Mets manager Terry Collins - making all the right calls

Mets Manager Terry Collins hugs pitcher Johan Santana after
Santana had thrown the first no-hitter in Mets history last night.

"I never thought I'd live to see this day." That's how I feel today; that's how all of us Met fans feel today after watching Johan Santana throw the first no-hitter in club history.

Many Mets have come close before. As we watched we knew we'd seen this movie before, but still we hoped we'd see the improbable. We'd see 50 years of history vanquished.

While Santana did the hard work on the mound, one man had a very difficult call to make as the game wore on: manager Terry Collins.

The Mets have been a revelation this year and a lot of the credit must go to Collins. The team has a self-belief and never-say-die attitude that was totally lacking in the talented, but under-performing teams in the years before Collins took over.

The Mets used to be considered soft, quick to buckle when the pressure was on. Now the Mets are bulldogs, a reflection of their manager.
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Collins, a college football player at Eastern Michigan, has a football mentality when it comes to playing baseball and playing with injuries. He doesn't care for the molly-coddling that seems so much a part of the modern game.

That brings me back to Santana. Nobody is closer to Collins in that bulldog mentality than Santana.

Collins managed the Mets last year without Santana, who missed all of 2011 after major shoulder surgery. He's back this year and Collins and his team of coaches have managed Santana perfectly. No pitcher has ever successfully come back from the operation Santana underwent. For that reason, Collins' main issue with Santana is holding him back, removing him from games when Santana would rather stay in.

That's why last night must have been such torture for Collins. He has set a limit for Santana of 110 pitches per game. Santana went past that limit with 5 outs remaining in the game.

Collins left Santana in. He threw 134 pitches to complete the game. I'm sure this morning Collins, with the euphoria fading, is wondering if he made the right decision. Did he hurt Santana? Did he hurt the team's chances of having a magical 2012? Did he risk too much for the sake of a number?

That's what makes baseball great and strange at the same time. I don't think there is another sport where a manager would take such a chance that had no bearing on winning either a game or championship. That's what Collins did last night, however.

I can't speak for Santana, but I bet he feels it was a risk worth taking. I think I can speak for the fans, however, when I say that we all wanted last night. No matter how the rest of this year plays out we won't second guess Collins' decision to leave Santana in to finish last night's game. We wanted that moment, a moment we thought we would never see.

Irish government promotes Guinness with President Obama, but wants to stop it sponsoring sporting events

Guinness sponsors the Hurling Championship.
Kilkenny's James Fitzpatrick.celebrating
last year's All Ireland title.

In an attempt to curtail drinking by young people the Irish government is considering a proposal to ban alcohol companies from sponsoring sporting events.

Look, I'm as keen as the next 45+ year old to see fewer Irish people in their early 20s, late teens or even younger drunkenly stumbling around our streets at night, but that doesn't mean I see this as a problem that requires the government to "do something."

First of all I'm not convinced the problem is greater now than it was 25 years ago when sponsorship was much less prevalent. My own observation was that when Ireland was awash with cash it was frequently in a drunken stupor. Now we're broke (again) and people are drinking less. Irish people drank 10% less alcohol per capita in 2011 than in 2006. It's possible young people are drinking less now than they did during the Celtic Tiger years.

Regardless, young Irish people drink more than their peers in most European countries. It would be better if they drank less, but if the problem is no greater now than it was before alcohol sports sponsorship became the norm there must be other factors at work.

That doesn't stop people like Minister of State for Health Róisín Shortall. Young people are drinking "too much" and she's going to marshal the forces of state and do ... something, even if it's the wrong thing. Hence the proposal to ban Guinness and others from sponsoring sporting events.

The thinking is that young people are impressionable and sports stars are their heroes so when they see the captain of the championship team lifting the cup off a stand draped in Guinness advertising that's sending a message to the young fan that it's good to drink. I'm not going to argue that advertising and sponsorship don't work, especially on a subliminal level, but does a Guinness sign tell you to drink or to choose Guinness when you're buying that drink? I suspect the latter.

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Banning Guinness from sponsoring the Hurling Championship - probably the biggest Irish sporting event sponsored by an alcohol company - could well have more negative than positive effects on the health of young people. Guinness pumps a lot of money into the GAA through the sponsorship deal, money the GAA uses to develop facilities and promote playing their games to young children, teenagers and adults all over Ireland.

The GAA gets people moving and the Guinness money helps with that. The Guinness sponsorship is probably a net positive for the health of the nation.

