the darkerside to rants

So unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, this years tour is wide open again:

Germany’s Jan Ullrich, out of the Tour de France because of his connection to Spain’s blood-doping scandal, has become a fallen hero just one day before the start of an event he was tipped to win.

And not only him, Ivan Basso is out as well, as well as all riders that is associated with Eufemiano Fuentes, a doctor in Spain who seems to have performed blood doping on a couple of riders (over 30) who were slated to start at the Tour.

The decision, btw, was not made by UCI but by the teams, probably in an attempt to get some faith back, nothing has been proven, but who really doubts that there is doping?

So, who’ll stand on the podium in Paris at the end of July in the first race in the post Armstrong era?

Seen today:

It’s a fact – A whole grain diet may help you manage your weight.

Well thank god it’s a fact.

So,

Germany is on to the half final after defeating the Argentineans in a penalty shootout. Both teams would have deserved to win, but Germany had the nerves and so they move on.

Bummer for Argentina but in a way I am delighted.

Yes, sucks. It is now basically luck of the draw who moves on …..

Not happy about this, but I guess it was half to be expected at this stage of the game…. At least it is not the final yet.

On a different note. I noted that the Teamgeist balls have the names of the teams that play, location and time on them. I wonder if they do them somewhere overnight and fly them in or if they just created balls with all possibilities?

If the latter, will those “wrong” balls show up on eBay?

Well,

the game heated up a bit in the second half, ended 1:1.

Both goals were beautiful, but nerves are starting to show. We’re now heading into the 30 minutes of extra time and then maybe penality kicks…

I think the team that keeps their nerve will win, right now, it’s still wide open.

Well, it was some nice football, mainly though I think it was a snffing out of both sides, trying to test each other, very very few real chances, mainly in the middle field.

But it is sort of amazing to see how Argentina controlled the ball…..

Well, I think we may go into overtime, it’s still wide open.

0:0 at this point.

Pretty amazing….

Excellent movie about political realities, especially in light of 9/11.

John Connolly has an interesting piece on his blog about how we accidentally find new, interesting things, and how modern technology may change this soon.

I suppose the concept of instant gratification has been on my mind ever since reading an article about Google in a newspaper last week. Google, as some of you may know, rather fancies making every book ever written available to people on the Internet: just press a button, and the text will appear on the screen before you. It is, I suppose, the way of the future, but it seems to me that it spells a slow death for the idea of browsing and searching, at least in a way that does not involves browsers and search engines. In my darker hours, I wonder sometimes if, a generation or two down the line, there will even be bookstores to visit.

He has a point there, what I like about books is that you can read them anywhere, no power needed, you can browse them, get drawn in and get lost in them.

His story on how he finds books is interesting in a way because this is pretty much how I found him, his books. I was browsing around a book store, grabbed the book, read the cover text, started reading the first chapter and was hooked. This was Black Angel, and he has me as a reader since then….. I am not sure I would have found his book (or others) online. I don’t like reading large texts online (and yet, I still spend probably 50% of my time reading online, if not more so these days), but there is something nice, relaxing in sitting down somewhere with a book… Safety?

On my last move I realized I own around 2000 pounds worth of books and CDs…. My total moving weight was 3500 pounds, that should give you an idea on how important the written word is to me.

So, Futurama is back, and as a “spearhead” they produced a trailer for “An Inconvenient Truth” (which I actually saw yesterday).

Review of movie to follow, but if you don’t know what it’s all about, watch these two trailers: