A new crop of questions sprouts
as fall changes the dynamics in our gardens. lallitara creates one-of-a-kind, eco-friendly products by upcycling reclaimed materials sourced from around the world. The three-person team includes two MBA candidates from MIT Sloan.The
Mets were not charged with an error, but a series of botched plays helped Atlanta rally for a win. "After examining 75 of the kids over several years, we came to very clear conclusions that a vast majority of these kids are doing
well -- well fed, well kept, doing well in school and developing well," lead researcher Gideon Koren of
the University of Toronto tells the CBC. "Taking a small child from his or her parents in a well-adapted environment causes fear, anxiety, confusion and sadness."
Boy made a belated New York City debut on Friday; its album, �Mutual Friends,†is newly released here but has been available in Europe since 2011. Studies link blood proteins to subset of disorder, suggest diagnostic test Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco, the most valuable player of the Super Bowl, reached a deal with the team that was expected to be worth about $20 million a year. Male and female federal employees give their workplaces similar ratings overall, but women feel less empowered and say they are treated less fairly on the job, according to a new report. The information on diversity and inclusion
was drawn from the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government analysis of 2012 data collected by the Office of Personnel Management's Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey.
Read full article >> Q: DEAR TIM: I
have a chance to take a $250 course on electrical wiring that covers how to change outlets, switches, light fixtures, rewiring circuits, etc. I'm terrified of electricity and use
a stick to trip my circuit breakers.
With unemployment stuck above 7 percent, policymakers have been searching anxiously for ways to put more people back to work.
However,
the first step in that process may be the most complex — simply
identifying which type of business actually creates jobs.
Read full article >> SUDAN Six months before a referendum that could split Sudan in two, the United States and other countries are doing too little to help prepare for the vote, according to a report issued Wednesday by advocacy groups. While baseball gets ready for its big nights in Queens on Monday and Tuesday, we look at a fascinating first half of 2013And just like that, poof, here we are at the All-Star break, the first half of the 2013 season in the books. Actually, the dirty little secret is that MLB's first half is usually a touch longer than the second half, and that we actually reached the midway point a bit more than a week ago – but I won't tell if you won't.
When the games conclude on Sunday, eyes will shift to Queens as the borough hosts the Midsummer Classic for the first
time since 1964 and the Home Run Derby for the first time ever, on Monday and Tuesday. So, with this natural pause upon
us, why don't we take a quick spin back at what we've seen so far? In a World-Series-or-bust season, we saw chunks fall off the $200m-plus Dodgers roster before, slowly, the club returned to health. Yasiel Puig dropped down from the heavens and brought a new life to LA, and a start to a career only matched by Joe Dimaggio – suddenly, manager Don Mattingly became more golden that goat, going 16-3 heading into the break, hot on the heels of pretenders Arizona, ready to leave the defending-champion San Francisco Giants in the dust. There was a similar sputter due south in Orange County, with the Angels spending most of
the
half waiting for the dazed duo of Albert Pujols and new mega-signing Josh
Hamilton to start acting like their old selves. Mike Trout's minuscule-sophomore slump (by his standards) was just that; pitching was more problematic – they lost Jered Weaver for close to 10 starts and put up a staff ERA that's anything but titleworthy.
Under-pressure Mike Scioscia gets some relief after an 11-3 run, but there's plenty of work to do.
Who thought first place Boston's trip back from hell would be so swift, so powerful? Who thought a two-year deal for David Ortiz would actually pay off? The all-time DH hits leader wasn't alone in surpassing expectations, either – rookie Jose Iglesias has the numbers of a poor man's Puig. How about John Lackey contributing to more than just chicken jokes? Mike Carp filling in with a near four-digit OPS? There were issues, mostly with pitching, but manager John Farrell brought peace in our time to Fenway Park and
in no short order. To the south of the Bosox, manager Joe Girardi's good ship Yankees was taking on water, with many of his stars hanging out in their Tampa HQ for most of the season. But he kept the boat afloat with a handful of retreads and wannabes, and most of all, well above average pitching. Derek Jeter finally returned Thursday, and then got injured again – to what extent we don't know. Yet despite all the trauma, and typical Alex Rodriguez drama, they managed to stay in position to fight for the division – it could be Girardi's best managerial job yet.
The Tampa Bay Rays underperformed for most of the first half in their strongest department – pitching. Losing David Price and Alex Cobb for extended periods didn't help, but in the last month the staff has returned in full-fledged Rays fashion, dropping their ERA by more than a run while Evan Longoria, Luke Scott and James Loney lead an offensive revival that has seen them move from 10th in runs scored in 2012 to fifth this season.
Joe Maddon's Rays are 15-3 in their last 18 games and look like the class of the AL East right now.
