If all the cool kids are angry....

So, I guess the cool thing to do is be angry. Well, I've got a few things I hate. After the jump: Irish History, math, and some other sundry crap...


First, I can't stand books on Irish History. All of the ones I have either end in 1860 (at the end of the Great Hunger) or start in 1900 (at the beginning of the sustained nationalist movement). So, I don't get a good picture of the transition there. To me, it really seems relevant that 2 million people died during the Famine, as the Queen and Parliament did nothing. That seems both remarkable, and very relevant to the later troubles. Without starting around the time of Cromwell (maybe even earlier), it seems like you can't get a good picture of what exactly the English did to the Irish. Maybe I'm way off base, but the British oppression seems relevant to understanding Irish history, and the origins of Irish Republican movement.

The real problem with the modern Irish histories I've read is that they always come across as biased and revisionist to me. This makes sense, if you start at 1900, because the British were SERIOUS assholes pre-1900 (which also pisses me off). For example, no Catholic could vote (i.e. 80% of the population were disenfranchised), and a Catholic could not hold public office. The Property act forbade Catholic landowners from willing what little land they owned to their eldest son, but had to divide it between all sons (not daughters, which also pisses me off, but isn't too relevant to my point), unless one son became Anglican, in which case he got it all. Of course, a Catholic couldn't inherit Protestant land. This eventually meant that the Irish owned only about 5% of their own island by 1900.

Post-1900, the British were just regular assholes. They rescinded most of the Penal Laws (some before the Famine), and attempted some `welfare' projects. However, most of the books I read don't mention the wrongs of the British. They talk about the glories of late 19th century Ireland, with property ownership on the rise (now that the Irish could buy property), or the apparent evils of the Catholic church (which suddenly started spending money on churches now that it was legal). They pay only lip service to the fact that all of these `changes' in Irish culture came about because real Irish culture suddenly became permissible. These post-1900 histories are probably pretty good books, but I get so pissed off when I pick one up.

On that topic, I really hate the British in the colonial period. What assholes.

To be fair, I'm not a huge fan of the Catholic church either. I just really like the Irish. And dislike the British.

And, because no post would be complete without some sort of nerdness: I currently hate the Edwards-Doi model for the time-dependent behavior of the Gaussian chain. The little bastard keeps acting wonky. I know on physical grounds that <[R(t)-R(0)]^2>~6Dt, so why does it give me O[ t^(1/2) ] as t->0. What an asshole. For now. Once I figure out what I'm doing wrong, I won't be angry anymore.

As an aside, I really hate that the number `zero' (above) comes out looking like the letter `o' on this blog.

And Maryland rain pisses me off. I had to leave work half an hour early today (because I walk), because the rain looked so bad. I get home, and there's all this lightning, but no real rain. Just a boring drizzle. Bah.

Also, I hate Water Chestnuts.

And GChat jerks.

And the British. Again.

Ahhh. I feel better.