Gordon Foster moved through the 20th century like a lost character from Cryptonomicon.

He worked as a code-breaker in Bletchley Park, met Alan Turing, studied cybernetics, helped develop operations research, invented ISBN, became a professor in Statistics at TCD, connected remote areas to the internet and communicated with doctors attending the Ebola epidemic in Zaire.

RIP.

Jean Medécin,

who had a son who was also mayor for a long time,

Jacques Medécin

who, unlike his father, was fond of

Gaullism,

the French political ideology which espouses national independence, including the

Force de frappe,

the tactical and strategic framework for

France's weapons of mass destruction,

which were mostly tested in her colonies and had some costly accidents including the

Beryl incident,

when some soldiers and officials were exposed to radiation, including another Gaullist,

Gaston Paleweski,

long-time lover of English novelist Nancy Mitford, one of the

Mitford sisters,

another of whom married

Oswald Mosley

a notable British proponent of

fascism.

The grounds include specimen trees, two ornamental pounds and a trellis-covered sunken pathway which encloses a semi-circular formal garden. A long tree-lined avenue leads up to a gravelled forecourt in front of the house.

The house and estate were sold by then-owners the McGrane family in the year 2000 to the British Embassy in Dublin for stg£6.4 million. It was intended to replace the British Ambassador's residence at Glencairn House.

Tree-lined extent of the grounds of Marlay Grange, on the Grange Road

Planning permission was received from South Dublin County Council for a lot of work to renovate the property and to add a number of outbuildings and chalets on the estate to accommodate embassy staff, but the plan was eventually dropped due to security concerns. This led to the British Government re-purchasing Glencairn House and putting Marlay Grange back on the market, losing significant money in the process.

The property was bought in 2007/8 by Niall Mellon, property developer and philanthropist, who tried to build houses on the grounds. The council turned down his application for planning permission and the house went back on the market. Enquiries with the estate agent at the time suggested that the asking price was in the region of €12 million, even though the property crash was already in progress.

Last satellite image of Marlay Grange house and formal garden

The building is a cut-stone two storey high-roofed Victorian house built in the Gothic style. The imposing structure contains gables, dormer gables, and a tower with a truncated pyramidal roof.

The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage described the house as "a fine and comparatively rare example of a Victorian Gothic country house in the Ruskinian style".

The gatehouse is to your right as you enter the grounds, a two-story building of approximately 102 sq.m. (1,100 sq.ft). According to the 1911 census, the house has "2 rooms and 2 windows to the front."

The front door is sealed with a metal panel and the windows are blocked up. There is a curious feature at the rear of the house, a platform jutting out from a window with a pole above it.

According to the property brief, the gatehouse is in need of extensive renovation and modernisation. They weren't kidding. The electrics would have to be completely redone, as well as the plumbing most likely. The decoration seems not to have changed since the early part of the century.

There are very few items left in the house, although all of the mounted furniture (such as cupboards) is still in place. The upstairs area is inaccessible, the stairway is blocked.

The gate lodge had at least one famous resident, at the time of the 1911 census, who we will see in a later post.

Pastor Terry Jones in Motion

Jones strikes an unusual figure, with his handle-bar moustache suit and 70s-coloured tie. He seems like a figure from a National Lampoon film, but right now he is being taken very seriously. He's called off his protest because the voices in his head told him to.

Back in July, Jones's colleague Sapp posted a YouTube video about their plans, and there was some brief interest, a few news articles. The story has steadily grown, as affiliate television stations have passed on the scandal. The BBC covers its growth in this article.

Burning books has always attracted controversy throughout history, symbolising a destruction of a civilisation and abandonment of intellectual society. It is taboo.

Non-Aryan literature burnt in Berlin's Opernplatz in May, 1933

The burning of books by the Nazis in the 1930s is probably the most familiar example, gleeful SA men piling academic papers and Jewish books onto the funeral pyres of civil society. Heine's quote "Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people" is on the lips of every secondary school History student. See the transcription of Goebbels' speech and the description of the scene.

The burning of the remaining books at the dwindling Library of Alexandria by the Saracens contributed to centuries of disdain in the West for ostensibly uncivilised and anti-intellectual Muslims.

