FROM QUEENSTOWN, SOUTH AFRICA'S MPUTHUMI NTABENI: " ... I'm too aware of my self, my infuriating self-containment, my spontaneous rudeness, my insulting silences, my tendency towards reclusiveness, my sad soul, my sensitiveness to artificiality and superficiality, my detesting the rim world of false expectations, my loathing for greed and selfishness, my weariness with secondhand untested opinions, my love of virginity in senses, my inconsistencies and lie; my ambiguities from a feeble, possibly unique self in search of real experience and; my often too distant self with incurable isolation.

She[, my girlfriend] too knows all that because she uses some of them as her weapons of defense whenever I suggest her own imperfections. Under themes of our blissfulness she senses a somber note of doom that scares her. We recently hired a DVD movie, "The Hours"; the one Nicole Kidman won an Oscar for last year for playing the life of VW (Virginia Woolf). There was an instant when VW was about to commit suicide. As VW walks to the river to drown herself she says: "To have looked at life and loved it for what it is, and then put it aside, forever . . ."

I liked the sentence because it explained VW's suicide as a non-cowardly and pre-meditated decision. I never got to explain that to my girlfriend because she concentrated only on the petal of doom that scared her in my admiration ..." READ MORE


MATTIE LENNON ON THE DONNYBUS TERMINAL: " On Monday 25th March 1974 I reported to Donnybrook Bus Depot to start my week practical training as a bus Conductor.

As I went through the "new-garage" section of the building I didn't know I was walking through history. The building itself was an innovation, being the first of its type in the world. When the prospect of this radical building was first mentioned to architect Michael Scott in 1944, he contacted a Danish Engineer Ove Arup and persuaded him to set up an office in Dublin. Scott believed that engineering in Ireland, at the time, was not up to European standards. Arub was responsible for supervising the engineering of the building, designed by Scott's practice. Scott was ahead of his time in the field of design and Arup was known for his original ideas in concrete construction.

Donnybrook Garage was the first building in the world with a concrete shell roof, lit completely by natural light. Each "shell" was poured in situ using large wooden moulds, which were then dismantled, reassembled and moved on to form the next bay.

The building was completed in 1952 and a half century later I did a bit of snooping to find out what happened to the moulds.

In this case "the mould was broken" on the advice of a senior Civil Servant named Dan O'Donovan. (There goes my idea of replicating Donnybrook Garage in Kylebeg; no matter what Seamus Brennan says). ... " READ MORE


RON DEINER AGAINST THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: " ... The Constitution of the United States, as originally conceived and adopted, was a deeply flawed document. Thanks to the ongoing process of amendment, some of the worst problems with the document have been at least ameliorated, if not fixed. The chief architect, Thomas Jefferson, remains to this day a puzzle and a conundrum - an architect of freedom and the owner of slaves, a believer in democracy and the fashioner of electoral tricks. Perhaps the worst flaw of the Constitution and a remaining major problem is the Electoral College, followed closely by the methods for electing the U.S. Senate.

There are three important flaws to the Electoral College, if one were to go no farther than simple arithmetic.

The first is that the system of electoral votes depends on the population of a state, not on the numbers of eligible voters, registered voters or actual voters. A state that manages to create the most barriers to the ballot box leaves those who are entitled to the vote with a disproportionately weighty vote. ... " READ MORE

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