I've Joined JAPA

...And I Don't Have A Clue What I've Joined
If you check the sidebar, you'll notice a new link to JAPA - Japan As Popular Culture Association. Nominally it's an association of professionals trying to promote pop culture in Japan on an industrial level. Some of the members listed on their page are from government institutions; some of them are from the private sector.
I note, one of them is a member of the band 'Shonen Knife', so this is a pretty eclectic crowd with an uncertain direction.

I got invited to join by Contemporary Art critic Yumi Yamaguchi, who also produced my short film 'Rakuda1.2' some years back. If anything interesting happens on their mailing list (and it usually does) I'll be sure to report back. I'm really not sure how I 'qualify' at all, but I'm putting it down to a new adventure. :)

In the mean time, make sure you check out some of their conference minutes. Try this for size from March 2006:

1. Japanese Sound-scape
Los Angels people living the university town does not care about sounds very much. They might think it is personal freedom to make noise, or they still have a sense of livening in the age of Western reclamation.

2. Japanese views of animals
Cute animal characters are often used of advertising for adults in Japan, but it is not common in western countries. Typical example is the sticker with a cat being caught in doors of a train with a “ouch!” face.
There are some Manga research books to analyze characters of Manga or animations such as “ Tezuka is Dead”, “ Girls Folklore” by Eiji Otsuka and “ Manga Country Nippon by Jaqueline Berndt. The honorary professor of the National History Museum at Sakura Manabu Tsukamoto is an expert of Japanese views of animals by writing “ The Folklore of Political Monism about Animals”. Yujin Kawabata’s non-fiction books such as “ Penguin Meets Japanese”, “I Caught a Whale, and I Thought” and “What a Zoo Can Do” etc., “ A Frog’s Mind” by Chiba Central Museum.
We do not create a rabbit character for boy in Japan. Pink colored animals like a rabbit becomes a character normally, but they use a realistic expression for a picture book and a creation in France.
It changes historically. A squirrel that lives Japanese mountain naturally has not been on Japanese old tare of a fairy tale story, but once it appears as a suit of “Sho-chan” in the Taisyo era. It suddenly became a one of the cute characters.
French two students learning design found the illustration of a cat holding its nose on the package of sands for a cat’s toilet, and said that it is cool than putting a photo of a cat, it is like a original design of Japan.
A penguin is a popular character in Japan. It is a shocking data that one third of raised penguin are in Japan.
It has some levels to personify an animal as humanlike conversation in the animal world < personifying lifestyle < profession < conversation with human. There are a lot of working animal characters for local governments, the National Athletic Meets and CI. Mr. Kentaro Takemura reported the personifying levels in “Saruman”.
http://takekuma.cocolog-nifty.com/

3. Hanuman
“ Hanuman and Five Kamen-Riders”. There are a lot of hints to consider cultural development.
http://blog.livedoor.jp/textsite/archives/50168971.html
It is a surprising that Chaiyo, famous of the Ultra man copyrights case, also did Kamen-riders.
“ Eiga-hiho” magazine have reported about Chaiyo production from Nov. 2004 issue to Jan. 2005 issue.
http://www.yosensha.co.jp/hihotop.html
It said on Dec. 2004 issue that Chaiyo and Toei co-produced “Hanuman and Five Moddaeng (Kamen-Riders)” and they officially borrowed and shot the riders’ suits.

Pretty interesting if you can decipher the actual concerns from this short-hand.
Here's an interesting one from their first month of keeping records:

4.Globalization of media (cultural influences)
Although the volume of Japanese Contents exports is increasing, the cultural influence from such Contents is still small. This may be related with the fact that the scale of Japanese media (Contents industry) and its international competence is much smaller compared with the media conglomerates in the US and Europe.
Is it possible to represent the international competence of pop culture in figures? If so, such figures can could be used as indices for the industrial competence of Japanese Contents and also be used to study the correlation between such competence and the wider influence of Japanese pop culture (such as the “Japanese point of view”) overseas.

i.Sales of a certain character product and the profit an industry makes from the product does not have a direct correlation to the respect given to the creators and authors of the product, with the differentiation or predominance of the product in the market, or the influence of the product on regional culture or on the societies that accept the product.

ii.Japanese media does not actively seek for export business. While the US media industry has long-focused on Japan’s abundant media market, despite its size, and established the know-how of importing and distributing Japanese media.

iii.Are the impacts of financial influence and propagation and the impact of cultural influence and propagation identical? Phenomenon of Econo-rationalization and phenomenon of cultural acceptance sometimes appear to be the same.

iv.“Ethnic” is the subjective definition of “dissimilarity.”

v.Spread of Japanese culture in Asia (a spin-off from mature domestic industry?): What is the future stance of the Japanese Contents production as globalization and technology outflow continue to advance?

5.Pop culture and security
Is it possible to understand pop culture as a form of security, as well as considering whether it is safe to rely on the US pop culture?although it is practically the center of media culture of Japan?
The worldwide success of the Japanese animation and comic business relies on the effort of authors and production companies. It is hard to say that animation or comics are successful international business seeds or whether they have validity in the belief that culture can be a security treaty.

6.Hollywood and Japanese Culture
Issues of non-Euro-America areas, including Asia, are often talked of with the nuance that Japanese cultural policy has remained the same since the Meiji revolution? that is, “Leave Asia and join Europe where tradition lives,” or the superiority of Japanese culture. However, is this adequate for those who accept Japanese culture?
One common point in games, animations, and comics is that a realistic Japanese person does not appear in them. Usually, the main character looks like a white westerner. The influence of Hollywood stereotyping may be stronger than we imagine.

i.When creating a film aiming at the international market, it is essential to consider the balance of characters’ races and not to specify the characters’ religions and cultural backgrounds.

ii.America’s view of Japan is changing. It has become natural to think that new games and animations always come from Japan.

iii.“Culturally unbound” or “non-ethnic” animations and games from Japan have spread across the world as pop culture (flexible culture) not as highbrow culture.

iv.This success may be due to the symbolization of characters (as a concept opposite to realism), which is one of specialties of the Japanese.

v.Not all the authors of works that have received internationally high reviews are clearly conscious of global standard. “Style-Japanesque” is not the essence of popularity; therefore it is not necessary to be obsessed with such style.

7. Ability of agenda setting:
Why is the agenda-setting ability of the Japanese media weak? Is it also weak in Asia? Generally in Asia, self-categorizing elites respect America and self-categorizing middle class love Japan for some reason. Isn’t Japan now Eastern Asia’s re-embodiment of 19th century Euro-American culture (civilization?)?

i.The wave of media globalization does not influence Southeast Asia and Japan.

ii.Japanese media, which is popular across the world, including Asia and the Middle East, may be the result of people’s dissatisfaction with the fact that only a limited amount of world information is available from NHK. (e.g. 2ch.net)

iii.Journalists often study in the US ? The centric and open US approach to journalism making a clear contrast with the closed Japanese media environment.

iv.Lack of professionalism as a journalist in Japanese media industry, therefore no ground to cultivate journalistic skills.

Now that's some interesting thinking right then and there.
There's actually an association that would have me as a member. That's amazing in itself.

From The Pleiades Mailbag

Eight Areas Of Concern This Month
I haven't done this in a couple of weeks and he's been sending me some interesting things.
So in no particular order, here they are:

1. About Global Warming and glaciers.

COLUMBUS , Ohio – For the first time, glaciologists have combined and compared sets of ancient climate records trapped in ice cores from the South American Andes and the Asian Himalayas to paint a picture of how climate has changed – and is still changing – in the tropics.

