It’s about 4lb frozen.

What should I do with it?

I’ve also got a large amount of Wicklow lamb.

I’m open to ideas, you see there are only 2 of us and the bambino and once we thaw it we have to cook it before we can refreeze it (we can refreeze it after it’s cooked, right?)

We’ve considered mincing it with some of the lamb and make meat loaf and/or pies.

Does anyone with any chef type proclivities have any ideas?

The long winter nights must just fly by.

There’s a theoretical and imaginary element called marriagium and there’s only a finite amount in the universe. By allowing more people to get married there is less marriagium per marriage and as such people become “less” married.

That’s right, the more people who are married the less married those people who are married become.

Marriagium is next to Narrativium on your periodic table of the elephants.

Given any situation, any discussion, any thing some people will adopt a position of saying “Oh well it’s politicians.” Then they can not do anything themselves to remedy anything because it’s not their fault.

This personal policy of allocating blame and washing hands is used as displacement by many to avoid action. “Why should I do anything? It’s Politicians hand in hand with the bankers who have created this situation, let them sort it out … the bastards.”

A recipe for idleness and inactivity.

But why should we sit around waiting for someone else to sort out the world? Do we not have abilities ourselves? Do we not have capabilities ourselves?

Is it in my interests to sit around while I blame someone else for the situation I’m in? To some that seems to be an ideal situation. Personally I find that to be an awful state of affairs. I could not sit around idle for that length of time, I can sit around idle for a reasonable length of time (ask my wife) but after a while even I would need to get up and do something.

So … as to the politicians … In Ireland we elect our politicians through a process called “democracy”. What happens is every few years we “elect” these politicians from a number of available “candidates”. Who can be a “candidate”? Anyone? Absolutely anyone who is an Irish citizen. So if you’re an Irish citizen and you think that all politicians are corrupt self-interested bastards in the hands of big business and you can convince others who have the same concerns that you are not one of these miscreants then you could be a candidate and maybe even get elected. You could run as an independent and by being willing to work with other such independents you could work together to turn the country around. That’d just be amazing, wouldn’t it? At this point someone will normally say “Oh well, you can’t trust independents, they won’t work together, you’ll end up with lots of people pulling in different directions.” To such people I ask, if it was you would you want to work together for the greater good or would you want to pull in your own direction? If you were electing an independent would you vote for someone who would pull together or pull in their own direction? If you wouldn’t want to work together, don’t stand. If your candidate wouldn’t want to work together, don’t vote for them. Are you, as part of the electorate, incapable of electing representatives of who would serve the greater good?

As to yourself, outside the direct sphere of politics and elections, what can you do? Could you lobby? Could you represent wider interests through activism and engagement? Could you do something, anything? Would you?

And as to the wider economy … Apparently that’s not your fault either. Apparently there’s no point having any sort of idea of any sort of enterprise because no one will ever trust you to do anything with it. No one will ever invest in you and no bank will ever lend you any money. And is that so surprising if you won’t even have the trust in yourself to try because you’re sitting back and waiting for the government and the politicians you don’t trust to do something?

So have an idea, have a dream, write a business plan, go to the banks, go to investors, try something, do something, because they don’t own your ability to achieve. You own your ability to achieve.

Or would you prefer to just sit around and go “Oh well, it’s not my fault.”

Someone who tries to bully you online is an idiot.
Someone who can’t respond to something you say online without recourse to personal abuse is an idiot.
Someone who down thumbs or otherwise denigrates something you say online without offering any sort of constructive explanation is an idiot.
Someone who, on the basis of no relation with you apart from an online one, tries to act like they “expected better of you” is an idiot.
Someone who spends untold amounts of time trying to wind you up online is an idiot.

Do you care what idiots think of you?  Should that make you change your behaviour or react?  No.  Of course not.  Ignore the idiots.

v1. I read a book today
“the God Delusion”
It said that I can say
Religion is illusion
There’s no discouragement
Shall make me once relent
My first avowed Intent
To mock religion.

v2. Who so beset me round
With fairy stories
Do but themselves confound
My obstinacy the more is
No faith shall stay my might
Though I with straw men fight
I’ll tweet all through the night
And mock religion

v3. On Sunday I shall go
To my mum’s for lunch
I shall not mention this
She would not like it
Then Atheism flee away
I’ll fear what she would say
To an avowed intent
To mock religion.

But the report also shows that the Traveller community is only 0.5% of the population.  It’s like one person in 200 is fair play for being subject to all the hate for the other 199.  How can that ever be acceptable?  Say you lived in a village of 200 people and one person there was the subject of constant hate and abuse.  Would that be OK?  What if you were that person?

But what’s mystifying is this exists within the Irish penchant for taking offence (see various previous blogs.)

the Irish are a people who will on the whole take offence at the drop of a potato … often dragging in this whole “800 years of oppression” nonsense … but given half a chance many of them will turn on the traveller community with a malice that defies understanding … and so the formerly oppressed have become the oppressor… unless …

Unless there’s a reason for this malice.

