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"....and I'm the prince of darkness.."

Dark Knight - Kids Version - Sweded

Busted

Click photo for larger size

Newsweek Olympics

There are many places full of amazing Olympic photos, but the 6 pages at Newsweek are some of the best I have come across so far. This one is Ange Mercie Jean Baptiste of Haiti bleeding during a judo match. Judo being the one event the Japanese managed to cover every second of. To say the coverage here was poor from an international point of view is an understatement, but it has been more than made up by sites such as Newsweek and shots like these.

Newsweek

No smoking, no eating, no sleeping desu

no sleeping desu, originally uploaded by Knotty.

Little Gordon

Warning: Content May Offend

Part1


Part2


littlegordon

The 2008 Beijing Olympics in Pictures

via the New York Times ..go full screen.

via the Big Picture at boston.com

Team GB return home in pictures via the Daily Telegraph to a heroes welcome.

Junk miles

"Let’s hear it for going out and riding 80 percent with friends."

"Ultimately, what we learn is that riding is a binary system. When you go hard, you go really hard, whether a three-minute interval, a full-on sprint or the half-hour climb. And when you go easy, it’s really easy. Frankly, it reminds me of a dog I had. When he was on he had the energy of a top-fuel dragster on Red Bull and anger. And when he was resting he slept the sleep of a bank vault, only with his tongue hanging out."

belgiumkneewarmers

I have done no riding (to speak of) since June. I miss it. I think I am getting my head around putting a baby into our house and lives though. The bike will always be waiting for me.. if not my legs :)

Bolt's Feat

freakonomics

Bear market.. smells of pepper

Read through to the end.. via the bigpicture.. on a roll.

Big Freddie Mac

Much too good to just share or simply link to.. via the big picture

"McDonald’s Corp. held a press conference today to unveil its latest sandwich: the Big Freddie Mac. Priced at 50 cents, the Big Freddie Mac is the first fast food hamburger to be subsidized by the federal government.

“The economy - not that there’s anything wrong with it - is causing Americans to cut back on eating hamburgers,” explained McDonald’s spokesperson Donald McDonald (no relation). “Washington has decided that the burger is too big to fail, so the Treasury Department has agreed to kick in three bucks for every Big Freddie Mac sold.”

The Big Freddie Mac, while similar in appearance, is significantly different from the McDonald’s mainstay - the Big Mac. Big Freddie’s bun is inflated to look twice as large as it actually is, while the two all-beef patties are actually one all-beef patty sliced in half width-wise and pumped up by puffy lettuce. The “special” sauce is French dressing which is this week’s “special” at the dollar store next to McDonald’s headquarters. The number of sesame seeds has been reduced to one with a promise of more in two years if the burger market bubble continues. Each Big Freddie Mac comes in a special wrapper printed with suggestions on how to “flip the burger” for profit by selling it to people who are new to fast foods or kids who haven’t learned to read yet.

“The Big Freddie Mac program does not mean we will be bailing out other fast food menu items,” said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. “As they say in the business, it’s for a ‘limited time only’.” However, he did not rule out a similar plan to help Starbucks, which has recently been forced to close 600 stores. Rumors out of Starbucks headquarters in Seattle hint that the company is about to roll out a government-subsidized coffee called the Frappe Mae."

Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

Oil

"Those brave enough to predict oil prices are usually wrong, but the perception that the fundamentals have changed has begun to affect the trading market and behaviour of speculators. That is why the Russian invasion of Georgia had so little impact. Speculators in particular are pulling out of oil – with a few beginning to bet on a further substantial fall. In the words of one London trader: when prices have risen by more than 100 per cent in 12 months the chances are that the next move will be downwards. Prices could break through the symbolic $100 a barrel level.

The world is still dependent on hydrocarbons for more than 80 per cent of daily energy needs.

Falling prices will relieve some of the pressure on consumers but complacency would be misplaced. This is a lull in the storm not a reversion to normality. The need for a transition to a more diversified, lower-carbon energy economy is as urgent as ever."

ft

Basically demand is lower and spare capacity is rising easing pricing pressure. Long term view is the same though, keeping buying regularly, average in and hold for the long term.