Their conclusions mark a massive climate shift to a cooler regime that occurred just over 5,000 years ago, and a more recent reversal to a much warmer world within the last 50 years.

The evidence also suggests that most of the high-altitude glaciers in the planet's tropical regions will disappear in the near future. The paper is included in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Lastly, the research shows that in most of the world, glaciers and ice caps are rapidly retreating, even in areas where precipitation increases are documented. This implicates increasing temperatures and not decreasing precipitation as the most likely culprit.

The researchers from Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center and three other universities combined the chronological climate records retrieved from seven remote locations north and south of the equator. Cores drilled through ice caps and glaciers there have captured a climate history of each region, in some cases, providing annual records and in others decadal averages.

“Approximately 70 percent of the world's population now lives in the tropics so when climate changes there, the impacts are likely to be enormous,” explains Lonnie Thompson, professor of geological sciences at Ohio State.

For the last three decades, Thompson has led nearly 50 expeditions to remote ice caps and glaciers to drill cores through them and retrieve climate records. This study includes cores taken from the Huascaran and Quelccaya ice caps in Peru; the Sajama ice cap in Bolivia; the Dunde, Guliya, Puruogangri and Dasuopu ice caps in China.

For each of these cores, the team -- including research partner Ellen Mosley-Thompson, professor of geography at Ohio State – extracted chronological measurements of the ratio of two oxygen isotopes -- O18 and O16 -- whose ratio serves as an indicator of air temperature at the time the ice was formed. All seven cores provided clear annual records of the isotope ratios for the last 400 years and decadally averaged records dating back 2000 years.

So much for that for Global Warming scepticism.
There's also this article.

The Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, probably even longer. The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia."

A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that the Earth is heating up and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming." Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century.

This is shown in boreholes, retreating glaciers and other evidence found in nature, said Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University who chaired the academy's panel.

The report was requested in November by the chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., to address naysayers who question whether global warming is a major threat.

Last year, when the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, launched an investigation of three climate scientists, Boehlert said Barton should try to learn from scientists, not intimidate them.

Boehlert said Thursday the report shows the value of having scientists advise Congress.

"There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change," he said.

Aiyah.

2. X-Files Type Disease Article
This is Distrubing.

OAKLAND -- A horrifying and fascinating disease is affecting thousands of people in the Bay Area, along the Gulf Coast and in Florida. Though some doctors have claimed the malady is psychosomatic, other scientists are making headway unraveling the mystery of Morgellons Disease.

Former Oakland A's pitcher Billy Koch has it. And so do his wife and their three children. And though they can afford top medical care, doctors have no answers.It started in Oakland four years ago. Koch saved 44 games and was the top reliever in the major leagues. His fastball wowed crowds. And then the strangeness began.

"He freaked out. He wanted to ignore it … I wanted to too. But when it comes to your kids, you gotta stop ignoring it," said Koch's wife Brandi.

She describes their symptoms: "It was the scariest thing I had ever realized in my entire life. There was matter and black specks coming out and off of my skin."

Within two years -- at age 29 -- Billy Koch was out of baseball, partly because of the uncontrollable muscle twitching that went on for months at a time and often kept up him up all night.The disease is characterized by slow healing skin lesions that often extrude small, dark filaments, especially after bathing.

"That's when it would really just ooze -- literally ooze out of my skin," explained Brandi Koch.

The couple was at wit's end after numerous doctors not only provided little in the way of relief, but actually were skeptical about their health problems: "There's no reasonable explanation for it. I'm not seeing things. l'm watching it happen. We're pretty sane people…" lamented Billy.

Infectious disease specialist Dr. Neelam Uppal sympathized with the Kochs' plight: "They've seen several doctors, [and] everybody's told them they're crazy. It's in their head. They're delusional."

Dr. Uppal gave the Kochs and fifteen other patients a powerful anti-parasite medicine and antibiotics that helped temporarily. But the filaments come back.

Testing of the filaments brought no results, according to Dr. Uppal: "I've seen [it]; sent it to the lab. They can't identify it. They'll say 'They're nothing.'"

The reaction of medical professionals has made a difficult situation even harder for Brandi Koch: "It's not enough that you're suffering and hurting. It's 'You're an idiot!' and 'You're crazy!' on top of it. I'm really hurt and sad and scared."

The Kochs may be the most recognizable of more than 3,000 families nationwide reporting these same unexplained symptoms. There are curious clusters, in Florida, along the Gulf Coast and in the San Francisco Bay Area. That's where we begin our investigation into new clues to this medical mystery.

Now that's weird.

3. String Theory As A Crock
This one basically stakes out turf against this string theory biz.

"When it comes to extending our knowledge of the laws of nature, we have made no real headway" in 30 years, writes physicist Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada, in his book, "The Trouble with Physics," also due in September. "It's called hitting the wall."

He blames string theory for this "crisis in particle physics," the branch of physics that tries to explain the most fundamental forces and building blocks of the world.

String theory, which took off in 1984, posits that elementary particles such as electrons are not points, as standard physics had it. They are, instead, vibrations of one-dimensional strings 1/100 billion billionth the size of an atomic nucleus. Different vibrations supposedly produce all the subatomic particles from quarks to gluons. Oh, and strings exist in a space of 10, or maybe 11, dimensions. No one knows exactly what or where the extra dimensions are, but assuming their existence makes the math work.

String theory, proponents said, could reconcile quantum mechanics (the physics of subatomic particles) and gravity, the longest-distance force in the universe. That impressed particle physicists no end. In the 1980s, most jumped on the string bandwagon and since then, stringsters have written thousands of papers.

But one thing they haven't done is coax a single prediction from their theory. In fact, "theory" is a misnomer, since unlike general relativity theory or quantum theory, string theory is not a concise set of solvable equations describing the behavior of the physical world. It's more of an idea or a framework.

Partly as a result, string theory "makes no new predictions that are testable by current _ or even currently conceivable _ experiments," writes Prof. Smolin. "The few clean predictions it does make have already been made by other" theories.

And there we were thinking, String Theory is 'it'.

4. What's DARPA Up To?
Here's an interesting page that leads to more interesting pages like this one.

The Virtual Soldier Program seeks to establish a new capability that will revolutionize medical care to support the soldier. The program will create the mathematical modeling approaches to develop an information (computational) representation of an individual soldier that can be used to augment medical care on and off the battlefield with a new level of integration. This virtual soldier will be based on a highly complex model that is derived from biologically driven principles and populated with properties that are extracted from evidence-based data. The initial effort will consist of a two-component, three-dimensionally displayed model: (1) an organ-tissue system model component, and (2) a properties level model component. Once derived, the virtual soldier will provide multiple capabilities, including but not limited to automatic diagnosis of battlefield injuries, testing and evaluation of non-lethal weapons, and virtual clinical trials.

Check it out.

5. About Gary McKinnon
Don't miss this interview. It's really interesting; if nothing else, it's quite enlightening about certan things that maybe some people think maybe we need not ought to know. If you search his name on Wikipedia, you get this page:

The unemployed computer systems administrator is accused of hacking into 97 United States military and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002. The computer networks he is accused of hacking include networks owned by NASA, the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defense and the US Air Force, and also one belonging to The Pentagon. The US estimates claim the costs of tracking and correcting the problems he allegedly caused were around 700,000 USD.

McKinnon was originally tracked down and arrested under the Computer Misuse Act by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) in 2002, and later that year was also indicted by the United States government. He remained at liberty although subject to bail conditions including a requirement to sign in at his local police station every evening, and to remain at his home address at night. In addition he was banned from using a computer with access to the internet. There have been no further developments in respect of the charges relating to United Kingdom legislation, but in late 2005 the United States formally began extradition proceedings.

