01.31.08
Retraction
I want to state that I am officially embarrassed I wrote this.
What a laugh he must’ve had reading that.
The Des Richarson evidence should be a great laugh.
01.30.08
Today
What an awful awful story this is – four teachers in a primary school abusing children from the 1960’s to 1980’s. That kind of abuse cannot take place without people knowing and turning their backs. One teacher admitted he selected his victim because he was poor and malnourished – figured he wouldn’t get any grief from the parents – and he was right. Other people knew about it. That is absolutely certain.
Meanwhile the other day, Myers wrote a column which shows the utterly bizarre logic the “anti-feminists” are willing to employ.
He describes a court case which can be summarised as follows:
- girl out for night with friends gets pissed and goes back to a friend’s bedsit with a strange (ie previously unknown to her) guy – she and the friends crash out.
- she wakes up and yer man and herself are having sex. She protests in some way (Myers says she said she had no protection) – the guy withdraws and on the advice of her friends leaves.
- later she makes an allegation of rape. He presents himself at the Garda Station and co-operates fully with the investigation but says there was no rape – they woke up together, began having sex and when asked to, he stopped.
Myers says “drunken, remorseful girls can do a couple of things after they’ve discovered they’re having sex, or just had it, without knowing too much about it. They can write the night off as human folly, blaming themselves and the men concerned for getting so drunk so as not even to be conscious of, never mind responsible for, their deeds, in which there is no conscious consent, no conscious denial, no conscious intent, no conscious assent, and most of all, no conscious violation.
Or they can go to the gardai — which is what happened here.”
Now, so far I agree with him. Date rape is really complex and I could write a long, long essay on the whole issue. Suffice to say that I don’t agree that all rapes are equal and that the young woman who gets pissed and gets intimate with a stranger is equal in status to the woman who is attacked and raped either outside or in her own home. If a car is stolen, a car is stolen – a crime has been committed and the thief should be prosecuted. If I leave my car in a notorious blackspot with a laptop visible on the back seat – I can still expect justice from the gardai, but any decent friend will say “you idiot – why did you park your car there in the first place?”
ANYWAY, so he’s not being Mr Sensitive with his language and could keep his column to this point, but then he goes on to explain that a previous trial of this man couldn’t reach a verdict and in THIS trial, the man was acquitted! by a jury made up of 11 women.
What conclusion does he draw? That it appears that men can get justice EVEN from women in a rape case? That women clearly expect their peers to behave responsibly and that a regrettable grubby incident between two drunk people is not necessarily a rape. That society can be expected to see sense?
No, he says IF the jury members were men, they probably would have found him guilty and THEREFORE! feminism is terrible because it would have been feminist propaganda that the men would have believed.
Reality doesn’t suit his argument – so let’s ignore that and speculate about things that didn’t happen (as opposed to what actually did) in order to have a go at feminists. Sigh…
01.29.08
Blog over Troubled Waters
oh dear..since Andrew’s looking for it!
My name is Sarah and I’m a blogaholic. I’ve tried to give up but keep having relapses. When I see or read something interesting, my inner voice says “I must put that on my blog”. Then my other voice says “No, Sarah, you don’t. Tell a friend, not the world”. Then all the other voices join in and I have to lie down for a while. So when John Waters had a go at blogs I was willing to listen, but then he went over the top and I had to figure out what he’s at. Maybe he needs to lie down for a while too?
On Newstalk’s Breakfast Show a couple of weeks ago, he said that blogs were “entirely stupid’ and asked the hosts to find him a blogger who could put three consecutive words together. Newstalk obliged him and organised a debate between Waters and Tuppenceworth blogger and barrister Fergal Crehan in which the Irish Times columnist could have gracefully acknowledged that his opponent could speak quite fluently and coherently. Instead he went on to observe that blogs are “entirely negative, entirely cynical and entirely aggressive”. Other terms used were “poisonous” and “inhuman”. His diatribe against “the internet” and “the computer” included a claim that 60-70% of the Internent is porn and when challenged to cite a source said he didn’t need to as “everyone knows that”. In his column last week about Pope Benedict withdrawing from a speaking engagement at a university due to protests he said the blogosphere culture embraced “ideological spite and indifference to truth”. Oh dear.
