Posts from — June 2014

The two African teams in today’s games hung on with great defensive efforts that generated scoreless first halves in both games.

The Final Scores

France 2-0 Nigeria
Germany 2-1 Algeria

The Nigerian goalie, Vincent Enyeama, was able to frustrate the French, and Victor Moses made a beautiful save of a French shot that caught Vincent out of position, but Vincent rushed forward to block a French cross and didn’t get enough of the ball to clear it, giving Paul Pogba the opportunity to head it into the empty net.

The second French goal is down as an ‘own goal’ by Joseph Yobo, but the shot by Mathieu Valbuena was destined for the net and Yobo didn’t get enough of the ball to divert it.

The single Nigerian goal was disallowed as Nigeria was off sides.

The German-Algerian game was similar with the scoring all in Extra time, a German goal at the beginning and then the second German goal followed by Algeria’s goal at the end. The Germans had to wait until the Algerians were worn out to actually score. The German team controlled the ball two-thirds of the time and took three times as many shots as the Algerians, but the Fennec Foxes played great defense for the full 90 minutes of standard time. They were just worn out when they went back for the 30 minutes of Extra Time.

I’m concentrating on the weather and the World Cup because the weather affects me and the World Cup is more calming than watching the Catholic majority on the Supreme Court impose Canon Law on the formerly non-religious United States. They made it clear they were political in Bush v. Gore, corporate tools in multiple cases, and now they are imposing the laws created by a group of male dementia patients in silk dresses on the people of the United States.

Part of the training for interrogators/interviewers in both the military and law enforcement is recognizing when people are being evasive when they answer questions. Watching Supreme Court nominees testify is a good training tool. I knew the suckers were lying like hell, but Senators don’t really have the training to question people and get the truth. When you put religious whackoes on the bench, you are going to get religious whacko decisions.

The ‘Synod’ of Catholic Justices don’t believe that women really have rights, so it doesn’t bother them when decisions chip away at the rights the Constitution and laws give them.

The Supreme Court of the United States has no credibility with me, or many other US citizens. We don’t believe we will receive ‘equal justice under law’ in the overtly political, corporate, religious court.

At 9Am CDT we had 101°F Heat Index locally, so I decided I wasn’t going to be weed-whacking or anything else outside. Down in Brazil that was the air temperature in the stadium (38.8°C) where the two games were played today.

Football/soccer has two 45-minute halves, and they only pause play to haul bodies of the injured off the field. Because of the heat FIFA is allowing referees, at their discretion, to call a ‘drinks break’ 30 minutes into a half, and both games had two of them. Mexico and Costa Rica fared slightly better than the Netherlands and Greece, but it wasn’t really an advantage.

The Results:

Netherlands 2-1 Mexico

Costa Rica 1(5)-1(3) Greece (penalty shots)

The Group winners are still winning, but not easily. The Netherlands was held at bay for most of the game by the superb effort of the Mexican goal keeper, Memo Ochoa. They finally got their act together at the end of the game and scored twice, the winner a penalty kick in injury time.

Costa Rica played almost an hour at the end of the game with only 10 men after Oscar Duarte received his second Yellow Card. They managed to hang on and win in the penalty shoot-out 5-3. This is the first time Costa Rica has made it into the Quarter Finals.

The second invest of the season, Invest 91, has formed off the coast of South Carolina over the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. Conditions are good for some development. The steering for the system is weak, but it is currently drifting Southeast.

It is expected to curve back towards the coast in a few days, but is currently considered mainly a rain threat.

The Knockout Round started today with Chile being the first team knocked out. Brazil and Chile were locked in a 1-1 tie through the game and two overtimes, so it came down to penalty shots with Brazil scoring 3 while Chile fell one short.

Update: Brazil will play Colombia in the first Quarter Final game, as Colombia beat Uruguay 2-0.

These are the games:

Brazil v. Chile
Colombia v. Uruguay

France v. Nigeria
Germany v. Algeria

Netherlands v. Mexico
Costa Rica v. Greece

Argentina v. Switzerland
Belgium v. US

The teams in the top four games will supply one of the finalists, while the other will come from the teams in the bottom four games. One loss and you are out.

FIFA has over a half billion dollars in the prize pool and teams get paid for advancing, with the overall winning team making about $35 million to go along with the Cup for the last game.

It turns out that I underplayed what happened to “Jaws” Suarez. The four-month ban is from football, meaning he can’t play for his Liverpool club until November, while they will be paying him millions under his contract. He is banned from 9 international games and FIFA took a ‘bite’ out of his wallet with a 100k Swiss franc fine [$112k US]. Some people think the penalty is too severe, but this is the third time he’s done it. They should make him wear a collar with a current rabies tag and a muzzle on the field.

A man and his wife were shot to death in Sarajevo and that was used as an excuse by the hereditary morons of Europe to plunge the world into war. It was a family affair as most of those morons were first cousins, grandchildren of Victoria of Britain.

To be clear, no one, with the possible/probable exception of his wife and children liked Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but the rules of succession made him the heir to the Empire of Austria-Hungary. His wife, Sophie, was considered a commoner, and his children were not included in the line of succession nor given any titles. He was disliked by the elites and the people. He spent his time wandering the world killing animals to have stuffed and put in his castle.

