Best Car Songs For The Holidays

None of the songs in this article are on my iPod (I can link up the |Ipod to the car's stereo). I'll tell you what are the worst songs for driving - anything by Enya, or Sarah MacLachlan.

What is unusually nice though is listening to children's song - old songs - and singing along to them.

My current favourite pop songs:
1. Miles Away - Madonna
2. Disturbia - Rihanna
3. A Million Miles - Gravity's Grace

clipped from blog.wired.com Being car guys, it occurred to us that there are approximately 1.2 gazillion songs about cars. Has any topic short of love so often been the subject of song? We don't know for sure but we'd bet Karl Benz had no sooner fired up his Motorwagen before someone was writing a ditty about it. Cars are as much a part of rock-n-roll as sex, drugs and Marshall stacks. 7. The Beach Boys - 409. Everyone cites Little Deuce Coupe, but for our money, this B-side to 1962's Surfin' Safari is the best of the Boys' many car songs because nothing says "bad ass" like a mid-60s Chevy with lousy brakes and an obscenely large engine putting out 425 horsepower. 1. Prince - Little Red Corvette. This song isn't really about a Corvette, it's - spoiler alert! - about a one-night stand. Prince wasn't the first to use a car as a metaphor for a woman and he won't be the last, but his catchy tune from the album 1999 will always rank among the best.

Pirate shoot at Cruiseliner - Cruiser outraces bullets, leaves pirates eating wake

Not sure how 8 bullets are going to stop a Cruiseliner. That said, if these guys hijack these sea-moving apartment blocks, those hostage situations could get pretty ugly.

Why don't the international navies send a few subs to the area...

clipped from news.yahoo.com It is not the first time a cruise liner has been attacked. In 2005, pirates opened fire on the Seabourn Spirit about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off the Somali coast. The faster cruise ship managed to escape, and used a long-range acoustic device — which blasts a painful wave of sound — to distract the pirates. NAIROBI, Kenya – Pirates chased and shot at a U.S. cruise liner with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel as it sailed along a corridor patrolled by international warships, a maritime official said Tuesday. The liner, carrying 656 international passengers and 399 crew members, was sailing through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden on Sunday when it encountered six bandits in two speedboats, said Noel Choong who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Malaysia.

Venice becomes Atlantis - worst flooding in 22 years

Venice was flooded 50 times between 1993 and 2002, but by far the worst incident was on November 4, 1966, when the city was submerged by 1.94 metres of water amid catastrophic flooding throughout Italy. - Yahoo.com

clipped from news.yahoo.com VENICE (AFP) – Venice was under water again on Tuesday after suffering its worst flooding in 22 years, as a new tide soaked the Renaissance city up to about thigh level. On Monday the "acqua alta" (high water) reached 1.56 metres (five feet, two inches), the highest level since 1986, before beginning to recede. Lower parts of the tourist mecca, including the world-famous St Mark's Square, remained under water at midday on Tuesday after reaching a high of 1.02 metres, according to the ANSA news agency. The city is expected to return to normal in the early evening, its tide monitoring centre said.

Man shoots deer twice - deer bores antler in man's chest

I wonder if this dude is going to go and kill wild animals for fun again?

clipped from news.yahoo.com SEDALIA, Mo. – A hunter bagged a big buck on the second day of firearms season, but the kill caused him a lot of pain. Randy Goodman, 49, said he thought two well-placed shots with his .270-caliber rifle had killed the buck on Nov. 19. Goodman said the deer looked dead to him, but seconds later the nine-point, 240-pound animal came to life. The buck rose up, knocked Goodman down and attacked him with his antlers in what the veteran hunter called "15 seconds of hell." The deer ran a short distance and went down, and died after Goodman fired two more shots. Soon Goodman started feeling dizzy and noticed his vest was soaked in blood. So he reached his truck and drove to a hospital, where he received seven staples in his scalp and was treated for a slight concussion and bruises.

Zimbabwe - 12 000 cases, 473 dead + WHAT IS CHOLERA?

Now they've cut the water supply in Harare to curb the Cholera outbreak. What would you rather die of - thirst, or from drinking shitty water.

Human rights groups in Zim estimate the death toll is twice as high - at about 1000.

Cholera is bad news b.t.w. - it's an infectious gastroenteritus with the main symptom massive diarrhea and dehydration.

