Derby Dead Pool 2006

[themaninblack 2,112]

I'm just pleased to get a hit a Chrimbo!

 

However, I've made a good start, which kind of puts of pressure on me

to perform just as well if not better next year and with the new rules...

[football_fan 42]

Ex Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein has been executed.

 

BBC link

 

Congratulations to the 45 teams that selected him. Especially to "Nice Little Urner" and "The Coffin-Dodgers" who selected him as their joker.

[Rotten Ali 600]

I make it that I'm 3 points behind you Football Fan. Can't see I overtake you in the last 41 hours but who knows?

[Octopus of Odstock 2,206]

That Top 10 place was woefully short lived. Nonetheless, I should still hopefully finish in my best position yet.. (17th last year was my previous best)

[Tempus Fugit 214]

Looks like the RDP don't even follow their own rules

 

II. CONDEMNED CRIMINALS NEED NOT APPLY

No credit shall be given for prisoners already incarcerated with a potential death sentence pending or already sentenced to death, if they are lawfully executed. However, full credit shall be given if that prisoner commits suicide, is murdered, or dies of natural causes. If a prisoner is executed lawfully for a crime that was committed after entry into the dead pool, then full credit shall be given. No credit shall be given for persons kidnapped or held hostage at the time they are chosen, unless death unrelated to that person's captivity occurs after release.

They've given points to people who selected Saddam after he was already condemned to death.

[grobler 35]

I had already submitted my team for 2007, Ford was on it. Doesn't bother me because I got him this year.

So now my replacement pick, Bernard Manning, is in the team. I was watching some comedy show over christmas and was regretting leaving him off my list. He looks ready to go. Perhaps it's a sign.

 

Then again, does Jesus perform miracles like this, killing off someone so a better pick can be put on...

I think I saw the same programme . It was about politically incorrect people and shows etc . Manning looked WELL poorly to me.....I might sneak him in if any of my current 2007 choices pop in the next 36 hours or so....

[DevonDeathTrip 2,365]

That puts me on six hits for the year. I can't work it out but I think I might sneak in to the top 30. I am quite happy with that result, considering none of my picks had the good grace to die until June, four have died since the November 17th and two of those were after Christmas.

 

I can only hope that my joker, Nick Du Toit, is on the wrong end of a good kicking from his sadistic prison guards by midnight tomorrow. That would put me in the top ten.

[Octopus of Odstock 2,206]

Looks like the RDP don't even follow their own rules

 

They've given points to people who selected Saddam after he was already condemned to death.

 

That dead pool is a crock of sh*t anyway. You couldn't pick people like Drake, Carr, Hill, Puskas etc. I won't be entering again come September time when "my year" is up.

[Canadian Paul 97]

Looks like the RDP don't even follow their own rules

 

II. CONDEMNED CRIMINALS NEED NOT APPLY

No credit shall be given for prisoners already incarcerated with a potential death sentence pending or already sentenced to death, if they are lawfully executed. However, full credit shall be given if that prisoner commits suicide, is murdered, or dies of natural causes. If a prisoner is executed lawfully for a crime that was committed after entry into the dead pool, then full credit shall be given. No credit shall be given for persons kidnapped or held hostage at the time they are chosen, unless death unrelated to that person's captivity occurs after release.

They've given points to people who selected Saddam after he was already condemned to death.

 

When I pointed out to them that Saddam died on the 30th, I also bitterly brought that up as well. Perhaps a rookie updated the site? No one should get any points because the potential death sentence has been there since 2003, and most certainly no one past November 5th should get any points.

[Rotten Ali 600]

Looks like the RDP don't even follow their own rules

 

They've given points to people who selected Saddam after he was already condemned to death.

 

That dead pool is a crock of sh*t anyway. You couldn't pick people like Drake, Carr, Hill, Puskas etc. I won't be entering again come September time when "my year" is up.

 

Absolutely, but you know OoO, it's even sweeter as a Brit' to finish first in very well supported American deadpool. It just goes to show how thick some of them are if they can be upended by someone with only a few GCE's and a BTec.

I also did well in the Game Gazette (by my calcs in the top half dozen or so, and top rookie by a country mile) but they were so pissed that I would send them a list without first being asked!

 

The population of the US of A is like 5 times the UK's and consequently they should know 5 times the number of celebs we have heard of. Take that Eddie Albert bloke, loads of them were picking - never heard of Green Acres myself so could not fully judge if he would be a worthwhile pick.

Too insular by far! Think they own the planet! Most of them have never been outside its boarders! And like you noted they don't even know their own rules!

