IFK Gothenburg goalkeeper Kim Christensen could be in hot water after moving the posts during a Swedish first division game to make the goal smaller.
The Danish goalkeeper was caught by TV cameras pushing the posts toward each other before a match against Orebro.
Referee Stefan Johannesson spotted the posts had been moved a few centimetres about 20 minutes into the game and pushed them back into the right place.
Christensen later said he had done the same thing before several other games.
He was spotted using his feet to push the bottom of each post slightly inwards.
The Swedish Football Association is investigating the incident.
"I have never heard anything like this before," said Swedish FA's disciplinary chief Kheneth Tallinger. "It's unique."
IFK Gothenburg drew 0-0 with Orebro and top the table on goal difference with just a few weeks of the season to go.
Friday, 25 September 2009
Thursday, 24 September 2009
ABOUT LOVE
To me, Love is an unconditional, and most times unearned weave of warmth that connects two people – man to man, woman to woman, man to woman. It is often generated not as a result of one specific action but as a result of a series of events. Its is also often expressed in ways that only the people in the relationship understand and to others outside the relationship, the expressions could seem like everything but love. Love can be found anywhere but the purity of it is what cannot always be guaranteed. It is easy to point the finger at people who claim to be unable to find love and blame the black hole inside them for their emptiness and inability to find the ultimate feeling. But if we look closely at ourselves, many of us who point the finger have a bigger hole inside us and this is, more often than not, the reason why we are quick to spot the same traits that we felt when the love juice in our lives started drying up.
One of the most asked questions amongst men and women is about when and how you know you are in love. The answer is simple. If you can put your hand on your earth and say of someone else that you have an unconditional, unearned feeling of warmth between you and the person, that is the beginning. You are not in love because you cannot stop thinking about someone, or you get butterflies in your stomach every time you are around someone. The fact that you have admired someone for all your life or spent all your life with a person doesn't mean you are in love either. Love does not happen overnight. It is a process that starts from one point and can take whatever route it is destined to.
Another question that is often asked is whether love at first sight is possible. In my humble opinion, love at first sight is a myth. The myth of love at first sight is created out of the impatience of people who do not want to think of or go through the process of falling in love. These are the people who do not want to endure the toil but want to reap the harvest. Love is an art, not a science and that means that the presence of the right components and the following of the right procedure does not guarantee the expected result.
People also asked whether it is possible to fall out of love. I think it is possible to fall out of love but a justifiable case will be hard to find. For the two parties to be able to say that at one point, after a period of time, they felt an unconditional, unearned feeling of warmth between themselves but due to circumstances beyond their controls, the tide had turned and there was no more warmth between them, it will take the coming together of many factors that are beyond my imagination.
So next time you guys meet a girl, and you girls meet a guy and you get all fuzzy inside and your brains start to paint pictures of what could be, just tell yourself “maybe love is not the way I'm feeling. Maybe all these feelings are just a conjecture of what might be or what I want.”
But maybe I am the least qualified to talk about love. Maybe I'm not. Maybe first timers and veterans are all just skinning the cat in their own different ways. Maybe we all have the same amount of love inside us but the level of our understanding of love is what determines how much love we show/give to people around us.
Sometimes it feels like everyone and no one is in love at the same time. Sometimes I ask myself what love is. Is it an emotion, an expression, a mood, a feeling, an infilling or just something else that words cannot describe. Maybe no one will ever know the fullness of love. Maybe at the end of the day, we will all find out that what we thought was love was just a mirage and the real thing is a million miles away. One thing I know for sure, regardless of all the maybes, is that love is real
One of the most asked questions amongst men and women is about when and how you know you are in love. The answer is simple. If you can put your hand on your earth and say of someone else that you have an unconditional, unearned feeling of warmth between you and the person, that is the beginning. You are not in love because you cannot stop thinking about someone, or you get butterflies in your stomach every time you are around someone. The fact that you have admired someone for all your life or spent all your life with a person doesn't mean you are in love either. Love does not happen overnight. It is a process that starts from one point and can take whatever route it is destined to.
