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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - - Posts by Arwon |
| Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 |
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Arwon Bazu                   Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| I need assistance, my dog is wet and I don't have a towel. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| New model social democrat, very libertarian on social issues and accept the realities of a market economy, seeing the state's role as curbing the excesses. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Aviator glasses used to get me weird looks, but now they're cool so they don't. I WAS WEARING THEM FIRST, DAMN IT.
Apart from that, about all I have is a Californian flag I sometimes wear as a cape. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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Originally posted by DeiOriginally posted by max American football. Also I'd just like to add that Mark Schwarzer is a god. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Who cares if he lied or not? The war was a stupid idea that has turned out badly, regardless of whether he lied or not to start it. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| No-one who isn't Australia has ANY RIGHT to complain about being screwed by FIFA. We've ended up having to move to another fucking Association (Asia) just to get a fair go.
For the last few world cups, Australia's qualifying route from Oceania has been to play all the Oceania teams, but because they're easy to beat, no European clubs would ever let us have our players. Some players risked their contracts and careers to make it to our games (Harry Kewell for one) but it was an uphill battle. So we ended up winning Oceania most of the time, sometimes New Zealand put up a fight but usually not. But we did it without access to our best players, which means bad preparation. Then, instead of, as champion of the OFC, getting automatic entry like the champion of EVERY OTHER CONFEDERATION, we had to play a South American side. Bear in mind, this is a one-off, two-match qualifier series, months after the OFC playoff. This means no match practice as a unit, often the players haven't even played together for weeks or months. And it's an all-or-nothing thing, one shot, no second chances... very different from the pools and round robins of other playoffs. In short, we got thrown into (by far) the toughest match on our calendar with the worst possible preparation--no good matches with our best side. And often, it was a real fight to even GET our best team because European clubs are mostly cunts. Meanwhile, freaking CONCACAF somehow gets three automatic spots so powerhouses like Jamaica and Honduras get a shot... and they get a playoff for a fourth against an Asian side (incidentally, Trinidad made it by beating Bahrain this time around) while we're stuck going to Colombia or Uruguay or Venezuela to play a top-class side that actually has match fitness. We've tried, repeatedly, to secure a fairer deal, either an OFC automatic entry or playing off against an Asian side (which would make a lot more geographic sense)... but every time, our lack of clout has seen FIFA politics, ie, the clout of Europe or South America, screwing us over and keeping us in such a shitty situation. Things should be better starting next time. Australia's moving to Asia, which will mean access to huge new markets, its competitive club championships, a decent and fair set of world cup qualifiers, and so forth. Australian soccer might actually GO somewhere. So I guess my point is, Europeans really have no right to feel hard-done-by by FIFA. Try being at the obscure periphery of the football world instead of at one of its two main cores. Besides, I don't really think the precise make-up of the European contingent at the WC is going to have a huge bearing on revenue. It's the world cup, it's IN GERMANY, people are going to go see the games regardless of whether the Czechs or Spanish are there. (edited by Arwon on 11-20-05 12:24 AM) (edited by Arwon on 11-20-05 12:27 AM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| I stopped reading about the time it linked the evolution debate with the search for chemical and biological weapons. | |||
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Arwon Bazu  Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| I think they should start naming them after gods.
Hurricane Kali, Hurricane Huiztilopotchli, Hurricane Odin, that sort of thing. Though, I suppose, battoning down in the face of the fury of Hurricane Poseidon would have a rather different sort of feel than, say, Katrina or Beta. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| OMFG BIAS | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Yes. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| WHAT ABOUT KLEZMER MUSIC? | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Sucks to be them, structural unemployment's a killer. But then, GM is fucked from the top down... whatcha gonna do? (edited by Arwon on 11-22-05 07:07 PM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Checkout monkey at a supermarket. I also work for the government - they pay me to not be homeless or burn things. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| I honestly don't remember how I got here. Not entirely sure why I still am, either.
*shrug* |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Actually, it was FEMA's job. Says so in their charter. Its their job to ensure state & local agencies are prepared to meet disasters, and to coordinate a response when things clearly cn't be handled at a lower level. Which was clearly the case. They dropped the ball on that front, and the guy who appointed some crony with no disaster management experience who was fired from his previous job managing the National Horse Registry must shoulder significant fucking blame.