Wiki: In its most severe forms, cholera is one of the most rapidly fatal illnesses known, and a healthy person may become hypotensive within an hour of the onset of symptoms; infected patients may die within three hours if medical treatment is not provided.

clipped from www.businessday.co.za “Cholera outbreaks in Zimbabwe have occurred annually since 1998, but previous epidemics never reached today’s proportions. The last large outbreak was in 1992 with 3 000 cases recorded,” the WHO said in a report. The WHO said in a report that the cholera outbreak is affecting most regions of the country with a fatality rate of up to 50% in some areas. It reported 473 deaths from 11 700 cases.

Bloggers gaining credibility - Huffington

"In contrast, bloggers are armed with a far more effective piece of access than a White House press credential: passion." - Huffington

NVDL: 100%

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com Traditional journalists are blogging, while bloggers are gaining credibility and stature in traditional media, Huffington said in a Reuters interview ahead of Tuesday's release of "The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging." The blogging guide published by Simon & Schuster provides tips on getting started and noticed as well as Huffington's own views, having created one of the most influential Web sites to gain prominence during the 2008 White House race. "Blogging," Huffington wrote in the book's introduction, "has been the greatest breakthrough in popular journalism since Tom Paine." Paine's 1776 pamphlet "Common Sense" dramatically helped promote the cause of American independence. "The new media will continue to allow people who otherwise would not have a voice to have a voice, and that's not something that's going to wear off," she said.

Personality Disorder Afflicts 1 in 5 Adults

One obvious sign of a personality disorder is excessive perfectionism.

clipped from news.yahoo.com The study was released Monday in Archives of General Psychiatry. It was based on interviews with 5,092 young adults in 2001 and 2002. Personality disorders showed up in similar numbers among both students and non-students, including the most common one, obsessive compulsive personality disorder. About 8 percent of young adults in both groups had this illness, which can include an extreme preoccupation with details, rules, orderliness and perfectionism. All good students have a touch of "obsessional" personality that helps them work hard to achieve. But that's different from an obsessional disorder that makes people inflexible and controlling and interferes with their lives, he explained. Obsessive compulsive personality disorder differs from the better known OCD, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, which features repetitive actions such as hand-washing to avoid germs.

Mumbai: One hand on mobile phojne while pulling the trigger with the other

Outside of Leopold's Cafe, "one of the gunmen seemed to be talking on a mobile phone even as he used his other hand to fire off rounds," an eyewitness told The New York Times.

clipped from blog.wired.com As they approached Mumbai by boat, the terrorists "steered the vessel using GPS equipment," according to the Daily Mail. A satellite phone was later found aboard. Once the coordinated attacks began, the terrorists were on their cell phones constantly. They used BlackBerries "to monitor international reaction to the atrocities, and to check on the police response via the internet," the Courier Mail reports. The gunmen were able to trawl the internet for information after cable television feeds to the two luxury hotels and office block were cut by the authorities. The men looked beyond the instant updates of the Indian media to find worldwide reaction to the events in Mumbai, and to keep abreast of the movements of the soldiers sent to stop them.

Oil prices plunge to 3-year low

The market has gone totally bonkers.

clipped from news.yahoo.com SINGAPORE – Oil prices fell to a 3-year low below $48 a barrel Tuesday in Asia, as more bleak U.S. economic news and plunging stocks markets darkened investor expectations for crude demand. Light, sweet crude for January delivery was down $1.50 to $47.78 a barrel, the lowest since 2005, in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midafternoon in Singapore. "We think by next year OPEC will be somewhat successful in tightening supply and underpinning prices," Moore said. "You have to wonder where the oil price would be now without the OPEC cuts." Moore said he expects an average oil price of $74 a barrel for 2009.

Christmas without all the stuff - One family’s daring experiment:

This Christmas we are MAKING gifts. Although I have already bought a few...

What I would REALLY like for Christmas is a swim in the sea.

clipped from www.yesmagazine.org On the other hand, eating local and riding bikes instead of driving cars allowed us to lose the spare tires around our guts, cure ourselves of longstanding skin problems and insomnia and become generally healthier. And not using electricity to power entertainment devices drew us closer together as a family and made us spend more time with friends. Despite the fact that people spend relatively large portions of their income on gifts, as well as time shopping for and wrapping them, such behavior apparently contributes little to holiday joy.

Sushi, anyone?

