On Tuesday last I had an email from the Chancellor of UMass Lowell, where I sometimes teach: “I am sorry to let you know that this changed over the weekend. As part of the university’s proactive effort to support and inform our international students, the International Students & Scholars Office (ISSO) has been regularly monitoring … Read more
Are the Eurocrats and their allies most delusional about the topics they profess to find most urgent? Or are they just setting out to delude the rest of us? This was Ursula Von Der Leyen speaking at the 9th Brussels Conference on Syria, on Saint Patrick’s Day last: The agreement between the central authorities and … Read more
‘I wish I could think of a positive point to leave you with. Will you take two negative points?’ Woody Allen, from his stand-up comedy routine (1964) Consider the facts: French writer Annie Ernaux has an affair with a young man, thirty years her junior (she was fifty-four, he was twenty-four), and writes about it, … Read more
What’s my favourite Woody Allen movie? He has directed fifty, churning out one a year since 1982, maintaining a consistently high standard leavened by only occasional dross, so it can be difficult to choose. Another common phenomenon to be taken into consideration in this discussion is how fans of any artist who becomes ‘problematic’ are … Read more
It happens. After four years of marriage, I’m madly in love…just not with my husband. I feel like Diane Lane in Unfaithful, guilt-ridden, and giddy as I face my new reality. I am a terrible wife…but…I was becoming a fantastic girlfriend. You may deem me a horror, but the truth is never a fairytale. Only … Read more
In recent years, ‘video games as an art form’ has become somewhat of a hotly debated topic. While some argue that video games don’t have the potential to be meaningful art, others argue the opposite and favour video games being considered art because of their expressive elements, such as music, design, visuals, acting, and interaction. … Read more
Part I of this series examined Mario Draghi’s recent proposals for reforming the E.U.’s economic model. It explained how one key tool was missing from his new industrial policy toolkit. That missing tool was public enterprise. Here in part II, we take a closer look at commercial State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Particularly regarding their role at … Read more
This article is the first in a forthcoming three-part series by Cillian Doyle on the role of the state in a mixed economy. Last month there were two seemingly unrelated events which in an Irish context can be connected. On September 9th Mario Draghi’s published his 400-page report on improving E.U. competitiveness. The report provides … Read more
Few writers can do grief and loss like John MacKenna. He is, without question, the John McGahern of the ‘Ancient East’. Where McGahern has put the villages and drumlins of Leitrim along the inland cusp of the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’ at the heart of his writing, the landscape of South Kildare, and its surroundings are … Read more
And Not Your Garments Lord, Lord this my heart full of secrets, seeds I know you did not send—Lord, I cannot rend. If I am choked, therefore, by weeds, I will not ask for a mended garden, I won’t beg your holy pardon at scythe’s end. These were difficult to bury, so little loam left … Read more