That was supposed to be Toronto's adjective, but instead the Jays are off and on then off again. It's been a struggle from the start, from losing Jose Reyes for most of the season to watching RA Dickey get lit up over and over, recover, and then get lit up again (repeat) – his inconsistency fits in perfectly with the Jays, who showed what was possible in June, only to slide in July. Then there are the Orioles, a mystery team coming into the season. Were they really as good as the team that came out of nowhere to within a whisker of the 2012 ALCS? The answer is "potentially", even if they can't match their remarkable one-run games and extra innings records of last season. Their lineup proved to be stacked, with breakouts from AL home run leader Chris Davis and doubles machine Manny Machado, who powered the O's through starting-pitching issues to hang in a tight division.
Now, if they had just a bit more pitching, we would be talking about a powerhouse. Did somebody say powerhouse? The Pittsburgh Pirates aren't quite that, and it is hard to give a team 11th in runs scored such a label, but if you live and breathe, how the heck can you not get excited about the Buccos? The
pitching staff which gasped for air last August has become the best in the NL, behind the unlikely breakout success Jeff Locke, a 36-year old closer in Jason Grilli and a host of stellar arms. Starling Marte, Pedro Alvarez and Andrew McCutchen need help but at the very very least a .500
record seems in the bag.
The Bucs' NL Central became the best division in baseball (even with the Astros now living in the AL), with Pittsburgh, the Cards and the Reds
all with a place in the playoffs if the season ended today.
Once again, the St Louis Cardinals were among the most well-rounded teams in the game. Adam Wainwright's wins nearly eclipse his walks and Shelby Miller's first 12 starts were startling, even if he's come down to earth since.
Closer Jason Motte out for the year? No problem, journeyman Edward Mujica did just fine.
Quality shined through up and down the lineup, one that has pounded out more runs than any other team. Yadier Molina continued his evolution into a potential Hall of Fame catcher and just think – Matt Adams, a part-timer, has put up an OPS of close to 1.000.
They've been good enough in 2013 to not play someone like this every day.
Be jealous.
Their rivals in Cincinnati set out during the offseason to improve their offense and they have done just that, moving up five places in runs scored
to look more like the slugging Cincy teams we used to know.
Shin-Soo Choo became the highest-impact acquisition of the offseason – constantly on base, ready to be driven in by Joey Votto, who put up another monster half. The staff has been amongst the best in the NL – Homer Bailey has the highest ERA in the rotation at 3.70, giving us a no-hitter night on 2 July.
Yes, talent abounds … yet curiously they have failed
to put it all
together yet, going 17-20 in June and July, five games out of first. Let's stay central, this time in the AL, where Max Scherzer leapt to the front of
the Tigers rotation, finally fulfilling expectations and going 13-0, becoming the first trade miner review do so since Roger Clemens in 1986. For Scherzer, a former No 1 pick, leapfrogging Justin Verlander, who is having an "off year" with a 9-6 record and a 3.70
ERA, was anything but expected, but it has happened and the Tigers are better for it of course – last year at this time they were in third place, 2.5 games out. Now they're 2.5 games up even if, like the Reds, you get the idea they haven't played their best baseball yet.
That despite the duo of Prince Fielder and Miguel Cabrera, the latter of whom is chasing a second consecutive Triple Crown, leading a solid but not spectacular supporting cast.
There's something about this Tigers team that keeps you from completely buying in, even though they played in the World Series a year ago – maybe it's their .597
team OPS when games are "late and close" – even Cabrera is hitting .192 in such situations.Cleveland
and Kansas City have proved to be better than a
year ago.
The Tribe and Terry Francona may have had as many ups and downs as a carousel, but they have to be happy with their first half. The Indians lost 91 games last season and could neither hit or pitch. Now they can hit, and they're also a lot of fun – trotting out the likes of Jason Giambi, allowing Scott Kazmir to pitch again, having a closer in Chris Perez who allegedly orders marijuana to his house in his dog's name. Enough said. KC made huge strides with their pitching, but for an extended period the Royals couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat, going through a stretch when they won six games and lost 21.
The offense was so bad that they had to drag in George Brett to try to fix their bats, while the poor guy was just trying to enjoy his retirement. Thirty years after the famous pine tar incident, Brett was back in the dugout, dispensing tips.
Did it work? Well, since then KC are 21-15 and their sluggish OPS has jumped up 50 points. Coincidence? Maybe, but who cares, they're winning and slowly moving away from their doormat status in what is a crucial season for the franchise.The Oakland A's demolished some teams in the first half, such as the Houston Astros, the Yankees, the Chicago White Sox, the Angels
and the Royals,
going 29-5 against these ball clubs.
Against everyone else, they went 25-33.
A bizarre stat, and I'm not sure what it means, but it's hard not to miss when looking at their schedule.
