As you may have guessed Laura and I are not in Ireland for Christmas. We have gone to the sun. just so you know its only about 5 degrees warmer than Ireland and it is raining. Go figure

Happy Christmas everyone.

Having lost their court case over community rating BUPA have announced they are leaving the Irish market. A lot of printers ink, and Internet electrons is going to be used discussing the merits and impacts of this. I think the issues I have heard raise so far are mostly red herrings. Like the 300 jobs in Cork, favouritism to the VHI and so on.

I would see there being one question. When they entered the Irish market were BUPA aware that community rating was to be in effect?

If not then the government changed the market conditions mid course and they have a case that they might have been treated unfairly. But there still is the question of why not raise their premiums to compensate?

If community rating was specified at the time they entered the Irish market 10 years ago (which I believe was the case), they should have accounted for it in their business plans and not just gambled on a court case. Then, much and all as we will miss them, they should be careful the door doesn’t him them on the way out of the Irish market.

My small independently operated web based RSS reader, orijinn has announced that they are shutting down.

Can anyone recommend a replacement?

What is this country coming to. First an idiot thinks that after being ejected from the Late Late Show driving a car into RTE’s reception will get people to adopt his hare brained care safety device.

Then last night another eeijit stormed the FAI headquarters and threatened to set it and himself in fire because he was not happy with how his football team was treated.

Where are these nutcases coming from? What causes a person to become so detached from reality as to think that these are sensible courses of action? It’s no wonder there are stereotypes about crazy Irish people.

I am just worried that we are going to have to deal with an escalation of idiocy as other raving loons try to draw attention to their pet causes!

Richard Dawkins was on the telly last Friday. Pat the plank had him as a guest on the Late Late. I didn’t get to see it because, I don’t watch Pat, and I was out on the razz in Dublin with Laura and my brother anyway. But the vids are up on You Tube. There is a link to the videos on Dawkins blog.

Unfortunately I still have not had a chance to see them as the broadband connection in my hotel room is so flaky it is almost unusable. Which is probably why they offer it for free.

I am sure that when I finally get to see it there will be lots of confrontational people in the audience arguing with Dawkins from emotion rather than reason. Even within the Irish Skeptics society religion is a subject that is almost taboo. The one meeting I attended (where James Randi spoke) had people trying to get Randi to agree that it is okay for skeptics to be religious. The contradiction between accepting things by “faith” and being a champion of reason did not seem apparent to them.

In general I got the impression that the society would prefer to tiptoe around the issue rather than confront it. You can pick up the undercurrent of this on their forum which is hosted over at boards.

Anyway, the comments attached to the post on Dawkins site are not inspiring:

“as an Irish person I apologise for the poor showing in that ‘debate’. However, Pat Kenny, and obvisouly his audience, are far from intellectual giants. Pat is known as ‘the plank’ in Ireland for good reason.” – marklennox

“Embarrasing to be Irish and watch this, as has been noted, no intellectual heavy weights on this show barring Richard, however i think a good representation of how the belief in the church in Ireland still prevails.

After all that has happened in many dioceses and after the cover up and denial of the church is it not time people in Ireland asked themselves some hard questions about what they believe.” – yogibear

What a wasted opportunity; this is the second time in a month that Richard has appeared on Irish TV or radio (with Ryan Tubridy a few weeks ago) and on both occasions he has been paired with an intellectual inferior, neither of whom could deal fairly or reasonably with any of the points made.. ..When I think about it, it would have been much better to pair Richard with Tommy Tiernan – kinvara

“Truly embarrassing, frustrating and disappointing non-debate. Apologies from an Irish person to all rational thinkers.” – mundi luminar

One interesting one, that give some hope (other than placing us in the UK) was:

I envy all of you in the UK. Have you ever watched American late-night television? “I mean, I get the feeling that this show is not even the cream of the late-night crop and yet I cannot fathom being so utterly stimulated by watching TV here in the states. A debate this like simply would never happen here on network television.

While I find the same frustration in some of the audience’s inability to grasp very fundamental aspects of the nature of science, I still applaud you all for living in a region where the debate is encouraged.” – OUMedStudent

Update
It looks like Dawkins was on the Panel with Dara O’Briain as well. This one was a lot better going by the comments. Again I will have to wait to view it.

Well done to Dara O’Briain for letting Richard do the talking! Not a very common skill in many other chat show hosts. The two guys on the left were a waste of space though. – bobbafrett

I am in Stockholm again for one last business trip before I break for Christmas. Then I take a break from all the travelling and flying I have been doing by going on holiday and, eh, flying to the far side of the world and travelling around for 3 weeks. Hum…

Today I did Dublin, Dusseldorf, and Stockholm. The weather was wet and cold in all of them. What is the point of having a continent with different countries and geographies when they all have the same weather?

I did have to travel through Dublin airport at 05:30 on a Monday for the first time in a very long time. The queues weren’t that bad. It only took me 20 minutes to clear security. Contrast that with Dusseldorf where there was no queue at all. It might not have been as busy as Dublin first thing on a Monday but there were hordes of business people getting evening flights across Europe. As an airport Dusseldorf rocks! I have never been in one where there is a real live pianist playing in the check-in concourse.

Sorry to harp on about this, but I was thinking about airport and airline security again this morning. If you were a terrorist looking for the next big spectacular then you want an attack that:
1) Kills lots of people (good for causing real terror)
2) Disrupts air travel across a wide area and for a long time

What I would do is get a suicide bomber to go into Dublin airport and detonate a bomb in the queue for the security checks. The high density of people means you would get a good body count, and the attack would cause pandemonium for air travellers everywhere. Airports would also be caught in the catch 22 situation where increasing security (through more stupid checks) would just increase the risk.

Its a wonderful plan for would be martyrs. As Blogorrah would say, did I mention we are giving these ideas away for free?

I like this one:
http://atheistdelusion.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

Sorry for all the short posts lately. I am working me bollix off at the moment as next week is my last week at work so I haven’t had time to write more.

But I will say Laura and I were out on the razz last night and we got a tip from a man in Cafe en Sienne (Indian Pipe ream in the 12:10 at Market Rasin). The odds are 1:1.16. Look world. If you are giving out horse tips, can they have better odds please?

Update The bloody nag came in second at 6/5. I am so very glad I didn’t put anything on it.

The BBC have a nice series of photos of people’s impressions of what moon bases would look like over the last 100 years.

It’s interesting that as they come closer to reality (not that it is going to happen any time soon) they become smaller and less impressive.

Now, who wants the “Moon Pirates” one?

The Register has an article on HD TV. This link is for me to find it again in the future.

As seen on RichardDawkins.net, but from Time Magazine originally.