The 2007 Cricket World Cup comes to an end

Some days ago, I wrote an update about what was going on at the World Cricket Cup 2007 in the West Indies. By then, only eight teams were still on the race for the trophy. Today, we know what will be the final destination of such prize.

On April 28, the final game between Australia and Sri Lanka was played at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados. For the third consecutive occasion, the Aussies managed to win the World Cup and take it home. To do so, they defeated the national team of Sri Lanka by 53 runs, although the game was suspended after 38 overs per team due to rain. However, the result is out there, and I'm pretty sure that the Aussies should be very excited about this success.

I congratulate the Australian team for this achievement, and encourage other teams to keep working hard towards the next World cup, which will be held in 2011!

For more information about statistics and data of the world cup, visit the ICC's homepage by clicking here.

Murphy's law... or Murphy's rule?

"If anything can go wrong, it will" is the core idea that is stated by Murphy's Law. From time to time, everybody experiences the power and truth contained in this phrase.

Simple everyday examples make us remember that Murphy was right when he stated such law:

• When you're driving on a lane that is not moving at all, you notice that the lane beside yours is flowing. You change to the next lane, and suddenly it stops and the lane you were in starts moving.
• After a long 12 hour flight, you arrive to an airport and notice that you are missing a document to clear immigration. You are sent to the immigration office, where you have to wait for ages to be cleared and you miss your connection flight. You manage to reschedule your next flight, but that one is announced to be delayed. (This is a true story!)
• You wash your car, and unexpectedly, it rains a few minutes later.
• Bread will always land on the jammed side if it drops from your hand. Technically, if things can be worse, it will also land on your pants.

I'd say that, since Murphy's law does not always apply, it should be considered a rule. But regardless of this, to whom do we owe the wisdom to formulate this rule?

We owe it, of course, to an individual named Murphy. According to a popular belief, a Captain named Edward A. Murphy, who in 1949 supposedly said on a project about a certain technician: "If there's some way to make it wrong, he'll find it". Some people recorded this saying and named it the "Murphy's Law".

Not everybody agrees with such tale about the origin of the (so called) law. Another explanation, for example, suggests that in Great Britain, people created the idea about Murphy's law to explain the slips or Irish people, so it's only about a joke that became popular.

These are only a couple of the infinity of stories that try to explain the origin of a name for Murphy's law. Despite this dispute, it is necessary to acknowledge that Murphy's law is probably a phenomenon that existed many years before its supposed discovery. It's a phenomenon that has probably been there since humans started to make decisions, and it will be forever there, unless humans become someday perfect (which, of course, will never happen).

With some information from Murphy's Laws site.

Back to blogging activities

I haven't had the opportunity to update this blog lately. That doesn't mean that I decided to abandon it at all; I am very excited to have the chance to do right now at least a small posting so this blog keeps "fresh".
A recent trip to Asia has led me to discover a whole new world of fascinating and unexpected things. I will be posting some of my thoughts and ideas about it soon.... stay tuned.

Everything's corner: Happy Birthday!!!!

I can't believe how fast does a year pass. It was exactly a year ago, on April 15, 2006, when I started my blog and published a post about the Buffalo Bills to commemorate the event. On that note, I was hoping that the Bills had a good 2006 season, which unfortunately didn't happen.

However, although it's very painful to me to follow the Bills' losing streak, my purpose to write a blog was not to dedicate all the posting to the Buffalo Bills. I have rather focused this blog to post opinions about various topics, as long as I think (and hopefully, you do as well) are relevant and interesting for the people who read this blog because, regardless of the volume of readers that this blog may have, I think that people who search for information and entertainment in the blogsphere deserve high quality readings. That has been my purpose, and that will keep being for as long as this blog lasts.

Now, I'll show some irrelevant but interesting data about the last year:

• Amount of visits: 2636
• Origin from visitors: 30% of the visitors to this blog are from the USA. A large amount of visitors come from other countries such as Mexico, Canada, and the UK.
• Post that attracted more readers: Naked Opera, posted on January 17, 2007. Other posts that attracted a large amount of readers were Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty, and Dolce & Gabbana, its marketing age of grotesque?.
• Search engine that referred the most amount of readers: Google.
• Blog that referred the most amount of readers: iVoryTowerz (thank you!).