Also bizarre was the sewage "mystery mass" at Oakland's Coliseum which sent umpires, Mariners and A's scurrying for higher ground – which happened to be the Raiders locker room. Perhaps most bizarre was Bartolo Colón's first-half performance, in which the ancient hurler became their only All-Star, heading up the best pitching staff in the AL. In Oakland, it matters less when Josh Reddick struggles mightily, when Josh Donaldson leads a middle-of-the-road offense – these guys can pitch their way out of 50ft of crap.
(Yeah, I did it again!) So can the Texas Rangers. Who would have thought we'd live to see the day that Arlington housed such prestigious pitching
statistics? They've survived losses of Alexi Ogando, Nick Tepesch, Colby Lewis and Matt Harrison and now Yu Darvish, who is on the DL, and they still managed to be runners-up to the A's in ERA in a less than friendly pitchers' park. The bullpen helps, because it's among the best – Joe Nathan has a 0.756
WHIP Tanner Scheppers is evil in relief. They may not score like they used to, especially now Hamilton is out in
LA, but they deserve credit for overcoming injuries to Lance Berkman,
Ian Kinsler, and AJ Pierzynski during the half – Ron Washington has his reinvented Rangers a smidge behind the A's at the break.
A year ago, the Washington Nationals were 15 games over .500
with a four-game lead over the Atlanta Braves in the NL East. Today they are looking up at the Bravos, just a hair above the .500
mark.
Why? Because things don't always come together they way you planned. Washington no longer have the best rotation in baseball and the timing could not be worse considering what has gone on offensively
for Davey Johnson's Nats. Losing Bryce Harper for an extended period certainly was a setback but that can't trump the abysmal performances of Adam LaRoche, Kurt Suzuki, Denard Span and Danny Espinosa, who are culprits in the Nats slide to 14th in runs scored in the NL.
Meanwhile, the Braves get little publicity, even while they cruise seemingly effortlessly towards yet another NL East title. Seriously, who is talking up the Braves? Perhaps that's how they like it. The transition from the Chipper Jones era to the Upton era is going less than smoothly – Justin, who still has a ways to go to reach his full capabilities, looks like Babe Ruth compared to BJ, who is hitting .179.
Despite such grotesque figures from the elder Upton, they
haven't made much of a difference – rookie catcher Evan Gattis led the way offensively early and Brian McCann returned from injury and responded to the pressure the kid was laying on, putting up his best numbers in years.
Freddie Freeman was good enough to upset Yasiel Puig in the fan vote for the last NL roster slot while Chris Johnson makes Braves brass wonder if they really need another third baseman. With Tim Hudson, Kris Medlen, Mike Minor, Paul Maholm and Julio Teheran in place the starting pitching
is superb – the biggest problem they have is figuring out who goes to
the ailing bullpen after Brandon Beachy returns from Tommy John surgery after the break.
The 2013 season for Mets fans is about Matt
Harvey and the change in culture GM Sandy
Alderson is attempting
to instill. So far Harvey has been everything to a franchise badly in need of cornerstones, and the hope is that Zack Wheeler will now become a true 1b in a rotation with a bright future. Brass have promised investments either via trade or free agents in the future, as the ballclub begins to look ahead to 2014, although Mets fans can't help but notice that Terry Collins' team have won 16
of their previous 25 games, including a sweep of those hapless Giants. Still, it goes without saying that the biggest contest in Queens this season will be the All-Star Game. What else have we seen thus far in 2013? A pair of Dodger brawls called by a broadcasting legend. Ryan Zimmerman, Miguel Cabrera, Will Middlebrooks, Dinoner Navaro and Carlos Gonzalez each going deep thrice in a single game. Homer Bailey's no-hitter, plus six one-hitters – and that doesn't include Yu Darvish's near perfecto opening night.
Anibal Sanchez' 17 strikeouts against Atlanta in late April. Big Papi becoming the all-time leading hit leader among DH's on Wednesday. Mariano Rivera's emotional goodbye tour across big-league parks.
Steve Delabar's move from the classroom to the All-Star Game. Shin-Soo Choo's early season hit by pitch fest. A performance-enhancing drug scandal starring guess who? A fan asking Chris Davis if he uses steroids.
Fog in Chicago.
JA Happ's scary moment.
An umpire apologizing for a blown call and another ump being fired for what is believed to be drug use … and much much more.
