Sunday Misc 01Jul18

Here's a few items from the bran-tub of idleness.

• Horse-coping in Banagher, King's County
• I've mentioned Chlamydia trachomatis a few times before on The Blob, partly because it's a little bit easier to spell than Neisseria goneryeehar ghondoreeea gonorrhoeae. So it was handy to catch up with John Oliver's report of the way Norway is dealing with the discharge issue.
• The youtube sidebar delivered me to a JO report about deaths and dissection in Danish Zoos. Which reminded me of my happy time in Blijdorp zoo and my encounter with the frozen head-and-neck of a dead giraffe. Giraffes? Been there before.
• Foodie
• Drumully Boxty from Co Caaavan.
• Betty's Poitín Marmalade from Bandon Co Cork.
• Canadian University is all ahoo and taking sides on the difference between Free Speech and Hate Speech after a graduate student teaching assistant started a discussion about gender in grammar. 
• Hate speech? Raheem Sterling plays soccer, for England, but the red-tops have decided that he can't put a foot right off the pitch. He and his mum had a hard life and this carping just ain't helping.
• Canada? CBC report on Easter Island: the statues were all about potlatch and conspicuous consumption to put one over on the neighbours.
• Word on the donor front was that if you paid people to donate blood and/or plasma then only junkies and graduate students would come forward and the supply chain would be dangerously contaminated. The Economist demolishes this lazy assessment of the value of blood and blood products. via MeFi where the comments push back on what exploitation is about.
• Politics
• Sinn Fein leader MaryLou McDonald interviewed by Owen Jones
• Government propaganda about Ireland's Global Impact
• Propaganda about the role of the Irish Defense Forces for 60 years as UN Peacekeepers 
• Read the comments: incl. about Leo Varadkar coat-tailing on the sacrifices. "My father was in the 34th Battalion in the Congo in 1961. We went to Baldonnell in 2010 to the 50th Anniversary of the first deployment to the Congo in 1960. They're was a group photograph. Biffo Cowen was our glorious Taoiseach at the time and he stood right in front of my father in the photo. My father tapped in on the leg with his walking stick and said to him "move up out of the way, sure you weren't in the Congo". I nearly died laughing. He'd hop the stick off Varadkar's head if he was near him."
• Musical
• Nimo Patel and EmptyHandsMusic riff on We Shall Overcome
• Susanne Vega - Luka
• Paul McCartney on Carpool Karaoke.
• Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush - Don't Give Up
• Roberta Flack - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face