Did You Know Your Teeth Can Save Your Eyesight?
February 28, 2008 (One Response)
I KNOW THIS SOUNDS PRETTY INSANE, but it’s actually true. It’s a procedure called Osteo Odonto Kerato Prosthesis (OOKP), and it’s just saved the eyesight of a very lucky Irish man called Bob McNichol.
The story begins a couple of years ago when a freak accident involving hot liquid aluminium exploded into the eye of of Bob McNichol from Mayo. He lost his eyesight as a result and assumed that’s the way things would stay, which I think you will agree is a fair assumption given the circumstances.
After doctors in Ireland said there was nothing more they could do, McNichol heard about a miracle operation called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP) being performed by Dr Christopher Liu at the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton in England, and that’s when the story gets really weird.
You see the principle behind this procedure is pretty wild. It’s a technique which the Italians pioneeredback in the 1960s (I’d love to know what they were smoking when they came up with this one!) which involves creating a support for an artificial cornea from the patient’s own tooth and the surrounding bone.
In this particular instance his son, Robert, donated a live tooth so that the surgeons in England could perform the procedure on his father. The medical types gave the procedure a 65% chance of partial success, and wouldn’t you know it the crazy thing actually worked.
McNichol’s right eye socket was rebuilt, part of the tooth inserted and a lens inserted in a hole drilled in the tooth. The first operation lasted ten hours and the second five hours; they basically built a new eye socket and foundation based upon a tooth extracted from his son, and now McNichol (senior) has enough eyesight to watch TV and generally get around again.
I guess the thing that pisses me off the most about this amazing story is that the Irish doctors just gave up on him, and weren’t even informed enough to know that there were other potential options out there less than a few hundred miles away over in England.
Still, it’s a happy ending for the McNichols and will provide great hope to others out there who find themselves in a similar - if unfortunate - set of circumatances.
All you need is £40,000 in your pocket, probably access to the Internet, a willingness to do the legwork yourself and a ticket to England it seems.
Irelande Douze Pointe - Eurovision Gets A Proper Hand Up It’s Arse At Last!
February 23, 2008 (2 Responses)
I HOPED, I REALLY DID… and tonight it actually happened. Last week I heard about the 6 Irish Eurovision song contest entries and the one that caught my attention was the duck turkey from Dublin with the most outrageous idea yet. I’ve always avoided watching the Eurovision because it’s so campy and crap, but this year when I heard that a hand puppet was being entered into the contest with a song called “Irelande Douze Point” - as a kind of protest vote - I just had to tune in tonight to see what happened in the qualifiers.
And would you believe it… the idiots left it up to the voting public to decide who goes through. So of course the voting public decided to push for the biggest fuck-you act possible; they voted in a turkey for the Eurovision. I’m not talking about a bad song, I’m talking about an actual hand-puppet, fowl mouthed, Dublin based ex-builder Turkey with a hand stuffed up it’s arse!
It was absolutely pure class to see the reaction of the judges in the room after the hand puppet performed what I can only call an abomination of a song, surrounded by some seriously dodgy dancers and what appeared to be some kind of drag act/opera cross. This has literally just happened folks, so the video of this act is probably not yet available on the ‘net, but as soon as it is I will link to it from here.
You have to see this to believe it. Really. Words cannot possibly convey how truely atrocious and outlandish this is… and I just love the fact that the Irish public have voted this forward to the Eurovision competition. How the hell will the other contestants react?
G’wan you good thing!
Update: Here is the link to the video of this insane entry into the Eurovision 2008. Enjoy!
Finally, A Eurovision Turkey I Can Watch!
February 6, 2008 (2 Responses)
I MIGHT ACTUALLY WATCH IT this time around, especially if Dustin is on stage!
I refer of course to the ever-present Dustin the Dublin turkey, a famous muppet puppet if ever there was one in Ireland. This turkey has pedigree. He ran for president of the country for a while before being ousted. I think he even got into politics along the way. Rumour has it he has turned down a top job at the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) in order to concentrate on his singing career and more specifically Eurovision 2008.
And why should anyone care? Well you see Dustin is not just a turkey, he’s a hand puppet. That’s right, this stuffed, insane and manky turkey with a hand up his arse is getting almost as much press coverage as Clinton and Obama here in Ireland, it’s even making some international publications and I love it! Really. I mean Ireland has it’s problems these days, but seriously… where else in the world could you get a turkey with this much talent?
The mad turkey - if he makes it to the final stage - will be singing his song entry entitled “Irelande Douze Pointe”. No doubt some sanity will interfere with the plan, but the possibility of having a hand puppet representing Ireland and delivering a truely aweful song in the Eurovision would actually make me want to watch the damn thing, possibly even sober. Can you just imagine the ensuing carnage from the other competitors that would follow, especially if he scored some points in the process? Mmmnnn… fun indeed.
Ah hell, given the state of the political parties in this country I’d even give the damn bird my vote if he decided to run against the Fianna Failers and their bitches the Greens. 
G’wan ya mad thing!
One Woman Raped Every Day In Ireland Last Month
January 2, 2008 (6 Responses)
I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING… if you’re anything like me you’re thinking “What the fuck?”
The statistic can’t be right. There must be some mistake right? Wrong.