The Louisiana National Guard was/is mostly in Iraq, so it couldn't fulfil its role as an interim source of supplies and civil authority after the NOPD completely collapsed and was non-effective after the storm hit. It was the fed's responsibility to get some other sort of interim authority in there, either other Nat'l Guards or the Army. The federal government should have mobilised the Army before the hurricane hit. Everyone knew, or should have known, how bad it was going to be--what happened wasn't even the worst case scenario. And yet they still couldn't handle it. Primary blame rests with FEMA. On the war: The obvious answer is "I'd have not fucking invaded". The cost-benefit analayis jsut did not stack up at all, and anyone not blinded by the peculular kind of democracy-bringing-crusader ideology (neo-conservatism?) rife in the White House could see that. This includes the State Department and the CIA, for fucks' sake, both of whom were very hesitant and skeptical. I'd have recognised that Iraq was just another unpleasant authoritarian regime, it wasn't a new Cambodia or Stalinist Russia, not the pinnacle of all that was evil in the world. Invading to stop largescale killing was about 15 years too late, the humanitarian horse had well-and-truly bolted. It wasn't a threat, Iraq was prostrate and contained. I'd have pointed out that the sanctions were making Hussein stronger and his victims stronger, and tried to use the UN to exchange much more relaxed sanctions, and less isolation on trade and stuff, for new and rigorous inspections. Make the people less dependent on the Iraqi government for food etc. The inspections mostly did their job in the early and mid-90s, most of the arsenal was destroyed... which is all that could've been hoped for. No-one seriously ever expects inspections to be 100% effective. They're, by their nature, hostile, antagonitic and invasive, and it is the natural way of things that the inspected country resists and evades as much as it can get away with. Getting outraged by this was never more than a pretext for invasion. In short, I'd have recognised that the idea of invading to bring peace and democracy was, basically, delusional fantasy, and that powerful as we were, we're not omnipotent, not everything can be solved with money and bombs. Sometimes there's nothing you can do that can work well (see also: Yugoslavia). You just can't wage a political war, a war of choice, without being damn trustworthy, making damn sure you have a solid plan for improving the situation, being damn sure improving things throuh armed intervention is even POSSIBLE. Otherwise, you're just marching in, all full of righteousness and fantasy, and fucking things up in new and interesting ways. And this is what happened. (edited by Arwon on 11-24-05 12:35 AM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| DOCTOR MARTENS DOCTOR MARTENS DOCTOR MARTENS BOOTS. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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Originally posted by Colin Whatever. We escaped, New Zealand can go fuck themselves! c(: The flipside of the argumentthat we're screwing the OFC, is that OFC is opened up considerably by Australia leaving, that we've stunted the development of sides like New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tahiti, Vanuatu, by essentially never letting them progress at all. The OFC draw has been opened up considerably by the absense of the (relative) colossus. It did no-one any good for us to be racking up 30 goal margins against sides like American Samoa and the Cook Islands, and they all knew it. Essentially, New Zealand were the only ones who opposed our move... all the Island Nations supported us in the vote to let us leave. A fair deal for OFC would be, if not automatic qualification for the champion, which never seems to happen because of the OFC's poor bargaining position relative to giants like UEFA and COMNEBOL... at the very least, an easier playoff match. Like, CONCACAF or AFC rather than bloody South American sides. Geographically, having the Americas play and OFC and AFC play makes more sense. Or alternatively, another idea would be having the top couple of sides from the OFC comp gain access to the pools of the Asian qualifiers or something. I'm of the opinion that the pools system is better than one-off playoffs... it can make it harder to qualify, but it means more competitive matches which can help sides that don't get that, to reach their potential, as opposed to a quadrennial roll of the dice. Plus, the difficulty can be mitigated by giving the OFC teams a good seeding so they don't end up in "groups of death". |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Well Africa just plays "top team from each pool goes through, end of story". So that's harder.
And it wouldn't have meant just us going through. Well, up until NZ football went to shit, it wouldn't have, and they still occasionally manage to beat us. We *have* had automatic qualification a couple of times in the past, that's how New Zealand got there back in the 70s or 80s. And, I've also gotta say, rankings aren't everything. They're heavily dependent on who you play and how often, and there's a definite bias in there towards the teams at the core who're playing regular fixtures against each other. I bet that, for example, quite a few African and North American teams are better than a lot of the lower ranked European sides like Austria or Russia they're ranked below. Just looking at us, for example, since we're one of those teams that suffers in the rankings due to lack of regular competitive matches... the teams ranked above Australia that we've beaten, in the last 5 years, are Paraguay, Colombia, Mexico, France, Brazil, Uruguay, England, Jamaica, South Africa. And the teams we've lost to: Ireland, Japan, Korea, Uruguay, Turkey, Tunisia, Argentina, Germany. And draws with Norway and Venezuela. So we're competitive, but having only played a few games a year against decent sides, our rankings languish in the 50s and 60s among sides we pretty easily beat these days. We're an extreme example, being more on the periphery than most, but it's still clear that volume of competitive matches is a significant bias in the rankings. It probably has to be this way, but we must recognise that its not an absolute guide. I guess the point I'm making is that it's seemingly a lot easier for improving European sides to jump in the rankings quickly, than for other sides, and it's probably easier for mediocre ones to maintain a decent position through the sheer volume of matches they play. Elsewhere, rankings are seemingly a more inexact guide because they're based on less matches. Just look at Africa, where none of the big powerhouses (Nigeria, Cameroon, Senegal, Egypt, South Africa, Morocco) qualified becuase 4 or 5 recently improved upstarts, with lower rankings, knocked them off. (edited by Arwon on 11-26-05 07:49 PM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Hmm...
Generation X and Microserfs, both by Douglas Coupland. There should be a word for the bizzare, introspective, angsty sense of profound sense of pure wellbeing that a Douglas Coupland novel gives. Cloudstreet by Tim Winton made me smile broadly. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson. Man was an incendiary genius. Rum Diary was good too. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Don't listen to these people, drinking is fun, scornful, elitist contempt for something you've never tried is not. |
| Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 |
| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - - Posts by Arwon |
All you have to do is beat Basel in your final match and that SHOULD be enough. Staying alive. 