Euros are Over, But the Blog Goes On…

A fond farewell to Euro 2008 then. An excellent tournament all round. And very sincere congratulations to Spain, who were brilliant.

But if you’re looking for a further fix of football blogging don’t worry… we’ve got you covered.

For club football, visit us at The Offside where you’ll find a front page blog and active community of well over a hundred team blogs.

For more international football, read World Cup Blog. We’ll be covering World Cup 2010 qualification, Olympic soccer, the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations, and plenty more. We have a load of international team blogs, and we’re always looking to add more.

Thanks for reading Euro 2008 on WCB and we hope to see you on our other sites.

JS Mill and the banking crisis

Sitting on the runway at La Guardia, I started wondering what happens to capital now that so many banks are owned by bigger banks or government.

Culture and commerce take turns as the engines of innovation in our world, and you might say both of them have fallen relatively silent. Without them we are vulnerable to "prevailing opinion and feeling" and the eagerness of people to impose terms.

Protection...against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them, to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. (JS Mill, On Liberty)

To take the obvious example, I wonder if the capital that animated Silicon Valley a few years ago would be available this time around? Or does a government hand in the marketplace discourage risk and innovation?

My society

I was watching Scrubs last night and I heard this song during the episode. It’s called “Ain’t no reason” by Bret Drennen. Now I couldn’t hear the lyrics exactly on the count of it was just playing in the background of the episode, but I caught a few phrases and the guitar sounded lovely, so I searched the song online and I found it on youtube along with its music video. I watched the video and realized what the song was about. It was a song about the world today and all the social issues that are in it.

The message of the song is simple: we as human beings most of the time, live our lives without thinking about the problems that the world faces. Personally, we might not be facing them or they might not be affecting us directly, but they’re still around. A lot of people take for granted the easy, normal lives that lead. They forget that behind the pleasure and luxury that they enjoy everyday, there are people suffering somewhere else. A lot of people say that they have problems that they can’t deal with, or that their lives are so off-track that they don’t know what they can do to fix. But what they don’t seem to understand or realize is that their problems are probably, nay most likely, mediocre when compared to those that are being faced world-wide.

We see these problems on TV all the time; global warming, oil leakage into our ocean, the war in Iraq, starving third world countries, unfair labor practices overseas, etc. All these issues were mentioned in the video. And when you watch it, you can’t help but feel a little bit guilty about not being able to do anything about these problems. It’s a dilemma really. The easiest one I can think of is the unfair labor practices. I don’t know about everyone else, but I know that most my clothes and shoes were probably made overseas and might be by workers who are underage, suffering from low wages, or working in an unsafe environment against their will. But here’s the kicker: I continue to buy sneakers made by Nike despite knowing that in the 1990s, they were in lawsuits for unfair labor practices in Vietnam. Am I to blame? Probably to certain to extent. But what are we supposed to do? The fact of the matter is, most of the clothing companies today are probably doing something that seems unethical in order produce and manufacture their products. So we can stop buying from one company and move on to the next, but what makes us so sure that this one doesn’t do the same thing, if not something worse?

It’s hard to admit, but there are just some things in life that we regular, every-day people cannot control. There are just problems that we can’t fix. And there are just decisions we can’t really make. I guess the bottomline is, it’s amazing how much we take for granted everyday; the amount of complaining and bitching we as Americans do; and the big deal of so very little things that we encounter.

If you wanna check it out, here’s the song and video on youtube:

Is war necessary ?

WAR, (Wrathful Armed Rudity), this is how I would expand it, if possible. The world has seen many wars in its history, and the history continues. While exploring on the reasons for those wars/battles, we can list the following as reasons:
* Acquisition of land
* Revenge
* Retain power
* Retain individual prestige
* Freedom(the least cause of wars)

In ancient days, where humans were in the starting stage of the transition from animals to humans, they could not hide the behaviour(rudity) of animals. So, the easiest way for them to tackle a problem is fighting against their enemies. But, if you believe the transition has occurred, there is no point in still fighting.

With the ’sixth sense’(if there is really a thing like that), humans must think on their activities. Wars have brought in a great loss in lives, capital, dignity, freedom, etc. ever from its first occurrence. Eventhough, if humans were unable to think on the consequences of wars, he must have atleast learnt from its consequences. But, none of them happened.

Why dont people think that they are not going to take the above said reasons with them after death ? In their lifetime, why dont they be helpful to others, without harming others ? Why dont they use the money spent on wars to others needing them ?

Life is beautiful, but only when someone allows you to live in.

So, promote love and appreciate peaceful way of solving any problems.

Rambo4 Synopsis

Twenty years after the last film in the series, John Rambo (SYLVESTER STALLONE) has retreated to northern Thailand, where he's running a longboat on the Salween River. On the nearby Thai-Burma (Myanmar) border, the world's longest-running civil war, the Burmese-Karen conflict, rages into its 60th year. But Rambo, who lives a solitary, simple life in the mountains and jungles fishing and catching poisonous snakes to sell, has long given up fighting, even as medics, mercenaries, rebels and peace workers pass by on their way to the war-torn region.