As usual, there were incredible plays made some of which can be seen here:Click here if you're reading on a mobile.Now the countdown begins to the All-Star Game, which is just five days away. Then there's those two awful days afterwards with no baseball whatsoever – more than enough time
to get your mouth watering for
the second half of the season.MLBUS
sportsBaseballNew York YankeesPittsburgh PiratesDavid Lengelguardian.co.uk
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
All rights reserved.
| Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds The Stuxnet computer worm that infiltrated industrial systems in Iran this fall may have been designed specifically to attack the country's nuclear program, potentially crippling centrifuges used to enrich uranium gas, according to new research. Cricket is losing a man valued as much for his personal qualities as his batting prowess with retirement of the Mowbray mongrelT he Oval is famous for its valedictions, its final Tests and last hurrahs, its Kleenex sales and achingly sad, crepuscular moments.
They usually come a month or two later than this but on Thursday Ricky Ponting, the mongrel from Mowbray, playing his final first‑class innings, raged and raged for seven hours against the dying of the light.While Ashton Agar was doing something astonishing in Nottingham, Ponting scored 169 not out to save Surrey from defeat by Nottinghamshire.
Then he raised his bat to recognise the standing ovation, and a great cricketer was gone.There was catharsis as well as heavy runs for Ponting. For this venerable ground had been the scene of the player's worst moment, he said, when
England achieved the draw in 2005 that won them the Ashes in the greatest series of them all.Then there was 2009 when, making his last Ashes appearance in this country, he could not prevent England winning the Test at the venue and reclaiming the urn that had been lost so ignominiously in Australia natural vitiligo treatment years earlier. Ponting, now 38, had become the first Australian captain for over a century to lose
two Ashes series in England, and he would go on to lose a third at home.So
there are scars for him, along with the garlands, as he moves towards retirement with his young family and collection of greyhounds – Shane Warne gave him the nickname Punter because of his love of betting on the dogs.The boy Ponting, who would go on to play 168 Tests and 375 ODIs, was one of the most remarkable of cricketing prodigies. Born in Mowbray, a blue‑collar suburb of Tasmania's Launceston, he scored four centuries in five days for his club's under-13 side.
He was so good that serious consideration was given to him playing for the state side when he was just 14.Today,
he stands second only to Sachin Tendulkar as the most successful run-scorer in Test cricket. In terms of esteem among Australian batsmen, he has edged ahead of the elegant Greg Chappell, the redoubtable Allan Border and the taciturn Steve
Waugh, and only Sir Don Bradman stands ahead of him.In
truth, he should
have left international cricket a little earlier than he did; in his final Test series, against South Africa at the end of last year, there were just 32 runs scored from five innings with the 1-0 series defeat culminating in his final Test in Perth.But
then, to prove there was life still there, he was voted Sheffield Shield player of the year after scoring 875 runs at an average of 87.50 – and with it he won that domestic trophy for the first time. When he made his debut for Surrey earlier this season he scored 192 against Derbyshire.
But, even more than the runs, we will treasure the snarling, feisty competitiveness which made him such a formidable – though undersized – Aussie Rules footballer when he was 16.
Remember that four-letter fusillade against the England fielders after he had been run out by the substitute fielder Gary Pratt at Trent Bridge in 2005?That aggression, when mixed with drink, once
threatened his great career. Early on, he was thrown out of a nightclub in India and given a black eye in a Sydney brawl.Today, though, it is his quality as a man, as well a cricketer, which we value.
Last month, at The Oval, he spoke for hours with a gathering of Surrey club captains, showing as much interest in them as they did in him.When
he joined Somerset back in 2004, he arrived tired and jet-lagged but insisted on playing in a Twenty20 game at Taunton that evening when asked, and in a benefit match for Keith Parsons the following day. He scored a century in each of his first two championship games and had a profound influence on James Hildreth and other young players.Long
ago, when the only blimps in cricket were colonels, I didn't care much for Australians. Maybe that was because the first one I met, as a 12-year-old, was the infamous Cec Pepper,
who pushed away this autograph hunter when he was
an umpire at Leicester during the 1964 Ashes tour.Some years later, the profane Sergeant Pepper asked another autograph seeker if he had one for Garry Sobers, and then devastated the boy by signing his own name over that of the great West Indies captain.But
my encounter with Pepper came before I grew to love Australia and recognise the Ashes as the greatest sporting contest of them all.English
cricket is defined by these unrelenting tests of character and skill. And no cricketer was harder, more combative and more talented in these contests than the man who has just walked from the field for the last time in the long shadows of a south London evening.Ricky PontingSurreyAustralia cricket teamCounty Championship 2013 Division OneCounty Championship Division OneAustralia sportCricketPaul Weaverguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
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More Feeds All Star forward Carmelo Anthony went down with a knee injury but the New York Knicks deferred their concern long enough to overcome a 22-point deficit and beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 102-97 on Monday. Cristiano Ronaldo’s goal with about 20 minutes left gave Real Madrid a 3-2 aggregate lead over Manchester United, securing Real’s passage to the Champions League quarterfinals.
