• No warning had been given to any civilians before the soldiers opened fire
• None of the soldiers fired in response to attacks by petrol bombers or stone throwers
• Some of those killed or injured were clearly fleeing or going to help those injured or dying
• None of the casualties was posing a threat or doing anything that would justify their shooting
• Many of the soldiers lied about their actions
• The events of Bloody Sunday were not premeditated
• Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein, was present at the time of the violence and “probably armed with a sub-machine gun” but did not engage in “any activity that provided any of the soldiers with any justification for opening fire”

The inquiry ran for 12 years at an ultimate expense of £195M. Its findings have been widely greeted positively.

What I post today is not directly connected but certainly not unrelated: a debate — I use the term loosely — between Fintan O’Toole of the Irish Times and members of the Wolfe Tones, an Irish rebel music band who have enjoyed a long, successful career. Fintan contends their music and their style of performing are inherently racist and filled with hate-speech, while the Wolfe Tones assert that… Well, that Fintan is lacking a sense of humour, that his knowledge of the history of The Troubles is lacking and that he shouldn’t be able to consider himself Irish.

While even after having watched it countless times, to me it is completely obvious who wins this farce of a “debate”, the Youtube comments tell a different story:

In any event, here is the “debate”, in full:

An excellent article by Kurt Kleiner explores why people often act completely irrationally and how intelligence by itself doesn’t make you rational:

Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

Yes  /  No  /  Cannot be determined

The Fix Your Mix blog ran a series of articles studying the composition of pop music. Here are two: A Compositional Analysis of Kids by MGMT, Single Ladies by Beyonce. Another interesting post was entitled 5 Pop Songs With No Music. They run a good blog there — it’s worthwhile keeping an eye on it.

G.M.B. Akash was featured as the first guest photojournalist on Zoriah’s blog last April in a post concerned with child workers in Bangladesh:

My intention is not only to show the children at work as victims of bad bosses exploiting them, but I want to show the complexity of the situation: The parents who send their little boy to work in a factory because they are poor; the child who has to work to earn a living for the family; the boss of the factory who is being pushed by big garment companies to produce for less money; and the Western consumers as clients who buy cheap clothes.

Zoriah took some incredible photos recently of the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake. Here is the second set of three. Naturally, some of the photos are quite disturbing.

On to lighter things, and Vincent Bousserez created a series of macro photographs which are quite amusing:

You can view the full set here and the artist’s website here, however be warned: for some reason, the artist decided it’d be a good idea to have music play automatically when you visit his website. As the Americans say, “go figure.”

Village of Joy had a blog post with photos of 50 strange buildings. Some are very well known, but a few I’d not come across before, such as this “Kettle House” in Texas:

This house sculpted out of a megalith in Guimarães, Portugal:

And this bizarre house again in Texas:

When you check the rest out, it’s worth keeping in mind that many of the pictures are links to more information and photos.

And here are mock-ups from Front Architects of one recycling possibility for billboards: compact housing.

More photos here.

Lastly, a quite lengthy series of hilariously bizarre photos from a Juggalo gathering. Quality stuff.

John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono has been given a lifetime achievement honour at Mojo magazine’s awards in London.

Mojo chief editor Phil Alexander, who hosted the event, praised Ono, 76, as “a huge influence on modern music”.

Bollocks.