He was killed as the result of a series of screw-ups. Had he survived it would have been proclaimed a miracle. The half-dozen members of the Serbian Black Hand tasked with killing him were incompetents.

The ABC has a nice article on the man and his death.

Why should people still care about World War I? It not only led to World War II, it was the proximate cause for the Russian Revolution and all of the problems in the Middle East and the Balkans. We are still dealing with the problems caused by World War I. It wasn’t “the war to end wars”, it was the ‘father of all wars’ since.

Family Meal

Nom…nom…nom…

[Editor: The kit joins mom for an afternoon snack.]

Friday Ark

From the ‘crime’ desk, Luis “Jaws” Suarez of Uruguay was given a four-month ‘vacation’ from international football by FIFA for ‘unauthorized snacking’ during a game.

The survivors from the Group stage are:

A – Brazil & Mexico
B – Netherlands & Chile
C – Colombia & Greece
D – Costa Rica & Uruguay
E – France & Switzerland
F – Argentina & Nigeria
G – Germany & US
H – Belgium & Algeria

Results are from the BBC.

The US snuck into the Knockout phase on “Goal Difference” because they had the same number of points [3 for a win and 1 for a tie] as Portugal. The Goal Difference is calculated by adding all of the goals that a team scored against their opponents and subtracting all of the goals scored by opponents. The US had a GD of 0 while Portugal had a -3.

In the Knockout phase there are no ties and the losing team is eliminated. Overtime periods and penalty shootouts are used to prevent ties.

Only Groups G and H are still in question after the games yesterday and today.

Finished Groups:

C – Colombia & Greece
D – Costa Rica & Uruguay
E – France & Switzerland
F – Argentina & Nigeria

Greece is in on a penalty kick goal, but the Ivory Coast didn’t think there should have been a penalty called. In the case of Uruguay, the question wasn’t about the scoring, but whether Luis Suarez of Uruguay bit Giorgio Chiellini of Italy on the shoulder. FIFA will review the incident.

Group F is a headache for FIFA because Germany and the US could ensure their promotion to the next round by having a tie in their game tomorrow. Depending on what happens in the games tomorrow, evey team in the group has a chance at promotion. If the Germany-US game ends in a tie, there will be questions.

In Group H Belgium is through, but Algeria and Russia are battling for the second spot.

The results are from the BBC.

John Kerry introduced some reality into the discussion on Iraq. I’m not referring to the political side, but to the military side of the equation. He let it slip that there isn’t much use in using air power against ISIS if the Iraqis can’t follow up on the ground.

I support air power. I think air power is extremely important on the battlefield, but it doesn’t do any good to drop bombs on the enemy unless there are people on the ground to take advantage of the enemy losses. You have to have troops on the ground to secure and hold territory and the Iraq army doesn’t seem to be capable of taking the offensive.

The basic problems in Iraq are a government that doesn’t represent all the people in the country and an army that won’t fight. Air power can’t do anything about either of those problems.

OTOH, ISIS is on the border of Jordan, and if the king of Jordan needs additional air power, the system works, because he is a US friend and his army will fight.

ISIS is only about 100 kilometers from the Saudi border. If they decide to head south, screw the Saudis – they financed these crazies so they can deal with them on their own.

From the tables at the BBC, Brazil and Mexico are advancing from Group A, While the Netherlands and Chile will represent Group B.

The Other Groups still have a matches to play, but tentatively, Colombia will represent Group C, Costa Rica from D, France from E, Argentina from F, Germany from G, and Belgium from H. These teams are in a position of being at least second if they lose their final matches.

To promote sales of merchandise, the teams are wearing new kit for this Cup, although you have to look closely to notice with some teams, like the Netherlands.

The US football side at the World Cup only seems to wake up in the second half, and has very little regard for defense.

In their match against Portugal today they almost secured promotion to the next round by going up by a goal when the regulation time ended. Then they failed to defend during injury time and Portugal managed to tie the game.

While they are certainly in a stronger position that Portugal, they must hope of only a close loss to Germany, at worst. If they draw, they will be through.

Portugal need a massive win over Ghana and a massive win by Germany over the US to make it through. Ghana hasn’t suffered a massive loss to either the US or Germany.

The US has people who can score, but they will need to spend some time on defense to be a credible side.

[Aside: plumbing and coding are taking up a lot of my time.]

Today at 5:51AM [CDT] is the Summer Solstice, technically considered the “first day of Summer”, but the mid Summer by much of Europe.

Many Wiccans celebrate the day as Litha, while computer programmers honor their predecessors, the druids, who build the first solid-state computing devices, the megaliths, like Stonehenge.

The Slavs celebrate St. John’s Night, Иван Купала [Ivan Kupala], the battle between the White god [Белобог – Belobog] and the Black god [Чёрнобог – Chyornobog] for control of the Sun. The Black god always wins and the night begins to expand.

The sound track to the battle is Иванова Ночь на Лысой Горе [Night on Bald Mountain ] by Модест Петрович Мусоргский [Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky], which everyone should play very loudly.

Archæoastronomy tracks all of the important solar events, another of the many things I learned from Andante.

Waiting To Eat

Is it time?

[Editor: The kit has taken to coming over to my house and eating here before going to my neighbor’s to eat.]

Friday Ark