here's to murphy...and whoever took him on holiday

click on:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7556182.stm

brilliant!

underworld at baltimore

smile, please :)

it's not politics, it's all about the sport...

china would like everyone to believe that as the world watches the bejing games that it is a modern, united, and happy country.

in reality bejing is a police state where every single person entering the city of 16 million is individually checked, whether they arrive by land, rail, or air.

the IOC has taken china at its word, but in reality the olympic games have made china's human rights position worse, with activists arrested and detained, police monitoring outlying areas where reporters might venture, and the situation in tibet prevented from being broadcast to the outside world.

the world's press arrived in bejing to find internet sites blocked, apparently with the IOC's knowledge and approval.

as for the air pollution, nothing to worry about according to china and the IOC.
that's a different perspective than everyone else's, including the american mountain biker that took part in an international competition last year near bejing. he reported that out of 46 contestants, only 8 managed to finish the course. he along with the world champion failed to finish what he described as a "fairly easy course".

and for anyone wishing to protest at the olympics:

Liu Shaowu, director of security for the Games, said that Chinese law allowed protests "as long as applications were made and approved in advance", a condition almost never met in the country.

"How to get approval for protests and what requirements are needed for people to participate in the protests will be explained to every applicant in the process of application," he said. "Normally we will ask people to go to the approved places for their demonstrations."

a happy, modern, and united china?
only the bits that the chinese communist party wants the world to see.

chinese people are also controlled.

in protest, nutty chooses not to watch the 2008 olympic games.

K2 - where miracles are hard to come by...

unlike the father who pronounced his daughter's survival from a 14 floor fall down a chimney in new york as an" absolute miracle", mountaineers know that their survival depends on their physical and mental condition, the weather, planning, and safety rules being observed.

click on:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7540250.stm

NASA - 50 years old today

happy birthday to NASA - amazing what can happen when there's a cold war going on and the soviets have just beaten the americans, and put sputnik, the world's first satellite in orbit around the earth.

In 2006 the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" was quietly struck from the agency's mission statement after four years. NASA said the deletion was in accordance with President Bush's 'vision' of going back to the moon...

carlos sastre and team CSC win the tour de france

brilliant!

team CSC - wow!

the best sporting event on television this year has just come to a close, and most americans didn't watch a single second of it.

in protest, i will not be watching the bejing olympics.

brilliant stage in the tour and hamilton wins in germany

what an incredible stage 13 in this year's tour.

well done to versus for showing the stage live.

nasty looking oscar perero crash.

and lewis hamilton comes back to win the german grand prix.

nutty & daisy are back, and mark cavendish wins 3 tour stages

apologies for not blogging for such a long time!

happy belated birthday, tanc!

i should be sent back to london where it rained one month's rain in just one day while we were there...

will post a few photos when i've gone through them in the next couple of days.

anyway, brilliant stage victory yesterday!

Mark Cavendish made history by becoming the first Briton to win three stages of the same Tour de France.

D.C. mayor gets 'Smart'

no, not tanc...but our very own fenty.

brilliant. first he manages to get meters in taxi cabs, then he swaps his gas guzzling suv for one of these.

bet he can't wait for obama to be elected president, like everyone else in d.c.

92% of Americans believe in God

see:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/876/religion-america-part-two

but strangely,

Public Continues to Oppose Banning Handgun Sales

see:
http://people-press.org/report/419/public-continues-to-oppose-banning-handgun-sales

so, americans overwhelmingly believe in god but want the right to shoot, kill, maim, and injure each other with guns...

doesn't that seem a little odd?

Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave

great op-ed piece in today's new york times.

Click on link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/opinion/22friedman.html?em&ex=1214366400&en=1d288dfdedd325e6&ei=5087%0A

Redha & Andrea's wedding photos - congratulations :)

heroic sporting performance of the weekend goes to:

no, america, not tiger woods, grimacing in pain as he forced a playoff in the u.s. golf open, but noriyuki haga. wrestling a 1000cc superbike to an amazing double victory in the world superbike championship round at germany's historic nurburgring.

haga won both races, despite riding with six pins in a right collar bone after fracturing it two weeks ago after a crash at miller motorsports park, utah.

and what an incredible second race. wow.