Of course the government's proposal would only affect sporting events in Ireland. English and European soccer, rugby, golf and other major television sports that originate in other countries would be out of reach. So the government's ban would serve only to weaken Irish sports without really doing much about children and young people witnessing alcohol-sponsored sporting events.

Besides, if the government is that worried about drinking and the susceptibility of star-struck young people why does it organize celebrity drinking events? Last year we had two major ones: the Queen, who actually spurned the Guinness that was offered to her, and the coolest cat to visit Ireland in years - President Obama - were both invited to drink for the cameras.

Without doubt the happy scenes of President and Mrs Obama downing Guinness in Moneygall would have had far more influence on young people than the sight of Kilkenny's hurlers lifting the championship trophy adorned with Guinness streamers.

The Irish government organized a trip to the pub for President and Mrs Obama
during their visit to Ireland in May 2011.

If I were in charge of the GAA or any other Irish sports organization I'd tell the government to get its own house in order before coming after our revenues. If the government feels the need to "do something" they can start by not foisting pints of Guinness into the hands of every visiting world leader.

{Hurling photo thanks to the Belfast Telegraph.}

When Irishwoman Katie Taylor goes for Olympic gold I won't be watching

Irish boxer Katie Taylor, favorite to win gold at the London Olympics.

Katie Taylor is Ireland's best hope for a gold medal at the Olympic Games, which take place in London two months from now. I hope she wins her gold medal, but I won't be tuning in to watch her. Taylor is a boxer and, although this possibly puts me at odds with 'modernity,' I will not watch women's boxing.

From everything I've picked up through the television, radio and newspapers Taylor is a fantastic boxer, extremely skilled in the "manly art of self defense" and is favorite to win gold. This past weekend she won the gold at the World Championships, a title she has held since 2006.

Of course women's boxing is a minor sport, unlikely to create much of a stir in most countries, but in Ireland Katie Taylor is on the verge of becoming a superstar. Public misgivings about women's boxing are non-existent either because people are afraid of falling afoul of the PC police or they're too desperate to see the Irish flag fly above all others as the Irish anthem rings out at this summer's games. Irish Olympic gold medals are pretty rare, especially if you exclude Michelle Smith's three golds for swimming in Atlanta in 1996.

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Undoubtedly Taylor's undamaged face and perfect smile owe a lot to her skills in the ring. My wife met her once and was surprised at how pretty Taylor is.

An attractive woman boxer seems unlikely, but there you go. I'm sure this fact is not lost on marketing people, who are probably drooling at the ways Taylor can be put to work once she wins that gold this summer. The people in charge of women's boxing have probably noticed too. I wouldn't be the least surprised to learn that it was Taylor that they had in mind when they "suggested" that women boxers wear skirts in the ring rather than shorts.

Maybe they didn't know Taylor well enough before making the suggestion. The new sport's biggest star was having none of it. She said the miniskirts they wanted the women to wear were a "disgrace," that she didn't "wear miniskirts on a night out, so I definitely won't be wearing miniskirts in the ring."

Taylor is a female boxer, which is rare enough, but she is also a born again Christian and unafraid to talk about her faith. Among young Irish people that makes her even rarer than a female boxer.

American sports fans are used to athletes making reference to God in interviews, but here that sort of overt religiosity is unknown. Taylor is more Jeremy Lin than Tim Tebow, but regardless I'm sure the Irish media is hoping she keeps those "glory of God" references to a minimum. It invites awkwards silences from interviewers.

My wife may have been surprised by Taylor's appearance, but it was Taylor the person that really got her. Taylor is "humble, friendly, polite, and extremely generous," a real credit to her parents and she'll be a great ambassador for Irish athletes when she wins that gold.

From all I've learned about Taylor I admire her greatly. I really wish her well. It's just that she's only a few years older than my oldest daughter and, although I'd have loved it if my daughter were great at running or soccer or basketball, I would never have wanted her to box.

I expect to watch a fair amount of this summer's Games, but I won't watch women's boxing even when our local hero goes for gold.

{Picture from SpiritRadio.ie.}

Ireland and the EU Fiscal Treaty - it cannot be 'No' this time

Declan Ganley - bogeyman of Irish politics & a leading
'No' campaigner on EU Fiscal Stability Treaty.  

Europe is in turmoil. Greece is heading for an ugly exit from the Euro, possibly from the European Union itself. The big European powers are at loggerheads as to how to solve Europe's massive problems and in the midst of all this the Irish people will be going to the polls on May 31 to vote on the EU Fiscal Stability Treaty.

