Yay! Circus Vegas has made its web debut with an utterly gorgeous website. Designed by the amazingly talented Sabrina Dent, I am beyond happy with it. Her brilliant ideas and awesome attention to detail truly rocked.

As most of you know, my family own and run Circus Vegas, an Irish traveling circus. As I blogged pics and stories here, I noticed how many people Google the circus as it travels around the country and thought it would be great if the show had it's very own site.

CircusVegas.ie features practical info about the show's whereabouts, biogs of each of the performers, a photo gallery, and also a very lovely blog that will feature pictures and stories about the goings on at the circus (my favourite so far is the one about Jazz, our incredibly cute new foal).

Do check it out! I will be adding more pics and stories over the coming weeks, but if there is anything you've ever wanted to know about circus life do let me know and I will do my best to post about it.

Included in this list are:

• John McCain was held in a camp, The Simple Life was held in a camp.

• John McCain's wife, elder daughter, Paris and Britney all use the same shade of hair dye.

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It gave me giggles, anyway. Clicky here for the full list.

I use tons of different sources when I'm cooking stuff up. Unlike the very talented Debz or Donal, or even my own sister, I'm simply not one of those people who can toss a few things together, beat in an egg, some spinach and a spoonful of tabasco, et voila, there's a delicious meal. I like recipes, it soothes and relaxes me to follow simple instructions. But I also like customising them - usually to make them quicker and easier.

So I'm going to give something a try. Every week (fingers crossed) I'm going to follow a new recipe - be it from a book, from the amazing BBC Good Food, or from my mum or sister - and post about how it goes.

You might get some nice dinner ideas, I might get some nice pictures, Eoghan might get fed. Good times all around :)

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Here's a taster (gotta love a girl with a dodgy pun addiction...) of what's coming up:

And here are the cookbooks some of these experiments will be coming from:

PS. While I'm on the topic of foodie things, do check out Lidl Treats, a brilliant new blog about how to sort the yum from the not-so-yum at everyone's favourite discount supermarket.

A while back, Red Mum posted a cool set of red pics. Inspired, I threw up a collection of recent pink shots, and asked if any other photogs fancied doing something similar. Phil and Darren were up to it, and so the Colour Post Challenge was born.

Since then, we've have cool blues from Estelle, great yellow shots from Annie, very cool black themed pics from Grannymar, brown pics from Jefferson, orange pics from Baino, and some more blue from Red Mum.

Hopefully it will keep spiralling - there are loads of colours left! Maybe budding photog Ciara, or the very gifted Catriona or, now that he's back, McAWilliams might want to give it a shot?

We got an award! Thanks a million to the uber talented Phil over at Iced Coffee for endowing us with an Arte y Pico award for “creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community.”

It's the first time we've ever gotten one of these so we're really, really chuffed :), especially when it's coming from a photographer whose work is truly awesome (seriously, check it out).

Like Phil, I plan on putting it in my virtual awards cabinet (which I will keep in the virtual loo, along with my virtual picture of Bono and me on a yacht*. )

Going to have that mojito up there to celebrate (you can get it at Ely HQ in Grand Canal Dock). The deal is that we have to pass the award on to five blogs that we heart, so I'll get thinking on those and post next week.

Eoghan and I are off on a yum two-day papmer-y break, so no blogging until Monday; although I might send off the odd sneaky tweet when Eoghan's not looking.

Between the Carlsberg Comedy Carnival, the Chocolate Festival (can't BELIEVE I'm missing both of these) and the very cool and photogenic looking Kings of Concrete Festival there's plenty of fun to be had so have a great weekend :)

* Ok, I don't have a picture of Bono and me on a yacht. However, I have been in a loo that has! Classy, much?

Well it's me mainly since I'm learning to drive at the moment (More on that in the next post). But what's grinding my gears in the "getting my goat" sense of the phrase is the abuse of statistics.

What with print media being mostly cut-and-paste press releases, the least we could hope for is a careful analysis of the information the journalist is being spoonfed. Instead standards just seem low across the board. Here are two examples, please feel free to join in the grumpy fun and highlight any others you come across.

1. Men Kill Women Shocka!

• "Men 'to blame for most female road deaths'" the Irish Times informed us on Monday.
• "Male drivers to blame for 68pc of female road deaths" the Indo offered on Tuesday.

"Bold men", you say. But here's a headline the facts actually support.

