When I am working in Dublin I have a set routine to start my day. I boot up my lap top, and as it takes 10 minutes to get to a state where I can work with it (I know as I have timed it) I head downstairs for breakfast.

I have a cup of tea and a lightly buttered scone at my desk while I read whatever mail has arrived since I left work the previous day (and there can be up to 30 or 40 mails). This is pretty often the high point of my work day. It doesn’t get much better than this.

I get pretty annoyed when people mess with the formula, so who the hell told the cook that he could put cherries in my scone this morning! I wanted a standard white scone, with raisins. There was no place in this picture for chopped red berries. They are not part of any proper scone receipe.

My breakfast routine is shattered. The morning ruined. I am a broken man. I can’t even face coming into work on Monday now. I will probably just stay at home instead….

Congratulations go out to my brother Kieran. He has been selected to represent Leinster in the three day Tour of Ulster race this weekend.

All the hard work and effort he has put into his cycling is certainly being recognised amongst his peers. This time last year he was getting ready for the FBD Milk Ras. He has decided to sit it out this year and instead is concentrating on winning some races as an A-Cat rider.

One of the strongest examples of his commitment to the sport has to be the mad 3 day trip he took to see the Tour de France and cheer on Mark Scanlon last year.

The one problem with all this is that our family is from Limerick. He is (quite justifiably) getting grief for turning his back on Munster to wear the Leinster geansai. Oh the shame of it…

It’s funny how small things can have big effects. Something relatively innocuous happens and a switch is thrown in your head. Any uncertainty about the path ahead is removed. You know what you have to do.

All that remains is to generate the circumstances for success.

It looks like the world’s dislike of US foreign policy is having serious consequences for American’s abroad

Cool, fan mail from India. Una (a UCD MC person) is travelling around that fascinating country.

She sent me this message:

I am currently in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal and as far as I can see they didn’t locate it very well. This city is everything Indian cities are renowned for – hot (above 40 everyday), dirty and full of persisant touts. Today is my last day and tomorrow I take a 23 hour train ride to sweet Bombay, where I will meet John.

So I was thinking of something interesting I could tell you and maybe even your website as a token of appreciation for how it’s picked me up when I’m feeling homesick and I thought of this:

Three weeks ago I was travelling in Sikkim in the north east of India. It’s a mountainy place north of Darjeeling and on our way to the Kanchenzonga trek we took an overcrowded jeep up high into those mountains winding our way around ravines with evidence of recent landslides and overturned vehicles glinting from the bottom of gorges. The mortality rate on these roads is one of the highest in India. It was a thrilling ride made even more entertaining by the road signs that the Sikkimese government had erected along the way. Some of these were quite cheerful “It’s not a rally – enjoy the vally” and others more more morbid “It’s better to be late than THE Late” but my favourite, and I think yours too, would have to be “Stop gossiping and let him drive!”.

Thanks Una and safe travelling!

Today as you go about you business, spare a thought for Stanislav Petrov. He is a retiree, who’s pension has not kept up with the rising cost of living and he lives in poverty in the suburbs of Moscow.

He is one of those people who in the great scheme of things probably wouldn’t figure too much. Except that if it weren’t for him we probably all would not be here today.

In 1983 just after the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Air Lines 747, when tensions where high between the USSR and the US, Stanislav was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. He was stationed south of Moscow in a secret facility that watched the US to provide advance warning of a nuclear attack.

Just after midnight on Monday September 26th, the sytems Stanislav was monitoring reported multiple US missile launches against the USSR. The satellite systems were reporting an attack, but by the time confirmation would come from ground radar it would be too late to respond. It fell to him to decide if this was a real attack or not and to pass the notification to his superiors and the Politburo.

Under immense pressure he decided that this was a false alarm and notified his supperiors accordingly. He was proved right, and there was no Soviet counter-strike. A subsequent investigation showed sunlight reflecting off clouds had confused the monitoring satellites. Although he was right, Stanislav had not followed procedures so he was neither praised nor censured for his actions. But we all can be thankful for what he decided not to do that night.

