Oy_the_Great

Try reading more than just the title Mlbfan13.

The transfer period is once again wrapped up, and some interesting moves have been made, especially in the Premier League. The Mancunians have contacted former Spurs-striker Berbatov for about 38m and sold Saha, Silvestre and a series of others. Liverpool sold Crouchieboy to Portsmouth (never thought he'd leave Liverpool though) but reinforced their attacking strength with Ireland's superstriker Robbie Keane. I think West Ham did great by purchasing Valon Behrami from Lazio for only 6m and so did Arsenal, who cantacted Marseille's creative midfielder Samir Nasri for about 13.5m. In Spain it's Barcelona that did the most interesting purchase: right-winger Dani Alves from Sevilla for 31m, the highest transfer fee Barça ave ever paid, but, according to Joan Laporta, that's the right price for the best winger in the world. Along with Alves, they also bought defender Martin Caceres for 15m, which seems a little high to me, but then again, I don't know him that well. Contacted for an unknown price, attacking midfielder Alexandr Hleb from Arsenal filled the gap that Ronaldinho's leave (A.C. Milan, £21m, either a mediocre sale for Barça, or a great purchase for A.C., I hope it's the latter) has left the Barça squad with. Everton on its turn, bought one of Belgium's greatest talents, Marouane Fellaini, for about 18m, the highest price for a Belgian player so far. But what surprised me most of all, is the ridiculous amounts of money Manchester City all of a sudden has, because of its new owners, who clearly do not understand football. Buying all players that did well and stomping them in one team is not how a great team is formed. I can't believe that there still are morons who think football -or any team sport for that matter- works like that. Real did it in the late '90s, Chelsea did it after them, none of them were succesful, and now Man City is going to make the same mistake? They bought Robinho for 42m, Jo from CSKA for 23.5m, Wright-Phillips for 11m and Vincent Komany for 8.5m. Then there's the transfers of Zabaleta and Ben Haim for undisclosed transfer fees. Now I constantly read rumours that this new owner, an Arab called Sulaiman Al-Fahim, wants to make Man City the 'greatest club of all time' by spending as many millions as needed. Firstly, I consider A.C. Milan, Juve, Real, Barça, Liverpool and Man U the greatest clubs of all time, simply because they have a great history. I think most football fans agree that a club isn't the greatest if all time simply because they have all the most expensive players of one time. But anyway, what he wants to do, is go as far as offering over 200 million for Cristiano Ronaldo, and ridiculous prices like that for anyone who he really wants. On one hand, I find this evolution in football disgusting; the most expensive player ever (Zidane, Juve to Real, 75m) would not even be half of what this Arab thinks Cristiano is worth? Somehow I feel that 100m for Cristiano is plenty. So am I the only one that thinks transfer fees are grossly out of proportion nowadays? The results of those unworldly transfer fees will most likely be higher ticket prices and no added value for the fans. For all the football fans here, what do you think about the transfers and the transfer policy some clubs have?

Asking people if an IQ of 145, which you undoubtedly know is great, is OK? What kind of a conceited [puncture] do you have to be to do that? Seriously, stuck-up people like you should all be put together on an island for a day, and you'll either see how irritating your behaviour is, or you'll make some lovely friends so you no longer have to prance around alone in your dazzling divinity.

Oh, my bad, I really thought he served 12 years.

What do you mean you don't know if tha's a joke? You're not daft are you? Holland is actually pretty good at softball. Funny article though, love the ending: "The confused Netherlands team was eventually disqualified for attempting to play field hockey."

Sweet, Belgium finally also has a gold medal, and not just a crummy one: Tia Hellebaut won the high jump event, a 2m05 jump, first try, very impressive :) The Belgian runners also did great: 5th in the 4x400m for men, 3 whole seconds faster than the previous Belgian record. And we're even 1st or 2nd in the 4x100m for women (depends if the Russian women get disqualified or not; Brazilians claim the made some kinda fault). Quality for a small country with no real sporting culture like Belgium.

That's exactely what it is: no matter how hard people try to deny stereotypes, they often are right: most poor boys in Africa and South America play football. Most Asian kids live a vastly different and rather secluded life, but are hard workers. European and American kids are a mixture, although most kids here prefer doing nothing. Sweet tricks by that YoYo guy though, amazing what he can do. That's one of those things that's (IMHO) typically Asian: being extremely good at something, but not that good at a heap of other things. And I'm just pointing out what I think of being typical, I hope no idiot will pull this out of context and call me a racist for it.

