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Slow blogging week once more...  All blackbirds are crows to me Lately, the top of my windows has become an evening retreat for a couple of feathered friends. Yes, I did warn that I was short of material. Song of the moment is a throwback to 70s disco... I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor: Came across it on a viewing of Meet the Spartans. Eh, it was funny in parts lah. [By the way, despite being completely dissed by critics, it earned over US$80 million on a US$30 million budget - exceptional since I would have guessed closer to a US$3 million outlay. One of those things that people enjoy but find it inconvenient to admit] Regular football will be back on in a fortnight, after a World Cup that was captivating mostly for the wrong reasons...  Americans, at the forefront of critical thought as always Get Fuzzy has some good innovations for the next edition. Can't be worse than the vuvuzelas, now a permanent scourge.  Some of the ideas aren't that bad. Like the MMA refs. Penalty shots are fine I feel; Take them right, take them tricky, and celebrate them... fishily. Back to the rat race, i mean... cavia queue.
- Adidas-sponsored Alvaro Arbeloa, extolling the virtues of the Jabulani World Cup ball  3-second summary of the World Cup Final, 2010 (Source: RedCafe Forums) Settled the missing Grilled Birds reports I've been meaning to make up for the last seven years, and also engaged in... other projects. Entertainment for the week has thus been outsourced to MrBrown, who outdoes K'naan's World Cup anthem, Waving Flag, with The Wave Song (link courtesy of yiren): And lest I forget, Mr. Ham recommends a hamster-themed comic: Hamleto!
- sport -
It's all come down to this, after days of tripping down to the local community centre, coffeeshops and even SAFRA Jurong, Soccernet gamecasts and (perfectly legal) blurry Indonesian television signals - twenty two men, one Jabulani, one World Cup.  You get what you (don't) pay for I've been a poster boy for information entropy these couple of weeks; After England did it in for themselves, I switched over to my backup Brazil, who immediately fell to the Netherlands after a bright start. Undeterred, I rooted for Argentina as my cousin had a little something riding on them (a decision for which Maradona's naked ambition had zero influence on), and they self-destructed in spectacular fashion against Germany, courtesy of Maradona's ballboy. That, by the way, also gave additional consolation to England, who lost by 1-4 and not 0-4. God save the Queen! I felt it hard not to back Paraguay against Spain, due to the not inconsiderable charms of their Godiva-like Number One Fan, Larissa Riquelme; Not expecting them to progress from anything other than a penalty shootout, my hopes were briefly raised when Paraguay won a penalty, but had it saved. They did survive one of their own, before a late Villa winner came. Of the four sides remaining, I most wanted Uruguay, who incidentally have a smaller population than Singapore, to win it, and the Dutch obligingly eliminated them by three goals to two. With the Cup now bound for Europe, I settled on Germany as by far the least of three evils, and even roped in Mr. Ham to provide extra analysis. Mr. Ham confidently went against seasoned tipsters Paul the Octopus and Mani the Parakeet, who went for Spain (leading to possible actual seasoning for Paul by disgruntled German fans). We were both wrong, as Spain edged past the Germans by the odd goal in one of the slowest and most boring matches I have had the bad fortune to sit through, and I don't care what anybody thinks of that.  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm For third place, my heart said the delightfully roguish Uruguay, while my head said the clinically efficient Germany (supposedly they hired undergrads to research on the other teams, a nice job if one can get it), and Mr. Ham went for... Uruguay. The mostly meaningless match was far more entertaining than most that had gone by, and it was 1-1 at the break, and 2-2 on the hour mark, with both these goals being missed thanks to my fellow spectators grinding out a 3-3 in PES on the PS3 (6-3 to Uruguay after extra time, with two Germans sent off). In real life, the Germans won it 3-2, as Forlan crashed a free-kick against the crossbar in the final seconds. So it's down to Holland and Spain tonight, and while I'm not a fan of either, I would mind the Netherlands a bit less, and even grudgingly acknowledge Robben's skill at drawing fouls and cards - he does at least run for his keep. Also, Dutch captain and former Arsenal player Giovanni van Bronckhorst is of Indonesian heritage. Who would have guessed? Mr. Ham's tip: Spain.  This probably means the Netherlands wins, by the way Spain! Spain! Spain! (this had better work)
- sport - - Machiavelli, The Prince Take a bow, Luis Suarez!  Rigid Morality 0 Real-life Pragmatism 1 (Source: Yahoo! Sports) The rest just have slower reaction time." - RedCafe Forums This latest bit of chicanery conveniently came after my little piece on football ethics, and the summary is that an Uruguayan player, Luis Suarez, stopped a certain goal with his hands on the line, with almost no time remaining [N.B. this situation was previously mentioned on this blog]; Unlike many other infractions at the World Cup, this one was spotted and Suarez was sent off and a penalty given to Ghana, but Ghana missed, and eventually lost. Again, two issues, as with England: a) did Suarez cheat? and b) did he do the right thing? My answers are again: Yes and yes. I should expand on a): Suarez is a cheater, but to the extent that almost all professional footballers are cheaters (I was tempted to say all, but refrained as such a paragon of virtue may exist... just that I have yet to see one). Has there been a player who has