Maths was never my strong subject in national school. I struggled. I was labelled a “slow learner”. While the rest of my classmates worked away on incomprehensible maths problems, the teacher took myself and some others to a separate part of the room for special attention. In secondary school, physics and maths were still my Achilles heel. I loved English though. I was a good student overall. A bit above average I guess, but not a star pupil by any means.

I will never forget the day I collected my leaving cert results. A big day in the life of any teenager. I arrived in to the principals office. The head brother (I went to a De La Salle school ) looked down through my results and pointed out my disappointing maths and physics scores. Nothing about my wonderful result in English. I left feeling deflated. I’d done the best I could. My mood wasn’t helped by the fact that as I left, a “star pupil” was next in line. I could hear the enthusiastic voice of the principal as he congratulated the maths, physics and everything else superstar on his results. I walked home under a cloud.

Roll forward to today, I find myself thinking again about education. The various reports about grade inflation and the need for science and maths in schools is a topic exercising many minds. The former head of Intel, Craig Barrett, spoke at an economic think tank in Farmleigh about one of the reasons the company came to Ireland. It was education.

He told the audience that the Irish aren’t as clever any more and we needed to do something about it. Fair enough, we need to sit up and take notice on hearing  a wake up call like that.  Unfortunately, there is a danger in listening to someone like him that we lose sight of the people that actually matter in all of this – the student. Is it unrealistic to want an education system that is truly interested in unlocking the potential of each and every child rather than preparing them as cogs in the machine of American imperialism? Is it right to force a child along a career path that maybe they don’t have the aptitude  or real passion for? Shouldn’t we aspire to living in a country where every child is equally valued and cherished no matter what their academic ability or how much money is in their parent’s bank account?

You may have heard of Gillian Lynne, the celebrated ballerina, director and choreographer. She is famous for her work on Cats and the Phantom of the Opera (the longest running show on Broadway). The following is an extract from her Wikipedia entry:

Lynne had been underperforming at school, so her mother took her to the doctor and explained about her fidgeting and lack of focus. After hearing everything her mother said, the doctor told Lynne that he needed to talk to her mother privately for a moment. He turned on the radio and walked out. He then encouraged her mother to look at Lynne, who was dancing to the radio. The doctor noted that she was a dancer, and encouraged Lynne’s mother to take her to dance school.

One wonders how many people are doing jobs today because they were pushed into it?

Maybe, just maybe, the key to Ireland’s future recovery is allowing the dancers to dance and the singers to soar.

Image by mandaloo [cc]

This new ad from Fáilte Ireland has grown on me. The music, by The Heathers, is a great choice – dynamic, energising and different from what you’d expect in an ad like this. With hotel prices in Ireland now the cheapest in Western Europe, there’s never been a better time to take a break at home. The fun definitely starts here.

What’s that all about? It’s called a hash tag and is used on Twitter to identify a tweet as being about a particular topic/event or cause.

In this case, the hashtag is yet another in a long line of internet responses to child rape, abuse and torture covered up by church authorities. Crimes so sickening that they don’t even bear thinking about.

The sad thing about these responses is they are all about the church and not the victim. You only have to look on Facebook as a guide. Expel the Papal Nuncio from Ireland has over 5,150 fans. Supporters of the ISPCC ? 375.

I blogged some time ago about what stirs Irish passions on Facebook and you can see the graphic there which illustrates the same point.

My view is that if you’re going to get exercised about a cause, do something to help those who need it rather than make it all about your own belief or non-belief system. The most vocal voices on the Irish blog and Twittersphere about this issue are intolerant of anyone with a belief system and believe themselves to be of higher intelligence. Take yesterday’s Sunday Independent as an example of the sneering attitude I’m talking about.

Emer O’Kelly, writing about the issue of Good Friday drinking says :

“Take 100 people; offer each of them a ticket for a rugby match between Leinster and Munster on Good Friday. How many of them would prefer to take up the offer rather than go to church that afternoon for Good Friday services, in commemoration of the hour when tradition holds that Christ died on the cross? Probably 99.

The one who would genuinely prefer to go to church is possibly suffering from a slightly unhealthy religious mania.”

An “unhealthy religious mania” to make a free choice in a democratic society to attend a religious service or not.

She makes valid points in the article too, but it’s tainted by her opening comments. They demonstrate an utter disdain for fellow country men and women (of which there are more than she or the media would have us believe) that choose to go to church on Good Friday. Men and women that recognise the wrongs in the church but also believe the church is more than the bishops and priests who run it.

Hashtags on twitter and facebook groups that focus on the perpetrators of a crime rather than the victim are plain wrong. Using child abuse as a way to seek the removal of the catholic church in Ireland is a supreme act of selfishness with and deserves no support.

Support the ISPCC, One in Four or the Alliance Support Group in a practical way. Get angry about children at risk TODAY.

The removal of one minute of a bell ringing on RTE isn’t going to take away the pain of a child abuse victim or heal any broken hearts. What it does do is take away focus from the people who are forgotten in all of this – the victims.

Begosh and begorrah, ‘tis yerself is it? soft mornin’ so it is. Slainte. Diddlyi dee di. How’s your shillelagh?

3 more sleeps until St. Patrick’s Day. Are you ready to shake your shamrock and dress as a leprechaun? They are totally up for it Liverpool at Medication.

“Shamrocks & Shenanigans! The big green one comes to Med on a Wednesday! The black stuff will be flowing! The Leprechauns will be leaping! Will you find your crock of gold?”

Image owned by stunned [cc]

I’ve been keeping an eye on the price of the Sony Reader Touch and see that D.I.D. Electrical are offering it for €249.95 in store this weekend. Oddly, if you buy it direct on the website it will set you back €278.95.