Is it not possible to split the poll into US voters and non-US (and underaged) people? Because I read that McCain has gained on Obama; in fact according to recent polls McCain woul win with a pretty significant difference compared to Obama. I'm sure that a large part of these votes are from non-Americans or underaged people, so the poll is pretty irrelevant. As for me, Obama would have to drastically change his course to lose me as a supporter. I don't know if you know something about your former presidents, but charisma makes a great deal of difference, especially in foreign politics. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1944 I believe) was a president that wasn't particulary good in anything, except for talking and surrounding himself with the right people. Because of him, the US flourished and recovered from the bad blow caused by the stock market plummet in the late '20s. He even ruled for 3 succesful terms, a feat only Washington ever did before him. Now Obama has great charisma, that's the least you can say, and he's very popular abroad, especially in Europe, and I'm sure in many other parts of the world as well. The US badly need the opposite of G.W. Bush Jr., as he's done a tremendous amount of damage PR-wise and economically seen in all parts of the world. With Obama (black, a democrat, open-minded, a listener,...) as the opposite, much of the hatred against the USA would fade away. I don't know if he's the best person to deal with the economical crisis, but nor was Roosevelt, and yet he dealt with it, thanks to his 'brain trust', which were all of his advisors. Because Obama is known to be a listener, someone who does not act without carefully thinking everything over, I think that he may be fully capable of restoring the economical balance with a little help of well-picked advisors.

I've always found it funny that nearly everyone is talking about helping Africa. Talking, talking, talking. I wonder how many of those people have actually been there and did charity work, or who have just been there, or even just donate money too good causes, for that matter. I've been to Morocco, Egypt, Tanzania and Kenia, I enjoyed it as a tourist, but as an economist it struck me that a lot of Africans always work themselves into the same trouble. And it's not their fault, or not entirely for sure. What happened in the colonial period is that the same western values were applied to the African tribal cultures, with slavery for their conquerers as a first consequence. After these tribes fought for their independance, the western people abandoned the countries, leaving them to whoever ceased power first. And this is exactely why it isn't as easy to get Africa out of their misery: the same old same old happens there, generation after generation. The people just can't seem to live as one nation, they always fight over the massive richesses Africa posseses, with one dictator replacing the other all the time. Now, I've often wondered why that doesn't happen in Europe, or Eastern Asia, where hundreds of millions of people can live together without constant war and prosper. It's striking that former poor Asian nations catch up with incredible speed to most Western civilisations. Why doesn't that happen in Africa? I think the answer is simple: it's all part of the culture. Europeans and Asians have the cultural habit of living under the rule of a government, often a democracy. Europe has a history of 2,500 years of democracy, the eastern Asian civilisations have been around for much longer even. But Africans aren't used to living in one unified state, as we Western people are, it's simply not part of their culture. And you can't just expect that to change over a few years time, not even hundreds of years, I'm afraid. So the problems in Africa are rooted far deeper than you might expect, and you can invest all the money you want in it: without proper help and guidance, it won't solve a thing. I admire people from the Red Cross, but I'm sure most of them in Africa realise that what they're doing is just another drop on a hot plate.

A Californian taking stereotypes out of proportion? Go figure skating! Oh, no wait. Figure. My bad. He's right though. It's not that there aren't any liberals in the south, it's just that there's a larger percentage of people that hates some liberal thinkers. Just like not all Muslims are suicide bombers.

Bah, I don't want to think of the horrible things that could be done with invisibility. I am not a hippy, I'm just very sceptical, but when I think of new amazing technologies, I always think of the downside of them. If ever such invisibility materials would be marketed to the public, all the crimes that are already pretty easy to commit will become child's play. Theft, murder, kidnapping... will all be a lot easier to commit. And on a larger, military scale, this obviously won't bring us any closer to peace. Dictators and mobsters will rub their hands when they get a hold of this. And I honestly wouldn't feel very much at comfort when I know people with those cloaks might be running around everywhere, privacy would once again get punched in the groin.

Hmmph. "Intervene". As someone said well in the other thread, Russia probably had other things on their minds when they joined the fray. Chances are they were benefitting somehow. I don't think any country would want to go to war unless they're going to benefit from it. Russia definitly wasn't getting any positive PR from this. Actually, I really do not think Russia's prime objective here is benefitting from the region; the oil & gas is only secondary. What really matters here is the new political position Russia wants to claim once again: that of a global superpower that really has a foot in the political climate of this world. They lost it after the fall of the Sovjet Union, and I'm pretty sure Putin wants to reclaim the former power they once had. The thing is that he does it all wrong: military power is not everything. And even the military power he wants to show off with is nothing very impressive, as he's fighting a minor and very poor region with barely an army at all. If the Russians would simply be a little more diplomatic or invest in their PR, as you mentioned, their power would much sooner be recognised.

