Slowly but surely I am creating my web presence. I imagine it will take a lot of discipline to keep any blog up to date. And it probably takes a big ego to think that you have a something interesting to say every day. Well, let's hope I can find enough to keep talking - although talking to oneself is talent worth developing.
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It is not known where the giant Lego figure came from
Mystery surrounds the appearance of a giant Lego man on a beach in Brighton.
The 6ft-tall (1.8m) red, green and yellow figure has the slogan "No Real Than You Are" painted on the front and some words written in Dutch. Brighton resident Peter McNiven said he had spotted the figure in the water while walking to work this week. It is not known if the figure washed ashore or was carried to the seafront. A Lego man with the same slogan appeared on a Dutch beach last year. Mr McNiven, 32, who works for a digital marketing company, said: "I just happened to stumble across him on Wednesday morning. "I took a couple of pictures because it's not something you see every day. "There's a lot of talk about him coming over from Holland to here, but there's no tide marks on him."
A spokesman for Brighton and Hove City Council said it did not know how or why the Lego man had appeared on the beach. He added the figure had now been taken away.
In August 2007 a giant Lego toy, bearing a close resemblance to the Brighton figure, mysteriously appeared on Zandvoort beach in Holland. And Like the Brighton Lego man, there was no official explanation about where the giant plastic toy had appeared from. The blue and yellow figure was pulled out of the sea and bore the same slogan "No Real Than You Are
‘Truth on Tara was buried deep due to culture of lies’ - Mail on Sunday
38 sites discovered during test-trenching, on M3 route
My findings on Tara were altered, says archaeologist
Irish Mail on Sunday - 29 June 2008 - By Luke Byrne
A LEADING archaeolgist employed to survey the M3 Tara Valley route has claimed her findings were changed to support the motorway when in fact there was evidence against it. In a devestating attack, Jo Ronayne - who was working for the National Roads Authority - says her findings were altered before being presented to ministers. Miss Ronayne, who was an excavation director at the Tara valley site in Co. Meath, claims she was told to ‘change interpretations’ so as to ‘lessen to potential of numbers of sites’. And she says she was excluded from NRA meetings in which her evidence was altered before reports were passed on to the Government. The damning allegations will shatter the Governments defence that it would not change the Tara route because there is no significant archaeological site on it. And it will lead to disturbing questions about whether ministers - and in turn the public or even the courts - were misled about the archaeological finds.
Miss Ronayne, who was directly employed by NRA subcontractor Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd, suggests in an explosive academic article that her role appeared to have been a sham. ‘I didn’t realise that the testing and my reports would be used to facilitate rather than stop the project going ahead. Or that they don’t let you write the truth in the reports or give you enough time to do a proper job,’ she wrote. The archaeologist - whose sister Maggie, an archaeology lecturer in NUI Galway, is due to attend today’s World Archaeological Congress in Dublin - remains utterly disenchanted with how she says her reports were used and portrayed. She said: ‘I held the licence and was responsible for the work, but the NRA archaeologist would come down and tell me what I should be doing. ‘Directors or field archaeologists working on the sites were not allowed to attend meetings where decisions were made by the NRA’s own archaeologists about how to interpret and present what we were finding.’ She added: ‘A number of times I was told to change an interpretation which served to lessen the potential numbers of sites. We were also told to excavate large sections even tough you are not supposed to excavate in the testing phase. ‘They edited our reports before the Minister saw them.’
In May 2005, following preliminary archaeological reports made by the NRA, the then-environment minister Dick Roche sanctioned 38 archaeological excavations in the Tara-Skryne valley in Co. Meath, effectively approving the route. It was reports such as those complied by Miss Ronayne that Mr Roche would have been presented with before he eventually gave his approval for the project. Following the decision to go ahead with the road, Miss Ronayne and a number of archaeologists refused to work on the excavations. Since the route of the M3 was approved, there have been a number of protests aimed at highlighting the archaeological value of the stretch of motorway.
However, the results of initial test-trenching were often highlighted by advocates of the route of the motorway. In March 2005, Frank Cosgrave of the Meath Citizens for the M3 group, told the Joint Committee on Environment and Local Government: ‘Nothing that could be described as a “national monument” has been found. At the same meeting, Cork TD Billy Kelliher said: ‘The argument put forward by the archaeologists with regard to the richness of the area is a bit of a myth.’ Labour Environment spokeswoman Joanna Tuffy said: “If this is true, I think we need to bring in a completely independent archaeological survey to make sure that anything that can be salvaged will be. ‘At this stage we’ve already gone too far so we can’t turn back.’ Miss Tuffy added: ‘This incident is something that I will raise in the Dail.
Truth on Tara was buried deep due to culture of lies Mail on Sunday - EDITORIAL 29 June 2008
BUILDING a much-needed road ought to be reasonably straightforward. Yet, years after Meath commuters were promised the M3 motorway, the project has been hit by another completely avoidable scandal. The revelation of official interference in the archaeological studies at Tara mean more misery for those stuck in tailbacks, but it is the culture of official deception that poses the gravest questions.