gone through a career without illegally impeding another? Oh, but it's just a matter of degree... Doubtless debate on Suarez's Palms of Providence is raging on messageboards throughout cyberspace, and I offer this RedCafe thread as an example of the common viewpoints professed. Most did agree that he did the right thing [which was question (b) above]; There is however more dissention on whether he had "cheated". The usual points were brought up: A popular one was that he was caught (and knew quite well that he would be) and punished with a red card and a penalty kick, so it was not really cheating, just playing to the rules; This earned rejoinders such as it's cheating in the same way that stealing a car is theft, and that the punishment is irrelevant. My observation is that if Suarez stole a car, most other players steal FM radios and television sets almost every game. Multiple times. Sure, it doesn't mean that the car thief should be protected from reproach, but it does beg the question of whether he is disproportionately picked on, as but one thief among many. The next amusing observation was that when stuff like Solskjaer's last ditch tackle and Scholes' handball against Fulham were trotted out (both of them being well-liked true United legends), justifications such as "the striker that Solskjaer fouled still had the keeper to beat, so it's not really comparable", and "Scholes was unlucky, it was instinctive" came out of the woodwork. It's different when it's your thief, see...  They loot, we "find". Completely different *wink* (Source: boingboing.net) - Mark Grace Also, after Brazil lost to Holland (thanks to Melo unable to be mellow - if Brazil have a weakness, it's them not being able to deal with being behind), I'm currently offering my support services to any interested parties. For a token fee, I will transfer my now-free-again allegiance to any team of one's choosing for the remainder of their World Cup (which should then be very short). Any takers?
- sport - - 白武男; 武神海虎地狱 第32回 Today recently published an article from a professor of ethics lamenting the acceptance of cheating in football, and berating Manuel Neuer, the German goalie who faced England in the Round of 16, for not doing the right thing and admitting to The Goal Ungiven. Neuer confessed as much, that he had known that the ball was over the line, and frankly any denial would have been slightly ridiculous given the spatial awareness that top-class goalkeepers have to have. However, according to the professor, he "...missed a rare opportunity to do something noble in front of millions of people. He could have set a positive ethical example to people watching all over the world, including the many millions who are young and impressionable." Personally, I feel that, as in many other ways, football is simply mimicking real life. But first, let us examine the professor's argument. He brings up Maradona's and Henry's infamous handball goals (to which Fabiano's should really be added, except that it didn't quite have as much impact) as evidence for the "win at all costs" mentality in football, and says that they should not be exempt from criticism for these acts any more than say, taking performance-enhancing drugs. I would note here that there is a slight difference, as such cheating in football is seldom premeditated, unlike doping. What makes it even more tricky is that there is a very, very fine line between fair and foul. Should defenders be honour-bound to call themselves for a yellow card, if they feel that they have clipped an opponent a fraction of a second late? It would be a strange sport indeed. Next, he cites cricket as an example of a (more) honest sport, giving the example of Adam Gilchrist, who is known to admit it when the ball has grazed his bat, thereby dismissing himself. I have a couple of objections, the first being that the professor is arguing from the specific to the general; A single saint does not a sport holy make, and here the professor conveniently forgets things like bodyline, leg before wicket and illegal bowls, which less virtuous perpetrators presumably keep silent about when they happen.  Rats! I thought I was in luck when it landed in the water! (Source: cartoonstock.com) The second is that the costs are not commensurate. When Gilchrist outs himself, it costs his team but one of perhaps forty such opportunities. When a tennis player calls a ball in against himself (which is not all that common, by the way), it is just one point in one game of dozens, possibly hundreds. Ditto the stroke penalty for golf, which would be one or two of hundreds in a tournament, and I daresay in most other more "gentlemanly" games. Interestingly, the professor appears mistaken when he praises Fowler for taking his penalty in a way as to allow the opposition goalie to save it, since Fowler himself admitted that while he did tell the referee that it wasn't a foul (perhaps aware that referees are not supposed to change their decisions due to player input), he took the penalty to the best of his efforts anyway (and his teammate scored from the rebound, so...). [Note also that the positive examples where players have deliberately denied themselves goals came in inconsequential friendlies, or when they were already winning by a landslide.] Thus, a more comparable measure of honesty would be if Gilchrist calls himself out in the very last inning with the match on the line, or if Federer insists Nadal's volley brushed the line in a tiebreaker, or if Woods admits that his club inadvertently touched the ball on the 17th hole on the final day of a tournament, since these situations would be the rough analogue of what a goal means in football; Otherwise, their more minor acts of sportsmanship should be more fairly compared to acts like a team abandoning a good attacking move to kick the ball out of play for a downed opponent player, which does happen quite frequently. I would thus argue that footballers are not inherently less ethical than other sportsmen. It is simply that the stakes are far higher when the incentive to cheat appears, and the grey areas are larger (no thanks to FIFA). Many other sports are designed such that open cheating by players is very difficult and/or will not be rewarded; For the former case, how could a baseballer cheat to win (other than steroids, spitballs and corked bats), even if he wanted to? Or volleyball players? Or badminton players?  