These remarks are patently silly and plainly wrong. There are bloggers who can put more than three words of english together. In addition to Crehan, would it be dreadfully arrogant to suggest myself as one? There are many bloggers who are not stupid : nobel prize winners and respected academics like Brad de Long are famous bloggers. I frequently find myself laughing over warm and funny comments on blogs : no cynicism, no poison. Everyone does not know that 60-70% or even “well over half” of the Internet is porn. In fact, no one knows. Even Google has to guess as only a fraction of the internet has been indexed. Oh, and the Pope Benedict protest consisted of a student sit-in and a letter signed by professors at the university. “The Internet” had nothing to do with it.
However, for the sake of rational argument, let’s pretend he said that blogging is frequently, rather than entirely, negative. I try to give up blogging because apart from the time I waste, I get tired of the occasional arguments which break out on my blog. He says we need to assess why blogging can get so negative. He’s wrong about much but he’s right about that. So what’s going on?
A blog can be about any subject but we can definitively say two things about all blogs.
The first is that blogs are a social networking tool. In non-internet parlance, that means that they connect people with one another. Official social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo are where people who already know each other, like classmates and colleagues, catch up with each other. With advertising thrown in they are negative in the sense that these are businesses which make money from friendship. They have their bullies, but so do mobile phones. Shall we assess the negativity of phones?
Blogs, though sometimes showing advertisements, are generally non-commercial means for people who do or don’t know each other in real life to exchange views. I can honestly say that I have renewed old friendships on my blog and connected with people I’ve never met for honest, rewarding chats and often, a good laugh.
Secondly blogs are a medium that simply reflect humanity. Recently I compared the poor standard of shop service in Ireland to that in America. Then I got a letter in the post signed “Paddy” : no last name and no address. It said “Dear Bitch, Why don’t you fuck off permanently to New York you anti-Irish Bitch.” I had a good laugh about it with my husband. “What can you expect?” he said “if you are going to alienate the shop assistant community?” The next day I got another letter telling me I was wonderful and a particular column should be taught in schools.
Letters such as these are rare but emails and blog comments expressing similar sentiments are quite regular. For the record, I get more positive : or rather reasonable -correspondence than negative. Also for the record, the single biggest group of angry correspondents are those advocating Father’s Rights : John’s fans. Across the political blogs many observers have noted that right wingers tend to “troll” : deliberately provoke arguments – more than left wingers. What does it prove? Not a whole lot. Expressing opinions publicly makes some people very angry while gaining the approval of others. If someone has gone to the trouble of writing a letter, putting it in a envelope and going to the post office, it means they felt very strongly for a whole day, or even several days. If they sent an email or wrote a comment on a blog, they felt strongly for about a minute. If they complained loudly in the pub to their friends about a moronic journalist or corrupt politician, it means they don’t really care that much. Having daily internet access gives the pub crowd a bigger opportunity to vent.
Waters says that the Internet “draws out” negativity. What it actually does, and what’s hard to take, is that it delivers existing negativity very efficiently right into your house and onto your desk. There will always be people who think I’m a bitch or John is “pathetic” as he’s noted recently. Now they just have a remarkably easy way to inform us of their considered opinion. The Internet doesn’t encourage negative feelings, it merely overcomes the inertia and cowardice required to express them.
Of course, just because people can do something, doesn’t mean they should. Digital natives, those born into the age of the internet will learn how to protect themselves online from criminals, the criminally stupid and their own worst impulses. The Digital Immigrants, the leftovers from world of paper who have trouble adjusting to the online world will probably never quite get it.
“It” is that the internet, despite the cranks, the nutters and yes the pornographers, has democratised debate and rather than isolating people facilitates the creation of online communities who have great fun, develop thought and provide moral and practical support for each other. Bloggers have grabbed a share of public discourse from press barons and exclusively annointed commentators. Sometimes its not pretty, but accusing it of being entirely negative is entirely wrong and entirely cynical. With skills like this, maybe Waters should start blogging?
01.28.08
Bored
with the harangue on Bertie so I deleted a bunch of comments ( I deleted non-Crewser ones too as they would have looked odd)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
We had T’s 3rd birthday party yesterday. Another getting-away-with-murder-family-party. Topping the “ride around the fields in the jeep” entertainment of J’s party the Da arrived with one of his vintage tractors and it was “go’s on the tractor with Bill”. Hurrah!
