Archive for May, 2008
Red Devils Rejoice
Manchester United hoisted its 3rd UEFA Champions League trophy in Moscow today after narrowly defeating bete noire Cheslea FC 6-5 on penalty kicks, after a 1-1 stalemate in normal and extra time. The scoreline, however, belied Chelsea’s increasing domination of the game, especially towards the latter stages of normal and extra time.
Soccernet’s Richard Jolly comments on Chelsea’s loss and, in his eyes, United’s deserved the accolades. He points out eloquently,
“Tradition triumphed as, in a country overflowing with new money, the nouveau riche came off second best.”
Hubbard, one of Soccernet’s many erduite and insightful writers, is, of course, referring to Chelsea and its billionaire owner/oil magnate Roman Abramovich. Abramovich has spent truly inordinate amounts on new players during each of the transfer periods he has oversaw, and after this heartbreaking loss, this close-season will surely prove no exception, with beleagured Israeli boss Avram Grant eying a discontented Ronaldinho and Kaka.
Grant deserves more plaudits than his effusively praised counterpart, Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson. Admittedly lacking a personality comparable to charismatic predecessor Jose Mourinho, Grant has attained something the celebrated Mourinho never did: an appearance in the Champions League final. Although falling to United, Grant steadied the unsettled dark-blue London outfit to remarkable second place finish in the Barclay’s Premier League as well. In first place? Ferguson’s Manchester United.
Obviously winning the hallowed double, a Champions League and Premier League trophy, is no simple feat. Nevertheless, the more hands-off approach employed by the Glazer family has proved far easier for coaches to work with, juxtaposed against Abramovich’s intrusive, meddling methods towards managing his expensive team. Facing scrutiny from Abramovich and the media, former Chelsea boss Mourinho found his job untenable and and himself unable to develope the type of rapport with his aloof Russian boss that the Glazers and Ferguson have enjoyed.
what we’re reading
Newsweek released their 2008 rankings of the best high schools in America. Huntingtown slipped to 568th, 144 positions below last year’s rank of 424th (which was a marked improvement on 2006’s 891st ranking). Jay Mathews explains the methodology behind the rankings here.
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We’re also following the Washington Post’s weeklong series on chidlhood obesity: poor diets and sedentary lifestyles have pushed more than one third of all children into the ranks of the overweight or obese, triple what they had been a generation ago. Elementary school children, the Post writes, are now subject to high blood pressure, cholesterol, and Type 2 diabetes – creating the very real possibility that our generation will live far shorter than our parents. Read the reports on PE classes, school lunches, and a ‘fat school‘ where tuition costs upwards of $6000 per month to help students lose weight.
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And, TechCrunch reports on Facebook’s upcoming changes to profile designs. The company, TechCrunch writes, wishes to make profiles more refined and easier to manage.
Milestone.
On this rainy, unglamorous Sunday, as I began to restore some of the lost content/widgets on the blog (they’re all back now!), I thought to myself, how long have we been doing this?
So I peered through the archives and encountered an interesting statistic:
Today marks nearly the 6th month the EIC has been in business!
I started the blog at late on a Saturday night (or I guess Sunday morning) and proceeded to write post number one (click Nov. 2007 on the archives button on the column farthest right) at a truly obscene hour, even for mystandards – 4am I believe, on November 18, 2007. It’s been an interesting six months, and I think we’ve attained a certain credibility around the school with teachers and students that I didn’t envision when it all started that night. Our mission has changed however - as the whole blogging concept never caught on with most of the editors, Kyle and I have made it our own portal to disseminate snippets of what we’re reading, thinking, and doing.
what we’re reading
The Wall Street Journal on how elementary school fundraisers have perverted our childhood. / With less than a third of teenagers with real jobs this summer, a profile of teenagers who are making as much as $2,000 per month as virtual contractors and designers on Second Life for their summer job. / GameDaily speculates that PS3 and Xbox 360 price cuts are near – with perhaps a Blu-ray enabled 360 even closer. / Inside Higher Ed on the future of foreign language education in the United States.
Shaj Mathew
kahutzler
