Durham-in-Wonderland:

Who does [New York Time's public editor Byron] Calame think he’s fooling? Imagine the following scenario: three African-American college students are charged with a crime for which almost no evidence exists. One has an air-tight, public, unimpeachable alibi. Their accuser is a white woman with a criminal record and major psychological problems. They are prosecuted by a race-baiting district attorney who violates myriad procedures while seizing upon the case amidst an election campaign in a racially divided county.

Does anyone believe that the Times would have covered the story outlined above with articles that bent over backwards to give the district attorney the benefit of the doubt, played down questions about his motivations, and regularly concluded with “shout-outs” regarding the accuser’s willingness to hang tough—coupled with sports columnists who compared the accused students to gangsters and drug dealers?

Not last night. There must have been a giant baseball magnet up in the left field stands.

I've watched the all three races of this F1 Season and it's turning out that this may be the best on to watch in years:

• there is a three way tie for the driver's championship with Alonso, Räikkönen and Hamilton with 22 points
• the #2 drivers, Massa for Ferrari and Hamilton for McLaren are turning out to be better and more exciting that the #1 drivers
• anything can happen yet in the team standings, as second place Ferrari appears to have the better car this season
• Rookie British driver Lewis Hamilton has been on the podium in his first three races and shows a very amusing level of aggression on the track

Well deserved for the Pats and well self-inflicted by the Chargers, but arggggg!

Update: ESPN has an excellent recap of the game. Pats with the ball in the air during the entire second half, Charges relying on LT to make anything happen, and San Diego continually doing stupid things to keep New England drives alive.

Alice Miules in The Times is saying that the UK Olympics have all gone to hell (and that the UK should pull out):

Yesterday Ms Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and political leader of the Games, admitted that costs for the Olympic park had risen 40 per cent in a year. It will now cost not the £2.375 billion of public money she promised last year that she was applying “absolute rigour” to, but £3.3 billion of public money. Then there is another £1.044 billion for regenerating the East End. London Assembly members, who meet today to discuss the Olympics budget, think it may cost £8 billion or more in the end.

Take a figure . . . double it . . . add whatever you like. Which part of the extra costs were not predictable when the bid was submitted in October 2004? A spiralling security budget, more than quadrupled now to £850 million? Did the bid team really need to wait for 7/7 to realise that an Olympics in London in 2012 would be under particular threat from Islamist terrorism? Or was it the increasing cost of land in the East End that took them by surprise, from a predicted £478 million to £1 billion and rising? I wonder who it was who failed to predict that landowners would make sure they squeezed as much as they could from a Government that had no choice but to buy their land, and fast. “We have also adjusted the transport figure to put it in 2012 figures,” Ms Jowell blithely added yesterday. Well, what figures was it in before? And who drew them up? Ah, yes. Tessa Jowell.

I was so happy when Vancouver got the Winter Olympics, knowing that this would scuttle Toronto's chances for quite some time.

We just had a snow squall move through; first snow of the year. The airport is reporting winds up to 85 km/hr which is just a touch below Storm Force. Trinity-Anne and I ran out and got our faces covered in flakes.

We're supposed to sail on the weekend but with the marine forecast for Gale Force winds, well, we'll see.

Fun weather fact: if you look at the radar right now, you can see lake effect snow AND you can see snow turn to mixed to rain as it passes over the Toronto heat island.

Now I understand the difference:

• Class 1 Accident: "Freak": Being blown up by your allies
• Class 2 Accident: "Bizzare": Stingray stinger through the heart

I wholely endorse ESR's plea re: dear Americans, we're on the same side (mostly) please stop killing us.

CBC reports on someone named Kirsten Sweetland winning the junior women's event in the world triathlon championships in Lausanne, Switzerland. Congrats, etc.. CBC cropped the photo, so I thought I'd print the whole thing. Not that I want to draw attention to her excellent grooming habits or anything. 

Al's got some great pictures of classic boats [1][2] spotted recently at an "Antique Boat Regatta". I especially love the one he's highlighting, and someday, money gods willing, I shall have one for myself :-)

Alas, after travelling all the to St. John's, in part to bring Trinity-Anne to this year's Regatta, we never got to see it: rain and wind, wind and rain.

I just watched 5 minutes of soccer (aka “football” in the heathen lands) on TV. Jeezus, that’s one deadly boring sport. I can see why everyone mobs into a pub in the off chance someone will smack you over the head with a stool just add a little fun to the evening.

Edmonton will be playing the better team.

Idle question, to those in the know. If the situation was reversed, would your city be cheering for Toronto?

We won the gold in curling. And by “we”, I mean some other guys that I don’t know also from Newfoundland, but I did just invest 2h30 of my life in watching it.

(Kudos to CBC for getting the headline right seconds after the game ended).

Rick writes:

Ottawa Senators goalie Ray Emery has been in the news around here simply because of his mask. Emery seems enamoured of boxer Mike Tyson and has two images of him painted on his goalie mast. People here have freaked over it. Emery explained to the press that he greatly admires Tyson for his skill as a boxer and sees no reason for a fuss. One reporter shouted from the back, “It’s because he’s a convicted rapist.” Emery repeated that he likes Tyson for his boxing skill. What he should’ve said to the reporter was, “Yes, and he went to jail and served his time,” and then continued about Tyson’s boxing skills.

What the reporter should have asked whether it’s appropriate for the player that is least likely on the team to get in a fight, that will be protected by the other players as if he was a little girl if he does get in a fight, and is padded with tens of pounds of body armor — to wear the image a boxer.

Of course, that reporter should know Tae Kwon Do or something if he’s going to ask that question :-)

I fully expected to be brought to a page full of half-naked models batting a ball about.

Here’s a picture of me during the Shark Worlds, intently staring into the distance.

Arggg…. A semi-diasterous last day, placing 17th and 18th for a total of 105 points. Almost everyone who needed a good day had one… but two other boats didn’t.

105 ties with another boat for 10th and 11th place; our 1st place finish in the first race breaks the tie and puts us in the points (note the wrong placing for us) and gives team Shoestring the best finish we’ve ever had in a Shark Worlds.

Cool.

We raced the long distance race today, starting in super light winds which built to around 9 knots. We were third at the windward, leeward and “zulu” marks; we picked up one boat along the way and lost two (due to skill, a undersized reaching spinnaker and weeds on the rudder). 551 “Graffti” tracked us for the rest of the race, closing to within 2 feet but we ended up beating them by 40 seconds.

We got 4th to leave us in 6th place overall. Very nice, but one middle race could take us into the mid-teens. Tomorrow’s the last day, 2 races max.

Day 2: no wind. We were APed on shore for 3 hours before the decided to send us out. They threw a very light wind race which the cancelled it at the windward mark. We were leading the race after catching a 30 degree shift in the middle (!) of the course.

Day 3: lots of wind, cloudy in the morning, sunny in the afternoon. We had a middling day: 11th, 18th, 2nd, and 28th. We missed being first in the 3rd race by 1/2 boat length. We missed being 13th in the second race by about the same. The fourth race was a diaster – we dug in too far to the port layline and got buried so deep there was no recovering.

We’re in 12th place now—we’re 8 points from being 6th and 2 points from being in 16th.

Today is the long distance race. The forecast is for the wind to drop out, but the forecast was very wrong yesterday, so who knows. Good results now are essential.