brian flanagan

The Daily Show explaining New Yorker Cartoons

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:05:09 +0100

The Daily Show explaining New Yorker Cartoons

Photo

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:56:06 +0100

Will this get Guy Ritchie out of his rut and back in to the groove?

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:28:26 +0100

Will this get Guy Ritchie out of his rut and back in to the groove?

Clinton voted No.

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:47:47 +0100

Clinton voted No.: Who knows what should would have done if she were still in the Big Race, but she’s not and she done good.

Simply no excuse.

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:29:24 +0100

Simply no excuse.

Photo

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:25:08 +0100

a la Marx Brothers.

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:49:35 +0100

a la Marx Brothers.

not convinced

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 04:46:31 +0100

not convinced

attention to detail.

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 04:32:00 +0100

attention to detail.: The fake ad on the left of the News Center page is pretty great.

Video

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:49:23 +0100

Time Magazine, 1958

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:45:24 +0100

Time Magazine, 1958

"Alphabetical order and random order are the same thing."

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:14:34 +0100

“Alphabetical order and random order are the same thing.”

- Jeffrey Zeldman via Twitter

Endorsements

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:38:30 +0100

From time to time I decide to endorse something on this blog. Fisherman’s Friends had that honour. As did voting on the Lisbon referendum.

I’d like to take a moment now to endorse hating Keith Olbermann. I don’t care if he’s more in tune with some of my political ideas. I find him, perhaps, more sickening than Bill O’Reilly. It’s not easy to out-do Bill O’Reilly in general awfulness.

Pulling an all-nighter to finish a couple things so I can head...

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:21:45 +0100

Pulling an all-nighter to finish a couple things so I can head to Belfast tomorrow for a 21st and BarCamp.

Just in time, Al.

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:08:34 +0100

Just in time, Al.

"I like to draw and paint. It is a river to me. I am not an Indian."

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:48:52 +0100

“I like to draw and paint. It is a river to me. I am not an Indian.”

- John Lurie

"There was […] a black man there playing bongo drums. I hate bongo drums. I started to tell him..."

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 02:12:55 +0100

“There was […] a black man there playing bongo drums. I hate bongo drums. I started to tell him to stop playing those goddamn bongo drums but then I said to myself, No, that’s not right. You got to let him play his goddamn bongo drums if he feels like it, it’s part of the misery of democracy, to which I subscribe.”

- Donald Barthelme, I Bought a Little City, Sixty Stories

In Ireland's Defence

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:33:00 +0100

Ireland has been all over everybody’s front page today (at least until Tim Russert kicked off) because of the Lisbon vote. And it’s been pretty negative. Says the New York Times:

In a significant setback for efforts to reform the European Union’s unwieldy institutions, a referendum on a revised treaty was voted down in Ireland.

Says the BBC:

Voters in the Irish Republic reject the EU’s Lisbon treaty in a referendum, delivering a severe blow to leaders’ plans for reform.

Says the Irish Times:

The Lisbon Treaty has been rejected by Irish voters sparking a crisis for plans to reform European Union structures.

I’m a bit pissed off that the EU’s failure to run properly is now being blamed on the Irish. It’s worth noting that it isn’t that the Irish were the only people to reject the treaty, but rather that the only referendum in the whole Union held on the treaty yielded a conclusive ‘No’.

As everybody (particularly Fine Gael) scrambles to react, there’s been a lot of sentiment regarding the cheapness of the ‘No’ campaign. I won’t deny that a lot of it was pretty sleazy. Sinn Fein’s signage probably turned off more people to voting ‘No’ than it turned on. But the main complaint about the ‘No’ campaign is that because the treaty is quite long and unreadable, the campaign got away with overly simplistic claims against it. That’s probably true. (Though, the claims for the treaty could hardly be called appropriately complex— ‘Europe: let’s be at the heart of it’ ?).

Point is: one can’t object to a ‘No’ campaign harping on single issues the way that one might object to a ‘Yes’ campaign doing so. Rejection does not imply that the treaty is wholly bad, whereas acceptance should imply that the treaty is wholly good.

So don’t blame the Irish for tossing a spanner in the works. The people were given two-hundred-and-seventy-something pages of legalese and asked to vote for or against it. And they voted against it. Some because they had issues with it. Some because they were misinformed. And some because they didn’t want to pass a treaty that would effect their sovereignty if they didn’t know what exactly it entailed.

Nope.

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:38:13 +0100

Nope.

Waiting.

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:53:34 +0100

50% turnout yesterday. That’s 10% better than expected— and I’d wager most of those last minute voters were on the ‘No’ side of things.

The votes are still being counted, but it looks like ‘No’ won substantially in Dublin. Farmers were expected to make up the ‘No’ base, so I’d suppose that if even Dublin said ‘No’, then probably the whole country did, too.