On this week last year (December 31, 2006 to January 6, 2007):
What was unusual about a report in which 40% of those questioned said they were bullied in Irish schools?
Why was the adoption of Irish as an official working language of the European Union delayed?
How many smuggled cigarettes did Irish customs officers seize in 2006?
Why was a pub in Cork, the Joshua Tree, fined €4,000?
In a radio interview, Richie Ryan said that his former Ministerial colleague Paddy Donegan was drunk in 1976 when he caused the President of Ireland to resign by calling him a ‘thundering disgrace’. Later reports suggested that Donegan had actually been more explicit. What might he have called the President?
A second independent record of Jesus was written about 110 AD. Gaius Tacitus was a Roman Consul who turned his attention to writing in his forties. His first major work, the Histories, was written around 105 ad. It chronicled the Flavian dynasty that ruled the Roman Empire during the final third of the first century. His second major work, the Annals, was published about five years later. It covered the quarter century leading up to the Flavian dynasty, from the death of Augustus Caesar to the suicide of Nero. Here’s what Tacitus had to say about Jesus in the context of the spread of Christianity in 64 AD: >>>(more…)
Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian, in his Jewish Antiquities of 93 ad, was the first independent historian to refer to the existence of Jesus. Josephus was a thirty-year-old Jewish rebel during the revolt of 66 ad who miraculously survived a suicide pact among his troops, then switched sides and became a Roman citizen. In 93 ad he published the Jewish Antiquities, a twenty-book history of the Jews. This allegedly contained this reference to Jesus:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
Aside from not being contemporaneous, Jesus-mythologists have noted that this reference is weighted down with alarm bells. >>>(more…)
The preamble to the Irish Constitution begins with at least two untruths: that all authority of both men and States comes from a fictional being called ‘the Most Holy Trinity’, and that the people of Ireland have obligations to somebody called ‘our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ’. Here’s a thought, as we wind down from celebrating the invented birth-date of this supposed Divine Lord of Ireland.
Surely, if Jesus did so many amazing things, somebody at the time would have written about him? Well, actually, no. The first time Jesus is mentioned outside the Bible is sixty years after he supposedly died. By then, Paul had already spread the myth of a Jesus that he himself had never met, and the first gospels may have already been written. After these sixty years of silence, there are five ‘early’ independent reports that Christians most often quote: >>>(more…)
I’m trying to find out about well-known Irish atheists, by which I mean that they are well-known for whatever they do, but may not be well-known to be atheists. So far I have come up with five - Gabriel Byrne, Roddy Doyle, Bob Geldof, Neil Jordan and Cillian Murphy. Does anybody know of any more?
Here are quotes from the above five about their atheism: >>>(more…)
While we’re in Christmas cute mood, here’s our cat Jane watching the Garfield movie on telly today. We also have a ginger cat called Boris (because he looks like Boris Johnson), so Jane might have thought that Boris had got inside the telly.
Despite often heated debates as to whether Christmas is a Christian festival or a Christian appropriation of a pagan festival, the truth is that Christmas started in 1973 when Slade released this song:
Merry Christmas, everybody.
I’ve written before about The Hibernian magazine, the beyond-satire Irish Catholic Nationalist monthly edited by a former IRA man. The latest issue features such articles as On Meeting Mary and Learning to Pray; Hilary Clinton, Cultural Marxist; and Latin Mass, an Update.
It also challenges the mainstream media’s coverage of the death of Katy French, with the only obituary that I have ever read that includes the line: ’she promoted sexual permissiveness in a very public manner and spoke openly about her use of instruments of perversion in this sphere’: >>>(more…)
John Waters was voted Eejit of the Year at our Christmas lunch yesterday, with a very strong 26% of the votes, narrowly beating former twice-winner Hector who polled a creditable 24%. There were two other shock results. Liam O Maonlai came third with 12%, solely on the strength of his Irish phrases CD. And Father Brian D’Arcy, who was only added to the ballot paper at the last minute, polled 10% to knock last year’s winner, Eddie Hobbs, into fifth place with 8%, just narrowly ahead of David McWilliams at 5%.
