Posts by giovanni tiso
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Police interview Sensing Murder psychics
And not with a view to charge them with something, mind. To help them solve a murder.
Can I have the money from my taxes that goes to the police redirected towards something useful?
(I found it pretty hard to "sense" in which thread we talked about this, by the way - Russell, the search function sucks. In the event, Google saved the day.)
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In other news, I woke up this morning to the melliflous sound of John Banks' voice saying "Clearly I know how the mentally ill operate." Would anybody like to fill me in on what he said before that most disturbing sentence?
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If there's anything the Democrats can hammer her on, it has to be this.
Book banning, book banning, book banning. Extreme views on abortion. Creationism in schools. She's not a politician, she's a pinhata.
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There is an energy policy in there. An attitude to taxes, Iraq, size of government.
Ah, yes, it's all in the attitude. That's what leadership is about, isn't it? Appearing sure of yourself, projecting a certain image, being surrounded by family. A compelling personal story. Attitude.
The reason why Obama's speech was exceptional is that he managed to weave the personal story, the mantra of unity, the attitude towards the social ills of the country, with a substantive political project of reform. He let you know what he was about and how he was going to go about things. It's up to McCain to match that (good luck, bro). But that wasn't Palin's job. She had to tell the country who she was, make the case for McCain, attack Obama. She did all those things, not helped by the fact that Giuliani went over and so they couldn't show her biographical video in time for the prime time cameras.
Within that particular frame, she did brilliantly, I thought. Simon and Craig have accused her to be reading off a prompter the words written by somebody else, but hey, so did Biden, and not half as well. But the convention speech was step one, and in a way the easiest one, where you get to define yourself in front of a friendly crowd; how she's going to front up to scrutiny, the vicepresidential debate, the scandals and indiscretions that are quite legitimately up for debate (troopergate, the bookbanning spree, the earmark boast, the being for the bridge before she was against it... that's not bad in four days!) that's the big question. If she can't do any of that - I doubt she can, at this point - they'll sequester her from the media and use her exclusively on the trail, where she could be moderately useful in some communities. But without a meaningful national media presence, she'll be a drag, as well, a constant reminder that old man McCain doesn't really have a number two.
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I'd actually prefer no politician anywhere uses their families as stump props
I'm still trying to get over Gore kissing Tipper. Ah, the humanity!...
But Americans in many ways elect a first family, don't they, a pair of quadriennial constituional monarchs with tots in tow (occasionally they get to succeed their fathers, too - the adorable little nippers!). The family is always in the picture, this is nothing new.
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Ahem. Red Wings won the Stanley Cup _this_ year.
My Anaheim Ducks won the Stanley Cup _last_ year.I meant last season. I am sadly aware of what happened last year.
(One game! They banned Pronger for just one game! A travesty.)The FA gave those sailors a set of rules to play by, it popularised them, it organised the FA Cup to showcase the best football happening.
When the Italians wanted to start an organised sport, they used the English model because they saw the FA as an admirable example.Look, half the football clubs were cricket clubs as well, and do you think that Italians even knew what the FA Cup was? They liked football, they quickly discarded cricket, and moved on. There weren't a million ways you could organise tournaments given the basic set of rules, and the original serie A resembled the English tournament as much as the NPC resembles whatever goes on in England in rugby right now. Bear in mind too that the FA was fiercely insular, hardly a soccer promoting body - the English team didn't play abroad until well after WW2. But that's by the by. The point is according to what criteria you could say that the English Premiership is successful (makes money, fill seats, yes, but is rife with violence and racism and doesn't serve the national team too well) and whether the model could be applied here, if it were even desirable to do so.
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No, but the FA has still done a very good job at getting people to play football worldwide
Wow, that's a big statement. England invented the sport and it caught on, but it's hardly the FA that did it. I know a bit about the history of the sport in my country, and I can tell you it was British expats - and particularly sailors in Genoa - that got it all started, and it took off from there. Bugger all to do with the FA.
The examples you cite, well, I don't know much about Argentine football (except that they're animals...)
I'll let that one slide.
but the French use a similar system to the English one -- a league with relegation/promotion, a cup, a national team that doesn't restrict itself to only picking players playing domestically, etc.
It's got nothing to do with the league, it's how they get kids to play, how many grounds and clubs they set up in the seventies and eighties, their high performance centres. They were quite revolutionary back then, and it's paid off handsomely. And yes, unlike the English, they pick a lot of players from abroad, simply because historically their league doesn't have a lot of money to play around with (although they're catching up).
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if thats wood - its smokun
She already got ripped into for that line dissing community organisers by a very angry pundit on CNN, and I think there will be more to come. One of the very few genuine blunders in the speech - which BTW conveniently ignores the fact that Obama went on to become a state senator after working in his community; for true symmetry, she ought to have pointed out that after finishing her studies, she went on to become a sports newscaster.
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The Enquirer will continue to pursue news on both sides of the political spectrum
We sniff panties in a non-partisan way. Priceless!
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As evinced by the fact that everyone plays Association Football. That would seem the most important measure of the Football Association's success.
If that were true, I'd expect the national team to be quite a lot more successful. Besides, a lot of people play football in Brazil and Argentina and quite a few African countries, in spite of the very sorry financial state of their premiere competitions, and in Italy, Spain, Germany etc. I think if you want to look for countries that are very successful in promoting participation and fostering talent, I'd rather point to France and Argentina. Assuming we're interested not just in the NPC being well attended, but also in the All Blacks being successful.
Further, if you look at the teams which beat English teams, an awful lot of them follow the basic English model of a league and a cup, and are organisationally very similar.
European leagues work more or less all in the same way, yes. It's quite possible that it was the English who started the model, seeing as they invented the sport. It doesn't mean it's an unqualified success, nor that you can apply it here, to a different sport and a much, much, much smaller market. That way the talent drains of South American and African countries lies.