It's well over half anyway

"Blogging is entirely negative, entirely cynical", you don't think you were guilty of generalizing overmuch there John Waters? The reason that a great deal of blogs are negative is that they are often reacting to what passes for News in the modern media world and much of it is terribly sloppy. And all produced by the journalists that John holds in such high regard.

According to Waters there is fact checking in journalism. Is there now, like the person who wrote an article for the Village a few years back about the changing role of the news presenter and when profiling the main news anchors in the US referred to Peter Jennings as "still going strong". The man had been dead for a while at that point and for many months have been publicly battling cancer. I emailed the magazine to ask about this quite awful oversight and never received a response. They must have thought I was going to pay them again to read a correction. I did as it happens read a few later copies of the magazine that others had bought but there was no sign of an acknowledgment of such a glaring error. More recently trivially, in a recent copy of Magill just before Christmas there was reference to Mick McCarthy taking us to the quarter finals of the World Cup in 2002. When John was challenged on his percentage figure for the amount of pornography on the Internet, he was unable to cite any source for it other than it being common knowledge and he finally retreated into saying it was well over half. Common knowledge is a great old thing and it has proved so flexible over time. We have folks saying MRSA is down to the gays and it was equally commonly known that black people are great singers but can't swim so well. And let's not forget that old common knowledge that Jews drink babies blood as part of passover. So much for fact checking in journalism John.

Even more worrying in the debate was John's attempt to link the Internet with suicide clustering in Wales. The area in Wales has high rates of unemployment and yet we have a MP talking about people killing themselves because some site allows people to leave tributes to friends who have died. That the site is called Gone Too Soon appears to have slipped the notice of the MP and John Waters. Why not a ban on memoriam cards if remembering people is an encouragement for suicide? Next we'll have columns from Waters blaming people who instruct children in reading and writing for giving kids notions about their lives that may leave some dissatisfied with their lot.

Let's get this man an Oscar nomination!

Jerry O'Connell was in Stand by Me you know.



So this is what he has been doing since Sliders. Good one!

John Waters - it burns, it burns.

57% of the internet is pornography according to John so we shouldn't take anything on it seriously ... Hmmm... interesting argument there from John Waters especially when it comes from someone who works in the err...print media. Now if only he could tell us exactly how long the print media has been free of pornography he'd be done.

The Internet is a medium, you big twit. You give beardy men a bad name and I should know.

Liberals, Libertarians and Lollygaggers

"Freedom is a privilege nobody rides for free" - Steve Van Zandt.

It's a terrible idea to take political ideas or philosophies from song lyrics (especially the 80s) or even off the side of a cereal box but is it really any worse than the schoolboy clutching their recently thumbed Ayn Rand preaching about freedom and the individual and how they don't have to play by the rules because the rules only serve to oppress them and their world altering talent?

True libertarianism properly leads to anarchy, and not the safety pin punk kind either but a totally free society. Such a totally free society that can only exist when it is underpinned by being populated by people who know enough of what they need to do in order to sustain themselves and the freedom that they are exercising. In other words they have to dispose of their rubbish, vacuum the house and make their own dinner. No one else is going to do it for them. With this freedom and personal responsibility come boundaries imposed by the environment. Freedom to listen to whatever you want doesn't mean that you will be able to listen to it at 4am when living in a semi detached house, simply because there is also no law to prevent your neighbour coming round and feeding you hands first into a bacon slicer. There is nothing wrong with aspiring to producing a citizenry capable of living in such a free society even if we can all recognise that it is not going to be possible. Much in the communist pursuit of new Soviet man, though we have enough cop on to know we're not going to get there any time soon. But where does that leave our mollycoddled children of the pseudo right in Ireland?

Most Americans of the centre and even the left are more right wing that most Irish people and moreover most Europeans. However those folks can walk the walk not just quote from Heinlein or Ayn Rand. Oddly enough it seems the Irish software industry is host to many of the pseudo right in Ireland, people who would run a mile from from truly making it on their own. Why is the regulator not doing more for me, why is the state not intervening, why is this state board not doling out more money to me and my chums in funding and why don't people with money give us things for free.

Why not give money to these producers of...what is it again.. ah, solutions? Because most start ups fail, and the best way to make money is at things you know something about. Hell, it is a fact of commercial life that most businesses fail. Though it provides a delicious type of irony that folks who see failure in some spheres to be a mark of shame (I've been unsuccessful at things because I've tried to do things), are aghast at the unwillingness of the hoi polloi to fund their own potential failures.