Sushi restaurants around the world have driven the Bluefin Tuna to the brink of extinction.
15,000 tons is the limit that can be fished without without the species becoming extinct.
Last year's global sales reached an estimated 61,000 tons of bluefin tuna.

clipped from www.time.com The surge in bluefin tuna fishing over the past decade has been driven by the proliferation of sushi restaurants across the world. The bluefin industry, once the province of rustic local fishing fleets in Mediterranean, was last year worth about $1.6 billion. Today, tuna fleets use high-tech spotter planes buzzing over the Med during the summertime tuna-spawning season, in search of shoals that have escaped the trappers. The industry's major players are massive multinational corporations such as Mitsubishi, the world's biggest tuna trader — Japan imports the bulk of bluefin tuna caught in the Med. Some of the larger companies have created state-of-the-art tuna ranches in the Med's deep waters, where bluefin tuna swim into giant nets and are fattened over a period of months before being hauled out and processed in floating factories before being exported.

Get out of your car - get onto a bike

I agree - a cyclised city is a civilised city. They're even spelt more or less the same.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk Londoners will be able to pick up and drop off one of 6,000 bikes at 400 locations across the capital, Boris Johnson announced today, as he invited companies to register their interest in setting up his cycle-hire scheme. The scheme was one of Johnson's manifesto promises and is inspired by the successful Vélib' programme in Paris.

The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

Balance and Brawn

Over the past few days I've been fortunate enough to have read Clinton van der Berg's biography of Ryk Neethling [Read my Review]. This has lead to a sudden amount of introspection, some of it painful, some of it inspirational. I was struck by the fact that for all Ryk's discipline, he has maintained a healthy balance in terms of going out, and having fun. Somewhere in the book I think he describes life is Tucson, Arizona - train hard, study hard, party hard.

I have to say I have never had a problem with training. Once I am out there, I love it. I often suffer from over-training for this reason, or train too hard, too fast. Right now I realise that my biggest problem isn't training, it's the distractions around training, which sometimes means getting to be in the wee hours of the morning.
Discipline is not just about the work, but cutting down on the fun. I suppose it's obvious.

Having said that, I have struggled not to become obsessed in order to stay super-disciplined. I mean focusing 100% on sport and cutting out every other thing. When I trained for the Ironman in South Korea, I took it so seriously, I went completely vegetarian; (not fish, not eggs, not even cheese). For someone who likes Burgers and braaivleis, that was a very difficult regime to maintain. I guess what I am saying is I admire Ryk's ability to train so hard, and to keep a sensible balance with a few other distractions. It's something I need to learn still.

Over the last 2 weeks I have been swimming a fair amount. I'm very unfit but it's encouraging to see how quickly you can improve on your own 'records'. In one of my first sessions I swam a 2:50 for 200m (10 lengths of the Melrose Arch pool). A few days later I thought I would challenge that time, and on the 7th length suddenly became overcome by the hypoxia and stopped. It was a mixture of a million thoughts, mostly negative, growing in momentum with the increasing oxygen debt. I bailed on the set, but for just a moment. I tried to get it together and swam the last three lengths hard. I came in 2:49. Tonight I thought I would make another go of it, but I was worried that I would choke as the oxygen debt got worse. I went for it on my third set, and did a 2:44. I could barely believe it.

In South Korea I did a 250m in 3:03 so I know I can still improve a lot.

I think the first few workouts, the first changes we make to our lifestyle, are by far the most difficult. Once you get past those awkward feelings (they feel like withdrawal symptoms) it gets easier, even though you are still improving. Overcoming these feelings of "It's too hard"and "I can't" is a mindgame. The body is there waiting for permission to push itself. The mind is always in charge of moods, thoughts, much of what we do. To perform physically, even to be happy, the mind needs to step aside.

Mens 4 x 100m Freestyle Final Athens 2004

Woods ends nine-year relationship with General Motors Corp - Sport Sponsorship in jeopardy as economic crisis deepens

NVDL: GM splitting with Woods (who doesn't really need the money) shows to what extent the American economy is deteriorating.

clipped from biz.yahoo.com There are a lot of parties who are going to have some difficulties finding sponsors to substitute for what the auto industry used to provide. Woods is the world's most marketable athlete with an estimated $100 million endorsements a year. If his agreement with one of the world's most active sports sponsors dissolved, some experts wonder if any endorsement or sponsorship deal is really ironclad in these tough times.

Mumbai Terrorists Planned to Kill 5000, Blow up Taj Hotel [VIDEO LINK]

Close to 300 people were killed in a highly organised killing spree. It turns out the terrorists planned to kill almost 20 times this number. Only one terrorist is still alive; he has confessed where they received training (Pakistan) and that they had prepared for the attack over 6 months.

Watch here.

Chasing the Dream: Book Review + PODCAST

When I was younger I probably partied too much, but I've greatly tempered my behaviour. I go out and socialise, because the alternative is to stay home and get bogged down in nothingness. - Ryk Neethling

It took me 4 days to read Chasing the Dream, the authorised biography of South Africa's swimming sensation, Ryk Neethling. More accurately, 4 nights after work, reading until one or two in the morning. Reading the book made me want to go and swim in the gym (but not until I'd finished the whole book).

