Although not as grand as the Museum Quarter of Hapsburg Vienna, Dublin has a proportionately rich concentration of museums, galleries, and Victorian heritage alongside Trinity College Dublin, our own mini Museum Quarter. The analogy is not entirely without basis as both concentrations arose in the context of large empires, and elements of both have taken […]
Category: Desmond O’Neill
Desmond O’Neill: Welcoming the new ageing in a global context
Expenditure in older populations is an investment, not a cost, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) With relatively little fanfare, the World Report on Ageing and Health—one of the most important WHO documents in recent years—was launched in New York to coincide with the UN International Day of Older Persons on 1 October. It represents a […]
Desmond O’Neill: Nordic insights into the art of ageing and dying well
I hate to miss the opening ceremonies of European geriatric medicine conferences, with the individual interplay between this most complex of medical specialties with the national characteristics of the host nation. Norway is notable for its ability to fuse simplicity and sophistication, typified by the striking new Opera House in Oslo where the sloping roof provides […]
Desmond O’Neill: 45 years of solitude
One of the rare pleasures of life is to encounter a movie without the encrustation of prior critical approval, hype, or derision. One of my stand-out cinematic experiences occurred at a very busy stage of my life when I was brought to The Matrix without any prior awareness of plot or critical reception. The sheer […]
Desmond O’Neill: Wheelbarrows, transport, and health
There is an old joke about a man who goes through a customs post with a wheelbarrow of sand every day. The increasingly frustrated customs officers make intensive searches of the contents, but never find any contraband. After many years, all are retired and meet by chance in a pub. When prevailed upon to reveal […]
Desmond O’Neill: Surprised by beauty
Like most doctors, my conference schedule is usually mapped out well in advance, anticipating the complex leave requirements of trainees and colleagues in an ever busier department of geriatric and stroke medicine. This year, while on a 12 month secondment to the rapidly evolving Irish programme in traffic medicine, the constraints on my timetabling are correspondingly […]
Desmond O’Neill: The success and opportunities arising from population ageing
There is an extra uplift from spring conferences which mirrors the freshness of the season. My own traverse started in Vienna with a reflection on how the hegemony of the English language impoverishes our access to German speaking culture, distancing us from a rich spirit of inquiry that suffuses Germanophone congresses. Philosophical and cultural topics […]
Des O’Neill: Flights of Imagination—Birdman and Still Alice
Birdman, one of the most riotously entertaining yet serious movies of the last decade, deservedly won a clutch of Oscars. Dealing with ageing, the fear of irrelevance, and the nature of art, it wore these themes lightly, bearing us aloft through the imaginative direction of Alejandro González Iñárritu, skilled camera work, humour, and a superb […]
Desmond O’Neill: Older drivers and medical fitness to drive
Does life really imitate art, or is it the other way round? Listening to an exhilarating live performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra of Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, the droll tone poem about a famous trickster by Richard Strauss, I was struck by the notion that this might be the first description of ADHD through music. […]
Desmond O’Neill: A gerontological fear of missing out
Faced with a gerontology conference with 30 parallel sessions over five days, the texting argot of teenagers comes in handy. To LOL and YOLO has been added FOMO: Fear of Missing Out! Effective FOMO management strategies involve several ingredients. The first is not change between sessions as invariably the timetable has changed in the other […]