If he is extradited to the U.S. and charged, McKinnon faces up to 70 years in jail and has expressed fears that he could be sent to Guantanamo Bay.^[1][2] He has said that he will contest the extradition proceedings and believes that he should face trial in the UK, principally as he argues that his "crimes" were committed there and not in the United States.

In an interview televised on the BBC's Click programme,^[3] he claimed that he was able to access the military's networks simply by using a Perl script that searched for blank passwords; in other words his report suggests that there were computers on these networks with the default passwords still active.

You sort of wonder why they're so keen to get this fellow if there was nothing to any of this stuff.

6. The Zap Guns
This is straight out o Phillip K Dick, this stuff.

An experimental micro-satellite with the ability to disrupt other nations’ military reconnaissance and communications satellites.

An Air Force program nicknamed, Rods From God, aims to hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium or uranium from the edge of space to destroy targets on the ground, striking at speeds of up to 7,200 miles per hour with the force of a small nuclear weapon.

“We haven’t reached the point of strafing and bombing from space. Nonetheless, we are thinking about those possibilities.” Peter Teets, former Acting Secretary of the Air Force

Yowza. How scary is that? There's more:

The MTHEL is potentially the most valuable directed energy weapon in the U.S. arsenal. MTHEL is a high-energy chemical laser weapon that may some day in the very near future provide homeland security defense in and around major cities and other sensitive sites across the country. In tests conducted in August 2004 at HELSTF, THEL (the stationary version of MTHEL) successfully shot down 100% of multiple targets, including; rockets, artillery shells and mortar rounds ranging from 81mm to 120mm. It never missed. The cost per round, at about $3,000.00, pales in comparison to other, more conventional missile defense systems such as the PATRIOT, which has a cost of several hundred thousand dollars per round. Even at that, the kill ratio of the PATRIOT is significantly lower that the THEL and it was never designed to intercept incoming mortar rounds or other small projectiles. The range of the THEL is also classified, but is “several kilometers” according to Sutton and Gregg Basel, project manager for THEL at Northrop-Grumman, THEL system designer.

Zeus, again virtually unknown to the majority of Americans, has been successfully deployed in both Afghanistan and Iraq in an EOD or Explosive Ordinance Disposal role. With a solid-state laser mounted on the back of a HMMWV where the machine gun turret would normally sit, ZEUS, with only a 2-3 kilo-watt laser and a range of up to 300 meters, has destroyed over 100 IED’s (improvised explosive devices) and other unexploded ordinance in combat zones. Overall, ZEUS has destroyed over 1,600 targets with a kill rate of 98%, only slightly less than THEL. Currently, the U.S. Army has only three operational ZEUS weapons systems in operation. Wachs, like Sutton before him, said that the only thing preventing him from building and deploying more systems is “funding from Washington.” He added that when ZEUS destroyed the first IED in Afghanistan, “cheers erupted” from the troops. No doubt.

Whoah, boys and girls!.

7. 9/11 Stuff.
Richard Andrew Grove interview here for download. If that name rings a bell, maybe you know too much already. :)

8. The Lucifer Project
As if the name isn't scary enough...

There are a few people in the world, who with endless imagination and creativity in union with massive resources and high technology have been playing “God” and secretly experimenting with changing the makeup of our solar system. There are not too many plans conceived that could be greater than creating a new star in our own backyard. One could almost claim godship upon success. Although at first I considered hiding what I knew so that the plan would go forward with full success, in the end my conscience overcame this desire since I knew there could be dangerous Earth implications for such a plan. Also keeping something this large a secret would be like finding a massive buried treasure while deep-sea diving and then never returning or telling anyone about it. (I still find myself wavering back and forth between wanting to see this spectacular plan unfold and not wanting it to happen knowing the potential consequences). I first stumbled onto the reality of this project while reading a famous conspiracy book entitled “Behold A Pale Horse” by William Cooper, former U.S. Naval Security Briefing Team member. Most people who came across Cooper's short account (only a couple paragraphs) immediately discounted it, afterall, creating a star with a plutonium bomb sounds somewhat incredible at first, but this idea captured my imagination and completely fascinated me. I kept asking myself, “Why discount this?” With advanced knowledge and technology, I could see how some great minds would start to think about doing once impossible things. The more I checked into the facts, the more I became convinced that Cooper did not just make this up out of the blue. Too many coinciding events that he had predicted started manifesting themselves for it all to be just a tale. I could not keep quiet anymore about the plan despite my appreciation of the deep science, creativity, and innovation that made it possible. Also, despite the long odds of the event occurring, I felt compelled to warn the public because of the potential danger from the cast-off of matter that normally occurs in a star's ignition. I will also make a case that there is a great deal of ritualistic symbology associated with the timing of this event, symbology that has strong ties to Freemasonry (old and new). I ask the reader to consider this scenario first: If a handful of the world's greatest scientists were hired and paid top dollar by an organization with great wealth to solve a nearly impossible scientific problem and were allowed to work on it full time for years or even decades, do you think they would have a good shot at solving the problem, assuming they had the latest and greatest technology at their fingertips and were allowed to work in secrecy? My personal answer to this is “Yes, I believe they would have a very good chance!” One needs only to know the story of the “Manhattan Project” to see this.

The logic of the Lucifer Project other than the extreme thrill of creating something so amazing, if not of sinister intent, could be that in order for humans to one day break out of this shell of Earth we must create more favorable conditions for traveling within our own solar system. For instance, could humans one day live on Titan? Maybe, but how do we warm it up? We play the part of creator and conduct solar system terraforming on a grand scale by turning Saturn into a small star that supplies Titan with the heat and light it needs to awaken. Turning one of our gas giants, like Saturn, into a star is the essence of the “Lucifer Project.”

The rest of it's even more 'out there'.

8. The Free Sex In China?
This one is more light-hearted.

A little sexpot was running and not looking where she was going, instead eyeing a luscious panting object to her side, and slammed right into a big sign -- a sign, no less, advertising plastic surgery. Sexpots and panting-pots rush to the tragedy. “This is a national emergency!” a sexpot screams. “Call up the People’s Army!” a panting-pot demands. Tears fall -- a river forms -- a roaring river roars -- the Germanic-thick gate quivers….

With little eyes barely open, the dazed sexpot looks up, blinks twice, and mumbles, “Wo de tou fa zen me yang?” Translation: “Is my hair OK?”

“It’s a national miracle!” ricochets off the venerable university's walls and echoes throughout the campus. Students on the lawn hug each other, tightly. Professors -- all classes were suspended during the national emergency -- critically analyze the national miracle. Under the guidance of a hastily formed “Central Committee for Tianjin University Miracle,” a declaration is posted on all university bulletin boards:

“The national miracle student recovery is attributed to the superior strength of the Chinese spirit that is re-blossoming under the superior leadership of the Communist Party that is leading all Chinese to a better and better life….”

The old Mao survives in the new China, marching with a nascent licentiousness that gives this mysterious land some big-time twisted strangeness. But what is this strangeness all about?

Kind of funny to think it's only taking root now.

Back To The Other Future

No Laughing Matter
NASA thinks the next generaiton of space craft will be back to the rocket model they so disavowed at the dawn of the Space Shuttle era.

Instead of being carried into orbit piggy-back like the shuttle, its replacement will be sent into space as the payload of a rocket, in similar fashion to the Apollo Moon landers.