Dallas coach Rick Carlisle called it a "defensive pillow fight."
-- Gadhafi vows 'long war' as US, allies pound his forces from air and sea Plus: Has any player made 200 league appearances for three
clubs?; Teams voluntary going down to 10 men (2); and the
referee who blew for half-time after 29 minutes. Send your questions and answers to knowledge@guardian.co.uk and follow us on TwitterTHE GREATEST FIXTURE PILE-UP REDUXThanks to a wet winter, and an amazing cup run to the semi-finals of the FA Vase, Guernsey FC of the Combined Counties League Premier Division are currently looking at playing 17 competitive games in 30 days," writes Neil Blakely. "Is this a record, or have any other clubs faced a backlog this large?"The Knowledge is no stranger to fixture pile-ups, having discussed them at length in 2009 – see here, here, and here. At that stage the travails of Canvey Island, who played the final 12 fixtures of
the 2001-01 season in just 17 days (including a string of five matches on 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 May), could not be topped, but Guernsey FC's current fixture list is something rather extraordinary.
With 14 games in hand on some of their Combined Counties rivals, Guernsey have 21 games to play in 37 days, and that'll go up to 22 if they come through the FA Vase semi-final against Spennymoor Town."I've
never known anything like it," Guernsey's head coach, Tony Vance, tells us, joking that he'd prefer not to reach the final. The cup run, coupled with the dreadful British weather, hasn't left Guernsey with many weekends to play with. "The teams that
we play in the league won't come to Guernsey during midweek, so thus they can only play at weekends," says Vance. "We travel midweek but they don't, but that's part of the deal for us competing in this competition. We were led to believe that in extreme circumstances they would come midweek, but that's not been the case."Being fair to them, we're stuck in Guernsey, we've joined their league, so I can understand their reluctance to come out to Guernsey midweek. It is what it is. For us to play in their league something has to give and if that's it, then we have to deal with it.
It's a simple choice of playing the fixtures or forfeiting them, and we don't want to think about that
because at the end of the day, if we fall short by a few points, you don't want that hanging over you."If Guernsey win all their games in hand, they'll top the table, but Vance believes it is simply impossible. Instead he's focused on going up in second with a decent points-per-game average. "We're being realistic about it," he says. "We've had tough schedules in the past when we competed in the Island Games, where you play five games in six days in a tournament situation, but obviously this is a little bit more hectic than that."Three times in as many weeks Guernsey will have to play league matches on three consecutive days, with the season ending on a four-games-in-four-days streak if they do reach the FA Vase final.
Although most of the matches will be at
home, it's the sort of run that would have some managers turning scarlet with rage.
"We're going to have to use completely different teams," Vance says. "It's probably a straight choice between splitting the first choice XI or just playing a brand new XI, because there's no way that players are going to be able to cope with that, especially at this stage of the season."Between the visit of South Park and a Tuesday night trip to Epsom & Ewell in mid-March, Guernsey lost three players to injury and work commitments. "Injuries are going to play a bigger and bigger part as the spell goes on," Vance says, but with the players enthused, he's staying chipper. "It's a nice story if it comes off, and the players are really up for
the challenge; we'll have a go and see where it takes us.
If we do manage to get sufficient points it'll be a massive achievement for everybody."THE
DOUBLE-TON TREBLE"Has any footballer played over 200 league games for three different clubs?" wonders Jeff Applegate. "The closest I can find is Peter Shilton who played over 200 games for Leicester City and Nottingham Forest and then almost doing so again at both Southampton and Derby County. Recent players to have reached the 200 mark with two different clubs but unable to reach it with a third are Gary Speed and Nigel Martyn – I am sure there are many others. So, has this feat ever been achieved?"Shilton did indeed come within 12 games of reaching the milestone.
He made 286 league appearances for Leicester, 202 for Forest but a mere 188 for Southampton. Indeed the former England goalkeeper is only eclipsed by one man in our reckoning, and even he did not make it three times to 200. World Cup winner Martin google sniper review 302 league appearances for West Ham, 206 for Norwich and 189 for Tottenham.And, despite a painstaking search through every Rothmans, Playfair annual and PFA record book we can find, that's the best we can do.
Of the players currently active, QPR goalkeeper Rob Green perhaps has the best chance of becoming the first to reach the mark, having already made 223 Norwich appearances and 219 in a West Ham shirt. Eleven appearances for the Super Hoops have followed so far – he just needs rid of that pesky Julio César.DELIBERATELY
DOWN TO 10 MEN (2)Last week Neal Butler
took us back to January 1991, when Nottingham Forest finished their FA Cup third-round replay with Crystal Palace with 10 men because Brian Clough wanted to "take the piss".
