Old style 240917

Miscellany:

• Irish kids have to learn Irish in school and many of them hate it [crap teaching, mostly]. To help them through the hoops of exams, many of them will ship out West for a week in the Gaeltachs. Learning the language doesn't have to go with the Catholic church and the GAA. Here's some examples of pop as Gaeilge which might, just might, give meaning to this not-foreign language.  Communal singing worked well for the London Capital Children's Choir; worked for me aNNyway. Here's TG Lurgan helping a bunch of youngsters sing it out.
• Fanfaidh Mé Ortsa - “I Will Wait” le Mumford” & Sons as Gaeilge
• Ar Mo Thaobh "Stay With Me" le Sam Smith as Gaeilge
• I've given tribs to Anna Kendrick singing the Cup Song. Here's the TG Lurgan version Amhrán na gCupán which is, in its ranks of identical movement, worrying reminiscent of a Nuremberg Rally Reichsparteitag.
• More from the Arts Block
• Full contact improv
• Hollywood dance battle
• Sam Black, a plasterer, sings 60s. I feel better for that.
• Florence & sings Shake it out. You've heard this before but could bear it again.
• Rubberbandits sing a message of hope [them previous, like]
• Petting your dog: the key for relaxation
• They say that a good job is all in the preparation. That's certainly true with painting walls. Slapping on the emulsion is is the least of it. Stripping off the old loose paint and filling the holes from previous lives takes at least as long as a couple of coats of slappy. Here's a video showing how to split a great big rock using plug&feathers. It helpfully includes one mis-split and a perfectly beautiful example. But the bulk of the 20 minutes is a voiceless (and musakless!) explanation of how to forge the required iron-mongery. Restful, fascinating and informative.
• We've had (quite enough of) walk like an Egyptian. Here's how to walk like a medieval peasant.
• I wrote last year about Dewey Decimal vs Library of Congress classification systems for libraries. Here's a Mental Floss factoid collection about libraries.
• Life and death? I wrote a couple of years ago about the mechanics of baling out from a burning WWII bomber - 50mm wider doors made a huge difference. Here's the civil aviation equivalence today: more people, fatter people, narrower seats make your escape less likely in an emergency.
• Better to do a little (or a lot for a few) than do nothing with your million$$. Harris Rosen gets the local kids educated.
• . . . and did you ever think to go back and thank your inspiring 3rd grade teacher?