Monthly Archives: February 2012

The good old days.

From The National Library of Ireland:

This is the procession for James MacNeill, newly sworn in Governor General of the Irish Free State. Our catalogue had this as Westmoreland Street, Dublin. I’d be happier that this is actually the head of the procession on O’Connell Street, having just passed over O’Connell Bridge. Would you agree?

In typical fashion (if you’ll pardon the pun), the Irish Independent writer dismisses Mr. MacNeill’s attire with two words: “morning dress”, but we are treated to great detail on Mrs. MacNeill, who “wore a clipped lamb coat trimmed with fox fur and a brown felt hat to match the fur. Her dress was also brown, trimmed at the neck with soft yellow, and she wore shooes and stockings to match the dress.”

 

National Library Of Ireland Flickr Stream

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFNoJxv7tso

Mark Pollock is an Irish (from Hollywood, Co Down) adventurer and motivational speaker. In 1998, he lost his sight and in 2009, he became the first blind man to trek to the South Pole. Last summer, he fell from a bedroom window during the night and was left paralysed from the waist down.

This week he visited Berkeley, California-based Ekso Bionics and began walking again.

I was up and walking. I had no idea of the time but the PTs were giving me my ratio of standing time to walking time and number of steps. As we passed the first hour it looked like I could start to be part of this exciting innovation in robotic technology. But the walking frame wasn’t the end game, crutches are next and so my walking experiment continues

Walking In Robotic Legs (Mark Pollock)

Via @Markham

..should you shop in A-Wear and favour stepped-hem skirts, ‘Broderie Anglaise’ blouses cream sequin dresses, floral Palazzo trousers and shades of the brightest ‘Miami Vice’ candy pastel. Models Karen Fitzpatrick (brunette) Sarah Morrisey at the Morrison Hotel, Dublin, literally earlier.

(Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland)

Alan Toner, intellectual property and communications researcher, writes:

The labelling of the copyright amendment as Ireland’s SOPA has been contested by some as inaccurate. There are differences, it is true. Most obviously SOPA is designed to target ‘foreign’ websites, whereas the Irish SI (Statutory Instrument) makes no distinction between foreign and domestic web sites.

Secondly the SI focuses on copyright questions whereas SOPA takes aim at a broader range of alleged ‘intellectual property’ infringements. Participants in the counterfeit medicine trade as well as suppliers of counterfeit materials to the military and federal agencies are made subject to increased punishments. In addition SOPA is more forensic, and paradoxically thus, transparent in the terms of the anticipated consequences: IP (internet protocol) blocking (probably jettisoned at this point), exclusion from search engine results, isolation from financing via advertising or payment systems.

But it is precisely as a result of the open-ended language of the Irish legislation that there is a justifiable fear that such means could be deployed at the discretion of an Irish judge. IRMA’s behaviour – from the negotiation of private enforcement agreements with Eircom to their current suit against the Irish state for the losses sustained as a result of unauthorised uses – indicates how ill-advised it is to make available such an unbounded instrument for their use – these people have just got a bad attitude. Leader of the opposition, Micheal Martin, grotesquely described Sean Sherlock’s handling of the process as ‘perfect’, a remark less surprising if it is recalled that there was a desire amongst the last Fianna Fail/Green coalition to rush copyright enforcement orders through just as they were about to be booted out by the electorate.

Apart from the concerns about the substantive questions about legal consequences, there is a problem with method. When it takes a Freedom of Information request to discover that Enda Kenny held a private meeting last summer with the new head of the Motion Picture Association of America, former Democrat Senator Chris Dodd, then the suspicion that vested interests are intervening in a surreptitious manner to shape the law is fully justified. All the more so when it happens quietly in Castlebar.

Ireland’s Post-SOPA Tsunami (Alan Toner, KnowFuturInc)

Hang on.

Chris Dodd met Enda Kenny?

From The Sunday Times (behind paywall):

(Pic by Dara Robinson)

With great difficulty.

Ray D’Arcy at St. Brigid’s Cathedral (and round tower) in Kildare Town performing his first official role as Tourism Ambassador for County Kildare: weaving a St Brigid’s Cross for the annual St. Brigid’s Festival (Feile Bhride), organised by the Brigidine Sisters. He is seen here with Sr Mary Minehan (left) and Carmel Kindregan.

And here’s one they made earlier:

(Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland)

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan writes:

Yet, almost overnight, the old antagonisms have been wiped away. The euro crisis pushed the two kindred nations together, and the Queen’s visit sealed their alliance. At dinner in Dublin at the weekend, most of the people I spoke to started from the premise that the EU was a disaster, and that Britain and Ireland should forge a closer relationship within the Anglosphere. One questioner asked about joining sterling, another about forging a joint foreign policy. A man who described himself as a lifelong republican wondered whether, if Alex Salmond succeeded in securing a ‘devo max’ settlement, it might not become the basis of a confederation throughout the British Isles.

.

Ireland And The United Kingdom Have Never Been Closer (Daniel Hannan, Telegraph)

Previously: How We Differ

“I saw the traffic lights [above at James Street, Westport] and the symbols have since been removed.I believe that heart signs appeared around the same time on traffic lights in Galway city. The only concern we had was that they might distract motorists, ”

Insp McKenna said. He assured The Mayo News that gardaí were not worried that the signs or the graffiti were the work of serious drug pushers.

 

Stop The Light And Get Stoned (Aine Ryan, Mayo news)