Whoops! (Source: latinosportslegends.com) When opposing players can come into contact with each other (e.g. basketball, American football, rugby etc), and the opportunity to be less than honest occurs, the latter case of reducing the incentive to do so applies. Does anybody believe that a basketballer would not smack a shot away from the hoop in the dying seconds of an NBA playoff game, (committing the basketball foul of goaltending) and pretend not to have done so, if he had the slightest chance of getting away with it? Nah. Then again, basketball runs to the hundreds of points, so any such individual act counts for little in the big picture. The importance of tries in American football and rugby would probably come closest to that of goals in football, but they have instant replays to remove doubt. Put another way, if Neuer were a rugby fullback, he wouldn't try too hard to kick the ball away after an opponent downed it on the line, but mostly because there is no payoff in doing so - the video referee wouldn't be swayed by that. Conversely, if FIFA had allowed video replays for referees, if only for incidents leading to goals, Neuer, Maradona and Henry would be mere footnotes, and their sneaky actions might not even have made it into the match report, being utterly inconsequential. And a professor of ethics would have had to find another group of sportsmen to paint with a broad brush. To give just another perspective on the bending of rules if it provides an advantage, a player in rugby is supposed to feed the ball into the center of the tunnel during a scrum. In theory, this means that both sides should have an approximately equal chance of getting possession. However, the player whose duty it is to feed the ball in somehow manages to put it in closer to his teammates almost every time I catch rugby on the TV, with the referees long since given up on enforcing the letter of the law. Cheating? Well, not if everybody does it... And now, to answer the original question: "Why is cheating OK in football?" and the answer is simply, it works. If referees didn't strictly enforce the rule on permissible elbow angle in cricket, I would suspect that bowlers would try to skirt it for better deliveries... and guess what, they do. If a basketballer doesn't feel contact when a reaching foul is called in his favour, he keeps quiet, and few think the worse of him because of it. Footballers dive simply because the upside is far greater than the downside. Another answer may be that because most people think it's ok. Frankly, how many football fans expected Neuer to own up (though this might have not affected anything, given that FIFA's response to replays showing that their officials messed up was to ban instant replays)? How many would have done so, had they been in Neuer's shoes, whether they felt it was right or not (talk being cheap)? I would guess very few. And how many fans would outright curse Neuer as an absolute idiot had he done the "noble, positive ethical" thing and thrown the ball into his own net? I fear that an anonymous survey (any psychology students looking for a topic?) might diminish the professor's faith in humanity. In summary, berating the seeming prevalence of cheating in football is akin to criticising the people in a city with low police presence and lots of money lying around for being more prone to theft and therefore less ethical than the residents of another city with security cameras at every street corner and plenty of locks. Humans are honest to the extent that it benefits them to be, which is a pretty high level in modern societies, and no more. That's all there is to it. Back to the World Cup, Paraguay squeaked past Japan to set up a possible all-South American semifinals, while Spain narrowly defeated Portugal, whose star man Cristano Ronaldo fell to the Nike Write The Future curse [video]. Pity. It was perhaps the best ad I've seen in my life, eclipsing even The Secret Tournament and Take It To The Next Level (both also by Nike)
- sport - England Expects...  Well, it was The Sun, what did you expect? (Source: majorleaguesoccertalk.com) A quick re-examination of the English Expectation Cycle:
The way I see it, there are two issues here: a) were England cheated? and b) did England deserve to lose? My answers: Yes and yes. Let's begin with the part on losing. It's becoming painfully clear that England are just not that good (even if shorn of Ferdinand, Hargreaves, King, Scholes, etc), and are probably not in the top ten of the world (FIFA generously put them at eighth). Clearly, in terms of teamwork and technique, they aren't even in the top thirty, from what I've seen in the tournament so far, but they do still have some brilliant individuals (on their day). Given that England are probably somewhere between the 8th and 16th best team (cutting them some slack), then a Round of 16 exit is just par for the course, i.e. they have achieved more or less what could be expected of them, especially as they lost to a higher-ranked German side (Argentina are just seventh and Greece 13th, so take it with a grain of salt). In other words, it's the public's own fault for making England out to be what they aren't. The manner of the defeat was another thing altogether, as England made Germany look better than they had any right to be.
