#AprilCountry – April 15th, “I’m so Lonesome I could cry” Dean Martin
From the sublime to the … well, you be the judge, but although I am very partial Dean Martin and kinda wish we had as relaxed, smoothly confident a singer…
Category: if a thing is worth doing it is worth doing badly
A poem for Palm Sunday – “The Donkey”, G K Chesterton
I find Chesterton a somewhat mixed bag , and that applies to his poetry also, but this has always moved me deeply, and is all the more effective for concealing…
Jarod Gott on Tinder, writing and the presentation of the self
Recently I was at Dreams, Hallucinations and the Imagination, a conference organised by the University of Glasgow’s Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience. Dreams and like experiences are an interest…
You are not alone: the word “sonder”
I recently came across the word “sonder” Coined in 2012 by John Koenig, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that…
What is greater – to give your life for Irish freedom or to write comic songs about the Tipp team?
The Nationalist is running a poll to find out Tipperary’s All Time Great. Among the likes of Charles Kickham, Adi Roche and Dan Breen we have The Two Johnnies, a…
Schrödinger’s Cat panels at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies
The Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies was established in 1940 by Eamon de Valera’s government with three constituent schools of Cosmic Physics, Theoretical Physics and Celtic Studies. By far the most…
1939: A fish is named after John Steinbeck, who behaves rather shabbily in response
Surely 2019 sees no other 80th Anniversary more significant than this one? From “The Naming of the Shrew” by John Wright: Has any taxonomist ever lived to regret…
Don’t trust Alexa Crazy Fact: the name “Wendy” wasn’t invented for Peter Pan (and pig orgasms don’t quite last as long as all that)
One of the skills of Amazon’s Alexa is Crazy Fact. This skills allows Alexa to pop up with a fact which is a little unusual or offbeat. From this, I learnt…
Séamus Sweeney 