Contrasting ways of accepting the past were seen this week when two mass murderers, suffered very different fates.

Students of European political history might be familiar with the infamous l’affaire Dreyfus, otherwise known as the Dreyfus affair.

If you want to know what is wrong with our health service, don’t ask Simon Harris or the HSE. 

Bob Geldof once remarked that he was glad he had not been a fresh-faced rock idol in his youth. “I’m fairly lucky, in that I’ve always looked like shite,” he said. “If you were a pretty-boy pop singer, it would wreck you, growing older.”

IF the misogyny, the bigotry, the homophobia, the racism, the bullying, the hatred, the dangerous ignorance, the xenophobic nationalism and irrational hostility that make up far too much of today’s online commentary were expressed in the columns of this or any other newspaper lawyers would demand and get the kind of damages that would put the survival of any traditional media platform in jeopardy.

IT is essential that cabinet members are credible when they speak in the Dáil but the level of dishonesty and scandal uncovered in An Garda Síochana is so startling that resolving those issues must almost take precedence over any other issue in that sphere. 

DDT — dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane — is a perfect example of what was initially considered a chemical solution to age-old problems. 

Over recent days, questions about how citizens might use technology to try to protect communities or individuals from criminals — violent thieves or suspected paedophiles — have been pushed to the fore of public discourse.

At a moment when the liberal values that have done so much to advance Western societies over the last 75 years are threatened on so many fronts the difficulties facing chancellor Angela Merkel have implications far beyond German or European borders.

In a world that is childishly enraptured by Christmas even before November has played out it may be hard to imagine, much less accept, the existence of evil.