Vent of Hearing

Arts and Letters Daily

Arts and Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate

Tons and tons of links about a wide variety of subjects. Looks to have an interesting selection of links, but with no dating it is not clear when they are added to the website.

Making Contexts

Making Contexts: "Choose an image. Click on it. Write. Aside from that, how you want to do things is up to you."

[via markpasc.blog]

The new Sick Note

Soccernet reports that Steven Gerrard is injured again.

Certain players have a propensity for injury, e.g. Darren Anderton, and "The Owen and Giggs Hamstring Boys". Steven Gerrard seems to be another.

I can accept the odd injury to players (Beckham's foot) but Gerrard's training and playing techniques must be looked at for his long term future. To get recurring injuries is detrimental to himself, his club and his country.

As good as Nicky Butt played in the World Cup, you can't help feel that we'd have done so much better with a fit Steven Gerrard, especially with Beckham not being fully fit.

What Happened to the New Fast Automatic Daffodils?

To the person who did a search for "What Happen to the New Fast Automatic Daffodils" - A very good question. Something I want to know myself.

According to the New FADs website they finished in 1995 after poor sales of their last album :-

"Their ideas continue to develop in different directions, with Justin working at present on an extracurricular project under the guise of Only Child (he is one). Meanwhile, the next FADs project is to be self-produced and will incorporate elements from their live shows, as well as more unusual recording locations such as viaduct arches on a Sunday morning."

However, none of that appears to have resulted in any produced work.

Stop moaning, United didn't win anything last season

spiked-life | Column | Offside, 25 July: "It's about time we called a halt to the anti-United moan-athon. Instead of whinging about United, the other title contenders could, er, try to raise their own standards."

So Manchester United bought Rio. I said at the end of last season we needed three new defenders and a new goalkeeper. One down, three to go.

Last season United were going to win everything because of Veron and Van Nistelrooy. Look what happened.

I see Arsenal as the team to beat, with Liverpool being a real worry. As ever fans should concentrate on their own teams instead of looking across at Man United.

Sherwood doesn't help himself

I can't see this doing Tim Sherwood any favours. If Hoodle were to bring in new, better players, I would expect Sherwood to be one of the ones replaced. He isn't that good.

Why Spike Cheats at Kitten Poker

Series 6 Buffy spoilers of a very light variety. Honest, it won't hurt if you look, but if you are sort of person who doesn't want to know anything about it, look away now

Bradford Gamble Failure

BBC SPORT | Football | Teams | Bradford City | Bradford future rests on Carbone.

Bradford City could potentially fold as a result of the club gambling their future on the exhorbitant wages of one player.

Although Carbone is at part to blame, the real idiots are the people who agreed to pay him the money (UKP40,000 a week, even Manchester United think twice about paying that much). They gambled on the fact that this player could keep them in the Premiership and lost. Now, the revenue isn't there and they can't afford to pay him.

Let's hope that the club survive and the board learn an important lesson and pass that lesson onto everyone else.

I have to admit a real conflict of interest here. A large part of footballs money troubles have been because the other clubs have been trying to keep up with Manchester United. It seems only United, Arsenal and a few other big clubs are ever going to win the league now, and that isn't very good for the game. Sort of devalues the winning of it really, if you know that other teams can't compete with you. Look how much money Fulham had to spend to get to mid table position. Ten years ago, Fulham were Blackburn and they were able to win it. I really doubt that now.

What is the word?

What is the word for the feeling I have right now?

Is it ennui? Maybe, but it doesn't communicate the frustration I have with everything.

Is it anger? Possibly, if I had energy for anger.

Is it hopelessness? Closer, but doesn't convey the frustration I mentioned above.

Is it frustration then? It's a part of it, but not the summation of it all.

What is the word then?
I don't know, that's the whole point.
I don't know.

Rio Signs

I had a nightmare last night where Man United accidentally signed Les Ferdinand by mistake, but it seems that everything has gone according to plan and Rio Ferdinand is now a Manchester United player.

Gary Neville is conpetant enough, and it Wes Brown fulfilled his potential, that only leaves left-back as United's problem area (apart from backup for Giggs when he gets injured). Silvestre isn't so bad, I suppose.

If one player can make a defence, then it will be someone like Rio Ferdinand, and he'll have experience of playing alongside Beckham, Butt, Neville and Scholes for England.

I feel sorry for Leeds United fans (no, honestly!) because it seems their club has overreached itself financially, but they were the ones who took a gamble on Rio in the first place. Back then, he wasn't the finished player.

But if they start moaning about us stealing him, I can only point out that we only did to Leeds what they did to West Ham.

With Arsenal without a few key players now, I expect Liverpool to be the main challengers (always harder to defend your title). I think they got lucky with the Bowyer transfer and will probably get Duff now.

Weird weather in Peru

The Independent reports that there are snow blizzards in Peru.

This is weird weather. I visited Peru in August 1999 (just one month later) and it was hot. Very hot. I thought maybe it was just Southern Peru but Cusco was reported as one of the places in a state of emergency. I walked the Inca Trail near Cusco (we're talking jungle here) and had to so careful not to dehydrate and get sun stroke.

Rio Deal Agreed

BBC SPORT | ENGLISH PREMIERSHIP | Man Utd reach Rio deal.

I am, of course, over the moon about this. :)

Hughes the Legend

An article on the living legend (in Manchester United eyes at least), Mark Hughes. He was class.

Breast Feeding and cancer

Breastfeeding could slash breast cancer risk : "Having an average of six children and breastfeeding them for two years would reduce the incidence of breast cancer to third world levels according to Cancer Research UK".

Yes, but the woman would die ten years younger due to stress

Discussion on Parentheses

Parentheses: "To understand parentheses in grammar, think of them in math:

1 (2 x 2) = 5"

Rio Transfer Request

What is going on with Leeds United and Rio Ferdinand. I thought David O'Leary got sacked because he opposed the sale of Rio. It must have been for some other reason, or Leeds just want to make Manchester United pay as much as possible for England's best centre-back.

Height and Intelligence

Every time I need to test a change to dellah.com, I fire up a linux box that I rarely ever use (it sits under my desk), and every time I forgot where I put apache. It is not in the usual place and I can never remember where I put it. When I installed it, I knew less than a penguin about linux. The fact is I now know only slightly more than a penguin about linux, and it isn't helping me be more technologically able.

I think I have a limit to everything I put my mind to beyond which I just can't cope. For example. Maths and Physics. At school, I was close to the top of the class in both these subjects before 6th form. It was simple stuff. In 6th form, things got a little bit more complicated, and whilst others seemed to stay at their level (the top of the class stayed at the top, the middle struggled a little bit and some passed and some failed, whilst the bottom didn't even do A Levels), I dropped to the middle section. By degree level, the physics got just to complicated and I scrapped a 3rd (although I suppose proper revision might have helped). Most of the people who were in the middle section at school did better than me.

Is this related to my height? At 13 I was one of the tallest in my class and played football at centre-back. By 16 I was one of the smallest, and played right wing.

ADSL Coming Soon

For Telephone Number XXXX XXXXXX on Exchange READING TILEHURST

Good news! The checker indicates that Broadband is available in your area and that the preliminary check on your line suggests that you should be able to receive Broadband services at speeds from 512kilobits per second to 2Megabits per second downstream and 256kilobits per second upstream.

Please note that a further test on your line will be performed should you decide to place an order, to make sure that your line is suitable before progressing the order.

Thank you for your interest.