Marking Time

The surfers were all tricks until I got my camera out. Then they got stage fright and couldn’t stand up.

This morning I was reading a post on Sarah’s blog about Enda Kenny’s “Celtic and Christian” remark. Just to get my facts straight I decided to read the whole speech. I found it on Fine Gael’s website here. At ten o’clock this morning the pertinent line read:

As a Celtic and Christian people, we understand better than most the special challenges of immigration and integrating new communities.

Now it reads:

As a people, we understand better than most the special challenges of immigration and integrating new communities.

A little bit sneaky, I think.

Update: It appears that the words “Celtic and Christian” still appear in the text of the speech. The summary press release quotes Enda as saying “As a people” but the actual speech text quotes him as saying “As a Celtic and Christian people”. Why the anomaly?

• everySecondPaycheck.com: Inflation and Job Losses
  “My analysis may be simplistic but I hope my point is clear, it’s not oil and gas prices driving Irish inflation.”
  (tags: Irish Politics economics)

To legally safeguard the settlers’ investments, possessions and farms on Manhattan island, Minuit negotiated the “purchase” of Manhattan from the Manahatta band of Lenape for 60 guilders worth of trade goods. The deed itself has not survived so the conditions causing the negotiation and validation of the deed are unknown. A textual reference to the deed became a foundation for the legend that Minuit had purchased Manhattan from the Native Americans for 24 dollars’ worth of trinkets. The Manahattas had no legal concept of permanent ownership of land since they moved encampments on a seasonal basis and lived off whatever land they inhabited. Since the Manahattas were not familiar with European legal issues they could not have understood the concept of property deeds. We therefore don’t know what they thought they relinquished by signing the deeds.

Wikipedia: New Amsterdam

The PAC revealed yesterday that a 1999 report into Medialab used words such as “dismal”, “surprisingly weak”, “inexplicably dismal”, “mediocre”, “flaky”, “not sufficiently industry-focused”, “very mediocre” and “disappointing” about the entire concept.

But the Government went ahead and established it anyway. And because it tied itself to contractual arrangements with the MIT, the State was “hamstrung”, even though a rescue plan was prepared within Government at one point.

Because of the legal position that ceded almost all power to MIT, “when things went wrong, the State was in a very bad position to pull any irons out of the fire,” Mr Noonan said. He suggested that many on the Irish side had been “overawed by the academic reputation of the MIT” when putting the deal together, thereby failing to safeguard the State’s interests.

Irish Independent, 1st February 2007