Colin Manning

The pandemic is not the first time Irish government has prevented people from travelling to Spain. All the current talk of special credentials required by Irish people to leave for Spain reminded me of the Spanish Civil War (Non-Intervention) Act, 1937.  This law enacted by the Irish Free State (Ireland was not yet a republic) was intended to stop Irish people from travelling to fight in the Civil War in Spain. Section 5 of the act made it unlawful to join either side ("belligerent") in the war or to "induce or attempt to induce persons" to do so.  Section 6 stated that "It shall not be lawful for any person who is a citizen of Saorstát Eireann to depart or attempt to depart from Saorstát Eireann for the purpose of proceeding to Spain ... unless such person holds a passport ... bearing an endorsement ... declaring such passport to be valid for Spain and Spanish territory." https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1937/act/1/enacted/en/print.html A person who ...

I saw an episode of the Disney Channel's "Lab Rats" today.  There's a family of four kids.  Three kids are white and one is black.  Three of the kids are enhanced humans with superpowers. One of them is not.  Want to hazard a guess as to which of the four doesn't have the superpowers?

Bakker is a vendor of plants that operates online and by mail order.  The company annoyed me some years ago by sharing my details with third parties without my permission.  People who buy plants by mail order are quite an attractive demographic and so it's a nice little sideline for the company.  I ended up getting a lot of junk mail as a direct result of this and I eventually traced it back to Bakker.  I was in the market for some plants today and so I e-mailed to the company just to make sure that their practices had since improved.  The reply I got was not conclusive enough to make me part with my money. While there I noticed some very nice clematis that go by the name of So Many®.  I was struck by the registered trade mark symbol.  It is unlikely that such a trade mark would be registered in Ireland since it is merely descriptive.  It is actually an offence in Ireland to use this symbol for a mark that is not registered under Secti...

This infographic from the WIPO has some classics from the misinformation tool kit. It wants to show the increase in Domain Name cases in 2016 and the relative sizes of the industry sectors they came from. But by increasing both the height and width of shapes used to represent them, the differences are exaggerated. This graphic tries to show that the number of cases has increased by 10% and the height of the shaded square behind is indeed 10% taller than the unshaded one in front.  But the width has also been increased by 10%.  This is deceptive because the area of the shaded square is 21% greater than the unshaded one.  A more accurate representation would look like this: The same error is made in the breakdown by country, but it is especially egregious in the case of France. This attempts to illustrate the 38.3% increase in cases from France.  But an increase of 38.3% in both the height and width of a square results in an increase in area ...

Irish Free State Registered Trade Mark No. 1 The first registered trade mark in force in Ireland was the UK's Trade Mark No. 1 for Bass Ale. However, following independence in 1922 Ireland put in place its own intellectual property regime. The Industrial and Commercial Property (Protection) Act 1927 established a trade mark register for Ireland.   Deanta I nEireann is Irish for Made in Ireland . A trade mark that merely designates the country of origin would not be registrable today.

Ryanair's website has long been overdue a makeover.  The new site is much more attractive.  It was not working properly over the weekend, but seemed to be open for business again yesterday. It still has a ways to go though.  Although Ryanair.com accepts bookings from passengers who have non-ASCII characters in their names, it doesn't properly print their boarding cards.  This belies a very anglo-centric view of the world.

The routing algorithm used by Transport for Ireland clearly needs tweaking. It suggests that passengers travelling from Bishopstown to Ballincollig should go all the way into town and change busses there, despite the routes intersecting much earlier.  That could add an hour to the journey on a bad day.  I wonder is it because the bus routes don't share an actual stop, the routing algorithm does not consider them to intersect?  At the point where they first meet, the busses are travelling opposite directions they don't share any stops with the same number.  But of course most passengers would be happy to get off and cross the road to save an hour. I've reported the problem to the website operators. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes to fix it. update: I received a details response within hours. The error was fixed within the week.

Sex with 21 Women Lowers Risk of Prostate Cancer I saw this story reported today and it stuck me as particularly poor science. As click bait, it is irresistible. It has it all: sex, cancer, an excuse to use the word ejaculation and the conclusion that promiscuity is better than monogamy, unless you're gay. The study found that men who had slept with more than 20 women had significantly lower instances of prostate cancer than those men who slept with less. I have no reason to doubt the numbers.  But many reports of the findings illustrate the classic fallacy of confusing correlation with causation.  I have noticed that on on days when lots of people carry umbrellas, the buses are much fuller.  But it would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that umbrellas cause busses to fill up, and that increasing the  number of umbrellas on our streets would improve bus company revenues.  It is similarly incorrect to conclude that the full busses cause people to c...

I caught an interesting episode of Freakonomics Radio today, and it got me thinking. It described an experiment by Uri Gneezy of U.C. San Diego. He wanted to explore attitudes to competition in men and women and determine if the differences he has observed are innate to the sexes, or if they are acquired from the culture.  He conducted an experiment that gauged people’s attitude to competition and risk, in two different cultures. The first was the Masai in Tanzania.  This is a very patriarchal society and women are not held in high esteem there.  The second culture was the matriarchal Khasi society of India. In this society women have most of the power and make most of the decisions. Participants in the experiments were tasked with throwing tennis balls into a bucket from a distance. The more balls they got in the bucket, the more money they could win. However each participant could chose from two payment options.  A participant could chose the first option and...

I found the photos in this shop window an interesting application of web aesthetics to the real world. They are clearly inspired by Instagram. They have the colour washes, borders, and the square aspect ratio. And note the grids of thumbnails.

