h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Count

Posted Feb 27, 2016

I voted yeserday. Ireland's voting system is one of the fairest in the world, second only to that of Northern Ireland in my opinion.

In my constituency, we had 9 candidates on the ballot paper and only 3 seats to be filled.

Today is the count. They've been counting since first thing this morning. It's now nearly 6pm and they should have the result of the 4th count soon. 3 candidates have been eliminated and one elected. Two or three counts should settle it so we should know the result by about 9pm. And a similar drama is going on in every other consituency.

Will the government fall? Almost definitely. Who'll replace them? It's anybody's guess.

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Latest reply: Feb 27, 2016

Hairy panic!

Posted Feb 19, 2016

One of the things Australians have to worry about that I don't.

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Latest reply: Feb 19, 2016

Brussels 2016

Posted Feb 18, 2016

I'm off to Brussels tomorrow for the weekend to see my brother and his wife. They've lived there for about 40 years now. No great plans for what I'll do while I'm there other than chat and drink some Belgian beer.

They live just across the road from the Stoclet Palace, a mansion built for an Austrian banker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoclet_Palace

This looks interesting, but is not open to the public. It's owned by members of the Stoclet family who can't agree on what to do with it so it is just sitting there, empty. It's got lots of very fascist-looking bronze nude statues on it.

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Latest reply: Feb 18, 2016

St Brigid's Day

Posted Feb 1, 2016

Today is St Brigid's Day, 1 February, the first day of Spring in the ancient Irish calendar. Although the Irish weather service now use the British definition of Spring as starting on 1 March, many people in Ireland consider today to be Spring.

It's normally about this time that the days start getting back to a reasonable length, and the plants start putting up new shoots. Some of the early flowers come into bloom.

Of course this year, due to global warming, the flowers have been in bloom since early December, so the transition into Spring is not as obvious.

St Brigid was one of the three patron saints of Ireland. She had the same name as one of the pagan goddesses. I always assumed that either:

a) she was a fictional character invented by the early Christian missionaries to subsume the pagan goddess into Christianity, or

b) she was an actual person named after the goddess who became a convert to Christianity and later had lots of stories of miracles attributed to her

I've recently heard a third theory which I had not considered:

c) she was an actual person who became important in the early Christian church, and the pagans not yet converted to Christianity were so impressed with her that they created the legend of the pagan goddess.

I must look into this some more.

Brigid's name is also spelt Bridget in English. In modern Irish the central g is softened to a silent gh giving spellings Bríghid (pr. breej), Bríd (pr. breej) and Breda (pr. breeda).

There are lots of fantastical legends about Brigid. After curing the King of Leinster of an embarrassing illness, she asked for some land on which to build a convent. She said she would accept as much land as she could cover with her cloak. When the time came to allocate the land, Brigid laid her cloak on the ground and it magically stretched out to an enormous size, giving her a piece of land big enough for the convent and farmland to support it.

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Latest reply: Feb 1, 2016

Posted Jan 28, 2016

Bible has ultimate answer: A87862675

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Latest reply: Jan 28, 2016