...oohh, that shot really took some balls, tiger.

and father's day definitely belonged to haga, with his son watching from the pits ride a world superbike to victory.

Lift-off for Nasa space telescope

from the bbc:

















click on:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7436088.stm

gamma ray bursts release about the same amount of energy in one second as a star like the Sun will release in its 5-10 billion-year lifetime.

and the sun releases enough energy in just a single second to power the united states for some 9 million years..., so it's impossible to really comprehend just how powerful these gamma ray bursts are.

To Save Fuel, Airlines Find No Speck Too Small

from the new york times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/business/11air.html

The nation’s airlines are scrutinizing every step of their operations, from the tarmac to the sky, and from the nose to the tail of their planes, searching for new ways to cut their soaring fuel bills.

They are power-washing jet engines more often to get rid of grime, carrying less water for the bathroom faucets and toilets, and replacing passenger seats with lighter models.

The financial pain of higher fuel prices is particularly acute for airlines because it is their single biggest expense. Eight years ago, 15 percent of the price of an airplane ticket went to pay for jet fuel; now, it is 40 percent, according to the Air Transport Association, the industry’s trade group.

....

exactly why do airlines not change the way they do business?

let's pretend we want to send a package somewhere. what criteria is used? would we reasonably stand in line at the post office and try telling the person behind the counter that our package should somehow cost the same to transport as a heavier item, even though it can be proved that it physically takes more energy to move the object with greater mass?



the airlines should adopt a fixed fare + a pro-rated charge based on both passenger weight and their associated baggage. how can that not be fair? passenger weight directly affects fuel economy, and many people have simply become larger than they were twenty years ago.

and just because we don't like something doesn't make it discrimination.

flying has become a very unpleasant experience, given the endless waiting, cancellations, and security at airports. the airlines can pat themselves on the back for ludicrous earlier marketing practices for driving their own industry to the wall, such as $20 flights, etc.

and now they want to charge you that for a piece of baggage...

in france, they have the TGV to move people at high speed without all this hassle, but that's what you get when you vote for actually paying taxes that invest in public transportation alternatives.

taxation has become a dirty word in america, and look where it's gotten us. successive governments, both republican and democratic alike have invested in a future of essentially nothing but the automobile. didn't any of these individuals travel to europe when they young and weren't being whisked about in limos?

i guess nobody said it better than george h. w. bush.
"The American Way of Life is Not Negotiable" - yeah? well let's see how $5 gas looks for 'the american way of life' come election time.

where are the high speed rail networks linking all the major cities across the nation? if only all the tax breaks given to oil companies had been used for something benefiting the consumer...

but then what else should we expect? GM et al have already killed the electric car (how smart are they feeling now)

see:
http://ablokesblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/who-killed-electric-car.html

GM announces plan to save america's hard hit consumer

just what can the world's biggest automobile manufacturer do when petrol hits $4 a gallon and everyone is feeling the 'pain at the pump' because governments havent invested in public transportation since discovering that dead dinosaurs, etc. could be used to power vehicles?

why, give americans cash incentives on the biggest gas guzzlers of them all, of course. that's what america needs, right now. THIS IS OUR FUCKING COUNTRY!

• Chevrolet — Tahoe (nonhybrid) or Suburban: $2,000 customer cash + $4,000 owner loyalty bonus cash = $6,000 total cash.

Tahoe (hybrid): $0 customer cash + $4,000 owner loyalty bonus cash = $4,000 total cash.

Silverado or Avalanche: $2,000 customer cash + $3,000 owner loyalty bonus cash = $5,000 total cash.

• GMC — Yukon: $2,000 customer cash + $4,000 owner loyalty bonus cash = $6,000 total cash.

Yukon (hybrid): $0 customer cash + $4,000 owner loyalty bonus cash = $4,000 total cash.

Sierra: $2,000 customer cash + $3,000 owner loyalty bonus cash = $5,000 total cash.

• Cadillac — Escalade: $2,000 customer cash + $2,000 bonus cash + $2,000 owner loyalty bonus cash = $6,000 total cash.

i would have thought giving them stock in exxon/mobil to the same value might have shown a little more intellectual ingenuity, and actually benefitted the consumer because in just a few short years these shares will be worth more than their vehicles...