[Octopus of Odstock 2,206]

The population of the US of A is like 5 times the UK's and consequently they should know 5 times the number of celebs we have heard of. Too insular by far! Think they own the planet! Most of them have never been outside its boarders!

 

Well, I wouldn't be as outlandish as all that, but the fact they don't, as I've mentioned on here before, have Phil Hill, an AMERICAN World Championship racing driver, kinda of beggers belief. Anyway, I'll do the best with the people it does allow me to pick & then not bother anymore.

[themaninblack 2,112]

It's turning out to be a tense finish: it's been a corking month for the celebrity deaths!!

[CarolAnn 926]

Too insular by far! Think they own the planet! Most of them have never been outside its boarders! And like you noted they don't even know their own rules!

 

<rant>

 

The question, though, is do we know the difference between "boarders" and "borders?"

 

Most of the time I hear crap about Americans from Europeans I shrug it off - they may go on about how awful we are but they forget it when it comes to a whole lot of things that say "Made in America" or are made by American companies in Europe. Sometimes, though, it really chaps my posterior. This is one of those times.

 

First of all, since when does population count determine number of celebrities? You're the number guy - show me the study that shows that the number of celebrities a country has correlates directly to its population.

 

The United States of America covers more than 3.6 million square miles. The distance from New York to Los Angeles is more than 2700 miles. We actually have to cross another sovereign nation to get to one of our states. Americans can spend their whole lives never able to travel their own country, much less jet off to another. 3.6 million square miles is a hell of a lot of insular.

 

With the exception of Mexico and Canada, pretty much the only way we have to get to another country is to fly (you can drive through Mexico to Central and South America, but it isn't recommended because of what tends to happen to people in central and southern Mexico and really isn't feasible because of how long it takes). Have you priced airline tickets from Dallas or New York to London lately? They hover around $500.00 with a 60 - 90 day pre-purchase, plus there are the costs of eating, sleeping, getting from one place to another, etc..... I, for one, don't have a couple of thousand in my back pocket to take my kids overseas for a ripping good time.

 

You can join the US military and see the world, which is how my father brought me to all the places I lived (I would actually maintain that I am better travelled than most) but these days you'll just go to Iraq.

 

My mother, who is the most anti-war, anti-Bush, hippie throwback in creation, went to England a couple of years ago to visit a friend and spent a fair amount of time explaining to her friend's friends that just because he's her President she doesn't support him. If I'm spending thousands on a trip somewhere I really don't care to have to do that. It was bad enough in the 1970s when everyone in Europe wanted the US military there just in case the Soviet Union took a wild hair but basically treated us like sh*t. We were supposed to bring our weaponry and our soldiers and die if the Soviets crossed the Iron Curtain but be sure to be seen and not heard in the meantime. I can live without reliving that experience.

 

RA, have you been to the United States? If you have, have you been outside of New York or Los Angeles or some other large tourist trap city? How many Americans do you genuinely know - in real life, not over the internet? People go on and on about American tourists but I can swear and testify that European tourists in Dallas can be just as bad. You ought to go to Southfork Ranch when there's a tourist contingent there - and the English are just as bad driving in America as Americans are driving in England.

 

Most of us are just like most of you - family people trying to make a living and get by day to day with a little fun and a little pain. I have lived in Germany, England, Japan, Italy, Spain and Argentina, and most of the people I met were just like the other people I met. The only difference was the food they ate and the language they spoke.

 

The more we honor each other, differences and all, the faster crap like Iraq will stop happening. You may say I'm a dreamer, and all that..........

 

</rant>

 

Sorry if I offended anyone else - I just really really really had to get that off my chest. MH, feel free to delete if you think it necessary.

[Windsor 2,235]

Excellent, CarolAnn.

Saved me from coming out with a 'smug bastard' speech.

[football_fan 42]

Getting back on topic

 

Today there were services honoring 2 DDP celebrities:

 

James Brown had his funeral service at the James Brown arena in Augusta, Georgia. It was mostly a concert with quite a few notables performing. To my dismay, Michael Jackson, pathetic as he is, made an appearance and made a sad attempt to steal all the spotlight for himself.

 

Former US President, Gerald Ford's casket arrived at the U.S. Capitol this evening for two days of public viewing before the official funeral on Tuesday. This is already the 2nd of 4 funeral ceremonies for him. The procession had quite a few notables from the Republican party. Vice President, Dick Chaney, former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Alexander Haig, Robert Dole, Alan Greenspan, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. A couple of them looked rather peaky, so I would not be surprised if 1 or 2 of them were to be in the obituaries in the coming months.

