would It Cost To Build The Death Star? (Centives)

via

Remember Ireland’s First Female Superhero?

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Well, it was 1982.

Marvel Comics’ Molly Fitzgerald aka ‘Shamrock’.

Molly, as Shamrock, attended the first ever Pan-European Conference on Super-Human Affairs as a representative for Ireland. The conference was attacked by the Nazi villain Brain Drain, who brainwashed the heroes present to return to their countries and kill the heads of state. Various members of Alpha Flight raced to stop the heroes, and Northstar hoped to stop Shamrock from attacking Ireland’s president. However, her powers made her immune to Brain Drain’s influence, and the president was never in danger.

Roger Mellie Would Be Proud

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The Profanisaurus of its day.

From Project Gutenberg’s free to browse online copy of ’1811 Dictionary in the Vulgar Tongue’ by Captain Francis Grose. Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing selected the beauts above.

Then – bearing in mind that this is the language of the early 19th century British underworld – there’s the ‘Irish’ section:

Oh.

See the whole filthy thing here, you clumpish fribble.

via/pic/pic