NASA finds water on Mars!

america: cheap, tacky, & in denial

history is an often overused term in the united states lexicon, probably because it doesn’t have much, but last night history indeed was made, and this country turned a very important page.

contrary to john, sniggering-nervous mccain’s speech in louisiana to a crowd made up of white people, barack obama, clinched the democratic presidential nomination.

the difference between the two candidates, republican and democratic couldn’t be more stark as voters consider their choice before november’s election. of course, for a candidate that voted against the martin luther king holiday, it was all so sincere…

and then there was hillary’s “I have all these 18 million voters and I can influence who they vote for in November” aggressive speech.

it’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll begin with how about acknowledging history, hillary, chose to be a sore loser in denial. not once recognizing that for the first time in american history, an african american had clinched the nomination for president, she chose to instead focus on herself and why she was the better candidate in the swing states that she won; as if there were some more contests down the road…hardly a speech of healing and party unity.

must be difficult for the clintons given that they must have dreamt for so long to see an African american running for president. I guess they never imagined that one would emerge that could prove to be so effective a candidate and inspire so many when everything looked like a given for hillary just a few months earlier. they wanted an african american presidential candidate, alright, just not on their watch.

so america was presented with a truly historical night, and one in which both hillary clinton showed no class whatsoever, and john mccain just showed up.

just goes to prove that all those millions can’t buy dignity, because the only candidate showing any was barack obama, whose first real duty when he got to the microphone was to thank his grandmother, and then went on to give a truly uplifting speech, one full of hope and inspiration and unity. there was nothing about him.

maybe all those rabid democratic hillary feminists should be pondering that as they plot his downfall.

...and come november, we will find out if democratic americans actually have a brain, or want four more years of exactly the same.

and since they're so committed to not voting to barack obama, i suggest all hillary's supporters watch spike lee's excellent documentary:

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/4_little_girls/

she's the better candidate...

now she's open to the VP slot...

CHANGE is not picking someone whose most vehement supporters wouldn't vote for you and would rather vote for john mccain. strange when you consider that these are the very people that are supposed to feel strongly about women's reproductive rights, civil rights, discrimination, and the opposing of appointing of right-wing justices - the very opposite of the republican candidate many were threating to give their votes to if florida and michigan delegates weren't given full voting rights.

just what sort of democrats are these people, and why would barack obama want hillary as a running mate just to appease those she has stirred up and made angry. isn't that john mccain and the republican party's job?

no. real change is having courage in your convictions and NOT having a clinton at his side. there are plenty of non-toxic choices for vice president. all of whom haven't been busy trying to persuade us all of his un-electability, his inexperience, who would be ready on day one (because he isn't) and drive a wedge between him and the very voters she purports to represent.

give hillary a job in the cabinet as minister of health. she would be excellent at it, and it would be good for the party and the country, but he just cannot bow to elder pressure and give her (and run-away-mouth bill) the VP slot. because a few minnow-minded washingtonian democrats think that forcing the two of them together is somehow a good idea. bit like oil and water.

that's not what the millions of young people have stood in lines, just to hear you speak, a politician, for the first time in their lives have waited all this time for.

now give them (and us) what we all want.

Standard & Poor's

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/portal/site/sp/en/us/page.siteselection/site_selection/0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0.html

"Standard & Poor’s is the world's foremost provider of independent credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research and data. We supply investors with the independent benchmarks they need to feel more confident about their investment and financial decisions."

oooh! aahh! cantona!, that sounds good, doesn’t it?

yesterday, standard & poor’s cut wall st. investment bank credit ratings on expectations the securities firms will be forced again to write down the value of their assets.

what’s wrong with that, you might ask. i say, well why didn’t they do this anytime before these very same firms hemorrhaged $800 billion dollars in losses, and the collapse of wall st’s 5^th largest investment bank, bear stearns…and all during a time when the federal reserve didn’t make borrowing funds available through it’s discount window. i.e. conservative, more predictable conditions.

conclusion: you wait until everyone's lost their shirt, and then make a prediction.

isn't that being just a little fuckin’ late to the party, guys?