We have built a world that sometimes seems geared for conflict or even self destruction. But the deus ex machina is people. People like Stanislav remind you to keep faith in humanity. Most people are basically good. And despite the occasional wobbler, they do try to act that way.

This one is especially for Mish. Could this be the daftest security screening move ever?

I am reading Robert Fisk’s quite entertaining book on Ireland during the Second World War. In it I am after coming across details of an interesting incident in the early days of the war.

In October 1939 the German U-Boat U35 sank the 8000 ton Diamantes off Ireland. Because of rough seas, the U-Boat commander, Kapitain Werner Lott, took the 28 crew on board and 36 hours later dropped them in Dingle. This act of chivalry (not uncommon before the Laconia incident) was a bit embarrassing for the Irish government as it was technically a violation of our neutrality.

I was intrigued by this event so I pottered out onto the net to see what was out there. The excellent UBoat.net only had the CV of the U35. This showed that the submarine had been sunk barely 2 months later in the North Sea.

The web being the great resource that it is however, it turns out the U35 has a home page! This has a good write up on the incident with photos and eye witness acounts of the time. Apparently it even made the cover of Life magazine in the US.

It was intersting to see that Kapitain Werner Lott had survived the sinking of his sub, spent the rest of the war as a POW and returned to Dingle in 1984. He died in 1997. I have not been as succesful in finding out what happened to the very lucky crew of the Diamantis.

If you have the time though, Uboat.net is a great site to wander around.

*** Update 31.05.2010 *** You can now see that issue of Life magazine through Google Books.

The Catholic Church in Ireland has said they are okay with legal recogniton being given to co-habiting couples in Ireland. That’s nice of them. But why are they making this submission to the government? Surely they should be addressing it to their followers and not trying to influence laws that will apply to people other than Catholics?

In general I have no problem with people having religous beliefs, no matter how strange. Hey I even used to have some myself one time.

But I have a big problem with religions trying to force others to live their lives in line with their views. It is part of the arrogance of organised religion to feel that the laws of the land should reflect their teachings.

One of the odious examples of this is blasphemy law. There a religion tries to limit my freedom of speech because they feel it offends their God. This is a daft law for a load of reasons.

• It imposes the beliefs on one religion on people who are not of that religion or of none. “I believe my God is above criticism so you may not criticise him/her/it either”
• It gives state preference to some religions over others. In Ireland the blasphemy law cannot be used by Hindus, Muslims, Pagans or Satanists for example. It applies only to Jews and some Christian denominations. This is probably as well though. Can you image the fun if the Satanists accused the Christians of blasphemy towards the Devil?
• It seeks to limit freedom of expression by declaring something is essentially sacrosant. You can’t even satirise it. This is like those tin pot dictators that muzzle the press by prohibiting “disrespect for the government”. It’s a small step from preventing comment on a God to preventing comment on the church.

And this is just one example. The debates on divorce, abortion and contraception have been subject to religous interference in the past (and today).

It is an sign of the authoritarianism of the church that it feels it’s teachings need to be backed by secular as well as religious law. Are they that insecure in their beliefs? If they were confident of their arguments with their followers, then abortion could be legal in Ireland, and good Catholics would not avail of it. Instead they seem to prefer the route of coercion, and they want to apply it to everyone whether you are of their flock or not.

A secular state demands the total separation of church and state. So would the church butt out of law making? Stick to telling your own followers how to run their lives. Don’t try to tell me how to run mine.

I have been getting worried about my size recently. Things seem to be getting out of hand. I measured it this morning and it was nearly 31cm. This may be too big, and action has to be taken. L is starting to complain!

I am referring to my stack of unread books (I hope you were not thinking of anything sordid? ) It’s now 305mm high. I am just not reading these at anything like a fast enough rate. And this doesn’t include my backlog of Economists either.

Once again work is interfering with my personal life. It is no wonder that I want a job as one of the idle rich.