Another question that is often asked is whether love at first sight is possible. In my humble opinion, love at first sight is a myth. The myth of love at first sight is created out of the impatience of people who do not want to think of or go through the process of falling in love. These are the people who do not want to endure the toil but want to reap the harvest. Love is an art, not a science and that means that the presence of the right components and the following of the right procedure does not guarantee the expected result.
People also asked whether it is possible to fall out of love. I think it is possible to fall out of love but a justifiable case will be hard to find. For the two parties to be able to say that at one point, after a period of time, they felt an unconditional, unearned feeling of warmth between themselves but due to circumstances beyond their controls, the tide had turned and there was no more warmth between them, it will take the coming together of many factors that are beyond my imagination.
So next time you guys meet a girl, and you girls meet a guy and you get all fuzzy inside and your brains start to paint pictures of what could be, just tell yourself “maybe love is not the way I'm feeling. Maybe all these feelings are just a conjecture of what might be or what I want.”
But maybe I am the least qualified to talk about love. Maybe I'm not. Maybe first timers and veterans are all just skinning the cat in their own different ways. Maybe we all have the same amount of love inside us but the level of our understanding of love is what determines how much love we show/give to people around us.
Sometimes it feels like everyone and no one is in love at the same time. Sometimes I ask myself what love is. Is it an emotion, an expression, a mood, a feeling, an infilling or just something else that words cannot describe. Maybe no one will ever know the fullness of love. Maybe at the end of the day, we will all find out that what we thought was love was just a mirage and the real thing is a million miles away. One thing I know for sure, regardless of all the maybes, is that love is real
Thursday, 17 September 2009
BRIXTON POUNDS
Can printing your own cash actually help revive a struggling economy? That's just what traders in one London shopping district are hoping for, as they begin accepting a new local currency.
Short on cash? Then why not make your own. There's no law against it, so long as you don't try to pass it off as sterling.
And you can use whatever you please to make your money, whether cigarettes, rabbit skins or paper notes.
That's what's happening in Brixton, a south London neighbourhood where shoppers, from Thursday, will be able to hand over 10 Brixton Pounds (B£s) in return for their groceries.
Proponents of local currencies say they boost the community's economy by keeping money in the area, but critics dismiss them as fashionable gimmicks, tantamount to protectionism.
Research suggests that when the wider economy slumps, communities turn to barter systems. In other words, when there's little money around, people think about making their own.
The Great Depression of the 1930s saw a wide take-up in the US and much later, the Global Barter Club was born after the Argentine economy hit rock-bottom in 2001. At its height, the system was supporting three million people.
And today's straitened times may well renew interest in complementary currencies but, as one unconvinced Brixton shopper, asks: "What's the point?"
"A local economy is like a leaky bucket. Wealth is generated then spent in chain stores and businesses. It disappears leaving an impoverished local economy," explains Ben Brangwyn, part of the team behind the Totnes Pound, launched in south Devon in 2007.
"Local money prevents that from happening and keeps the money bouncing around the bucket, building wealth and prosperity."
Currently, 6,000 Totnes pounds are in circulation from an estimated local economy of £60m.
It is, stresses Mr Brangwyn, a radical experiment, still in its very early stages, but he can see a day when England has 2,000 local currencies.
Other towns joining the experiment, started by environmental group Transition Network, are Lewes in East Sussex and Stroud in Gloucestershire which introduced the Stroud Pound this week.
Fake notes
Brixton, with its reputation for bustling streets, a lively nightlife and a notoriety for street crime, is the first urban area to have its own currency.
Volunteers behind the project say it has not been an easy sell.
Some shopkeepers are concerned about counterfeiting and the build-up of Brixton pounds in their till. Others see it as a novel advertising tool that could become gift vouchers, or even a collector's item.
So far, £10,000 has been pledged by businesses and local people to be converted into B£s, but on the streets there is still some convincing to be done.
Project manager Tim Nichols hopes people will be drawn by the notion of a kind of "secret club" for holders of the special notes and expects Brixton's antiestablishment spirit to work to its advantage.
"We are in London, the financial hub of the world, and are trying to do something that goes against the grain of the big banking system that we are living on the edge of."
