There's one who is following a noble tradition...

Australia 602/9, England 53/3. We've been there before. Many times.

What if Freddie had won the toss yesterday? And said "this pitch has a bit of life in it, we'll bowl first"? Yeah well, what if he decided to have a bat? Maybe they would have gotten 400 and felt happy with themselves.

Instead, they batted second... starting about an hour before stumps on the second day. They might make 400. In fact, they need 403 to avoid the follow-on. That's not looking too good right now.

ABC Radio National's The Sports Factor recorded their show from the outer at the Gabba yesterday. The MP3 of this morning's half-hour program is part of the attached playlist. The Sports Factor's podcast feed is http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/sportsf.xml and it's a program I recommend very highly.

Also on the playlist, I've linked to a few cricket stories from ABC Radio's news programs, AM, http://www.abc.ne

Just over an hour of bedtime listening late last night for me, with MP3 audio summaries from the ABC, BBC, Guardian, Telegraph and CricInfo. The BBC, Guardian and Telegraph are all producing special daily podcast programs.

The ABC's Ashes podcast feed consists of a collection of four clips, being the stumps summary, two press conference interview and a radio highlights package. All of the ABC's material is also available for download from the Cricket Australia site (which does not have a podcast feed).

The Midwinter-Midwinter is back for 2006-07: The rickeyre.com Ashes Best On Ground award. Just like an MVP, except it's a BoG...

To update what I said on the announcement of the 2005 Award, you can take your Border-Gavaskar, Compton-Miller, Chappell-Hadlee, even your Peden-Archdale... I am now presenting my award for the Ashes Player of the Tournament.

Presenting: the Midwinter-Midwinter. Who needs to invoke the names of two legends when you can honour one person twice?

Throughout the Ashes, I'll be watching the Prime Ministerial website for cricketing references in John Winston Howard's media interviews. I'll also be keeping score on the number of references he makes to Darfur or any other major African conflict. (As regular followers of this blog will already be aware, the number of times that John Howard has used the word "Darfur" in public as recorded either in Hansard or in the pm.gov.au transcript archives currently stands at zero.)

Let's kick it off with JWH's interview with Virginia Trioli at 2BL ABC Local Radio Sydney on November 13:

So Natural Foods Australia Limited
(ASX code SNF)
21 November 2006

Response to Announcement of Retirement from Swimming of Ian Thorpe

So Natural Foods Australia Limited ("SNF") advises that while we at SNF will miss Ian competing in the pool, we understand his decision and fully support him as he moves into the next phase of his career.

I've just done a brief interview on BBC Five Live's Pods and Blogs program, the second time I've been on their show. They were doing a segment previewing the Ashes, talking mainly about the BBC Online coverage (which will include Test Match Special podcasts after each day's play).

But they also trotted out one of my more infamous podcasts from The Net Sessions, after which I gave my take on this year's Ashes (ie, that Australia's experience will be the decisive factor) and discussed blogging a little.

Australia is poised to become the first country to make copyright infringement a "no-fault" offence, a move aimed at broadening criminal penalties for infringement.

- Source: Intellectual Property Watch, 17.11.06

More on the potential impact of the amazing Copyright Amendment 2006, currently before the Senate, in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald.

We're number 47! Australia has been ranked 47th out of 56 nations covered by the Climate Change Performance Index, conducted by Germanwatch.

That's three places behind the Ukraine, four behind Indonesia, but six ahead of the USA and seven ahead of China.

Sweden is number one on the index, with the UK at two. Interestingly, India is at nine. Saudi Arabia drags the chain at 56.

The one area that bogs Australia down badly is in the realm of climate change policy.

Anoth