A Service Dog......... a Trusted Friend.

My little boy, Morgan, is different. Not so you'd notice but the 'difference' makes a huge impact on his life. He has Aspergers Syndrome - ASD. High Functioning Autism if you must give him a label. He was diagnosed when he was at four and then discharged, with no support offered. I've had to learn how to care for my son through hands-on experience and the Internet. And I've just discovered something that I hope will change his life.

I read about Trained Service Dogs and how they can help change the often difficult and challenging lives of children like Morgan and now my friends and family are campaigning tirelessly to raise funds for a dog that will be deeply loved and will return that love with care, protection, fun and confidence for Morgan.

To me, 10-year-old Morgan is gorgeous, sensitive and loving. he sees the world from a different angle and says the funniest things at the most inappropriate times such as saying to his Step Dad, "I'm really sorry to tell you this but I think your Gran is going to die soon" at her 90th Birthday Party. Yes, it raised a few eyebrows there too!

You see he can't read situations, or facial expressions or even emotions for that matter so it wasn't funny to him, it was a fact. Though I do still secretly have a chuckle about it, this social inability leaves him very vulnerable. Imagine not knowing who is joking or being mean. Who is a stranger and who is just being friendly. A Service Dog would respond by putting itself between Morgan and any possible threat.

Morgan is a bright boy, above academic level for his age and he has kept us very busy. One of his earliest talents was using the computer and by age four was logging on independently, We purchased a game subscription, not realising a budding hacker was in our midst, watching passwords being typed in, logged into the payment details and at the grand old age of Four and half, emptied his fathers bank account.

Another of his skills is Lego building, currently part way through The Death Star.We now have so much Lego we could build an extension. As each interest develops into an obsession, Prepare for a challenge as I pirouette round a room that has an assortment of figures and space crafts in various poses for a boy who has diagnosed his Mother with Legophobia and will flip if they aren't in the right place when he returns. Now you are starting to get the picture.

However, its not all fun, cuddles and brick models. Challenging children have challenging behaviour as does Morgan. He was a lamb really until bullying opened his eyes to being different. It made him realise he didn't fit in and he gets frustrated, upset and angry. Yet while his anger is fleeting his remorse and guilt seem to consume him. Again a Service dog would see the signs and respond before he lost control.

He is very polite, well mannered, most of the time and articulate. However, take him out of his comfort zone (usually his onesie), and you will see the anxiety and panic that makes him unable to cope. Its called sensory overload and well, its difficult to explain but Morgan's anxiety has become so great that other than visiting our local newsagent for his favourite drink on his scooter once a day, he's becoming trapped in his own home. Its debilitating for him. A harness is attached to his dog who would then sense his anxiety and move into action.

As they've gone through school together the difference between he and his sister, Sophie, has shown most starkly not in achievement but in social life as Sophie's solid friendship group have a diary full of social events while Morgan's only ever invite came from one of Sophie's friends. Leaving him asking one of the hardest questions I've had to hear "Why aren't I allowed friends Mummy?". Now I know a dog isn't going to give him a party but it is going to give him a trusted companion..

In a society where it seems its acceptable to discriminate against anyone who doesn't fit the norm, maybe it pays to remember that children are born accepting of everything around them and learn what isn't acceptable from adults. This bright little star needs to shine. The dogs we are raising money for are trained to aid all aspects of every day life. Its the difference between Morgan looking out of the window wishing he could go and having the confidence to put on his coat, Knowing that if he feels anxious he has someone with him who knows what to do, isn't that what every 10 year old boy deserves?

Suzanne Burnett

Ten Ancient Viking thoughts for the day

"One's back is vulnerable, unless one has a brother"

"There are more things to be thought of by men than money alone"

"Never slay more than one main the same stock,and never break the peace which good men and true make between thee and others"

"Then said Atli, when he got the thrust, 'These broad spears are becoming a fashion.' After that he fell forward over the threshold"

"He is bad tempered, and may be that I shall let another's wound be my warning"

"There are few more certain tokens of ill than not to know how to accept the good"

"Where fault can be good, the good is ignored"

"A tale is but half told when only one person tells it"

"No one is a total fool if he can be silent"

"Eyes cannot hide a woman's love for a man"

Photo Minute: Beautiful Scotland

Unthinkable: Is religion just a matter of taste?