But we mistakenly suggested that Clough could have replaced Steve Hodge, the third player to be removed, if he'd wanted to! "Surely a maximum of two substitutions was allowed back then," says Omar El-Gohary. "I love the fact that Clough may have been taking the mickey out of Palace, but I'm halfway through Jonathan Wilson's excellent biography of him, and the running theme so far is that Clough later embellished quite a lot of stories …" A perfectly sensible point, well made.Other examples have been flooding into the Knowledge inbox this week: "Bela Guttmann 1947 is another (almost) example," says Jonathan Wilson, reminding us of this passage from Inverting the Pyramid:The following season [Guttman] won the Hungarian title with �jpest, and then it was on to Kispest, where he replaced Puskás's father as coach. A row with Puskás, no shrinking violet himself, was inevitable, and it came in a 4-0 defeat to Győr.
Guttmann, who was insistent that football should be played the 'right way', had spent the first half trying to calm the aggressive approach of the full-back Mihály Patyi. Furious with him, Guttmann instructed Patyi not to go out for the second half, even though that would leave Kispest down to 10 men. Puskás told the defender to stay on.
Patyi vacillated, and eventually ignored his manager, at which Guttmann retired to the stands for the second half, most of which he spent reading a
racing paper, then took a tram home and never returned."How strange that your story should involve Roy Keane," points out John Briggs, in another of the emails we had in response to this question.
"When he was manager of Sunderland, in every pre-season game he would play the last 20 minutes or so with 10 men.
When asked why, he claimed his team should get used to playing with 10 men in case they had a player sent off in a league
match."
We don't have anything to hand to back that up, but as Keane also threatened to leave players at home if they wore tracksuit bottoms in training or walked on their heels instead of their toes, we wouldn't blame him for preparing to find himself short.Steve Faulkner got in touch to remind us of the time that Kenny Burns, then playing for Birmingham City (not yet Clough's Nottingham Forest, though the story is often told as if he were), kicked John Hollins in the head while the QPR defender lay on the floor. The City
boss at the time was Willie Bell, who was so incensed at the kick – missed by the referee – that he pretty much sent Burns off himself, removing him from the field without a replacement.Juande
Ramos is another manager happy to reduce his own numbers in the name of principle, as Nick Einhorn pointed out after reading this Barney Ronay blog written
at the time of Ramos's appointment as Spurs manager. Remember those few moments before everybody realised this was going to be a horrible mess? Yes, everyone was very excited about another churlish Iberian tipping up in the Premier League, especially after learning that he'd once left Rayo Vallecano with 10 men "to teach his players a lesson" for
being complacent during an easy 2-0 win. "The players were not trying, so I took a drastic step because I wanted them to work harder," Ramos explained.Finally, here's Nicholas Siggs, with another Forest tale, this time from August 1997, at the start of what would be a promotion-winning season under Dave Bassett. "We were 8-0 up in an away league cup tie at Doncaster," says Nicholas. The goals came from Geoff Thomas, Dean Saunders, Jon-Olav Hjelde, Pierre van Hooijdonk (of
course) and Chris Allen.
"Given that we were so far ahead and having used all the subs, Hjelde had I think not long returned from international duty and was basically knackered, so he was withdrawn before the end. Needless to say it didn't affect the result!" Forest also won the home leg, 2-1, to take the tie 10-1 on aggregate. And then lost to Walsall in the next round.KNOWLEDGE
ARCHIVE"A few years ago in the Premiership, a referee pumped his fist with an exclamation of 'yes!' when a player scored a goal in a certain game," wrote Ian Kerr back in 2006. "The referee later claimed that he was so pumped because he had allowed play to go on instead of blowing for a foul in the build-up, and was chuffed with his own free-flowing refereeing.
So who was the ref? What teams were playing, and who scored the goal? And where is our friend the enthusiastic referee now?"The nugget in question was Mike Reed, who knocked seven bells out of fresh air when Patrik Berger put Liverpool ahead against Leeds during their 3-1 win on 5 February 2000. Reed did indeed claim he was made-up with his own performance,
having waved play on after Vladimir Smicer was fouled in the build-up, but the FA were not particularly enamoured with his public display of self-loving."Having considered the available information, we have issued a reprimand and a warning to Mike Reed," warbled a spokesman. "While we understand the emotions involved, it is essential that match officials do not make gestures which could lead to misinterpretation. The impartiality of our officials must not be open to question. Mr Reed has been warned to keep his emotions under control in future or face further action."There
are several other examples. "I recall seeing footage from the end of the 1971 FA Cup final after Arsenal had beaten Liverpool 2-1 after extra-time," says Steve Hewlett. "When he blew the final whistle, I'm sure the referee Norman Burtenshaw fell to his knees, pumping his fists towards the heavens." It's tough to get more than anecdotal evidence on this one – they didn't have it on YouTube [2013 update: Mike Aylott this week got in touch to point out that the brilliant footage is now] - but it seems to be true. Burtenshaw claimed afterwards that he was simply celebrating the fact that the game hadn't gone to a replay.That excuse lost what little credence it had when, a few months later, he presided over Arsenal's 6-2 battering of Benfica. Burtenshaw's performance was so bad that he was mobbed by Benfica players, who tried to beat the crap out of him – a task that would clearly have taken a fairly long time.
