“WHERE DID all the intellectuals go? In an era when heated arguments on current affairs TV shows pass for reasoned debate and condensed newspaper opinion pieces try to convey complex theories, the era of the prominent public intellectual seems a mirage. Yet back in the 17th and 18th centuries there was such a vibrant tradition…
The Santorum Conundrum
Yesterday, Maureen Dowd gave Rick Santorum the public evisceration that was coming to him as soon as his presidential campaign transitioned from “comedic” to “plausible” (a journey taken by all the Republican primary candidates at some point, except for Mitt Romney, whose campaign has gone in the opposite direction). It’s good to see Santorum’s fundamentalism be…
The culture that is Germany (Jaywalking Edition)
Finally, my own Tyler Cowen-esque cultural observation – last Friday, the day the German president Christian Wulff was forced to resign remember, the daily tabloid Hamburger Morgenpost (circulation 115,000) ran this front page. The headline, Erwischt!, or Caught! “How more and more Hamburgers are crossing at the red light – and how they make excuses,”…
Driving Down the Road to Nowhere Interesting
Drive was one of the best-reviewed movies of last year, both a critical darling and a cult hit. When I finally watched it, I reacted as I suspected I would – a state that can best be described as underwhelmed admiration. It’s certainly stylish, though I thought its brand of cool was of the…
Koyaanisqatsi out of balance
Taking a graceful, meditative, enlightening 90-minute masterpiece of visual cinema and compressing it to a mere five minutes might seem like some sort of vandalism. And replacing the majestic Philip Glass score is undoubtedly an assault. But Wyatt Hodgson’s Balance Out of Life dares to butcher of one of my favourite films, Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, and…
The Failure of Facebook
So last week we found out that Mark Zuckerberg is finally doing it – Facebook floats, or soars, or takes off, or whatever verb of motion best describes its share price after the imminent IPO. We’re going to hear a lot about how much money Zuckerberg is going to be worth, and how much Microsoft’s…
Googling for a Philosophy
I have a short piece in tomorrow’s Irish Times about the whole Google privacy, and in the process of writing it I came across the search giant’s corporate philosophy. Reading through it, it’s pretty clear that something’s gone awry since the early days. Now, I am a largely satisfied user of plenty of Google…
Talking the talk…
I hope to learn some German by the time I leave Hamburg, but after a few weeks I’ve realised it’s not going to happen by osmosis. I have an interview in today’s Irish Times with Benny Lewis (yep, that’s him above), an amazing Cavan man who travels the world learning languages and blogging about it at Fluentin3Months.com….
On tennis, and redefining ‘epic’
January is in its final hours, but unless Ireland wins the European Championships, I highly doubt I’ll see another sporting event as exhilarating and magnificent as Sunday’s Australian Open final in 2012. Novak Djokovic and Rafa Nadal gave us a match of such improbable drama and stupendous force that it reaffirmed, once again, that…
All apologies, but no shame in the game
So Fianna Fáil says sorry for overseeing the Irish property bubble, destroying the economy and signing away our economic sovereignty. About time, but it’s hard not to be cynical about Micheál Martin’s apology. Most of the people responsible for this calamitous period of misrule have faced only a hiding at the polls as punishment, but otherwise are…
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