The top 10 for well-being:

1. Netherlands
2. Sweden
3. Denmark
4. Finland
5. Spain
6. Switzerland
7. Norway
8. Italy
9. Republic of Ireland
10. Belgium

Full story at BBC.

Members of the university’s GigSoc were in final rehearsals for a production “loosely adapted” from the Disney film Sister Act, which was to debut at the Black Box Theatre in Galway tomorrow after six months of preparatory work.

But yesterday afternoon, in a letter sent via a Dublin-based solicitor, Disney informed the students that the performance would breach its intellectual property rights and threatened legal proceedings if the play went ahead, according to GigSoc.

He said the play had attracted “fantastic support” from students of NUIG and neighbouring colleges, while there had been “record interest” from the general public. “We are dumbfounded by Disney’s stance towards what is a charitable, non-profit-making society, aimed at promoting safety and integration for the student LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community. We were just having fun.”

That’s pathetic. Copyright & IP gone horribly wrong. Disney; quick get into court to lobby for another extension of copyright. Think of the unholy damage this production would have done to the marketing potential for Sister Act. Or what possibly could have been the logic behind it? What can possibly be gained from it? Do they think the publicity gained by this will make more people go rent Sister Act? Is Disney just pure evil?

Can you imagine if a recording of this play leaked onto the internet… Sales of the original Sister Act plunging, Whoopi Goldberg unemployed, Disney unable to make anymore hit Nun related movies… the humanity. Irish Times story. Gig Soc homepage.

Senior clerics in the historic Croatian town of Dubrovnik are fed up with poorly prepared wedding couples and their scantily clad female guests taking over their churches and placing unreasonable demands on their priests.

Full story. ‘Scantily clad female guests’? In Church? Maybe it’s time to reconsider my religious leanings?

We covered this recently; the idea for evening rural transport; seemingly to ensure that drinkers can get to pubs without driving in rural areas. At the time, commenter Adam said:

I hope they passengers will need to pay a fare to make the service commercially viable? If so, it can be compared to the nightlink service in Dublin, if not the state is sanctioning, paying for and encouraging people to go out and drink heavily.

I feel sorry for any businessman or woman that has to close up their company, but market forces are market forces and the State should not interfere to prop businesses up where customers aren’t bothered enough to make their own way there.

Now Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Minister Éamon Ó Cuív has ‘agreed the parameters for a pilot scheme.’ Irish Examiner story.

Yesterday, life for 17-year-old Jenny Ring was sitting a mock exam at St Paul’s college in Greenhills, Dublin city, trying to concentrate on her exams.

But all the while, her thoughts were drifting to the Tate Modern gallery in London where next month one of her paintings will be unveiled at the international Dreams and Reality exhibition.

Irish Examiner story. Doesn’t seem to be anything up about the exhibition at the official tate website yet.

Accoring to a new survey, one in five young people in Cork are using cocaine.

A new survey has found that 20% of 18 to 35-year-olds use the drug, with many taking it on a daily or weekly basis.

That’s impossibly high. No doubt there is a huge culture of use, but 1 in 5? Really? Breakingnews.ie story.

New health labelling providing information about the salt, sugar and fat content of all soft drinks is to be introduced over the next few months.

Members of the Beverage Council of Ireland have agreed to provide “guideline daily amounts” on their products.

Full story. Nice of the Beverage Council of Ireland to agree to that, hovering up there in their super star destroyer.

Nice little doohickey for browsing Irish blog awards nominated websites; it randomly picks a blog to display; use the header up top to view another one. Clickety clack. (via.)

BALCONY TV REMOVED FROM YOUTUBE!!!
ALL VIDEOS REMOVED
Its true we are very sorry to say. We have just checked the BalconyTV YouTube account and it seems all our videos have been removed and our account has been disabled. The first we sensed of this was a couple of weeks ago when the Dirty 9s video was removed for apparent copyright reasons. The same happened with Super Jimenez and Barry McCabe the following week.
We are guessing that all videos will now be inactive on various groups MySpaces…we are very sorry about this.
For most acts we still have the raw footage of performances…but alas we have lost a few along the way due to technical mishaps.

Full post at the BalconyTV blog. Harsh. BalconyTV had some good stuff. BalconyTV.com. (via.) Previously.

You probably got the email rolling around the irish interdiddles about the Stan Out Petition. It has 869 signatures at present. Now checkout www.stephenstaunton.com where they are trying to figure out whether Stan should go or stay.

The North Strand Klezmer Band was founded in 2005 with the previously unexplored aim of bringing the traditional songs of the Hasidic and Ashkenazic Jewish culture to Dublin. A six piece featuring brass, accordion, guitar, double bass and percussion, the band stay close to original material with a tight hypnotic rhythm section and striking lead melodies veering into the dancehalls of ska.

And here they are playing up a storm in Burger King in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin in 2006:

Myspace. Fair few other videos at youtube.

Boards.ie Ltd, the message board website, has acquired the ‘Boards Group’ domains and websites from creator John Breslin.

Breslin, who is also a founder and director of Boards.ie, had operated the other sites in a sole capacity but the sale of the assets to Boards.ie will allow the company to create similar community websites in other countries.

More here on Silicon Republic Happy Birthday Boards.

I didn’t expect to type that. Ever. But the always right on the button Limerick Blogger is reporting this:

The Limerick Leader is reporting that Limerick City Council are not ruling out the possibility of checking the feasibility of hosting the worlds largest games right here in Irelands Sporting City as part of their strategy to attract millions of visitors to the city in the next 10 years.

Read the full post for a detailed look at the feasibilty of hosting the Olympics in Limerick.

Rock the Vote is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organisation that will officially launch in spring 2007 with the aim of mobilising young people to create positive social and political change in their lives and communities. The goal of Rock the Vote’s media campaigns and street and campus team activities will be to increase youth voter turnout in the 2007 Irish General Election.

Wow! Awesome! So, like, in my face! The intention is good though… Irish blogger Maman Poulet is on the ball:

Maman Poulet would usually have no problem in supporting anything that mobilises young people to stick their number 1 (and other votes) on the ballot paper. However Rockthevote.ie with lots of money and no sense it seems are launching in April 07 - that’s one month before the general election folks. Whilst young people are being turned off voting in their droves by crap debates and crapper posters, this crowd aim to break through all the noise in 43 constituencies complete with a Constituency and Community Director and get young people out to vote. Oh yes and when the electoral register is closed and supplemental registration is extremely difficult to do.

And she gets a comment from someone involved with the site on that post who says:

The starting date does confound common sense, and so you’re entirely right to ask why April 2nd? The answer is that the starting date is based on watertight international evidence. The experience from elsewhere is conclusive and the statistics speak for themselves: starting more than 4 weeks before the day of a national election is highly ineffective - 6 weeks is the absolute limit, with the last week being the most crucial. Like it or not that is the reality and that is the reason we are launching on April 2nd and not March 2nd or tomorrow.

Rockthevote.ie.

Public voting for the Irish Blog Awards 2007 is online here. TCAL.NET is nominated in the best blog and best group blog categories. A full list of all nominees across all categories is here. Voting form. Previously.

A lecturer from Trinity College Dublin is to receive an Academy Award for his role in developing visual effects software for the film industry.

Full story. Good work Dr. Anil Kokaram.

Twenty Major,(wikipedia) has moved his site to twentymajor.net. It looks pretty plain at the moment and has lost a bit of the character of the old site, but hopefully the bearded one will sort that out in between Guinness poos soon.