Steve McDanels, manager of Nasa’s failure analysis branch at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, said that this was the only certain way of protecting crew capsules from the sort of damage that caused the Columbia disaster in February 2003.

“Having a payload-type craft application, where the craft is integral to the structure, is going to be the way forward,” he said. “There is no possibility of a foam strike that way.”

None of the designs currently under consideration for the Crew Exploration Vehicle that will replace the shuttle in 2012 features a winged, reusable craft, and it is highly unlikely that Nasa will return to the model that symbolised manned spaceflight in the 1980s and 1990s. “I think that won’t be at the forefront of the technologies explored,” Dr McDanels said.

This amounts to a total write-off of the last 20-30years of NASA since the Apollo missions ended. You really wonder where all that money went. Ugh. Talk about a 'wasted generation'.

They Don't Like Negativity
Engineer Charlie Camarda was displaced from the Shuttle crew in the upcoming launch.

WASHINGTON - New York astronaut Charlie Camarda has been bumped from his top NASA engineering post for backing colleagues who questioned the safety of Saturday's planned space shuttle launch, NASA officials said yesterday.
Camarda's removal heightened the turmoil over NASA Administrator Michael Griffin's decision to take the "acceptable risk" of launching the Discovery orbiter despite warnings of potentially fatal blastoff debris.

Camarda, who flew aboard the troubled flight of Discovery last July, told colleagues in an e-mail that he was fired from his post as chief engineer at Houston's Johnson Space Center and given another NASA engineering job.

"I refused to abandon my position and asked that if I would not be allowed to work this mission that I would have to be fired from my position and I was," he wrote.

Camarda, 54, of Ozone Park, Queens, said he supported the dissents on launch safety made by NASA safety chief Bryan O'Connor and engineer Chris Scolese.

Maybe it's not such a bad thing for his health.
The Shuttle is scheduled for lunch this Satutday.

The Long Goodbye

The Final Moments of the 2006 Soccerooss World Campaign...

The Loss
I stayed up and watched the Socceroos lose 1-0 to Italy.

After the heroic run that catapulted Australia from their group, the Socceroos were knocked out 1-0 by the Azzurri after taking the fight to their vaunted opponents with skill and verve.

A last-minute penalty, harshly given against Lucas Neill, was converted by Francesco Totti, to record a completely unjust result. It was a particularly cruel blow for Neill, who has been the Socceroos' best player of the tournament and was magnificent again today.

Australia, against the world's expectations, had dominated of the game, passing the ball around an Italian side happy - or more to the point, forced - to sit back and absorb the Socceroos' smooth build-up play.

Australia's non-stop pressure told in the second half when a savage tackle on Marco Bresciano earned Marco Materazzi a red card.

It raised the decibel levels even higher from a sell-out 46,000 crowd, with the Australian supporters screaming their boys on.

By contrast, Australia struck forward at every opportunity, once and for all consigning ludicrous claims of being a physical side to the dustbin of history.

Vinnie Grella, against the country where he lives and whose language he speaks, produced the performance of his life, the heartbeat of a team that fears no one and has played like every game is a World Cup final.

Robbed of Harry Kewell, who was unable even to walk thanks to his nightmare groin injury, the Socceroos threw every scrap of energy, defiance and inspiration at Italy, but couldn't force their way past one of the favourites for the tournament title.

Ultimately, it was a travesty of a result after a display by the Socceroos to surpass even the barnstormers against Japan and Croatia.

Everybody knows the story by now; the PK in the dying seconds broke the tie and that was it.
In my opinion, "they was robbed"! How can the ref sleep? How can he live with himself? It's soccer, mate.

I will remind all of my favorite old saying that I made up: "The road to Hell is paved with Umpiring Decisions".

Which brings me to...

What I Really Think of 'Soccer' and FIFA
I never liked it. I still can't say I do after watching that PK goal. The games I like are not that governed by Referee and clock. Baseball, Cricket and Tennis don't have a clock. They have Option-locks (9-innings, 2 innings/50 overs, 3 sets, 5 sets), but they don't die by the clock.

Time-lock is a worse script device than Option-lock anyway, but that is another discussion. I will say that because in drama-writing, Option-lock is superior to Time-lock, the drama borne by these games are more intrinsically interesting - As in, "Will he, won't he?"
Besides, it means umpiring decisions don't kill entire games except in the most extraordinary of cases - like failure to rule against under-arm bowling.
The drama borne out of Time-lock is extrinsically interesting - As in, "What the hell was the ref looking at?!"

Even with other Time-lock games, the thing about 'Football' is that umpire decisions can really swing a game. It won't happen in Rugby or League or Aussie Rules to that degree. In Rugby or League or Aussie Rules, a team could control close to 50% of events on the field. The impact of the ref is marginal. If I were to judge Football by that one game, I'd say the teams had about 30% control of the game respectively and the ref had the other 40%.
That's why people are saying the outcome was a travesty. Well, I'm beginning to think maybe it's the game itself that just sucks?

But it's not the only time. Italy were robbed in 2002. So I've been here before, having watched a game where the ref sunk a team.
Here's something from the LA Times:

COLOGNE, Germany ? The Aussies should have known it would end this way. It was inevitable.

The seed for Australia's 1-0 World Cup defeat by Italy on Monday on a blatantly incorrect penalty kick awarded by Spanish referee Luis Medina Cantalejo in the final seconds was sown in South Korea four years ago.

Monday's devastating blow to the Socceroos was a makeup call.

Anyone with any suspicion of just how things are manipulated at soccer's highest level, including the outcome of games, needs only to look back to 2002.

That's when Italy was robbed blind in a 2-1 overtime loss to South Korea in a second-round World Cup game that was atrociously refereed by Ecuador's Byron Moreno. The South American was so bad that Italians named a row of public toilets after him in Sicily.

The loss eliminated the Italians and ? much to the delight of soccer's movers and shakers ? sent cohost South Korea on a run that took it to the semifinals and an eventual fourth-place finish.

Given the massive public support for the team, keeping South Korea alive as long as possible was very much in FIFA's interests. So Italy paid the price.

This time around, the price has been paid back.

Things are all square with Italy. Australia will get the makeup call next time around, at South Africa in 2010, assuming it qualifies.

That's how it works.

It's about making hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate sponsorships and television contracts. Fat cats greasing fat cats. It's not really about sport or sportsmanship. Only the naïve believe that.

Think this is the rambling of a conspiracy theorist? Here's the way the Italians viewed it in 2002:

This from Francesco Totti, who was ejected in the game against South Korea: "It was a scandal. The truth is that he [Moreno] had his mind set against us ? this was a desired elimination. By who? I don't know ? there are things greater than me, but the feeling is that they wanted us out."

Or this, from Franco Frattini, then a minister in the Italian government: "The referee was a disgrace. Absolutely scandalous. I've never seen a game like it. It seemed as if they just sat around a table and decided to throw us out."

And finally this, from then-Italy Coach Giovanni Trapattoni: "I said that it would be tough, that we had additional opposition. I am not talking about a plot but about an additional opposition."

Flash-forward now to Monday afternoon in Kaiserslautern. The Australia-Italy match is nearing the end of its allotted three minutes of stoppage time in regulation. Only seconds remain.

Italy's Fabio Grosso beats one player and makes a run toward the penalty area. Australian defender Lucas Neill slides to make a blocking tackle but fails to make contact. Grosso continues his run, and purposely trips over the fallen Neill.

No foul has occurred. If anything, Grosso has taken a dive.

But referee Cantalejo points immediately to the penalty spot. There is only time left for the kick. No time for Australia to reply.