 

Then there is the December scenario. Quite a few notables died in the last 2 weeks of this month, especially in the week leading up to and the week following Christmas Day and Boxing Day. The leadership board is pretty tight at the top. One wonders whether this is it for 2006 or if we will see another Artie Shaw scenario with just 1 day to go before the end of the year.

[Canadian Paul 97]

Looks like the RDP don't even follow their own rules

 

They've given points to people who selected Saddam after he was already condemned to death.

 

Apparently mine or someone else's bitching has paid off, as points have been removed. That's what they get for being a bunch of cheating bastards.

 

Now I'm off to add Barzan al-Tikriti and Awar al-Bandar to my DDP list and submit it. Different rules for different fools it would seem.

[Rotten Ali 600]

Ouch. Thanks for the rant.

Nice to see you hitting back.

I do like America really and been 3 times (Orlando-Miami-Keys-Tampa, Washington-Boston-Killington & NYC) & most of the Americans I've met. However on-mass, they get a bit too preachy and self centred "Uncle Sam knows what's good for the good-old USA and that's what you lot are going to have to put up with".

Worked with quite a few Yanks at General Motors and Ford divisions and found them to be quite nice but insular.

As one of your points alludes to, my poolofdeath team "any one from" choice may make you laugh.

 

In the main I was playing devils advocate on the thread and guessed that I may ruffle feathers but when the chips are down I'll stand by you lot, middle America included.

 

Happy New Year to you CarolAnn.

[Godot 149]

Reconciliation. What a nice way to end the year. The US has to live with the burden of top country. Not easy for small town America that maintains small town values where everyone knows each other and where there is still no need to lock the door. It's a different world from downtown Baghdad, different from the suburbs of LA and its drive-by gang shootings. But then you can find that in Mosside and British village life respectively.

 

In general I think the British are better informed of world affairs partly because we used to own a lot of these places abroad and some of us (not me) think we still should. One thing that has struck me on numerous visits to the US is not just a poor sense of geography but of history too. Another thing is the sentimentality and prudishness of a lot of Americans. Why don't American women go topless on the beach like they do in France (but not much in the UK incidentally)? I think the UK and the US have more in common that we like to admit.

 

As for US involvement in wars, it's difficult for them not to be involved if they want to spread democracy. I happen to like democracy. I would rather get a community service order for stealing, than lose my hand. Better an asbo than a bullet in the head.

 

It must be tough living with anti-Americanism. Here in the UK we must live with delusions of grandeur and the legacy of empire where we struggle to deal with our diminishing status in the world. We're a little country that behaves like a bantom cock. It's about time we bowed out and joined the "conference league" of world affairs. We have a sophisticated enough financial system to be a new Switzerland but we just can't do it. Maybe Gordon Brown will make it happen but I doubt it. Not with Trident.

[themaninblack 2,112]

Reconciliation. What a nice way to end the year. The US has to live with the burden of top country. Not easy for small town America that maintains small town values where everyone knows each other and where there is still no need to lock the door. It's a different world from downtown Baghdad, different from the suburbs of LA and its drive-by gang shootings. But then you can find that in Mosside and British village life respectively.

 

In general I think the British are better informed of world affairs partly because we used to own a lot of these places abroad and some of us (not me) think we still should. One thing that has struck me on numerous visits to the US is not just a poor sense of geography but of history too. Another thing is the sentimentality and prudishness of a lot of Americans. Why don't American women go topless on the beach like they do in France (but not much in the UK incidentally)? I think the UK and the US have more in common that we like to admit.

 

As for US involvement in wars, it's difficult for them not to be involved if they want to spread democracy. I happen to like democracy. I would rather get a community service order for stealing, than lose my hand. Better an asbo than a bullet in the head.

 

It must be tough living with anti-Americanism. Here in the UK we must live with delusions of grandeur and the legacy of empire where we struggle to deal with our diminishing status in the world. We're a little country that behaves like a bantom cock. It's about time we bowed out and joined the "conference league" of world affairs. We have a sophisticated enough financial system to be a new Switzerland but we just can't do it. Maybe Gordon Brown will make it happen but I doubt it. Not with Trident.

 

British pride wouldn't stand for it, whatever that is...

[Magere Hein 1,400]

Reconciliation. What a nice way to end the year.

Indeed.

The US has to live with the burden of top country. Not easy for small town America that maintains small town values where everyone knows each other and where there is still no need to lock the door. It's a different world from downtown Baghdad, different from the suburbs of LA and its drive-by gang shootings. But then you can find that in Mosside and British village life respectively.

