Month: June 2006
The Return of the Dalkey Baby
For several weeks in the summer of 2005, the Irish media indulged itself in a feeding frenzy of tabloid-like hysteria surounding the gruesome story of 'Niamh' (now identified as 'Cynthia Owen') who claimed that she had been the victim of abuse by an organised cabal of child-molesters. This resulted in her becoming pregnant whilst still a child herself - a crime allegedly faciliated by her parents. 'Niamh' then claimed to have watched as her new-born infant was stabbed to death with a knitting needle. In the wake of the 7/7 bombings in London, the Dalkey Baby story dropped off the main media's radar - the last we heard being that an excavation (looking for the remains of an infant) in a Dublin garden, had revealed nothing. But, one year later, the story is back. False memory syndrome The full details of Dalkey Baby story are covered in detail on blather.net...
Blather Meets… Noam Chomsky
<!-- © Blather.net/Walsh--> Recently, Blather's academia correspondent, Johnny Mayonnaise, went to Massachusetts and unexpectedly encountered the world-famous Noam Chomsky! In Johnny's written report for Blather, you can almost feel you're there in the room with him: I find myself in a long corridor of an institutional building. I'm being shown around by a young lady whose face I don't recognise. I do, however, recognise the building. I saw it in a documentary film entitled Manufacturing Consent. It is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "This is Noam Chomsky's office," I remark to my hostess, pointing to a door on the left. "I know," she says, opening the door and leading me in. When I get in, I see that she is already at the other end of the room. Noam Chomsky is there too, sitting on a sofa. She asks him if it is okay for me to come in and...