And who steps up to take it? None other than the formerly affronted Totti, the victim of 2002's "scandal."

Totti scores, and Italy goes through to the quarterfinals. Australia's first World Cup in 32 years is over.

"I just can't believe it," said Aussie midfielder Tim Cahill. "We're in disbelief, because anyone who watched the game could see that it was not a penalty."

Teammate Scott Chipperfield goes further. "They look after the big nations," he said. "They want the big nations through to the semis and final. It's always the way."

And this, from Australia assistant coach Graham Arnold: "We're a small footballing nation that gets no favors. All we asked for was a fair go, and I don't think we received it.

"From the sideline and what we saw on TV, it was a joke."

And then there was Australia's coach, who had this to say: "If you see the replay, there is no doubt that it was not a penalty."

Australia's coach is Guus Hiddink. He was on the other side of the "conspiracy" in 2002. Back then, he was South Korea's coach when Italy was stiffed.

Honest. You can't make up this stuff. Only FIFA has that talent.

Anyone for rugby? Its World Cup is decided on the field.

For this even to be in print as a suggestion says we're not alone in thinking something stinks.
Yet, it's all said and done now. I'll be back to writing about the Yankees 2006 shortly.

UPDATE:
This is plain Overreacting:

Leading the outrage yesterday was Billy Vojtek, who represented Australia in the Socceroos' only previous World Cup outing in 1974.

"He should get 10 years at Guantanamo Bay with hard labour, that referee," Vojtek fumed. "He should not be allowed in this country, he should be classed as a terrorist. I am shattered about a decision that, in the last seconds of the game, he can give a penalty which was not there."

Describing it as "so bad it was unbelievable", Vojtek said it awarded the game to the inferior team.

10 years hard labour at Guantanamo Bay followed by flat-out refusal to grant a visa to Australia in the future plus being classified as a terrorist? Man, that's a bit rough; well-deserved, mind you, but rough. :)

Guus Says Goodbye
Here's the SMH story:

Hiddink, speaking in the aftermath of Australia's last-gasp loss to Italy, said he was proud of his players and would never say never about a World Cup repeat with the Socceroos.

"I am sad that it is finished," Hiddink said. "On one hand it is a joy to work with the players, a joy to work with the staff, and with the FFA. I am also enriched because I met a lot of people in Australia in a short time and I am a little bit sad that it has ended.

"We don't know what will happen in two or three years and by that time I am an old man and they might say that they don't want me any more. But I am not at the end because I feel energetic and the boys give me a lot of energy."

The Dutch coach has led Australia for less than 12 months but said he had already set a precedent for returning to unfinished business. Hiddink said that, without knowing what Australia's plans for his successor were, he would maintain a relationship with football in Australia even as head coach of the Russian national team, a position he takes up next month.

"I went back to PSV after I had success there the first time and then went back and restructured the club a little bit. I don't say no to Australia because it is too far away. In the meantime, I am going to Russia - but … I am sure that even though I don't have a job [in Australia], I will visit."

Hiddink paid tribute to his players and support staff, describing his time with Australia as "tremendous".

"There is emotion," he said. "Sometimes when I am by myself then I feel a lot of emotion about these players. This group, also the staff, all the people that made it happen around the team. I am very proud when I think of all the members of the team.

"What I like about them is that I could be tough to them but I respected them and they respected me. We had one aim and that was first to qualify for the World Cup and then perform really well on the world stage. Sometimes, I worked them so hard they could kill me but they never gave in and it was such a tremendous time."

Here's another link:

Hiddink revealed that after the loss to Italy, he told the team of his pride in their performance as the players relaxed over dinner at their hotel.

"I expressed my feelings that sometimes it (the build-up) was tough, I demanded a lot of them because, with my modest experience, I know what's coming up in a World Cup.

"They responded to the tough approach and did a terrific job. They answered the demands of international standard (soccer).''

Hiddink said the team stayed up late together.

"We played cards until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. I taught them a Dutch game so we said goodbye with a game of cards."

And the Dutchman spoke of how hard it was to part company with the boys.

"Saying goodbye when the circumstances are bad happens a lot in football and is quite easy. But in this case, it's very hard to say goodbye," he said.

Thanks for the memories; Farewell and Good Luck Guus Hiddink.
You meet people in life and each encounter is important. It was a once in a lifetime thing for the Socceroos and Australia. Guus made it count every last bit. There are no regrets, just broken dreams, but in their place are born new dreams. Life goes on.

Another Dream, Another Promise
The world has noticed Australia now.

No-one gave the Socceroos any chance of winning the tournament but their performances to reach the second round showed they were not out of their depth and with a bit of luck might have gone even further.

Perhaps ominously, their roller-coaster ride also aroused the imagination and interest of a country that has won virtually every major international sporting trophy on offer but shown little real interest in soccer, until now.

Here's what folks in Australian Soccer think:

(Sydney FC Coach) Butcher backed Australia to again reach the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa.

"Qualification is a lot more reachable for the World Cup (with the move to the Asian Confederation)," he said.

"In four years time Australia should be playing in South Africa."

Central Coast coach Lawrie McKinna agreed Australia should qualify again in four years time.

"Hopefully the Australian team is dominating the Asian competition," he said.

"In four years time I think they'll be looking to be ranked in the top 20."

Perth Glory's Alan Vest said it was imperative Australia made it to South Africa.

"We should have got ourselves established in Asia," he said.

"We've got the Olympics to look forward to and then the build-up to the next World Cup, we've been there now and we've got make sure we're there next time."

Adelaide mentor John Kosmina said the opportunity was there for Australian soccer to build a proud history.

"I'd like to think we'd be in the same sort of position as we are now (in four years), we've achieved something now, we need to make sure we're still successful.

"A legend or a tradition has now been born and we need to keep re-creating that ... now we need to start to build some history."

But Bleiberg warned qualification for 2010 would be tough.

"It depends on generations, this generation was very successful and had a lot of talent," he said.

"The young generation is not as good and ... we have to qualify through Asia, it will be much harder."

Well, let's hope it's not another 32 years.

The Legacy Of The 2006 Campaign
Here's an interesting take.
I'm quoting it whole because it's too good to let go into the mists of internet archives. 'The Australian' can sue me.

Neil Clark: A better world is the ultimate goal
June 27, 2006
REGARDLESS of how the Socceroos fared in this morning's second-round match with Italy, let's agree on one thing: the World Cup has been sensational. Not only for the quality of the soccer we have seen, the tremendous spirit of the players and the spectacular goals, but for the unprecedented way in which it has brought together people from across the world.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the nuclear arms race were supposed to usher in global peace and understanding. Sadly, it never happened. Instead, since 1990 the world has become more divided, more dangerous, more unstable. The globalisation model that was adopted - involving the imposition of a one-size-fits-all political, economic and social template by the world's wealthiest nations, if necessary by military force - has not made the world a smaller, friendlier place. If anything, it has pushed peoples further apart.

The World Cup represents an alternative model of globalisation, and a far better one: it involves not the domination of one country or economic system over another, but the celebration of global diversity and respect for, rather than the destruction of, national sovereignty. All across the world, people are once again taking delight in their national identity, to the horror of globalists of the Left and Right. In Germany, flags are once more fluttering on rooftops: a sign that, 60 years after the horrors of World WarII, the country has at last returned to normality. The exuberant, attacking football Jurgen Klinsmann's team has played embodies the spirit of the new Germany: positive, confident, looking forward rather than back.

