16th of April, 2003 ANTE·MERIDIEM 11:43

Michael McDowell seems to have gone on a pretty intensive course of angel dust, to judge by his behaviour as minister for justice recently. Tagging sex offenders (the intention is to use instruments that measure breathing and heart-rate so they can predict when he’s^[1] about to reoffend; if he’s married, this has the side-effect of the Gardaí having the voyeuristic pleasure of knowing when the old conjugal obligations are being fulfilled): “getting tough” on drink-fuelled crime—the only proscriptive approach that will do anything about that is the one the Pioneers took, which isn’t really an option in 2003 in the non-Islamic world^[2]: revoking work permits (uhh, how exactly will increasing the number of poverty-stricken immigrants on the street instead of earning a living & consuming freely solve anything?). He was also doing something growth-hormone induced about the telecoms/internet infrastructure as well, if my curmudgeonly memory is to be trusted. Someone go give him a good talking-to.^[3]

Our house had the first blackout I’ve seen in my five years in Dublin last night. It lasted all of 20 minutes, but my MP3s kept playing and my XPDFs stayed open on all the make documentation I can find—cf http://​bugs.​xfree86.​org//​cgi-bin/​bugzilla/​show_bug.​cgi?id=72 . Muhahah, my computer has a battery.

And my, what lovely weather we’re having. A bit more of this, and I’m going to get really disoriented.

[1] I don’t think, and you don’t think, and Michael McDowell certainly doesn’t think that this will ever be applied to a woman. There are downsides to being the intense sex.

[2] IMHO, a better approach would be to reduce the legal drinking age to 16, reduce the taxes on alcohol, and make the whole ritual so utterly mundane that the kids are well over it at seventeen. Worked examples; Germany, France, other massive chunks of the continent.

[3] “Talking-to”? Never mind McDowell, what am I taking?