Some of the more bleating types can barely get through an afternoon without falling over their own contradictions between not believing that agreeing with a license agreement is actually agreeing with it before they're running to their barrack room law books about how some set of terms and conditions they agreed to (or which they might merely have accepted) didn't offer them enough protection from some frightful defilement.

Context is all as they say.

The actual mail that caused my expulsion from Eden. I do note for grammar reasons that I should more properly have said avoided instead of avoid. My intention was to pass on a minor crib to Mr Mulley and that was all, I even explicitly acknowledge in the last line that it was entirely up to himself what language he uses.

Mail history begins here -

To: "Damien Mulley"

A tad harsh I was only saying, not sure who ate your doughnut. And the latter is
anatomically difficult. G'luck.

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Damien Mulley" <>
> To: "Daniel Sullivan" <>
> Subject: Re: Happy new year and all that.
> Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:32:53 +0000
>
> Dan, don't bother contacting me again. Go f%&k yourself.

Damien,

Hope your health gets sorted in the new year and that you're in fine fettle
throughout. One minor crib but would it be at all possible if you avoid
using the R word in future.

- EDs note: Note the following text is taken from Damien's site as linked to below -

But there’s more!
But hell, with P.S., I’m a Retard doing so well and Irish accents being all
hot again, let’s give them quality stuff. Glenroe. Dinny and Miley and Fanny
and Biddie and endsinYie and their Billy Barry kids with D4 accents.

- EDs notes: my quoting from his site ends at this point -

http://www.mulley.net/2007/12/29/the-irish-yet-again-miss-another-obvious-opportunity

I know it sounds terribly nanny state of me, and it is entirely up to yourself.
Anyway have a good'un.

Mail history ends here!

A heresy

I'm not interested in starting a war, not even a minor police act or peacemaking intervention or whatever people ended up calling the thing in Iraq. However, once it appears that one man's consumer right advocate decides becomes tomorrow's whinger or the smug man's George Carlin I'm disinclined to hold fire. Course I didn't actually instruct anyone to stop using any particular word, I was merely enquiring if the use of one word could be avoided by way of a crib or comment; passing comment supposedly being the lifeblood of blogging. There are naturally going to be times when no other word will do but the word that one has chosen with such care and consideration as Billy Connolly so perfectly illustrated in his timeless comparison of "fuck off versus go away - exclamation mark". Yet there is the world of a difference between Billy Connolly swearing and some spotty teenager repeating the same word again and again at the top of their voice for their own amusement . Most of us can tell the difference.

Naturally, when you've built yourself up and been built up by others so that you've got the loudest platform the tempting idea when someone says something that you disagree with is to misrepresent what the other person had to say so as to portray the other person in the worst possible light and then seek to drown out this other viewpoint. This all serves to ensure that you're always going to be the one seen in the right. There is an expectation amongst the hoi polloi that the great and the good don't stoop so low, perhaps in truth it should be less an expectation and more a means to identify the great from the merely well known.

Nanyway, Turns out that in reality once the individual's voice is loud enough it's also a cracking good way to ensure that the voice of other individuals isn't heard. Of course presenting yourself as an advocate of debate but then cutting someone's access mid-stream so as to prevent them from responding is a pretty contrary way to go about such things. But to do so without actually letting on to everyone else involved in the conversation that you've canceled their ticket creates the impression that you've won and they've simply retreated with their tail between their legs. At least in sports everyone else gets to actually see you taking your ball away with you. Not so for the high priest of Irish blogging who nixes your access on the QT and professes himself more than adequate to be the impartial judge of all that it is good or bad in Irish blogs. Could the same person really have said

"... I think that the philosophy of blogging, with everyone allowed to comment on what you write and point to what you write and quote what you write will be assimilated more into mainstream. I'm a big fan of Jeff Jarvis and his ideas of the newsroom of the future are well worth a read. As I said earlier, blogs are a great way of enabling the voice of the individual to be heard." ?

Bad words for the beautiful people

Just in case some folks are being given the impression the thought police have come down on poor Mulley.net and are trying to suppress his right to party or some such I thought I post the briefest of background since I’m not allowed post any comments in response.