GB.. pure gold

"With the Union Flag in the ascendant and God Save the Queen being played almost daily, the Beijing Games are providing an unexpected boost to Great Britain's national pride - or so you might have thought.

Unfortunately, no sooner had our rowers, cyclists and sailors collected their medals than the carping started - largely on account of their successes being clocked up in "posh" sports. That a disproportionately high number of these British champions went to fee-paying schools is regarded by some as a symptom of a divided society, evidence of a deep-rooted malaise.

In place of celebration, there is consternation: dark mumblings about the benefits of privilege. In the warped view of the Grumblies, middle-class successes are to be resented, as if, like those of drugs cheats, their places on the awards podium were the result of improper behaviour.

Britain's middle classes are already in the dock for heinous crimes, such as seeking the best schools for their children, paying extra for private healthcare and determining the output of Radio Four. Now, it seems, they must endure being rubbished for having the audacity to produce results in a sporting arena that the nation expected to be dominated by foreigners.

Am I alone in rejoicing as British Olympians, despite extreme exhaustion, conduct live interviews in clear, correct English? If this is the worst that can be said of the middle class, I'm tempted to apply for membership.

I all but applauded as Katherine Grainger responded to the BBC with dignity and clarity, only minutes after the heartbreak of getting caught on the line in the coxless fours by China.

The British quartet's effort had been heroic. Miss Grainger, an Edinburgh law graduate, was shattered. It was her third Olympic silver medal. At 33, her last chance for gold had almost certainly gone.

Yet her conduct was exemplary, a lesson in handling extreme adversity. There was no blaming the coach or the conditions, no allegations of dodgy tactics by the victors. She took it on the chin like the great sportswoman that she is.

The Grainger family must have burst with pride - and rightly so. If her impressive display was the product of private tutoring, or just a comfortable upbringing, then let's have much more of it. Sadly, it's not that simple.

The unpalatable truth is that we have become so accustomed to the syntax-mangling, grammarless, cliché-ridden Neanderthal grunts of our professional footballers that, in comparison, just about every member of Team GB (with the exception of one or two boxers) seems like an alumnus of an expensive finishing academy. This, of course, is not the case.

They don't come much more down-to-earth than Christine Ohuruogu, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, who was brought up in east London. Yet, after her dazzling gold-medal run in the 400m, she spoke fluently and confidently of her success: no "fink" and "fawt", no "frow" and "froo".

She was thrilled, but the result was neither "magic" nor "mustard". Miss Ohuruogu has a degree in linguistics from a proper university, London's UCL, but middle-class she is not. Her background was every bit as challenging, if not more so, than those of most in the pathetic England team that scrambled a lucky draw against the Czech Republic at Wembley."

telegraph

I was a rower. I still don't understand the attraction of football. I didn't go to a 'posh' fee-paying school. Middle class? No idea.

birthday quake

birthday quake, originally uploaded by Knotty.

Need a bigger garden.

"For between £200 and £2,000, people can buy a cow that stands no taller than a large German shepherd dog, gives 16 pints of milk a day that can be drunk unpasteurised, keeps the grass “mown” and will be a family pet for years before ending up in the freezer."

timesonline eg. littlemooranch

brilliant.

Increase your skepticism level

"But the frenzy around it was unsettling to me; as soon as it was published (including some really stupid factual errors) the story was around the world and it made me wonder: how accurate are the stories I know nothing about but read all the time? If something as small as this could have errors in it because of a feeding frenzy does that bode well for our acceptance of everything else we read.."

ridingthetiger

Beware the Wuxi fingerhold!

"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present."

"Legend tells of a legendary warrior whose kung fu skills were the stuff of legend."

"It is said that his enemies would go blind from over-exposure to pure awesomeness!"

"I just ate, so I'm still digesting, so my kung fu may not be as good as later on."

Kung Fu Panda.. brilliant.

Let me present the farting preacher..

Scam?