Summing up, Germany's goals were mainly due to England being some combination of slow and silly - pensioner slow and schoolboy silly. David James was slightly disappointing too, for while he can't be blamed for letting in any of those, all of the goals, except perhaps the last one, were savable. In other words: England no good. Sepp Blatter vs. The Eye of Tech... However, if past World Cups and Euros are any indication, the representative image (and video) for English fans will be this, which brought up the spectre of 1966 (the coincidence was not lost on Ladbrokes, who paid out on their "Geoff Hurst special"):  FIFA: Nope. Not over the line (Source: Redandwhitekop Forums) It must be said that this isn't even a close decision, where FIFA president Sepp Blatter's "ten different experts will have ten different opinions on what the decision should have been" applies. Most anybody with two eyes, and standing within twenty metres, would have seen the ball go over the line. Thousands of fans there did. Millions of viewers all over the world did. But the referee and his linesman didn't, and that's all that counted. However, I'm now of the opinion that the match officials shouldn't shoulder the bulk of the blame for such incidents; It's something like ordering three men to watch twenty-two starving chickens squawking their way around a ring in real time, and note down exactly which fowl pecked which. The referees shouldn't be the ones put on trial. The FIFA argument against video evidence falls along the lines of a) it's too expensive, b) it takes too much time and c) it diminishes the human element and reduces the "fascination and popularity of football". a) is patently bullshit for the top levels of football, and even if it is true for lower/grassroots football, it must be noted that such matches seldom have three FIFA-approved officials, a well-marked pitch, goalposts, or even a proper ball. As for b), the time taken by players arguing obviously erroneous decisions (as Mexico did when Tevez's goal was allowed despite being miles offside) far outstrips what a video replay would take. Ironically, the match officials (and the audience) in the Argentina-Mexico saw their mistake staring at them from the JumboTron at the stadium, but couldn't legally rescind their decision according to FIFA rules. c) actually makes sense in a twisted sort of way, if one considers that promotions like the World Wrestling Entertainment would be less popular if the wrestlers went about their jobs honestly. It is probably true that the mistakes evoked stronger emotions and reactions than even the most beautiful of moves. But is that the point of sport? Anyway, even if video evidence were used to banish only the most egregious miscalls (the Carroll blunder deserves a mention), there would still be plenty of drama left to mine. Behold:  Assassination scandal at the World Cup! (Source: worldcupblog.org) Here's where a GIF animation might not tell the whole truth: if one looks closely, the Chilean player's knee does brush Torres' right foot, which led to that foot hitting the back of his left calf... which was the signal for a sniper to take the poor guy down from the stands. Note the telltale unnatural "archer bow" [I would have put Rooney's superman dive against the Germans up, but as with the rest of his performance, it was substandard]. There's also always innovation, and following on the heels of such breathtaking tricks as the Zidane 360, the Ronaldinho elastico and the Blanco bounce, South Africa 2010 has seen... the Heskey stepover-cum-shoulderdrop:  Defender guaranteed to be flummoxed And of course we get the lighter side of the beautiful game, such as when a cameraman gets too close to celebrating players:  Because one good hit deserves another ...That Every Ham Shall Do His Duty Do not concern yourselves. Mr. Ham is putting together a PETA wet affairs team now.