• "Women to blame for most female road deaths"

Hang on! Isn't that just the IT headline with the first word changed? It is. It's also true. So is this...

• "Female passengers twice as likely to die with male driver".

The actual statistics (from a joint RSA/CAWT report) relate to female passenger deaths on the road between 1997 and 2006.

In short, 345 female passengers died in road collisions, 234 (68%) of those in vehicles driven by men.

Further numbers follow to highlight the extra risk of males aged 17-24. There are also some interesting figures on female passengers' opinion of their male drivers and what action they take/do not take as a result.

There are at least a couple of underlying assumptions*. One is that if you were the driver of a car in which someone died in a collision then you are to blame for their death**. A second is that "road death" means "car user death" although these are only 55 per cent of all road deaths for the period in question. That's fine as long as we're all aware what is being talked about.

2,226 car users died in collisions between 1997 and 2006, out of 4,015 road deaths. Male road deaths are three times as frequent as female ones. That implies 557 female road deaths in the period. The RSA/CAWT report tells us that 345 died as passengers. That means 212 died as drivers. That means 212 female drivers + 111 female passengers driven by other women = 323 total women died in cars driven by women. 323/557 = 58 per cent.

Hence, women were to blame for 58pc of female road deaths. Of course, men were to blame for most female car passenger deaths but that's not what the headlines said. Or what leading paragraphs in the articles said either, viz

New research shows that more than two-thirds of women who died [as passengers - EC] in car crashes from 1997-2006 were passengers in cars driven by men. - Irish Independent

Women are more likely to die in a car crash if they are a passenger in a car driven by a man [than if they were a passenger in a car driven by a women], new statistics have revealed. - Irish Times

Of course the main statistical problem with the report is that raw road death numbers don't really tell you how relatively dangerous different ways of doing the same thing are. No more than my telling you I had firefighters wear orange helmets for three months (during which there were 4 deaths) and yellow helmets the rest of the year (during which there were 9 deaths) tells you that orange helmets save lives. The death rate was 16 per year with orange and 12 per year with yellow... maybe yellow is safer.

The point is, if a risky activity is being tried numerous different ways over a period of time, it is important to know how long each way is tried for. In this case, how many hours do women spend driving, driving other women, being driven by men?

*In the following discussion, I used NRA/RSA statistics collected on this site to fill gaps in the data.

**Seems obvious for single car collisions but what about an innocent being hit/run off the road by some other vehicle. If there were some big difference between the sexes in the frequency or lethality of these accidents then this assumption might no be valid. I'd guess it broadly is though.

2. Growth in Rate of Economic Growth Fails to Grow... Shocker?

Another classy effort from the Times, "Economic growth contracts in first quarter" they assure us. The first sentence of the article reads, "Economic growth in the Republic shrank by 1.5 per cent between January and March this year..."

Growth is the rate at which something becomes bigger.

To contract is to become smaller.

So "growth contracts" means that a reduction in the rate at which something is getting bigger. So, if I weighed 69kg in 2006 and 74kg in 2007 and now weigh 77kg, then I grew by 3kg this year compared to 5kg growth last year. My growth has contracted. I have not, however. I have gotten larger. I am now a svelte 12 stone where once I was a lanky eleven. What's going on?

Well... Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Ireland, which is a measure of the size of the economy, was 1.5 per cent smaller at the end of the first quarter of 2008 than it was at the beginning. So "growth" was MINUS 1.5 per cent. It (growth) was -1.5 per cent. It did not SHRINK by 1.5 per cent, it, itself, IS minus 1.5 per cent. The economy became 8.7 per cent larger during the first quarter of 2007 so, if you don't mind a year-on-year comparison, economic growth has gone from 8.7 to -1.5. It has fallen by 10.2. Measured in percentage terms, 10.2/8.7 = 117 per cent, so economic growth contracted 117 per cent of itself year-on-year, as in we lost ALL growth (all = 100%) and then some. Alternatively, growth fell by 10.2 (per cent) of the economy's size, from 8.7 to -1.5.

Bottom Line: Economic growth didn't contract by 1.5 per cent, the economy did.

Apologies for the blogging hiatus, things have been a bit uppy downy and distracting. (And also, we got Mario Kart for the Wii. Oops.)

But now that my thumb has got some feeling back, I have returned.