He is also optimistic the recession can work in its favour.
That's the view of Susan Witts who co-founded the BerkShare, a local currency launched in 2006 in Berkshire, Massachusetts.
She puts the growth of BerkShares (from 1 million to 2.5 million in three years) down, in part, to the recession and a lot of hard work.
"Introducing a new currency means more work. You have to train staff to use it, adapt accounting processes. When things are going well, it seems an unnecessary extra step.
"But in difficult times, businesses are looking at ways to make their business work. It relies on people's sense of wanting to shape their own economic future."
But David Boyle, of the New Economics Foundation think-tank and a supporter of alternative currencies, believes efforts in Britain are hampered by its banking system.
Whereas the US has a major network of local banks willing to handle other kinds of money, banks in the UK are less willing to do that. He suggests the answer could lie with local authorities playing a more controlling role.
The vital factor though, says Mr Boyle, is belief.
"If you can maintain that belief in the community, it can work," he says.
Tax dodge
Other economists dismiss the whole concept as a gimmick.
"It might make people feel good, but it's not achieving anything meaningful," says Tim Leunig, of LSE.
"You're saying you can't buy goods from Hackney, Southwark or China, even if they are cheaper. It's giving Brixton shops monopoly power and in the long-run destroys incentives. Almost all collapse because they don't achieve anything."
The only use he can see for it is as a tax dodge, but the taxman says this is a red herring.
All businesses have to report all turnover and as every local currency is tacked to sterling, every sale, whether paid for in cream cakes, polar bears or carrots must be reported to its sterling value, the HM Revenue and Customs says.
And if you are not running a business, the HMRC has no interest because where there's no profit motive, there's no taxation consequence. The Treasury, meanwhile, views them as little more than gift vouchers.
So, with the government unperturbed, perhaps we could yet see Mr Brangwyn's vision of 2,000 separate local currencies realised. But would that be a brave leap into the future or a return to the Middle Ages?
HOW TO USE B£s
Exchange £20 for 20 Brixton Pounds (B£s) at Morleys department store or Opus Cafe
Spend this in any of the 70 or so shops, clubs, pubs, cafes which have signed up
On another shopping trip, accept change in B£s from the shopkeeper
Spend this change in another of the shops. And so on
B£s can be exchanged for legal tender at certain Brixton businesses
40,000 notes in 1, 5, 10 and 20 units, each featuring a revered local figure, are printed on watermarked paper with holograms and serial numbers
B£s cannot leave the area nor be banked to earn interest
They may sound experimental but have in fact been used since the Middle Ages when local currencies were all there was - it was not until the 1700s that every European country had its own currency, says Tim Leunig, an economist at the LSE.
Cortesy - BBC Magazine
Short on cash? Then why not make your own. There's no law against it, so long as you don't try to pass it off as sterling.
And you can use whatever you please to make your money, whether cigarettes, rabbit skins or paper notes.
That's what's happening in Brixton, a south London neighbourhood where shoppers, from Thursday, will be able to hand over 10 Brixton Pounds (B£s) in return for their groceries.
Proponents of local currencies say they boost the community's economy by keeping money in the area, but critics dismiss them as fashionable gimmicks, tantamount to protectionism.
Research suggests that when the wider economy slumps, communities turn to barter systems. In other words, when there's little money around, people think about making their own.
The Great Depression of the 1930s saw a wide take-up in the US and much later, the Global Barter Club was born after the Argentine economy hit rock-bottom in 2001. At its height, the system was supporting three million people.
And today's straitened times may well renew interest in complementary currencies but, as one unconvinced Brixton shopper, asks: "What's the point?"
"A local economy is like a leaky bucket. Wealth is generated then spent in chain stores and businesses. It disappears leaving an impoverished local economy," explains Ben Brangwyn, part of the team behind the Totnes Pound, launched in south Devon in 2007.
"Local money prevents that from happening and keeps the money bouncing around the bucket, building wealth and prosperity."
Currently, 6,000 Totnes pounds are in circulation from an estimated local economy of £60m.
It is, stresses Mr Brangwyn, a radical experiment, still in its very early stages, but he can see a day when England has 2,000 local currencies.