The 'Yes' side is desperate for us to approve the Treaty. They're pleading; they're threatening. The Treaty is about "jobs;" it's about "stability." A 'No' will mean Ireland will be denied all access to credit (ie money) and we'll be kicked out of the euro. Basically they're saying that if we don't agree to the terms on the table our European "partners" will leave us battered, bleeding and slumped over in the corner.

The problem for the 'Yes' folks is that we've heard all of their positive gloop about jobs before. Nobody's buying it this time. The Irish people have finally and thoroughly removed the wool from their eyes: we were sold a pig in a poke starting with the Maastricht Treaty when we voted to join a currency we had no business joining. The Europhiles led us into this mess. Nothing positive they say now has any meaning. As for the menacing, negative stuff, well ... more on that in a minute.

The 'No' folks are the usual hodgepodge group of socialists, nationalists and others who are just fed up with the never ceasing centralizing of power in Brussels, outsiders all of them. In the Dáil (parliament) they comprise no more than 20% of the elected representatives, but when it comes to the EU they represent a far greater percentage of the electorate.
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The most "unofficial" leader of the 'No' campaign is businessman Declan Ganley. If anyone in Irish politics can be called a bogeyman, it's Ganley. He's scorned by the left - his allies in these treaty referendums - and he's scorned by the center and pro-EU right.

One reason Ganley is so distrusted and disliked by so many, is that he appeals to a large segment of the population and he never fails to turn up when it's EU referendum time. He never takes the unthinking 'Yes' for an answer.

Ganley is not among the group generally called "Euroskeptics," but rather he's a Euroidealist. Ganley believes in a federal Europe with democratic institutions. Ganley wants the Irish people to reject this treaty because it doesn't solve the serious economic problems we in Ireland and people across Europe face now and it doesn't address the democratic deficit at the heart of the European Union.

Ganley's right, of course, but he's also wrong. It's too late. The EU is doomed and voting 'No' in the hope that this is going to trigger the change Ganley hopes for is just pie-in-the-sky thinking. There is no appetite for a new EU, although it's badly needed. Those who founded the United States had the sense to revisit the Articles of Confederation and draft a new Constitution, but they didn't wait for 25 years to realize the error of their first attempt. The EU has waited too long and the Germans and other creditors have too much to lose fixing it now.

All of which brings me back to the menacing, negative stuff that is bubbling up in Brussels, Berlin and elsewhere in Europe. Ganley says voting 'Yes' is like buying a ticket on the Titanic. He's wrong about that. We're already on the Titanic. The only hope now is that sucking up to those who control the lifeboats will work in our favor when we hit the iceberg. Voting 'No' will not endear us to those people.

In the past when we voted 'No' to EU treaties we were told to go try again, like the Irish people were disobedient children being asked to leave the room and come back to the table in a mannerly fashion. That will almost certainly not be the case this time. This time we can't stop the Treaty, so if we vote 'No' it will only affect us. We may well be taught a serious lesson by those who now control the purse strings here. They may well tell us to leave the table, go to our room and not return.

I love the idea of voting 'No' and toughing it out, but we're in a very weak position right now. If we were actually cut loose by those calling the shots in the EU the hardships we currently face would seem as nothing. Civil disorder or mass emigration are possible in such a scenario.

If this were 1999 when we were riding high I'd be all in favor of telling the EU leaders where to get off. I've only once before supported a 'Yes' in an EU treaty referendum. I won't be voting 'No' this time, however. I'm definitely not in the 'Yes' camp either, but I am in the 'Not No' camp.

{Photo thanks to Independent.ie}

Ireland's "changeable" weather - colder now than during the winter

Ireland's changeable weather. It's felt colder since Easter 
 than it did during the winter. It's been wet too,
but that's a given.

If you know Ireland then you know you cannot count on the weather. It seems to defy all prediction, making monkeys of the weather forecasters.

In fact, the weather seems so far beyond prediction that most Irish people are more willing to accept the word of a man who predicts the weather based on the behavior of frog spawn and nanny goats than those who use the latest scientific equipment and models. Modern science can't compete with old wives tales when it come to weather forecasts, something that can irk the professional weather man/woman.

Tuesday was a perfect example. Unfortunately I didn't have access to frog spawn man's latest thinking on what might happen, but at lunchtime I checked the Met Eireann web page before deciding that I could include a walk of just about a mile and a half after a meeting. I didn't want to use the car or take a bus. I wanted to walk.