FROM: Dr Ben Bernanke
Central Bank of United States of America
01-658-555-1234

TO: CEO
Lagos, Nigeria

Dear Friend:

I have been requested by the regional members Federal Reserve of the USA to contact you for assistance in resolving a matter. The Federal Reserve of the USA has recently concluded a large number of contracts for credit derivative investment vehicles "CDIV" in the Wall Street region of the USA. The contracts have immediately produced moneys equaling US$40,000,000. The Federal Reserve of the USA is desirous of CDIV in other parts of the world, however, because of certain regulations of the USA Government, it is unable to move these funds to another region.

Your assistance is requested as a non-USA citizen to assist the Federal Reserve of the USA, and also the investment bank community of Wall Street USA, in moving these funds out of USA. If the funds can be transferred to your name, in your Nigerian account, then you can forward the funds as directed by the Federal Reserve of USA. In exchange for your accommodating services, the Federal Reserve of USA would agree to allow you to retain 10%, or Nigerian $4 million of this amount.

However, to be a legitimate transferee of these moneys according to USA law, you must presently be a depositor of at least $100,000 in a USA bank which is regulated by the Central Bank of USA.

If it will be possible for you to assist us, we would be most grateful. We suggest that you meet with us in person in New York, NY USA, and that during your visit I introduce you to the representatives of the Wall Street USA, as well as with certain officials of the Central Bank of USA.

Please call me at your earliest convenience at 18-555-1234. Time is of the essence in this matter; very quickly the USA Government will realize that the Central Bank is maintaining this amount on deposit, and attempt to levy certain depository taxes on it.

Yours truly,

The Esteemed Arch-Chairman

thirsty thursday beer

thirsty thursday beer, originally uploaded by Knotty.

Odd ones out

What do these three countries have in common?

For the geographically challenged..

USA, Liberia and Myanmar.

Leadville

LEADVILLE, August 10, 2008 (AFP) - Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong finished second in his first race since 2005 on Saturday.

The 36-year-old American was runner-up in the Leadville Trail 100, behind Dave Wiens, winner of the past six editions of the race. Wiens bested his own course record by more than 13 minutes finishing in 6 hours and 45 minutes.

Video

"It's the first time in three years that I've done seven hours of cycling," said Armstrong of the tough, single-day mountain bike race.

This might be the next race... Race Across The Sky Leadville 100 Mile MTB Race
(The best being that I would need a new (mountain) bike.. hahahaha.)

Bert & Ernie Ante Up

Barack Astley

Record player

Music enthusiasts are reverting to the authenticity of analog, going back to vinyl playing turntables, turning their backs on digital music. If you feel like joining them, then may I suggest the The Reference II by the Swiss manufacturer Goldmund.

Each turntable arrives in five crates and is installed by a 3 man Goldmund Team with complete calibration included to ensure it is perfectly set-up. It is a limited edition of 25 units only sold on subscription with a maximum production of 5 units per year. The supporting table of extreme rigidity and inertia weighs 250kg and has a 100cm, 20 kg, 5-layer dynamically balanced platter (3 metacrylate and 2 brass) with 12 lead damping inserts. It has a cog-free motor with lowest electrical and mechanical noise, shielded and dampened by 15kg of brass. It has touch controls integrated in the tabletop for the turntable (33 / 45 / 78 rpm) and the T8 tone arm which itself weighs 7kg. It goes on and on. The full spec is here.

Total weight? 350kg. Cost? $250,000 to you. Bargain. But where do you plug in the iPod?

Slow day

Start typing letters to guess the movie title. You’ve got three takes (ie wrong letter choices) to get it right. Win and you get to see the movie poster. Lose and, well, play again.

Probably not the VP choice then

John Edwards on Bill Clinton in 1999:

“I think this President has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen.”

LAT

"Are they going to wait until dark and then bring out their dragons?"

The Beijing Olympics: Are They A Trap?

panty at the river

panty at the river, originally uploaded by Knotty.

