European Union agriculture ministers today approved the Commission’s proposal to set at 0% the obligatory et-aside rate for autumn 2007 and spring 2008 sowings.

I did not know this; set-aside was effectively suspended last year – and when Japan is still having problems getting basic foods for its citizens now, a little red light goes off in my head. I’ve been to Japan, they’re ahead of us on the tech curve, if they can’t weather supply problems, we could be in trouble maybe we should pay attention.

If you’d like to see Colin Farrell’s introduction (and Jon Stewart’s introduction of Colin Farrell), you can watch this version. Colin Farrell seems to have studied at the Wanderer’s school of hair care — long and uncombed — and managed to achieve a sort of pirate look for the Oscars. The media wasn’t sure what to do with that other than show it a lot without saying anything about it.

*A friend recommended the film to me because it was 1. highly musical and 2. Irish. The film seems to affect different people in different ways. One woman was upset at the plight of the female lead, that she was an under-appreciated woman of impressive talent condemned to a life of obscurity. Some people couldn’t get away from the fact that the two leads started dating after the filming was over, despite an impressive age difference. The Wanderer and I, however, spent the next few days homesick, as seeing familiar but distant streets and hearing familiar but fading accents reminded us acutely of how far away we were.

For anyone who’s heard me mention it only obliquely (or the very perceptive who have heard me not mention it but think about it while chatting idly about other things), I applied for a job as an analyst for CNA, a defence think tank. It would have put me in DC for two years, and probably Naples after that for as long as I could stand being away from Dublin.

And they send their analysts into the field to gather data. On aircraft carriers. I was faced with a dilemma: do I jump in with both feet, trying really hard to get this job, and risk sticking the Wanderer in DC, away from friends and family (and me, for 6-12 months at a stretch) for an extra two years? Or do I let it go by, since it’s not really what I’m looking for?

You might guess the opportunity to hang out on an aircraft carrier and sail the world wooed me sufficiently.

Alas, they are no longer interested in me, though they were kind enough to send me an e-mail telling me so. On the bright side, I can have all those braincycles back, I don’t have to go shopping for a suit, and I’ve had the chance to dust off my CV and go through an interview with no dire consequences of failure. Although I stood to gain quite a lot, I’ve lost nothing and gotten a bit of experience.

May I accept all my future failures with this much perspective.

In the interim, I have one super-important thing to link.

More later, but first, thanks to Dix and El Wanderino for putting us up!

The speed at which it has been updated is amazing; I was looking at Michael McDowell’s page and it had been updated within 24 hours of his result, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it had been updated within a fraction of that time. Similarly the results of the pages for each constituency have really detailed results on 1st preference votes and which count candidates got elected.

The fact that people go to the trouble of constructing and maintaining those pages without glory or reward or even credit is amazing. I often get the urge to do things like that but I rarely follow through. I’m glad that others are less fickle.