Tuesday 19 April 2011

Internet Television, procrastination tool or useful new media?

Remember the days when you used to have to wait weekly for your favourite television shows to be shown on the likes of RTE or BBC? Remember when you used to have to wait three or four months at a time until your television series started again? Not anymore, thanks to internet television. Our generation has become obsessed with the internet, using it for all aspects of everyday life. And now, with this recent new use, the obsession has just become worse. Teenagers and young adults can now spend hours watching their favourite shows, series after series. Television has taken a hard knock as it becomes a dusty ornament in the corner of the sitting room. Pretty soon, televisions will be things of the past that you tell your grandchildren about.

The Ryanair Generation

My generation who started out as the ‘Celtic Tiger Kids’ have become known as the ‘Ryan air Generation’. Factors such as the economic downturn and lack of opportunities in our country have forced many skilled workers that are fathers, mothers, sons and daughters to leave the comfort of their birthplace to search in foreign places for new opportunities.

This is becoming all too common in our society and although people may call it the ‘norm’ it still has a huge emotional impact on these individual’s families.

Sunday 10 April 2011

Make Up – Just an Illusion of Beauty?


The moral rights and wrongs concerning makeup is a topic that can be debated for hours on end. However, every question asked finds its way home to the same answer – looking beautiful. Makeup gives women the freedom to look whatever way they want, to pile on confidence as they pile on foundation and to create shapes and shades that were never there before. Have modern times lead women to believe they can buy beauty in a bottle? Where do these deep rooted urges to transform their faces come from, and how far will some women go?

Friday 8 April 2011

MAJOR SIGNINGS ENSURE RED HOT ROVERS REMAIN TEAM TO BEAT


WITH yet another pre-season seemingly dominated by off field troubles its well and truly time we take a look at who holds the trump cards and get down to business as the new Airtricity league season finally kicks off. Despite the well documented cloud of financial uncertainty hanging over many clubs recently there was still a considerable amount of activity in the much anticipated transfer window.
Former kingpins Bohemians will undoubtedly struggle this year as the grim ramifications of their financial implosion hit home. They were the busiest club during the window, but for all the wrong reasons, as their dwindling income resulted in a mass exodus of star players. Influential leader Paul Keegan and pacey full back Conner Powell skipped across the pond to Doncaster Rovers and Colchester United respectively. While crowd favourite Mark Quigley and prolific striker Jason Byrne bucked the emigration trend and instead opted for the short trip north to Dundalk, as they too depart the sinking ship.

Were's all the craic gone?


Describe the typical Irish pub drinker- he’s a fibber, a chancer, a plamas, brimming with the confidence and charm that has made the Irish people famous worldwide. HE always has a story and finds a friend in the next person to walk through the door
Sadly, however, he is a dying breed. Much like an animal of the wild; without a watering hole it cannot survive. The nation’s socialites have become drug addled beer machines whose only form of conversation with a stranger is to ask for a light.
Ireland has seen a rapid decline in the pub industry over the last decade.

Emotions Aplenty in the Relegation Dogfight


Euphoria. Devastation. Ecstacy. Desperation. Emotions which can be triggered simply by the prospect of the dreaded relegation dogfight. Every year, these emotions are channelled through the hearts and minds of desperate football supporters, as they can only watch on as their beloved football teams flirt with the prospect of relegation from the elite, elegant league, to the scrappy, ugly second tier of English football. Relegation can prove fatal for some clubs, as they suffer the inevitable losses in TV revenue and ticket sales, as well as accumulating an unmanageable wage bill. Some clubs have never recovered from this demotion, so it is pivotal that clubs avoid slipping through this dreaded trapdoor...

Ireland has narrowly averted a major cultural disaster. Since the formation of the Fine Gael/Labour government, the proposal to make the Irish language optional in secondary schools has been dropped in favour of restructuring the way in which it is taught. This change of heart is hugely significant and will allow the Irish language to reassert itself as a form of national identity.
Language holds a strong cultural significance in any country, and Ireland is no exception. Often used to symbolise Irish independence from Britain, the ancestral language has played a pivotal role in solidifying national identity. Unfortunately this identity has been diminished significantly in recent years, as issues have arisen regarding our sovereignty due to European integration.

Saturday 2 April 2011

Tough Two Years Ahead for Obama

 “In this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people” – Barack Obama, speaking to the gathering hundreds of thousands during his victory speech in Grant Park, Illinois. Not even the harsh winter climate of Chicago could dampen the joy felt during that wet, windy November night back in 2008.

The future of the Irish news industry


NewsWhip Media was launched in November 2010 by Limerick-born lawyer and entrepreneur Paul Quigley. NewsWhip was one of four “News 2.0” news sites - web-only start-ups, rather than newspaper offshoots - to emerge in the Irish market last year. As the way in which people consume news is rapidly moving from the traditional newspaper model of the daily reporting of facts to an on-line, technology-enabled two-way conversation, a proliferation of “News 2.0” news sites has sprung up internationally, such as the Huffington Post in the US and Rue89.com in France.