I'm as excited to write on this blog as I was when I first started. It's definitely one of my favourite activities, and I hope to be able to write more and more... although in the next few days I won't be able to write anything, I'll come back with new stuff to keep this site fresh.

Thanks for visiting this blog! Keep checking it out!

Ridiculous businesses for dogs: If pets could only speak...

What can be more annoying that seeing the scarce resources of nature wasted in ridiculous businesses for pets? Having a radio station for dogs is fairly stupid, and founding a company dedicated to tailor suits and tuxedos for dogs is perhaps even more pathetic... so what adjective does a business dedicated to produce haute-couture clothing for dogs can deserve?
That's the genial idea that a couple of Swedish-Venezuelan designers came up with. The firm is named E&E Hallström, and their products are high fashion clothes for dogs.
What a waste of resources. Can anybody explain me what should we cheer these kind of businesses and activities? From my point of view, there are many better uses that can be given to the fabric wasted (yes, wasted) for the purpose of producing garments for pets. Wouldn't it be more useful, for example, to use those resources to manufacture clothes for people in other parts of the world, who don't have anything to protects themselves from the effects of weather?.
The truth is that dogs don't need garments. Honestly. If dogs could speak, I'm sure that they would tell how uncomfortable they feel when using clothes. The only reason for which dogs are dressed with clothes is to amusement of some people (and sometimes, as a symptom of antropomorphization of a pet suffered by the pet's owner, which it's proven to be a real disorder). Poor animals.
Here's a link to the homepage of this ridiculous firm, visit if you wish and let me know about your own opinion about the topic. Click on the address, or copy and paste it on your browser:
http://www.ehallstromc.com/

Manatees, 'only' threatened

The manatee is no longer an endangered species. At least, that's what the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) concluded after some years of studying the manatee's case. According to such office, the amount of manatees has increased in the past 5 years to an amount enough to consider the species a "threatened" one, rather than an "endangered" one.

If manatees understood news, would they be happy about it? Or would they rather be worried? To some extent, the news about the increasing population of manatees is a very happy one, but I wonder whether such announcement will serve prelude to allow the hunt of manatees later on.
The authorities, of course, deny such theory, arguing that the protection for manatees will be kept. The question that comes to my mind then is: For how long?

For now, it looks that the gracious manatees are safe from following the same fate that extinguished the poor Baiji in China. Will that last for a long time? I hope it does, but that definitely depends on a lot of factors, mainly predation by humans.

It's always a pleasure to hear good news like this one anyway.

Click here to read the original note from The Guardian.

ICC Cricket World Cup West Indies 2007 update

The Cricket World Cup 2007 started some weeks ago in various locations of the Caribbean and it looks that some surprises have happened lately.

I'm not a cricket fan, and by no means I have enough knowledge about cricket to judge the results so far whatsoever. However, as far as I know, among the always favorite teams are India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, England, Australia and New Zealand. From them, India and Pakistan have been eliminated already; in fact, they weren't able to even classify to the second round of the tournament. By the way, Bob Woolmer, coach of the Pakistani team, was murdered after a surprising defeat against Ireland a couple of days before Pakistan's last game in the tournament...

Whether there is a link between Woolmer's death and Pakistan's low performance during the World Cup, is an issue that will be difficult to determine. The tournament has continued, and there are only eight teams still on the road to the championship (named the Super Eight by the International Cricket Council -ICC-): Australia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, South Africa, England, West Indies, Bangladesh and Ireland. From them, Ireland's situation seems to be hopeless. England, West Indies and Bangladesh will have a difficult time to pass; actually, it looks that they're in fact eliminated (again, don't take anything I write here for granted... I'm commenting based on my little knowledge about cricket. Help will be appreciated!).

Whatever happens with the so-called Super Eight, won't change the date and time set for the final match: April 28, 2007, in Barbados... that's when the next Cricket World Champion will be defined.

If you follow cricket, I'm sure you won't miss it. If you don't, you'll probably be as curious as me to know who wins the tournament, and if you can't find a TV channel that broadcasts such match, check the cricket World Cup's website by clicking here to get the complete list of results.

Enjoy Passover, Easter, or whatever holiday you're celebrating... if any.

Subway jump

It's difficult to describe the real border between recklessness and stupidity. Such is the thought that comes to my mind after knowing about a curious kind of 'sport' that some individuals have been practicing lately in subway stations in Mexico City.
No description is needed. Just watch the video and judge by yourself.

