IrishBeat.com

Also known as Brandan and Borodon, Brendan was born about 484 A.D. near Tralee in County Kerry. He was ordained by Bishop Erc and sailed around northwest Europe spreading the Christian faith and founding monasteries — the largest at Clonfert, County Galway. Legend says that the community had at least three thousand monks — their rule dictated to Brendan by an angel. He died at the age of 93 and he was buried at the monastery in 577 A.D.

Brendan and his brothers figure prominently in Brendan’s Voyage, a tale of monks travelling the high seas of the Atlantic, evangelizing to the islands, and possibly reaching the Americas in the 6th century. At one point they stop on a small island, celebrate Easter Mass, light a fire – and then discover the island is an enormous whale!

Maps of Columbus’ time often included an island called St. Brendan’s Isle that was placed in the western Atlantic ocean. Map makers of the time had no idea of its exact position but did believe it existed some where west of Europe. It was mentioned in a Latin text dating from the ninth century called Navigatio Santi Brendani Abatis (Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot). It described the voyage as having taken place in the sixth century. Several copies of this text have survived in monasteries throughout Europe. It was an important part of folklore in medieval Europe and may have influenced Columbus.

The account of Brendan’s voyage contained a detailed description of the construction of his boat which was not unlike the currachs still made in Ireland today.

If you’re at all in technology or have that one program that always crashes for no reason, this is a really funny blog.

maniacalrage.net

I was recently asked to comment on the following article which outlines the top 20 countries and their relative debt rankings. They compare the country’s GDP to Debt ratio. Here’s a link to the article

CNBC Article

Here were my comments:

Seems like that list is filled with Socialist style governments, which makes sense as they have to pay for their generous benefits. In considering a typical politicians view of the world, it makes complete sense. I knew about Ireland, but was surprised by the UK and some of the others. There are various opinions as to the reason for the problem and whether it’s a problem, but in my view the problem is that we have politicians that live for the now and the “now vote”, so they are willing to rack up enormous debts in order to get each vote so they can stay in power. They don’t necessarily care about who has to pay for it. The bigger problem is that they aren’t investing the debt into the future growth of the economy. It’s mostly wasted on programs that have short term impacts.

I think, and have considered starting a movement, that my generation should resolve to create a generational tax in order to pay down the debt we have inherited. We inform the current generations that are in power that their estates will be taxed at 90-95% in order to pay back the debt which has provided their wealth as a result of leveraging our generations future earnings. Instead of living within their means in the USA’s time of dominance (past 60 years), they have squandered the wealth selfishly and burdened future generations. If we could get 80% of the younger voters to sign on, it could have an impact on the actions of the current generation that’s in power. Probably over simplified and unrealistic, but it would at least send a message that we’re fed-up with the behavior.

More problematic is that ow that corporations have “taken over” our government (actually more like handed the reins), we will probably have a harder time getting anything done that will fix the problem as it will result in more taxes/regulations for them, which they will fight tooth and nail. This means we’re going to see the slow decay of the American lifestyle and prosperity as a result of the influence of the vary structures that were created to protect and enhance our lifestyles. It comes down to short sightedness and greed. It’s not a bright outlook, but the most realistic.


What do you think?