Absolution ...and a pint
QUESTION How did The Confession Box pub beside Boyers in Dublin get its name? Is it down to its diminutive size or is there a religious link?
THE little tavern in Marlborough Street is located just a few doors from Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral, and was originally called The Maid of Erin.
In 1920, when the War of Independence was at its height, the Catholic bishops of various dioceses decreed that rebel volunteers who engaged in ambushes, etc, would be excommunicated.
That meant that those involved in the struggle for independence would be denied the sacraments and this caused much resentment.
However, some priests secretly went against their archbishop and heard confessions in a special room in The Maid of Erin. In time the pub became popularly known as the Confession Box.
Today, an artistic brass plate on the windowsill of the Confession Box reminds people of how the small tavern got its name. Tim Horgan, Dillon’s Cross, Cork.
QUESTION Has anyone been killed chasing a tornado or watching a volcano?
HUSBAND and wife vulcanologists Maurice and Katia Krafft were famous for documenting volcanic eruptions in photographs and film.
In June 1991, while filming eruptions at Mount Unzen in Japan, they were caught in an unexpected pyroclastic flow, a fastmoving current of hot gas and volcanic matter, and were killed instantly.
Pioneering American vulcanologist Harry Glicken was also killed during the eruption, as were the 40 journalists and firemen who had accompanied them.
Maurice Krafft once claimed: ‘I am never afraid because I have seen so many eruptions in 23 years that even if I die tomorrow, I don’t care.’ In 2016, the couple were featured in Werner Herzog’s spectacular documentary film Into The Inferno.
David Lynne, Birmingham. THE TV series Storm Chasers, which ran between 2007 and 2012 on the Discovery Channel, filmed teams of experts in America’s tornado belt.
A number of shows featured TWISTEX (Tactical WeatherHowever, Instrumented Sampling in/near Tornadoes EXperiment) led by engineer Tim Samaras. He had been fascinated by tornados ever since he had watched the film The Wizard Of Oz as a child.
On May 31, 2013, Samaras, his son Paul, 24, and meteorologist Carl Young, 45, from California lost their lives when a tornado they were chasing near the airport of El Reno in Oklahoma suddenly changed direction and engulfed them. Their Chevrolet Cobalt was struck by a subvortex, in which winds were moving at 175mph within the main tornado.
Paul and Carl died when they were thrown from the car. Tim, buckled in the passenger’s seat, was killed when the car was thrown half a mile by the storm.
Jonathan Dean, Salisbury, Wilts.
QUESTION Why is the cartoon Pepe the Frog controversial in the US?
PEPE the Frog is a character from the irreverent comic Boy’s Club by Matt Furie. It features teenage monsters Andy, Brett, Landwolf and Pepe, who spend their time ‘drinkin’, stinkin’ and never thinkin’ ’.
Pepe debuted in 2006 and quickly became popular online. Students who had finished their exams would upload pictures of Pepe’s heavy-lidded, froggy face with the character’s catchphrase: ‘Feels good, man.’
One attraction was that the cartoon frog could be placed in virtually any circumstance and be depicted as Shakespeare, a superhero or a celebrity.
The cartoon gained notoriety in 2016 when Donald Trump retweeted a smug Trump-Pepe creature during his election campaign with the line: ‘You can’t stump the Trump.’ Pepe began to be used in more nefarious ways.
He was adopted by the alt-right movement – a loosely defined group of white supremacists, neoConfederates, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists and other far-right fringe hate groups – and by racist and anti-Semitic groups.
This led to the Anti-Defamation League, an international Jewish non-governmental organisation, listing Pepe as a race hate symbol alongside the swastika and the Ku Klux Klan hood.
Upset by the misappropriation of his character, Furie hopes to revive Pepe’s image in the future.
Charles Troughton, Ross-on-Wye, Hereford.
QUESTION How accurate were the predictions of the future by sci-fi author John Brunner?
THE fact that his books, which were written in the Sixties and Seventies predicted the internet, social media, Viagra and an ecological crisis facing the world makes it extraordinary that sci-fi author John Brunner received little recognition in his lifetime.
You’d be forgiven for thinking he was American, as most of his novels have US settings and themes. he was born in 1934 in Preston Crowmarsh in Oxfordshire and served in the RAF before turning to writing.
His key works are the Club Of Rome quartet: Stand On Zanzibar, 1968; The Jagged Orbit, 1969; The Sheep Look Up, 1972; and Shockwave Rider, 1975.
Brunner did not get the recognition he deserved before his untimely death in Glasgow in 1995. However, his works are now viewed as classics of the genre, not least because of his uncanny ability to predict the future.
Stand On Zanzibar is particularly prescient.
Set in 2010, the story imagines a world with a vast social network that media organisations use to put out news in short bursts and receive real-time feedback from their fans.
The Soviet Union has been replaced by China as the chief threat to US power and the most powerful man in the world is President Obomi.
Brunner’s predictions included self-scheduled television, equivalent to Netflix.
He also accurately foresaw that terrorism would be a major threat to US interests and that gay and bisexual lifestyles would become far more mainstream. Peter Smith, Durham.
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