I mailed the newly crowned journalistic technology supremo of the Irish internet scene suggesting I had a minor crib about the use of the word “retard” in a post of his and if it’s use could be avoided if that were at all possible. Not wishing to be needlessly Michael Howard about all this but I did not at any point instruct anyone (and who the hell would I be to be to instructing or telling anyone what to do) to stop using particular words, I was simply making a comment. And it was only a minor crib and as far as I can see people are all over the place talking up the idea of social networks and collaboration and a key aspect of that effort is the value of feedback. Sad fact is that when you’re on the receiving end you're not going to agree with much of the feedback and you plain might not like some of it. But that's the point of it. For my own part, I had honestly thought that the word had largely disappeared from conversation in this side of the Atlantic, not that it had even been as common here as it was in the US. Now, I wasn’t offended by the word or upset; I will admit to being somewhat surprised to see it. I got a mail back which succinctly told me “Dan, don't bother contacting me again. Go fuck yourself.” Well, that's me told then isn't it. Of course what some like to term Political Correctness is what others would might just call simple decency.

The follow up response on-line has been to declare that he will not be stopped from using whatever words he wishes, though how exactly someone just saying something is remotely going down the road of “stopping” them I’ve no idea but there ya go. And the post naturally has to include a variety of words to show how Damien is reaching for his ready pack of Twenty Major to defend saying fuck or whatever but Twenty is genuinely funny and quite pointed in his comments; the post I was commenting on was neither funny nor very pointed.

And most odd of all in the heel of the hunt is that someone who was quite recently carping about the fact that someone that he had occasion to pick a bone with had the temerity to ban his comments is very quick to use the same tactic once someone else’s shoe is on another foot entirely. Yep it seems so sensitive is Damo to any kind of negative comment that it turns out that I’ve been “banned” from posting comments on the site of the great and all powerful Wiz. Not that I posted much of any use in any case, so no loss to anyone there.

So by all means keep reading Mulley, he posts some really interesting stuff, but for God’s sake don’t dare say anything negative about him or it’s the stocks or the badlands for you.

US primary predictions - Republicans

I think that the Republican race has changed very significantly in recent days or over the holiday period as people call it stateside. And I think it has happened as people come to the conclusion that Giuliani isn’t the guy when it comes to facing off against terrorism and that McCain fills that role much better.

Huckabee may well still win Iowa but my personal inclination is that it will be Romney and that win will serve to insulate Romney from too much damage from losing New Hampshire to McCain but Romney being involved in a close finish with McCain will allow McCain the airtime to get his experience and

So the race is now between Romney and McCain, I think Romney will win Iowa but either lose New Hampshire to McCain or that McCain will be so much closer to Romney than expected that he is the one to come out of New Hampshire with more Mo’. Huckabee should win South Carolina but his campaign could implode if he doesn't do as well as many have come to expect him to do in Iowa. A possible Howard Dean for the '08 Republicans? Probably not but it is possible.

Giuliani will still win Florida I suspect but not especially convincingly and Super-Duper (and what a mistake that has been for the states that wanted to play a role in deciding who is the nominee) Tuesday will see the departure of Thompson.

Ron Paul isn’t going to bother departing the race as his real aim is to shape the platform (manifesto) at the convention. The winner take all nature of the Republican primary should insulate the party against that but he could still have influence. Huckabee is in large part really running for the VeeP slot though and he could get it from McCain as a means to reassure the religious conservatives. Though I think Romney would have a better claim on the ticket given his likely performance but I wonder if he will view it too much as beneath him still Romney would put Mass in play and some other New England states.

US primary predictions - Democrats

Democrats:

I think Iowa won’t decide anything for certain for the Democrats other than confirming that all the big three could win the nomination. (Now how is that for a hostage to fortune?) Clinton is still the favourite at this point for Iowa and the nomination but so was Dean four years and just look at what that got him. What the democrats have learned from the 1988 election is that they have to pick someone who will reach outside their base and honestly Clinton doesn’t do that. The other odd thing about American politics is the boredom factor, people are to some extent bored with the coverage of Clinton and Obama, if Edwards can get come out of Iowa as the little candidate that could and if Obama wins New Hampshire and South Carolina then Clinton

If Edwards is over 20% in Iowa (before the divvying up of the remainder votes) he is still well at the races, if Hillary is under 30% then it proves she can be caught nationally and the post vote writing will be about how vulnerable she is looking and if Obama goes over 30% on the first count and wins then he is going to get the Big Mo’ into New Hampshire. However, I don’t think Obama will win Iowa because I think he lacks the organisation comparatively speaking of Clinton and Edwards in turns of getting people out to vote. And getting people to come out is the problem that did for Dean in the end.

My prediction for Iowa before the departure of the non-viable is

Clinton 27% Obama 26% Edwards 24% Richardson 6% Biden 4% Dodd 1% Kucinich 1%

After those under 15% are eliminated I think Edward wins and Clinton finishes 3^rd.