So I checked the forecast. There was a chance of a light shower in the early afternoon, but the evening was to be dry. Seeing as I knew I wouldn't be on my way til after 4:30 I left the car behind and set off knowing I was going to have a healthy, lengthy stroll to close the day.

The meeting had just ended and I started my walk. I was half way - equidistant from start and finish and well off any bus route - when it began to absolutely pour. This was no light shower. It was a heavy rain and not the huge-drop, thunder-storm type rains, but the finer, more soaking rains that just drenches you. The proverbial drowned rat would be drier than I was when I finally finished my walk.

I know what you're thinking: 'that happens to me where I live to.' I'm sure it does, but it just seems to happen far more often here than elsewhere.
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The weather in Ireland is "changeable," which also just happens to be the forecasters' favorite word. They use it to describe days that are warm, cool, dry, wet, calm, windy and anything else you can think of. That seems to describe a large number of days in any calendar year.

Changeable. That could also be used to describe the actual seasons. 18 months ago Ireland experienced one of the coldest winters of the past hundred years. Cold, snowy, icy weather lasted for weeks. Then just around Christmas 2010 it went away. And stayed away. January, February, March right on through to December 2011 the weather was pretty much the same.

Before last winter those who like to provide seasonal forecasts were telling us we were in for another dose of freezing weather. They couldn't have been more wrong. The weather was fine. Drier and warmer than usual, which carried on through January and February. We essentially had no winter whatsoever. Non-winter then gave way to beautiful, warm weather in late March. It was like we'd suddenly found ourselves living on the Mediterranean.

All that ended in April. Don't go looking up the stats because I won't believe them anyway, but it's been colder since April 9 than any month since the snows of December 2010 melted. It's not ice cold as it was on occasion during the winter months, but it's been an almost constant damp, chilling month since Easter.* We even had a funnel cloud (water tornado) just off the coast here. The temperature wasn't even 40F at the time and the accompanying hailstones didn't melt for hours.

I hardly had the heat on during long stretches of January through March, but it's been working overtime since then.

Who knows, maybe this is evidence of climate change, but I think it's more likely that it's just another sign that Ireland's climate has always been changeable. You get your wintry days and you get your summery days, but you never really know when they might come. In between you get long stretches of changeable weather. Climate change? The Irish laugh in its face.

* The odd thing is that on this little island the weather can be so different. I don't think the weather's been anywhere near as dire away from the east coast.

Censored – the Catholic Church's clunky attempt at keeping Fr Brian D'Arcy 'on message'

Fr. Brian D'Arcy, censured by the Vatican
for his newspaper columns.

Popular Irish priest Fr Brian D'Arcy has been censured by the Vatican. Or, as the Irish media tells us, Fr D'Arcy has been muzzled, silenced. One columnist even referred to the Vatican "bullyboys" giving Fr D'Arcy the "mafioso treatment." The Irish media can be a tad emotional at times.

Fr. D'Arcy was censured, apparently, for articles he wrote for the Sunday World newspaper in 2010. Fr. D'Arcy has been a weekly columnist for the paper since 1976. He is also has a regular slot on BBC Ulster radio and a regular contributor on other Irish radio and television stations. The Irish media can rely on Fr. D'Arcy to tweak the hierarchy whenever the opportunity arises and he's generally described as a "liberal priest."

Fr. D'Arcy is more than just a media darling, he is also a member of the National Union of Journalists, as I learned over the weekend. One outraged journalist's tweets seemed to indicate that the Church was not entitled to censure Fr. D'Arcy seeing as he is a member of the union.

I find that last tidbit more than a little odd. Why is a Catholic priest a member of labor union? After all, his primary occupation, the job that puts food on his table, is his position as a priest. He is also a member of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland.
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I know being a priest is not like working for a bank or a software development company or a professional sports team, but nonetheless in a practical sense the Church is an organization with employees and a mission just as banks, software developers and sports teams are. Do they have employees who are members of the National Union of Journalists?

All of those employers have employees who deal with the press. Banks, software developers and sports teams have official spokesmen, who provide the 'voice of the organization,' but they also have employees who offer opinions on what is going on in their business or even the wider world.

For example, you'll often hear a bank employee on the radio talking about the economy or the industry. Some bank employees write regular columns in newspapers. Software development personnel seemed to be asked regularly for their views on education. Members of professional sports teams are all available to the media for comment on their own play, sometimes on the trends in the game and occasionally on issues that have nothing to do with sports. Again, are any of these people members of the NUJ as well? I doubt it.

All these people – the banker, the software developer, the athlete – all write or comment under a censor of some sort. They all know there is a line that their employers won't let them cross.