He'd had a chance to brush up on his self-defence skills a few years earlier, mind.
When Aston Villa beat Millwall 2-1 in October 1967, the Den crowd were so incensed they stormed the pitch and surrounded Burtenshaw.
He had to be carried from the pitch after being knocked unconscious.The German referee Wolf-Dieter Ahlenfelder, by contrast, was knocked sideways by a few pre-match liveners. "It was 8 November 1975 when, in the Bundesliga, Werder Bremen played against Hannover 96," scene-sets Eberhard Spohd.
"The referee Ahlenfelder surprised everyone with some seriously strange decisions - including blowing for half-time after 29 minutes. A linesman indicated his mistake and Ahlenfelder played 16 minutes' added time.
Then, during the half-time interval, he stuck his tongue out at a photographer, and Bremen's president Böhmert said: 'For this show we could have charged a higher entrance fee.' Ahlenfelder of course denied drinking alcohol, but later he admitted that he had 'several Maltesers' (a schnapps)
before the match. And to make things really clear to the layman, he said: 'We are men – we don't drink Fanta.'"For thousands more questions and answers take a trip through the Knowledge archiveCan you help?"Have any twins or brothers ever jointly managed a football team?" wonders Luke Kelly.And
on a similar line, here's James Burnell: "Oldham have just appointed Lee Johnson as manager.
When the Latics take on Yeovil on 16 April his dad, Gary, will be in the opposite dugout. Will this be the first ever meeting between managers who are father and son?""In ocean races in sailing a handicap prize is awarded as well as a line honours prize to recognise sailing skill rather than simply the newest and most expensive boat," writes Benjamin Penny. "Have any leagues ever instituted a "handicap winner" as well as a winner on raw
points at the end of the season to reward footballing skill irrespective of the wealth of the club or the size of its
wages bill?""I've just finished watching Central Coast Mariners lose 3-1 to Kashiwa Reysol in the Asian Champions League," writes Tom Engelhardt.
"Nothing out of the ordinary there but what is notable is CCM missed a penalty late on which was fat burning furnace review 5th consecutive penalty miss in League and Continental competition. In their previous Champions League match they missed in injury time from the spot for a 0-0 draw.
My question: is this the worst penalty missing streak in football history?""Ronnie Johnsen played the last three games of Manchester United's season in May 1999, lifting the Premier League in the match against Spurs, the FA Cup the week after against Newcastle and the European Cup a few days after that against
Bayern Munich," begins Paul Brown. "Exhausted by his efforts he didn't play for United again until late on the following season.
Now, I'm almost 72% certain that he next played for United in April 2000 in a game in which the Premier League title was regained.
This means that lucky Ronnie played in four consecutive trophy-winning matches. Can any other player match
such
a gluttonous run?"Send your questions and answers to knowledge@guardian.co.ukJohn AshdownGeorgina Turnerguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds "Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed,"
the press release says. "It is illegal to resell or attempt to resell a recalled consumer product." Guillermo del Toro's latest is consistently thrilling and playful, returning human agency to the action-packed genreStop me if you've heard this one before.
Giant
alien monsters known as Kaiju are making their way through an inter-dimensional portal deep in a Pacific ocean trench, and are coming ashore to reduce cities like San Francisco and Manila to rubble.
The only thing that will stop them are giant
robots, or Jaegers, piloted by two humans, one for each hemisphere of the brain, thus ensuring that the robots can tie their own shoelaces and guess how you are feeling.And if that sounds like a salad of just about every blockbuster of the last five years, then
you'd be right.
What can I say? Except Arthur Brooke and William Painter both had a crack of the Romeo and Juliet story before this Shakespeare kid showed up.Advance word on Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim was that it was the "thinking man's Michael Bay movie," and while thoughtfulness is always nice, that's not, strictly speaking, accurate.