How about a pic of a cute pup to make it better? You can't not forgive an adorable face like that! He's my aunt's and he's called Pepzi.

But just because we haven't been posting, don't think we haven't been keeping ourselves in the bloggy loop.

• Read all about Darragh getting naked (and cold) for art,
• Gingerpixel returns with some beautiful shots,
• Debz launches her yummy food site (I've already bought brownies and cookies)
• Mulley introduces us to a great new blog (yet again),
• Gav made me laugh out loud with his high-larious stint as a photocall model,
• Redmum sees red
• Darragh is making us all envious with his iTunes TV shows in Australia,
• Photog Natalie Norton has posted two great tutorials (the one about baby photography I hope to use very soon as both my sis and my friend Amanda could pop any day now!),
• And, finally, one of my favourite-est bands in the world have started a blog. Yipee.
• Oh, and if you're wondering why I didn't post all this in one big paragraph it's because, apparently, this is the best way to get your attention.

I know it's only a wee drop compared to the oceans of posts some of my fave Irish bloggers have posted, but I'm totally chuffed that we have made it this far and we're having lots of fun with this blog.

The photomeet a few weeks ago has really encouraged my photoblogging; meeting all those great photobloggers and seeing the awesome shots they produced from looking at the same thing I looked at was great inspiration. So thanks!

And on that note: If you're around Dublin this weekend (or willing to travel!) do come along to the next Photomeet. It's going to be at the Docklands Maritime Festival so should make for interesting photos. The plan is to meet at the Harbourmaster at 1pm. Join the Facebook group here.

Thanks again for reading.

US comedian Stephen Colbert roasts George Bush at the White House Correspondent's Dinner

US political talk shows can be a tad more extreme than we're used to. This is Bill O'Reilly being an ass on Fox News.

Remember that chase scene from the start of Casino Royale with all that cool free-running? This is "Parkour" pioneer David Belle in action demonstrating more of the mad skillz.

You must have seen this already, but enjoy again the most wide-ranging analysis of US foreign policy you'll hear all year.

A wildlife video with a difference. Go Buffaloes!

Meanie tabloid in stealing blogger's photos and words shocka.

Great post and tips on concert photography.

Jezebel link to two great photo pieces: One on retouching (everyone's talking about it following the New Yorker's piece on Photoshop supremo Dangin) and another featuring some tips from a paparazzo on how to avoid people like him.

A lifelong friendship in pictures, a really heartbreaking story.

Darren Greene is a brilliant photographer. I love this shot.

These guys are so cute it hurts.

The ever-awesome Natalie Norton has blogged a great piece on depth of field.

Via Anne. A polaroid a day until the day he died. Explanation here.

Stephen's post on young people's apathy has got me thinking and brought back some freshman memories from my first year at UCD.

I agree with him that being a bit too comfortable has a lot to do with why so many young people are so apathetic - a lot of students aren't as hard up or faced with the same difficult issues as they used to be, and this in turn leads to a general laziness and disinterest in politics of any kind - be it at student, local or national level.
But that doesn't explain all of it. I remember this one time (not at band camp), when I was in first year and had yet to get involved with the college paper or the students' union, some friends and I were sitting in the Arts block having some tea and bit of a moan about money. A lot of us came from single parent households, worked way too many hours a week in minimum wage jobs, some were on grants, and all of us were struggling.

Just then, mid-moan, a nice SU guy came up to us and handed us a leaflet about a grant-related protest that was taking place. We all agreed with the argument that the protest was trying to get across, and we all nodded enthusiastically as he explained how necessary it was to show our dissatisfaction with the way things were being done.

But come marching time, did any of us show up? Nope.
I still can't figure out why, and it still bugs me today.

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Pic above: Not, as I'm sure you've guessed, protesting students, but the closest thing I had: happy, St Paddy's Day revellers.

Wohoo, so I've been to my first photoblogger Photomeet! Redmum, who got the whole thing started, was just the loveliest, most welcoming person and introduced the whole big photo gang, which included two photogs whose work I've admired for ages, Catriona and Gingerpixel.

We met at the Toe Jam Carboot Sale at GB Shaws in Portobello, which was a visual feast of stalls, costumed people and fairy cakes. A great mix of v cool music, chocolate brownies, knick knacks and tasty lemonade. Like MacAWilliams, I took lots and lots of pics, but I think most of them were awful! Completely agree with him on the taking shots that look like holiday snaps thing; I was a bit like a kid in a candy store at the all the kitschy delights, and was just snapping away for the heck of it along the way.

