Hiatus

Sorry, from this point on we are on hiatus until we are not.

Ghana 0 - Ghana 1

Ghana defeated Ghana!
Wow, what a game! Ghana was a way better team but could not win, even after getting a penalty kick.

And Brazil, a shadow of its former great self, was defeated by the Netherlands.

One prediction that I might regret: Germany pulverizes Argentina today...

Mundial 2010

Portugal 7
North Korea 0
Wow!

Even though it sometimes seems this way, there are no truly awful teams on Mundial: there are a few great teams, couple of good teams and a bunch of "less good" teams, but no god-awful teams. Well, any team, even the greatest, has on occasional bad day but the North Korean team had a really frigging dreadful day today when it lost seven to nil to Portugal. High scores are as rare in soccer as hen's teeth, and even rarer on Mundial, so this one truly stands out…

Too bad that the unfortunate North Korean players (and even more so their managers and coaches) as their reward for “exemplary” performance on Mundial may be forced to contribute to the North Korea’s nuclear program and carry radioactive isotopes with their bare hand if the Korean despot-in-chief (pardon me, Exalted Leader) Comrade Kim Jong-Il, flies off the handle.

Huh..?

All I could utter was a very loud WTF...

In a stunning move by the Vatican, the classic Dan Aykroyd-John Belushi comedy film "The Blues Brothers" was declared a "Catholic classic" alongside more pious films such as "The Ten Commandments" and "The Passion of the Christ."

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/mission_accomplished_vatican_blesses_gex4vIBiJ78B9Pgukel42I?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=#ixzz0rJdb6nd1

José Saramago

José Saramago, the first Portuguese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1998) passed away in Spain at 87. Loved by many (including yours truly) and despised by some - a great human being and a wonderful writer.

British Petroleum (BP) oil spill 2010

Here is something from the land of the truly stupid...

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) called the BP escrow fund for cleanup a “shakedown” and a “$20 billion slush fund” then apologized to BP during the congressional hearing today.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38665.html#ixzz0r8tIApql

British Petroleum (BP) oil spill 2010

As quoted by The Daily Beast, Mr. Carl-Henric Svanberg, the Chairman of BP said that his company cares for the "little people" affected by the spill. Now, he's a Swede so that might be just a lapsus. On the other hand most educated Swedes speak excellent English so there is an outside chance that his choice of words wasn't accidental and that Mr. Carl-Henric Svanberg is simply a common asshole.

American Airlines and common sense

Read here about American Airlines offering discount prices of formerly free services. Yes, you pay actual dollars for formerly free services and it is called discount..! I admire their semantics (I do, I really do, it is evil but oh-so creative use of words!) employed to justify price increases and nickel-and- diming of the flying public:

“American Airlines Introduces ‘Your Choice’ Services to Give Customers More Options, Greater Control Over Travel Experiences.”
“It allows people to tailor their purchases and buy things that have value to them.”
“American Airlines Streamlines Its Airport Processes.”

Lavatory use is still free (?) on American Airlines so pee away!

British Petroleum (BP) oil spill 2010

(...)Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials.(...)

Read more on the New York Times site (may require a logon and a free account.)

Sir Elton (openly gay) John and common sense

Fact: one million dollar wedding of a very conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, 59 (to Kathryn Rogers, 33) in Florida. Sir (openly gay) Elton John performed for a cool six figure fee. More at the Daily Beast.

Here's a typical Limbaugh's comment about gays:
When a gay person turns his back on you, it is anything but an insult; it’s an invitation”
(More of the kind here.)

No comment, of course...

British Petroleum (BP) oil spill 2010

ABC News reports that
(..)A simple Google search of "oil spill" turns up several thousand news results, but the first link, highlighted at the very top of the page, is from BP. "Learn more about how BP is helping," the link's tagline reads. (...)

Read more at ABC News

Rental cars

2010 Ford Mustang Convertible (soft top.)

Rented from Alamo in Denver, Colorado at the end of February. Why did I rent a rear-drive convertible in winter? Why not..? I drove it around 1000 miles in 6 days, including two trips over the La Veta pass, without a problem save for a few fishtails on a packed snow.

While the Mustang is nothing spectacular in terms of performance, a fine sports car wannabe nonetheless, it is a nice car to look at, with pleasant and pretty comfortable interior. Ride was a bit on the “sofa on wheels side” (esp. in tighter turns) but bearable nonetheless. But... the fit and finish can be easily described as a piece of automotive crap. Literally, no interior component fits properly! Gaps and misaligned plastic parts are everywhere. A herd of Orangutans with screwdrivers would have put it better together! The convertible top would go down smoothly but got stuck during my attempts to put it back up (it was cold or perhaps it was my fault, these contraptions are sometimes finicky.) The trunk space with the top down was OK for a convertible (but miniscule comparing to an average sedan) but quite spacious with the top up. The ride was quiet – for a soft top convertible - with the top up, but noisy with the top down with strong wind buffeting above 60 mph. I didn’t use it with the top down for long, though – it was freaking cold!

Would I rent it again – perhaps, it’s a fun car to drive for a week or two with the top down. Would I buy it? Hell no!!! Judging from that rental, Ford in the US has a long way to go before their cars can remotely approach even the cheapest European and Japanese imports in terms of fit and finish.

Example (highlited in red) of "fit and finish by Ford" on the Mustang.

Photo credit, both photos: Copyright © 2010 Michael Liczbanski

Passings

Italian screenwriter Furio Scarpelli passed away on April 28, 2010 in Rome. He was 90.
He wrote or co-wrote many classic Italian movies including two of my favorites, the Sergio Leone’s spaghetti-western classic “Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo” (“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”) and “Il Postino”.

It is illegal to be illegal! WTF..?

The Legal Arizona Workers Act, aka the “Employer Sanctions Law,” went into effect January 1, 2008. You can see it here.

“The Legal Arizona Workers Act, as amended, prohibits businesses from knowingly or intentionally hiring an “unauthorized alien” after December 31, 2007. Under the statute, an “unauthorized alien” is defined as “an alien who does not have the legal right or authorization under federal law to work in the United States.” The law also requires employers in Arizona to use the “E-Verify” system (a free Web-based service offered by the federal Department of Homeland Security) to verify the employment authorization of all new employees hired after December 31, 2007.”

WTF? Someone has to employ the undocumented workers in Arizona or they wouldn’t be there, so instead of simply enforcing the existing law Arizona has now elected to enact new statues making being illegal illegal. Oh yes, enforcing the existing law would mean alienating their Republican electoral base (the small, blue-collar, business owners likely to employ undocumented workers seem to be mostly Republican…)

Passings

Alejandro Robaina, famous Cuban tobacco farmer, known as the "godfather of Cuban tobacco" passed away today at his home in the Vuelta Abajo region. He was 91 and apparently died of cancer.