Easter was great. I went to my grandfather’s home in Los Angeles with my mom, dad, and brother. My girlfriend also joined us which was very fun. All sorts of family were in LA and we had a great time looking for hidden eggs and such. Shortly after, my cousin, Kelly, came to take a look at UCSB. I’ve found that it’s easy to try and sell this school as it is in the best location there is, the people are smart and decent, and the overall experience is generally awesome.

A few days after that, my aunt, uncle and I went to see Adyashanti speak in a satsang. That entire weekend was truly wonderful as a time for contemplation and stillness. I don’t really feel like blogging about it but if you see me feel free to ask about it, as I’d be happy to talk about it in person. If you don’t know who Adya is or just to get a feel for what it was about, take a look at the teachings he has online or the book “True Meditation“.

This past month, spring quarter started. I spent quite some time trying to figure out what classes I would take and found it a lot harder this quarter to work a schedule out. As it stands I’m taking “Cultural Anthropology”, “Global Culture and Ethics”, and “The Channel Islands” which are all pretty exciting, particularly the one about the Santa Barbara Channel. I’m also attending a class about Irish literature just for fun.

I’ve also watched a couple of movies and highly recommend “Bobby”. The film is very inspiring and has great characters (RFK is not really a character in the story).

Here at school, we recently had sand castle day. We built an awesome igloo. More details to follow.

I’m extremely busy right now as it’s finals week here at UCSB but of course Saint Patrick’s Day is a good time for a break and a bit of craic.

Recently in my Anthropology class, “Nationalism and Nation-States”, we took a look at some national anthems of European countries. One of the songs we looked at was Ireland’s anthem and so I’ve decided to include it here today for those not otherwise familiar with it. The following is sung by The Wolfe Tones.

Paraphrased from Wikipedia:
Amhrán na bhFiann (“a-rawn nuh veen”) is the national anthem of Ireland. It is usually sung in the Irish language. In 1907, it was written in English (“A Soldier’s Song”) by the Irish rebel Peadar Ó Cearnaígh and the tune was composed by Patrick Heeney. It was published in 1912 and later translated into Irish Gaelic by Bulmer Hobson. In 1926, the chorus from the Irish translation of the song was adopted as the national anthem of the Irish Free State.
Some recent news regarding anthems in Ireland was the dastardly sale of the original copy of the anthem -a state treasure- at private auction as well as the controversial decision to allow England to play God Save the Queen at Croke Park (the site of a 1920 massacre of 14 Irish players and spectators at a Dublin-Tipperary gaelic football match by the Black and Tans).

Anyway, hopefully you have a great Saint Patrick’s Day. Cheers and good health!

• News: News Off The Press
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When you look at this list, there really isn’t anything that the New-Press is solely providing besides Obituaries. And yes, I did just link to the News-Press.

Anyway, the journalists have called for supporters to cancel their subscriptions and a large boycott is in effect. The problem is, the News-Press is the only home-delivered daily paper based in Santa Barbara. There are a few freesheets and weekly papers but they don’t present much of an alternative individually. And that what’s about to change. I have started a website, newsoffthepress.com, that collects the most recent headlines and stories from local print publications, television and radio stations, and blogs and presents them in one place.

News Off The Press benefits both readers and publishers alike. Readers are provided with a one-stop resource to find the latest news; publishers can expect to see traffic driven to their sites. Our name comes from the goal of news found without McCaw’s influence (news that is off of the Press) as well as invoking the idea of news “hot off the press”. Living up to our name, freshly published stories are aggregated by software and presented on our homepage as soon as available.

The project is in beta but the site is up and running strong. If you want to learn more about how it works or how to best navigate the site, take a look at the about page. Comments can be sent to contact@newsoffthepress.com if you want. Alright, let’s banish the bias!

