In case you can’t read it.

Shelbourne manager Dermot Keely talks to Séamus Leonard about promotion hopes, striker Anthony Flood and the porn potential of Max Cream..

Now if there was ever an article that just jumped out and said read me it has to be that article. I heard Shelbourne had finacial problems a fews years back but are they still in a state that they have to resolve to porn?

The paragraph that deals with it is.

One such player is the exceptionally-named Max Cream, a young American player who impressed in the 2-0 League Cup defeat to Drogheda United. Now that the Californian’s international clearance has come through can we expect to see more of him in a red jersey?

Keely jokes: ‘Yeah, you might see him on one of those late night porn shows!’

On a serious note, though, he adds: ‘Like a lot of them, he’ll (Cream) have to wait for his chance by waiting for someone to get sent off or something like that and then get in and get his chance. You just have to wait your turn.’

His wikipedia page

Leinster assistant coach David Knox has described the appointment of Declan Kidney as Irish Rugby coach, as ‘a big mistake’.

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In an interview with the Irish Independent, Australian coach Knox is very critical of the rugby played by Kidney’s Munster, insisting their triumphs come at the expense of any style or flair.

‘The Munster people think he [Kidney] is a messiah but I just don’t understand that.

‘Munster get 30 points on the board by grinding away and when the other team is shot, they try and throw the ball around a bit. Then people say, what a great team. It’s rubbish.

The old Munster don’t play great thing. It always amuses me the way Leinster always go on about how great they play and how bad Munster play. I would rather Munster play like they do and get to Heineken cup finals then play like Leinster and think that a Magners League win is the same thing. When Leinster get to 4 Heineken Cup finals then we can talk.

Martin O’Neill has vowed to make Aston Villa an even more formidable force this summer after narrowly missing out on an automatic UEFA Cup spot.

Villa finished sixth in the Barclays Premier League despite operating with the smallest squad in the division.

They will now face opposition from either Northern Ireland, Finland or Denmark in the third round of the Intertoto Cup in a two-legged tie on July 19-20 and 26-27.

Clubs from 50 nations will enter and be competing for 11 places in the UEFA Cup second qualifying round.

From RTE

Martin O’Neill has vowed to make Aston Villa an even more formidable force this summer after narrowly missing out on an automatic UEFA Cup spot.

Villa finished sixth in the Barclays Premier League despite operating with the smallest squad in the division. They will now face opposition from either Northern Ireland, Finland or Denmark in the third round of the Intertoto Cup in a two-legged tie on July 19-20 and 26-27.

Clubs from 50 nations will enter and be competing for 11 places in the UEFA Cup second qualifying round. But by then O’Neill hopes to have a stronger squad at his disposal, even though it seems likely skipper Gareth Barry will be heading to Liverpool.

And it continues from my reading both are the exact same. Why because the source of the story is PA Sport). Who provide a wire service to RTE.

Science in Ireland is not something that gets much coverage compared to the Arts that fill much of the Daily News papers and get supplements in the papers every week. Some people would put this down to Ireland not being a big science nation while being the nation of Joyce, Heaney and Yeats we seen as an Artistic powerhouse. Yet on science we certainly are not lacking in big names.

So where to start. A good place to start this series is probably with E=mc^2 the most recognised equation in the world. Published by Einstein in 1905 in his paper “Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy-content”? It has entered pop culture like nothing else in science. Now before anyone asks Einstein was not Irish. What Einstein published was a theory a mathematical model it was not until 1927 that it was actually experimentally proved by John Douglas Cockcroft from England and Ernest Walton from Waterford. What they did achieved was the first artificial splitting of an Atom.

