Countdown to the world cup

111 days and 176 games remain until we will know the last of the 32 teams who will be playing in South Africa next year. 16 days after the 4th place CONCACAF team plays the 5th place CONMEBOL team, we will know exactly who Australia will be up against next June.

Let’s look at the best case scenario first:

The seeded teams should be: South Africa; Italy; Brazil; Germany; Spain; England; Argentina; France. No prizes for guessing who we’d like out of this group.

The Europe pot will depend largely on the draw for the second-place playoffs, but Slovakia look good to top group three, so I think we’ll assume they’ll be there.

We can assume that we’ll be in a group with CONCACAF, so we don’t have to worry about those guys. The last group will be CAF/CONMEBOL plus an odd CONCACAF side if CONCACAF wins a 4th place. Algeria is topping their group in CAF, so let’s draw them too.

So our best case scenario: Australia (#16), Slovakia (#42) and Algeria (#47), South Africa (world #72).

Worst case scenario: I guess you could take your pick from the seeded teams, but let’s just assume that playing the world number one is not a good thing and pick Brazil.

Netherlands will end up unseeded due to the intricacies of FIFA’s matrix. They’ll be the hardest team in the UEFA pot.

For the final pot, you can either assume that the USA will get put in there, or (more likely) that it will be a 5th place CONMEBOL team which would make Côte d’Ivoire the highest ranked. Since this is worst-case scenario, let’s go with USA.

So, our worse-case scenario group: Brazil (#1), Netherlands (#3), USA (#12), Australia (#16).

As you can clearly see, it’s all in the draw!

Fun facts with Fielding

Senator Steve Fielding is organising a climate change briefing, and is inviting the entire senate!

I can’t see how any responsible senator could vote on an emissions trading scheme without listening to what the world of science has to say on the issue.

Sen. Steve “the fact-finder” Fielding

Giving the seminar will be prominent climate-change denier and chief scientist for News Corp., Professor Bob Carter. To keep with this theme, I am organising a few briefing sessions of my own, that I invite you all to attend:

1. The holocaust, with David Irving
2. Evolution, with Sarah Palin
3. Accounting standards, with Kenneth Lay
4. How to organise informative seminars, with Steve Fielding

You get the picture.

The swine, the swine!

Just when you thought that the media hype surrounding the swine had died down, along comes reliable Joe Hildebrand.

UP to 10,000 New South Wales people could die of swine flu in a two-month period – more than double the rate of all other deaths – unless there is mass vaccination, experts warned.

Source: news.com.au

A quick glance down through the article reveals that the “expert” is actually a nine-year-old kid, and the “new modelling” was based on a game of hopscotch.

Meanwhile, the federal government is reportedly ordering 21 million vaccinations, to be delivered after the flu season is finished.

However, according to startling new modelling performed by experts at the North East Institute, the government could be wasting their money. Unless we act now, Joe Hildebrand’s scare story could in fact be blown out of the water. Allow me to demonstrate.

Using the popular disease vector modelling program Pandemic, we can see that if the swine flu takes hold, our population could be decimated with only 41 people remaining after three months!

If you want to be one of the remaining 41 people, I suggest it’s time to start reading this site. Bon voyage!

Politwitter

The Twitter bandwagon is well and truly in full swing, with hip characters such as Big Kev, Malcolm Turnbull, Joe Hockey, Kate Ellis, Nigel Scullion and Tony Burke all getting in on the action. However, I believe that this time they have bitten off more than they can chew, and will soon be breaking one of the number one rules of politics.

Politicians are elected by the people, for the people. While in practise they are generally serving the interests of their party, they also have historically kept in touch with the electorate and been generally approachable. To raise an issue with a politician, all you need to do is write them a letter.

Letters written to a politician will be answered; in fact it is unthinkable that no response would be received to a letter written to the office of, say, Malcolm Turnbull. Sure, it much be a response from a lackey, but you still feel loved. With email, the same applies (with the obvious exception of the Rev. Fred).

Now with Twitter however, these pollies are eliciting thousands of messages from Middle Australia every day. Many of these tweets have pressing questions crammed into their 140 characters, and yet the vast majority will go unanswered.

This is a dangerous game to play, people. If my question isn’t worth 140 characters, then your policy surely isn’t worth my vote.