Yearly Archives: 2013

Spuds2 Spuds3 Spuds4The Sitric Compost Garden.

It’s an urban community garden whatsit at the end of a terrace on the corner of Sitric Road and Viking Place in Stoneybatter, Dublin.

Anne Hayden, who has created a new blog On The Batter, about all things Stoneybatter, Dublin, writes:

“New York native Kaethe Burt-O’Dea, (above) who has been living in Stoneybatter for 25 years, started the garden in 2005.

She explains: “I’d always composted and when I came to Dublin I was trying to compost in my back garden but we’re so confined here, we have so little space, that it wasn’t terribly successful.

It was really with a couple of neighbours that we started talking about composting on the street and looking at that site. In fact we didn’t know who it was owned by…and we still don’t.”

““We spent a couple of years worrying what would people say if we put something there, would they kick us off? And finally we said ‘what the hell’ and put some compost bins there and started composting and growing things there.”

 

Fair play, in fairness.

On The Batter (Compost Together)

@onthebatterblog

Anglo-two-layers

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/98368251″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Here it comes. They can’t hide.

The Anglo Tapes re-mixed, juxtaposed and Fugee-ed.

ronanjkelly

ESB

ESB2Hundreds of ESB workers gather outside the ESB’s headquarters on Lower Fitzwilliam Street in Dublin.

They’re protesting an approval, made at today’s AGM, to pay a €78.4m dividend to the State/exchequer.

The workers claim the move is unlawful and that it will undermine the semi-State body’s ability to sort out a €1.6billion deficit in the ESB’s pension fund.

ESB workers protest over planned dividend to State (RTÉ)

ESB staff try to halt €500m dividend payments to State over pension dispute (Irish Times)

Pics: Emily

90305521

My office has been contacted in recent days by sections of the press making inquiries concerning my state of health and general medical condition. The following statement will I hope provide an adequate response.

“I am currently undergoing medical management for a serious cancer condition. I am extremely grateful for the superb treatment I have received from the team of consultants at St. Vincent’s Private Hospital as well as the nursing and general hospital staff.

The cancer appears to be related to the initial incidence of viral hepatitis which I contracted from tainted drinking water while I was on unpaid Government business in Eastern Europe in 1994.

I have no difficulty in making this information public in response to press queries because I believe that there should be no stigma attaching to cancer as a disease. I continue to enjoy life and am looking forward to returning to my duties in Seanad Eireann over the next few days.

David Norris

 

(Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland)

(If you would like to add a message below for David we’ll get it to him)

elementselements2‘Science communicator’ and PhD student Jamie Gallagher maps where the scientists who discovered the various elements of the Periodic Table were living when they discovered them. Talking to Smart News, Gallagher sez;

One of my favourites has to be polonium, though, the first element to be discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie. They were working in a modified shed with substances so dangerously radioactive their notes are still too active to be handled safely. Working together they isolated this element and later named it Polonium after Marie’s home country. (A country, I may add, that turned her away from her pursuit of education as she was a politically interested female). It was her hope that by naming the element after Poland she could generate interested in the independence (from Germany) campaign for the country. Yet [in my periodic table] the victory comes in under the French flag where the work was carried out. It remains to this day the only element to be named after a political cause, and a wonderful tribute to a phenomenal woman.

Full sized version here.

io9

IToldJune, 2008

IrishTimesWebMarch, 2013

ITnewJune 26, 2013

 

Design Changes At Irishtimes.com (Hugh Linehan, Irish Times)

Previously: The IT Crowd

Building an Irish Times website for the new digital era (Hugh Linehan, Irish Times, March 12, 2012)

Pics: Top and bottom, Stephen Devine; middle, Designrouge.com

Thanks Stephen Devine