Tottenham vs wigan 3- 0

Tottenham thrashed the Latics 9-1 in November, he opened the scoring here when he was a yard offside. Then the England striker left the stage clear for forgotten man Roman Pavlyuchenko to wrap up the points.The Russian’s two goals guaranteed Spurs leapt up to fourth place in the Premier League after starting the match in seventh – underlining just how tight the battle for the final Champions League spot has become. Defoe struck on 27 minutes. Peter Crouch released Niko Kranjcar, who teed the ball up neatly for the overlapping Gareth Bale. Bale had timed his run to perfection but there was no doubt Defoe had gone too soon. And after sliding in to poke the ball past Chris Kirkland he gave a guilty look across to the touchline. But the linesman’s flag stayed down, to the amazement of the home defenders. Defoe’s latest effort meant he had supplied every one of Tottenham’s last six goals in all competitions.

Pavlyuchenko, who was almost on his way to Lokomotiv Moscow in the transfer window, could argue he showed boss Harry Redknapp he does have other options. He certainly made the most of a rare outing after replacing Defoe 17 minutes from time. He added a cool finish to fellow sub Luka Modric’s surging run on 84 minutes and a couple of minutes into stoppage time he hooked home the rebound after Kirkland had blocked his point-blank header. Kirkland may have had to pick the ball out of his net a dozen times in two matches against Spurs but he kept his side in with a shout until Pavlyuchenko’s late double. The former England keeper made a terrific save from Defoe and then spread himself to deny Crouch. Spurs defied the bog-like playing surface to produce some sparkling football and also showed a willingness to roll up their sleeves, something that has not always been a feature of their play.Wigan were still aggrieved over Defoe’s opener long after the final whistle. But they need to stop feeling sorry for themselves if they are to get out of trouble.

They rarely threatened to peg Spurs back, although Heurelho Gomes produced an acrobatic save to tip over a Hugo Rodallega drive in the first half and Charles N’Zogbia was not too far away with a curling effort. The Latics have now managed just one win in their last 12 Premier League matches – at Wolves – and are only two points clear of the drop zone. The shocking state of their pitch, churned up by the onset of the new rugby league season, has not helped a side that likes to play passing football. They will dig it up on Friday and have it re-laid. Maybe Spurs would like to have the old turf sent down to London…

DREAM TEAM RATINGS

STAR MAN – GARETH BALE (Tottenham)

WIGAN: Kirkland 6, Melchiot 6, Caldwell 5, Scharner 7, Diame 5, Figueroa 6, Thomas 5 (Moses 6), McCarthy 6, N’Zogbia 5, Moreno 6 (Sinclair 5), Rodallega 7. Subs not used: Stojkovic, Watson, Scotland, Gomez, Boyce. Booked: Diame, McCarthy, Figueroa.

TOTTENHAM: Gomes 6, Corluka 6, Dawson 7, Bale 9, King 6 (Bassong 6), Bentley 6, Huddlestone 7, Palacios 6, Kranjcar 6 (Modric 7), Crouch 5, Defoe 7 (Pavlyuchenko 8). Subs not used: Alnwick, Kaboul, Gudjohnsen, Rose. Booked: Bentley, Defoe, Dawson, Huddlestone.

pay for facebook ???!!! will you ???!!!

Facebook is the new king of social networking. But the site is stuck with an old business model that prevents it from cashing in on the increasing affluence of its users and the monopoly it has over their attention. Simply put, Facebook should charge.A recent study by Nielsen Claritas indicates that the top third of lifestyle segments measured by the researcher relative to income were 25% more likely to use Facebook than the bottom third. Meanwhile, less-wealthy segments were 37% more likely to use MySpace.MySpace popularized the concept of online social networking, and had relative success handing out free accounts and plastering them with ads. But this model does not appear to be sustainable; the unit of News Corp. which contains MySpace lost $363 million in the year ending June 30, and a rotating executive team is evidence that the business is attempting a turnaround. The youth and lack of spending power amongst its users is at least partly to blame for MySpace’s decline — so too is the downturn in online ad spending.

