Gareth Bale - football as art

If anyone ever doubted that great football is an art form, watch this.



The clip is taken from the Run of Play football blog - 'a blog about the wonder and terror of soccer'.

Joe Jordan makes Rino Gattuso look very small indeed

Joe Jordan is from mining stock just south of Glasgow.
I'm not sure he would even call this a headbutt.

The Palin map - Giffords' chilling prediction

The Independent's Jonathan Raban writes:

Gabrielle Giffords made great sense when, in March 2010, she discussed the Palin map with a TV interviewer, saying: "Sarah Palin has the cross-hairs of a gunsight over our district – and when people do that, they've got to realise there are consequences to that action."

We don't know exactly what she was getting at but it's a chilling quote.
Hopefully she'll soon be able to tell us.

Santa 2.0

Nice piece by Brian Campbell in today's Wall Street Journal.

He's saying that Santa needs upgrading and outsourcing. He thinks we need a Santa who: 'runs triathlons and talks about them on Twitter'.
Should somebody tell him? Where's Julian Assange when you need him.

Rubberbandits - pure genius

I can only describe this as undescribable.



Surely this should romp home as Christmas No1.

Sepp Blatter's gay PR disaster

This anti-gay comment could be more damaging to Sepp Blatter than the dodgy World Cup decisions.



He's not just head of an organisation that, to put it generously, requires a little more transparency, he's also proved himself to be a political dinosaur. He needs some quality PR.
Sepp Blatter is 74.

Embarrassing Times

Now they've got a pay wall so here's an extract from the second leader in today's Times:
'There is a dangerous nihilism in the refusal to distinguish between information that embarasses the powerful, and information that potentially puts lives at risk.'
There but for the grace goes everyone who publishes words, so I refuse to gloat.
But, that is embarassing, or should that be embarrassing, for a paper with the highest standards of all.