#scraptheangelus.
What’s that all about? It’s called a hash tag and is used on Twitter to identify a tweet as being about a particular topic/event or cause.
In this case, the hashtag is yet another in a long line of internet responses to child rape, abuse and torture covered up by church authorities. Crimes so sickening that they don’t even bear thinking about.
The sad thing about these responses is they are all about the church and not the victim. You only have to look on Facebook as a guide. Expel the Papal Nuncio from Ireland has over 5,150 fans. Supporters of the ISPCC ? 375.
I blogged some time ago about what stirs Irish passions on Facebook and you can see the graphic there which illustrates the same point.
My view is that if you’re going to get exercised about a cause, do something to help those who need it rather than make it all about your own belief or non-belief system. The most vocal voices on the Irish blog and Twittersphere about this issue are intolerant of anyone with a belief system and believe themselves to be of higher intelligence. Take yesterday’s Sunday Independent as an example of the sneering attitude I’m talking about.
Emer O’Kelly, writing about the issue of Good Friday drinking says :
“Take 100 people; offer each of them a ticket for a rugby match between Leinster and Munster on Good Friday. How many of them would prefer to take up the offer rather than go to church that afternoon for Good Friday services, in commemoration of the hour when tradition holds that Christ died on the cross? Probably 99.
The one who would genuinely prefer to go to church is possibly suffering from a slightly unhealthy religious mania.”
An “unhealthy religious mania” to make a free choice in a democratic society to attend a religious service or not.
She makes valid points in the article too, but it’s tainted by her opening comments. They demonstrate an utter disdain for fellow country men and women (of which there are more than she or the media would have us believe) that choose to go to church on Good Friday. Men and women that recognise the wrongs in the church but also believe the church is more than the bishops and priests who run it.
Hashtags on twitter and facebook groups that focus on the perpetrators of a crime rather than the victim are plain wrong. Using child abuse as a way to seek the removal of the catholic church in Ireland is a supreme act of selfishness with and deserves no support.
Support the ISPCC, One in Four or the Alliance Support Group in a practical way. Get angry about children at risk TODAY.
The removal of one minute of a bell ringing on RTE isn’t going to take away the pain of a child abuse victim or heal any broken hearts. What it does do is take away focus from the people who are forgotten in all of this – the victims.
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This week’s header image on le craic
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Begosh and begorrah, ‘tis yerself is it? soft mornin’ so it is. Slainte. Diddlyi dee di. How’s your shillelagh?
3 more sleeps until St. Patrick’s Day. Are you ready to shake your shamrock and dress as a leprechaun? They are totally up for it Liverpool at Medication.
“Shamrocks & Shenanigans! The big green one comes to Med on a Wednesday! The black stuff will be flowing! The Leprechauns will be leaping! Will you find your crock of gold?”
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I’ve been keeping an eye on the price of the Sony Reader Touch and see that D.I.D. Electrical are offering it for €249.95 in store this weekend. Oddly, if you buy it direct on the website it will set you back €278.95.
The Power City price has been pegged at €249.95 for a couple of months now. Today I noticed that it’s now selling for €232.45, presumably in reaction to the D.I.D. offer.
If you’ve been thinking about investing in an electronic reader I don’t think you can go wrong with the Sony offering. At this price, I think I may upgrade my old PRS-505.
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I’m thinking Irish – in fact, I always have
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Found out about this new website, ThinkIrish.ie, on Twitter and I really like the idea. So much so, that I’ve put a little doohickey in my posts with a link to the site.
Quite simply, it’s asking people to switch €20 per week to Irish goods and services. Doing so could create up to 20,000 jobs. Already I see some shouts of PROTECTIONISM rearing it’s head on Twitter too. All I would say to that is, this campaign (as I see it) has nothing to do with protectionism. It’s not seeking to limit choice or throw up trade barriers. It’s asking us all to think about what we’re buying and do our best to buy Irish.
Anyone that reads here regularly will know I’m not a Johnny come lately to all of this. I’ve posted a few times trying to get a bit of blog momentum going on related topics a couple of times e.g. The Opposite of Ryanair , I Love Ireland, and Why I won’t be pre-ordering Grandad’s book. Sadly, because of my limited influence in either the blog or twittersphere – none of these gained any traction – but it’s time we thought more about the choice we make in this country and drop the typical Irish attitude of doing nothing but moan about the state of things.
I just urge any Irish person reading this to make an effort over the coming weeks and months to switch some purchases and help make a difference because every switch will make that difference.
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You mean you didn’t know that about mules?
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Fascinated this morning by an article in the Feb 15 & 22 edition of The New Yorker about mules. I’ve never given any thought to mules before and my knowledge of them is limited to two facts:
1) They’re like donkeys
2) I can be as stubborn as one at times
After reading the 6 pages and 14 columns of the article I now realise that mules deserved better from me. I really should have made an effort to get to know them better. I think you should too. So here are the best bits from “Riding High. Mules in the Military. By Susan Orlean”
- A mule will carry up to 136 kg, seven hours a day, twenty days straight, without complaint.
- Mules have an inviolable commitment to self preservation, which is often misinterpreted as stubbornness. In truth, it is probably a form of genius. A horse will eat until it founders and dies; a mule will only snack, even if it happens upon an open bin of oats.
- Mules are the hybrid result of mating a male donkey with a female horse. They have an uneven number of chromosomes and are therefore sterile. Every mule is sui generis; it leaves no legacy beyond itself, no radiating gene pool to mark its visit to this world.
- Once upon a time in America, a young man without mule handling experience would have been the exception.
- George Washington had a herd of mules – one of the first in the US. They were sired by an Andalusian donkey named Royal Gift, which he had received as a gift from the King of Spain.
- The mule population of the USA has been on a roller coaster ride since the highs of over 5 million in 1930. The Amish population explosion between 1982 and 2008 saw a big increase in demand for mules.
- A 2008 study of mule cognition at the University of Sussex fond that mules, over all, not only understood things better than either horses or donkeys but were also better at following instructions.
That’s the great thing about the New Yorker. You just never know what you’re going to learn from it, and when those little tidbits of information might come in handy. I know that next time some says I’m stubborn as a mule, I can say that, actually, it’s a form of genius.
Image above owned by argo 72 [cc]
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