As fast-growing Facebook closes in on MySpace in the U.S. in terms of unique visitors later this year, it’s burning through millions of dollars a month (some claim it’s as high as $20 million), with no magic levers to reverse the trend in the short term.In November 2007, when Facebook took a $240 million stake from Microsoft, the investment was at a $15 billion valuation. Now it’s down to $4 billion and probably less. As Caroline McCarthy reported a few days ago, rumor has it that “one potential investor submitted a term sheet for a valuation in the neighborhood of $2 billion.”As Facebook works its way toward a probable IPO, the big question is: how can it show it can make money? Well, one way–and I’m not the first to suggest it–would be to charge a nominal monthly fee. With that in mind, I ask a simple question: how much would you be willing to pay to use Facebook per month?A lot of people I ask say they’d pay $1 a month–or, preferably, a yearly fee of $10 if paid in one shot. But some say they have Facebook fatigue and would rather quit than pay a dime.

An international love affair with Facebook is also a culprit. Not only has the site — started in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 — won over many younger users of MySpace, it’s introduced social networking to people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and older. As the Nielsen Claritas study hints, these users have jobs and bank accounts, and might be willing to shell out a few bucks a month for what is becoming an increasingly valuable communication tool in their lives.Another recent report from Nielsen says that 17% of the time people spend surfing the Internet is devoted to social sites, up 6% from a year earlier. No doubt, the quick and addictive status updates posted daily by users of Facebook and Twitter have something to do with the increase.Who knows? Social networking could prove to be an even more valuable business than news, an industry that’s giving serious consideration to charging premium subscriptions for online access. One difference working in Facebook’s advantage: many consumers have been getting online news for free for the past decade, and have grown accustomed to it. Social networking is relatively new.Facebook has shot down the idea of charging all of its members (the company’s COO Sheryl Sandberg in April said, “We are not planning on charging a basic fee for our basic services”). But the site may have plans to put a price tag on services, such as offering to print the millions of photos people upload to the site. It could also charge a nominal fee, like $1 per month, to let members avoid ads.



Michael Jackson who had died on June 25, 2009, 'risen from the grave' and went to his ex-wife

Believe it or not, Michael Jackson who had died on June 25, 2009, ‘risen from the grave’ and went to his ex-wife, Lisa Marie Presley. King of Pop’s ‘rise from the grave’ in a show seance held by Lisa and Michael’s former makeup artist, Karen Faye. Michael had called upon the spirits with a psychic medium. She told me, the spirit of the owner of the Thriller album as if anxious and expressed regret for any mistakes during his lifetime. “He seems to be on a mission to reach the people in his life and asked for forgiveness. During the seance, he explains his mistake and wants us to forgive him. He looked nervous,” Aceshowbiz, Thursday (11/2/2010 ). Throughout the chat session with the ghost of Michael’s, Michael was very cheerful when talking with Lisa.

“Michael said to Lisa, ‘You are very kind to me. I’m sorry I hurt you much. I’m so sorry. I should have a lot of listening’. At Michael’s speech, my heart was crushed,” said Faye. Shaman who mediates the relationship describing Michael with Lisa is very deep and they understand each other. “It seems Michael inner relationship with his family is very dynamic. It also expressed about the level of pain and emotional disability Michael,” added Faye. Lisa is the daughter of none other than Elvis Presley’s legendary stars. Lisa married Michael in 1994 and divorced 18 months later. Brief marriage produced no children.

http://www.youtube.com/v/0XEnNkYvSOM&rel=0&fs=1

Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport for $2.1 million

You want to buy a camera? We can pit it against three others with nearly indistinguishable features, no problem. Blu-ray players? We’ll compile a three-axis matrix that triangulates the perfect combination of image quality, connected functionality and price. But if you’re considering the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport, we can’t do much for you.Comparing it to any other car is pointless, because there is nothing else in its $2.1-million (based on current exchange rates) class. That same cash-filled briefcase could buy seven Ferrari 599s or every single 2009 model Mercedes. You could snap up a top-shelf Maybach and employ a chauffeur until well past the apocalypse. Hell, in this economy, $2.1 million is probably enough to make you a one-man special-interest group with some serious Washington clout.But don’t. Buy a Grand Sport. Even if there were another 253-mph drop-top with more luxury appointments than a Bond villain’s boudoir, you wouldn’t want it. You’d want this exact car, because more than being a blast to drive, it is the greatest gasoline-powered vehicle that has ever been, or will ever be, built. Seriously. Take a moment and consider what Bugatti has done: Because a handful of billionaires demanded that the fastest car in the world be available topless, the Volkswagen-owned ultra-luxury automaker essentially broke the laws of physics. Again.The first Veyron is an engineering marvel. That’s the one with the massively reinforced roof that helped keep the rest of the body from deforming into an amoebic tangle of graphite composite and exotic metal under the joint stresses of lateral acceleration, horsepower and wind. It stands as one of the greatest achievements of the petroleum age. It required the intellectual might of one of the largest and arguably smartest car companies in the world to birth a car that was not only faster than anything on the road, but easy enough to pilot that anyone could drive it. (“It killed my husband” is not the kind of country-club buzz that sells cars.) To make the Grand Sport, Bugatti’s engineers had to do the same thing, only with a giant hole in the middle. It was like designing a picture frame to break rocks.