Ideologies have a power to build communities; that’s why they endure, says philosopher Alexandra Grieser 

‘That religion is back on the political stage has much to do with its power to build communities and provide blueprints for action.’ Photograph: Thinkstock

Philosophers such as David Hume  and William James argued long ago that reason and emotion are intertwined. Discoveries in neuroscience have confirmed their hunch. Yet today’s debates on ideology and religion seem reluctant to acknowledge the evidence.

People are labelled either left or right, either religious or scientific, as though they wear ready-made uniforms of belief. But as Trinity College Dublin lecturer Dr Alexandra Grieser points out, ideology is never purely a matter of principles; it is also bound up with sensations and tastes. Grieser, who is assistant professor for the theory of religion, argues that we can deepen our understanding of religious belief through aesthetics: the study of sensory values.

She provides today’s idea: “Aesthetic forms are never only expressions of ideologies; they create the realities we live in.”generation: it’s a perilous time to be a child in Ireland

How is an ideology more than just the principles underlying it?

“Ideologies are convincing not only on the basis of what they say, but also on the basis of how they link ideas to the life of people.

“Political ideologies have always linked up with forms of art, symbols and architecture; they ‘tuned’ the body, as in parades and by uniforms, and they prescribed how to sense, feel and behave between kitchen and bed, without much of a difference between religious and, say, communist ideals in this respect.

“Religion, however, has the advantage of being rooted in long historical traditions. It harks back to repertoires so well-established that even its critics have to deal with them.

“Today, it seems that the time of the great political ideologies is over. It is more the mediated world full of promises and advertisements that led sociologists of the 1990s to observe a ‘McDonaldisation’ of our perception; we’re thinking we have a free choice, but we’re choosing uniformity.

“Ironically, McDonald’s recent TV spot advertises that ‘taste is a powerful thing’ by showing that cheese and honey are disgusting, and only the burger gives the security of knowing what you get.

“Indeed, taste is powerful, especially when it comes to encountering difference. Exclusiveness makes aesthetic ideologies political.”

Does the experiential nature of religion explain why it is so resilient to attacks from science?

“That we expect religion to ‘go away’ has much to do with the western Enlightenment idea that science would replace religion and make it superfluous or wrong. But religions change over time, and they are not confined to explaining natural phenomena.

“For some time it looked like sociologist Robert Bellah was right in saying that religions have become a matter of ‘habits of the heart’. If you want to know about astronomy, you don’t need to ask the Vatican any more, but if you are looking for communal rites, for a meaningful form of coping with crises and death, you wouldn’t go to the university either.

“Moreover, science does not deliver the values that determine how to consequentially act. Science and technology even brought along problems we never had before, and religions gained a critical function when it comes to questions such as the redefinition of ‘brain death’, or what we should be doing on human embryos.

“That religion is also back on the political stage has much to do with its power to build communities and provide blueprints for action.”

Can you understand religion, then, unless you have also experienced it? 

“Maybe it is even harder to understand religion when you think that the experience of others should resemble your own. If I want to understand the interplay between religion and violence, for instance, it might be more important to look at what motivates people than to share their experience.

“But if one wants to study the many aspects of religion, it certainly helps to assume that religious people are ordinary human beings, and not just ‘those weird people believing strange things’. It is on the basis of their humanity that we can understand even extreme actions or attitudes.”

How has neuroscience become a battle ground for ideologies?

“It might sound a bit like a political thriller to say that the military has a huge interest in brain research. However, Edward Snowden has shown that we are living in such a political thriller every day, and movies such as The Matrix have already responded to the idea that knowing about the brain also means knowing how to control it.

“We have great research that shows how the brain has been imagined as the steering centre of our personhood, as the commando bridge of our body, and as the computer that can be reprogrammed for optimal functioning. But recent findings show how strongly entangled our ‘embodied mind’ is, and that we create the brains we have, not least through how we treat and use our bodies.

“Instead of creating a neuro-religion and believing that fixing the brain will fix all odds of human life, it is important to ask the simple question that philosopher Catherine Malabou  wants societies to discuss: what should we do with our brain?”

Dr Alexandra Grieser and cognitive scientist Dr Fred Cummins are giving a joint talk on March 4th, 6-7pm, called The Ground from Which We Speak, as part of the Dublin City Council Welcome Disturbances exhibition at the Lab Gallery, in partnership with UCD Art in Science. www.thelab.ie

ASK A SAGE

• Question: Should you listen to your heart or your head?
• Muhammad replies: “God created the angels from intellect without sensuality, the beasts from sensuality without intellect, and humanity from both intellect and sensuality. So when a person’s intellect overcomes his sensuality, he is better than the angels, but when his sensuality overcomes his intellect, he is worse than the beasts.”