My iPhone 3 is like a penis that has lost a few inches.  It was once very impressive and I was so proud of it.  I relished every opportunity to whip it out of my pants and show if off to admirers.  And they were many.  But now not so much. Other men’s are much more impressive these days, and I have had to console myself with the knowledge that although mine isn’t as impressive as it used to be, it’s still perfectly fine and meets my needs. That was until recently. A few of my favorite apps no longer work.  FourSquare was the first to go.  But that was a bit of harmless fun and was no great loss.  Next went Skype.  That was a huge loss.  Even, audio-only Skype was really useful.  I found it so useful that I even switched to a network that allowed it to work without WiFi.  The most recent departure was WhatsApp, which is the messenger of choice in Spain where many of my friends and family live.  I’m quite annoyed by a...

Earlier this year there were a large number of ceremonies in towns small and large, up and down Ireland commemorating the loss of the Titanic 100 hundred years ago. Why? Why are some events considered worth commemorating and some lost lives special? In the next ten years there will be a number of anniversaries in Ireland. It will be interesting so see how each is commemorated. The Great War, the 1916 Rising, the foundation of the state, and the civil war, all occurred just over 90 years ago. Historically Ireland has not placed much value on those who gave their lives in the Great War. Their sacrifice was largely ignored and was in stark contrast to the mythical place that the 1916 Rising occupies in Irish culture. So what about the Titanic? How has it come to occupy such a special place in the popular culture? Perhaps because the tragedy occurred in an era of mass communication, it captured the public imagination. It was a big news story. Perhaps because some rich people died...

When I first caught a glimpse of Supernatural I dismissed it as derivative and more of the same.  All of this territory had been covered before by the X-Files, Buffy, Angel; and Medium and Ghost Whisperer of late.  But the TV universe of the undead is very big and there is plenty of room in the genre for shows like Supernatural to eek out a corner.  The show is bizarrely self-aware of its place within the the genre and often makes references to other shows and movies.  One character is prone to visions and the other compares him to Patricia Arquette and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Although the X-Files had its share of monsters and mutants, most of them had a pseudo scientific explanation. Agent Scully was always on hand to find a mutant gene or toxic chemical to explain them. The other worldly elements of the stories were literally from another world, rather than inhabiting some place between this world and the next. The other story arc of a massive an...

I deleted my Facebook account today. So maybe you'll be seeing more of me here.

I noticed that the latest version of iTunes includes iCloud. I took the opportunity to download some tracks I had purchased over the past few years on different machines. Ironically the only full album I ever bought from the iTunes Music Store can't be downloaded because it's not available in the Ireland store anymore. It's interesting how big corporations and content companies want a free market when it comes to them expanding into new territories, but when it suits them they like to do things country by country. Last christmas I got some free downloads as a result of making some CD purchases at Amazon.fr. But I had to actually go to France , to download them! I bought the album back when iTunes Music Store used DRM. It will be interesting to see if iTunes will still authorize it for playback. When will content owners realize that they should stop pissing off the people who are actually prepared to pay a fair price for their content. It seems they are determined to m...

I watched [rec] last night. I had been meaning to watch it for a long time but it's not easy to do that in a house with kids. I was a non-stop scary ride. It's interesting that someone can still find a fresh take on the zombie after so many years of the genre. I was worried that the Spanish language and English subtitle might take from the raw reality TV feel, but it didn't get in the way at all. If you haven't seen it, think blair witch meets 28 days later. It was surprisingly not that gory. Much of the violence happens off screen. It's definitely worth a look.

Recent proposals from the French and German governments on dealing with the Euro debt crisis are interesting. But writing debt ceilings into national constitutions is a bad idea. Countries that have constitutions generally use them to specify the relationships between the state institutions, details of how the democracy works, the rights of individuals, and the limits of state’s power. Very few constitutions anywhere go into specific details about state finances. Constitutions set out basic principles and ideals. The grubby business of politics is left to fill in the details. How money is raised and spent is a policy issue and is largely left to the governments that the people elected. It is not a constitutional issue. The Constitution of Ireland goes into great detail to specify how laws are passed and the role of both the lower and upper houses in passing these laws. However it treats finances differently. There’s a section of the Constitution called “Money Bills” containing Article...

I was buying books online before the web. That sounds impossible, but believe it or not there was a company that allowed you to telnet into its server, search for, and order them. Books have traditionally been expensive in Ireland. Retailers had high margins and books were priced based on IEP/EUR equivalent of UK prices. There is no VAT on books in Ireland so they could be safely imported from the US without additional taxes. I've been looking at my Amazon spend over the past years. My account details in Amazon list pretty much everything I've bought. It's been instructive. The main thing I've learned is that I probably need to buy less and read more. Some of the figures are staggering. In 2007 I spent well over $1000 at Amazon. That was all books. I can't buy DVDs and CDs at Amazon.com. That doesn't include any books I might have bought at other sites like Barnes and Noble. My buying habits have changed. Amazon.com was my long term favorite, but Amazon...

I did a bit of shopping in the January sales at Amazon. There were some excellent offers. I bought 4 CDs at Amazon.fr in the 4 for €20 sale. I am quite happy to pay €5 for a CD. That's a good price. It's not that long ago I was lashing out €20 - €25 a pop. But I think I am done now. I have little sympathy for the troubled music industry. Even a few short years ago when I wanted to buy a particular single, it was not available. In fact there was no legal way to get it except wait until the whole album came out. Amazon has gotten a lot of my money over the years, not because of price but because of choice. I remember many years ago going to one of the main retailers in Cork looking to order an old movie. They had no interest in acquiring it for me. Their business was based on selling many many copies of the most popular items. I guess in time I will buy more at iTunes. So far I've spend less that €30. For now I think I will just enjoy all the music I've bough ov...