Anna Braine

Quick post on phone from hospital. Anna Elizabeth Braine was born today at 4.44pm. Both girls are fine and we're all over the moon. See flickr photo in sidebar.

Update: Some proper photos here:

Some more on Flickr:

A real Chuck Norris fact

Voting is now open for the New Humanist's bad faith awards. I think Chuck Norris is a clear winner. He said if he was a president he would tattoo an American flag with the words 'In God we trust' on the forehead of every atheist. What a cock. Though you'd be tempted to dismiss him as a looney and give it to that other cock who thought the summer's floods were God's punishment for Britain's liberal attitude to homosexuality.

Alive and kicking

Fi beat me to it but after a very long time trying to get to this point, we have a baby with a heart beat. I took this video with my phone, and the sending directly to youtube from phone thing worked for once. So I might chuck a load up now. Videos that is. We're delighted that it seems to have passed the usual abnormality tests, but a few seconds into the video you can see quite clearly that it's actually an alien baby.

Accident on O'Connell street

Bit shaken today. I was walking up O'Connell street this morning on the way to the LUAS, walking in the middle as always to avoid the crowds and the paper pushers. Just past the Spire I see this big truck coming up on the path. I was thinking what's he up to? he's going to hit that sign post if he doesn't slow down. Then when I saw he had no intention of slowing down, and was about ten feet away from me, I jumped out of the way. For a second I thought he has to stop, there's a sign post there! And there was guy just in front of the sign post! I don't know where I looked just then, I just got out of the way as quickly as possible and then when I looked back, the truck was still going, knocking down everything in its path, and then it stopped at the big christmas tree.

I looked around to see where the other guy had ran to. He hadn't! Jesus! He was lying twenty feet away in the trail of the carnage looking a bit mangled. His clothes were half ripped off him, and he was very still. I don't think he ever saw the truck. I think he might have been looking at a phone or an i-pod or something. Shit! I felt terrible. If I'd been thinking a bit quicker, I might just have been able to grab him out of the way. The poor kid, might have been about twenty. A cop arrived very quickly and the kid started groaning horribly. Sounded horrible but was probably a good sign.

Another guy jumped up to the truck to check out the driver. The driver said he just blacked out. Still a bit shaken and upset, I gave my number to the cops, and got some hot sweet tea before coming into work. Can't stop thinking about that poor guy. Really hope he comes out of it ok.

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Update #1

This was just put up on RTE: http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/1112/rta2.html?rss

Lorry accident at the Spire

Monday, 12 November 2007 09:23

A lorry ended up on the central meridian close to the Spire on Dublin's O'Connell Street.

Gardaí are attending the incident, which has caused traffic disruption on O'Connell St, northbound.

There are no reports of any injuries.

No reported injuries? That's odd.

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Update #2

Same RTE link now says:

Boy injured in O'Connell St accident

Monday, 12 November 2007 11:22

A 16-year-old boy has been seriously injured after being struck by a truck which mounted the centre median close to the Spire on O'Connell Street in Dublin.

He was taken to the Mater Hospital after the collision, which occurred at around 8.20am..

Northbound traffic on O'Connell Street in Dublin is down to just one lane. The remaining lane, which is the bus lane, is open to all traffic.

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Update #3 12:40

Just got a phonecall from Garda. The guy that got hit was talking in the hospital. He's got two broken legs and a broken pelvis and will be in the operating theatre for the day but it sounds like he's going to be ok. Eventually. Phew.

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Update #4

Some friends told me there are photos on Flickr. It's a small world alright; turns out both of the people who took these pics (Redmum and Eoghan MCabe) have blogs that I occasionally read. Redmum's O'Connell street Photos. Eoghan McCabe's O'Connell street photo.

Also someone from The Star rang me after lunch. At least I'll get such a small mention that they won't be able to do some bad punning with my name. Right. Think I'll leave it at that with the updates on this thing. Feel like I'm milking this for the sake of blogginess now while that poor chap is in the Mater (out my window) in agony.

Ha ha!

Did you see that Louis Theroux show earlier this year about The Most Hated Family in America? One of their favourite pastimes was to picket funerals of dead gay soldiers, thanking God that they are dead. Easy targets and all that but I'm still delighted that they've just lost a case taken against them. $10.9m in damages will surely ruin them. In Nelson's best voice: "Ha Ha!"

A dolphin obituary

You know when a famous person dies and and there's an outpouring of grief and respect, the odd RIP email here and there. Well there's another 6 Billion of us, and growing, so who cares? It's a much greater loss when a whole species disappears. It's just insane. By a mere stroke of luck this little planet has managed to invoke life, many strange and beautiful forms of life. Yet some just pop out of existence forever. Very sad day when that happens. Slightly sadder when it's such a unique creature as the baiji, a freshwater dolphin anomalous to the Yangtze river. This is the first aquatic mammal species to become extinct since either the Japanese Sea Lion or Caribbean Monk Seal, both of which became extinct in the 1950s. Baiji's have been in existence for 25 Billion years and now they're gone.

Fucking humans. I can think of quite a few I'd rather see go before a whole species.

Have you seen this man!?

Something tells me the Portuguese Police are going to be looking for this man for a long time.

Read full story.