Barmy Army Ashes Test (SCG Jan 7th 2011)

England retain the Ashes (3-1)

Results

1st Test: Australia v England at Brisbane - Nov 25-29, 2010
England 260 and 517/1d; Australia 481 and 107/1
Match drawn (0-0)

2nd Test: Australia v England at Adelaide - Dec 3-7, 2010
Australia 245 and 304; England 620/5d
England won by an innings and 71 runs (1-0)

3rd Test: Australia v England at Perth - Dec 16-19, 2010
Australia 268 and 309; England 187 and 123
Australia won by 267 runs (1-1)

4th Test: Australia v England at Melbourne - Dec 26-29, 2010
Australia 98 and 258; England 513
England won by an innings and 157 runs (2-1)

5th Test: Australia v England at Sydney - Jan 3-7, 2011
Australia 280 and 281; England 644
England won by an innings and 83 runs (3-1)

Man of the series: Alastair Cook (who scored 766 runs at an average of 127 during the series). In total, he spent 2,171 minutes at the crease. In the Melbourne test, his score of  235 (not out) broke Sir Donald Bradman's record for the highest Test score at the MCG. At the end of the second day of the Adelaide test match, Cook's tally of 136 not out meant he had scored 371 runs and batted for 1,022 minutes without being dismissed, an England record.

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He has got some skills

Check this out . . .

Some nice unicycling - ridden by Kris Holm

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin !!

This week marks both the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and also the 150th anniversary of "On the Origin of Species".

Three hours from disaster - the US economic and political system

Check out this video - Rep. Paul Kanjorski explains how the US (and world) economy came within 3 hours of complete collapse due to an electronic run on the banks.

He explains just how close we all came to economic and political disaster:

I was there when the secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve came those days and talked to members of Congress about what was going on... Here's the facts. We don't even talk about these things.

On Thursday, at about 11 o'clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States to a tune of $550 billion being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two.

The Treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped $105 billion into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks.

They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic and there. And that's what actually happened.

If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o'clock that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.

Now we talked at that time about what would have happened if that happened. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.

Please check out the video!

The World is Flat 3.0

Here is an interesting talk from Tom Friedman (speaking at MIT).

He says:

A bigger problem still is that three billion new players are streaming into this newly flat world, seeking their own version of the American dream, with cars, toasters, and microwaves. “If we don’t find a cleaner, more non-emitting way to power their dreams, we’re going to burn up, choke up, heat up and smoke up this planet so much faster than even Al Gore predicts.”

Friedman scoffs at those who claim “a green revolution is going on,” calling it instead a green party, entailing no real sacrifice or pain. He says the only hope will be a “disruptive breakthrough” that brings a completely different mix of standards and taxes.” Friedman’s new mantra is, “Change your leaders, not your light bulbs.” Without new leaders to rewrite our laws and trigger the innovations, “we are cooked.”

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