That all changes when a group of human rights missionaries search out the "American river guide" John Rambo. When Sarah (JULIE BENZ) and Michael Bennett (PAUL SCHULZE) approach him, they explain that since last year's trek to the refugee camps, the Burmese military has laid landmines along the road, making it too dangerous for overland travel. They ask Rambo to guide them up the Salween and drop them off, so they can deliver medical supplies and food to the Karen tribe. After initially refusing to cross into Burma, Rambo takes them, dropping off Sarah, Michael and the aid workers...

Less than two weeks later, pastor Arthur Marsh (KEN HOWARD) finds Rambo and tells him the aid workers did not return and the embassies have not helped locate them. He tells Rambo he's mortgaged his home and raised money from his congregation to hire mercenaries to get the missionaries, who are being held captive by the Burmese army. Although the United States military trained him to be a lethal super soldier in Vietnam, decades later Rambo's reluctance for violence and conflict are palpable, his scars faded, yet visible. However, the lone warrior knows what he must do...

Sylvester Stallone writes, directs, produces and stars as John Rambo in RAMBO TO HELL AND BACK, filmed on location in and around Chiang Mai, Thailand. Also starring are Julie Benz ("Dexter"), Matthew Marsden (RESIDENT EVIL; EXTINCTION, BLACK HAWK DOWN), Graham McTavish (HBO's "Rome"), Rey Gallegos (AMERICAN WEDDING), Jake LaBotz (GHOST WORLD), Tim Kang ("Third Watch") and Paul Schulze ("The Sopranos"). JOHN RAMBO is produced by Avi Lerner, Kevin King and John Thompson. Executive producers are Andreas Thiesmeyer, Josef Lautenschlager and Florian Lechner. The Director of Photography is Glen MacPherson (16 BLOCKS). Production Designer is Franco Carbone (ROCKY BALBOA) and the Costume Designer is Lizz Wolf.

The x-files

From its Fox Network debut on September 10, 1993, to its finale on May 19, 2002, the weekly 60-minute sci-fi drama The X-Files endeavored to prove that "the truth is out there." The series' title refers to those FBI files dealing with cases of paranormal and other otherwise unexplainable phenomena -- UFO sightings, alien abductions, genetic experimentation, possessions, telekinesis, and the like. Investigating the X-Files are agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). Notorious within FBI circles as a maverick and iconoclast, the Oxford-educated Mulder made it his personal mission in life to prove that there were more things in Heaven and on Earth than were dreamt of in our philosophy. For him, it was very personal: his own sister had been abducted by extraterrestrials some 20 years earlier. His more skeptical partner, medical doctor Scully, was assigned to curb Mulder's more "fanciful" theories and to seek logical explanations to the phenomena at hand. (Ironically, in real life, actor David Duchovny doubted the existence of space aliens, while Gillian Anderson confessed to being a "true believer.") As the series progressed, Scully became more convinced that there were indeed paranormal forces beyond her ken; conversely, Mulder began to concede that Scully could be right once in a while, and tried to prove that humans, rather than aliens, were responsible for selected phenomena.

Each successive season of The X-Files ended with a cliffhanger, ranging from the murder of Mulder's information source "Deep Throat" (Jerry Hardin) to the birth of a mutant child who may or may not have belonged to one of the agents. No matter what happened, the physical evidence proving (or disproving) alien intervention invariably disappeared, and it was abundantly clear that there were those within the government who didn't want the truth to come out. Among the most obstreperous of Mulder and Scully's antagonists was a ubiquitous, obnoxious stranger (William B. Davis), known variously as "Cancer Man" and "Cigarette Smoking Man," and finally identified as one C.G.B. Spender. Other regulars and semi-regulars over the years have included Mitch Pileggi as Mulder and Scully's boss, Assistant FBI Director Walter Skinner; Steven Williams as Mr. X, another enigmatic information source; Nicholas Lea as Agent Alex Krycek; Mimi Rogers as Agent Diana Fowley; Chris Owens as Agent Jeffrey Spender; and Tom Braidwood as Melvin Frohike, a member of a government "conspiracy watchdog" group known as The Lone Gunman. One of the most popular series ever to emanate from Fox, The X-Files was also one of the longest-lasting science fiction series of all time, surpassed in longevity only by the endless Star Trek saga. In 1998, the series spawned a successful theatrical feature, also titled The X-Files, which tied up several loose plot ends from the series while establishing a whole new set of mysterious complications. The X-Files was created and executive-produced by Chris Carter. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

What is the factors of Environmental Problems?

• Factories and industries
• Transportation
• Open burning
• Rubbish
• War
• sewage
  
• contruction