Spudette - August 9th

Average Athlete vs. Olympic Athlete

The 100 most common English words

Can you guess them?

for my Scrabbley Father-in-Law and the daughter that would love to win one day :)

McArmy

"McDonald's is to launch a UK recruitment drive aimed at hiring 4,000 new staff as the fast food chain looks to take advantage of consumers trading down in the wake of the consumer downturn. The recruitment will increase the size of McDonald's 67,000-strong UK workforce by 6pc, a number approaching the combined strength of the Royal Navy and RAF. So, seriously, who in their right mind would swap an evening meal at the pub for a McDonald's?"

telegraph via hpc

Fruity

Overheard at lunchtime, Tokyo, Japan.

"You know what a rhyme is right?"
"Of course I do, it's like a lemon only green."

Gotta love that.

Reinvention

"Reinvent the British and you get a global finance center, edible food and better service. Reinvent the French and you may just get more Germans."

Michael Lewis via Bloomberg

What studies say about your sounds

"But sometimes.. ..musical tastes will reveal nothing. The key to understanding.. ..is to treat them with respect by listening to what they have to say, rather than typecasting them according to the type of music they listen to."

POP: Conformists, overly responsible, role-conscious, struggling with sexuality or peer acceptance.

HEAVY METAL: Higher levels of suicidal ideation, depression, drug use, self-harm, shoplifting, vandalism, unprotected sex.

DANCE: Higher levels of drug use regardless of socio-economic background.

JAZZ/RHYTHM & BLUES: Introverted misfits, loners.

RAP: Higher levels of theft, violence, anger, street gang membership, drug use and misogyny.

theage.com.au

Elic Crapton

Yuto Miyazawa might butcher the lyrics, but he is only 8 years old..

I.O.USA

new layout

new layout, originally uploaded by Knotty.