- sport - - FARK.com In this eventful week or so, North Korea upset Brazil and won the World Cup, various areas in Singapore got flooded (if I had a penny for each time it rained when I visited Sim Lim, I would... have an advance on a visit to a washroom), and I attended another wedding. Alright, North Korea probably didn't resort to time-delayed video editing, but broadcasting their getting wiped 7-0 in their second match against Portugal didn't make for the best propaganda. It was probably a calculated gamble given their respectable showing against the Brazilians, but unfortunately for them it became the biggest omelette in superior racially-pure faces since Jesse Owens won four golds in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Probably bigger. There has been no word if the 3-0 defeat to the Ivory Coast (eliminating both teams) was shown also live in the Workers' Paradise, but one has sympathy for the returning North Korean footballers, other than the few who are based in Japan. Hopefully they're not of the Uday Hussein school of football management. If the footballers are lucky, the Dear Leader will be focused on getting US$65 trillion from the accursed imperialists. Good luck with that, especially with said imperialists having mucho debt and oily seas on their hands, even if Chinese workers finally demanding increased wages (Honda strikes in China at the same time as Honda strikes against Denmark, heh heh), and the yuan being allowed to rise, should allow them to correct their trade gap. By a bit.  In which the chest-to-face nerve is pinched (Source: Pesfan forums) As for the Ivory Coast, they provided a prime example of how to win a skirmish, but lose both the battle and the war. Two goals down with a few minutes remaining, Keita had the bright idea of deliberately running straight into Kaka, then falling to the ground clutching his face. Sadly, the referee got conned and sent Kaka off - but the Ivory Coast didn't have any time to make good on their extra man advantage, and ended up ruling one of Brazil's better players out of their last group game, not to mention pissing the already-qualified Brazilians off; Which would be fine, except that the Ivory Coast needed Brazil to beat Portugal to have any hope of advancing. Oops. (Brazil and Portugal ended up playing out an entertaining 0-0 draw). [Quick historical aside: Brazil was once a Portuguese colony, about the time that Malacca was one too, and Singapore wasn't all that far from being taking on an Iberian, or even Dutch, flavour - see, history can be fascinating!] It wasn't as if the samba boys were shy about falling over easily either, and frankly it's getting ridiculous that some of the best players in the world have to resort to such deception - or is this part of the reason why they're among the best? It's certainly safer to try flashy moves when they can be parlayed into a foul whenever they don't work out. Then again, defenders also get away with a lot of shirt-pulling... Admittedly the Brazilians also displayed a lot of what makes them many peoples' second team, with Fabiano outdoing Maradona with a double-Hand of God for his second goal. Still, I wouldn't begrudge them a sixth World Cup victory, unless they meet England.  The cheeky Busquets Peekaboo trick (in context) England... got better and scraped through behind the USA (what if...), which is not saying much given how painful they were to watch for their first two matches. Rooney seems to be offering himself up as the scapegoat by sniping at the English fans after a combined poor individual and team performance, and they now meet the Germans next. All according to script. An Anglican bishop, who recognized the magnitude of the task before the Three Lions, has even penned a special prayer for the team, even as he admits that it might be too much to ask God to have them actually lift the trophy. He could perhaps ask for some tips from the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil, who seem to have less trouble with World Cup glory (and better fashion sense to boot)... At least England's still unbeaten and in the mix, which is more than can be said for the finalists of four years ago, France and Italy. I once commented on how current teams are superior to past ones, but have probably underestimated the effect of team spirit and camaraderie; It should be reasonable to expect national representatives to put aside any personal misgivings, especially on such a public stage, but the French in particular have shown how a collection of unmistakeably talented players can wither miserably. Contrast to say the South Koreans and Japanese, who man for man are not quite up to them, but who have both made the next round. With the Liverpool manager job now open, I found myself wondering if outgoing French coach Raymond Domenech might be interested in it, but was immediately ashamed as that would certainly constitute inhumane punishment. Special mention goes to the Kiwis, who bow out undefeated, and to a lesser extent the Swiss, Aussies and South Africans, who got four points, which might have been enough to get them through (even three is possible, in a group where one team wins all three of its matches, and the remaining teams get a win and a loss against each other). On the betting front, I expect the bookies to be cleaning up, what with all the upsets and the tendency of people who know next to nothing about football to wager on the "favourites". Somehow nobody ever admits to making a net loss, though. Shrug. In non World Cup stuff, I finally got about setting up Remote Desktop for my lab computer. For some reason to be further investigated, SoC-VPN (based on OpenVPN) apparently doesn't work well on dual-boot systems (Props to Technical Services for this info), and even after I got it running on my netbook, I couldn't immediately ping my lab PC. As it turns out, the IP address of the lab PC isn't automatically routed through the VPN's gateway - where they gateway IP is of the form A.B.C.D, the lab PC's IP is of the form A.X.Y.Z; The solution then is to simply use the command: route -p add [IP of remote computer] mask 255.255.255.255 [IP of gateway] to force the proper route. It's always slowest the first time... Also, Mr. Ham finally got a YouTube comment! Yes!
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