So while a bank's investment manager might discuss the workings of his industry, he almost certainly will not discuss what his bosses are doing wrong. Same goes for software developers and even star athletes, although the big stars are often given a lot of leeway due to the uniqueness of their talents. Yet even big names can be reined in, sometimes even for saying something about the wider world that interferes with the employer's "message." (See Ozzie Guillen for a recent example.)

Message. That's one of our modern day buzzwords. You gotta stay on 'message.' The bank, the software company, even the professional sports team all want to "stay on message." So does the Catholic Church.

Fr. D'Arcy wasn't staying on message. In fact, he's made a habit of calling into question the management of the organization he works for and even the "product" they're selling, if you can forgive my crudeness. So the Church reprimanded him. They didn't silence him. They told him he can go on writing his column and doing his piece on the BBC, but his media work has to be run past a Church censor; they want to make sure he  stays on message or at least does not go too far off message.

Is this a good idea? Will censuring and censoring Fr D'Arcy work for the Church? I don't know, but I'm skeptical.

Fr. D'Arcy is not my cup of tea, but he doesn't shock me. Ever. In fact, I hardly listen to him when I hear him on the radio because he's always saying the same thing. He never surprises. I doubt anyone in Ireland is ever surprised by Fr. D'Arcy. Therefore, it seems to me censuring Fr. D'Arcy will accomplish little other than providing  succor to those who love bashing the Church – and they've had lots of that lately. I can see no real up-side to this.

On the other hand, in this internet age, it's possible Fr. D'Arcy's newspaper columns and radio work could well be sowing confusion in far-flung places. For all I know Fr. D'Arcy straying off message is wreaking havoc with the Church's work in the Philippines or Uruguay or even El Paso for that matter. That seems unlikely to me, but I don't know.

I'm not charged with running a 2000-year-old organization with a billion members, millions of employees and global reach. Keeping such a vast organization on message is a mighty task. Censuring Fr. D'Arcy might be the right option, but it just feels ham-fisted.

{Photo thanks to the BBC.}

A story begging for Hollywood - surviving the mid-Atlantic plane crash

A Lockheed Constellation 1049H – the plane that ditched in the Atlantic on 9/23/1962.

Until yesterday I'd never heard the story of Flying Tiger 923, a flight from New Jersey to Frankfurt, Germany that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean 500 miles off the Irish coast on September 23, 1962. What makes the story remarkable is that of the 76 people on board 48 survived.

I stumbled across this story in a local Colorado newspaper, which had an article about one of the survivors.  Fred Caruso is in Ireland to mark the 50th anniversary of his lucky escape. At first I thought it was possible the local Colorado paper had the story wrong, but a few minutes of Googling told me it was true. There was no shortage of links with information, including the cold, official government report into what happened. However, most of what's available comes thanks to Caruso. Caruso is using his web site FlyingTiger923.com to tell the story of Flight 923*.

I can only imagine that Caruso thinks there's a story to tell here. I'm just amazed it's taken this long for it to be told (or retold as was a news item at the time). I can't believe it hasn't received the big Hollywood treatment.

I don't know about you, but when I board a plane that is going to cross an ocean the one thought that never goes through my mind is that I might actually survive a catastrophic incident. The idea that something might actually go wrong with the plane and the pilot might have to improvise a landing strip occurs to me regularly, but never over the sea. I always assume that if something disastrous happens over the ocean that I'll be soon landing in the next life.

Sure I know Captain Sullenberger managed it. He managed to land on water, but that was the Hudson River, not the Atlantic Ocean.
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Flight 923's Captain John Murray** landed his plane, mostly intact, on the ocean in waves up to 20 feet in height. It wasn't a smooth landing nor did everyone survive. The left wing tore off, the plane broke in half and 25 people were killed. It's still a tremendous feat, allowing more than half of the passengers and crew to live.

A landing, safe or otherwise, in the middle of the ocean is a guarantee of nothing, other than that death has to be defied again. The plane was equipped with five life-rafts. However within seconds four of them were blown away, out of reach, gone. The one remaining life-raft was designed to carry 25 people, but 51 were alive in the freezing waters around the ditched plane.

They all clambered aboard, some of the injured were helped by others into the overloaded inflatable raft. Then they waited. And drifted - nearly 22 miles from the crash site. The fact that there were far too many in the life raft meant it was cramped and uncomfortable, but probably saved them from freezing to death. After 6 hours the Celerina, a Swiss freighter that had monitored the SOS messages, found the floating survivors.

