Lego pirate event at the Burlington Mall

This looks like fun - create a 8 foot model Lego pirate. February 20 to 22 in the Burlington Mall.

Comparing recession reporting in Ireland and Boston

The Internet makes it easy for me to read the Irish newspaper coverage of the recession. Irish coverage focuses on laying blame on the Irish government and on property developers who borrowed money. As Orla Mulcahy puts it in the Irish Times today, "Resentment and suspicion bloom in recession". The US press seems to focus more on how people can pull through - for example this Boston Globe article about how people are determined to find new jobs, and less about apportioning blame.

But, if blame is to be apportioned, maybe the culprits in Ireland are not only property developers and the government. What about the fact that the general population spent the last 5 years spending crazily? I spoke to German visitors who were shocked at the amount of new BMWs and Mercedes in Dublin. I was personally embarassed at the gigantic shopping sprees of Irish people I encountered here in the US on weekend shopping trips. Maybe this wild crazy spending was part of the problem? Maybe the fact that Ireland's nouveau riche culture made Russian oil barons look restrained by comparison? I always used to notice that Tommy Hilfiger and Abercromie and Fitch labels were much more prevalent in Dublin than anywhere in the US (and there was not even an Abercrombie and Fitch store in Ireland!), since Ireland is more "label conscious" than the US. I also used to be amused to overhear people say in Dublin that "This pair of jeans cost me 140 euro", or "I am spending 4000 euro on a trip to Australia". I would be more inclined to say "This pair of jeans cost me $18 at Old Navy in Dedham".

And still it goes on: Compare these two motoring articles this week:

The Irish Times: "Outrunning the recession in the Audi A8" - glorifying an expensive car:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/motors/2009/0211/1233867930757.html

The Boston Globe: A Boston Globe journalist describes how he happily drives a 1997 car, saving money:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid6936117001/bclid1213891213/bctid11753250001

A few years ago, I mentioned in Ireland that I had bought a freezer cheaply because it was dented on the side. The reaction was as if I had peeled bubble gum off the floor, put it in my mouth and chewed it. That was unthinkable in Ireland, we were beyond that. But, here in frugal New England, that was laudable.

Was it the government, or indeed property developers, who forced people in Ireland to spend all this money? I wonder....

Samantha Power

Samantha Power is the most senior Irish-born person in the Obama administration, having been given a senior foreign policy post.

It is interesting to see, using Google, what people search about Samantha Power.

As you can see below, they search about

- Top of this list is a search about her views on Israel. I had no idea she had said anything about Israel, but since it was the top of the list, I ran the search to see. That made me wonder about self-fulfillment in Google's search history. Turns out she was critical of Israel's behaviour in Jenin.

- Then, people searched about her wedding, which was in County Kerry. Further down the list is a search for her husband.

- Her book about genocide, "A problem from Hell", comes only at number 4.


The one thing I remember about Samantha Power was reading that, in her early days in Boston, she purposefully studied baseball so that she could fit in better in Boston. I never did this, and I rely on my hazy memories of learning to play "Rounders" in Community Games matches in 1980s rural Ireland for my knowledge of baseball rules. That may explain why I am so clueless about the game.

Which T-Stop is this?

I photographed this station on Tuesday. Where is it?

Answer: This station is in Oslo, Norway. They use the same black-on-white T logo as Boston's MBTA uses.

Interactive snow etiquette Flash feature on Boston.com

Boston.com really goes in for Flash graphics. Now the have a snazzy "Snow Etiquette" feature, in which you can scroll around and click on cartoon drawings which talk of real Bostonian experiences in the winter (shoveling snow, falling over, and the like):

http://www.boston.com/interactive/graphics/200901_snowlife/

Based on my recent quick trip to Dublin, I look forward to the Irish Times producing a similar "Rain Etiquette" guide.

Claiming Obama as Irish

- Good piece by Fintan O'Toole in Saturday's Irish Times on the tongue-in-cheek efforts to claim Barack Obama as Irish, including a local politician's idea to build “some sort of heritage center, museum, some sort of monument” in Moneygall, the village where Barack Obama's great-great-great-grandfather lived. As O'Toole notes, "The endless game of claiming everyone as Irish can be fun and even educational – up to a point."