Unfortunately it’s being reported over the airwaves tonight that last month the Dublin Rape Crisis centre had to help one woman per day during December ‘07. Between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, the helpline received 12 calls from people who had been recently raped. That’s 31 people who were assisted by the crisis centre and brought to hospital to be treated, in just one month alone! Hell for all we know thats just for Dublin, never mind what happened around the country.
The really scary thing is that these statistics only represent those calls that were reported last month, not the actual figures. Experience suggests the actual numbers are quite a bit higher.
What the hell has happened to Ireland? I remember when a murder being reported on the radio was a big thing, a shock. Now there are murders every sodding day on every news bulletin. These rape statistics are frightening enough, but I did a bit of looking around after hearing of this report and discovered even worse statistics for Ireland as follows… Read more
Alien Anthropology: Religion Is Dead, Faith May Yet Prevail
December 16, 2007 (16 Responses)
WE VISITED AN ALIEN WORLD this morning. It had been many many years since I’d seen the inside of a church, excepting of course the usual weddings and funerals that require perfunctory attendance but none of the usual alertness I’d associate with the giving and receiving of actual organised religion.
This morning SusiQ and I attended a mass (the reasons for which are not really central to the theme of this post) and as I sat there and looked around at the church, the audience, the priest, the whole interaction I was struck by how alien it all was for me. The church in question was one I’d frequented when I was a young boy growing up in Dublin, but by the time I was twelve I’d basically bailed on the whole organised religion thing and left mass and churches behind in the process, much to the distress of my mother.
And so it was that I found myself back in this church, with my mother as it happens and SusiQ, and the occasion provided me with an opportunity, anthropologically speaking, to observe the alien process in action and see for myself how things had changed in the decades since I last found myself in that church.
For starters, the audience congregation had changed dramatically. I’d say only 25% of the seats were taken up, and of those probably 90% of the participants spectators were at the over-sixty stage. I only counted two kids in the entire church and probably four or five middle aged or young couples, most of whom were eastern European by appearance. Attendances have dropped off significantly from when I was a boy.
My first surprise was when the priest stood up and announced the start of the service for ‘those listening at home’; they were broadcasting over a church radio network. An obvious progression I know, but still I wasn’t expecting it for some reason. As the priest droned on in the usual monotones I took stock of the churchgoers in the rows and rows in front of him and would liken them to robots, going through the well established and comfortable motions, rather than active partipants in any religious ceremony. They came in, sat down, switched off and performed when required. There was no real engagement as such.
Then of course it got weirder, which is only to be expected I suppose in an alien landscape… Read more
Are These The Actual Options For Famous Guinness Dublin Brewery?
November 28, 2007 (4 Responses)
USUALLY IT’S A CASE of the public sampling Guinness, on a fairly regular basis it has to be said, but this evening I took part in a survey - completely by coincidence - where Guinness were sampling their customer base in advance of potentially huge changes for the ailing company.
Things have not been going well for Guinness in recent years. I used to work there, up until 2001, and even then market share was dropping with alarming regularity. Although overall share prices are on the up for Diageo - the parent company - the Guinness brand is in trouble. Drink driving legislation, take home trade market growth and more ‘fashionable and younger’ drinks are all taking their toll on the old diehard brand.
Guinness of course have attempted to fight back with clever marketing campaigns and adverts, with new products and options for the younger and more discerning drinker (Guinness Red anyone?… Meh!), hell they’ve even developed some “Surge” technology to enable the ‘perfect pint’, but none of it seems to be making that much difference to the downward slide in performance.
Even when I was working there the rumours of the Brits closing down the St. James Gate brewery were always a regular topic of conversation at the lunch table, or indeed over a pint or two. Up to now it’s been speculation, but more recently this particular rumour seems to have gathered some speed and momentum. Back in June this year Diageo confirmed they were looking at options, but remained elusive on what those options actually were.
The survey I completed online tonight kind of reinforces (for me anyway) the idea that the Diageo management team are serious about taking a long hard look at their options for the home of Guinness this time around, and in particular they seemed to have refined said options down to just a few fairly key ones.
So, what variations are they looking at then? Well, you might be surpsied to know that there are four distinct options on the menu - according to the survey anyway -as follows:- Read more
PC In A Tree Concept Wins Dyson Design Award
November 9, 2007 (2 Responses)
I JUST THOUGHT it was worth giving a quick mention to the latest invention from a student in Dublin. The Dyson design award has been picked up by Laura Caulwell, a 22 year old graduate of the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), for her tree shaped PC that allows users to upgrade parts of the computer separately.
Caulwell, who was awarded €2,000 after scooping the top prize, will now go on to represent Ireland at the prestigious International James Dyson Award held in January 2008. She calls her new PC invention the “Cultivate”.
Shaped as a tree, the “Cultivate” allows each part of the computer to be upgraded separately so that as a user’s needs change, the tree grows. The trunk of the tree houses the motherboard, while 10 branches also hold the central processor, RAM, battery, power supply, expansion cards, storage, two speakers, an ambient light, and a mouse. Any of these components can be “plucked” from the tree and sent back to the supplier for upgrade, recycling or remanufacture.
Pretty clever isn’t it?
The Cultivate computer tree also features silver aluminum “leaves” which act as external heatsinks, cooling down each component. They are attached by the user, and can be bent and curled into all manner of shapes so not only is it functional but you can tailor your own PC to suit your astethic tastes. Well done Laura, and good luck in the International competition!
