An American in Ireland

Monday was technically the 30th anniversary of the USA's win over the USSR in Olympic hockey, but as far as I'm concerned today is the real anniversary. That's because it was the second Friday of the Olympics when that game was played.

I was reminded of that greatest ever day for an American sports fan when I came across

I'm not sure if you noticed or not, but baseball's spring training got going the other day. That means a new baseball season is only a few weeks away, thank goodness.

However, before we get to Opening Day St.Patrick's Day will be here. And, as is the custom now, that means Major League Baseball will be promoting its special St. Patrick's Day line of merchandise. You can get a green version of pretty much every team's cap and tee shirt, if you like.

Obviously there's a demand for such products, which I think is great. The die-hard baseball fan can satisfy their need to display where their baseball loyalties lie, but also exhibit their pride in their Irish heritage. I have a few green Mets shirts myself.

Disney World is operating a 'No Irish Welcome' policy. Or so it seems. Okay, it's not that serious, but it was brought to my attention last week that Disney's web site has omitted Ireland.

Yup, that's right. When you use

Curling. There are a lot of detractors out there, especially in America. Many people seem to believe that curling is not a sport and doesn't belong in the Winter Olympics.

Niall O'Dowd is one of those people. O'Dowd says Curling is the silliest sport at the Olympics, that it's essentially a couple of people sweeping in front of a 'kettle lid' sliding along the ice.

I disagree. I'm a big fan of the Winter Olympics. I'd be hard pressed to choose my favorite sport at the winter games (hockey doesn't count because I watch that regularly). Curling would be up there, however.

I hadn't been living in Ireland all that long when Annie McCarrick disappeared in March 1993. McCarrick was from Long Island and had moved to Ireland only a couple of months before she went missing, last seen heading towards a location in the hills in Wicklow.

No trace of her was ever found. Now her name and face are back in the news because the chief suspect in her disappearance is due to be released from prison shortly.

Shortly after she disappeared McCarrick's face was on posters all over Dublin. Her smiling face was on every street corner {photo above was on those posters}. Whenever I saw one of those posters it hit home that an American had come to live in Ireland and that something awful had happened to her.

Over the past year or so there's been one good economic story for Ireland that has sort of been lost amidst the reports on company closings, job losses, bank bailouts and government spending cuts. The little snippet of good news has been the number of company's that have relocated their headquarters to Ireland.

Today's Irish Times reports that United America Indemnity is moving its headquarters to Ireland from the Cayman Islands. I never heard of United America Indemnity before, but the Irish Times says the company had previously announced that it was moving its headquarters to Switzerland, but has now reconsidered. Can't be bad news, right?

UAI says they are moving here because "Ireland offers an attractive business environment, a highly educated and motivated professional workforce, a comprehensible legal system grounded in Common Law, a sophisticated regulatory environment, and an extensive global network of international treaties."

Members of the Irish parliament (the Dáil & Seanad) were given some very bad news yesterday: the folks who run the national television service, RTE, are not going to move the proceedings of the two houses of the Irish parliament to prime-time. In fact, RTE's Cillian de Paor gently broke their hearts when he told them that "Desperate Housewives has a bigger audience I'm afraid."

Now the truth is, I'd rather watch "

Elsewhere on this site you will find articles celebrating Irishman John Furlong, who is head of the winter Olympics Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC). However, what you may not know is that Furlong and VANOC have been drawing plenty of fire for what many French-Canadians feel was an almost total lack of French at the opening ceremony.

An editorial in yesterday's

Do you know these people?

No? Me neither. Nor, I'm willing to bet, does anyone in Ireland.

These three are among the 11 suspects that the United Arab Emirates believes were behind the recent killing of

I didn't know what to expect from Craig Barrett, the Irish-American former head of Intel, when I heard he'd been made Chairman of the Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG) last year. At the time all I thought was, "That's a good idea. He'll open a few doors." I never expected he'd actually be so active, so keen to voice his opinion about where Ireland needs to go to achieve economic success in the 21st century.

Barrett {photo} has not been shy. He's been all over the papers and radio expressing his opinions, particularly about the Irish education system. So far the reaction to Barrett's views has been non-existent, possibly because to engage with him would be to call into question some of the sacred cows of the education system.

One of those sacred cows is the Leaving Cert. Ireland's secondary school system is built around the Leaving Cert, which is a series of exams taken at the end of the sixth and final year of secondary school (basically junior high & high school). All the exams count the same, which means an 'A' in Home Economics or Art counts just as much as an 'A' in Math or Physics. Each grade gets so many points and a student's point total determines what college course he or she gets.

First it was George Lee quitting on politics and his party and now we have another high profile resignation. Today the Green Party's Déirdre de Búrca resigned.

De Búrca was a Senator for the Greens, one of only eight party members in the two houses of the Irish parliament. She got her seat in the Senate when her party entered government in coalition with Fianna Fáil back in 2007.

