I keep getting emails from Facebook saying “So-and-so has added you as a friend. We need to check that you are in fact friends with so-and-so. To confirm this friend request, follow the link below…”. But for a while now, the link hasn’t worked. Is it possible that their system is wilting under the exponential strain? I hate being unintentionally rude.
Category Archives: Asides
Everything you need to know about modern Ireland…
… in a single newspaper headline.
A clipping from the Irish Times, August 8, 2007.
Botanical immigrant no. 2
Fuchsia: my favourite hedgerow flower. Kerry’s got hedges which seem to contain nothing else but my friend John D tells me that, like Montbretia, it’s not native to Ireland. It’s a pretty good argument for migration IMHO.
Next parish America
The Blaskets are a mesmeric group of islands off the Kerry coast which, among other things, spawned a remarkable set of writers. The islands were eventually abandoned in the 1950s, after a prolonged storm prevented a doctor being brought from the mainland to the aid of a dying young man. But they retain an elusive, romantic fascination. Some years ago, the Irish government built a cultural centre on the mainland to celebrate the culture and literary heritage of the islands. There was a great deal of controversy about the building, which many people felt was too intrusive. It does indeed look strange from a distance, but once inside it one immediately sees that it has great architectural integrity. It’s built around a long, slate-floored spine which points towards the abandoned village on the Great Blasket. We went there in the late afternoon and had the place more or less to ourselves. It was a beautifully peaceful and evocative experience.
Lilies of the valley?
Montbretia in Dunquin. Botanists classify it as a “noxious weed”. It adds colour to every hedgerow in Kerry.
You can’t be too rich…
… or too thin, as some famous actress once said. This disgracefully smug ad for the new iMac made me think of it.
Who needs Al Jazeera…
… when they can have this?
Thanks for Gerard for finding it.
Sun rises again
From today’s New York Times…
Sun Microsystems solidly beat Wall Street’s estimates yesterday when it reported a profit for the fourth quarter, providing evidence that the company’s turnaround plan was working.
The report sent shares of Sun up nearly 10 percent in after-hours trading, after they declined 3 cents to close at $4.89 earlier in the day.
Profit at Sun, which makes computer servers, was $329 million, or 9 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier net loss of $301 million, or a loss of 9 cents a share. Revenue rose to $3.84 billion from $3.83 billion. Analysts had expected, on average, earnings of 5 cents a share on $3.84 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Financial.
It was the third consecutive quarter of profit for the company, which had endured a lengthy downturn and five consecutive quarters of losses….
Time to eat my hat, then. Two years ago, I thought the company was doomed.
Real life intrudes into Second Life
From GMSV:
The more the Real World pushes in, the more Second Life starts looking like First Life.
On Wednesday, with the FBI looking over its shoulder, proprietor Linden Lab shut down Second Life’s casinos and declared there shall be no wagering on games of chance throughout the land.
Then yesterday came word that IBM — once famous for its unspoken but rigid white-shirt-and-wingtips workforce dress code — would be spelling out guidelines for the appearance and behavior of employee avatars in virtual worlds. There’s no mention of navy blue suits, but workers are advised to be “especially sensitive to the appropriateness of your avatar or persona’s appearance when you are meeting with IBM clients or conducting IBM business.” In other words, it would be best not to come to meetings as a badger in a ball gown. Employees are also urged not to be two-or-three-faced. “Building a reputation of trust within a virtual world represents a commitment to be truthful and accountable with fellow digital citizens,” IBM states. “Dramatically altering, splitting or abandoning your digital persona may be a violation of that trust. … In the case of a digital persona used for IBM business purposes, it may violate your obligations to IBM.”
I find this deeply reassuring, somehow. It fits neatly with the discovery that the social stratification that characterises the real world also applies to social networking sites — with MySpace down the socio-economic (as well as the age) scale, and Facebook up the scale in Preppyland. Stand by for the first New Yorker cartoon showing two Baby Boomer parents confronting Preppy teenage daughter with trailer-trash troglodyte in tow. “Don’t you think he’s a bit MySpacey for you, honey?”
Illusions of grandeur?
What do you see? A stone? A distorted image of the moon?
In fact, it’s the skylight in the dome of the church in Cotignac.