SA Nazis and students burning books in May 1933

Since the act is taboo, most people have never tried burning books. Perhaps they imagine happy flames devouring the words and knowledge. See how happy everyone is above, glad to be rid of complicated ideas. Even the students themselves are joining in.

The reality is less exciting. Allow me to present a personal anecdote about burning books...

Standing around the bonfire in a field in Kerry

When camping in Kerry with my Scout troop, we ran out of firewood one evening, and took to burning old papers and log-books discarded by the Outdoor Education Centre where we were staying. These burned so pitifully that the fire required constant  ministration to stop it from going out. Burning books requires much time and commitment. Anything less leaves sheets, chapters, whole volumes unburnt.

Burning paper leaves great mounds of ash. Individual pages are sometimes left readable in the absence of breeze. We used a stick to lift the ash-skeletons of books, only to reveal whole books resting intact in the embers below.

I couldn't help but imagine an SA stormtrooper poking at an unwilling fire, trying to burn the last of the hated literature, only to find another volume by Marx or Freud lurking beneath, giving up in disgust and walking away, sheets blowing behind him.

In the morning, we found there were still full books beneath the ash

Russian mapping of the town of Carlow

From the same institution which brought us the sublime book by Daniele Ganser, Secret Warfare : Operation Gladio and NATO's Stay-Behind Armies, a fascinating article by retired Irish Army colonel, Desmond Travers:

Soviet Military Mapping of Ireland during the Cold War

It was an open secret among analysts during the Cold War that the two major powers used satellite and high altitude surveys to assess each others aims, intentions and resources. Indeed it was US satellite surveillance which first noted the disparities between the USSR's claimed crop yields and the reality, as Khrushchev once bitterly observed to his US adversary!

Colonel Travers carefully compares the Soviet maps with those of the Ordnance Survey, noting how the Soviets included some objects that the OS did not, but neglected others. They seem to have been oddly attracted to water-mills! More chillingly, it looks like they may have been categorising Irish roads based on how militarily viable they were, for logistical support.

I encourage you to read this article, and gain another viewpoint on our rolling terrain. Imagine plotting tank-routes and support artillery...

My Father's Kodachrome and B&W Contributions

This Wikipedia user has scanned and uploaded some of his father's old photographs, from America and Europe, seemingly from the 1960s. What strikes me is the difference that still existed between places, a far cry from the homogenous urban and suburban landscapes of today.

What attracted me most was the comparison I could draw between London and Chicago at the time.

This is a comic shown to me by friend Meron. It was originally in Russian by Alexey Lipatov, but an anonymous individual translated it the dialogue into English. It was re-formatted by Thomas Silbey. I went one step further and re-lettered the comic in English, in 2005.

I re-lettered all the dialogue and narrations. I re-lettered most of the special effects, necessitating some re-drawing of the backgrounds. Some special effects I left because they made sense as they were or because they would have been hard to replicate. I took some slight liberties with the text. I know Stalin sounds a bit like Seán Connery, and I like it! Imagine the Scot playing Stalin in the biopic...

If any of the aforementioned people object to this re-lettered comic, please contact me.

You'll have to click Read More to see the comic!

©2001, comics.aha.ru

PS: The comic was mirrored here, along with some of the extra information about each frame.

Luftwaffe funeral?

In this post, there are a mixture of photos taken from the air and on the ground by Nazi German pilots in the Luftwaffe during WWII, flying over cities in Russia. There are some miscellaneous other photos mixed in too.

Here's the link: http://englishrussia.com/?p=2952

With the gunner at the turret

Empty beach - Varosha, Cyprus

About a fortnight ago, Aengus made a rather good post about abandoned places.

Today I came across another page with photos of abandoned places, probably the largest one I've seen so far. All the usual ones are there, Pripyat, San Zhi and Centralia, but also a few I hadn't seen before. If you are new to this addiction, this will whet your appetite. This one has three pages full of photos, and while it's just a compilation, it's not to be missed!

http://www.dirjournal.com/info/abandoned-places-in-the-world/

Abandoned building - Varosha, Cyprus