Lazy Sunday

The reviews are in. The digital short, "Lazy Sunday", with Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg, is the funniest thing to appear on SNL in a long time. That may not be saying much, but it is still very much worth checking out.

My Candidates

I did this the last time so I figure I might as well do it again. The following is a list of the candidates for the upcoming federal election in my riding:

• Pat Martin (incumbent, NDP)
• Ray St. Germain (Liberal)
• Helen Sterzer (Conservative)
• Gary Gervais (Green)

Pat Martin seems like the best choice, although the Green Party fellow "has participated in numerous endurance sporting events including over 40 triathlons and 8 full marathons", which is worth something in my books.

UPDATE, 22-1-2006: Anna-Celestrya Carr, of the Communist Party of Canada, has joined the fray. Somehow, I don't think it matters very much.

Group C

This is the group the Dutch were drawn into, and thus the group I care about (current FIFA rankings in parentheses):

Argentina (4)
Ivory Coast (41)
Serbia and Montenegro (47)
Netherlands (3)
Rank average: (3+4+41+47)/4 = 23.75

In other words, if everything holds to form, it should be pretty clear who advances from this bunch. Ivory Coast has a couple strong players like Drogba, and I don't know much about the Serbians, but I don't expect too much of a challenge. Compared to group E, with Italy (12), Ghana (50), USA (8) and the Czech Republic (2), average rank 18.5, it's not so bad

My quick predictions on who will advance:
Group A: Germany, Poland
Group B: England, Paraguay
Group C: Argentina, Netherlands
Group D: Mexico, Portugal (probably the easiest group overall)
Group E: Italy, Czech Republic
Group F: Brazil, Japan
Group G: France, Switzerland
Group H: Spain, Tunisia

Check back in 7 months and see if I was right.

Speaking of football, my favourite team is at the top of the table in Holland.

Pot-luck

With the World Cup (of soccer, that is) six months away, it seems like there is no time like the present to start talking about it. Actually, the real reason to be interested now is that the final draw for the group stages in Germany is set for Friday, and today FIFA announced the draw procedure.

For World Cup neophytes, the 32 teams that have qualified for the World Cup are drawn into 8 groups of four, who play each other, round-robin style. The top two from each group advance to the playoff round. Each group will contain one team each from Pot 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Pot 1: Germany, Brazil, Argentina, England, France, Italy, Mexico and Spain.
Pot 2: Australia, Angola, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Togo, Tunisia, Ecuador, Paraguay
Pot 3: Croatia, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine
Pot 4: Iran, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Costa Rica, Trinidad & Tobago, United States
Special pot: Serbia & Montenegro

Now, since Canada was eliminated from qualification already last summer, I'm interested from the point of view of an Oranje (Netherlands) supporter. And even though they have been ranked #2 or #3 in the world for the last year, they missed out on being a pot #1 team (all but ensuring that they would be the strongest team in their group) based on a FIFA formula that rewards success over the past two WCs. The Dutch failed to qualify for Korea/Japan in 2002.

All this means that the Oranje could easily be drawn into a nightmare group consisting of (FIFA world rankings in parentheses): Brazil (1), Netherlands (3), USA (8) and Tunisia (28).

Now, since the FIFA rankings are a bit wonky (the Czech Republic are ranked ahead of the Dutch even though they lost twice to the Oranje in the European qualifying rounds), it makes sense to offset that bias with a measure of actual success in the world's most important tournament to determine seedings. But with my orange-coloured glasses on, I really don't want to see my team get screwed. If I was an American fan, I wouldn't be too happy either, but I'm not so I'd love to see them get a tough group.

More to come after draw day December 9th.

P.S. The special pot for S&M is to ensure they don't get drawn into a group with 3 European teams, which isn't allowed.

Update: Here is someone who agrees with me, kind of. He thinks Mexico is undeserving of a seed, which may or may not be true. With the formula FIFA used, it doesn't leave much room for argument.