Also note that we were using the in-camera microphone on a prosumer camcorder so the audio is pretty bad. I ripped this from a DVD (.vob), converted to .avi, and converted to .m4v so all the transcoding has likely affected the quality (it’s really hard to see the dark scenes whereas on the DVD it’s not that bad). Another disclaimer, the acting of the school staff is horrible but, as Taylor says, “What can you do?” Anyway, I really do like the story and am proud of what we made. If you’re wondering about the name “Paramont”, we came up with that for our production company during a separate project as a spoof of Paramount Pictures and since the crew was the same, we kept the name. We definitely had a lot of fun making this film which was, of course, the main point.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet”

Yes, I made this! You can use it for free, under a Creative Commons license, if you credit LiamKeane.com

Every once in a while I do a search on Google for the name “Liam Keane”. This site is usually at the top but there are (as of 12/06) 705 results for the exact phrase “liam keane”. A lot of these results are not about me, but about other people who I share my name with. Interestingly, many of the results are about a man, three years older than me, from Limerick, Ireland who was acquitted in a controversial August 2001 trial after being accused of murder. After seeing numerous documents discussing my infamous namesake, I began to wonder how many other namesakes I might have and what they where known for.

So, using Google to perform an exact phrase search as well as other wildcard searches, I found a few additional references to those using this name. It appears there are at least 30 Liam Keanes and these are just the ones referenced on the internet; there are likely many more not online. Here are the results:

People named Liam Keane:

#	DOB	Description	City	Reg.	Country	Site	Src
1	?	solicitors, Liam Keane & Co.	Dunsaughlin	Meath	Ireland	yes	1
2	?	computer services, Direct IT	Cahir	Tipperary	Ireland	yes	1
3	?	acquitted after being accused of murder	Ballysimon	Limerick	Ireland	?	1
4	?	hurling selector – 1999, GAA club secretary – 2006	Newcastle West	Limerick	Ireland	?	12
5	?	on-farm inspector, Canadian Egg Marketing Agency	?	?	Canada	?	1
6	2006-01	child	Palm Springs	California	USA	?	1
7	?	rode a hovercraft for 45 minutes	?	Mayo	Ireland	?	1
8	?	?, has a wife - Maria	Quin	Clare	Ireland	?	1
9	?	Product Management and Services, Tecnomen Ireland	Shannon	Clare	Ireland	?	1
10	?	?, has a wife - Betty	Sallynoggin	Dublin	Ireland	?	1
11	?	Traveller Health, IAP Monitoring Committee, Scouting Ireland	Kilkenny	Kilkenny	Ireland	?	1, 2, 3
12	?	bicyclist sponsored by Kanturk Credit Union, cousin of author!	Kanturk	Cork	Ireland	?	1
13	1988	studying Medicine at the university of Aberdeen	Wormit	Fife	Scotland	yes	1, 2
14	?	real estate, Reuben Brothers SA	Geneva	Geneva	Switzerland	yes	1
15	1990 (~)	Taekwondo student (traditional, yellow)	Launceston	Tasmania	Australia	?	1
16	1990 (~)	cricket player	Cornwall	Auckland	New Zealand	?	1
17	1996 (~)	competed in the long jump (3.53 m)	?	Victoria	Australia	?	1
18	?	real estate agent	White Rock	BC	Canada	yes	1
19	1972	ran 10 miles in 1:15:49, holds US patent 6904994, Caterpillar	Apex	NC	USA	?	1, 1
20	?	Broadway Village Parish Councilor	Broadway	Worcestershire	England	?	1
21	?	dart player	New York	NY	USA	?	1
22	?	ran a 5k, has a son – Sean	Bellingham	WA	USA	?	1
23	?	Listowel Emmets (GAA) team captain (2006 Div. 1 Senior County League)	Listowel	Kerry	Ireland	?	1
24	?	"Father Liam Keane", St. Annes, Fairfield	Fairfield	Lancashire	England	?	1
25	2005~	Liam Leonard Keane, "descendant of High King Brian ‘Boru' (via YDNA)"	Wakefield?	MA	USA	?	1
26	?	sold a raffle ticket to raise funds for a basketball team	Medfield	MA	USA	?	1
27	?	cartoonist	?	West Midlands	England	?	1
28	?	hosts “Dublin’s best mix of country music”, Wed. 9pm - 103.8 FM Dublin	Dublin	Dublin	Ireland	?	1
29	1992~	soccer player, played in the 2006 University of Ulster Foyle Cup	Ballybofey?	Donegal	Ireland	?	1
30	?	Driver Testing and Licensing, Department of Transportation	Dublin?	Dublin	Ireland	?	1
31	?	GAA player – Seattle Gaels, GAA secretary	Seattle	WA	USA		1, 2
32	?	William J. Keane, president of Enviro Dynamics	Wash. DC	DC	USA	yes	1