Australia, too, has advertised its finest, most admirable qualities to a global audience. The never-say-die attitude and buccaneering spirit the Socceroos showed in their matches against Japan, Brazil and Croatia will live long in the memory. Ditto the astonishing ball skills of the Ivory Coast, the best team not to make it to the knock-out stage.

The US has also won friends and admirers, even among those who regard its foreign policy with disdain. Bruce Arena's team played with courage and tenacity, and support for it exposed just how misguided are those who seek to politicise the World Cup. For instance, the World Development Movement's website www.whoshouldicheerfor.com offers advice on which countries we should be supporting on "ethical" grounds. Each country in the World Cup was assessed according to criteria ranging from health spending to carbon emissions: Ghana came first (the most supportable), the US last.

All very useful, but not when football matches are at stake. The Ghanaian team's play-acting and the blatant dive that earned it a decisive penalty in its match with the US would have raised the hackles of any neutrals, regardless of the country's superior record on greenhouse gases. And which pathetic souls would have cheered on Croatia against Australia on the basis that it stands at No.6 in the WDM's ethical assessment, while Australia is at No.28?

The po-faced politicisers fail to understand that in football, it's how teams play the game that determines the reaction of neutral supporters, not the policies of their governments. I knew nothing about The Netherlands or its politics when as a child I cried myself to sleep the night Johan Cruyff's magical team undeservedly lost the 1974 final. And my views on the war in Iraq had no bearing on my cheering on the nine-man US squad in its heroic, gutsy performance against Italy. The World Cup should be about transcending political differences, not extending them.

In Germany, if not on whoshouldicheerfor.com, that has largely been achieved. The atmosphere in the cities of the host nation, apart from the boorish behaviour of a minority of England fans, has been incredible, with supporters from all across the world - from Togo to Paraguay and Iran to South Korea - mingling peacefully. Each set of supporters has brought something special to the tournament: the Trinidadians and Tobagans their steel bands, the Togolese their witch doctors, the Aussies their irrepressible enthusiasm.

My favourite images of the tournament include Argentinian and Mexican fans linking arms together in the stadium in Leipzig during their teams' second-round tie, and a stunningly beautiful German girl, her face painted in black, red and gold, blowing a kiss to the world's television audience during her country's victory over Sweden.

The legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once remarked: "Some people think football is a matter of life and death ... I can assure them it is much more serious than that." He was right. The past three weeks have done more to engender a spirit of global community than any politician, pop star or secretary-general of the UN ever could.

Neil Clark is a lecturer in politics and history at Oxford Tutorial College in England.

Kinda' cool.

The HTV

JAXA Release Details Of HTV
While the whole International Space Station hangs on the shuttle mission, JAXA have released their idea of supplying the ISS.


This is the HTV 1/20th Model:

I've seen this object sittng in one of the foyers in Tsukuba. The model has moving sections when you press a switch up front.

This is how the HTV will be launched, on the the H-IIB rocket:


The HTV module is much heavier than any of the other pay-loads JAXA have fired into orbit. It's certainly rated to be beynd the capacity of the current H-IIA rocket system. Hence the development work going into the successor.

Once the HTV is launched and detached, it docks with the ISS:



...at one of the nodes.



What's really interesting about the HTV is that it has a pressurised section and a non-pressureised section. Once in docking position, people on the ISS can get into the HTV's pressurised section as one of the modules of ISS. Then there is the de-pressurised section which can be exposed to the hard vacuum.
This is a mock up of the actual HTV



When I was there, they were laying in and testing electrical circuitry in this thing.
Now that I see these photos, I'm kind of a little nostalgic about my time there in Tsukuba. I was so exhausted by the end of the trip and it was the last location so I couldn't wait to get out of there; but looking back and seeing these photos, I kind of regret not pestering for more information.

This Week's News

Hubble Trouble


The Hubble Telescope's main camera has shut down and this is creating a problem. Here's an entry from WaPo:

The Advanced Camera for Surveys, a third-generation instrument installed by a space shuttle crew in 2002, went off line Monday, and engineers are still trying to figure out what happened and how to repair it.

"It's still off line today," Max Mutchler, an instruments specialist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said Saturday.

Engineers are hopeful the problem can be fixed, said Ed Campion, a NASA spokesman at Goddard Space Flight Center outside Baltimore, which is responsible for managing the Hubble.

A bad transistor could be causing the trouble, Campion said. If so, a backup could be used. Another suspicion is that some of the camera's memory was disturbed by a cosmic event. That could be fixed by reloading the memory.

"Both possibilities are things that can be resolved here on the ground," Campion said.

The loss of the camera has not shut down the telescope entirely, he said.

"The Advanced Camera for Surveys is regarded as sort of the workhorse for the telescope, but there are other instruments that are still working," Campion said.

Meanwhile...

Everything Riding On This Shuttle Launch
Observers are saying that everything is riding on this coming shuttle launch.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Space shuttle Discovery will carry more than crew and cargo for its scheduled July 1 launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The whole shuttle program's future is riding on this flight.

The stakes could scarcely be higher: if the flight proceeds with a clean, safe lift-off and a trouble-free 13 days, NASA officials have planned two more shuttle flights this year, aiming for the eventual completion of the much-delayed International Space Station and a possible fix for the aging but cherished Hubble Space Telescope.

But if Discovery is seriously damaged at launch and the shuttle crew is sent to shelter aboard the space station, NASA chief Michael Griffin has said he would consider ending the quarter-century-old shuttle program.

In that case, Griffin said on June 17, "I would be moving to shut the program down. ... I think, at that point, we're done."

That would make it virtually impossible to finish building the space station as currently designed or repair the Hubble. It would also leave the United States with no homegrown way to get humans to space until the next generation of vehicles is ready, probably around 2011.

Ouch. You just pray that this flight doesn't kill another seven astronauts. WaPo article is more matter of fact:

Discovery's commander, Steve Lindsey, said he was encouraged by the forthright design debate since NASA was criticized after the Columbia disaster for squelching dissent.

"Both sides were listened to, very vocally and very publicly," Lindsey said. "You had a group of engineers who said, 'Change it.' Managers decided, 'Don't change it.' I guess time will tell which side was really right."

Armed with data from each new flight, NASA managers and engineers plan to make changes to the foam on the tank before each future flight until the fleet is grounded in 2010. The next-generation vehicle isn't expected to fly until around 2014.

NASA managers have acknowledged that another fatal mistake could ground the three remaining shuttles before the international space station is finished being built. It also could rule out any chances of a repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.

"Look, if we go fly and have another accident, that will be the end of the program," Hale said recently. "I'd rather not fly and say we couldn't get our act together ... than rush into some ill-advised launch where we had a catastrophe."

This isn't exactly encouraging to read at all.

Nix And Hydra
Pluto's been found to have 2 more moons.

Pluto's two new moons formerly known as S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2, have been named Hydra and Nix by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the recognized authority for assigning names to celestial bodies. The announcement was made 21 June 2006 in IAU Circular 8723. The two moons were discovered with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in 2005.

Oddbjørn Engvold, General Secretary for the International Astronomical Union, says: "I am very pleased with the decision of the IAU Planetary System Nomenclature Working Group".

There we go.

Group F Fall-out

The End Of The Road For Japan
Well, it's that point of the World Cup and this much we know: Brazil is still Brazil. Brazil trounced Japan 4-1, in a game reminiscent of the Australia-Japan match. Japan had a 1-0 lead but Brazil stormed back.

You have to feel for Hidetoshi Nakata, who came into this tournament as the single most marked player on the Japanese squad. He was never satisfied with the level of commitment shown by the rest of the squad and this result is going to sit very heavily upon all of Japan. This is going to lead to a lot of changes.