A Canadian aircraft carrier, the Bonaventure, was also monitoring the distress calls. Despite the stormy conditions the naval ship's helicopters ferried medical supplies to the Celerina and removed the most severely wounded. Later, when the Bonaventure was near Ireland, the helicopters again transferred the wounded to Shannon Airport.

The Swiss freighter arrived off the coast of Ireland two days after the plane crash. British helicopters removed the 17 remaining wounded. They were treated at Mercy Hospital in Cork. Fred Caruso was among them. He's back now to visit to mark the anniversary of those remarkable events and to thank those who helped him 50 years ago.

The past few weeks our televisions have been full of dramas and documentaries on the extraordinary tale of the sinking of the Titanic. I would have thought these events on the Atlantic exactly 50 years after the Titanic would merit at least some attention from Hollywood. This is a great story and it needs a big audience.


* Caruso has also published a book on the subject, Born Again Irish, the title of a reflection of the good fortune he felt to be alive in Ireland in September 1962.


** Captain John Murray moved to Ireland after the crash and flew out of Shannon Airport.

{Photo thanks to Avia Deja Vu}

Belfast's new Titanic center needs a little more 'Hollywood'

Titanic Centre, Belfast

I went up to Belfast on Saturday. In fact, the whole family went to Belfast on Saturday to go to the new Titanic center there and to be part of Belfast's Titanic festival.

It still amazes me how much I know about the Titanic these days. Before 2007 I knew no more than anyone else who ever watched A Night To Remember. I hadn't (and still haven't) seen Kate and Leonardo in Titanic from the mid 1990s. When I think back to the 80s the fact that someone found the Titanic only barely registered.

All that changed after my (then) 7-year-old son saw A Night To Remember. Who can understand the workings of a the 7-year-old's brain, but from that experience was born an obsession. He had to know more. No, he had to know everything.

Birthday and Christmas presents included Titanic books and Titanic DVDs - movies and documentaries. There is a cartoon Titanic movie and Barbara Stanwyck starred in a movie called Titanic released five years before A Night To Remember. Who knew? Not me anyway.
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We indulged him, probably too much. We took him to Belfast for the first time in 2008. The memory still makes me laugh. We drove to the Harland and Wolff shipyard to show him the place where the Titanic was built.

My son, smiling, at Harland and Wolff, Belfast 2008.
Note the pile of rubble behind the rusty gate.

We were all looking at an industrial ruin, but he was seeing something else, something tangible to connect him to this legend he had been reading and learning about. His face was lit up with excitement. We took a free tour of the shipyard run by enthusiasts and he loved every second of it. We stood in a huge, wreck of a room, but it was the room where the Titanic was designed. He was thrilled.

Since then we've been back up to Belfast a couple of times to visit Titanic sites and exhibitions. We have also been to Cobh and Southampton touring both cities' Titanic-linked sites. We even made it to the Titanic Museum in Indian Orchard, MA.

Thanks to his keenness we have all learned a great deal about the Titanic, thrown ourselves into his interest and although some are more enthusiastic than others, I think it's fair to say we were all looking forward to the visit to the new Titanic center.

I don't want to say we were disappointed, but we were far from blown away. I came away hoping - hoping because I really want Belfast to get this right - that this was really a first effort and the exhibition can be changed to make it better.

Given that all the reviews I've seen have been glowing I'm feeling sheepish about my misgivings. However, I thought it was missing something. There are too few actual artifacts to call it a museum and there was far too much reading to call it an interactive or multimedia experience. There was so much reading, in fact, that I left with my head hurting and a sense that I'd missed a lot.

The centerpiece - the five minute 'Shipyard Ride' - fell far short of my expectations. I thought it would be a Disney-esque journey up and down, inside and outside the Titanic. Instead it was really minutes sitting down looking at recreated scenes of men working. There was no real sense of scale, which is what I was expecting.

I guess I was kind of surprised by how 'high-brow' the whole thing was. We weren't allowed to see, let alone climb, the grand staircase. They did put one in the building, but it's off limits to those plebes who merely paid for tickets to visit. Also, the building is a series of ships bows, but nowhere in the center are visitors given that "I'm standing on the bow of the Titanic" moment that I was sure would be there. There should be an outdoor Titanic bow.

There is also very little for younger children. The few hands-on exhibits for kids are a little dull and seem more adult or at least teen-focused. I was really surprised by this because when he was seven my son loved the Titanic experience he got up the road in Holywood, Co Down when we visited the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. I just assumed the new center would borrow heavily from that.