View table as plain list

Others:

name: Kim Kaminski
from: Germany ?
desc: referred to as “Kim Liam Keane”, photographer
web: kim-kaminski.de [link]
[source]

name: Liam Keane
desc: a character in some Harry Potter fan-fiction, has a brother – Tiernan
[source]

2009 Update: I first compiled this list of references to the name “Liam Keane” in December 2006. As I wrote then, for the exact phrase “liam keane”, Google returned 705 results. Now a search for the exact phrase results in ‘about 15,400 results’ according to Google. (However, Google only returns the first 408 (or sometimes 514) results and the rest are ‘omitted’ for being very similar.) Among a few I scanned I saw a real estate agent, someone engaged to a Sarah Hides, a teacher in Coulsdon, England, a teacher in Clare, and a player on the Feale Rangers. Beyond a brief scan, I don’t have time to go through 15k results so who knows how many unique results there are. However, searching social networks there’s now 4 Liam Keanes on Twitter, 33 on MySpace, about 40 on Bebo, and 41 on Facebook. So there is somewhere between 41 and 110 Liam Keanes. All these plus likely many others without online references to them!

So, that’s the list. If you notice any mistakes or if you have a suggestion for an addition, feel free to contact me and I’ll update this post. If you are one of the Liam Keanes out there, I’d just like to say hi and thanks for stopping by. If you would like a link to your site just let me know. Also, comments are welcome below. Cheers namesakes!

I have however been having a great summer. After experiencing Chilla Vista, I was lucky enough to attend another music festival, KCBX’s Live Oak 2006. I’ve taken numerous trips to Los Angeles and have been able to hang out with family. We went and saw Who Killed the Electric Car which was incredibly frustrating (yet hopeful). My aunt and uncle shared a movie with us, called The Secret which provides a very interesting outlook on the power of thoughts. I spent a few days in Santa Barbara with friends, which was a blast.

Added Aug. 12
My friend Kevin was home for a week and we had a lot of fun. We went to A Scanner Darkly, an interesting commentary on drug abuse that uses Rotoscope animation, and to Talladega Nights, Will Ferrell’s awesome spoof of NASCAR. Kevin, his sister, and I also dressed up in outrageous clothes from the 70s and hung out on State Street which was pretty nifty. Kevin and I also drove up to a shooting range and shot his Colt .45, which was an interesting experience. Kevin’s uncle was a Navy SEAL and now Kevin is training to be a real American hero in the Air Force. I feel differently about the use of violence and I am unfamiliar with weapons, particularly handguns. It was fun though. Nothing like the smell of gunpowder and the loud crack of a gunshot to soothe your stomach. We also went to Magic Mountain and Hurricane Harbor. If there is one thing of those I have stated that I would recommend doing, it would be going to Magic Mountain to ride the newest ride, Tatsu. Of the rides at Magic Mountain, Goliath is the most thrilling roller coaster, X is the most disorienting ride and Tatsu is the most fun experience. Basically, “after the rider is in the seat’s safety harness but before the ride starts, the seat is rotated 90° from the upright to a face-down position. The face-down position is kept for the duration of the ride” and this feature allows the ride to simulate flying. It’s crazy because for eons, man has wondered what it must be like to be a bird, Peter Pan, or Superman. And suddenly, you can experience that!

My family went to the Mid-State Fair in Paso Robles and we had a great time. We attended the Charlie Daniels Band concert and they played The Devil Went Down to Georgia which was impressive (although I prefer Tenacious D’s version myself).

Kevin went back to the academy and another friend, Carlyle, returned to the valley. We’ve been hanging out and doing crazy stuff too. Like getting Oreo shakes at Carl’s Jr. for example. Or buying candy at Tom’s Gas. And other really cool stuff.

It may seem like everything’s been above peachy. And it has been. But at the same time, my family’s living situation is somewhat uncertain. The farmhouse we live in is over 100 years old, and while we find it suitable, the owners apparently have decided to destroy it (possibly to open up the property for development, but that’s speculation). So we have to move and don’t know where to go. My parents have been really nice by letting me just enjoy myself while they worry about our future and work hard to figure things out. Anyway, it is an unfortunate situation since we have been living here for twelve years but things could be worse. At least our house has not been bulldozed by Israeli forces or shelled by Hezbollah fighters. Some people are not as lucky. You have to remember to put things in perspective.

So yeah, life is good.