All bollixed now

Once a purely North Dublin phenomenon, the word "bollixed" is spreading far and wide.

- On Sunday, Boston's "Universal Hub" reported that "The Red Line was all bollixed up"
- Today, Yahoo Finance contains a story about the mortgage crisis, where an interviewee says "He's tried that with several lenders, but because he doesn't have any income, they won't do it ... It doesn't seem fair that it got so bollixed up."
-Back in 2006, Robert Cringely reports in Infoworld that "D-Link routers are bollixed"

I blame the Commitments. This excellent Roddy Doyle book was about American culture transplanted to Ireland, where it could "thrive like a new bacterial strain" (in the words of Kinky Friedman's 1989 New York Times review of the book). But that book, and the resulting film, had the opposite effect, of taking North Dublin street slang across the Atlantic. Now we are all bollixed.

Roddy Doyle short film on Liberty Mutual's Responsibility Project site

This short (11 minute) film, based on a Roddy Doyle story, is well worth watching. The film is about an African boy on his first day at school in Dublin. The site says that the film is only licensed to be watched online only in the US and Canada though....



[ Hat tip to Turbulence Ahead ]

Brrrring it on

Very cold here in Boston. And am I the only person who thinks that Matt Noyes from NECN looks like he just stepped off RTE (Ireland's state TV broadcaster).



For those of you thinking "-6C is nothing", those temperatures are Fahrenheit. I was caught out by this a couple of times when I moved to the US. When people would mention "below zero temperatures" and I would think "that's nothing". But below zero fahrenheit is cold.

Jax Roslindale "Closing Forever"

Anyone who has walked through Roslindale will be familiar with the Jax store's "Closing Forever" signs. These "Jax Roslindale is closing forever" signs have been on their store for a least as long as I've lived in Roslindale. I've cynically come to interpret them as "this store is forever closing". But according to the Globe, it actually may be closing now, to make way for Family Dollar:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2009/01/11/looks_like_this_time_jax_means_it/

The Irish analogies with Gaza and Israel

Jeff Jacoby in today's Boston Globe:

Imagine someone vehemently asserting that Ireland has no right to exist, that Irish nationalism is racism, and that those who murder Irishmen are actually victims deserving the world's sympathy. Who would take his fulminations for anything but anti-Irish bigotry? Or believe him if he said that he harbors no prejudice against the Irish?

Robert Fisk in the Independent:

We hear the usual Israeli line. General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army's "research and assessment division" announced that "no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them." Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.


Lively debate on the Slugger O'Toole Site:
http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/gaza-the-death-or-birth-of-political-moderation/


And just to add a flippant point: From the Anderson Cooper coverage on CNN, parts of the Israeli border with Gaza actually look like Ireland (trees, green fields, rolling hills).

Waterford Crystal

So Waterford Crystal finally cracks, after seemingly going for years from one financial crisis to another. The Irish Times hits the nail on the head here:

However, the company has also been author of its own misfortunes. This is particuarly so in the case of its approach to the US market for Waterford crystal. Long after luxury giftware customer taste had migrated to more modern, informal glassware, such as Riedel, Waterford was persevering with its emphasis on more traditional heavy-cut crystal.

Its investment in Rosenthal and deals with designers such as John Rocha for more modern glassware have amounted to "too little, too late".

It also persevered stubbornly with a policy of distributing its range through A-list department stores, ignoring trends that showed customers increasingly buying their homewares at other outlets such as the Bed, Bath Beyond and Williams-Sonoma chains.

An anecdote:
A few years ago, I wanted to buy something to give as a corporate gift at a conference in Miami. I thought "what about a set of John Rocha Waterford Crystal wine glasses". Sleek, well designed, something that I thought was Irish but still modern and something you'd feel happy using every day. So anyway, i could not find any modern Waterford Crystal wine glasses for sale in places I'd expect. I had to go to Macy's in Downtown Crossing, seek out the small range of chintzy "heavy cut" Waterford Crystal glasses which looked like something from the 1950s, suited to a house with net curtains and shamrock wallpaper, but not something I'd feel happy giving as a corporate gift.