As travellers this community have avoided the property crash and the extensive negative equity gripping the “settled” community.

Could this be a simple case of jealousy?

One of the general knee jerk reactions to this is, of course, the removal of anonymous accounts for commenting.  Obviously, I cannot agree with this.

I’ve been online commenting and playing as Damocles for about 20 years and I stand over anything I’ve said or done as Damocles in context in that time.  Including standing over certain people’s xpilot bases and shooting them as they respawn, you deserved it … really you probably did … or I’d been drinking … and let’s be fair we’d all been drinking.

But now people are saying we can’t be anonymous online, and we can’t because some people abuse online anonymity.  Some people also abuse alcohol (I’ve had my moments) … shall we ban alcohol?

So what do we lose if we lose online anonymity and force all accounts to be linked to a readily identifiable person?

We lose the whistle blowers, we lose the ability to ask and discuss without being identified, we lose controversiality, what if you had an embarrassing ailment and you wanted to discuss it without letting people you know in on it (chronic athlete’s foot if you must know)?  We lose, in fact, necessary anonymity.

On controversiality we’d all suffer.  I, for one, know I hold some opinions that others will disagree with.  I also know that some of those people are idiots, often stupid, mindless, violent idiots.  Now, if I say something that I believe to be true, like suggesting as I did this morning that the UK has a duty to retain Northern Ireland as long as the people there indicate by self-determination that they wish to do so, some people might be moved to violence.  If I say this as Damocles what can they do?  Hit a red thumb button, complain at me a bit (to which I’ll respond if their point of debate is of interest) and then move on.  If I do this as a readily identifiable real life person what can they do?  Oh, they can look me up in the phone book.  Great.

So no one would be able to be even a little bit out there because it just takes one idiot with a phone book to over react.

So where would be then?  No debate, no discussion, just lots of little echo chambers with no one daring to speak out.  Again … Great.

Still, what to do about unnecessary anonymity and the trolls and the haters and the bullies?  Well what do we do about them in the real world?  Oh yes, we pursue, prosecute, and censure them and we keep our loved ones alert to the dangers and we protect them and help them.  Let’s do that then.

“All of this freedom of expression should not be abused by individuals. … Some people abuse this freedom. This effort to provoke, to humiliate others by using (religious) beliefs cannot be protected in such a way.”

Basically, some people use freedom of speech as a sort of virtual armour to go around winding people up for religious and other reasons.

Next, the people who were the intended victims of this winding up get angry.  We all know by now that if you insult Islamic people some people in the Islamic world will use this as motivation to stir people up further and get a bit of violence going.

When that violence kicks off who does it hit?  Does it hit the initial instigators?  No.  Does it hit the people who stir up the other Muslims?  No.

It hits other people.  The two stirring groups are unaffected.

Then the commentators ‘doze in with the “Oh well, people should be able to say what they want without there being violence, it’s not their fault.”

I disagree, it is bloody their fault, and it’s their fault without their responsibility and now you’re defending them.

Look.  If you want to defend freedom of speech go right ahead but don’t defend people who go and deliberately being arseholes in order to cause dissent.  Such people do not merit or care about your sympathies.

If you want to defend someone, defend Ahmed the Egyptian Grocer who was quietly going about his business before a mob stormed down his street incited by an idiot on the internet who knew he’d never have to suffer the repercussions of his actions.

At the end of the day if people use freedom of speech to offend then leaders will instigate limits.  Those limits won’t make a great deal of difference to people dicking about online, but they will make a difference to ordinary people who have to take responsibility for their words and actions.

German woman, she make nasty article about Irish People in Swiss paper.

Cork 96FM, they translate article.

Irish People, they read translation.

They no happy.

You see, people like to herd themselves into groups and then they like to comment on other people in other groups and they often say nasty things about these other groups often based on certain typical behaviours.  Now the people in the groups being commented on, they tend not to like that.  So what do they do in response?

Exactly the same thing.

So we have a German person saying nasty things about the Irish in a Swiss paper and then we get the Irish people, in turn, saying nasty things about the Germans and Swiss.

I could get quite pissy at this point.  I could point to a number of things that have happened to me and my family while in this Emerald Isle that point to the stereotypes that people have about the Irish and I could be very very pissy about it.

But I won’t.

Because I don’t believe that the answer to someone being an inconsiderate arse hat in my direction is to be an inconsiderate arse hat back.

I think that’s childish.  It’s about Give and Take, ultimately.  If you don’t want to take it don’t give it out.  And if someone gives out to you, just take it.  Otherwise we lead to escalation.  And it all gets out of hand.
Do we need the two most neutral countries in Europe, Switzerland and Ireland, fighting each other?