england!

portugal doesn't stand a chance with bobby moore, geoff hurst, and gordan banks.

world cup - quarter final game 2

italy vs ukraine.

got to go with italy for this one.

world cup - quarter final

germany vs argentina.

tough one for anyone from england to root for in this matchup.

could be the best game of the whole tournament. argentina look very strong, but i'm going for the underdog germany here, as i'd be a lot happier to see argentina lose than germany.

letter to the new york times - the united states and the world cup

from the new york times:

dear sirs,

so george vicsey writes:

"IT is hard to carry the flag for an entire continent, even in something as trivial as soccer.

really? have you ever even been to south america?

my mother has a great saying, george:

"it's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt".

this may come as a bit of a shock to you george, but other nations and continents do not trivialise football; perhaps that's why it is they that make it through to the second round...

your comment would not have been quite so glibly made if football was the only sport played in your country.

nutty

world cup - france beats italy for the best dive

a shot of thierry henry of france in yesterday's world cup match against spain.

world cup

come on ghana! england is rooting for you!

game 2 should be a banger. spain vs france.

i'm giving this to spain (sorry rehda, jean-marc...)

espn sucks

here's espn's coverage of italian home fans in the game against australia.

what's up with the line "everyone's rooting for australia"? how come they only show fans in sydney but not rome?

the baboon, marcelo balboa, has to be one of the most annoying commentators ever.
how come this baboon with a greasy mop, and an IQ of 7, gets to call world cup matches?

"he's gotta do...
"they have to do a much better job...
"i didn't see...
"he has to try harder...
"this is better...
"you're a man up. take advantage...

hey marcelo, SHUT UP!

pick a card - yellow, for instance...

this has to be the worst display of a referee's inability to control an international game of football i have ever seen.

you think his shoulder's sore today?

world cup - second round

italy vs australia.

tough, very physical match. i'm giving it to italy on skill. australia will pick up too many of cards.

switzerland vs ukraine.

ukraine. easily.

world cup

got to root for holland, here. they drew against argentina.

one way to stop

honestly officer, the tree just jumped out at me. it was a complete accident.

world cup

adidas world cup ball: $130

bar pilar screen: crap.

watching england beat ecuador at home with your mates - priceless

the sudden disappearance of the minister at half time was duly noted with disdain...

wikipedia - check the numbers

found this entry for the Sun on wikipedia:

The Sun is the star at the center of our solar system. The Earth and other matter (including other planets, asteroids, meteoroids, comets and dust) orbit the Sun, which by itself accounts for more than 99% of the solar system's mass. Energy from the Sun—in the form of sunlight, supports almost all life on Earth via photosynthesis, and, via heating from insolation—drives the Earth's climate and weather. In a single second, the sun fuses 600,000 tons of hydrogen into 596,000 tons of helium. The remainder is released as energy.

the numbers are wrong. here's nutty's edited and submitted entry to wikipedia:

...in a single second, the sun fuses 600,000,000 tons of hydrogen into 596,000,000 tons of helium. The remainder is released as energy; that's 4 million metric tons a second! and it's been doing this for approximately 4.5 billion years - approximately halfway through the Sun's life cycle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun

editing their page was really easy. the only problem i have is that anyone can write anything, so if you need to know, get hold of a real reference.

the world cup - at last.

game 1
germany vs sweden
i think everyone in england is wishing for a swedish victory, here, but sadly, i think the germans will dominate.

game 2
argentina vs mexico
come on mexico! but i think the 'argies' look too strong.

world cup

oops, got my games mixed up.

tunisia vs ukraine. i'm rooting for the underdogs tunisia and picking them.

saudia arabia vs spain. no way can the spanish lose

world cup - game......

switzerland vs south korea

the yodelers have no chance .

togo vs france

france will win, but i'm rooting for the africans

world cup

japan vs brazil

ouch!

croatia vs australia

this could actually be a very close game. i'm giving it to croatia just based on yellow cards alone.

and no, judy foudy, this is the star of the world cup, not landon donovan (ridiculous) as you stated post game. well done ghana!

a true show of support

hey espn, that's a great shot of time square in new york with 37 people watching the usa game...

what colour is FIFA?

hey FIFA, just wondering why their wasn't a single black kid taking to the field with the players for the game between ghana vs usa.

no black kids in germany?...

bush wants guantanamo closed

apparently, he's had enough of publicity stunts by inmates.

