In the nearly two years that I’ve been at the company, even bearing i mind the kid of superstars that make up some of Google’s employee numbers, I’ve never come close to seeing a set of snippets to rival this day’s-worth of work. If I ever feel like I’ve done enough for a day and can afford to slack off for a bit, now I know that I haven’t and I can’t.

A woman has become the first person in the world to be given an entirely laboratory engineered organ in a landmark operation.

Claudia Castillo’s stem cells were used to create an artificial airway which replaced the bronchus to her left lung, which had collapsed after she suffered a serious tuberculosis infection.

Two things:

First, I don’t want anyone saying, “I’d give her a lab-engineered organ, if you know what I’m talking about!”

Second, I think this technique is going to re-shape how we perform not only transplant operations but also cosmetic surgery, which is about adding things as much as it is about taking things away.

It strikes me that this whole push is flawed in two major ways.

The first is that it seems to be very emotionally motivated: every news story about it makes a big deal about a single, recent, high-profile murder. But the plural of anecdote is not data, and extrapolating from a single event to try to demonstrate a trend is at best ignorant and at worst dishonest. The only useful statistic mentioned in this article, right at the bottom, indicates that gang crime in Limerick is falling dramatically. That’s not to say that that interpretation is necessarily correct either, but I’d like to see more fact and less emotion in the drafting and reporting of legislation.

The second major flaw is that no-one in the news media, as far as I can tell, has tried to discover whether or not this proposed legislation will expand the powers of the Gardaí to surveil without warrant, or whether it will simply allow more types of evidence to be admitted in court. This is the difference between a large potential infringement on individual privacy, and a small but significant alteration to judicial process. That strikes me as a large enough difference that it should be possible for an interested citizen to discover which is being proposed.

Greystones in Co Wicklow has been named the world’s most liveable community.

The LivCom Awards, which took place in China this year, focuses on environmental management and the creation of a liveable communities.

There were 20 other towns from around the world were competing for the award.

I would have thought there were more than 20 eligible towns, but maybe they were scared away when they heard who the competition would be. Greystones FTW!

President McAleese said that in order to respect diversity among young people, society needed to stand up for democratic values and refuse to go along with loudly voiced prejudices.

I take it this also includes refusing to go along with the loudly voiced prejudices or Ireland’s conservative Catholic majority? I’m getting antsy. Can we have our enlightenment yet?

I don’t know what McAleese’s stance is on gay marriage, so I can neither support nor condemn her. It just makes me uncomfortable to see a representative of our country making statements like this when it’s so clear that the majority of the people in this country will never let it be more than an empty soundbite.