Clinton van der Berg does a credible job in his first outing as book writer, maintaining invisibility throughout, and giving the platform entirely to Ryk, whose voice comes through with powerful authenticity.

You may be surprised to hear that Ryk was a shy little boy once upon a time, with some of his reservedness caused by a speech impediment. You may also be interested to know which coach pushed Ryk the hardest, and made him the toughest. Here's a clue - not a US-based coach. Disturbing - the enmity between Dirk Lange and Ryk [His dislike of me was relentless], who had very personal, very angry differences. This reminds one of Jack White's struggles and frustrations with rugby's sport administrators. It's great that Ryk courageously admits these problems - and does so in a way that doesn't seem defeatist or spiteful.

Even so, don't expect a sanitised, self aggrandising story. Ryk calls a spade a spade, and an asshole an asshole.

Ryk draws us into his inner circle of relationships, giving us the inside track on Amanda Beard, Ian Thorpe (see above), Michael Phelps (an entire chapter devoted to him) and sensitively portrays his conflicting feelings between chasing his dream and being there for his ailing sister Elsje. There are also fascinating moments of self-examination, from his own failures (Ryk retired in 2000 before making the switch to short distances), to those of his Broederbond father. Ryk manages to maintain dignity in this honest account of a boy from Bloemfontein, who dreamed big, and went far away to chase those dreams.

For some the many references to meets and times may be confusing, and there are one or two rough patches where the storyline seems to skip forward and then hiccups back slightly. These are the only troublesome bubbles caught up (as you're likely to be) in the smooth pacing of the story. The authentic voice maintains a steady momentum through the froth, which ought to get you through his life story in record time.

The last chapters on the Beijing Olympics are as riveting as the chapters of young Rykie. Will Ryk attempt a fifth Olympics? Buy this book and find out!

Rating: 8/10

Listen to Ryk's 10 Commandments
Order Chasing the Dream here.

Cry Me A River: The 20 Most Heartbreaking Songs Of All Time!

Sometimes the song you associate with the person (and it may not even be a love song) becomes the eulogy for the doomed relationship. Shania Twain makes me want to cry

clipped from new.music.yahoo.com 1 George Jones: "He Stopped Loving Her Today," single (Epic, 1981) "He said I'll love you 'til I die..." Curly Putnam and Bobby Braddock wrote the shamelessly weepy lyric and melody; producer Billy Sherrill coated the track in sumptuous Nashville surround-sound; and then the greatest country singer of all gave the performance of a lifetime--a vocal imbued with deep, knee-quaking compassion for the poor schmuck who never got over the love of his life... until now, when he's "all dressed up to go away". I don't care how hard-bitten you may be, I defy you not to get a lump in the throat from this 20-year-old classic of cornball liebestod. It's utterly transcendental--the most heartbreaking record ever made. 5 The Righteous Brothers: "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," single (Philles, 1964) 6 Sinead O'Connor: "Nothing Compares 2 U," single (Chrysalis, 1990)

On the surface [PHOTOGRAPHY]

Why I Quit Swimming As #1 in 1984

I started swimming at a very young age. I was swimming with a coach, and training, at the age of 4 (whilst still at nursery school). Swimming suited me perfectly, since as a child I was shy, and quiet in public. I was a bundle of excitably mental and physical energy at home, but I found it very awkward to be around other people (and in a sense, I'm still that way).

I remember for the first months in kindergarten they couldn't get me to play with the kids. I would pitch up and draw for hours. I loved the huge sheets of paper they had, and that we could paint with water colors, or fingerpaint, or play with clay. It took a lot of cajolling to get me to loosen up, and when I did, I went nuts. I even performed in a play at the end of the year, where I had to stand up and shout: "HERE COMES THE KING, LET'S RUN AND HIDE." We used to build forts with planks in the trees. It was a lot of fun. Even so, I found a lot of comfort and thrill in the water, and as I say, in drawing. I loved to draw Disney characters, and what we were seeing on TV and movies (Heidi, Pinnochio, Peter Pan The Rescuers etc.)

I was also following in my brother's footsteps, though not quite. He was able to swim all the strokes perfectly, whereas I had a useless breastroke (it still sucks) and my freestyle was VERY free. My father referred to it as the windmeul [windmill].