In their lab in the Cavendish laboratory they built a particle accelerator (below rightpic from here). A particle accelerator is a device that as the name suggests accelerates particles to high speed. These then are used to bombard other particles to split them open. The largest one ever is the soon to be switched on The Large Hadron Collider in Cern

Using this accelerator they bombarded a lithium nucleus with a stream of protons using a high potential difference around 700,000V to do so. The result two helium nuclei and energy of around 17Mev. This was the first splitting of an atom. And resulted in 4 major scientific breakthroughs

First it proved E=mc^2. E=mc^2 means that mass has energy and energy has mass. Now an Atom has a certain mass and also has energy holding the atom together. Max Plank postulated that if an atom could be broken apart the binding energy would be released then the weight would be less then the constituent parts. The result of the Walton Cockcroft experiment proved this was true.

But that is not the only triumph of this experiment. It pretty much started a new branch of physics where particles are use to initiate nuclear interactions in a controlled way. Which CERN is now the world leader.

The apparatus allowed the creation of positron beams far more useful to experiment with then Aplha Particles from decay nuclei used before.

Quantum Tunneling is an effect in Quantum Physics which wikipedia explains clearer then I could.

In quantum mechanics, quantum tunneling is a micro nanoscopic phenomenon in which a particle violates the principles of classical mechanics by penetrating or passing through a potential barrier or impedance higher than the kinetic energy of the particle.^[1] A barrier, in terms of quantum tunnelling, may be a form of energy state analogous to a “hill” or incline in classical mechanics, which classically suggests that passage through or over such a barrier would be impossible without sufficient energy.

The main guy behind this was a Russian by the name of George Gamow. Classically Walton and Cockcroft should not have been able to split the atom and the energy they were using. It simply should not have happened. Classically the energy needed to “blast” through the wall was far greater then they were using. The repulsive forces should have been to great. But they did it. Because they didn’t blast through the wall they tunnelled. They proved Quantum Tunnelling.

In 1934 he became a fellow at Trinity College Dublin. During the war he was asked to go to America to join a group of scientists in “war work”. Which later became known as the Manhattan Project the building of the Atomic bomb. He didn’t take up the offer as the university did not have the staff to cover him. He also worked on various projects to help with Ireland during the war on projects like dealing with energy shortages.

In 1951 Walton and Cockcroft won the Nobel Prize for physics the only Irish person to win the award for physics.

He spent much of his life pushing the cause of science education in Ireland. In 1957 he wrote to the government saying.

“We are today entering a new scientific era and, if we are to benefit from it, our people should not be allowed to grow up scientifically illiterate.”

He continued on in Ireland even though funding for the sciences was poor. He died in 1995. The Walton Causeway Park in Dungarvan is named after him as is buildings in Waterford IT and Methodist College, Belfast.

Hear an audio clip of a speech he gave about the day he split the atom on Trinty’s Website.

Biography here

Mate Says me and another guy from the flats were chatting in the garden and these wee steeks [ed he is from the North]  came in to play football (yes, our garden is kind of a municiple ned social ground) see the guy tossed them out (I didnt really care, these ones dont break anything so i would have left them alone otherwise you annoy them and they break things when youre not looking but in any case, the other guy told them to sling their hooks

Me says: whats their hooks

Mate says: (to sling one’s hook is to leave)so then their mother came storming in afterwards for a row “why cant they play in hte garden?!” she was raising her voice and being really rude can you believe the brass neck on someone waltzing into your garden attempting to coerce you into sharing your land with her

Me says: ya what did you say

Mate says: who the fuck does she think she is? Ghengis Khan I wasnt there I heard from my window, I had gone in at that point to do some lunch

Me says:

Mate says: it was the other guy. He was like “why dont they play in their own back garden?” and she was “Our garden is concrete”

Me says:

Mate says: so matter of factly that you might think that it followed quite logically that, because we had a superior garden we should naturally hand it over to her family I suppose it might follow that we could use her garden if we wished to play squash while she’s out hanging her clothes or getting pissed

Me What she say in the end

Mate As far as I could tell she just kept repeating herself but louder each time, and I think she finished with something to the tune of “they are coming in and there’s nothing you can do to stop them, aite!” I heard them in later, and a woman from the house told them to leave and they threatened to “get their mother on them” that same house also lead dogs into our garden for a shit and one time Virgin Wines left my delivery “with a neighbor” alas from that house…. needless to say it was never found again