These results give rise to three lessons for eejits and eejit-watchers alike in 2008.
The Rise of the Intellectual Eejit
The Importance of Year-Round Eejitry
The Power of Traditional Eejitry
Here are the key points of those lessons: >>>(more…)
Some friends and I have an annual Christmas lunch at which we vote for the Eejit of the Year, and this year’s lunch is today. My hot tips earlier in the year were Eddie Hobbs, for his spectacular photos in ‘You and Your Money’, and Liam O Maonlai for his Irish phrases CD that was free with the Indo.
However, Hobbs has failed to keep up his early pace, and has struggled to maintain his eejitry in recent months. And O Maonlai has proved to be a one hit wonder, failing to follow up on the success of the CD. Hector O Heochagan is a perennial favourite, and no doubt some late nominations will emerge.
My dark horse is John Waters, who started with a strong burst of eejitry in the Eurovision Song Contest, sustained the pace with some classic articles including his ‘I’m crying, writing this’ eulogy of Katy French, then finished strongly with his appearance on the Late Late Show 7 Up Celebrity Ice Skating Competition. Here are the highlights of John Waters’ eejitry in 2007: >>>(more…)
Here is an excellent video analysis, from YouTube user Aggressive Secularist, about why the Irish census underestimates the number of atheists and agnostics in Ireland.
And here is part two of the video, in which Aggressive Secularist challenges an article by David Quinn about the strength of religion in Ireland: >>>(more…)
The fairy-tales that witnesses are telling the Tribunal are great fun, but let’s remember the common factor in four of the transactions. They each involve Bertie Ahern being unable to credibly explain lodgements to his accounts of exact round amounts in foreign currencies: two in 1994 that equate to £25,000 sterling and US$45,000, and two more in 1995 for £10,000 sterling and £20,000 sterling. The reason that the Tribunal knows about these amounts is because the money had to go through a bank to convert it into Irish currency, and the foreign exchange transactions created a paper trail that can be followed.
Some other lodgements also left paper trails - the so-called ‘first digout’ in 1993, and the ’savings’ in 1994 that were supposedly already spent in 1993. But, apart from these transactions, only Ahern knows how much more Irish money was washing through his safe over the years, money that never saw the inside of a bank because, as Celia Larkin put it, Ahern ‘felt more comfortable’ dealing in cash. I think it is safe (no pun intended) to suggest that Ahern’s safe may have contained much more Irish money over the years than foreign money.
But there is no way that we will ever know how much. So, in the meantime, here are the details of the key transactions that we do know about: >>>(more…)
I’d like to thank the Irish Independent, the Star on Sunday and FM104’s Strawberry Alarm Clock for their support in my attempt to become Ireland’s next football manager. Still no word back from the three wise men, though.
Here’s the full article from the Star on Sunday, in which Ken Sweeney does that newspapery thing of putting my age in brackets after my name, and kindly knocks a couple of years off it: >>>(more…)
David Kenny has brought out a second edition of his Erendipity book of weird Irish facts that you didn’t know you didn’t know, presented under strange-world-record type headings. Three of my favourites:
Here’s an animated version of Paul Woodfull’s republican balladeer Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly, explaining the history of Ireland in five minutes to a confused tourist. The animation is by Brown Bag Films in Dublin’s Smithfield Market.
UPDATE: This used to be available on YouTube, but it has been removed, presumably by British securicrats. However, you can see it here on Brown Bag’s website. (Warning - this is a very slow connection, so you are probably better off downloading it from the link than watching it on the Brown Bag site.)
Here’s a quick mental challenge arising from the Pope’s latest special offer to Catholics. The offer is aimed mainly at vulnerable people who are seriously ill and who believe what the Pope says is true. >>>(more…)
