A possibly dodgy penalty decision then another one that was more clear cut that wasn’t given and now two yellow cards within the space of a couple of minutes for Beckham.
Could a ref be any more controversial than in this match?
Well I guess this might solve the midfield problems as there remains very little option without Beckham in the picture.
Tags: sport
I’m crying with laughter having just watched this alternate trailer created for The Shining.
I never failed to score perfect marks on maths quizzes at school so it didn’t surprise me that I scored 20/20 here. I still don’t understand why people just don’t see mathematical equations the same as me, the answers appear so obvious to my eyes. My mathematics teachers would always tell me to put my ‘workings out’ on the exam papers when answering the questions as I’d score marks up to the point I made the mistake, seemed irrelevant to me.
It’s funny what you discover when you have a day off and see television programs you don’t normally watch. I learned today through Newsround that Scotland have won the World Elephant Polo Championship for the second time running.
I never knew that there was such a thing as the World Championship in the sport of Elephant Polo let alone that Scotland had a world beating team in it.
I think it is wonderful.
Tags: TV
The England cricket team were worthy winners of The Ashes having outplayed the Australians in each match since the first one at Lords which they lost. We mustn’t forget the England women’s team either who also triumphed over the Australians in their Ashes Test series earlier this summer.
Both teams were celebrating their wins in a parade through London.
England’s cricketers were given a rapturous reception in Trafalgar Square at the end of the Ashes victory parade to celebrate their win over Australia.
Captain Michael Vaughan thanked the “fantastic” thronging crowd and admitted: “This is beyond a dream.”
The team later enjoyed a Downing Street reception and went to Lord’s to hand over the Ashes urn for safe-keeping.
England beat Australia in a series for the first time since 1987 after drawing the final Test at The Oval on Monday.
“It’s been a long night,” said Vaughan, who clasped the replica Ashes urn throughout the celebrations. “We’ve celebrated in true English fashion and this is incredible.
I almost wish it wasn’t over I’d love to see many more matches of the quality we’ve had this year. In fact given that the matches will no longer be shown on terrestrial TV following Sky buying the rights I wonder if I’ll ever watch test cricket again.
Tags: sport
In Affectionate Remembrance of AUSTRALIAN CRICKET, which died at the Oval on 12th SEPTEMBER, 2005, Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances R.I.P.
N.B. — The body will be cremated and the ashes will be taken back from the Aussie bastards.”
It’s all over the match was drawn and the Ashes were won by England for the first time in 18 years.
Such a small thing it is to get so worked up over ain’t it.
Tags: sport
I think that the Aussies chances of retaining the Ashes have been scuppered by bad light and the bowling of Andrew Flintoff and Matthew Hoggard. They failed to turn they excellent 277-2 into a decent score and the bad light allowed the England batsman to choose not to play.
So into the final day and Australia are faced with the daunting task of bowling out England quick enough that they have enough overs remaining in which to beat the English run total.
They have the bowlers to do it certainly but will their drive to get wickets cause them to give away runs and thus increase the total necessary once they’re into their batting innings to take the victory. It is a fine balance they need to take, as it is for England also who are faced with the decision of batting carefully but not getting runs or getting the runs but risking their wickets.
Tags: sport
The Guardian newspaper has changed it’s format and updated the way it presents the various sections in the paper. It is now in the Berliner format that is popular in Europe that is a midsize between Tabloid and Broadsheet, curiously no newspapers in Berlin are printed in the Berliner format.
I’m usually quite wary of change but I like this new format and I think the new masthead is far better than the old one which appeared very eighties to me. Now I feel that the print edition has caught up with the excellent Guardian website.
Here we are at the Oval for the fifth and final test match of the Ashes series and Australia would seem to be in a dominant position with a score at the start of the fourth day of 277-2 in reply to England’s 373 all out.
But the Australians still have a lot to do in order to win this match. They are still trailing by about 100 runs and so would need to be scoring another 300 runs in this innings in order to get a decent total in which to bowl England out in.
I think it will ultimately come down to a lack of time to finish the job, what with the interruptions by the weather. But there is still a lot of cricket to be played here in the final two days so anything could happen.
Tags: sport
Guardian: Music file sharing to be offered legally
Online music fans will for the first time be able to legally share tracks by big names such as Oasis, Beyonce, David Bowie and Elvis Presley after the artists’ record label signed a ground-breaking deal with a new internet service provider.
In what some see as signalling a dramatic shift in the way consumers buy music, the provider, Playlouder, has licensed acts from SonyBMG, the world’s second largest record label, and is confident that the other two big record labels, Universal and EMI, will follow suit…
Because there will be no restrictions on the format in which the traded music is encoded, users will be free to transfer songs to any type of digital music player, including the market leading Apple iPod, or burn them to CD…
Because all Playlouder subscribers will share tracks over its own network Mr Hitchman said that the company could track the files and, through digital fingerprinting technology, make sure that record companies were remunerated accordingly from money set aside from Playlouder’s revenues each month.
I find this newspaper report to be very weird if it is entirely accurate. I cannot see how this service can function in the way it is intended if users truly are allowed to trade files in any format without restrictions. If true then a typical music track could be digitised and formatted in many different formats at various different bitrates and shared over the network, yet through digital fingerprinting the service is able to ascertain what music track it is and pass on appropriate payment to the copyright owners.
Such a file could even be concealed through a steganographic type application to resemble some other file such as a movie file of a home video that has no licensing problems as the user is freely allowed to share what they themselves have created.
Furthermore record corporations seem to be heavily in favour of DRM technologies in order to add restrictions to prevent piracy their willingness to license their music to Playlouder without the DRM technologies would seem to me to be counterproductive to their aims. Any non-DRM file that is legally shared using this service can in the future be illegally shared in the way that current legally downloaded files from services such as iTunes cannot.
But then again they may have read Chris Anderson’s fascinating piece on the economics of “piracy” and whether a little piracy can actually allow for more net revenues to vendors. Via BoingBoing and Waxy.