It's disturbingly calm here in Europe, but 4 years ago on my annual snowboarding trip, we got caught in a pretty serious blizzard at a little over 3 kms height (that's about 10,000 ft, which is pretty high in the Alps). It was -20°, we couldn't see a thing and we were miles and miles away from anything warm and safe. Luckily, I've got very down-to-earth and calm friends, and I'm not the panicky type either, so we just slowly grinded down the mountain, pretty much waiting until the blizzard was over. It's the Alps, not Alaska, so such storms never last long we tought, and we were right. Cold as hell though.

Bill Hicks, hands down the best American comedian IMHO. But at least as good, though a different style, is the dutch Hans Teeuwen. He's so incredibly insane, over the top and genius at the same time, he's the only comedian where I'm almost constantly in pain of an overdose of laughter. There's a bunch of good comedians out there, Dane Cook, Carlin, Seinfeld, that guy from Achmed the dead terrorist, but tbh, what they do is child's play compared to what Hans Teeuwen and Bill Hicks did. It's a shame Bill died and Hans retired, but their heritage is safely stored on my DVD collection and just never gets old.

O boy, I can make a list of trivia that would be near endless here. The one thing I do when I'm alone is get on the net, it sucks me right to it for some weird reason. As soon as I can get online, I will. Damn addiction. Also, I often watch a film before I go to bed, and when I see it alone, I often get carried away a bit. Ths last time, I was watching "The Last Samurai", and (even though Tom Cruise looks completely idiotic in the film) I was making these sword-like movements in the air, with an airsword, thehe. And then, at 4AM, with the final battle of the movie blasting through my speakers (I tend to put the volume up too much ;)), my ex comes in, as she lives above me and woke up from the noise. God damn it. That was embarrassing, me in my boxers, swinging a non-existant blade. What the hell can you say then? And, apart from being addicted to the internet and getting carried away with movies, I also tend to do some more mature things. I'm one of those dreamers that always ponder about life and think of what could have been, what can be and what might be. And then I often get a little depressed, because I'm a born pessimist, and seek comfort with some friends, which are luckily enough never far away.

God damn, that is disgusting. I thought those things only happened in movies, in urban horror legends or at least by some sicko in a forest, not on a public bus. I wonder how this guy was raised and what the hell went wrong. How can you even think of doing that? I already find it difficult to kill a fly, I can't even imagine how f*ed up you have to be to stab someone to death and then do that. It's almost too messed up to believe. Poor guy. And the kids on that bus, well, damn... I don't know about PETA, but normal people see the difference between nature's way and what humans do to animals. The only thing I think is wrong is that some cattle or poultry have to live in tiny pens only to be fed and slaughtered. What I do not mind, at all, is us breeding all kinds of animals and then after they've grown reasonabily old, having them killed, but only as long as they can have ample grazing grounds and are treated in a normal way. That's a lot less cruel than what happens in the wild, like you said.

Yeah Oy is totally going to keylog you. Anyways nice link Oy, I may have to give it a shot. Reminds me I think I need to still download CCleaner on my current PC (IIRC it allows you to clean registry too?) I don't even know what keylogging exactely is, but who knows, I might just do it anyway :P I currently use this version to do whatever it does that makes my register clean(er), and it works smoothly. I was also told by a friend that isn't a nitwit with computers like me that this is the program he prefers as well.

Ey people, I was irritated by the increasingly slow execution of, well, everything on my computer and decided to mannually disable some [Caution: Executable File]s with the task manager. Though I didn't know of some what they exactely did, I searched them up and got redirected from google to a feature (Microsoft certified) that cleans up your register, because an old register is full of stuff you no longer use or even have. It's often the source of the slow running of a pc and minor crashes. I'll happily admit I barely know anything about computers, but this thing seems pretty useful, so I decided to share it with all of you: it got me rid of 1693 registry problems and I immediately noticed the improvement. -> Waayo! Enjoy, let us know if it was any good for you! edit: you do have to download the full version apparently, I just found myself a way to a free version of it ;) edit²: I've heard someone's computer got pretty much screwed up by another program like this, so yeah, this post should perhaps get deleted, admins? Finally: some expert friend told me these programs did the same, they're free and they haven't ever caused him any trouble: http://technet.microsoft.com/nl-nl/sysi ... 7426(en-us).aspx

