ALIAS SEASON 3

As season three of the ABC espionage series gets under way, secret agent Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) has still not entirely adjusted to the startling revelation that she has somehow lost track of two years in her life -- and that her partner and erstwhile lover Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan) is now married to Lauren Reed (Melissa George). Also, she is informed that her double-agent father, Jack (Victor Garber), who thought Sydney was dead, has been jailed -- in solitary confinement -- for a year, and her duplicitous boss, Sloane (Ron Rifkin), has disavowed his evil ways and "gone straight." But just as in previous seasons, what seems true on the surface is a different story as Sydney digs deeper into the mystery of her missing years. Placed back on active duty, Sydney tortuously tries to put the pieces back together, with Vaughn at her side and Lauren agonizing over the likelihood that her marriage is doomed. Various links to Sydney's past include her old nemesis Julian Sark (David Anders), who has hatched a scheme to cripple the nation's satellite system; and freelance thief Simon Walker (Justin Theroux), whose team is involved in stealing a dirty weapon. There are also unexpected encounters with Sydney's old friend Will Tippin (Bradley Cooper), newly dragged from the bowels of the Witness Protection Program, and the redoubtable Allison Doren (Merrin Dungey), the evil doppelganger of Sydney's murdered roommate, Francie. Throughout, there is a concerted effort to prevent Sydney's memory from coming back -- an effort engineered not only by her enemies, but by those who know that she is harboring a terrible secret that will destroy her once she knows all. In the mid-season episode "Full Disclosure," Sydney finally receives the whole shocking story about those lost two years, and her complicity in the murder of a Russian diplomat. Thereafter, we're back to the basics, with Sydney and Vaughn collaborating on a variety of top-secret missions, several tied in with the ubiquitous Rambaldi code, which when broken will lead to a super-weapon capable of wiping out all of humankind. And in the time remaining in season three, the scorned Lauren is at the center of a startling betrayal -- and, ultimately, Sydney is slapped with a bitter disillusionment that makes all past disillusionments in her life pale in comparison.

Arsenal vs Fenerbahce: Intriguing matchups

A very favourable match up for Arsenal:

Theo Walcott vs Roberto Carlos

Roberto Carlos, a former Galactico pitting his 35 year old frame against the blistering pace of 19 year old Theo Walcott down the left. Carlos has lost a step or two and this should be Walcott's day on the field to exploit the space provided. Look for a very active day down this flank. Walcott should not be hesitant to pull the trigger since it seems to take RVP and Adebayor a lot longer to warm up in these international fixtures.

The X factors:

Emmanuel Eboue vs Kazim Kazim

Emmanuel Eboue in his more circumscribed role as right back. Lets hope he remembers that his primary role is to defend. He will be dragged out wide by Kazim Kazim aka Kazim Colin Richards in his English version. Eboue should eschew his penchant for nifty foot skills in 50- 50 situations for an old fashioned clearing boot deep into opponent territory.

Mikael Silvestre vs Dani Guiza and Semih Senturk

Mikael Silvestre: Short of recent match experience and coming back from injury. Will have to pair Djorou to stop the opportunistic Dani Guiza and Semih Senturk with their talent for out-positioning their markers and scoring goals through deflections and headers.

Xavi Named Euro 2008 Player of the Tournament

Well, this is embarrassing. I did a quick rundown of Euro 2008 Player of the Tournament candidates last night, and there was one name I forgot: Xavi Hernández.

And guess who UEFA has named as player of the tournament this morning? That’s right: Xavi Hernández.

I’m pretty sure UEFA did this just to make me look bad. And it seems a slightly odd choice, perhaps influenced by being chosen so soon after the final?

But in a lot of ways Xavi makes perfect sense. There really wasn’t one outstanding, dominant player at Euro 2008. But there was some top notch teamwork, especially in Spain’s midfield.

Instead of trying to pick the player who stood out the most, as I did last night, seems UEFA have given their Player of the Tournament award to a man who symbolizes all that teamwork.

So as the man who made Spain’s midfield tick, Xavi deserves the prize. Lots of smart short passing that made Spain’s possession game possible, and some inch perfect through balls, like the one for Fernando Torres’ winner last night. “It was him who gave the team its tempo,” said Uefa technical director Andy Roxburgh. I’m not going to argue with him.


Well, maybe a little. I still stand by my original choice of Iker Casillas. Yes, Xavi had a good tournament, but there was at least one occasion (against Italy in the quarter-finals comes to mind) where he was replaced by Cesc Fabregas, and Cesc looked a lot more effective.

Meanwhile Casillas pulled out all kinds of great saves, and made zero blunders. There was never any danger of him being replaced by Pepe Reina for the final 30 minutes.

But as a representative of the kind of football that won the tournament, Xavi makes sense. So congratulations to him and to the whole Spanish squad for a great team performance.

UEFA also named a 23 man squad of the tournament, like so:

Gianluigi Buffon (Italy), Iker Casillas (Spain), Edwin van der Sar (Holland); Jose Bosingwa (Portugal), Philipp Lahm (Germany), Carlos Marchena (Spain), Pepe (Portugal), Carles Puyol (Spain), Yuri Zhirkov (Russia); Hamit Altintop (Turkey), Luka Modric (Croatia), Marcos Senna (Spain), Xavi (Spain), Konstantin Zyryanov (Russia), Michael Ballack (Germany), Cesc Fabregas (Spain), Andres Iniesta (Spain), Lukas Podolski (Germany), Wesley Sneijder (Holland); Andrei Arshavin (Russia), Roman Pavlyuchenko (Russia), Fernando Torres (Spain), David Villa (Spain)

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.