The Dark Knight

"The most striking thing about the new Batman movie, now smashing the all-time box office records, is its emphasis on sado-masochism as the animating element in American culture these days. It must appeal to the many angry people in our land who want to hurt others, even while they themselves feel deserving of the grossest punishments. In other words, the picture reflects the extreme depravity of the current American sensibility. Seeing it all laid out there must be very validating to the emotionally confused audience, and hence pleasurable, in all its painfulness.
The rich symbolism in this spectacle represents the tenor of contemporary America as something a few notches worse than whatever the Nazis were heading toward around 1933. We like nothing better than to see people suffer and watch things get broken. The more slowly people are tortured (including the movie audience) the more exquisite the pleasure derived from the act. Civilization offers no consolation. In fact, its a mug's game. Thus, civilization is composed only of torturers and their mug victims.
Gotham City, the setting for all these sadomasochistic vignettes, is a place devoid of comfort. (The suburbs are missing completely.) Even the personal haunts of "the Batman," a.k.a. zillionaire Bruce Wayne, are hard-edged non-spaces. His workplace (cleverly accessed via a dumpster) is an underground bunker the size of about three football fields with a claustrophobic drop ceiling and a single furnishing: the megalomaniacal computer console that is supposed to afford him "control" of the city, but which appears to be, in fact, a completely impotent sham piece of techno-junk, since it can't even outperform a $300 GPS unit in locating things. By the way, Hitler had a brighter sense of decor in the final days of the bunker. Bruce Wayne's personal apartment is one of those horrid glass-walled tower condos beloved of the starchitects, which, in its florid exposure to everything external practically screams "no shelter here!"
At the center of all this is the character called "The Joker." Judging by the reams of reviews and reportage about this movie elsewhere in the media, the death of actor Heath Ledger, who played the role, adds another layer of juicy sadomasochistic deliciousness to the proceedings -- we get to reflect that the monster on screen may have gotten away, but the anxiety-ridden young actor who played him was carted off to the bone orchard before the film even officially wrapped, (and therefore deserves extra special consideration for America's greatest honor, the Oscar award, while the audience deserves its own award for recognizing the lovely ironies embroidered in this cultural phenomenon.)
The Joker is not so much as person as a force of nature, a "black swan" in clown white. He has no fingerprints, no ID, no labels in his clothing. All he has is the memory of an evil father who performed a symbolic sadomasochistic oral rape on him, and so he is now programmed to go about similarly mutilating folks, blowing things up, and wrecking everyone's hopes and dreams because he has nothing better to do. He represents himself simply as an agent of "chaos." Taken at face value, he would seem to symbolize the deadly forces of entropy that now threatens to unravel real American life in the real world -- a combination of our foolish over- investments in complexity and the frightening capriciousness of both nature and history, which do not reveal their motivations to us.
By the way, forget about God here or anything that even remotely smacks of an oppositional notion to evil. All that's back on the cutting room floor somewhere (if it even got that far). And I say this as a non-religious person. But the absence of any possible idea of redemption for the human spirit is impressive. In the world of "the Batman," humanity at its very best is capable only of being confused about itself. This is perhaps an interesting new form of dramaturgy -- instead of good-versus-evil you only get befuddlement-versus-evil. Goodness has lost its way in the dark night of the American psyche, as might be understandable considering the nation of louts, liars, grifters, bullies, meth freaks, harpies, and tattooed creeps we have become. The best we can bring to this predicament is the low-grade pop therapy that passes for thinking nowadays in educated circles. Any consideration of the heroic is off the menu here. We can't ask that much of ourselves. It's too difficult to imagine. Meanwhile, The People -- that is, the citizens of Gotham City -- literally banish even the possibility of heroism from town at the end of the movie -- they take an axe to it! -- perhaps indicating that they deserve whatever befalls them or, shall I say, "us."
A few other striking elements of this spectacle deserve attention. One is the grandiosity that saturates the story elements, and the remarkable impotence of it all. The Batman possesses every high-tech weapon and survival implement ever dreamed up, yet they avail him nothing -- except a lot off sickening leaps off skyscrapers and futile hard landings on car roofs, shipping containers, sidewalks, and other human carcasses. I doubt the writers/director Chris and Jonathan Nolan consciously aimed to depict good old American ingenuity as utterly valueless in the face of chaos, but that's the effect. Otherwise, everything in the Batman's world is overscaled and out-of-whack from the size of Bruce Wayne's fortune (what an executive package his Daddy must have made off with, and from which investment bank?!), to the energy expended in so many car chases and explosions, to the super-sized doom-worthy towers of the gigantic, soulless city.
Finally there is the derivation of all this sadomasochistic nihilism out of a comic book. How appropriate, since we have become a cartoon of a society living on a cartoon of a North American landscape, that the deepest source of our mythos comes from cartoons. We're so far gone that real human emotion is beyond us. We're to far gone -- and even without shame -- to care how this odious movie portrays us to the rest of the world. It is already making a fortune out there."
cfn
As Joli said after we saw it on Saturday night.. need to go watch it again.

Health Shake ?

Serving Size 1 Serving (32 fl.oz)
Amount Per Serving
Calories 2310		Calories from Fat 970
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 108g			166%
Saturated Fat 64g			320%
Trans Fat 2.5g
Cholesterol 295mg			98%
Sodium 1560mg			65%
Total Carbohydrates 303g			101%
Dietary Fiber 2g			8%
Sugar 266g
Protein 35g
Vitamin A			60%
Vitamin C			15%
Calcium			120%
Iron			6%

Right or Left Handed?

WIFE:
What would you do if I died? Would you get married again?

HUSBAND:

Definitely not!

WIFE:

Why not - don’t you like being married?

HUSBAND:

Of course I do.

WIFE:

Then why wouldn’t you remarry?

HUSBAND:

Okay, I’d get married again.

WIFE:

You would? (With a hurtful look on her face).

HUSBAND:

(Makes audible groan).

WIFE:

Would you live in our house?

HUSBAND:

Sure, it’s a great house.

WIFE:

Would you sleep with her in our bed?

HUSBAND:

Where else would we sleep?

WIFE:

Would you let her drive my car?

HUSBAND:

Probably, it is almost new.

WIFE:

Would you replace my pictures with hers?

HUSBAND:

That would seem like the proper thing to do.

WIFE:

Would she use my golf clubs?

HUSBAND:

No, she’s left-handed.

WIFE:
- silence - -

HUSBAND:
Bugger….