Eideard

Just a couple of samples:

Pass on the word with these breath fresheners wrapped in Biblical text

This peanut bar is “inspired by scripture” its name perhaps is less well thought through

Assuage your guilt by indulging in this God is Love Chocolate

There are more over here – for anyone needing to give their superstition a sugar rush.

McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton overtook an ill-timed safety car period by passing his main rivals on the track to post a brilliant victory in the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim, only two weeks after shining in the wet in the British GP at Silverstone.

That same safety car period, provoked by a heavy crash by Timo Glock on the pit straight, played well into the hands of Renault rookie Nelson Piquet, who benefited from a one-stop strategy to score his maiden Formula 1 podium finish. Ferrari’s Felipe Massa was third.

The McLaren pit strategy was useless – only succeeding in putting Hamilton behind with awful timing.

The McLaren man returned in sixth as Piquet jumped to the lead when Heidfeld also had to pit under green. Driving brilliantly, though, Hamilton began disposing of the competition, first with ease – teammate Heikki Kovalainen – then with determined moves on Massa, on lap 55, and Piquet two laps later, both at the hairpin at the end of the main straight.

Then, finally, it was smooth sailing for another masterful win by Hamilton, who now leads the championship with no company at 58 points. Massa is second with 54, while Raikkonen’s sixth-place result boosted the Finn to 51. Kubica earned two points from seventh and now tallies 48.

Hamilton’s pass on Massa was an exercise in skill and bravery. His pass on Piquet was as impressive; but, not as challenging. It was definitely a higher priority for Piquet to get that Renault through to a podium finish.

Read the article – it has all the details and more.

Eight years ago, Allyson Felix sat in front of the television watching fellow Californian Marion Jones attempt to win five Olympic medals and was inspired to take up athletics seriously.

‘We watched the 2000 Sydney Olympics all excited,’ recalls Felix’s mother, Marlean, in the front room of the family’s comfortable home, in Valencia, a neat, prosperous suburb in Los Angeles, where her daughter’s three world championship gold medals, won in Osaka last year, are stacked neatly on a table, still in their presentation boxes. ‘Of course, that was before all the hoo-ha.’

She is referring to the fact that Jones, who did win five medals in Sydney, three of them gold, is serving a six-month prison sentence for lying to federal investigators about taking performance-enhancing drugs, an admission that led to her being stripped of her Olympic medals and banned from the sport. ‘Allyson was very disappointed, extremely disappointed,’ Marlean says. ‘We wanted to believe all her denials, we really did. We just didn’t think it could be true…’

What has happened to Jones and some other American runners, including the father of Jones’s child, Tim Montgomery, means athletics is now desperately searching for someone it can trust in. Felix is now trying desperately to repair the damage caused to the sport by the woman who inspired her to take it up in the first place.

Along with several other prominent US athletes, including world 100 and 200metres champion Tyson Gay, 22-year-old Felix is a member of Project Believe, involving taking voluntary out-of-competition extra drugs tests to try to prove they are clean. ‘I see it as a responsibility to prove I am,’ Felix says. ‘It’s important that the fans can believe in what they are watching. I don’t want anyone to have any doubts about what I achieve.’

‘My goals drive me. I want to be successful but, just as importantly, I want people to believe in me.’

Bravo! I hope Allyson can bring that change to sport, to competition.

The collection agencies call at least 20 times a day. For a little quiet, Diane McLeod stashes her phone in the dishwasher.

But right up until she hit the wall financially, Ms. McLeod was a dream customer for lenders. She juggled not one but two mortgages, both with interest rates that rose over time, and a car loan and high-cost credit card debt. Separated and living with her 20-year-old son, she worked two jobs so she could afford her small, two-bedroom ranch house in suburban Philadelphia, the Kia she drove to work, and the handbags and knickknacks she liked.

Then last year, back-to-back medical emergencies helped push her over the edge. She could no longer afford either her home payments or her credit card bills. Then she lost her job. Now her home is in foreclosure and her credit profile in ruins.

Ms. McLeod, who is 47, readily admits her money problems are largely of her own making. But as surely as it takes two to tango, she had partners in her financial demise. In recent years, those partners, including the financial giants Citigroup, Capital One and GE Capital, were collecting interest payments totaling more than 40 percent of her pretax income and thousands more in fees.

More than a cautionary tale – after all, we’re describing a disaster afflicting tens of millions of Americans – this article is worth a read for analysis and examination of possible solutions.

Some of the external blame worth apportioning is in here. The call for an end to usury is overdue.

Local school districts got a green light to offer high school students an elective Bible course without the specific state standards that some contend are necessary to guide well-intentioned teachers from straying into religious proselytizing.

In the end, the board’s coalition of social conservatives prevailed, 10-5. Some religious experts immediately expressed dismay.

“I predict we’re headed for a constitutional train wreck,” said Mark Chancey, chairman of the religious studies department at Southern Methodist University. “The people who suffer will be the educators and the students, and the people who will foot the bill will be us the taxpayers.”

State board members, who balked at establishing state standards because they might be too difficult to write, were wrong, John Ferguson of Howard Payne University said. How can small school districts develop sound standards, he wondered?

“I’m not sure where these small districts with the six-man football teams in West Texas are going to come up with constitutional Bible scholars to help them craft these (standards),” Ferguson said.

When push comes to shove, Texans will be paying the bill for bible-thumping True Believers. Studies of existing courses found most of the courses were explicitly devotional with almost exclusively Christian, usually Protestant, perspectives. It also found that most were taught by teachers who were not familiar with the issue of separation of church and state.

Not that the proponents of this crappola give a damn about constitutional separation of church and state.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine that he backed a proposal by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months.

“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months,” he said in an interview with Der Spiegel. “That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,” he said…

“Who they choose as their president is the Americans’ business. But it’s the business of Iraqis to say what they want. And that’s where the people and the government are in general agreement: The tenure of the coalition troops in Iraq should be limited,” he said.

The interview’s publication came one day after the White House said President Bush and al-Maliki had agreed to include a “general time horizon” in talks about reducing American combat forces and transferring Iraqi security control across the country.

The Bush administration has steadfastly refused to consider a “timetable” for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

That’s a clear cutting-edge difference between “timetable”, “time frame” and “time horizon”. Right?

What we’re witnessing is a last-gasp attempt by a cadre of losers who recognize their lies and deceit must finally be tempered by a jot of reality. The nutballs who own the Republikan Party still hope to maintain a chunk of control in Congress in the coming election – even if it means developing a new set of lies to counter the contempt of voters.

A pilot was hailed for his bravery after he left his controls to rescue a parachutist caught in the plane’s undercarriage at 3,000ft.

The pilot left his seat for 30 seconds to cut the man free and then rushed back to the controls of the light aircraft, allowing the parachutist to make a safe landing.

The incident took place 3,000 ft above the Joint Service Parachute Centre at Bad Lippspringe in Germany where six British soldiers were taking part in a military parachuting competition. Five jumped successfully from the twin propeller engine Islander but their instructor got into trouble when the rigging of his chute became caught in the plane’s undercarriage…

The Briton, a former soldier based at the centre near Paderborn, has asked for his identity to be kept secret, insisting he was only doing his job and that any other pilot would have done the same.

The chutist was apparently caught hanging upside down and couldn’t reach the tangled gear above him. And, yes, ain’t it a good thing his reserve chute worked?