My son, now 11, and the Titanic in the new Titanic Centre in Belfast

I don't want to be too negative. We did have a good time. I enjoyed lots of it and my son loved more. He loved the giant photographs, the model of the gantry, the giant models of the ships, the staterooms, etc. Maybe my expectations were too high.

I just can't help thinking it's a little too much history and too little Hollywood, especially too little Disney. After all, the reason we all still recall Titanic when other tragic ships are all but forgotten is thanks to Hollywood. Belfast needs to remember that.

Belfast deserves no criticism for cashing in on its Titanic links

Titanic Belfast - opened on March 31

Belfast is catching flak thanks to its Titanic Belfast Launch Festival. While I can understand some of the misgivings, I'm more than willing to cut Belfast some slack on this one.

Belfast man William Neill, now a Professor of Urban Planning at Aberdeen University in Scotland, was one of the more quoted critics in recent weeks. Neill worries that the memory of the Titanic is not being "treated with enough respect." Neill acknowledges Belfast's shipbuilding history and it's "unique" place in the Titanic story, but is concerned that the city is trying to cash in with Titanic "infotainment" with its new Titanic center.

While Hill may have a point, other critics went completely off the deep end with their narky comments. One columnist even compared the Titanic's sinking with Auschwitz and 9/11, saying that in "2101, it's unlikely the people of New York will want MTV staging a concert at Ground Zero."

Let's get this out of the way: there is no comparison between the Titanic and Auschwitz or 9/11. None.
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A Mayo village recalls the Irish who perished aboard the Titanic

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The Titanic's Centenary
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Now, to be honest I found the decision to have an MTV concert this coming Friday a little weird too. However, the people of Belfast are not 'celebrating' Titanic's sinking, let alone the 1500 dead, but rather the achievement of getting the Titanic Centre built. Maybe Belfast didn't get the tone of this coming weekend pitch-perfect, but so what?

The crux of the issue for the critics is that Belfast is trying to use its Titanic connection to earn some filthy lucre. For these people Titanic and her dead should be remembered mournfully without fanfare and certainly without the ringing of cash registers. I say 'hooey' to all that.

First of all, nobody can say Belfast was quick off the mark to market its Titanic connection. It's taken them 100 years. People have been making money off the tragic events of April 14-15, 1912 for decades, but only now is Belfast trying to join them. I wonder if these same people criticized James Cameron for his Titanic or even Walter Lord for A Night To Remember for the same reason? Those two and everyone else associated with those movies were, after all, cashing in on the same tragedy with their own "infotainment." In fact, those movies created the 'Titanic industry' we have today. I see no reason to fault Belfast for getting in on the act.

Also, what about the dead? Would they really be remembered more appropriately if there were no Titanic "infotainment?" We can compare the Titanic's dead to those of other shipping disasters from the same era. How many of the 1,012 dead are remembered from the 1914 Empress of Ireland disaster? How about the 1,021 who died when the General Slocum burned and sank in New York's East River? How many New Yorkers remember even one of those people? I daresay virtually none.

Yet all this week stories of the victims of the Titanic are being aired again. Why? Because of the fanfare and "infotainment." Without that only a few would care about Addergoole, Co. Mayo and even fewer would care about Patrick Dooley or Charles Melville Hays or even the musicians who played right up to the liner's last minute. If not for the 'infotainment' the stories of the lucky survivors would be just about forgotten now. There would be no Encyclopedia Titanica online. So spare me your tears because the choice is not between remembering with respect vs "infotainment," but between forgotten and infotainment.

Also, Belfast just deserves a break. The city is only now waking up from a long nightmare. Other than 'the Troubles' what do people know of Belfast? Nothing much really, but the Titanic is a cultural icon, the subject of successful movies, commemorated in many cities with monuments and museums. Yet Belfast's connection to the Titanic* is only rivaled by Southapmton's.

The Titanic is a tragedy, sure, but it is long in the past. There is virtually nobody alive today who remembers the Titanic or who lost a loved one on the Titanic. It was a tragedy on a par with other long forgotten maritime disasters of the era. It was far less a tragedy than the one that unfolded in Europe between 1914 and 1918. Indeed, the Titanic is less a tragedy than what Belfast endured during 'the Troubles.'

That the Titanic is remembered at all is thanks to the entertainment industry's capacity to turn a horrific but largely accidental event into a romantic tragedy. Belfast is - finally - connecting itself to the legend, the myth of the Titanic. It is not cashing in on anyone's grief.

* Let's just keep that whole rivets thing quiet, okay?

