The swan takeoff - what a pilot

Click on the image for the video

I was walking alongside the Grand Canal in Dublin towards the LUAS tram line bridge at the Charlemont stop, which is also close to the Sixth Lock canal gate on the other side, and I stopped to watch a swan swimming strongly towards me. Hello, I said, this bird is going somewhere. Her speed through the water made a prow wave either side of the swan’s breast and a wash behind. There was a real sense of purpose here.

Then the swan turned in. To feed, I thought. No, it went slightly into reverse, legs maneuvering underwater, and I realized that it was making a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, to face in the direction I was walking. Then, without any further ado, it started to take off. I was right beside it. Wings flapping so that the tips actually beat the surface of the water, it rose slightly. Then the webbed feet gave additional forward thrust by seeming to run along the surface of the water. Slowly, it rose, but was also heading for the LUAS tramway bridge.

It got gradually higher, wings working away, but swans are not pigeons – because of their weight they’re ponderous in the air. In fact, I believe they are the largest bird that can still fly. The ostrich and some penguins are bigger but they’re water or earth bound. Now it was rapidly approaching the bridge and for a second it looked like it might collide with it - and that was even before it had gained enough height to clear the overhead cables that power the tram. But then there was a last, powerful surge from the wings and it was high enough to be above everything in its way. A few seconds later I saw it landing on the other side of the canal lock.

It was a magnificent spectacle. But for me the wonderful part was the obvious confidence the swan had in the distance from the bridge it knew it had to allow so that it could get over it. It seemed to know exactly where to turn after swimming away from the bridge in order to create an adequate runway for itself. Does it make that judgment every time, or has it, through trial and error in the past, established a landmark on the bank? I think the latter, because when I saw it swimming it never once looked behind – it just stopped at a certain point and turned.

I have been able to find videos of swans taking off and there is a link to one above. For me this is one of the many wonders of nature, but most times they have lots of space in which to get airborne. The takeoff I saw was special.

Science, Magic and Religion

The Internet truly is wonderful. Today I’d like to introduce readers to the possibility of viewing a complete undergraduate course at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), entitled “Science, Magic and Religion”, which is presented to us by Professor Courtenay Raia.

One would need to have a deep interest in the subject and/or rather a lot of time at his or her disposal in order to watch the whole course. However, the introduction video is well worth viewing, all by itself.

It is easy to imagine that it is only in relatively recent times that a clear distinction has arisen between the three elements in the title of this course: Isaac Newton, who discovered gravity, who defined mechanics and the laws of motion that bear his name, and who invented the Calculus, was an ordained clergyman who spent a good deal of his time practicing alchemy, the means by which many people of his day believed base metal could be turned into gold. Johann Kepler, who developed the laws that define the motion of the planets in their orbits around the Sun, had a steady sideline in the preparation of astrological charts which were supposed to tell the fortune of the person who commissioned them. In the Middle Ages astrology was taken so seriously that it was made a capital offence for anyone to attempt to tell the fortune of the King of England.

These videos have an added bonus in that Professor Raia is a joy to watch. She’s a supremely confident lecturer who uses her hands, in particular, to beautiful effect.

An Irish honorary consul for the Vatican?

The Irish embassy to the Vatican, Via Giacomo Medici, Rome

The Irish government has decided to close its embassy to the Vatican, ostensibly for reasons of cost. Supporters of the Catholic church claim that it is, instead, a gesture of defiance on the part of the Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister), Eamonn Gilmore, who is on record as being a secularist, and made possible from a political point of view by the wholesale cover up of child sexual abuse by the Catholic church authorities, which had gone on for many years but has only come to light in relatively recent times.

Ireland has another embassy in Rome, to the Italian government. The Vatican has insisted that it should have a separate diplomatic mission on the grounds that it has been recognised by, among others, the United Nations, as a sovereign state. The totality of its territory is, of course, enclosed within the limits of the City of Rome and, to add anomaly to anomaly, the existing Irish embassy to the Vatican has always been situated, not in Vatican City, but in another part of Rome.

