Father's Day Eve

You wrote:

Is Beckham playing for England? Last I heard he'd gone to some team in Spain ...

Yes he went off to play for the better of the top two Madrid teams didn't he? Real Madrid. I'm not actually sure how one gets to play for England, I mean he holds a British Passport, which would include Wales, Scotland and Northern Island, who all have their own teams, so type of passport can't be the deciding factor. If we assume it is the country that one is born in that entitles one to play for that country team then I think one of the Mexican players breaks that rule as he was born in the USA or something.

and that the Spice Girls were looking to make a comeback.

Please no, PLEASE.

How does the World Cup format work ... do countries compile "superstar" teams, or is there a process of elimination within countries whereby a given team -- Manchester United, or whatever -- wins a preliminary tournament and thereby the right to represent England in the Cup? My guess is it's a compilation strategy, much like the Olympics.

Your guess is entirely correct. Spot on.

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On your previous question:

I'm searching my brain for a potential context and I'm coming up short. Of course, it is 6:30am here. :-)

We had this particular conversation a few years ago now I think. You pointed me at Barnes' commentary to The Bible to explain the verses I present next, but the Barnes explanation was unsatisfying to me, and got me to a (personal) realization (that may or may not be "true") that The Bible is the word of Man perhaps insprired by God, but not His word per se. However, if Barnes' commentary is "true" then I see no problem with Science adopting a wave/particle duality for the nature of existence.

Here is the conundrum:

John 5:31

"If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid."

John 8:14

Jesus answered, "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going."

One rarely sees such an eminent case for "If A then not necessarily A" wouldn't you agree? :-)

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Unfortunately I had a complete renal collapse during my Crypto Proof of Concept workshop last week. My remaining kidney is operating at 50% efficiency due to chemo damage, but that's ok, a person can live on 25% of their total kidney function. I didn't pass urine at all on Thursday and the thing hurt like hell (I know just what kidney pain is like having lost the other one), I got a splitting headache and a raised temperature. I drank gallons of water and managed to start it back up again on Friday ... I'm seeing the doc on Monday, they'll probably send me for a kidney function test - normal numbers of a chemical (creatinin?) are 5% in the bloodstream, last time they checked this chemical was at 8% in my blood, they don't start dialysis until 15%. I tell you - I was sitting in the class on Thursday with still bleeding nads and a very painful kidney considering just ditching everything and going to hospital. But that would have been a bad idea, I no longer trust the medical profession and my class was in difficulty. My spirit remained much stronger by seeing it through, we had a successful outcome to the class on Friday morning - phew ! Worth quite a few millions euros to someone :-) Jesus helped me out, thank you Lord.

I believe that my renal failure/kidney swelling was caused by drinking two pints of real ale (something I never do) with the Croatians on the class as they watched their team get beaten 1-0 by Brazil in the World Cup. Too many toxins I guess - I have been warned.

I wrote some serious REXX prototype code and even some C code to call the crypto engines on the mainframe. I am a programmer/sysadmin at heart you know. I loved it. Very satisfying somehow.

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Tomorrow is "Father's Day" in the UK and I'm very excited at seeing my daughter from 10:00-15:00, my nads have at last stopped their weeping and we may go swimming. So does this make today Father's Day Eve? (Homer Simpson said that!)

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I had something else I wanted to discuss with you but for the life of me I can't remember what that was right now.