I cant believe how many people leave a concert before its over.

I cant believe how many people walk their dogs after 10 at night.

I cant believe how many people walk their dogs after 10 at night.

I cant believe how many people walk their dogs after 10 at night.

There are random buses that just loop my road. I feel like I'm in The Truman Show.

I have concrete proof that Don Henley sings louder than Glen Frey.

There are random buses that just loop my road. I feel like I'm in The Truman Show.

Soccer Post!

I've been watching a lot of soccer lately and I haven't blogged about any of it.  So here I go:

Arsenal
My favorite subject.  :-)  To catch you all up, they lost their big star at the end of last season, Thierry Henry.  He went to Barcelona.  That left Arsenal with a fairly young bunch of players.  Seriously, the highest rated player was a 20 year old kid named Fabregas (we've talked about him before).  Before the season, all the pundits predicted that Arsenal would place around 5th or 6th (out of 20 teams) in their league.  That was significant because only the top 4 teams in the English league get a shot at the European Champion's League - a prestigious tournament that all the big clubs want to win. 

Well, not only did Arsenal play better without Henry, they actually lead their league for several months.  Unfortunately, they suffered some bad injuries to key players around February.  Their level of play dropped considerably and they finally lost their lead last month to Manchester United.  Now, with only two games left to play, they are a VERY close third behind Chelsea and Manchester United (who are tied in first).  The frustrating thing about this is that all the writers are focusing on how Arsenal have "fallen apart" in the final part of the season instead of acknowledging that they weren't supposed to get anywhere close to first place at the beginning of the season.  Frustrating, especially since most of this prejudice against Arsenal is due to the fact that the team is mostly made up of non-English players.  If the squad was even just half English, they'd probably be praised and hailed as the Next Big Thing.

Anyway, Arsenal are not going to win their league even though they will finish this year with more points (teams rack up points for wins and ties) than they acquired last season.  Other big Arsenal news concerns players that may or may not be leaving at the end of the season, or in other words, just a couple of weeks.

Flamini - A French defensive midfielder who really only got a starting position this season.  But what a season it's been for him!  It's hard to explain to people who don't watch soccer, but he improved considerably over the summer and became very impressive.  His contract is up, so he is free to sign with any club.  So far the two biggest bidders have been Italian clubs.  Arsenal have made him what they think is a fair offer, but he seems to want a little bit more.  He was supposed to give them an answer on April 30.  The website says that deadline has been extended to this weekend.  I can't decide if that's good or bad.  Surely, if he had decided to leave he would just say so.  I want him to stay.  I want him to get fair compensation.  But I don't want him to break our bank.  We have to be able to afford other players, too.

Hleb - A Belorussian winger who plays gorgeous football.  His only real problem is that he rarely scores, which is not really acceptable for his position.  Technically, he's got 2 years left on his contract.  But there's some legal loophole that says players can buy out the remainder of their contract if they meet a certain age requirement and yadda, yadda, yadda.  Doesn't seem fair to me.  A contract is a contract.  You shouldn't be able to get out of it so easily.  Well, the big news on him is that while Arsenal was playing in Milan last month, he supposedly snuck out of their hotel and had ice cream with "people" from one of the Italian clubs.  I call it Ice Creamgate.  When it comes down to it, I'd rather see him go than Flamini.

Gilberto - Captain of the Brazil National team, the midfielder who Flamini displaced this season.  I'm torn on this one.  Gilberto is around 33, which is getting old for a soccer player.  But he's been a great asset to the team in the past.  He recognizes that he doesn't have much time left to play and wants to be on a team that will put him on the field.  I get that.  But he should also have enough experience to understand that the manager needs to do what's best for the team.  Gilberto has a better chance of playing next year if Flamini leaves, but he can't be our sole starter for that position.  We'd have to find someone else to replace Flamini.

Lehman - Ah, Jens.  Jens is one of the reasons I began following Arsenal.  He was the keeper for the German team at the 2006 World Cup.  He was our starting keeper for a number of years.  But he had a rocky start to this season and was replaced by Almunia.  Almunia played well enough that Jens never got his starting position back.  And boy, was he mad about it!  Jens absolutely cracks me up when he plays.  He's got quite a temper and gets upset and throws tantrums on the field.  I've even seen him get thrown out of a game because he was yelling at the ref.  But the reality is that he's approaching 40 (a typical retirement age for keepers) and, like Gilberto, he wants to be on a team that will let him play.  His contract is over, so everyone expects him to go back and play in Germany until he retires.  Goodbye, you German hothead, I'll miss you terribly.  Almunia is nowhere near as entertaining.

Besides those four players, there's lots of speculation about who may be joining the squad next year and who will be called up from the youth team.  But there won't be anything definite on that until June, so I'm not going to waste time on the subject.

Alright, a couple more things about Arsenal...

Fabregas was named Young Player of the Year for the English League.  Also, four Arsenal players made it to the "Dream Team" of the English League.  Players in the league vote on which players would make the best team - kinda like the All Stars team.  There's only 11 positions, so getting 4 of those assigned to Arsenal players is quite fantastic.  The next team best represented was Man U, with 3 players.  Chelsea didn't have any players make the team.  HA!