Edwards/Obama

People might well ask could Obama go on the ticket as VP if Oprah has come out for him. Clinton as nominee running against McCain/Huckabee would be Godsend to the Republicans as they don’t have to do anything much after that to motivate the religious conservatives to come out and vote, McCain/Huckabee against an Edwards/Obama ticket would look old and cranky.

Again Clinton will win Michigan but with Obama a very close 2^nd and Edwards not a million miles away) he might be a few thousand miles off)

January 3, 2008 Iowa^[7] caucus 29 10 6 45 11 56

Edwards to win, Obama 2nd

January 8, 2008 New Hampshire primary^[8][9] 14 5 3 22 8 30

Obama to win, Clinton 2^nd, Edwards get over 20%

January 15, 2008 Michigan primary 83 28 17 128 29 157 [0]

Again Clinton will win Michigan but with Obama a very close 2^nd and Edwards not a million miles away) he might be a few thousand miles off)

January 19, 2008 Nevada caucus^[10] 16 6 3 25 8 33

Clinton wins but Edwards out shades Obama for a distantish 2^nd.

January 26, 2008 South Carolina primary^[11] 29 10 6 45 9 54

Obama wins South Carolina, Edwards does better than expected but Clinton is a close 2^nd to Obama.

January 29, 2008 Florida primary 121 40 24 185 25 210 [0]

I think that Obama has a lower ceiling in Florida than Edwards and if Clinton weakens Edwards might be the one to benefit most. I would still expect Clinton to win Florida.

US primary predictions

This time four years ago (ok it was about a month from now as the primaries were later in the year then) I watched John Kerry on Meet the Press and realised that he had made the necessary changes to his message ere: the War in Iraq to win the Democratic nomination and to win Iowa. At that time most people thought Dean had a lock on Iowa and while they thought Kerry could still come back they were all wondering how and where he would do it. That he would head off the challenge in Iowa was not considered by most people to be at all likely. I texted a few friends “to call” Iowa for Kerry and left it at that.

Given that my intuition or reasoning turned out to be correct I’ve chanced a few other predictions not all of them correct but it’s fun for me at least and no one gets hurt. So turning my attention to this year’s election race in the US I’ve had a gander at the line up of the two main parties (what? you don’t want me to look at the Libertarian race too?) and my predictions follow here for the Dems and the Reps.

HorrorStoriesÉireann

Ah for feck's sake, it's worse this shower are getting not better. Read this account of a women's dealings with the HSE.

Note to the HSE- when you try and fix something it's an idea not to break loads of other things in the process.

Eoghan Harris has caniptions over Bertie and Mahon

It was one of those you had to be there moments with Eoghan Harris on last Sunday's (Dec 9th) Political Party with Ursula Halligan on TV3 (Jessica Fletcher's daughter) only thanks to the web you can be there now! I love the bit where she has to try and coak him into continuing. "we'll move on, we'll move on, do you want to move on?". I'm convinced she was on the verge of offering him a biccy if he was a good boy...

Fine Gael and the Reform Treaty referendum - don't move a muscle

I'm not unsure myself about what my own view on the European Reform Treaty will be. However I do have a very certain view as to what Fine Gael as a party should do. I strongly believe that the government parties should be allowed the space to campaign for this treaty that they have negotiated on our behalf. I think that FG representatives should be able to agree the case for the treaty on the national airwaves if that as seems most likely is the party's position. The party can put up a few billboards and YFG should do one of those poster campaigns that they've proved so adept at.

However when it comes to the vast armory of the party organisation it should be kept in reserve. Just as we did not fall for the false battle of the citizenship referendum in 2004 we should avoid being dragged into the hard slog on this one. Not a canvasser, not a door knock should the local party organisations do. Nor should local representatives feel in any way obliged to do much more than a few pieces in support in the local newspaper.

The 2007 Fudget

The problem for me with is budget this the numbers. See the numbers can add up all they want but we can't have that much confidence that the numbers will actually pan out as presented.

The 0.9 deficit is completely dependent on spending actually being controlled at an 8% rise for current expenditure and tax revenue growing according to the prediction, and all that with BenchMarking 2 coming down the pike (as the yanks would say) along with a housing slump sitting in the sidecar.

24,000 new jobs is a massive drop from the existing figure, Cowen said 72,000 was the previous number I think. It's not about applying the brakes instead the hydraulics are seizing and the vehicle of the national economy is starting to drift across the road into oncoming traffic.

It sounds like a reasonable budget in many ways but there is the problem, who really believes that with benchmarking 2 coming that spending increases of 8% will be achievable without cutting existing services?

My friend - Bertie.