Group F was a rough group to be in for Japan. Brazillian soccer is actually quite close to Japanese soccer, what with Japan coach Zico being a one-time great of Brazil and Alassandro Santos being a Brazillian-born Japan player. The J-League has incorporated lots of playing aspects from the Brazillians, so in that sense, they were playing the masters of their game.

With Cafu, Roberto Carlos, Ze Roberto, Adriano and Emerson on the bench, Brazil could have been accused of taking their final group game lightly. Brazil, though, had started with more purpose than in their previous two games, forcing good saves from Japan's former Portsmouth goalkeeper, Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi.

Japan responded with a move worthy of the famous yellow shirt. A five-pass build-up sent the ball into the penalty area and only a near-post interception from Arsenal's Gilberto Silva prevented Akira Kaji's dangerous low centre from causing problems.

Indeed, with Brazil reduced to mainly long-range attempts and Japan prepared to hit them on the counter-attack, this was turning into a thoroughly entertaining affair.

So when Japan scored, in the 34th minute, it was not such a big surprise. Junichi Inamoto instigated the move, feeding Brazilian-born Alex on the left, and he set up Keiji Tamada for a magnificent finish from 15 yards.

However, Brazil responded in first-half added time, with Ronaldinho's pass returned by the impressive Cicinho and headed firmly beyond Kawaguchi by Ronaldo to claim his first of the tournament.

The second half was only eight minutes old when Brazil took the lead, Juninho's swerving shot deceiving Kawaguchi from 30 yards. Ronaldinho fed Gilberto for the third, but the best was to come.

In the 81st minute, Ronaldo took a pass from Juan and created some space for himself before side-footing into the far corner of the net from outside the area.

Then there was Croatia, who were always going to pose a challenge through their imposing physical advantage, and then Australia. I never got the feeling that the Japanese media actually understood the Socceroos. If there was one team between Croatia and Australia that they shouldn't have designated as "easy target" (i.e under-estimate), it was probably Australia.

Harry Kewell Paying Off The Promise
Australia on the other hand drew with Croatia 2-2, and are thus, through to the final round.





That's Harry Kewell's goal levelling the match at the 79th minute.
If ever there was a much-maligned Australian player it's Harry Kewell. It took years for him to be allowed to represent Australia as freely as he wanted and now we're seeing the man we've been missing all this time. For years his club Liverpool would thwart atttempts by Australia to recruit him into the socceroos. What's worse, the club never stepped up to protect Kewell by saying so. As a result, Kewell took thrashings from the Australian press for not playing for Australia. Now, with that 79th minute goal that tied the match, his place in Australian soccer history is enshrined.

"Screw You All, I'm Still A Ronaldo Fan"


The way I see it, Ronaldo is the A-Rod of world soccer. Or A-Rod is the Ronaldo of world baseball. I don't know which. They're not exactly alike characters, but as guys who stand at the peak of the game, they're the 'it' men for their respective sports. You have to admire guys who get there through an over-abundance of capital 'T' Talent. Even when they go through a bad patch, one really shouldn't be writing them off.

Ronaldo is finally back to game shape.

Warning for the world: Ronaldo is up and running. Running may be a slight exaggeration, but the incredible bulk from Brazil scored his country's first and final goals last night, overtaking Pele to equal Gerd Müller's record of 14 World Cup goals and punishing Japan for their impertinence in taking the lead through Keiji Tamada.

Ronaldo equalised with a header, and after goals by Junior Pernambucano and Gilberto, fired his second to complete a win that ensures Brazil return here to face Ghana in the second round next Tuesday. Their delight was their compatriot Zico's disappointment; his tenure as Japan's coach would have continued only had they remained in the tournament.

Watched from the stands by Pele, a clearly emotional Zico sang both anthems. If Brazil are some way short of the standard of the 1982 side he played in, they are at least starting to find the higher gears. They did so, moreover, despite Carlos Alberto Parreira having rested five players.

Yet the Brazil coach persevered with Ronaldo, pairing him with the lithe Robinho, and the theory that the roly-poly attacker needed match practice was handsomely vindicated. Almost from the first whistle there were indications that his eye for goal is getting sharper.

It was an impression he was eager to confirm afterwards. "I'm very happy that I've made such a significant improvement, physically and technically, during the tournament," he said. "Patience is the key word. In all the difficult moments, I have managed to stay calm."

He's a villain in my part of the world because he dissed the Australians in the press saying he didn't know anything about any of them. My reaction? "yeah, yeah, whatever".
How many Australians know anything about, say, the Brazillians not possessed of single named jerseys? Or for that matter, who in wider Australia knew about 'Fred' beyond the true soccer fans? And there he was walkng in a goal against 'Straya.

Anyway, Ronaldo seems to finally have found his feet again, and they're mighty feet indeed. Watch out World.

Mailbox Funnies

This one came in rom Gra-gra.

These are from a book called Disorder in the Courts of America, and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
WITNESS: Forty-five years.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo?
WITNESS: We both do.
ATTORNEY: Voodoo?
WITNESS: We do.
ATTORNEY: You do?
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: Uh, he's twenty-one...
______________ __ _____________________

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Would you repeat the question?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Uh....
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
______ _____ __________________________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY : Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WIT NESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

Amazing.

Melroy's Space

New Female Commander For The Shuttle
Here's the link.

Air Force Col. Pamela Ann Melroy will become the second woman to command a space shuttle mission when her crew heads to the international space station next year, NASA announced.

Melroy, 44, follows in the footsteps of Eileen Collins, who charted a groundbreaking career as the first woman to pilot and command a space shuttle.

Collins retired from NASA in May after serving as commander last year of the first space shuttle since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Melroy and five crew members will fly to the international space station aboard space shuttle Atlantis to deliver a module that eventually will connect to European and Japanese science laboratories, NASA announced Monday. The mission is tentatively slated for late summer 2007.

Other crew members are pilot George Zamka and mission specialists Scott Parazynski, Doug Wheelock, Mike Foreman and Paolo Nespoli.

It will be the third shuttle mission for Melroy, who served as a pilot on shuttle flights in 2000 and 2002. She is a native of Palo Alto, California, who graduated from Wellesley College and earned a master's degree in Earth and planetary sciences from MIT.

Hopefully this mission is all going to work out fine. We all know what a craptacular concept the shuttle is now, it's scary we're sending anybody up in it, but it does owe a few trips to the ISS.

I Have A New Song

It's a song called 'Miss Belinda' out at iCompositions.
This song technically is the last song in my 12 song series called 'Escape From Satellite City'.
Yes, I'm being a sexist scumbag in using the pickie of the chickie in a bikini, but not being a sexist never profited me a cent so I am going to go out in a blaze of political incorrectness in getting people to check out my song. So... lustily check out my song. Click on my artist badge in the right hand column, click on 'Miss Belinda' download button, and the song is yours for a listen!

Weekend That Was - Phase 1 In Which Doris Gets Her Oats


I know 'Two of Us' was a Lennon song, but hey, if the shoe fits, it fits. Sir Paul McCartney turned 64, and with that he received a rash of media attention, getting compared to his own song.

AS A young Beatle, Paul McCartney wondered what it would be like to be 64. Yesterday he found out.

But far from the enduring love he described when, as a teenager he wrote the Beatles' classic When I'm Sixty-Four, McCartney finds his life in turmoil. He and second wife, Heather Mills, split after a four-year marriage.