They had to bolster the floor, doors and B pillars (where the back edges of the windows rest) with acres of carbon fiber. They had to turn the topside air scoops into structural supports for protection during a rollover. Then they had to sacrifice 100 virgins and have the production facility in Molsheim, France, blessed by druids.The result is the most structurally rigid convertible in the world, which, miraculously, weighs no more and goes no slower than the coupe on which it is based. With the transparent roof removed, air resistance limits the Grand Sport to 217 mph, but you’d want that roof on for a top-speed run anyway; the wind could rip your face off at around 245.

By now, the Veyron’s stats are legendary: 1,001 horsepower from a mid-mounted, 8.0-liter, 16-cylinder engine that gets air stuffed down its ravenous gullet by four massive turbochargers. All-wheel drive. A seven-speed, dual-clutch transmission that switches gears faster than a state staffer ducking questions about the Appalachian Trail. Depending on how you define “production car,” it is the fastest in the world. In the quickest Lamborghini ever produced, the Murcielago LP640, you can hit 60 mph in 3.2 seconds. In the Grand Sport it takes a hair under 2.5. How does it feel to command that pace? Godlike.The acceleration is so immediate you can feel your eyeballs deform under the G-forces. It’s a sensation of isolationist joy, an out-of-body awareness that you’re moving faster than the world can react. Bystanders vaguely remember seeing a flash of expensive paint a few seconds after you disappear over the horizon; entire generations of insects die on your prow. Passing other motorists becomes a dangerous entitlement that has you resenting oncoming traffic for hogging your “VIP lane” — especially when you realize that you can outrun not only the 5-0’s cruisers, but their helicopters, too. If they wanna catch you, they’re gonna have to dust off Airwolf and drag Jan Michael Vincent out of rehab.
But this isn’t just some dumb auto-jock that takes off from stoplights in a hail of shredded asphalt, molten Michelins and screaming revs. If anything, the exhaust note is a bit tame, and the power is manageable. Unlike driving, say, a Viper SRT-10, you’re not in constant fear of accidentally going around a turn ass-end first because you blipped the go-pedal a half-inch too deep. Though the Veyron has almost twice as much power as the super-snake, its all-wheel-drive and 14-inch-wide tires grip the ground with the tenacity of a junkie clutching a five-dollar bill.

A lot of factors contribute to this prodigious hunker-down: the aforementioned tires (Michelin developed them specifically to accommodate the Veyron’s top speed) and AWD; the giant mid-mounted engine, placed to provide perfect 45/55 weight distribution; the insanely advanced aerodynamics and suspension, which automatically change the shape and ride-height of the car to provide an extra 800 pounds of downforce when you exceed 137 miles per hour (they’d be illegal in Formula 1 competition, incidentally). And then there’s the sheer mass: Though its power-to-weight ratio bests the Ferrari F430 by almost 50 percent, the Veyron, at 4,400 pounds, is still more than half a ton heavier. And gravity is one tenacious bitch. This car sticks to the ground like 1,000-horsepower gum.

Push the Grand Sport hard, and the rear-biased AWD will start to feel looser, making the car light and nimble through the twisties. But even when attacking some seriously hairy turns from deep in triple digits, the Veyron never gave up its grip. And when we almost blew it on a butt-puckering downhill double-apex, the all-wheel-drive system put power in just the right place to pull the car back in line. All while we sat comfortably in bucket seats that made our couch seem fit only for the waiting room of the DMV.

