I grew up in New Jersey, and I was a teenager in the days of all the TEAM USA Basketball hype. 
Perhaps some of you remember, it was when the US decided to send their professional NBA types, instead of those college guys who I guess were losing all the time to teams like Yugoslavia or something. I wasn’t excited at the idea, nor am I a big sports fan, but it was interesting back then… Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan representin the US, it was as it was called – a dream team. I guess.
But man oh man. Seems that since winning every match in Atlanta 96 and then again in Sidney 2000, the dream is dead. I watched this lame-ass effort last night, and I laughed my ass off, when I wasn’t being offended at the level of play by the Americans. Puerto Rica was superior in every way. And from what I hear, this US team lost their qualifier to Italy as well. How lame. And on the other hand, hooray for the rest of the world, no more one-country domination of that sport.
Recall elections seem to be the trend in the world this year. Chavez won his yesterday, and will therefore continue being president of Venezuela for the remainder of his term. I love populism and mass hysteria as much as the next guy, but I find it very annoying that officials are now elected for a fixed-year term, yet suddenly you can demand a recall election to get him/her out early. Sounds like politics is starting to resemble a trip to the local department store; you buy something, but then you don’t like it when you get home, and you return it. Bad metaphor? Well my point was to stress why so-called liberal-democracies are full of non-democratic quirks.
Being that I am such a fan of blogs from around the world, I noticed Jill’s post today about Chinese blogs. Which led me to an ex-pat in Asia’s blog that I’m now beginning to read. (And I’m glad its written in English, I’ve got no Chinese characters on my windowsxp setup) Its an especially good for its blogroll, including all kinds from Hong Kong as well as “plain old China.”
Today’s Music: Franz Ferdinand (everyones listening to it I guess)