I've never been able to get a proper view of USAians due to what is known in the trade as sampling error. In my travels around the world I've managed to miss the New World completely, so the ones I met In Real Life I did so while they were abroad, an unusual condition for an American. Add to that that most of the few I did meet IRL were mostly technical staff in the IT business, or tourists or both. The conclusion is that I met a far from representative sample.

 

From that small sample I learned that Americans resemble ordinary people considerably. Most are OK, some are really nice and some are prats. In that respect they're no different from, say, Germans. If anything is remarkable about USAians it's that they're more in everything than the rest of humanity: OK, nice or a prat, only more so. As in every nation the prats get the political jobs. It's in the job description, I think.

 

I also know quite a few Americans from the Internet. As it's easy to ignore prats on the Internet I think they're all OK or nice and well educated.

 

As for US involvement in wars, it's difficult for them not to be involved if they want to spread democracy. I happen to like democracy. I would rather get a community service order for stealing, than lose my hand. Better an asbo than a bullet in the head.

As an aside: I don't think those are examples of democracy in action, although all can be. I also have trouble with the concept of spreading democracy by war. War isn't exactly a democratic method, when seen from the business end.

 

As a member of a smallish nation with a long, proud and profitable history of being walked over by foreign nations and choosing dodgy allies, our approach to world politics is friendly and understanding to all while ignoring them as long as they stay out or are paying for the priviledge of being around.When we fight wars it's for profit rather than ideology, even though we won't admit that nowadays. We even won't admit we're at war these days. In all this we're pretty much like the French, but not as loud about it.

 

The UK will get there eventually. The outcome of WWII didn't help in that process, since it's generally considered a victory for the UK, ruinous as it was. The UK, and the USA for that matter, have still to learn the blessings of losing a war or two.

 

It was bad enough in the 1970s when everyone in Europe wanted the US military there just in case the Soviet Union took a wild hair but basically treated us like sh*t. We were supposed to bring our weaponry and our soldiers and die if the Soviets crossed the Iron Curtain but be sure to be seen and not heard in the meantime. I can live without reliving that experience.

I remember those days. American soldiers weren't popular, although personal contact with them was rare: they tended to live in or near barracks. I seem to remember that their presence in the Netherlands was more a result of political expediency and NATO organisation than that we invited them. After the collapse of the Soviet Union most of the US military left, but a few remain, guarding and maintaining US nukes.

 

That said, I imagine it wasn't quite fun being on the receiving end of Dutch-American friendship.

 

regards,

Hein

[CarolAnn 926]

Most of us are proud of our countries and our heritages, warts and all. I am as proud of being an American and I am of being of Italian descent. Americans are in the odd position of being primarily a nation of immigrants and only now being two or three generations (at most) removed from our roots. I think that's why there are so many clear cut and separate cultures in the US - we still relate back to where we came from as much as where we are today. I am third generation American but my grandfather was the first child of his family born an American citizen so you could make the argument that I'm only the second generation. It's weird.

 

We're a pretty patriotic bunch - we subscribe to the philosophy of "I can say whatever I want about my sister but you better shut up." I related a story on another board that I post on about my frustration with an apartment complex down the street from me still having their American flag at top staff. We lower our flags to half staff/mast for 30 days when a former President passes away. I was saying how over the four mile drive between my home and my destination there were probably 20 flags flying.

 

American are raised with the ethos that we are the greatest country on earth. Well, in all honesty and all humility, in some ways we are. In some other ways we suck big green donkey.....well, you get the idea.

 

Bejamin Franklin is often attributed with saying something to the effect of, "We have brought forth upon this land a new race of men, rougher, more violent..." Unfortunately I don't have the exact quote handy. Well, the problem is that we are now teenagers, ladies and gentlemen, and we are bit driven by hormones. If the American people can be equivocated to the two teenage kids in my house it's no wonder we elected an arrogant, testosterone driven total idiot. That's the basic description of a teenage boy.

 

And MH - I think we IT people are all a little nuts, no matter where were come from but especially if we hail from Redmond.

[Godot 149]

I didn't mean to suggest spreading democracy by force MH. I don't think it is spread that way (apart from in Iraq, maybe, and it's far from clear that it's going to work there. Nor did it work in Cuba). But once it has been secured I think that force is sometimes needed to hang on to it, e.g, WWII and the Cold War. Sometimes, as in Vietnam, that force is misguided. The dollar has probably done more for democracy (or should that be capitalism?) than the bullet ever has.