Bugatti offers seven different seat shapes, to accommodate the seven known varieties of billionaire: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Each is based around a carbon-fiber shell and available in whatever animal skin the laws of your kingdom permit. Our test car was fitted with caramel-colored leather. It was nice, but the light hue reflected quite a bit of glare off the steep rake of the windshield. Other luxury touches include a stereo, we’re told. The CD player is custom-designed by Burmeister to operate skip-free at 250 miles per hour. We never turned it on. With the carbon fiber and polycarbonate roof removed, you have the only soundtrack you need: the engine’s growl (could be louder) and the roar of the twin air intakes, which suck air like a two rolls of quarters quart of sterno Las vegas.There’s also a navigation system. It might be the finest example of passive aggression ever assembled; Bugatti’s engineers clearly don’t want you to use it. You can only program the system with a separate, 2005-vintage PDA. If you can stomach the Windows Mobile interface long enough to set your destination, you get to view your route guidance in a tiny screen in the rearview mirror. Theoretically. As long as it’s nighttime. It’s invisible in the daylight, and the Grand Sport is a convertible.But even if its nav system shouted insults at you, it would be hard to complain about this machine. It is not perfect — no car will ever be. But it’s close. And it will likely remain as close as a car with a gasoline-burning engine will ever get. We’re at the end of the petroleum era, the end of a golden age of supercars where speed can be sought regardless of consequence. It’s highly unlikely that a major automaker will ever be able to justify spending the time and money to develop a fossil-fuel-powered car that can top the Veyron’s combination of power, speed, handling, driveability and flat-out luxury. The Grand Sport is the worthy successor to the Ferrari F40, the Lamborghini Diablo, the McLaren F1 and every other Texas tea-drinker that ever owned the title “world’s fastest.” And its high-level swank takes that prize with style points nonpareil.Maybe we’ll idolize maglevs next. Maybe Tesla will have its day on a Trapper Keeper with a juice box that tops 250. But whatever we’re drooling over next year, whatever makes its way onto the dorm-room walls and man-children’s screen-savers, it won’t run on petrol. Unless it’s still a Veyron: the last king of the gas-guzzlers, forever the greatest.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano concedes airline security system failed

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

WASHINGTON Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed when a young man on a watchlist with a U.S. visa in his pocket and a powerful explosive hidden on his body was allowed to board a fight from Amsterdam to Detroit.The Obama administration has ordered investigations into the two areas of aviation security – how travelers are placed on watch lists and how passengers are screened – as critics questioned how the 23-year-old Nigerian man charged in the airliner attack was allowed to board the Dec. 25 flight.A day after saying the system worked, Napolitano backtracked, saying her words had been taken out of context.”Our system did not work in this instance,” she said on NBC’s “Today” show. “No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way.”The White House press office, traveling with President Barack Obama in Hawaii, said early Monday that the president would make a statement from the Kaneoho Marine Base in the morning. White House spokesman Bill Burton did not elaborate.Billions of dollars have been spent on aviation security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when commercial airliners were hijacked and used as weapons. Much of that money has gone toward training and equipment that some security experts say could have detected the explosive device that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of hiding on his body on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.On Sunday, Napolitano said, “One thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked.” On Monday, she said she was referring to the system of notifying other flights as well as law enforcement on the ground about the incident soon after it happened.

The top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee took issue with Napolitano’s initial assessment.Airport security “failed in every respect,” Rep. Peter King of New York said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “It’s not reassuring when the secretary of Homeland Security says the system worked.”Investigators are piecing together Abdulmutallab’s brazen attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Dec. 25. Law enforcement officials say he tucked below his waist a small bag holding his potentially deadly concoction of liquid and powder explosive material.

Harold Demuren, the head of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, says Abdulmutallab’s ticket came from a KLM office in Accra, Ghana. Demuren said Monday that Abdulmutallab bought the $2,831 round-trip ticket from Lagos, Nigeria, to Detroit via Amsterdam on Dec. 16.

Demuren declined to comment about Abdulmutallab’s travels in the days before he boarded his Dec. 24 flight from Lagos to Detroit via Amsterdam, saying FBI agents and Nigerian officials view the information as “sensitive.” He says Abdulmutallab checked into his flight with only a small carryon bag.Abdulmutallab had been placed in a U.S. database of people suspected of terrorist ties in November, but there was not enough information about his activity that would place him on a watch list that could have kept him from flying.

However, British officials placed Abdulmutallab’s name on a U.K. watch list after he was refused a student visa in May.Home Secretary Alan Johnson added that police and security services are looking at whether Abdulmutallab was radicalized in Britain.