I know I’ve been mean with the blogging recently, so just some stuff that stood out over the past few weeks
1. Trinny and Susannah
So underrated this pair. Their What to Wear series is outstanding. M had been watching it and raving to me about it (I’d be off around the house or online and not watching telly). I wasn’t paying much attention as I reckoned I’d “seen it all before” but last week I saw the one on what older women should wear. Yet again, these women show how for women clothes are such an emotional issue! They use it to disguise, to hide, to show-off . Their clothes are SO connected to their self-esteem, self-image, lack of confidence. Susannah did a thing where she put on a cleverly made mask and suit created to show her at 70. She broke down and wept because she looked like her mother. What a reaction that was! Being reduced to tears because you look like your mother. Therapy alert! Then she rebounded and was determined : This will not happen to me. I will not ALLOW this to happen to me. Funny 
2. US Elections..
The War on the Clintons is fascinating. Andrew O’Sullivan had this interesting piece in the WONDERFUL ST yesterday on the War on McCain but the even more wonderful PO’Neill continues to expose O’Sullivan’s bizarre anti-Clinton agenda.
3. On the Domestic Front
My garden is well under way – hurrah! I now have blackcurrant, redcurrant, gooseberry, rhubarb and apple trees all planted! And this week am to plant the shallots. We even have a shrubbery! I told Kevin, the landscaper chap who did the shrubbery, Soon we WILL be the Jones’s. Surely all this planting compensates for my increasing trans-atlantic flying carbon footprint? We have planted 400 white thorn quicks and 100 beech (for the hedges), at least 75 – maybe 100 native Irish diciduous trees (like Chestnut, beech, etc) not to mention my budding fruit and veg garden. Can I leave environmental guilt behind me? Will the house lose the helicopter look?
4. Art
There is no way I am missing this exhibition.
5. Columns
Waters really should thank me. I did the column yesterday about his anti-blogging thing. I’ll post later but nothing readers here haven’t heard already.
01.21.08
John, why hast thou forsaken me? ;-)
One does one’s best. Regulars will know I have exercised my powers of moderation and deleted mean comments about John in the past. I smiled over the last few weeks as I’ve heard his recent diatribes against Bloggers. Well, partly he’s right and partly he’s just playing silly buggers. Blogs are a ripe environment for anonymous invective, but hey, I got this letter last week, in the post:
“Dear Bitch, Why don’t you fuck off permanently to New York? You anti-Irish Bitch, Paddy”
Paddy did not need the internet to provide him with the cloak of anonymity nor to hurl invective at me. The letter really didn’t bother me and my husband and I had a laugh about it (See, he said, this is what you should expect when you deliberately alienate the shop assistant community with time on their hands cos their shops are empty). And John’s remarks that bloggers are stupid (em, Brad de Long?) and incapable of stringing 3 words together (me? 
) are just factually incorrect (perhaps there are many bloggers who are stupid and many who can’t speak fluently, but saying ALL bloggers are so, is setting one’s argument up for pretty quick demolition.
ANYWAY, it looks like he his willfully and wonderfully determined to pursue his line and create another area of speciality for himself (single fathers and God having run their course apparently). In today’s column about Pope Benedict he says
“It was widely reported last week that Pope Benedict cancelled a visit to Rome’s oldest university, La Sapienza, after a number of academics and students accused him of despising science and defending the Inquisition’s condemnation of Galileo.
The Vatican said it was considered opportune to postpone the visit due to a lack of the “prerequisites for a dignified and tranquil welcome” following a sit-in by 50 students and a letter signed by 67 professors, including several allegedly eminent scientists.
The signatories said Benedict’s presence would be “incongruous” because of a speech he made at La Sapienza in 1990, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in which he quoted the judgment of an Austrian philosopher, Paul Feyerabend, that the church’s trial of Galileo was “reasonable and fair”. The letter declared: “These words offend and humiliate us.” This episode is emblematic of our latter-day blogosphere culture in embracing both ideological spite and indifference to truth, manifesting the classic symptoms of a whirlwind created on the internet by neurotics exchanging bites of information by way of stoking each other’s narcissistic obsession with expressing their democratic right to make fools of themselves.
Now em, the talk was cancelled after a sit-in and a letter signed by 67 professors. The blogosphere and the internet had no part whatsoever to play in the cancellation.
At the end of the column his argument addresses the ACTUAL issue at hand
“No effort was made by the media to uncover what Ratzinger actually said in 1990, but the protesters received universal publicity for their obscurantism, not because of the intellectual content of their criticisms, which were specious, but because of the status of their chosen target as an object of ideological spite. The stupidity of the protest was obligingly fudged by journalists with similar agendas, and another lie added to the Ratzinger file.”