"the State Department has now repudiated the comments of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Colleen Graffy, whose job in the department, ironically, is to find ways to improve the image of the US in the Arab world.

Instead her statement that the three detainees took their own lives as part of a PR tactic to further the cause of jihad, sparked outrage."

good job michael brown beat her to the job at FEMA...

world cup 06/22/06

czech republic vs italy - this is the game to watch, despite usa's game.

i think the czechs are in the mail. italy need an outstanding game to beat them . i'm rooting for italy, but have to go with czech republic given their strength in this tournament.

ghana vs usa

i'm rooting for ghana, but i expect the americans to put on a tough show. i'm picking ghana

roethlisberger and cheney to recieve awards from mensa

so big ben doesn't have a motorcycle license.

there's stupid

there's $#%@!^#(> stupid,

and there's really $#%@!^(> stupid

"i just get out there and relax"......
what, like riding a 190 mph motorcycle without a license, or helmet, is relaxing?!! tell me; how relaxed did you feel while they were scraping you off the road?

hey, it's always relaxing to know that one has no insurance coverage when you ride or drive without a license. yes, that means if an accident is youir fault and another party sues for damages, your insurance company doesn't want to know. that might be o.k. for highly paid sport stars, but not for most individuals without a gargantuan salary.

sorry ben, but though you may not want to ride with a helmet, or a license, but there's a simple reason people do. it's called thinking. you're lucky it was a slow speed incident. had you been travelling at 30mph, your injuries might have ended your football career, or worse.

i think have to put you in the third category of stupid, ben.

let's be honest, ben; you've become the dick cheney of the biking world.

the longest day of the year

the reason we have seasons is beacause the earth's rotation axis is tilted 23.5 degrees.

today, the sun does not set north of the arctic circle, and it does not rise south of the antarctic circle.

in six months time, when the earth is exactly a further halfway round its orbit of the sun, the situation is reversed.

detroit wins; americans lose - when lobbying hurts the environment and consumers

this photo is of a toyota prius we rented from zip car. on a 500 mile journey, including the mountains of west virginia, this car averaged 46 mpg!

Excerpts from Bush's speech today:

"On energy:

We got to diversify away from oil. And the best way to do it is through new technologies. And we agreed we would share technologies between our nations and between the E.U. and the United States. The E.U. needs to get diversified, as well.

And so this is going to be a very interesting period for us as new technologies develop. And we're willing to share those technologies."

That's great talk, but perhaps american car buyers ought to know this…from the new york times:

EVER since the first Prius rolled off the assembly line almost a decade ago at the Takaoka plant not far from Toyota City, hybrid cars have basically been a luxury item. If you owned one, you could feel good about using less gasoline and being a trendsetter, but you couldn't expect the fuel savings to make up for the thousands of extra dollars that the hybrid cost. There was no financial reward for environmental virtue.

But in the last few months, something important has changed. Gas prices have settled in at close to $3 a gallon, which is enough to make a few hybrids almost worth it, if not quite. And since the start of the year, the federal government has been giving generous tax credits to hybrid buyers, pushing the Prius and a couple of other hybrids into bargain territory.

Between the money saved on gas and the tax credit, the Honda Civic Hybrid will cost slightly less over a five-year span than the regular Civic, according to Consumer Reports. The same is true of the sharp-looking new Toyota Camry Hybrid, relative to a regular Camry. If you're deciding between a Prius and a regular Camry, the Prius, which gets a $3,150 credit, will start saving you money in just a few years.

The point of a tax policy like this — the point of a lot of tax policy, in fact — is to give people an incentive to change their behavior, and persuading Americans to use less oil certainly sounds like one of Washington's priorities these days.

Yet, astoundingly, many of the tax credits are about to be taken away. So if you are thinking of buying a Prius or Camry Hybrid, do it soon, as in this month or maybe next. And if you are wondering whether policy makers mean it when they say they're serious about changing our energy policy, join the crowd.

THE first thing to understand about the hybrid tax credit is that it was never really intended to reduce oil imports from the Middle East or slow the effects of global warming. The credit was created to prop up Detroit while giving conservation a nod.

Last summer, when Congress was completing an energy bill, Toyota's and Honda's hybrids were already winning people over in the marketplace, and it was clear that any tax credit would go overwhelmingly to buyers of Japanese cars. So members of Congress, with help from Detroit's lobbyists, came up with an ingenious solution. They created a cap, a maximum number of hybrids that any single manufacturer could sell — 60,000 — before a clock started ticking, causing the credits for that carmaker to begin disappearing two quarters later.

