Even Shane Warne is struggling to justify his optimism ahead of the next test. 'We can't play that badly again' seems to be the gist of it.

Update :

"Australia fell behind at Adelaide because they made some basic errors while England played well. But if Australia go out and make 450 in their first innings then it is game on. "

Hmm. 268 ( Read more... )

The list of nations China has convinced to boycott the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony reads ( Read more... )

Aside from the sheer bizareness of England leading Australia, in Australia and playing superb cricket, we now have a complete breakdown by the Australian selectors.

It's possible that they've just hit upon the magic combination that will turn the tide, but if so then it must be luck, or they'd have picked this squad for the first two tests.

By my ( Read more... )

Further to the discussion of petitions with one million signatures and EU rules regarding them, we've put one together in collaboration with Avaaz. Quite what happens next will be interesting to see.

Perhaps most interesting is the 'banner' composed of the million signatures and produced to give a 3d effect, similar to those weird things you see ( Read more... )

Pew Internet knows

I genuinely thought Shell were trying to extract themselves from the mess in Nigeria, based on conversations I've had with a number of (very senior) shell executives.

Maybe not.

(Reasons to run faster edition)

Seems inflation might be the only thing keeping condign 's side of the oil bet in profit next year.

Goldman Sach's now predict an average price of $100 / barrel for 2011, although as this piece makes clear, there's reasons to think it might not get quite that bad.

No idea why Newcastle have decided to dispense with Chris Houghton. He got us back up, and he's doing a decent job of keeping us there. I'm sure there was any hope of doing more this year.

And his signings to date have suggested a real eye for talent. This has got to be Mike Ashley's most brainless decision yet.

I may have stopped reading his books (more or less) but his interviews are still worth a read. Oddly enough I may well have been wearing a trench coat when I saw him do a reading from whatever it was he published just after Mona Lisa Overdrive. Virtual Lite?

WWF have released their own file format. It's a .pdf format that refuses to be printed called 'Save as WWF'.

Any suggestions as to how I could trump this?