Soup or Bowl thirty-nine is in progress in Jacksonville, Florida. The Fill a delphia Bagles are leading the Boston Patriot Act 7-0 with 8:30 remaining in the 2nd quarter as I speak. All I want to add is that The Guardian are doing live comms.

Yawn.

"Justice is distorted, and our economy is held back, by irresponsible class actions and frivolous asbestos claims..."
- GW Bush, State of the Union address, 2.2.05

I'll say just two words - 1: James. 2: Hardie.

(Thanks to Rahul Mahajan for drawing my attention to this.)

We know it had to come. His place at the Cubs had become untenable at the end of the 2004 season. But the trade came rapidly this week. Sammy Sosa is now a Baltimore Oriole.

The Prime Minister of Georgia, Zurab Zhavnia, has died as the result, apparently, of a gas leak at a friend's place, with whom he was staying. This is a story worth following. Here's the BBC report, including a video clip.

Imagine being asked to vote in an election where two-thirds of the candidates were not identified. What sort of democracy could give you the right to vote, but not the right to know who you are voting for?

February 2 is World Wetlands Day. Celebrated every year, it is the anniversary of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands at the Iranian Caspian seaside city of Ramsar (and it's also known as the Ramsar Convention).

Information on WWD at the Australian Department of the Environment and Heritage, and on the Ramsar Convention website.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

More later.

The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians will be recording January 10's ICC World XI v ACC XI match in Melbourne, and the yet-to-be-rescheduled rematch, as official one-day internationals in accordance with the ICC's wishes. The ACS committee discussed the matter at their latest meeting on Saturday, and their ruling was emailed to association members (including myself) yesterday.

The decision, forwarded to members in the name of ACS treasurer Jerry Lodge, reads as follows:

"At the ACS Committee Meeting on Saturday 29 January 2005 the Committee unanimously agreed the following action.

1. To accept the ICC ruling that the two tsunami matches be classified as official ODI matches. Therefore all performances in these matches will be included in the statistics prepared and circulated by the Association.

2. To write to the ICC expressing regret that a situation has been allowed to develop whereby statisticians are threatening to go in different directions and that this may lead to different sets of figures being promulgated.

3. To request the opportunity of being consulted in future by the ICC on any matter likely to affect cricket statistics, although we would not seek to reverse any decision by the ICC as this could be seen as being counterproductive."

Please see my earlier entry on this topic. My first reaction is that the committee has surrendered to an Orwellian situation and is putting to the ICC a response which is disturbingly soft and apologetic in tone. My second reaction is to reconsider my membership of the Association.

I'll give my third reaction a few more hours.

For all the devastation that occurred across South-East Asia, particularly in Aceh and Sri Lanka, as a result of the December 26 tsunami, we must remember that it's not just an Asian disaster. Somalia was hit hard. This report from IRIN:

Tsunami survivors need help to overcome the trauma

The Discovery Channel in the US is conducting a poll to determine the Greatest American of all time. (Update: Nominations are now closed and the Top 100 countdown begins on April 18.)