Geek chic didn’t sell
QUESTION Did Apple launch a clothing line? YES, a bunch of computer geeks tried to make their mark in the world of fashion – and, unsurprisingly, failed.
Apple was founded as a garage start-up in 1976 by Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne to sell the Apple 1 personal computer, hand-built by Wozniak.
The company was initially successful in bringing the computer age to the masses, but by 1985, it was in the doldrums. Jobs had been ousted and the Macintosh Classic, the LC (an upgraded Apple II) and the Performa budget series all performed poorly.
This failure was mirrored by the bizarre decision to launch a clothing line. The 1986 Apple Collection consisted of oversized sweatshirts and windbreakers in obnoxiously bright patterns. In every way it was the antithesis of the clothing favoured by black turtleneck aficionado Steve Jobs. It was a dismal failure.
Jobs went on to found NeXT – a computer firm, not the fashion store – which was bought out by Apple in 1997. His iMac revived the firm’s fortunes and set it on its path to global domination.
The internet being what it is, the Apple Collection of clothes is now highly desirable, with items selling for hundreds of euro on eBay. Harry Davies, Walkinstown, Dublin. QUESTION Was Karl Marx obsessed with blood-sucking vampires? KARL Marx, the German philosopher and political theorist who had a profound effect on 20th century politics, loved to punctuate his works with literary and historical allusions.
Gothic metaphors were in vogue in the mid-to-late 19th century when he was writing The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, and Marx was enamoured by the idea of capitalism as vampirism, sucking the lifeblood out of the workers.
Though Bram Stoker’s Dracula was not published until 1897, an undead creature feeding on the blood of the living had entered the popular imagination following the publication of James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney The Vampire, a weekly serial that ran from 1845 to 1847.
In an early work, Grundrisse, Marx described capital as ‘constantly sucking in living labour as its soul, vampire-like’, and as ‘sucking its living soul out of labour’.
In 1864’s Inaugural Address Of The International Working Men’s Association, Marx describes British industry as ‘vampire-like’, which ‘could but live by sucking blood, and children’s blood, too’.
His most famous use of the metaphor was in Das Kapital, where he claimed: ‘Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.’
Dr Ken Bristow, Glasgow. QUESTION What part of the country has the largest number of native Irish speakers? THE Gaeltacht areas of Co. Galway, including the Aran Islands and Galway city, with nearly half the population of all the Gaeltachtaí in Ireland, have the greatest numbers of native born speakers.
These Gaeltacht areas in Co. Galway have an Irish-speaking population of about 50,000. Around three quarters are native Irish speakers, but native Irish speakers are generally older people, so their numbers are in decline.
Irish is gaining in strength in urban areas, where an increasing number of younger people are learning Irish without being native born speakers.
The total population of the Gaeltachtaí is close to 100,000.
After Galway city and county, the next largest Gaeltacht is in west Donegal, with three main population areas, The Rosses, Gweedore and Cloughaneely. Gweedore is the largest Gaeltacht parish in Ireland. The population in the west Donegal Gaeltacht is about 25,000.
Next comes the Co. Mayo Gaeltacht, with a total population of around 10,000 in three distinct areas, Achill island, Erris and Toormakeady. Around two thirds of the population are Irish speakers.
The Co. Kerry Gaeltacht is made up of two areas, the western part of the Dingle peninsula and parts of the Iveragh peninsula and these two areas have around 7,000 Irish speakers.
The Co. Cork Gaeltacht is smaller, Muskerry and Cape Clear island, with around 3,000 Irish speakers between them. The West Waterford Gaeltacht, around Ring and Old Parish, is the smallest of all, with just over 1,000 Irish speakers.
Co. Meath’s Gaeltacht is quite different from all the other Gaeltachtaí, since it was started as a brand new Irish speaking area in 1935; today, it has a population of about 1,800.
Irish has made strong progress in parts of the North, especially in west Belfast, as well as in an area of south Co. Derry that has also seen much more interest in Irish in recent years.
The largest number of Irish speakers are to be found in the Dublin area, where around 15,000 people speak Irish daily. But conversely, Dublin is the area with the least number of native Irish speakers.
The most recent census in Ire- land, in 2016, showed a total population in the State of 4,761,865 and of these, one in four people claimed to have had some knowledge of Irish.
Overall, Irish was the main homework or community language for just 2% of the population. The number of native Irish speakers was estimated at between 40,000 and 80,000.
But overall, over the past six years or so, despite more younger people learning Irish, there’s been an alarming drop in the number of Irish speakers in the Gaeltacht areas, so that now, only just over a fifth of the residents in those areas now speak Irish on a daily basis.
As native Irish speakers get older and dwindle in number, the emphasis is going to be increasingly on people who weren’t born as native Irish speakers, but who have learned the language at Gaelscoil level.
Irish language schools at primary and secondary level retain their importance.
The hope is, despite recent declines, Irish will survive, even if it is one of the most critically endangered languages in Europe. Conn Ó Súilleabháin, Gaillimhe.