The separation is being played out in the full glare of publicity as intense as anything McCartney experienced in his days as a Beatle.

Mills, 38, has been the subject of a torrent of tabloid allegations about her past life, and has pledged to sue one British newspaper. "One of the worst aspects of going through what Heather and I are currently going through is the malicious spreading of rumours and made-up facts that is happening in some areas of the media," McCartney said in a recent message on his website.

McCartney's spirits may be at a low ebb but he remains a national institution in Britain and adored by millions of fans around the world. The Daily Mirror said McCartney's daughters Stella and Mary celebrated his 64th birthday by throwing a barbecue for close friends and family at his estate at Peasmarsh, East Sussex, in southern England.

In contrast to the frugal old age he foresaw in When I'm Sixty-Four, taking holidays "if it's not too dear", McCartney is one of Britain's wealthiest people.

Legal sources say he could lose up to a quarter of his £825 million ($A2 billion) fortune in a divorce settlement.

I guess the more sobering thought is that only 2 out of 4 of the Beatles made it to 60-something. Money, Fame and Fortune can't buy you longevity if you smoke or get hounded by crazies with a gun.

World Cup All-Nighters
Yeah, yeah, I watched the Japanese draw 0-0 with the Croats and the Aussies lose 2-0 to Brazil.

Australia produced a wonderful performance against the world champions but still fell short 2-0 in a truly competitive match which showed the immense progress the Socceroos have made since the appointment of Guus Hiddink.

Second half goals from Adriano and Fred sealed qualification from Group F for Brazil, but following the goalless draw between Croatia and Japan a point for Australia in their final match will almost certainly see them historically through to the second round.

The pre match talk surrounded the yellow card situation of Australia who had four players one booking away from suspension, Moore, Bresciano, Cahill and Grella desperately needing to stay out of trouble in order to face Croatia in the final encounter of the group stage.

Carlos Alberto Parreira named an unchanged side despite the widespread criticism of their narrow victory against Croatia while Hiddink made three changes, dropping Kewell, Bresciano and Wilkshire to the bench in favour of Sterjovski, Popovic and the hero of the last match Cahill.

It was to be expected, but the Socceroos did put on a brave performance and the scoreline hardly reflects the vigor with which they attacked and laid on the pressure. That late goal for Brazil was flukey.

'Adele Bloch-Bauer I' Is Sold


One of Gustav Klimt's masterpieces 'Adele Bloch-Bauer I' sold for an estimated US$135million in a private sale.

The portrait, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist and the hostess of a prominent Vienna salon, is considered one of the artist's masterpieces. For years, it was the focus of a restitution battle between the Austrian government and a niece of the Bloch-Bauers who said it was seized, along with four other Klimt paintings, by the Nazis during World War II.

In January all five paintings were awarded to the niece, Maria Altmann, now 90, who lives in Los Angeles, and other family members. Although confidentiality agreements surrounding the sale forbid Mr Lauder to disclose the price, experts said he paid $US135 million.

"This is our Mona Lisa," said Mr Lauder, a founder of the five-year-old Neue Galerie, a tiny museum devoted to German and Austrian fine and decorative arts. "It is a once-in-a-lifetime acquisition."

Mrs Bloch-Bauer died in 1925 at 43. In her will she requested that the painting and four others by Klimt be left to Austria on her husband's death. But when Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, he fled, leaving his possessions behind. The Nazi government confiscated his property.

Mr Bloch-Bauer died in November 1945, leaving his entire estate to three children of his brother Gustav: Robert, Luise and Maria. Only Maria Altmann is still living.

The price eclipsed the $US104 million paid for Picasso's Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice).

I have no smart-alec comment to make.

Having A Whale Of A Time
I haven't followed the fracas closely this year as the World Cup is inherently more interesting than nations arguing semantics and confuting ethics and environmentalism with name-calling.

I look upon the whaling issue not as the fighting standard for environmentalism, but the issue that puts the 'mental' case into the environmentalism. There are simply bigger, more pressing issues than whales. All the energy expended here is actually of no use to the overall picture of Global Warming and Global Dimming.

Today I find this article.

The International Whaling Commission narrowly voted that a 20-year ban on commercial whale hunting no longer was necessary because marine mammals have recovered from near extinction.
The 33-32 vote at Frigate Bay, St Kitts and Nevis, gave Japan a symbolic victory in its campaign to resume whaling and signaled a power shift within the commission but did not jeopardize the ban, which can be overturned only by a 75 percent vote from among the 70 member nations. Environmentalists and other observers called such a scenario unlikely.

The so-called St Kitts and Nevis Declaration also expressed the deeply divided group's "commitment to normalizing the functions of the IWC" - a reference to Japan's desire to return to the IWC's original role as a whalers' club with only modest responsibility to manage whale populations.

The vote demonstrated that Japan and its pro-whaling allies Norway and Iceland have finally acquired control of the IWC by enticing small Caribbean, Pacific and African countries - some of them landlocked and most of them with no interest in whaling - with lavish aid and assistance in developing fisheries.

Denmark unexpectedly voted in support of the declaration after previously siding with the conservation advocates. The European nation appeared to be swayed by the pro-whaling sentiments of its constituents in Greenland and the Faeroe Islands.

The resolution cast the 1986 whaling ban as a temporary measure aimed at allowing stocks to recover and deemed it "no longer necessary." It also contended that commercial whaling should resume because the commission's research has shown that "whales consume huge quantities of fish, making the issue a matter of food security for coastal nations."

Japan, Iceland and Norway have continued to kill more than 2,000 whales annually. The Japanese and Icelanders have exploited a loophole that allows "scientific" whaling, while the Norwegians ignore the moratorium altogether.

The host country's initiative passed after impassioned statements by Caribbean delegates that the whaling ban was a form of "new colonialism" by wealthy states that seek to impose "emotional" arguments that are detrimental to the small islands' economic development and natural resource exploitation.

"Years ago, we were told what to eat," said Claris Charles, Grenada's Cabinet member responsible for environmental and fisheries matters, recalling how slaves imported to the islands to work sugar cane fields were fed salted fish by colonial masters.

Cedric Liburd, head of the St Kitts delegation, proclaimed the decision "a historical one as we move toward normalization of the IWC. We're hoping this small country, St Kitts and Nevis, will help to bring the IWC back on its right course."

Japan's success in luring a simple majority of the IWC's members to its side provoked anger and predictions of doom for the global whale population among conservation and protection advocates. For example, only about 1,000 blue whales are believed to survive out of a population believed to have been about 250,000 before large-scale commercial whaling.

Well, when you think about it, the ban had to end this way.
The anglophone countries lack credibility in a post-Colonial world when they say "save the whales" to these tiny, poor nations where people are genuinely starving. For that, they only have their own histories to look back upon. I do take a lot of amusement out of this outcome after years of following this annual shitfight.


And one more thing... Media pictures like this one are terrible. If you took photos inside an abattoir, it would be even more bloody. Cruelty per se shouldn't be an argument against whaling. Such a position will inevitably draw fire as being hypocritical unless that party is completely vegetarian.

Fantasy Team Report
My baseball Combat Wombats have reclaimed the top spot and are extending the lead. I feel like a genius. My AFL Combat Womabts are regressing down to the bottom half as my stars have begun to regress significantly. Luke Hodge, Peter Everitt, Ben Cousins, Dean Cox and Chris Fletcher turned in a very mortal/un-Godlike performances this weekend, totally killing my totals.
My Yahoo Soccer team is also slipping into oblivion, while my Sportal soccer team is re-defining oblivion itself.
Predictably, I am busy chasing numbers.