Abdulmutallab received a degree in engineering and business finance from University College London last year and later applied to re-enter Britain to study at another institution. Johnson said Monday he was refused entry because officials suspected the school was not genuine and they then put his name on the list.

Johnson says that people on the list can transit through the U.K. but cannot enter the country.Officials said he came to the attention of U.S. intelligence last month when his father, Alhaji Umar Mutallab, a prominent Nigerian banker, reported to the American Embassy in Nigeria about his son’s increasingly extremist religious views. In a statement released Monday morning, Abdulmutallab’s family in Nigeria said that after his “disappearance and stoppage of communications while schooling abroad,” his father reached out to Nigerian security agencies two months ago. The statement says the father then approached foreign security agencies for “their assistance to find and return him home.”

The family says: “It was while we were waiting for the outcome of their investigation that we arose to the shocking news of that day.”

The statement did not offer any specifics on where Abdulmutallab had been.

Abdulmutallab’s success in smuggling and partially igniting the material on Friday’s flight prompted the Obama administration to promise a sweeping review of aviation security, even as the Homeland Security secretary defended the current system.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the government will investigate its systems for placing suspicious travelers on watch lists and for detecting explosives before passengers board flights.

Both lines of defense were breached in an improbable series of events Christmas Day that spanned three continents and culminated in a struggle and fire aboard a Northwest jet shortly before its safe landing in Detroit. Law enforcement officials believed the suspect tried to ignite a two-part concoction of the high explosive PETN and possibly a glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off popping, smoke and some fire but no deadly detonation.

An apparent malfunction in a device designed to detonate the PETN may have been all that saved the 278 passengers and the crew aboard Northwest Flight 253. No undercover air marshal was on board and passengers and crew subdued the suspect when he tried to set off the explosion. He succeeded only in starting a fire on himself.

Security experts said airport “puffer” machines that blow air on a passenger to collect and analyze residues would probably have detected the powder, as would bomb-sniffing dogs or a hands-on search using a swab. Most passengers in airports only go through magnetometers, which detect metal rather than explosives.

Abdulmutallab was treated for burns and was released Sunday to a prison 50 miles outside of Detroit.

Stiffer boarding measures have met passengers at gates since Friday and authorities warned travelers to expect extra delays returning home from holidays.

Adding to the airborne jitters, authorities detained a man, also from Nigeria, who locked himself in the bathroom on Sunday’s Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam as it was about to land in Detroit. Investigators concluded he posed no threat. Despite the government’s decision after the attempted Friday attack to mobilize more air marshals, none was on the Sunday flight from Amsterdam.

Daniel 5:27 "My lord weighed in the balance and found too light"

“My lord weighed in the balance and found too light”Daniel 5:27In a scientific experiment in school, we use a scale to determine the weight of an object by comparing it with predetermined weight. The purpose of this exercise is to balance the scales with a weight equal on both sides of the scales. If not balanced, one side of the scales of weight deficiency.In its golden ages, King Belshazzar held a great feast for the lords, wives, and mistresses. Because of the arrogance that is not half the battle, he drinks wine with trophies taken from the Temple.Belshazzar did not honor God for wealth and power on earth. But God does not see wealth Belshazzar as different things. Power and influence in the world can not protect property and lives.One of God’s word to Belshazzar is “Dachshund”, which means “my lord weighed in the balance and found too light”. That same night Belshazzar lost his life. Faced with the standards of God, he found in need and do not have enough weight in the eyes of God.Although we may not enjoy the lifestyle of rich King Belshazzar, we  be wise in how we live. Whether intentionally or not, often we place our security in material wealth and ignore God. It is easy to forget what really means it is surrounded by houses, cars and our wealth.

Reflect for a moment. Have I “invest” in my eternal things, or at what’s in this world who will perish?Wealth and power in this world will pass. One day the King Belshazzar a drink with a gold cup, he died the next day.Today, let us take conscious action to achieve focus on the desired standard of God’s spiritual, rather than chasing the world standard. The more we continue to renew our focus every day, the smaller the distance between us and the will of God.Until the day comes for us to be weighed by his standards, let us continue to evaluate ourselves by asking, how much me in his scales? Am I going to find enough in the scales of God?

Reflection:
Do things that make a life worth in the eyes of God, so he does not find us “too soft”?
Where do you put your price and value?