The video shows only one of the cases reported to the authorities in Mexico City. The Policemen are having a hard time trying to stop these people, but today they just caught the first one who claimed that he does it "to feel the adrenaline running through his veins". Probably he'll feel more than that when paying the fine he'll face.
Maybe it's only ignorance what drives these boys to do such stupid things. Are they really aware that they're putting their lives in risk when doing that? I don't know if there have been any "failed" attempts that had as consequence the death of the 'reckless' guy, but these facts definitely drive me to wonder whether all of the cases in which a person is reported to have committed suicide by throwing themselves to the subway's rails are really incidents in which the individual decides voluntarily to end their days in this world, or some of them are rather adventurers failing to reach properly the platform across... we'll probably never know.

Public transportation etiquette?

Using public transportation lately, rather than an own car, has made me discover dimensions that I didn't know.

Yes, it's true: Comfort is sacrificed, Commuting times tend to be longer (except in the case of a subway) and traveling long distances becomes tricky. On the other hand, it is a cheap way to go from one place to another, and if the transportation systems in place are adequate, it doesn't get very difficult to get from point A to B.
There's a phenomenon that occurs in public transportation systems, more commonly in buses: people who travel alone, don't like to share the seat with strangers. Although people don't show their inconformity of having a perfect stranger sitting beside them, they aren't comfortable. Still, when the bus is full and there are few seats available, there's no choice.
I guess that there should exist some kind of public transportation etiquette that I'm not aware of. Think of the following situation: The bus is half full, there are no empty seats but almost all of them can be shared. So you sit on one of the seats, which you share with a stranger. A couple of stops after that, some passengers reach their destination and drop off the bus, leaving some empty seats. The traveler sitting next to you wasn't one of the passengers that left the bus, so you're still sharing the seat. What is more polite to do: to remain seated in the same spot, or to move to an empty seat?
As I see it, if you remain seated in the same seat, it will be mostly uncomfortable to the other person (and to you as well), especially when the other traveler is aware of the availability of empty seats. But, if you leave the seat to sit in another spot, it can be understood as if you dislike the person seating next to you, which is not polite to do. A big dilemma... any ideas on that?
Regardless of the existence or not of a public transportation etiquette, I'd encourage everyone to use public transportation, which helps to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and the amount of traffic in the streets.

FBI Most Wanted list drops momentarily to 9 suspects

Busting one of the top 10 fugitives sought by the FBI is, unfortunately, a rare event. Some of the individuals that currently appear in such list, have been successful in avoiding the arm of justice for many years (such as Osama Bin Laden). Not very often is one of those suspects caught. But just yesterday it happened.

The only woman in the list of the 10 most wanted criminals by the FBI (in which characters such as Osama Bin Laden are included), named Shauntay L. Henderson, was arrested yesterday in an apartment in Kansas City. She was wanted by the authorities as she presumably killed a man in September 2006; also, she is believed to belong to street gangs that operate in Kansas City. Henderson is considered by the FBI as"armed, extremely dangerous and an escape risk". Ironically, she was arrested when she naively opened the door after being knocked by policemen.
This is definitely a good news. It would be good that all that all criminals could be arrested so easily. The question that pops into my mind, and probably into many other's minds as well, is: who'll be the next criminal "honoured" to be in the FBI's top 10?

To read the entire note from cnn.com, click here.

Tsunami, now smaller but still a menace

Today we entered the fourth month of this year 2007. Unfortunately, the month began with a sour news that makes remember that remember 26, 2004. On that date, a tsunami devastated villages and cities in several countries, most remarkably in Indonesia and Thailand. Such natural disaster was also responsible for the death of more than 100,000 people, and the disappearance of many others. Perhaps the worst natural disaster of our times.
Tsunami is today a word heard in the news. On this occasion, the tsunami hit the Solomon Islands in the Pacific. The tsunami (reported to be 10 feet high) is a result of an undersea earthquake that reached a magnitude of 8.0 degrees Richter. This tsunami is reported to have killed 8 people, to have caused a large amount of damages and destruction, and to have caused panic among nearby countries such as Australia and Papua New Guinea.
The good news is that this tsunami was not as severe as the one in 2004. I think that, if the tsunami would have been that powerful, there would barely be any Solomon Islands to talk about now.
My sympathies to the people of the Solomon Islands.

Click here to read the entire article from Yahoo! News.