Other towns joining the experiment, started by environmental group Transition Network, are Lewes in East Sussex and Stroud in Gloucestershire which introduced the Stroud Pound this week.
Fake notes
Brixton, with its reputation for bustling streets, a lively nightlife and a notoriety for street crime, is the first urban area to have its own currency.
Volunteers behind the project say it has not been an easy sell.
Some shopkeepers are concerned about counterfeiting and the build-up of Brixton pounds in their till. Others see it as a novel advertising tool that could become gift vouchers, or even a collector's item.
So far, £10,000 has been pledged by businesses and local people to be converted into B£s, but on the streets there is still some convincing to be done.
Project manager Tim Nichols hopes people will be drawn by the notion of a kind of "secret club" for holders of the special notes and expects Brixton's antiestablishment spirit to work to its advantage.
"We are in London, the financial hub of the world, and are trying to do something that goes against the grain of the big banking system that we are living on the edge of."
He is also optimistic the recession can work in its favour.
That's the view of Susan Witts who co-founded the BerkShare, a local currency launched in 2006 in Berkshire, Massachusetts.
She puts the growth of BerkShares (from 1 million to 2.5 million in three years) down, in part, to the recession and a lot of hard work.
"Introducing a new currency means more work. You have to train staff to use it, adapt accounting processes. When things are going well, it seems an unnecessary extra step.
"But in difficult times, businesses are looking at ways to make their business work. It relies on people's sense of wanting to shape their own economic future."
But David Boyle, of the New Economics Foundation think-tank and a supporter of alternative currencies, believes efforts in Britain are hampered by its banking system.
Whereas the US has a major network of local banks willing to handle other kinds of money, banks in the UK are less willing to do that. He suggests the answer could lie with local authorities playing a more controlling role.
The vital factor though, says Mr Boyle, is belief.
"If you can maintain that belief in the community, it can work," he says.
Tax dodge
Other economists dismiss the whole concept as a gimmick.
"It might make people feel good, but it's not achieving anything meaningful," says Tim Leunig, of LSE.
"You're saying you can't buy goods from Hackney, Southwark or China, even if they are cheaper. It's giving Brixton shops monopoly power and in the long-run destroys incentives. Almost all collapse because they don't achieve anything."
The only use he can see for it is as a tax dodge, but the taxman says this is a red herring.
All businesses have to report all turnover and as every local currency is tacked to sterling, every sale, whether paid for in cream cakes, polar bears or carrots must be reported to its sterling value, the HM Revenue and Customs says.
And if you are not running a business, the HMRC has no interest because where there's no profit motive, there's no taxation consequence. The Treasury, meanwhile, views them as little more than gift vouchers.
So, with the government unperturbed, perhaps we could yet see Mr Brangwyn's vision of 2,000 separate local currencies realised. But would that be a brave leap into the future or a return to the Middle Ages?
HOW TO USE B£s
Exchange £20 for 20 Brixton Pounds (B£s) at Morleys department store or Opus Cafe
Spend this in any of the 70 or so shops, clubs, pubs, cafes which have signed up
On another shopping trip, accept change in B£s from the shopkeeper
Spend this change in another of the shops. And so on
B£s can be exchanged for legal tender at certain Brixton businesses
40,000 notes in 1, 5, 10 and 20 units, each featuring a revered local figure, are printed on watermarked paper with holograms and serial numbers
B£s cannot leave the area nor be banked to earn interest
They may sound experimental but have in fact been used since the Middle Ages when local currencies were all there was - it was not until the 1700s that every European country had its own currency, says Tim Leunig, an economist at the LSE.
Cortesy - BBC Magazine
Friday, 11 September 2009
To push or not to push?
In our bid to take new territory, we often need a push or a burst of energy. If not to get us going, it is often to get us over the finish line. The eternal conundrum thus is when to start pushing, when to stop and whether any pushing would be needed in the first place.