Joe Humphrey

Photo Minute: A terrifying beauty...

Vladimir Putin talking tough....

“I love soccer”

Vladimer Putin

“Anyone who doesn't regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.”

“History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.”

“Nobody should pin their hopes on a miracle.”

“ It is necessary to suppress any extremist actions, on all sides, regardless of their origin.”

“Yes, life in Chechnya so far looks more like a life after a natural disaster.”

(After attacking it) 

    “Terrorists are always a threat to someone. If we’ll be scared of them, it means they won.”

“Why should we talk to people who are child-killers? No one has a moral right to tell us to talk to child killers.”

“Comrade wolf knows who to eat, as the saying goes. It knows when to eat and is not about to listen to anyone.”

“Terrorism has no nationality or religion.”

“ If you press a spring too hard, it will snap back.You must always remember this.”

                                               “ There is no such thing as a former KGB man.” 

"If you are ready to become the most radical of Islamists and to be circumcised, I invite you to Moscow. I would recommend that he who does the surgery does it so you'll have nothing growing back afterward."

 "We will wipe out them in the outhouse.” (on Islamic terrorists who happen to be

going to the toilet, an outside one)

McWilliams recalls 'nasty attacks' after predicting banking collapse

One of the country’s most high-profile economists was subjected to personal and nasty attacks over his prophetic warnings about an imminent banking crash, he has told an inquiry.

David McWilliams, also a columnist and broadcaster, said he was vilified for predicting and regularly cautioning about a looming crisis in the years running up to the country’s spectacular economic collapse in 2008.

The former central banker, who contributes to several Irish newspapers said he was “slapped down” by fellow economists over his gloomy forecasts and accused the media of an “undoubted herd mentality”.

Mr McWilliams said people were “swanning around” now with titles like banking expert who “didn’t open their beak” while living in Ireland in the run-up to the financial nosedive.

Senior bank bosses cautioned him about “dangerous talk” and he was told “don’t frighten the horses”.

But he told the Oireachtas Banking Inquiry in Dublin that editors never “muzzled” him.

Mr McWilliams said it was “very hurtful” when his motives were publicly questioned and he was upset about his wife and mother reading the attacks on him at the time.

“Irish mammies read all that stuff,” he told parliamentarians.

“It was very personal and quite nasty.”

The banking inquiry is currently holding a module into early warnings, divergent and contrarian views during the run-up to the crisis.

Despite his high profile warnings, Mr McWilliams said he was never contacted by anyone in power until the banking meltdown reached boiling point in September 2008.

“Categorically, not one advisor, not one minister, not one civil servant, not one member of the regulator, nobody,” he said, when asked who contacted him.

“In actual fact, I would have been toxic to all of them and they would have avoided me like the plague.

“All this was going on and never once was I asked my opinion about anything, by anybody informally or formally.”

But after meeting then Finance Minister Lenihan during a radio interview on September 6 that year, they swapped telephone numbers and Mr Lenihan called to his home in Killiney, south Dublin, 11 days later.

They discussed the options in his kitchen, followed by around 10 phone calls and one more face-to-face meeting on October 4.

“I never saw or met him again,” Mr McWilliams said.

“I think he was using me as a sounding board more than anything else.”

His only other official contact was from then Environment Minister and junior coalition partner Green Party leader John Gormley, who telephoned him at the World Economic Forum in China to find out “what was going on”, he said.

“I said I’m in Beijing, you tell me,” he told the hearing.

Mr Lenihan was also telephoning him “asking me all the time what are the foreigners saying”, he added.

“Why didn’t they ring their own bloody advisors instead of me? I never got paid a cent for all this,” Mr McWilliams said.

“Why did they have to ring a bloke in China to find out what was going on under their noses?”

When he asked them about this, their response was that until now everything they had been told was wrong, he said.

After the sporadic contacts over a few weeks he said he heard nothing again from anyone in power.

The commentator said he backed a State guarantee for bank depositors at the time, but only as a temporary measure until Mr Lenihan could find out the full facts about what was going on inside the banks.

A €440bn blanket guarantee was agreed by the then Fianna Fail/Green Party coalition on September 30.

Mr McWilliams said Ireland’s banking crisis was absolutely preventable but the banks staged “a financial coup d’etat” making sure their creditors were paid off while citizens were left miles behind.