Champions League
So, as I stated earlier, the Champions League is a tournament of all the best clubs in Europe.  Arsenal made it to the quarter-final round (meaning 8 teams were playing for 4 spots in the semi-final round).  We were knocked out by Liverpool.  As much as I wanted to see us make it to the finals, Liverpool has a really good record in this tournament - they've made it to the finals 3 out of the last 4 years.  So, it wasn't a huge surprise that they beat us.

Barcelona (and our boy, Henry) made it to the semi-final round, playing against Man U.  Unfortunately, Man U beat them.  In the other semi-final match, Chelsea beat Liverpool.  So the final round of the European Champion's League will be played by the top two teams in the English league.  This is the first year that two English teams have ever faced each other in the CL.  The final game will be played in Moscow on May 21. 

Playing soccer in Moscow?  Been there, done that.  Yep, the only time I've ever played soccer in my adult life was in Moscow.  I had no idea what I was doing, but it was basically fun.

Who do I want to win?  Just sitting back and looking at the two teams, I think I have more respect for Man U.  They are definitely on pace to win the league (meaning, they will finish in the #1 spot), so winning the CL on top of that will be a HUGE accomplishment - it's called winning the "double."  But as a selfish Arsenal fan, I would kinda like Chelsea to win the double.  You see, if Chelsea beats Man U in both the English League and the Champion's League, all the sports writers will talk about how Man U "blew it" in the end.  Everyone would stop criticizing Arsenal.  But it would kinda take a miracle for Man U to lose the English League.  Although, technically, if Man U and Chelsea BOTH lost both of their last two games and Arsenal wins both of our last two games, we could win the English League.  Yeah, there's not much chance of that happening.  But if it did, I wouldn't care who won the CL. 

Realistically, I predict that Man U will win the League and Chelsea will win the Champion's League.

UEFA Cup
Europe has another tournament for the clubs who finish in a second tier of their league, the UEFA Cup.  So, the team who finishes 5th in the English League gets to the UEFA Cup.  (I don't know which places from other leagues go to UEFA.)  I watched the last semi-final game of that tournament last night.  Bayern Munich played Zenit St. Petersburg.  Well, Bayern got thrashed by Zenit.  It was sad and amazing all at the same time.  Bayern Munich brought in a lot of big players over the summer.  They have made minced meat of pretty much all the other teams in the German league this year.  They are a lot of fun to watch, mostly because they have one of my favorite players from the French National team, Franck Ribery.  But also because they have several great players from the German National team.  (If you remember correctly, those were my two favorite teams in the 2006 World Cup.)

I simply couldn't believe my eyes when Zenit won the match, 4 - 0.  Zenit will face the Scottish team, Rangers, in the final on May 14 in Manchester, England.  I've never seen Rangers play, so I guess I'm rooting for the Russians.

Other News
Bayern Munich and Real Madrid should wrap up their first place finishes in each of their leagues this weekend (German and Spanish).  Barcelona will finish a  disappointing third place.

Europe 2008 (a mini World Cup) is scheduled for three weeks in June.  Stay tuned for posts about those games.

I am a little confused about how soccer works at the Olympics.  Seems to me that it should kinda be the same as the World Cup.  But, no, each team has to mainly consist of players under the age of 23.  Each team is allowed to have only 3 players over 23.  To make it even more strange, the Olympic committee doesn't recognize England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as unique countries.  So if they wanted to send a team to the soccer event, they'd have to put one together called Britain and grab players from all countries - under 23.  It's too confusing of a prospect, so none of those countries even bother.  So what you end up with in the Olympics is this weird mix of countries who would be obliterated in any other international soccer competition.  Anyway, the Under-23 rule makes it really difficult for me to judge, but I'm going to favor Argentina, simply because Lionel Messi should be playing for them.

Other than that, it sounds like there's going to be lots of big name transfers over the summer.  I will update you on how those shake out.  I know you just. can't. wait.  ;-)

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Going Beyond the Scientific Method

So, the scientific method is a way to explore and learn from our world.  The basic steps are:

   1. Define the question
   2. Gather information and resources (observe)
   3. Form hypothesis
   4. Perform experiment and collect data
   5. Analyze data
   6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
   7. Publish results
   8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)

Step number 4 involves all kinds of tests, often those that classify the physical structure and attributes of the subject.  In school, we often had to describe the color, smell, consistency, feel, etc. of the item we were studying.

According to this article, scientists studying the Giant Squid have taken step 4 to a new level.  They measured, weighed, poked, and fried up their specimen.  Yes, the scientists actually cut off a slice of the Giant Squid carcass to consume it as food.  To be fair, I would probably want to do the same thing.  We basically eat all kinds of things from the ocean.  But I can't imagine what they thought they would gain by admitting to having done so.  It seems so blatantly un-scientific...and a tad redneck.  "I seen this thang dead on da side of da rode, so I thew it on the hood ov mah F150 and took it home.  I tole the missus to fry it up and we et it.  It tasted like chiken."

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