Many Roman Catholics in Ireland are not pleased about the closure of the embassy. This is reflected in the belated opposition of a number of Fine Gael back benchers, who are no doubt reflecting the views of their constituents.

Even those of us who have been campaigning for many years for the separation of church and state in Ireland can, of course, appreciate that Catholicism has been a major influence in Irish history and therefore a part of our culture, for better or worse. That cultural link will always be reflected in, for example, the names of certain notable times of the year, such as Christmas. After all, we have no problem in commemorating other, earlier, gods in some of the days of the week, such as Woden (Wednesday) and Thor, (Thursday). Maintaining an embassy to the Vatican for cultural reasons is in a different league, however. There is the cost, which is a duplication of the expense of maintaining that other Irish embassy in Rome. There is the fact that Catholicism is a religion, not actually another country, no matter what it may like to believe itself to be in this regard, and there is the little detail that the Irish embassy was never actually within Vatican City, indicating that all concerned were playing diplomatic games at the time of its inception.

The Vatican (population 860) is not unique in having an existence as a small, semi-autonomous entity in Europe. There are also The Principality of Monaco (population 35,000), The Republic of San Marino (population 32,000), and The Principality of Andorra (population 84,000), as examples. I owe this information to my son, Shane, who has politics in his degree and who works in Public Relations, as I do the fact that, in the case of Monaco, Ireland is represented by an Honorary Consul. We currently have no representation in Andorra or San Marino.

Wouldn’t the Monaco example be an excellent resolution to the current controversy with regard to the Vatican? An honorary consul to the Vatican. As Shane says, one of the cardinals could do it.

Sources:

Irish Department of Foreign Affairs

US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook

Shane McKenna BA PRII

Democracy and a referendum on fiscal union in Ireland

Many people understand democracy only in terms of the will and dominance of the majority. However, as was well recognised by Thomas Jefferson and many others, majorities can be just as tyrannical as the worst dictators. That is why the free world operates under a system of constitutional democracy, which has other elements in the mix, like parliamentary representation and a constitution that guarantees the rights, not only of minorities, but of the individual.  
 
A referendum in Ireland on EU fiscal union will, almost certainly, be bedeviled by euro skeptic campaigners who will be quite happy to condemn the Irish people to all the very significant disadvantages of having to operate, in a globalised marketplace, outside of the membership of a major monetary unit, so long as they can strike a blow against abortion / the end of neutrality / the perceived defects of current government / whatever you're having yourself.  
 
At the end of the process it will be discovered, yet again, that half or less of those entitled to do so will have actually voted. Therefore the outcome will go to the faction that is best able to mobilise its troops.  
 
In the referendums on the constitution that were held in the years in the chart at the top, on no less than four occasions the turnout was below 50%. For what it’s worth, at those times a majority of the people was saying, in effect, that it did not want referendums. On no occasion was the turnout greater than 60% and in many cases it just managed to pull above the 50% level. In the 17^th amendment referendum, on cabinet confidentiality, the number in favour was 52.6% of those who voted, but this was a mere 23.5% of all registered voters. Significantly less than a quarter of the eligible voters in the state were thus able to have the constitution changed. This was not really a good exercise in democracy.

The Internet sheriff is coming to town

The Internet is about to be policed. In the USA there are government proposals under the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) to restrain those web sites that allow users to download material that is subject to copyright. In the EU there has been a requirement on all member states to strengthen their copyright legislation in order to bring about the same result. Ireland has implemented this but there was an oversight in the legislation that has to be rectified.

There’s been a lot of protest to these proposed measures, especially in the US, by Internet companies such as Google and Wikipedia as well as by private individuals. A more sinister development has been the “denial of service” attacks that have been made on US government and other agencies connected with the piracy prevention proposals.

When it announced that it was about to enact further legislation to fix the problem in the EU mandated legislation, the Irish government was faced with the outrage of Internet users. In the circumstances this seems like a copycat reaction to the situation that has arisen in the USA, because there wasn’t a murmur from anyone when the original law was passed.