So the real villains in the piece are the media/journalists for not doing their job, not the blogs who had no hand act or part, as Albert would say, in any of the events. In fact, if blogs have a “role”, other than social network and relishing in the joys and outrages of free speech, they have done a fantastic job in calling just such lazy journalism to account. The funny thing is, I can bet you anything, that there are blogs out there who did uncover Benedict’s speech and did place his argument (whatever it was) in some kind of context. Just as there are blogs who probably argued he’s a right wing, conservative creep. Either way, how ironic, that John in his column condemns those who make arguments not based on intellectual content but by simply selecting a target of spite. By including bloggers and “the internet” in the piece about Benedict, he’s done precisely that. What a shame.
Of course, John is no fool. This recent campaign is not the result of rage and passion bubbling over – he understands quite well the mechanics of issue creation. There are intellectually rigorous arguments to be made “against” blogging (and many in favour) but he’s not making them. He’s simply creating a new enemy for himself, urging them on (who will oblige him by establishing him as a hate figure of the online community) so he can write columns citing their remarks as proof of his thesis. Radio producers are no doubt relieved – cue up the calls for the many “debates” John will have with bloggers.
This disappoints me greatly. I like him. I’m not in his league. But this is just so..superficial….uuugh.
01.20.08
At the risk…
of incurring harangues with Crewser…
His Dead Mother?
He’s bringing his Dead Mother into it?
Wonder who leaked those documents?
Typical, I write a column saying he’s probably not corrupt and then the man is so desperate to come up with explanations for the source of money he drags his dead mother into it.
01.17.08
Free speech in the US
More on democracy…from today’s NYT
“CHOTEAU, Mont. — School authorities’ cancellation of a talk that a Nobel laureate climate researcher was to have given to high school students has deeply divided this small farming and ranching town at the base of the east side of the Rocky Mountains.
The scholar, Steven W. Running, a professor of ecology at the University of Montana, was scheduled to speak to about 130 students here last Thursday about his career and the global changes occurring because of the earth’s warming.
Dr. Running was a lead author of a global warming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the 400-member United Nations body that shared last year’s Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. But when some residents complained that his presentation here would be one-sided because no opposing view would be offered, the superintendent of Choteau School District No. 1, Kevin St. John, canceled it.”
What a wonderful country. Meanwhile the mudslinging gets going in South Carolina. Now they’re saying that McCain sold out his fellow POWs in Vietnam. Our little FG/FF spats are nothing…
01.16.08
Democracy Index
So, this is fun.
My work out here required me to check The Economist Democracy Index list. I was researching which countries in the world would be ethical to trade with. My colleague and I had an idea that trading with only the Top 20 countries on the Democracy Index would set a good standard. But em, that would mean we couldn’t work with the UK and em, France. Oh dear. We’ll have to set the standard to “Functioning Democracy” rather than Top 20. But eh, that means we also rule out Italy. This could get tricky. Compromises, compromises…
Here’s the 2008 list. Go to the bottom and click on the full report. Fascinating stuff. Why does Scandinavia top all these lists?
01.15.08
Travelling
I’m out in California again. And considering nicking a towel from the very nice hotel. Usually I just steal the little face cloths. They are great quality. But I dunno, I’m short on hand towels. Hmmm. My big gay friend said once that getting older means you don’t stop stealing towels from hotels, but you can afford to stay in better hotels with better towels to steal. I never stole a proper bath towel but the jump from face to hand doesn’t seem so very big. Where will it end? I secretly fear the hotel makes a note of towel thieves and you’re placed on an international black list.
My initial impressions from US media? God they HATE Hillary. What did she do to them?
01.14.08
Wind is blowing for nuclear..
IRISH adults don’t believe in the tooth fairy any more, but they are convinced of the existence of The Electricity Fairy. She conjures up power from fairy dust and sends it to our homes on moonbeams.
Because the Electricity Fairy is so efficient, artists in east Clare have the luxury of opposing a wind farm because the turbines will spoil their view, or “the landscape heritage” as they call it. The Meath Pylon Pressure Group is attracting huge numbers to meetings opposing a 400kilowatt line which will import electricity from Northern Ireland. The pylon is going to cause cancer, they claim, or reduce the value of their houses. Either way, they’re against it.