The Power City price has been pegged at  €249.95 for a couple of months now. Today I noticed that it’s now selling for €232.45, presumably in reaction to the D.I.D. offer.

If you’ve been thinking about investing in an electronic reader I don’t think you can go wrong with the Sony offering. At this price, I think I may upgrade my old PRS-505.

Found out about this new website, ThinkIrish.ie,  on Twitter and I really like the idea. So much so, that I’ve put a little doohickey in my posts with a link to the site.

Quite simply, it’s asking people to switch €20 per week to Irish goods and services. Doing so could create up to 20,000 jobs.  Already I see some shouts of PROTECTIONISM rearing it’s head on Twitter too. All I would say to that is, this campaign (as I see it) has nothing to do with protectionism. It’s not seeking to limit choice or throw up trade barriers. It’s asking us all to think about what we’re buying and do our best to buy Irish.

Anyone that reads here regularly will know I’m not a Johnny come lately to all of this. I’ve posted a few times trying to get a bit of blog momentum going on related topics a couple of times e.g. The Opposite of Ryanair , I Love Ireland, and Why I won’t be pre-ordering Grandad’s book. Sadly, because of my limited influence in either the blog or twittersphere – none of these gained any traction – but it’s time we thought more about the choice we make in this country and drop the typical Irish attitude of doing nothing but moan about the state of things.

I just urge any Irish person reading this to make an effort over the coming weeks and months to switch some purchases and help make a difference because every switch will make that difference.

Fascinated this morning by an article in the Feb 15 & 22 edition of The New Yorker about mules. I’ve never given any thought to mules before and my knowledge of them is limited to two facts:

1) They’re like donkeys

2) I can be as stubborn as one at times

After reading the 6 pages and 14 columns of the article I now realise that mules deserved better from me. I really should have made an effort to get to know them better. I think you should too. So here are the best bits from “Riding High. Mules in the Military. By Susan Orlean”

• A mule will carry up to 136 kg, seven hours a day, twenty days straight, without complaint.
• Mules have an inviolable commitment to self preservation, which is often misinterpreted as stubbornness. In truth, it is probably a form of genius. A horse will eat until it founders and dies; a mule will only snack, even if it happens upon an open bin of oats.
• Mules are the hybrid result of mating a male donkey with a female horse.  They have an uneven number of chromosomes and are therefore sterile. Every mule is sui generis; it leaves no legacy beyond itself, no radiating gene pool to mark its visit to this world.
• Once upon a time in America, a young man without mule handling experience would have been the exception.
• George Washington had a herd of mules – one of the first in the US. They were sired by an Andalusian donkey named Royal Gift, which he had received as a gift from the King of Spain.
• The mule population of the USA has been on a roller coaster ride since the highs of over 5 million in 1930. The Amish population explosion between 1982 and 2008 saw a big increase in demand for mules.
• A 2008 study of mule cognition at the University of Sussex fond that mules, over all, not only understood things better than either horses or donkeys but were also better at following instructions.

That’s the great thing about the New Yorker. You just never know what you’re going to learn from it, and when those little tidbits of information might come in handy. I know that next time some says I’m stubborn as a mule, I can say that, actually, it’s a form of genius.

Image above owned by argo 72 [cc]

If you’re looking to buy any books this week, Kennys.ie have a special promotion running at the moment.

On orders over €25, you can select from a list of free books. One that caught my eye was this one – ‘In Praise of Male Chauvinism’. It is described by Kennys as follows :

“Paperback ~ 64pp. 8vo. An amusing volume, not to be taken too seriously”

I really don’t understand why praise for this subject is not to be taken seriously though.

Some other titles available in the promotion are :

‘The Bus and Coach Industry: Its Economics and Organization’. This 1975 publication is the one still in use at Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann, so get it while it’s hot. Don’t worry girls, there is a book on sewing for you as well entitled ‘Sew News Timesaving Tips’.

Kennys have free shipping on books too, so there’s never been a better time to give an Irish bookseller some of your business.

Prices haven’t been announced for the iPad in Ireland or in Europe, and I haven’t been able to find much in the way of speculative pricing from blogosphere or twittersphere sources, so here’s my guess. Just basing these on current pricing on the Apple website for other products. If Apple are really serious about getting the iPad into lots of hands, they might shave another 20 to 40 euro off the 16GB Wi-Fi entry model. Would be nice to think they’d go all out and hit the sub 400 level. If I was going to buy one, I think I’d go for a 32GB Wi-Fi and 3G model, but that’s a whole lot of moolah to shell out for a 1^st generation product.

iPad Wi-Fi only models

16GB €469 (US Price $499)

32GB €579 (US Price $599)

64GB €679 (US Price $699)

iPad Wi-Fi + 3G

16GB €599 (US Price $629)

32GB €699 (US Price $729)

64GB €799 (US Price $829)

Trocaire’s Lenten campaign this year has a clear message :

“A hungry child cannot learn. A hungry aduly cannot work. But it does not have to be this way. Over the years, we have seen first hand how a little can make a huge difference.”

Don’t know about anyone else, but the above ad running on Television at the moment has to be one of the most powerful I’ve seen in a long while.  It is a simple, unexpected, concrete, credible and emotional story. That’s the SUCCESs Chip and Dan Heath talk about in their book, Made to Stick. (PDF of the SUCCESs model here )

The TV ad is backed up by equally effective online banner ads such as this one on the Irish Independent website.

One user left a reply on the TV ad on YouTube saying :

This ad has to be one? of the best ads not only Trócaire has ever made, but of any Irish charity. The reason I say this is because it was the first of these ads that actually made me give a donation.

Can there be any higher praise for a campaign than that?