De Búrca {photo with John Gormley} says she is quitting because she can no longer support a party that has "abandoned our political values and our integrity." She points the finger directly at party leader John Gormley saying he's "done a disservice to the Green Party" by tying the party too closely to their government coalition partners. De Búrca says Gormley has been "unable, or unwilling" to "take a stronger line with Brian Cowen and the Fianna Fáil party" and ignored Green Party principles because the party has become too attached to being in government.

It's funny what will light a fire under people. There have been all sorts of government decisions recently that could have sparked a revolt. Yet the people have been pretty accepting of all the budget cuts and bank bail-outs, probably because it was difficult to see any alternative.

All very quiet, until the past couple of weeks when there was an eruption over a new speed limit in Dublin. Dublin City Council voted to reduce the limit from 50 kph (31 mph) to 30 kph (18.6 mph) in the city's central areas.

At first the objectors' concerns and arguments were dismissed. 'People just needed some time to adjust' or 'this will make the city safer and better for cyclists and pedestrians' or 'it's only a limited area.'

The Winter Olympics get underway tomorrow in Vancouver, but there won't be a huge amount of interest here. The winter games, unlike the summer ones, are not a big deal in Ireland.

This year's team consists of six athletes, which I think may be the biggest team Ireland's ever sent to the winter games. I'm not really sure because even the official Olympic Council of Ireland web site offers little enough about Ireland's Winter Olympics past. Ireland sent five athletes to the 2006 games.

Snow and ice are rarities here, there are very few skating rinks, and almost nobody plays hockey so few kids grow up dreaming of partaking in the winter games. All of which makes it imperative that Aoife Hoey and Claire Bergin be allowed to compete in the women's bobsleigh.

Big doings here today, if you're one of those who is obsessed by the minutia of Ireland's politics. RTE's former Economics Editor and the nation's favorite merchant of doom, George Lee, announced today that he was quitting politics, quitting the Dáil and quitting the Fine Gael party less than a year after he quit RTE to "get off the fence" and work to "ensure the country got better Government."

That was in May of 2009 and now it looks like Lee (photo - right) will be looking to get back on the fence at RTE.

Undoubtedly this was a tough decision for Lee, but what of his former party and its leader Enda Kenny (photo - holding Lee's arm aloft)?

It's Super Bowl Sunday and I know what you're thinking: is this guy who calls himself The Yank going to watch the biggest game of the year. And the answer is ... sort of.

You can find the Super Bowl on TV here and there are a few gatherings of Americans and Irish football fans - there are some - around Dublin to watch the game. I won't be there.

I'll be watching from the comfort of my own home. For a while. Kickoff is at 11:25pm, which means the game won't be over til sometime after 2:30. I can tell you for a fact I won't see the finish. I might make it to half-time, but there's no chance I'll stay awake through that even if The Who's blasting "Won't Get Fooled Again" (which I love).

PIGS. Have you seen this acronym? It's only in the business pages and if you have seen it used it's because the PIGS are putting pressure on the euro, causing a sharp decline in the value of the European currency in recent days.

So what is or are PIGS? The PIGS are four European nations with severe fiscal problems: Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain. Or maybe not. Some say it stands for Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain.

And now there's some bad feeling over what that "I" stands for.

I was reading this story about the family in California who were all killed when their Toyota's accelerator got stuck and the thought struck me: why didn't the guy just take the car out of gear? I wasn't being critical so much as wondering why he didn't do that given he had time to make a phone call.

I thought about it a bit more and figured I was thinking like someone who drives a manual transmission car. When you drive an automatic - as most Americans do and as I did before I left - you don't think about gears. The car's always in "drive", even when you're stopped at a traffic light. If you're used to driving a manual transmission you're always shifting up and down and into neutral at lights, etc.

I think this has an impact on a driver's reactions in situations like poor Mark Saylor found himself in. I'm not talking about judgment so much as instinctual reaction. The instincts you acquire when you drive a manual are different.

I have to get something off my chest. I don't like Irish national team captain Robbie Keane. Don't rate him, don't like him. This puts me outside the pale with Irish soccer fans, who adore Keane.

This also probably puts me outside the pale with Irish Central's Cathal Dervan too and who am I to argue with Cathal Dervan? His knowledge of soccer is encyclopedic and mine is, well, not.

So why do I feel this way about Keane?

Okay, brace yourselves. It's entirely possible you've never heard of Jedward, in which case you don't have an opinion on the Irish twins. If, however, you have had the "pleasure" then you might be taken aback by what I'm about to say. I'm shocked myself.

I like Jedward. Now, truth is, I'd sooner have root canal than endure their singing and dancing routine, but as I was watching them being interviewed by the BBC's Jonathan Ross on Friday night I found myself liking them more and more.

So what's to like? I guess it's the complete naivety of the two of them. I considered the possibility that it's all an act - and it might well be - but even if it's an act the way the two of them are always in synch with the innocence is tremendous. But, I actually don't think they're acting. I think what you see is pretty much what they really are.