Take a student preparing for a test for example. Some students would have cleverly paced themselves over the course of the term and need minimal catching up to do when the test or exam is round the corner. Some other student would have been so clever and would need to catch up on things in order to make a success of the situation. In said situation, the well paced student wouldn’t need a push to get them over the line of success while the other student will need some sort of effort to either get them going or get them over the line, depending on how well they have positioned themselves over the course of the term
Another example is when a man is chasing a woman. Depending on the relationship before the chase, some men need overt gestures to get to show on the road while some others would have positioned themselves in a position where a gentle tap on the door will open it.
When it comes to pushing, like a good friend said, when all that is left in ruins, that’s always a good time to stop. Or maybe earlier if you’re a good judge of limits.
I also believe it has a lot to do with positioning. Strategic positioning makes movement and manoeuvring easier. It saves time, and, more often than not, reduces the energy consumed in getting a job done by a significant amount.
So, how do you strategically position yourself for a mission, task or adventure? First thing is to assess the task and decide how high on your list of priorities it is. After deciding this, you have to find out as much on the mission as possible. In doing these things, you will have a good idea of how possible your task is and how much effort will have to go into getting it done. You will then have to put yourself in a place where the mountain is scalable and the target is reachable. Regarding the examples mentioned, if you want to do well in a test, it would be advisable to position yourself in class as regularly as possible. And if you want to get a girl, let’s say a Christian girl, you will have to position yourself in a place where she will see you and be able to make a judgement of you as the sort of man she wants.
More than all, to be discerning enough to know when a push is needed and not needed is most important. Nothing feels worse than wasting time, effort and energy on something that needed very little effort
Take a student preparing for a test for example. Some students would have cleverly paced themselves over the course of the term and need minimal catching up to do when the test or exam is round the corner. Some other student would have been so clever and would need to catch up on things in order to make a success of the situation. In said situation, the well paced student wouldn’t need a push to get them over the line of success while the other student will need some sort of effort to either get them going or get them over the line, depending on how well they have positioned themselves over the course of the term
Another example is when a man is chasing a woman. Depending on the relationship before the chase, some men need overt gestures to get to show on the road while some others would have positioned themselves in a position where a gentle tap on the door will open it.
When it comes to pushing, like a good friend said, when all that is left in ruins, that’s always a good time to stop. Or maybe earlier if you’re a good judge of limits.
I also believe it has a lot to do with positioning. Strategic positioning makes movement and manoeuvring easier. It saves time, and, more often than not, reduces the energy consumed in getting a job done by a significant amount.
So, how do you strategically position yourself for a mission, task or adventure? First thing is to assess the task and decide how high on your list of priorities it is. After deciding this, you have to find out as much on the mission as possible. In doing these things, you will have a good idea of how possible your task is and how much effort will have to go into getting it done. You will then have to put yourself in a place where the mountain is scalable and the target is reachable. Regarding the examples mentioned, if you want to do well in a test, it would be advisable to position yourself in class as regularly as possible. And if you want to get a girl, let’s say a Christian girl, you will have to position yourself in a place where she will see you and be able to make a judgement of you as the sort of man she wants.
More than all, to be discerning enough to know when a push is needed and not needed is most important. Nothing feels worse than wasting time, effort and energy on something that needed very little effort
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
QUIET PLEASE, MEN AT WORK!!
Classic
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211996/Do-disturb-Slumbering-engineer-grabs-40-winks-job.html
Friday, 4 September 2009
Big thighs could be key to beating heart disease
People with thighs less than 60cms in diameter are more likely to die prematurely, the study found
Big thighs might confer a health benefit according to a study showing that people with small thighs run a higher-than-average risk of developing heart disease and an early demise.
Scientists have found that men and women whose thighs are less than 60cm (23.6ins) in circumference are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, and die prematurely, compared to people with thicker thighs.
They also found, however, that the apparent advantage of bigger thighs did not continue beyond the 60cm threshold. People with thighs much wider than 60cm did not fair any better than those whose thighs hovered just above the threshold.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, is the first to link the size of the upper thigh to the risk of heart disease and premature death. The finding could lead to a medical test based on thigh size as an indicator of a person's risk of developing heart problems in later life, in much the same way that body mass index is seen as an indicator of cardiovascular risk.