I understand what you're saying, but the moment the pencil touches the ground isn't just a moment, it takes a while. That's where I think your problem lies: it's not like it touches the ground and immediately bounces back up. A better example to show what I mean: The bounce may seem like a miniscule moment, but in fact it's like this: The moment the ball hits, does not last 0.000...001 sec, it lasts a while, which means that the scale you used to prove that a moment something happens can be reduced to 0 ends at a certain number. The impact (also of that pencil) lasts a couple of milliseconds, so in the end you will not reach infinity, or 0. You could argue about it by saying that 'the' moment is just a series of different moments, which are all 1 divided by infinity, which is 0, and that would make more sense. But that is exactely why I do not think 1 divided by infinity really implies 0, it's just the number closest to 0 next to 0 itself. Mathematicians of course realise that, but to make working with such numbers easier, they simply round it to 0, much like we commoners round numbers like 98.45999% to 98.46%.

I hope I don't get shot for bringing this oldie up again, but I just had to say that it is true that marijuana use decreased in Holland, definitely in the population regions where it actually harmed a little: youths. I'm Belgian, but half my family is Dutch, and I see a lot more teenage users here than in Holland. The reason for smoking marijuana when you're 12-16 is almost always the same: it's a thrill to do it, you're fighting the establishment by offending the rules. Basic teenage psychology. If you take away that illegal part, which is a thrill, you've got to admit that, that group of users will surely decrease. Pot is expensive and without the illegal aspect, it's probably not worth spending so much money on it when you're young. The same goes for alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs that can potentially be harmful, but not horribly addictive or life-threatening. I wouldn't like to see heroine, cocaine, crack, speed etc. to be legalised though: they are very addictive and seriously affect your mental state, also in the long term, unlike being drunk or high on marijuana. A little more proof: alcohol is illegal in the States when you're not 21 yet (at least in most states iirc): 7 of my (Belgian) friends went to college in the US, varying from San Francisco to Boston, and they all noticed the same: as soon as students (and they're the upper regions of American society) turned 21, a lot of them binged as much as their bodies would let them, or even to the point of intoxication. That rarely happens here, in Belgium, which is pretty much the home of beer. It does happen, but (un)surprisingly enough most of the people who end up hospitalised from intoxication are 16 or less, which happens to be the age at which drinking is still illegal here. The thrill factor, remember? I don't know about the drinking habits of American teenagers, but I'm guessing that drinking beer (which is pretty harmless) is a thrill for them too, because it's illegal, not because it tastes good or not even that much because it gets you drunk when you overconsume it.

Although it's not such a big deal here in Belgium, mine wasn't too great. I had just broken up with the girl a friend of mine took on a date (after he asked me if it was OK, but still) so I brought a mate of mine who dressed up just like her, but that was pretty much the only laugh I had that day. Thanked God for beer that day.

Yes, we should all just watch Spongebob instead.

Wouldn't call it *big*;it wasn't like Nadal destroyed him, far from it actually. But I guess you meant that it was important, which it sure was :) 4h47min I believe... I'd have collapsed at around the 4th set, from exhaustion or from a heart attack :P Yep, but Fed has never lost on grass before, in fact he hasn't lost on grass the last 65 games, apparently the 66th was just too much.

What a FANTASTIC game! I'm a big Federer fan, but in yet another 'Fedal' finale, they were both playing incredibly solid and beautiful tennis, almost flawless until the very last point. While Nadal was stronger in the rallies, Fed's serve was perfect at moments and often saved him from a desperate situations yet again. I've seen hundreds of games, played hundreds as well but this was without a doubt the most exiting and best tennis I have ever seen. A legendary game and I'm sure it will take a very long time before we can witness another game as wonderful as this one again.

3) Germany - Turkey (3-2): Another dramatic game where it seemed the Turks would once again turn the tables in the final minutes, but the German willpower was too much for them. I really enjoyed seeing the persistance of a team with half of the players injured and the other half not being in the core team. The Germans did beat them however, and I'm also glad that they did, because lady Luck had been with the Ottomans too much already, from the qualifications up to that semi-final. 2) Holland - France (4-1): As you mentioned it was obviously a wonderful game for everyone (but for the French): tons of exitement, fantastic football and a pretty fair game too, which is something I care about as well. 1) Holland - Italy (3-0): I'm a Holland fan and Holland is so often the team that performs well when their fans do not expect them to, and that match was the clearest example of it. I was thrilled to see them obliterating the world champions, it lit up the orange fire that was pretty dim the last couple of years. Everyone suddenly hopped on the orange bandwagon and celebrated as one, which is exactely what the lowlands needed. These games that unite are better any other kind of game. Football at it's most beautiful.