Irish homeowners are not "revolting" - they're treating their incompetent government with contempt

Ireland's Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan,
who bungled the Household Charge.

It seems just about anywhere the new Irish household charge appears in the foreign press the words "boycott" or "revolt" are used to describe the fact that so many people did not pay the fee by Saturday night's deadline. Yesterday's New York Times quoted an Irish parliamentarian who refers to the "mass boycott." The Financial Times says the Irish government is facing a "revolt" over the new tax. {You might even see such words around here.}

Words like "boycott" and "revolt" suit those political campaigners who have been leading the charge calling on the people not to pay, but what's going on is nothing like a boycott or a revolt. It's more a case that hundreds of thousands of Irish people have weighed up the pluses and minuses of paying and come to the conclusion that not-paying is not such a bad idea. Why? Because the government blew this one in a big way. The charge was designed and implemented badly. Very badly. 100% ineptly.

The charge itself – €100 ($133) for the year payable by the owner of each house and apartment in the state – is more annoying than crushing. There was even an option to pay the tax on a quarterly installment basis.

Considering the hefty sums people pay in income tax and VAT (sales tax of 23%) €100 is no where near the most onerous levy Irish people pay. Heck it's even less than €160 ($213) annual license fee for having a television in the home, a fee that most Irish people pay without grumbling.

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Half of Irish homeowners join boycott on $131 tax

Anti-household charge protest attracts 5,000 demonstrators in Dublin

Ireland's leader Enda Kenny pays no price for bad-mouthing the Irish people
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Before this new charge was introduced for the 2012 tax year there was no tax on homeowners at all. {No property tax, although there is a fairly steep stamp duty payable on the purchase of a home.}

So it is a new tax, but did the Irish people really revolt against the government's austerity program when they decided not to pay this new tax? Is it really the case that after four years of accepting the punishing cut backs and tax hikes that this €100 charge was the straw that broke the camels' back? No. No, what really happened is that many Irish homeowners thought they might get away without paying this one.

From the start it was clear that government was flying by the seat of its pants on the household charge. They had no database of who owned what property. Sure they knew who lived where, but they didn't know who were the renters and who were the owners.

When this point was put to members of the government they went into full tyranny mode. The Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan oversaw the planning and implementation of the Household Charge and he, in particular, became the face of this hectoring, bullying government.

The government declared that they were going to get the information they needed by strong-arming the electricity and natural gas companies into revealing what they knew. The state-owned banks too would be forced to comply.

That tactic didn't work, but it was revealing: the government was going to struggle making people pay. The government's lack of information as to who owed and who didn't meant no bill or invoice could be sent to those who had to pay. The more this question was raised the more aggressive the government became. The public didn't so much fear as smell fear.

It wasn't just the lack of invoice, however. The tax came with a list of exemption criteria, but the criteria were unclear. If the vox pops on the radio are an indication many people who aren't exempt seemed to believe they are. It was all as clear as mud.

The government carried on brow-beating long past the point when it was obvious that it wasn't working. As the clock ticked down towards the March 31 deadline the government then took to threatening homeowners with cuts to local services. That too failed, possibly because it was too late, possibly because the waste in the mostly unaccountable local government spending is obvious to all or possibly because many people just didn't want to pay the €100.

The government made such a mess that 800,000* Irish homeowners thought they'd take their chances on the possible fine for late payment. This only served to highlight another serious design flaw in the Household Charge: the penalty for not paying on time is too small.

Those who fail to pay within the first 6 months will owe €116 ($154). The penalties rise a bit after that, but if you leave it for a year you owe only €142 ($189). A €42 ($55) penalty is just too small to cause anyone worry, especially if you believe that this government is incapable of figuring out who really owes and who doesn't. (Compare that penalty to the €60-90 that's owed by those who fail to put €2 into a parking meter.)

To me this is the essence of what's going on here – hundreds of thousands of people have treated the new Household Charge as not much more than a parking meter. They figure there's a good chance they'll get away without being caught and if they are caught the price they'll pay is too small to worry about.

This isn't so much a revolt against imposed austerity as a statement by the people on the capabilities of the government to actually enforce the law. For generations Irish people have skirted the law when the opportunity has arisen and this is more of the same. They've looked the government in the eye and said, "I'll pay - when you make me." It's up to the government to prove them wrong.

* Even the figure of 800,000 who didn't pay is open to question as the government doesn't really have an accurate figure for how many households there are in the country. Simply incredible.

** Just for the record: I paid. My wife says I'm too American.

{Photo thanks to Independent.ie.}