My brother though inadvertantly painted a large target on his back. A lot of his friends swam with him and kept him company, whereas very few of my kindergarten buddies were interested, and those who were didn't swim particularly fast. When I tried to hang with my brother's friends, they laughed at me. And so that's how I started to work and focus on my swimming. It wasn't long before I was swimming just as fast as my brother and his pals, and that meant I was the quickest in my age group. One year in primary school we broke a freestyle relay record by 13 seconds. I won a few medals at Aquabears and Sasolburg and I broke a backstroke record at one point, but I was no Ryk Neethling, and I wasn't referring to the performances of American swimmers as he was, I was looking to my brother and people from our club (Otters and Seals, people like Barry Visser, and Allan Louis, and his two brothers).

I went to every Interhigh gala - not a huge feat - but I started with Free State Colors at the age of 7, and got it in Butterfly two years later. Two years after that I was a very serious 11 year old, and I knew who I was competing against. Luke Wollenschlaeger was a giant, and worse, he was a year younger than me. Next to him I was a pipsqueak. There was also Almero Strauss - a quiet, strong, white haired boy from Jim Fauche, and Mark Collie, who would go to Currie Cup. I wanted Free State colors again, and I needed to beat all these boys to get it. So I quit soccer (I was playing first team and Free State soccer at the time) to focus on swimming. I trained six days a week, often twice a day. Sometimes we even trained on Sundays. Some days I cried in my goggles. Other times my arms were too tired to lift to brush my hair. I swam so much when I looked at light bulbs I saw rainbows.

I'm not going to recount the race (I have before on this blog) other than to say Luke and I powered ahead of Almero and touched at the same time, 30.something. They gave me first.

The sacrifices that went into the race, and the 50/50 gamble of who won in the end didn't quite make sense to me. It didn't make the sacrifice worth it. I could also see that my body wasn't quite cut out for swimming (my coach said I was about to grow, but I've always been a bit too short for the sport, although I still have a big chest and long arms). The other thing was that at the same time that I waqs training like hell in swimming, and doing okay, I wasn't training at all in athletics (other than soccer practise) and then I would sneak a 2nd or 3rd in 100 metre sprints, and in the long jump. For many years I was the fastest swimmer and runner in my class, and I was one of the youngest boys in my class. So there was definitely a temptation to try athletics and other sports besides.

At the end of that year Penny Prideaux quit and went to Cape Town. That was a big blow. There was nothing wrong with Simon Gray, except that he came from Welkom and seemed to bring some of my arch enemies (like Mark Collie) from there into the squad...and he started off with quite technical training so I couldn't hear him (we had to write down heart rates etc and I had doctor's instructions to protect my ears so could never make out what he was saying). My first few workouts were miserable.

I had ear problems my whole life just like I had problems with my teeth. I suffered from ear ache, and several times from holes in my ear drums (where the chlorine had literally eaten through). This lead to me breathing on one side, something I still do today. Doctors today comment on the narrowness of my ear tubes; something I believe was an adaptation to those many hours spent in the water as a boy.

In the pool I had a nose clip and stuff in my ears, outside I had external braces. I was a mess outwardly, although inwardly I was the same boy with a strong fighting spirit. The addition of Grey High school, with all the older boys become pubescent assholes, was difficult for me to handle. My brother left as well, and my coach.
And then I left the sport completely for a few weeks.

It wasn't really a spontaneous decision. While I was training for my win, I resolved to take a breather (whether I won or not). And 'then see'. When I won the coach for Grey High secondary approached me, and told me how important I was going to be for the High School. He also wanted me to train in Grey's swimming pool, which I knew wasn't going to work.

Grey shipped in some of the best swimmers from other schools, which made it harder just to qualify for interhigh (you had to come 1st or 2nd). Now I was swimming against 5/6 of the best swimmers in the Free State. So I was often coming third, and often asked to swim the 100 Butterfly to let the other swimmers off the hook.

There are a lot of reasons. Even though I never regained the high level I had as a pikkie, I swam regularly in high school, and probably even more in university (but on my own, focussing on 1500m). I did attempt a comeback, and in matric I tried again, but family stress was worse than ever. In the end, I lost focus. For me, I achieved what I thought was enough for the time - #1 in the Free State. SA colors seemed very vague and hard to pursue (not hard to do as much as hard to figure out what to do and how), and I saw a lot of crazy swimmers in my time (I must have seemed off my rocker at times too), and didn't really see the sport as worth investing in. Especially since I didn't even have clarity on who would coach me, or how. And that was never really resolved.

So I do have a few regrets. I would have liked a better high school stint, but I did try and swimming served me beautifully as a triathlete, and I won races and managed podium finishes after school. My swimming background serves me still ;-)