03.23.08
Good resource
Great material here on bloggingheads.tv for smart US political debate (as opposed to the rubbish on mainstream telly)
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Cuba
We’ve seen Paddy’s photos, now read Ardmayle’s description. M and I went to Cuba on our honeymoon and stayed in the Nacional for a few days before heading out to the resorts at Vardero – where you effectively leave Cuba – but hey those beaches….. The lads and I agreed on the awfulness of the food and the tragedy that is Cuba. A wonderful people betrayed by the incompetence and egos of its own and America’s leaders.
Oh poor blogging this week due to various infections. On the mend though..
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03.12.08
Speaking of action…
If the March weather puts you off tramping up and down O’Connell St, try this instead…
Yes its Lent. I didn’t give up anything but I did put the Trocaire box on the (now compulsory in a modern Irish kitchen) Island Unit. M has a habit of leaving his change scattered there and it gets in my way when I start my neurotic polishing of the horrendously expensive granite worktop. SO, Trocaire benefits because instead of transferring the change into my purse, it goes into the Box. He protests occasionally and rifles through it for toll money. Needless to say I guilt trip him about STEALING money from the poor Africans. He suggests I put in some of my own. I contribute online I tell him. Oh, and the lectures have started to my boys about poor people and how we are rich and have to give them money and clothes and food. J asked “and do the boys and girls in Africa have Mammies and Daddies?” I said yes. Even though they don’t. He is sensitive and would worry about them. I want to be aware but not upset. He’s collecting toys to give them. Sigh.
ANYWAY a core part of Trocaire’s annual lenten campaign is Political Action. (though everyone only copped onto this last year when the BCI banned their ad for the FIRST time ever as it was political, but it was also about wimmin..muttter mutter). So, go here send the email and let them know we care about something other than pylons and high rise buildings and Centres of Excellence every 50 miles of the road…..
03.06.08
O’Reilly on the Democrats
hmmmmm so I’m watching Bill O’Reilly beat up a Clinton-Democrat and making the point that if Obama goes into the convention ahead on delegates but Clinton swings it with the super delegates, then the Democratic party will be ripped apart and all the black voters will say the white establishment stole the nomination.
Now, on the one hand, that’s dead right. On the other hand O’Reilly REALLY wants Obama to win. Is that just cos he hates Hillary or because the right would love Obama to be the candidate so they could have fun slaughtering him during the general election?
I’m glad I don’t have a vote! I wouldn’t know what to do.
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03.04.08
Election analysis
I pressed a US resident friend today….
Assuming Obama wins the nomination he reckons he’ll have no problem beating McCain unless:
1. There is a terrorist attack on American soil
2. One of McCain’s serving sons is killed
3. Bush invades Iran
4. Obama is caught with a white woman or a prostitute
We reckon the first two could be easily arranged. We presume the Iranian invasion is out of the question, but hey, you never know. We pray Obama has been behaving.
03.03.08
California
I’m back. The sun is shining, the air is fresh and smells of aromatic trees. The TV is wall to wall Primaries. I don’t like McCain at all anymore. He looks so shifty.
I will conduct research amongst my colleagues and draw conclusions on America based on oh, 6 conversations with this small clique of Silicon Valley Phds which will surely qualify me to pronounce on the subject of the elections in an authoritative manner. I am available to take calls from RTE. Save them sending Charlie out 
Sure what more would he do?
02.08.08
The Daily Show on Mitt Romney
Gotta watch this
You want the clip on Jon takes on Mitt Romney’s drop out. So so good.
My question is: how did this idiot get so far?
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?
01.14.08
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.
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