Many opponents of the new moves have characterised them as an attempt to censor the Internet. That allegation needs careful examination in the light of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression and the defence, almost to a fault, by the USA courts of this principle. For example, the US Supreme Court has ruled that protests by anti-gay religious fundamentalists at the funerals of soldiers that had been killed in Iraq, which create serious further anguish for the relatives of the dead person and which often include posters saying such things as “Thank God for Dead Soldiers”, are allowed under the First Amendment provisions.

Internet piracy involves the distribution, over the net, of material such as songs, films or written works without paying the person who created it in the first place. Preventing piracy is an extension of the principle that has allowed authors, performers and producers to make records, CDs, books and films in the knowledge that anyone who tries to rip them off will be prevented from doing so. It’s a vital incentive for people to work at being creative.

The protests have a certain irony. In the past, many performers, especially in the music industry, complained that they were being seriously exploited by the record companies, who are now among the biggest supporters of SOPA et al. Then technology improved to the point where most of them could set up their own recording studios, often at their homes. Now we’ve moved on further, to where additional technological advancement, i.e. the Internet, is facilitating another generation of rip-off merchants.

There is a difference between freedom of expression and the protection of intellectual material. The Internet will have to be policed in order to ensure that copyright law is observed. To attempt to leave it in its current Wild West state is naïve. To refuse to recognise the principle of copyright protection is unfair to the world of creative endeavour. Those who organised and signed petitions against SOPA, and the web sites that blacked themselves out in protest, would be doing a much better job if they put their time into helping create meaningful legislation rather than preventing it altogether. The “denial of service” attackers are bullies and intimidators – their attitude is “do what we want or we’ll prevent you from operating at all”. Even the word they use to describe themselves, “Anonymous”, is indicative of a group that has something to be ashamed of. They must be resisted at all costs.

Certainty

Recently a good friend posted a link on facebook to a TED talk by one Brene Brown, of whom I had never heard, although I was familiar with TED. This is a website that contains talks on various subjects either by well known people, such as Jane Fonda and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, or by lesser known but nevertheless well qualified specialists in their fields. TED is worth a browse at any time, just for its own sake.

Brene Brown’s talk, which is linked here, was well worth watching. I found that when I listened to it again, I got more from it. A key point of the presentation was that absolute certainty, in anything, is a major problem and a big mistake.

On December 15th last we woke up to the news that Christopher Hitchens had died. It was not unexpected as he had been battling with a serious form of cancer for about 18 months and it was known that he was not likely to survive. I have read most, if not all, of his books and I recently revisited the one for which he is perhaps best known, called “God is not great” (my copy is signed by the author, who I had the pleasure of briefly meeting when he debated religion with John Waters in the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 2008).

The following is an excerpt from the book:

‘Religion is man made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. Still less can they hope to tell us the “meaning” of later discoveries and developments which were, when they began, either obstructed by their religions or denounced by them. And yet – the believers still claim to know! Not just to know, but to know everything. Not just to know that god exists, and that he created and supervised the whole enterprise, but also to know what “he” demands of us – from our diet to our observances to our sexual morality. In other words, in a vast and complicated discussion where we know more and more about less and less, yet can still hope for some enlightenment as we proceed, one faction – itself composed of mutually warring factions – has the sheer arrogance to tell us that we already have all the information we need. Such stupidity, combined with such pride, should be enough to exclude “belief” from the debate. The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs to the infancy of our species. It may be a long farewell but it has begun and, like all farewells, should not be protracted”.

After such words, nobody can be under any illusion that Christopher Hitchens or those, such as myself, who agree with him, can themselves be certain about their positions. All we can do is maintain that an explanation of how the world came into being that does not rely on a supreme creator is one that works for us. 