The Corrib gas field protesters are still causing trouble in Mayo, and the anti-nuclear lobby emits a squawk every now and then. Hysterics in Ringsend don’t even want their rubbish burned in an incinerator to generate some heat. Meanwhile our coal-generation stations belch tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, as the polar ice caps silently melt away. Everyone loves electricity; if only they could abolish the inconvenience of making and transporting it. But here’s something we have to take on board: buying organic vegetables and going to the bottle bank once a week won’t save the planet – reducing our dependency on coal and oil will.
Last week Eamon Ryan, the Green minister for energy, bravely called for a public debate about the legal ban on use of nuclear power. When I first heard him on Morning Ireland on Thursday, I assumed he was prepared to countenance the possibility of using nuclear power in Ireland. By Thursday evening his position was clearer: let’s debate, but there’ll be no nuclear power. As that’s exactly what most people want to hear, Ryan is not being so brave after all. While the minister is against nuclear power, he’s big into wind and, judging by the money those chaps in Airtricity made, so are lots of others. They include the authors of the All-Island Grid Study published last week, which examined how a United Ireland – electrical not political – might meet its demand for energy. Ryan was keen to highlight an option in the study known as Portfolio 5 which would mean 42% of our energy being generated by wind. He reckons we could even export wind energy to Britain via the East-West interconnecter. The advantages of wind are its renewability and cleanliness. It won’t run out, explode or pollute anything – apart from the “landscape heritage”, of course, which sets off knee-jerk protests once an application for a wind farm is submitted. Wind energy, please; just not where we can see the turbines, if you don’t mind.
Wind has two enormous disadvantages – cost and intermittency. Taming it to provide 42% of our energy needs would require massive investment in the network and transmission structure. As well as extra power lines and protests, Portfolio 5 would cost €11 billion. This is compared to €7 billion for Portfolios 2, 3, and 4. That’s not a reason to do it: the operational costs would be cheaper than coal and it would significantly reduce our CO2 emissions. Saving the planet is worth the cost. But who’s going to pay for it? You? Maybe. International companies who can get cheaper energy elsewhere? Not on your nanny.
Here’s another problem which might take the wind out of Minister Ryan’s sails. Having a surplus of energy to export to the UK might just happen on an exceptionally windy day, but how do we cope when there’s not so much as a breeze? You can’t store wind energy, so a back-up source is always needed for when the air is still.
We can’t eliminate our use of coal completely, but the news isn’t all bad. Carbon storage is an option, and researchers are working with experimental technology which will clean up coal. It’s not commercially viable yet but that day may come. In the meantime there’s another source of power which just happens to be the cleanest, safest and most efficient in the world: nuclear.
Britain has done us a favour in the past by helping us deal with some intractable problems, such as unwanted workers (emigration) and foetuses (abortion on demand). Gradually they’re helping us solve our power problems too. There’s an interconnecter running between Ireland and the UK through which we import electricity. We’re pretty sure that most of the power comes from wind farms in Scotland, but electrical power is pooled so some of it has to come from nuclear power stations in England. Last week the British government gave the go-ahead to build 10 new stations, so it’s inevitable that we’ll be using lots more of their nuclear power, especially on calm days. Yet another Irish solution to an Irish problem – maintain a statutory ban on nuclear power in Ireland, but import it as required from Britain.
Still, we wouldn’t be alone in the hypocrisy. The Greens in Germany made it a condition of getting into coalition government that all the country’s nuclear power stations be shut. The process began, but the brakes are being applied. Now they’re planning to increase capacity from the stations not yet closed and will import the shortfall from France, where 80% of electricity is generated by nuclear power.
So the future is nuclear, but there are too many people who’d rather someone else faced up to it.
If you are one of those who hears “nuclear” and thinks “explosions and cancer”, think again. Many environmentalists, such as James Lovelock and Bruno Comby, now accept that saving the planet means going nuclear. Even those who remain opposed, the likes of George Monbiot, accept that nuclear power stations are clean and safe. The last pillar of Monbiot’s arguments is that no-one yet knows the consequences of burying nuclear waste. Yet research into million-year cladding indicates that the waste problem can be handled safely. Climate change caused by carbon emissions from coal and oil is destroying the planet, and will cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions perhaps within our lifetimes. We simply don’t have time to mess around with irrational fears of a safe technology. Nuclear power is carbon-free and we’ve got 10,000 or possibly 1m years to figure out what to do with the waste. That buys us a lot of time, and much cheaper than unreliable wind.
Once people thought nuclear power would destroy the planet. Actually it can save it. Irish people wishing it wasn’t so are just tilting at windmills.