2000

Continuing our Irish theme, here is a selection of quotations from a few great men of the Emerald Isle. No doubt you'll be familiar with some of them - perhaps you've even thought the same thing yourself.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing I ever do with it. It is never of any use to oneself. - Oscar Wilde

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get. - George Bernard Shaw

The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work. - W.B. Yeats

The National Team Sinks but the Premiership Sails On

Some of the best teams in the world are English but the national side still did badly in Euro 2000. Why was it? We take a look at the current shape of English footie.

Those who read me, know my conviction that the world ... rests on a few very simple ideas ... It rests, notably ... on the idea of Fidelity." So wrote Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), the Polish-born writer whose novels in the English language have come to be regarded as some of the greatest in English literature. Born in what is now the Ukraine, Conrad grew up with the name Konrad Korzeniowski, only changing it to be easier for English tongues to pronounce. At the age of seventeen he went away to sea, and for the next twenty years the naval life with all its hardships was to be his world.

I thought it would be fun to take a humorous look at everyday life issues in the United States and ask the question made famous by many 4-year-olds: Why? Why? Why? So why ask why? Why not?! Even if the answers are obvious to us, even if the questions themselves are wrong (some of us love the taste of cough syrup, for example: see below) kids will always ask why. The following is my Top 20:

1. Why does a gallon of bottled water cost more than a gallon of gas?

Throughout the nineteenth century the American frontier was a continuously-advancing line which marked the westward movement of settlers. It separated the natural and native Indian from the civilized and artificial white. It was a meeting place of two entirely different cultures, a place where, on the one hand a tragic clash took place, and on the other a priceless lesson was learned.

Napster, Gnutella, Reflecter: it sounds like the latest line of chocolate products. But these computer programs are revolutionizing the world of web music - and giving the record industry the fright of their lives.

You never know what a kid will come up with, given the proper tools.

A truly international man, South African Kevin Oakes lives and works in Germany as a producer of fashion shows. His job takes him all over the world to such places as Paris, Milan, Istanbul, Las Vegas, Budapest, Morocco and Cuba. Heinrich Feuerbach caught up with him in Berlin and discovered some fascinating things about the fashion industry.

The giant disused power station at Battersea on the south bank of the River Thames in London has long been a symbol of the decline of the city's main waterway. Compared to the elegantly designed River Seine in Paris and the magnificent canals of Venice, the Thames has often seemed a bit of an industrial mess.

This image is being transformed, however, by a series of exciting public projects aimed at making the river a place to be visited and not just crossed to get to work and back home.