I have come across many who are deeply religious and who use this as the backdrop for living exemplary lives. These tend to be the religious people who do not attempt to persuade me to their way of thinking, and I’m more than happy to recognise that theirs is the solution to life’s complexity that works for them. I certainly have no interest in winning them over to my position on the matter. Where problems arise is where believers feel they have to proselytize – where they arrogantly think, for whatever reason, that everyone they meet should be “given the opportunity” to conform to their philosophy. Is this because they're insecure in their beliefs and need the reassurance that numbers of like-minded people can give? Do they feel threatened by those who insist on rational explanations and who hold, as Cicero did, that what is incapable of happening never happened, and what is capable of happening is not a miracle?

And there are those people of religion who would insist that they are not proselytizers, such as the RC Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, but whose actions do not match their words. The Archbishop certainly comes across as a reasonable man. He is on record as saying that lapsed Catholics “should have the maturity” to leave the church. He is, one might think, the acceptable face of Irish Catholicism. That is until we realise that he and his colleagues insist on having what is known as the integrated curriculum in Irish state funded national schools, of which, for historical reasons, they manage well over 90%. The integrated curriculum means that Catholic doctrine is not just confined to religion classes but permeates all subjects throughout the school day. The end result is that parents who do not want their children indoctrinated but who have no alternative primary school to which to send them and who are, after all, part of the body of taxpayers who provide the funding for the schools, are forced to put up with what is a totally unacceptable situation. It means that not only does the Catholic Church proselytize, but it insists on having as its target audience those who, because they are children, are by definition immature, with their critical and cognitive faculties still only in formation.

It must come to an end. The only certainty should be that there are no certainties.

Vincent Browne and the Euro

Vincent Browne is one of Ireland's most venerable journalists. He and I will agree on some things and not on others. One area of accord is probably (based on Vincent’s writings to date) the belief that the study of economics is not a science. Note that I did not write “exact science”. It is not a science at all. It is a set of beliefs that are held by individual practitioners and invoked under any and all conditions. Economists are Keynesians, Monetarists or follow the Austrian School in the same way as the devout adhere unquestionably to Mohammed or Christ or L. Ron Hubbard. Economists cannot agree among themselves on the right course of action under any given set of circumstances and they most certainly cannot predict what will happen in the future.

Vincent doesn’t claim, of course, to be an economist although I understand he has standing as a lawyer. His piece (Irish Times Wed Jan 4th 2012), on the possible upcoming referendum on fiscal measures that have been mooted in the context of resolving the debt crises of certain members of the Eurozone, seems to rely on a legal interpretation of the relevant treaties, especially when he claims that no country can be expelled from the Euro zone, and also when he implies that Ireland can veto the proposals and thereby do a “service to all the people of Europe”.

Taking the last point first, we need only look back a short number of weeks to when the British attempted to use their veto to block EU Tobin tax proposals. In short order they found themselves completely circumvented by the other EU states and at the same time pushed noticeably closer to the EU exit door than even the most rabid Euroskeptic could have wished for.

With regard to the existing treaties not allowing a state to be expelled from the Euro, no nations have better illustrated, through history, the adage that there are many ways to skin a cat than the Germans and the French. In the limit, both of these (along with other fiscally responsible states such as Finland and The Netherlands), could themselves opt to leave the single currency and put in place an alternative that would satisfy their requirements. For those left in the rump Euro the effect would be just as devastating as if they were expelled from the original. I cannot tell the future any more than Vincent or an economist can, but history has indicated a high probability that they would be subjected to very high interest rates, including on home mortgages, speculative attacks on the currency that they would not be in a position to defend, an inability to borrow internationally to repay either the amounts owing as a result of the bailouts or for current requirements, and a fall off in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) due to uncertainty and a lack of confidence in the currency. The rump Euro would also be subject to significant devaluation, which Vincent and others would probably welcome as an aid to exports and tourism, but this also carries a price, and that price is excessive inflation. We would be back, at best, to the situation that pertained in Ireland in the 1970s, when savings and pensions were destroyed and when profiteering was rampant.

Vincent Browne, and all the rest of us, should be very concerned that he might just get what he has wished for.