A lot of people have been badly misled. Archaeologists hired for their professional expertise and integrity have not in the words of one, been allowed to ‘write the truth’. Altering independent advice to fit hidden agendas is a dangerous corruption of working of Government in itself, more typical of systematically dishonest regimes than a democratic country like ours. Dail and public debates were based on information that cannot now be trusted. The courts have been asked to make judgments premised, in part, on studies that contain the taint of offical tampering. And a difficult decision whether to put the real needs of the travelling public nover the genuine loss of a part of our patrimony has been subverted by bureaucrats trusted to give us accurate information.
Those responsible cannot be allowed to hide behind behind the monolithic facade of the public sector. This is a dishonest decision with serious consequences. The individuals responsible - who must be known to those who can blow the whistle on their misdeeds - must be held to account. But the culture of dishonesty that makes such flagrant interference possible is harder to root out without clear direction from the very top. This is a Government that routinely plays fast and loose with the accuracy of the information it serves up. Bitter experience has taught the public not to take on trust the official information it receives. Yet the truth will always out. Public confidence in politics is as low as it is because political standards are so low. This sort of deliberate dishonesty needs to be stamped out, with the Taoiseach and the Cabinet setting standards at the top.
Tara is one of my favourite places on the planet and the only place where I feel my Irish heritage (see my blog article on Travellers below). Just like Stonehenge, the magic of this place will be lost forever with the completion of the ill-advised M3 from Dublin to Cavan. Despite widespread protests at all levels, the Irish government is going full-steam ahead. The danger of this development is not the motorway itself but the housing estates that are already planned (probably on rezoned land owned by friends/family of past Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern) that will spring up at every junction. One such junction is planned a short distance away where the Tara Na Ri pub currently stands and will seriously impact the site. At least the housing crash might delay this abomination. Please visit the TaraWatch links at the end of this article and add your voice where you can. Cheers James
Bonnie Alter, London on 10.30.08
Arthur Frommer usually writes guide books about where to eat and visit in Paris, but even this super-enthusiastic traveller is getting worried about the state of the world's environment. To explain the rationale behind the latest guide book, called "500 Places to See Before They Disappear", the author says: "The devastation wrought by climate change and direct man-made interference is familiar to all of us. But this book is a carefully chosen list of last-chance destinations that eco-conscious travellers can enjoy - if they move sharpish - for possibly the last time." So put aside guilt about the flying for the moment and let's dream about the most beautiful, striking and unspoilt places to be visited on this last trip of their lifetime.
Locations are listed by topic, not country, so there are subjects such as Sea & Stream, From the Mountains to the Prairies, Big Skies, Going to Ruins,City & Town, Where History Was Made, Tarnished Gems of Architecture, and Disposable Culture. This one includes vanishing structures like wigwam motels in the southwest of the USA. The natural wonders include the Hill of Tara (pictured) in Ireland which is under threat due to a proposed highway running close by, and the Dead Sea in Israel because it may run dry.
The guide also includes many architectural spots that are under threat due to redevelopment pressures. This includes New York's Little Italy, and the Taj Majal in India. Others are in danger due to lack of money for restoration, such as the oldest parish church and the Battersea power station in England.
In the US, the Everglades are in trouble because of agricultural and development pressures. Lower water levels and pollution haven't help either, with the number of bird species falling by a whopping 93%. Fenway Park in Boston, built in 1912, and the oldest baseball park in the major leagues, is on the list due to threat of demolition. Frommer's 500 Places to See Before They Disappear Via : The Observer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If a woman wants to drive the men wild, she might want to dress in red.
Men rated a woman shown in photographs as more sexually attractive if she was wearing red clothing or if she was shown in an image framed by a red border rather than some other colour, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The study led by psychology professor Andrew Elliot of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, seemed to confirm red as the colour of romance -- as so many Valentine's Day card makers and lipstick sellers have believed for years.
Although this "red alert" may be a product of human society associating red with love for eons, it also may arise from more primitive biological roots, Elliot said.
Noting the genetic similarity of humans to higher primates, he said scientists have shown that certain male primates are especially attracted to females of their species displaying red. For example, female baboons and chimpanzees show red colouring when nearing ovulation, sending a sexual signal that the males apparently find irresistible.
"It could be this very deep, biologically based automatic tendency to respond to red as an attraction cue given our evolutionary heritage," Elliot, whose findings appear in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, said in a telephone interview.
The study involved more than 100 men, mostly college undergraduates, who were shown pictures of women and asked to rate how pretty they were, how much the men would like to kiss them and how much the men would like to have sex with them.
Men were shown a woman, with some of the pictures bordered in red and some bordered in white, grey or green. Even though it was the same picture of the same woman, when she was framed in red the men rated her as more attractive than when she was bordered by another colour.
Men were then shown photographs of a woman that were identical except that the researchers digitally made her shirt red in some versions or blue in others. And once again, the men strongly favoured the woman in red.
The men also were asked, "Imagine that you are going on a date with this person and have $100 (64 pounds) in your wallet. How much money would you be willing to spend on your date?" When she was clad in red, the men said they would spend more money on her.
The researchers noted that the colour red did not alter how men rated the women in the photographs in terms of likeability, intelligence or kindness -- only attractiveness.
The researchers then had a group of young women rate whether the pictured woman was pretty. Red had no impact on whether women rated other women as pretty, they found.
Gay men and colour blind men were excluded from the study.
Image by blinkbyblink via Flickr
