FIFA World Ranking Top 20: September 2010

Rank (previous)	Team	Points	Comment
1 (1)	Spain	1824	Beat up on Liechtenstein. (EURO ‘12 Quals.)
2 (2)	Netherlands	1663	Wins over Finland and San Marino. (EURO ‘12 Quals.)
3 (4)	Germany	1490	Wins over Azerbaijan and Belgique! (EURO ‘12 Quals.)
4 (3)	Brazil	1480	Won over USA in friendly.
5 (5)	Argentina	1351	Won a couple of friendlies.
6 (7)	England	1191	Wins over Switzerland and Bulgaria. (EURO ‘12 Quals.)
7 (6)	Uruguay	1182	Win over Angola. (Friendly.)
8 (8)	Portugal	1049	A loss to Norge & a tie (barely) over Cyprus. (EURO ‘12)
9 (9)	Egypt	1034
10 (10)	Chile	1004
11 (14)	Croatia	998	Win over Latvia and tie with Greece. (EURO ‘12)
12 (12)	Greece	973	Ties with Georgia and Croatia. (EURO ‘12)
13 (11)	Italy	965	Wins over Faroe Islands and Estonia. (EURO ‘12)
14 (22)	Norway	958	Wins over Portugal and Iceland. (EURO ‘12)
15 (13)	Serbia	945	A tie against Slovenia & a win over Faroe Islands.
16 (27)	Slovakia	919	Wins over Russia and FYROM. (EURO ‘12)
17 (15)	Paraguay	904
18 (18)	USA	899
19 (19)	Slovenia	897	Tied Serbia and lost to N. Ireland. (EURO ‘12)
20 (23)	Ghana	889

A lot of action in September. All European national teams are playing in the qualification round for EURO 2012. Interesting Results:

• Portugal tied Cyprus 4 - 4 at home; Then lost to Norway! Cyprus gained 20 spots. Norway gained 8! Portugal stayed put…
• Russia lost to Slovakia at home. Then dropped out of the top 20 and Slovakia gained 11 spots!
• France lost to Belarus at home. France is now ranked 27.

Greece had a disappointing tie against Georgia at home but also tied Croatia in Zagreb which earned them a point against a difficult opponent. Since then a few players have quit the Greek national team. It will be interesting to see who lines up against Latvia in a couple of weeks.

The latest full table can be found at the FIFA World Ranking website.

C++ Reference: Google C++ Style Guide

Located at:

http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.xml

Very interesting reference on C++ style (conventions) used by the Google developers. Each topic includes dos and don’ts, pros and cons, rationale, and other comments.

It is detailed enough to include the guideline:

Each line of text in your code should be at most 80 characters long.

In my development environment the line limit is usually set to 72 characters! I picked that up about 15 years ago from some hard core developers and got used to it. Sometimes I go over that but for some reason I have never exceeded 78 characters.

Jeep Poster: Through the White Mountains

My Cherokee during a drive through the White Mountains in New Hampshire. The 60 mile road trip essentially started at Conway where we followed Route 16 to North Conway and Glen. From Glen we took Route 302 to Bartlett and through the White Mountains all the way to Bethlehem where we got back on I-93.

A great drive that should be fun in the winter too (with the 4x4!)

Abstract

It all started with the image of a bubble on string!

New England Revolution 3 – Seattle Sounders 1

 

The first professional soccer game for Christina. A nostalgic one too since it involved the Sounders. Unfortunately for the Seattle team they did not play well. The Sounders went up 1 – 0 after the break but they immediately went back on defense and started the delaying tactics and they paid dearly for it.

The Revolution played well and had a number of decent chances. Keller managed to stop their efforts in the first half but he could not keep a clean sheet. Not really his fault except maybe the third goal.

As a game it was entertaining for us (this time the cotton candy was pink!) including a firework display 10 minutes after the game!

 

Newsweek: America the Ignorant

Newsweek on-line has a slide show with unusual ideas that Americans believe. It is titled 'Silly Things We Believe About Witches, Obama and More.'

Forget the birthers, the creationists, and other religious and political fanatics, and similar fringe groups. Their ideas are not exactly motivated by hard facts.

Also, I am not surprised about the lack of education on religion, government, geography, and other subjects. That is a well documented issue. I also remember that while in college I was told by… enlightened students that Greece is in Southeast Asia (Asia, Europe… same deal), Greeks are black (Southern Europe, Mediterranean, North Africa, Africa!), and Greeks speak Latin (the expression ‘sounds Greek to me’ never really registered!), and other trivia of similar ‘quality'.’

However, the following really blows my mind:

In 1999 (eleven years ago!) 20% of Americans still believed that the sun revolved around the earth.

How is it possible to believe in something that was shown to be false almost 500 years ago? They have never heard of Copernicus and the heliocentric cosmology? Where do these people live? According to the poll they are all around me!

I guess I have lived a rather sheltered intellectual life because I have never met people with such extreme ideas. I should be thankful for that!

FIFA World Ranking Top 20: August 2010

Rank (previous)	Team	Points	Comment
1 (1)	Spain	1883
2 (2)	Netherlands	1659
3 (3)	Brazil	1524
4 (4)	Germany	1464
5 (5)	Argentina	1288
6 (6)	Uruguay	1152
7 (7)	England	1125
8 (8)	Portugal	1062
9 (9)	Egypt	1053
10 (10)	Chile	988
11 (11)	Italy	982
12 (12)	Greece	975
13 (13)	Serbia	969
14 (15)	Croatia	968
15 (16)	Paraguay	961
16 (17)	Russia	956
17 (18)	Switzerland	940
18 (13)	USA	931	Lost to Brazil in a friendly.
19 (19)	Slovenia	917
20 (20)	Australia	911

No changes on the board except USA that lost a friendly to Brazil, lost 38 points and dropped five places! Teams ranked 8-20 are so close in points that losing a few of them could result in significant ranking drop.

Competition at the national level in Europe heats up next month with qualifying games for EURO 2012. Greece will play at home against Georgia on Sep. 3 and then an away game against Croatia on Sep. 7.

The latest full table can be found at the FIFA World Ranking website.