In my opinion, there’s no better way to break the tension before a major economic decision than to adopt the style of Weird Al and write some song parodies. A few months ago, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah became ‘Board Snip Nua’. Before that, we had Copa-Obama. Today is of course Budget Day and I’d like to [...]
It’s so cold and it’s so broken, Board Snip Nua!
I’ve always had a soft spot for song parodies, as longer established readers of the blog will probably ruefully attest. My last foray into this territory with my economic hat on was “Brother, Can you bail out my bank?” in the midst of our global financial excitement last Autumn (although I did try my hand [...]
Wisdom of the crowds? Web2.0, hubdub & guessing Ireland’s unemployment
I had the rather pleasant task today of going through a range of Web 2.0 / social networking tools and establishing the potential in their application to primary research. Some key things that the new generation of web tools can give include: Using something like digg or scribd to find key themes and recent developments [...]
The Ballad of Barack Obama & Sarah Palin (or Manilow's Nightmare)
Following the success (my targets were small) of Brother, Can You Bail-out My Bank?, and given that I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my blog-time blogging about the election, I thought it only right to sign off on the election with a tribute to the election that was. So, to the unmistakeable tune of – [...]
The genealogy-grammar paradox & Obama's endorsement of T&E Plumbing (or maybe it's the other way around)
The Huffington Post has an excellent collection of pictures from around the world, in response to the outcome of the US election – for more check out Election Day Around The World (PHOTOS). I had to laugh at one in particular, the one from an hour down the road, Moneygall, County Offaly. The first thing [...]
"WARNING: Your investment may go up as well as down!" and other signs that you're in a financial crisis
Warren Buffet – no relation to the Pina Colada-swilling Jimmy – has been widely quoted in recent days giving his latest advice for the market. In short, what with everyone being fearful, he’s recommending that people be greedy. Take the long term view, he says, and the US stock market (and, based on his logic, [...]
Brother, Can You Bail-out my Bank? (1931 revisited!)
Every crisis creates its own artistic genius – take for example Picasso, or the Credit Crunch Blues. Mere mortals mightn’t move in quite the same league, but we can try. So, with sincere apologies for the butchering of Jay Gorney’s lovely music and the usurpation of Yip Harburg’s original lyrics, Weird Al, this one’s for [...]
Bush versus Zapp Brannigan
Now, I know it’s very trendy these days to knock George Bush. Fun too. For those reasons and more, here is the world’s first ‘Can you tell whether Zapp Brannigan or George W. Bush said this?’ quiz… All you have to is have a guess whether each of the following was said by Captain Zapp [...]
