I hate tag memes and rarely participate in them as I see them as little more than chain letters and time wasters (yeah, I know, bah humbug!).

However, I’ve been tagged by Gavin and Bill to add to this charity link meme. The idea is to improve the page rank of charities in Ireland. If ever there was a good reason to join a tag meme, this is it.

The list of charities so far is:

• MS Society Ireland
• Irish Red Cross
• Samaritans
• Cancer.ie – Irish Cancer Society
• Irish Hospice Foundation – Hospice and palliative care in Ireland
• Barnardos – Ireland’s leading children’s charity
• The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity – Polish Charity
• CPR For Schools Across Poland – CPRTraining
• Program of Insulin Pumps in Diabetic Children Therapy – Insulin Pumps For Children
• Non-invasive Neonatal Breathing Support – Infant Flow
• Program of Universal Neonatal Hearing Screenings – Neonatal Hearing
• American Red Cross – disaster relief
• Raleigh Rescue Mission – homeless raleigh
• Samaritan’s Purse – emergency relief programs
• St. Jude Children’s Hospital – cancer research
• Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders – Humanitarian Relief
• American Red Cross – Emergency Preparedness
• AMREF – African Medical & Research Foundation – African Health Development
• DOROT – Programs for Elderly
• Feed the Children – Protect Children
• Service International – Disaster Relief
• Pujols Family Foundation – Children with Down Syndrome
• National Alliance to End Homelessness – Homelessness
• The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research – Parkinson’s Research
• Ronald McDonald Care Mobile Program – Child Healthcare
• Aids Research Alliance – Aids Research
• Wildlife Conservation Society – Wildlife Protection
• Cancer Research Institute – Cancer Research
• Second Harvest – End Hunger
• AARP Foundation – Helping Senior Citizens
• Bubblegum Club – Children In Crisis
• Autism NI – Autism Northern Ireland
• Adoption Ireland – Irish Adoption Charity
• Ireland Funds – Peace and Reconciliation In Ireland
• Dublin Simon Community – Combating Homelessness in Dublin
• Aware
• To Russia with Love

And the charity I am adding to the list is the extremely deserving
Debra Ireland

Who to tag next? How about –
Pat
Damien
Frank
Ina and
Justin

Niall Greaney was the son of my first cousin Greta Greaney. He was born 10th June 1987. Yesterday, 8th June 2007, I attended his funeral.

Niall died  as the result of injuries he received in an horrific car accident on Wednesday morning (Jun 6th) last.

Niall was full of life. At 19 he was already a well known sportsman and musician in his community.

His funeral yesterday was one of the biggest and most poignant I have ever attended.

To Niall’s parents Greta and John and his brother Sean and sister Linda, no words can adequately express the sorrow one feels at a time like this. You have my deepest sympathies.

I’m sitting in the cafe of my hotel in Bilbao, sipping a cortado waiting for my lift to the airport to fly home.

The sun is shining, a refreshing breeze is blowing, I’m looking at the Nervion flowing by lazily and the ediface of Gehry‘s incredible Guggenheim Museum is shimmering in the light.

I’m very far from Cork.

I think I will enjoy another coffee in this wondrous setting before I have to leave.

Apart from all the tech stuff going on at Mix07 last week I met a guy there who really brought it home to me that America really is the land of extremes.

It started innocently enough. I was sharing a breakfast table with a bunch of guys. I introduced myself and one of the guys said “You are on the Euro – you must be loving it over here then; everything is so cheap”

Stupidly I responded with “Yup, we have a lot to thank George Bush for”

Well, that set him off on a bizarre, sick, rant I will never forget.

First off, it wasn’t George Bush who was to blame for the state of the economy, it is Alan Greenspan, I was told. George Bush has done nothing but good for the US.

In any case, the United State economy has never been stronger, I was informed.

I didn’t ask “then why is the dollar so weak”. I did bring up the US’s massive foreign debt though. This was dismissed as inconsequential given that as a percentage of GDP, it has been higher in the past.

Next rant, the Euro is a failed experiment I was informed. It hasn’t been tested. As soon as there is any problem in the Eurozone, it will completely fall apart bringing down the European economies with it!

Then we started to get more bizarre. The war on Iraq is really a war on Islam. Islam is the most hate-filled religion in existence. It is the only religion which preaches killing non-believers. There are three occasions in the Koran where it specifically says that if you can’t convert an infidel, you must kill him.
I tried arguing that in the bible it says “an eye for an eye” which can be taken as a validation of retribution. I was quoting out of context, it seems. This guy’s answer was, seriously, nuke them all!

This led us on nicely to the death penalty. He just could not understand how “you Europeans don’t have the death penalty”. At this point I could have brought up the fact that the US is the only Western country executing criminals and it still has the highest rate of violent crime. No, I stopped arguing with him at this point as I was losing my appetite.

Finally, the majority of crime in the US is because of Mexicans. Mexicans have a violent culture. Mexico city is the most violent city in the world. They come to America and because of their innate violence, they end up in prison. According to this guy, Mexicans outnumber all other nationalities in US prisons.

I left the table.

On the other hand you meet great people like Chris Messina, Mike Arrington, Marc Canter, and Brad Abrams in the US.

Incredible.

I was talking to a friend in Dublin the other day who runs a software business. He received a phone call last week from Enterprise Ireland (EI) asking why his reported spend on Research and Development (R&D) had dropped from €300,000 last year to €0 this year!

Well, because the CSO (the Irish government’s statistics agency) had told him that under their guidelines his spend on software development, even if it is for product development, can’t be classed as R&D.

Ah, said the EI rep, sure don’t worry about that when you are reporting to us!

Great, now we know why the government can’t get anything right – the various branches of the civil service are making up the reporting rules as they go along!