Myself and a housemate used to drink in the Goose quite a bit and from time to time we'd encounter Bertie in there. Once I was even in the jacks just after he had gone in. Little did I know that this level of interaction makes me his friend, perhaps even a close friend. I'm a terrible person despite the closeness of our relationship, I haven't ever sent him a Christmas card and I completely snubbed his daughter's wedding. And not once did I offer to lend him money.

I'm a bad, bad person.

We win the internet - Seanad reform to start with 3rd level seats.

According to reports in two of today's papers the IT and the Examiner ,

So next time we can vote too!

Fair dues to John Gormley, even if his election observers were somewhat uncover at the count he has pressed on with actual reform.

Now if only I could get some movement on the issue of charges for disabled adults I could claim 100% victory.

Have I heard some of this before?

Interesting to look at what the BBC's man covering the Australian elections has to say about the themes of the election campaign.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/nickbryant/2007/11/political_junkie.html

"If you’re interested, here are the some possible themes to have emerged this time round.

• The obvious importance of green issues, and their impact, crucially, as vote-shifters. John Howard’s salutary policy announcement during the televised debate focussed on climate change. The all-important seat of Wentworth has almost become a referendum on green issues.

• Housing affordability. Targeting first-time buyers and possibly the parents who are still providing a roof over their heads, Kevin Rudd kicked off his campaign on this very issue.

• Broadband speed is looming larger as a political issue (which is not surprising in Australia, the land of the sluggish internet connection).

• Ditto the availability of hi-tech teaching materials to schoolchildren, like lap-tops (or the “tool box of the future”, as Kevin Rudd calls it).

• Water shortages have featured, but, in this drought-ridden country, not as much as you might have thought.

• This election has been less about big ideas than managerialism: essentially, who is most capable of running the economy, and, arguably, finding practical solutions to meet the challenge of climate change.

• Does Kevin Rudd’s fluency in Mandarin herald the day much later in this century, or perhaps the next, when it’s a much more common diplomatic language?

• This is not Australia’s first internet election but it is its first YouTube election. Is the reason we are seeing politicians ambushed so frequently now because within a few minutes the material can be uploaded onto the web? Political performance art is here to stay.

I am sure there are others, but I had better go. I missed the debate the other day between Treasurer Peter Costello and Labor’s deputy leader Julia Gillard, and I’m hoping to catch the re-run. Honest."

Why someone has to resign - Mary Harney

I'm only following on from the early coverage others have given this as I've been offline for a wee bit with work.

Anyone who would have worked in any work area that looks for problems or defects (such as the software industry or whatever) knows that you write them up and report them as soon as you find them, you don't store them up for weeks until you feel like letting them loose on those who have to deal with them. Yet the HSE do seem to take the view (and it is all the more peculiar when you consider it is actually real life and death issues in which timely intervention is of the essence that they are looking at) that they should wait until they've done with one thing before moving onto another. All that multitasking that we hear might be possible with so many people working in the HSE seems not to be possible. Are members of the HSE still covered by that old civil servant unsackability?

There was a glaring inconsistency yesterday between the comments of the HSE rep John O' Brien to the Dail Committee that surgical revision did not mean mammogram or ultrasound and the HSE local rep from PortLaoise that women being recalled would have new mammograms and ultrasounds as well as possible biopsies. There again that is the same man from PortLaoise who said they were waiting until they had enough of a cohort before starting, starting mind to contact the women concerned. And let's consider for a moment this whole "contacting business" which it appears involves writing to the women affected today (watch the man on RTe), does writing to them today mean those letters will be posted today? And even so is he aware that most places have no post over the weekend, and with the unreliability of the post many of those women will not get the all clear until Tuesday or even Wednesday next. I'll bet if they were cheques to builders for work done that the HSE would have couriered them to their homes. I also would question the value of tomorrow's special clinic which since it won't involve any tests will be working on the visual and consultation assessment of the doctors involved.

To add insult to injury not being contacted by the HSE today or tomorrow does not necessarily mean you are in the all clear as you could be part of the 170 that they haven't got to looking at yet. I wonder if they have been working a straight forward 9-5 on this issue or was any overtime approved in order to expedite their efforts?

The core problem for Mary Harney in all this is pretty simple, she is (just all our other ministers) more than happy to associate herself with any success stories that come out in health services say a reduction in deaths from heart disease for which she is not directly responsible (she isn't the one doing the actual work) for yet when any sort of downside presents itself she is magically immune from any sort responsibility as is everyone else in the HSE.

Light rail in Limerick

A possible alternative route for trams or light rail in Limerick as suggested by me!

Hollywood writers strike is good for something

At least there has been one positive outcome from the current WGA strike.