free speech

The most important thing that stuck with me from my study of linguistics is that words have a price. We have free speech; you have the option to say whatever you like. But whatever you do say has its consequences. You pay that price by…

All sound is amplified in Galway City Library. As if the quiet italicises every small noise: The growl of my stomach, someone’s soft footfalls, the rustle of pages and scratch of pens. Outside the world turns. Its freeways are jammed, its…

The world moves fast. If you don’t stop and read the papers, you might just miss a few things. So with this in mind, let’s take you through a few of those global stories that you may have missed over the last week. Facebook and disturbing…

Remember when people strived to be cool? People used to go out of their way to manufacture an air of coolness about themselves. There used to be a universal understanding that if you remained calm and kept your ego-laden-opinion to…

Approaching the consideration of offensive utterances as a matter of rights leaves us with major problems. An editorial in Saturday's edition of The Irish Times exposes them. In the week Paris marked the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo…

Lots of stuff happened this week. That stuff includes Teresa Mannion becoming the Queen of Ireland, Donald Trump being awful and trending for about seven days straight, and everyone in the world who vaguely knows what a podcast is being…

This week, the Toy Show was on the telly, and Twitter talked about it lots. Like, a lot. Like, it was the second highest trending topic in the world, or something. But despite all the Christmas induced excitement, overt slagging of young…

A few days ago, when speaking on CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ former Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin stated that if people wanted to live in America, they had to “speak American.” Even though she was quick to correct…