Into the lion's den

It's been a very busy week so far, hence the lack of posts. Today we had a government minister out to the institute to take a look at our AIRO project. Tomorrow I'm presenting at the Irish Economy conference in Croke Park. I'm one of the couple of non-economists presenting in what is a kind of who's who of academic economic commentators on Ireland post-crash. There's going to be a live twitter feed #ieconf that will tweet away all day apparently, if you're interested and into that kind of thing. It'll be interesting to see what the economists make of my take on the property market. Oh well, always fun to wander into the lion's den. Back to a book review tomorrow - The Dead Detective by William Heffernan.

Collapse of the Celtic Tiger

A good, short video called the Collapse of the Celtic Tiger has been released by Al Jazeera. If you want to know what happened/is happening in Ireland this is a good place to start (even if I ended up on the cutting room floor after spending an hour walking around in the wind and rain on a bank holiday because the sound quality wasn't good enough!).

Review of The Eighty Five Billion Euro Man by Donal Conaty (Y Books, 2011)

Ireland is bankrupt and the IMF team headed by Ajai Chopra has flown to the country to negotiate the terms of the bailout. Amongst their number is an Irish-American who is a more than a little bemused by his ancestors approach to finance and public service. He is given the task of shadowing the head of the Department of Finance, Dermot Mulhearn, during the negotiations and is then left in place to monitor progress when the rest of the IMF team leave town. Mulhearn’s priority seems to be to maintain a certain kind of lifestyle for the civil service and to protect his various perks and assets such as investments in apartments, hotels and a room full of voting machines, rather than to broker the best deal he can for the country. The politicians on the other hand seem totally clueless, dancing the last waltz as the walls come crumbling down around them. Instead it is left to the Eighty Five Billion Euro Man from the IMF to go through the books and to try and get civil servants and politicians used to the high life to change their ways. Mulhearn and his cronies however have a touch of the Sir Humphries about them and they’re not about to simply lie down and roll over.

Based on the @IMFDublinDiary Twitter feed and stories in The Mire, The Eighty Five Billion Euro Man is a satire/farce, starting with the IMF’s first visit to Dublin and ending just a few weeks after Enda Kenny took office as Taoiseach. It covers a whole range of different events and parodies both the civil service and leading politicians. The story is told mainly through dialogue heavy scenes that work well to capture some of the absurdities, ironies and tragedies of the bailout and subsequent political shenanigans. There is a lot to like about the novel. Some of the scenes are very amusing and the caricatures of some politicians are particularly well done, for example, Brian Cowen, Mary Coughlan, Brian Lenihan, Michael Noonan and Joan Burton. However, the plot is a little uneven, with the tail end of the book, in the lead up to the election and afterwards, notably weaker (partially because it starts to stray too far from the situation it seeks to satirise - especially Mulhearn running for election). The level of satire also varies a little and whilst it is very amusing at times it’s never quite as biting or cutting as it could be, and it doesn’t have the sophisticated wit and cleverness of a political satire like Yes, Minister. Given the in-jokes, I’m also not sure how easy it would be for someone unfamiliar with Ireland to follow some of the scenes. That all said, The Eighty Five Billion Euro Man is a recommended read for anyone who is interested in the crash in Ireland and the government response. It’s an amusing read and provides a counterpoint to the dry journalistic accounts that have dominated the shelves to date.

Lazy Sunday Service

I arrived home from a conference on Friday night to find that our accessibility mapping module had been covered that day in most of the main Irish newspapers - Irish Times, Independent, Examiner, Star, Sun, Mirror and Herald. Quite unusual, in my experience at least, for academic stuff to get both broadsheet and tabloid coverage, though they can do quite different things with the same material - see right. Nice that it was seen as interesting and useful.

Short stories read this week:
Oh Superman by Colin Graham (Pulp Metal Magazine)*
Neighbors by Kieran Shea (Shotgun Honey)
Lucky Convenience by Chris Rhatigan (A Twist of Noir)*
Sex Crime by Katherine Tomlinson (A Twist of Noir)*
The Tut by Paul Brazzil (Cavalcade of Stars)*
Dudley Do Right by R. Thomas Brown (Flash Fiction Offensive)
Tight by John DuMond (Powder Burn Flash)
Musculature by Charles Dodd White (Plots With Guns)*

My posts this week:
Review of Black Sheep by Arlene Hunt
The Self-Preservation Society
To cut a long story short
Banning the boom
Crime fiction and contemporary Ireland
Mapping and graphing accessibility and deprivation
Review of Storm Front by Jim Butcher
Lost

Lost

‘For god’s sake, Margie, where the hell are we?’

‘I ... we must be ...’ Margie twisted the map, peeked over it at the passing landscape, then back at the map.

‘You haven’t got a clue, have you! All you had to do was read the flipping map.’

‘I’ve been reading the flipping map! You must have taken a wrong turn.’

‘How could I have taken a wrong turn! You’ve been telling me which turns to take.’

‘Don’t yell at me!’

‘Do you have any idea where we are?’

‘No, but neither do you!’

‘I wasn’t reading the stupid map!’

Review of Storm Front by Jim Butcher (2000, Orbit)

Harry Dresden--Wizard
Lost items found. Paranormal investigations.
Consulting. Advice. Reasonable rates.
No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other Entertainment.

Harry Dresden is a PI with a difference - he’s a (mostly) white wizard who specializes in dealing with paranormal and supernatural events, acting as a consultant to the Chicago police force in cases where there are unexplainable happenings. Accident prone, destroyer of all things electrical, and shadowed by white council representative to make sure he doesn’t use magic inappropriately (after some previous offences), Harry is too proud to take anything but magic related cases and bumps along on the breadline. Shortly after he’s called by a frightened woman concerned about her husband, he’s called by the Chicago police to investigate a horrific death, where two lovers hearts have literally exploded out of their chests. On his way back to the office he’s given a ride by a local mobster and he’s then sought out by a sassy journalist. Something is going on and it involves black magic; a lot of it. And very quickly it’s clear that the wielder of this power wants Harry out of the picture; preferably permanently. Not only does Harry need to solve the murder case, he needs to find and neutralise the black wizard without using any illegal magic, as that will result in a death sentence from the white council. And that’s going to be damn difficult, especially when a number of supposed allies think he is black magician.

I loved this book. It captivated me from the first page to the last. It’s clever and funny (I laughed out loud several times and had a grin on my face the rest) and its as tight as a drum. Harry Dresden is a wonderful creation - he has all the stereotype hallmarks of the classic Chandler/Hammett PI, but Butcher has managed to give them a fresh spin. Written in the first person, Butcher has a strong and distinctive voice. The plot is intricate, well paced, and has nice twists and turns. And the action sequences are some of the best I’ve read for a while - a fight sequence with a demon midway through the novel is very well done. It is extremely rare that I will stay up into the wee hours to continue reading, but I did so with Storm Front. It was a five star read all the way. I’ve already sought out the second book in the series.

Mapping and graphing accessibility and deprivation

Just launched two new, all-island mapping tools - one that displays access to education, health and urban services for every house on the island (the map right is access to dentists by drive time), the other maps social deprivation using an index that is comparable in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. The systems can be accessed directly through:

All-island Accessibility mapping tool
All-island Deprivation mapping tool

The news page, which also provides access to the graphing tool that shows average results for every local authority, is on the AIRO site.