The idea, Mark Kemmer, a G.M. lobbyist, told Automotive News, was to keep any one company from getting "a runaway benefit."

Toyota hit the 60,000 mark last month, less than five months after the Jan. 1 start of the program, and the credits for its hybrid buyers will be cut in half on Oct. 1. (Because there are waiting lists for the Prius and Camry Hybrid, people who buy one in August or September may get their car after Oct. 1.) On April 1, 2007, the credits will be cut in half again. On Oct. 1, 2007, they will vanish. Honda, for its part, will probably hit the cap next year.

And the Big Three? Combined, they have sold fewer than 15,000 eligible vehicles so far, all by Ford, largely because their hybrids have not impressed buyers. Rather than building highly efficient hybrids like the Prius, Detroit has tinkered with gas guzzlers like the Chevrolet Silverado, adding hybrid technology to them so that they get slightly better mileage.

Come next year, then, the government will pay you to buy a Silverado hybrid (which gets about 16 miles per gallon) or a Ford Escape Hybrid (which gets about 26, according to Consumer Reports), but not a Prius (44) or a non-hybrid Corolla (29).

There is already a gas-guzzler tax written into the law that raises the price of inefficient cars, but not of sport utility vehicles or light trucks, notes Therese Langer of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Making the tax universal would have a far bigger effect than a narrow policy aimed at hybrids, and it could be balanced by tax credits for efficient vehicles of any kind. Google has a nice template: it gives $5,000 to employees who buy a car that gets at least 45 m.p.g. in the government's ratings, a threshold that only the Prius and two Honda hybrids now meet.

I know this might sound like one more nail in Detroit's coffin, but it doesn't have to be one. The Big Three have the engineering expertise to build vehicles that can go a long way on a gallon of gas. If Washington would only nudge people to buy cars like that, Detroit would start making them.

In the mean time, better try and get a Prius now if you want a tax credit. Crazy.

world cup - put pork chop in his place

holland vs pork chops.

please, please, please let holland beat argentina. victor is correct in his assessment of diego.

ivory coast vs serbia meltdown

the only way that the ivory coast can lose is they score more own goals.

e-mail to the disney channel about the world cup

given the utterly appalling coverage of the world cup from abc and espn (read disney), i thought i'd send the disney channel this e-mail:

"what the hell are you doing? your world cup coverage sucks!

first off, why do you insist on putting a woman in the studio? she hasnt even played a game with men at competition level. i don't care if she's won a women's world cup; i don't remember seeing any women allowed to play in this tournament.

drop the prepared script and the never-ending stats that mean absolutely nothing. theres only one thing that matters in a game of football: the number of goals you score compared with your opponent. normal commentary for this sport usually involves some sort of play-by play approach.

kill the post play commentary such as "there was no way he was going to....." i can do that having a few beers with my mates, including the minister of cheese no less.

finally, no one cares about whether the usa team is 0-0-65 when landon donovan drinks evian as opposed to tap water. stop the drivel, describe the dribble, and call a decent game of footie.

try and stop talking about the upcoming usa games at least 20 times during every match.

i can't wait for the pathetic vast outpouring of cheddar (unlike biesch, of course) for thursdays game against ghana.

quite frankly, i'm outraged!"

nutty

world cup

portugal vs mexico. i wonder what the odds are on portugal winning this game.

mexico.

also: iran vs angola. this game is probably the ugliest political match up in the world cup. i'm picking iran.

sweden vs england

time for a win, lads.

world cup - time to choose

games at the same time today.

germany vs ecuador (which i'll be watching). have to go with germany. can't see how they can lose.

costa rica vs poland (which i won't) i'm rooting and picking costa rica, even though they are underdogs.

tunisia vs spain

going by the fact that no teams can put two good back-to-back games together, it should be tunisia.

spain, easily.

world cup - game 29

saudia arabia vs ukraine.

saudia arabia is an underdog for this match and the ukraine lost badly to spain.

football & soccer - the difference is in the ball

hey FIFA! and all those looking at the world cup on big screen tv's: this is what a real football looks like.

it's got proper seams, looks like a football, every player in the world knows the weight of the ball and how it responds. it also won't keep sailing over the crossbar and reach 3/4 of the way into the opponents half when kicked by a goalkeeper.

this of course is very different to the ugly offering presented to the 2006 world cup. you change the ball just so adidas can sell it? FIFA are selling out to make football a commodity. the new ball is faster and less easy to control; just to make it more visually appealing for television. how many passes, crosses, and shots on goal seem to completely miss their mark....doesn't anyone notice this?