What distinguishes the two film-makers is love – a deep and abiding love of the genre, love of monsters down to the phosphorescent tips of their tentacles, love of robots down to their last rivet, love of the laws of mass and momentum, and all the unfakeable geekery that lifts and propels every frame of this film.How long does it take to tell the difference? I would say by the end of the opening credits. That's how long it takes for Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam), to lose his brother to one of the monsters, with one scoop of
its paw. When the two of them first showed up, two blond hunks strolling down the jet way, grins the size of the Mariana trench, rock'n'roll blasting on the soundtrack, you think: oh no, not another hymn to chiseled American manhood. Actually, no. His brother gone, Beckett must instead find his footing with a new team, opposite a young Japanese woman, Mako (Rinko Kikuchi), with a face as pale as lily and a Louise Brooks bob,
who wants revenge against the Kaiju for reasons having to do with a small red child's shoe. Del Toro's sense of characterisation is calligraphic, sentimental in the best sense, almost Cruikshankian: everyone is outlined with bold, fluid strokes that that lead them right back into the thick of the action. There is commander Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), who sounds ominously biblical and delivers lines like "I do not want your admiration and your sympathy, I want your compliance and your fighting skills," plus two squabbling scientists, one of whom believes that "numbers are the closest we can get to the handwriting of God," a line just good enough to give the impression of sincere belief.For
once the internationalism of the cast feels rooted in something other than demography. A sequence delving into Mako's backstory showing a little girl running terrified down ashen streets, manages to invoke both Hiroshima and 9/11, drawing juice from Japanese and American movie-making traditions.Maybe
that's why the tracking is soft.
Blockbusters – in their modern iteration at least – started out as an American form, maybe even the American form, like jazz and musicals and ice cream, and the story they told was America's backstory: David versus Goliath. "I don't ever want to think you could kill that shark," Spielberg told his actors in Jaws, a beta-male siding with the other beta-males against alpha-dog Quint, the shark-hunter."Aren't you a little short to be a storm-trooper," Princess Leia asks Luke when he first bursts into her cell on the Death Star in Star Wars, another film sized to the asymmetrical fight of the little guy against the big guy, because what brings the empire down, remember is it's size; the Death Star is too large to be adequately defended, leaving it open to a fighter craft the size of an x-wing. Both these fights recalled the fight America had just lost – in Vietnam, where it was the 900lb gorilla brought down by a lighter, faster force – but re-slanted so that Americans could root for the little guy again, a salve for the national dysmorphia, which results when the world's sole superpower still imagines itself a scrappy underdog.No other form tracks this more explicitly than the summer blockbuster, for no form more explicitly sets those two forces – size and speed – against one another. Think of Arnie versus the T-1000 in Terminator 2, a "Porsche to his Panzer tank," as Cameron put it, an uncannily predictive of the equally mercurial threat the country would one day face. Or the asymmetric warfare waged in Avatar, whose largest dragon, the Toruk, is vulnerable to attack from above precisely because of its size. How The Mighty fall: it's the
Cameron theme from Aliens to Titanic, and one he picked up watching the Vietnam war on TV as a teenager in Canada, amazed to see this giant of a
next-door neighbour fall. It's precisely what has
given his fantasies such a virulent hold on the American imagination.And it's what makes so many modern-day blockbusters so slack: they haven't the imagination for failure.
They are glinting, 24-carot dreams of success – quite literal power trips. The new Man of Steel has very little time for Clark Kent, only for Superman, Kal-el, this time reimagined as a demi-God. The Transformer movies are boring precisely to the extent that watching two equal, opposed forces thrash
it out is boring: only narrative sleights of hand and deus ex machinas will tip the fight. And why Pacific Rim is the most consistently thrilling bit of blockbuster sublimity since Avatar.I mean that word literally: "whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger," said Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) "Whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror." The romantics found it in the seascapes of Turner, the Alps, the craggy vertiginousness of Milton's Paradise Lost, the caverns of Piranesi and Opium dreams.It's not too hard to find traces of all of those in the awe-inspiring battles between robot and monster, most of them at night, some of them at sea, in del Toro's film. For once, the fights seem to be observing known physical laws, absent the tell-tale whizz of CGI, but instead moving with the sluggish grandeur befitting their massive bulk – or as one of the scientists, appropriately named Newton, puts it, "that's 2,500 tons of awesome!" But what really wins the day is the way Del Toro has rescaled the action to allow human agency back into the picture.
Best of all is Elba, who finds a declamatory pitch for his performance that could part the oceans themselves. "Today, at the edge of our hope, at the end of our time," he intones, like Olivier before the battle of Agincourt. "We are cancelling the apocalypse!"It's just a power-chord, a bit of silly magnificence in a summer blockbuster, but it lifts you out of your seat, and reminds you of just how rousing these things can be when they have a director of del Toro's imagination at the helm. Pacific Rim is consistently thrilling, playful and – it's guilty secret – unfashionably fun for a blockbuster, these days, when most superhero movies have succumbed to a terminal gloom.
If audiences don't go for it civilization really is doomed.Guillermo
del ToroScience fiction and fantasyIdris ElbaTom Shoneguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
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