Now Me and CK have taken the Carbon Footprint test of Change.ie. Now between us I am the more right wing of the two therefore in many peoples eyes the most obviously evil towards the environment. But in terms of carbon Footprint I kick his ass. I am on 2.11 Tonnes per year and he is on 5.47. Now I think I will admit mine is probably low balled a wee bit not one hundred percent sure what my gas bill is (will check the next one). Then again I ticked ESB as supplier even though being in the UK some of my power comes from Nuclear so less Carbon footprint then ESB so overall i would say it is pretty accurate. Also CK’s is quiet high for two reasons. 1 he is going to Cuba soon so that adds 3-4 tonnes on its own (ie the difference) and his house mates are a bit more heating happy then mine. What we did for the heating calculation was take our house bills and divide by the number in the house the reasoning being that the total bill would be the carbon footprint of all people in the house and this is a per-capita basis. Most of my footprint comes from flying. (about 6 short haul flights a year 3 taken sofar). Also your clothes do get washed at 30 degrees quiet well in washing macine. Anyway

The average in Ireland is about 11 which is twice as much then either of us. So both myself and CK are very low impact indeed CK is around the Global average and bizarrly i am around Africa. (of course Carbon Footprint of what I own is not calculated hence high country numbers) One problem with the calculator is the effect of food. It those not ask how much meat a person eats or where they source their food. This has an impact and I guess has been left out due to not wanting to piss off the farmers. Personnally I have been cutting down the portions of meat I eat a week replacing it in a stirfry with re-fried beans (emmmm) which are probably flown from South America so just as bad.(still about 5 meat portions a week though)

Anyway over the next few weeks we are going to look at ways of reducing our footprint. Considering that neither of us drive and both walk or get bus to work. That we both rent so can’t improve houses we live in. Not much we can do although coming into summer the ESB and Gas bills should drop with less lighting and heating to be done.

So to any other bloggers out there. Calculate your footprint and see can you reduce your footprint. Even if you don’t agree with the ethical green D4 fashion bull.

Yes people here is the abstract

A method for producing a beverage, comprising the steps of providing an aqueous animal extract, fermenting said aqueous animal extract with lactic acid bacteria, and fermenting the product of lactic acid bacteria fermentation with yeast fermentation, to produce an alcoholic beverage. Additional ingredients may be added for flavor or to enhance the fermentation process. In particular, a saccharide source may be added to control resulting alcohol content.

Water is a great substance for heating because it has a high Specific Heat Capacity meaning that it can store alot of heat. Great for when you are heating your house. However it also means that it takes a lot of heat to heat up.  Also to get water to boil more energy has to be used to get over the Specific Latent Heat. The energy to transform from liquid to a gas. Also if you think about it when your spuds are cooked the water is still warm. This is energy you have wasted as it is not used to cook the food.

Microwave ovens work on a different principle. Dielectric heating.Basically imagine that the water molecules or fat molecules in food are little bar magnets. The microwaves are rotating in polarization. So imagine that the little magnets see the opposite pole in the waves. So like magnets they align to these poles. Then the waves pole changes and the little magnets don’t like this so they are forced to repeal from this pole rotating. So as the waves change at about 2 GHz the magnets are spinning at this frequency and this causing friction and the food to cook.

Once the microwave turns off the little magnets stop moving and no more cooking is done and no more energy wasted. As the microwave just heat the food and not the surrounding medium little energy is wasted.

Surveys have been done on this question. One of them was comparing Microwave cooked new potatoes and hob cooked. The result. 70-75% more efficient to Microwave. So basically people who boil their spuds are the SUV drivers of the potatoes cooking world.

On change.ie they have a climate change counter which myself and CK will post about in the next few days when we get to check our bills and find out how many KWhrs we use.