And this week's Yo Blair Award for stupid things you say when you think no one's listening goes to: Dean Jones.

"...the terrorist has got another wicket..."

- DM Jones, commenting on Hashim Amla's catch of Kumar Sangakkara off the bowling of Shaun Pollock, TEN Sports, 7.8.06

Seen listed one after the other in the "World" section of today's smh.com.au home page:

• 
• Britons to stage 'masturbate-a-thon'
• Spiderman's grip closer

Badminton fanatic Dan Chien began noticing a change in his shuttlecocks a few months ago. The feathers seemed thinner and his shuttlecocks were falling apart at an alarming rate.

- opening paragraph of article by Jia Rui-Chong (LA Times), via Lexington Herald, 31.7.06

LEBANON: An environmental disaster looms

BEIRUT, 29 Jul 2006 (IRIN) - Lebanon is facing an environmental crisis after an Israeli air strike on the Jiyeh power station, about 20km south of Beirut caused 10,000 tonnes of oil to spill into the Mediterranean sea.

The air strikes on 13 and 15 July hit the power station’s fuel tanks and the leaking oil was pushed north by winds, and a thick sludge now coats much of the Lebanese coastline. At least 80km of the 200km coastline is affected.

Riah Abu El-Assal is the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem. As presiding bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, he oversees the Anglican Church in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Yesterday he issued the following statement on the crisis in the Middle East:

Dear Friends,

Somerset 688 for 8. Surrey, in reply, 717 all out. If you were the curator at Woodbridge Road, Guildford, would you be proud of this? And why is the ECB silent?

Dancing on Lies

The latest Flash animation from Peter Nicholson and the Rubbery Figures crew.

July 22, 1946: The Zionist militant group Irgun bombs the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the British Mandate Secretariat in Palestine. A total of 91 people were killed. The Irgun were led by Menachem Begin, who was subsequently Prime Minister of Israel from 1977 to 1983.

"I made it clear to the Congress that I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line. I felt like crossing this line would be a mistake, and once crossed, we would find it almost impossible to turn back."

- George W Bush, 19.7.06, speaking out against the innocent killing of human life. Not the people of Lebanon, but embryonic stem cells.

As I've said many times before there's nothing magical about the "blog", and certainly nothing exalted about the "blogger", but yesterday (July 21) was the second birthday of now.rickeyre.com in a blog format.

It started briefly on the Mambo CMS (now Joomla) before I turned to Wordpress. (Messages dated before July 2004 on this blog have been re-posted retrospectively, having been written elsewhere.)