Is there a place for Religion in modern society

Is there a place for Religion in modern society? This is a very controversial topic that it is very debatable. In recent years the number of mass goers has decreased dramatically, however in the recessionary times we are living in at present, the numbers attending mass has increased substantially. So this prompts another question, do we only use religion when we are in need of spiritual help or guidance and forget about it the rest of the time? This is also evident around Christmas time when churches are full to capacity, but every other Sunday in the year people do not attend mass. Years ago, Religion played a much bigger role in the life of Irish people, many nuns and priests were teachers and the religious order had a certain influence on the running of the state. The religious order built and ran schools all over Ireland and therefore had a huge influence on everyone.

"By the year 2000 only 45% of Americans went regularly to church, while two centuries earlier the entire population systemically visited the house of God. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the whole population of Europe went to church but by the early twenty-first century less than 10% did." http://www.buzzle.com/articles/religion-dead-before-end-century.html

I think that the clerical church abuse that has been brought to the eye of the public may have caused church numbers to dwindle in recent times and may have caused people to second guess their beliefs but I don't think this will have a lasting effect. I do believe that religion has a place in modern society however. People may believe in God or many gods but I believe that it is a very comforting thought to have religion as part of your life. It is obvious that religion does not have as big of importance today as opposed to previous decades but I don't believe religion will ever fade away. I think that the lifestyle of having a religion keeps faith in people. I think that by leading a religious lifestyle, be it Catholicism or any other religions, gives people aspirations as to the person they wish to become and where they want to go in life. I believe religion brings people up to be respectful and instills in people the idea of family and friends and therefore creates a bond between communities and this in my eyes will always have a place in modern society.

Social Networks/Media

Social media is the way in which people interact through different media forms, including virtual communities, brand communities, weblog communities and other web communities.

• Virtual communities are groups of people that primarily interact via e-mail, internet social network and instant messaging etc. rather than face to face. Virtual communication has become an additional medium whereby people communicate with people whom they usually know in real life
  
• "A brand community is a specialised, non-geographically bound community based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand". Muniz and O'Guinn (2001, pg.412). An example of a brand community would be Harley Davidson and the Harley owners group
  
• There are 3 different forms of Blogs and they include, Personal, Employee, and Corporate. Blog communities allow individuals to have their own personal voice heard and offer refreshing, unfiltered authentic voice. Blogs also offer communal affiliation and passionate self-expression. One risk to blogs is that "time spent in collaberative environments can appear largely social and not "real work" or "real study". " 2009, Colin Cooney, Dept of Business Studies, DkIT.

Although social networking is possible in person,especially in college, it is more popular online. People from all over the world gather on these networks and share their information/experiences together, e.g. sports, literature or just to strike up a friendships. Social networks are also meeting places for businesses. Social networks exist on the internet and vary from chat rooms to websites. One of the most commonly known social networks include Facebook which has approimately 300 million members worldwide showing the popularity of the network. More and more people are getting involved and signing onto social networks and looks like it is here to stay.

National Assets Management Agency, aka NAMA

The National Asset Management Agency, aka Nama, is basically a debt collection agency. It is one of these things that confuses a lot of people and people don't know whether to back it or not. Nama is known as a bad bank that will take on all the debts from the banks and cleanse the five institution, AIB, Bank of Ireland, Anglo Irish Bank, EBS Building Society and Irish Nationwide. During the 'boom' years, Irish people/companies were borrowing money they couldn't afford and the Irish banks were throwing the money at them. Now we are living in recessionary times and the Irish banks are up to their eyes in debt that people cannot pay. The banks never thought of the consequences. Nama will take over the bad debt portfolio's of the banks and in turn hopefully stabilise the financial system. When and if this occurs, the banks will return to 'normal' life and start lending once again. One of the outlooks is that if Nama does not materialise then the banks will be managing debts for years to come as opposed to concentrating on lending to the 'good' customers and Ireland will never pull out of the recession. The cost of these bad debts to Nama don't run in the millions, but have come in at a figure of €90 billion. One of the conspiracies of Nama is that the government will deliberately pay too much for the toxic loans. The banks will then go on relativley healthy dumping the bad debts on the taxpayer.

The government is assuming that the property portfolios have fallen 47% and are estimating that the loans amount to €47 billion give or take, but are paying €7 billion extra. They are paying the extra €7 billion assuming the prices will go up again. They describe this as 'allowing for the long term economic value' of the assets.

Will Nama work or will it fail, only time will tell.

Jedward-mania

John and Edward Grimes have risen to fame, so to speak, on the X-factor show. The 18 year old twins from Ireland are without a doubt causing a hype and controversy across Britain and Ireland, however, one question needs answering, do they deserve all the criticism??

What makes Jedward different to any other young aspiring teenagers to become the next pop stars, they have ambition and confidence, but why are we knocking them. If the twins fail to win the competition and have to return to 'normal' life, how will we feel about them then.? Of late, the public, both in Ireland and Britain have slated the twins for their singing ability but one cannot shy away from the fact that they are not still in the running because everyone dislikes them. People are voting for them and voting in the thousands. In recessionary times, one would wonder why the Irish papers and the Irish people are not delighted that the twins are making such a mark on the British show, but as usual, the Irish always put the Irish down.

In my opinion, it is an absolute disgrace that we, the Irish, cannot be happy for John and Edward and the mark they are making in the world of music and entertainment. Whether the twins win the competition or create a career for themselves in television presenting, we should be happy for the two lads who went after their dreams and support them on the road to their future. Personally, I feel that people are nothing but jealous of the boys from Dublin. While people are going through a tough time at present due to the recession, Jedward are making a future for themselves and people are in my eyes are envious of Jedwards success. Another issue I have are with the papers who are planting these biased stories into the minds of the public. They do not know the lads personally and therefore I don't think they have the right to make personal remarks toward the twins.

For Jedwards sake, I would love to see the Irish stand up for their own, give the support to Jedward that they deserve and weclome them back to Ireland when they return.

SEO - Search Engine Optimisation

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of designing and updating a website such that it is likely to show up in organic listings for user queries. It is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "organic" or "algorithmic" search results. Generally, the higher a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will get. SEO is very specific marketing, meaning it is how to appear at the top of the search results page. SEO basics are identifying target keyphrases, including the keyphrases in the page, and getting links to the site. If the basics are followed then the website should appear higher in the search results and therefore provide the people searching with the relevant information. Search engines define their results though two processes, indexation and ranking. Google uses bots, like virtual spiders, to find websites for their search results. You need to submit a page, unless they are linked to other indexed pages because they are then found automatically. Bots look at the different aspects of a page to analyse it. For every page that is indexed, it is then ranked. The higher the ranking of the page, the higher it appears on the results page. I will now discuss some of the Do's and the Don'ts...
Do's
Content Tips:

• Google ignores Meta keyword tags
• Focus on one or two keyphrases per page
• ...but add as many pages as possible
• Regularly check your stats for popular phrases
• Make it text rich ( avoid multimedia)

Don'ts
Avoid these spam techniques:

• Hidden or invisible text
• keyword stuffing ( in Alt tags, below footer, etc.)
• Bounce pages or other cloaking techniques
• Page-jacking (plagiarised content)
• Link farms and link spam
  

Google have a great ranking system and give the best results in my opinion, and is far superior than any other search engine ranking systems. This is the reason why I rank Google the best search engine.