However, I did use these shots as an opportunity to try out some cross-processing effects in photoshop, as they really fit with the retro atmosphere of the event (I tried my hand at replicating the C41-E6 effect; I can't for the life of me remember where I originally learned about it, but you can get a bit of info on it here).

Here are some of cool characters that were there:

The stalls were selling everything from random "bag o wires" to cute jewelry bits, Kanye West style sunglasses, and old records:

The pics are taking an age to load, so I'll update with some more later. If you're in a hurry though, they're sitting pretty in the Flick group pool (where you can also see everyone else's).

After the carboot sale, we made our way over to the food market at Meeting House Sq (I'll load those up later, but you can see some pics from the last time I was there here) and finished up with some drinks up on the Fitzsimons rooftop beer garden.

All in all, a great experience - thanks everyone for being so lovely!

It's a really cool idea, as there is just so much good blogging going on out there.

All you gots to do to nominate your fave post of the month is blog about it and link to here, or fill in this form.

He's currently accepting nominations for April posts so dig through whatever made you think/giggle last month and nominate away.

I trawl though lots of very cool stuff at the weekends and have a nice chunky photography bookmarks folder, filled with sites I go back to again and again as well as random interesting photo tid bits.

So, every now again - I'm hoping for it to be weekly, but let's not get ahead of ourselves - I'm going to hit the blog up with some nice photo links for you to click, and here's the first lot:

Photojojo direct you to a cool way to pimp your point and shoot

Midas touch: Really interesting piece on the king of touch-ups, Pascal Dangin (288 retouched pics in the March issue of Vogue alone!)

Vote for Gingerpixel in Canon's The Assigment

An oldie but a goodie: One of my fave photogs, Emily McCall, gives us a photo tour of her beautiful new house (seven photo-filled posts, all gorgeous)

Via Mulley: chalk-outlined shadows on Flickr

Lilli Forberg has some v cool shots of Mick Pyro and the rest of those crazy kids from Republic of Loose (how did she fit all of them in?!)

Here's a behind-the-scenes featurette about SATC style and its creator, the leg-end Patricia Field.

Sarah Jessica Parker: "She's really good at telling a story with clothes and she really knows these women in the city; because it's her city and she helped create it. We could not tell the story without her. Period."

Kristin Davis: "Pat definitely came with ideas in terms of updating us and what that would mean and how it would manifest. You know, sometimes I'll look at Cynthia in a scene and I'll think 'Wow, she never would have worn that in the show, it is different.' "

Two Tits and A Vote is a brilliant online campaign created by the brilliant blogger (and fab graphic designer) Sabrina Dent. It is advocating for better women's healthcare and buzzed through the radio and papers last week when it launched.

It's really gathering momentum and you can help in lots of easy ways: sign the online petition, print and post off the letter, or (my personal favourite) for just €2.50 Sabrina will send off a fantastically well-designed and cheeky postcard to Mary Harney.

If you want to really know why you should take part, take a look at this blog (read from the bottom up), a first hand account of what women are up against when our boobs get bumpy.

State will be hitting counters in early March and it looks good. I'd been hearing rumblings and rumours of a new Irish music mag ever since the speedy death of NME Ireland (they really should have given that a bit more time).

Nialler9 is in the driving seat so it will have a strong digital presence as well, with promises of "news, blogs, reviews and mp3 tasters". If the design of the site's masthead is anything to go by, this will be one very well-dressed mag. Check out their Hot Chip interview here.

I saw this on Una's blog.

Basically, new research shows that kids are scared of clowns:

"The study, reported in the Nursing Standard magazine, found all the 250 patients aged between 4 and 16 they quizzed disliked the use of clowns, with even the older ones finding them scary."

I'm totally biased of course, but I think it's the clown make-up (on a grown man) and not the clown that scares children. We had this brilliant guy a few years ago from Venezuela, Henry, who hardly wore any make-up and the kids loved him; little girls asked for his autograph and we ended up selling t-shirts with his face on them. I think the make-up - on grown clowns anyway - can look a bit garish and frightening, like a weird mask.

We currently have the least scary clown in our circus - my little cousin Stephen (pictured). Nicks his mum expensive red lippy to do his cheeks!