anyone looking at the games can tell that this ball is completely inferior to the one above. the future of world cup football looks very american. sadly.

typicall bullshit, this is being touted as the most accurate football made. it's also selling for $130.00... from adidas.com

world cup - game 28...

togo vs switzerland.

i'm picking and rooting for togo.

yodelers be damned!

referee love - wait a minute! is that biesch?

from bbc sport:

harry kewell could miss australia's crucial group f game against croatia after being charged by fifa for insulting a referee....it was reported in the referee's report that he insulted the referee several times.

what do you reckon he was saying? was it:

"you make the strawberry daiquiris, and me and the mates will provide the tofu fondue. it'll be fun. and cheesy!"

what i want to know is; what is the minister doing playing for australia?

rossi wins

nice power slide on the back tyre at the end of the race before hoisting the front.

world cup

france vs south korea.

france

world cup

brazil vs australia

no contest. this won't be a usa vs italy type game. forget australia's win over japan. this is brazil.

brazil. easily.

world cup - japan vs croatia

judging by the refereeing and standard of play of yesterday's debacle, there will be 8 players left on the field, 4 own goals, 57 dives, 16 yellow cards, and some truly terrible commentating (i think there ought to be a commentators world cup, and we get to vote like american idol).

the ball will also be lighter with different seams. oh i'm sorry; they've already done that.

i'm picking japan, purely because of the shame factor if they lose again.

rossi faces some stiff competition in sunday's motogp race

nutty's BOINC Projects

my world rankings are as follows:

seti@home = 79,462 out of 465,921

einstein@home = 20,563 out of 124,928

climateprediction.net = 15,029 out of 93,015

amongst all those participating in boinc projects, my world ranking is 43,386 out of 720,018

usa vs italy

espn's commentary of the world cup matches sucks.

first off, no disrespect, but what the hell is a woman doing in the studio commentating on the performences of the men's game? i doubt you'll find that in any other country that is playing in this year's tournament. it's got nothing to do with equality, but everything to do with world cup football. this of course works both ways.

the guy running up and down the field, calling offsides and throw-ins is a linesman, not a 'referee's assistant.'

when a ball is kicked onto another player and it comes off that player, it is called a deflection, not a 'rebound'; this isn't basketball.

how come i can count an entire play, with the ball being touched by some 10 players, before one of the commentators actually informs us of who has the ball, instead of reading off their very carefully prepared scripts. 'it's called play by play', or 'running commentary'

how come whaen iran take to the field, they always mention the political issues, but when angola play, there's nothing about cholera and the mind-numbing appalling living conditions experienced by many citizens, living on piles of rotting rubbish and sewage of an oil-rich nation?

i heard whilst watching the portugal game that if you were a new soccer fan, you should "watch the czech republic vs ghana game, because it has huge implications on the usa team".

how pathetic! how about"you should try and watch as many of the games being played as possible"? i guess if it doesn't directly involve america, there's no 'need' to watch the other games.

the world cup. every four years americans suddenly seem to get very enthusiastic about football...or have no idea about the game whatsoever.

italy :)

world cup - a huge game for the usa

czech republic vs ghana

have to go with the czech's here. they look very strong.

i wonder what percentage of americans watching the game against italy will watch this critical game that can affect the usa's fate. i reckon less than half.

portugal vs iran

whatever happened to mexico yesterday?

i'm picking portugal for this one.

world cup - angolan shame

mexico vs angola

anyone rooting for angola here ought perhaps to take a look at the new york times front page.

holland vs ivory coast

if holland lose this match, they had better not team up with serbia for the next tournament...what an ugly game.

world cup - game 21

argentina vs serbia & montenegro.

impossible for any englishman to ever root for argentina, but they will advance easily.

how sweet would a serbia victory be against those utterly despicable, cheese-eating argies.

world cup - game er...

sweden vs. paraguay

got to root for sweden here.

this country deserves more recognition than volvo, saab, and abba, although check this old saab out.

england!

as much as i like trinidad & tobago...

check this out.

go to

http://www.bbc.co.uk/isleofman/tt/index.shtml

then scroll down to

* take an on-board lap of the tt circuit

* get closer to the action with an on-board view

it's a lap on a motorcycle of the isle of man tt races. trust me, there is absolutely no other reason to go to the isle of man other than for this race or a special event.