Professor Berit Heitmann of Copenhagen University Hospital, who led the study, said that smaller thighs may be linked with heart disease because they indicate a lower-than-normal muscle mass in that region, which could be a factor in triggering the development of type-2 diabetes, when the hormone insulin does not work properly in controlling levels of sugar in the blood.
The study, based on monitoring 1,436 men and 1,380 women over a period of 12.5 years, found that thigh size as an indicator of heart disease risk was independent of other known risk factors, such as smoking, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. This is one of the reasons why it might be useful in doctors' surgeries, the scientists suggest.
"We found that having smaller thighs was associated with development of cardiovascular morbidity [illness] and early mortality.... General practitioners could use thigh circumference as an early marker to identify patients at later risk of cardiovascular disease and early mortality," they say.
They also suggest that exercising the legs and lower body to increase thigh size could be a useful way of decreasing the risk of heart disease. They say that it is "worrying" that half of the men and the women in the study aged between 35 and 65 have a thigh circumference that is lower than the 60cm threshold.
An editorial in the BMJ said that the study raises several questions, such as whether the link between thigh size and health risks is real or a spurious, chance finding. Although the statistical modelling used in the study was rigorous, studies on a much larger group of people will be needed to show that the association is real, it says. "Is this association biologically plausible? It would seem logical that having bigger thighs would be a reflection of greater adiposity [fatness], and that this would increase the risk of heart disease," the editorial says.
However, previous studies have also found that too little muscle or subcutaneous fat in the legs may be a risk factor in developing diabetes. "Interestingly, other studies have shown that larger hip circumference, which might be a proxy for thigh circumference, significantly reduces the risk of incident diabetes and coronary heart disease," the BMJ editorial says.
Telegraph.co.uk
Big thighs might confer a health benefit according to a study showing that people with small thighs run a higher-than-average risk of developing heart disease and an early demise.
Scientists have found that men and women whose thighs are less than 60cm (23.6ins) in circumference are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, and die prematurely, compared to people with thicker thighs.
They also found, however, that the apparent advantage of bigger thighs did not continue beyond the 60cm threshold. People with thighs much wider than 60cm did not fair any better than those whose thighs hovered just above the threshold.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, is the first to link the size of the upper thigh to the risk of heart disease and premature death. The finding could lead to a medical test based on thigh size as an indicator of a person's risk of developing heart problems in later life, in much the same way that body mass index is seen as an indicator of cardiovascular risk.
Professor Berit Heitmann of Copenhagen University Hospital, who led the study, said that smaller thighs may be linked with heart disease because they indicate a lower-than-normal muscle mass in that region, which could be a factor in triggering the development of type-2 diabetes, when the hormone insulin does not work properly in controlling levels of sugar in the blood.
The study, based on monitoring 1,436 men and 1,380 women over a period of 12.5 years, found that thigh size as an indicator of heart disease risk was independent of other known risk factors, such as smoking, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. This is one of the reasons why it might be useful in doctors' surgeries, the scientists suggest.
"We found that having smaller thighs was associated with development of cardiovascular morbidity [illness] and early mortality.... General practitioners could use thigh circumference as an early marker to identify patients at later risk of cardiovascular disease and early mortality," they say.
They also suggest that exercising the legs and lower body to increase thigh size could be a useful way of decreasing the risk of heart disease. They say that it is "worrying" that half of the men and the women in the study aged between 35 and 65 have a thigh circumference that is lower than the 60cm threshold.
An editorial in the BMJ said that the study raises several questions, such as whether the link between thigh size and health risks is real or a spurious, chance finding. Although the statistical modelling used in the study was rigorous, studies on a much larger group of people will be needed to show that the association is real, it says. "Is this association biologically plausible? It would seem logical that having bigger thighs would be a reflection of greater adiposity [fatness], and that this would increase the risk of heart disease," the editorial says.
However, previous studies have also found that too little muscle or subcutaneous fat in the legs may be a risk factor in developing diabetes. "Interestingly, other studies have shown that larger hip circumference, which might be a proxy for thigh circumference, significantly reduces the risk of incident diabetes and coronary heart disease," the BMJ editorial says.
Telegraph.co.uk
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)