Newsnight

I was going to hit y'all up with a link to last night's edition of 'Newsnight', which featured the first-ever onscreen head-to-head debate between a McDonalds Executive (UK McDonalds chairman Steve Easterbrook) and a prominent critic (in this case, Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation).

Unfortunately, my attention was demanded elsewhere (and not in a good way) and I missed most of it. "Not a problem", thinks I, "I'll watch the web stream later". Except, as people who've clicked on the above link can testify, there is no web stream (the 'podcast' is a different thing). Copyright reasons. Yeah: I know; we paid for it, we just don't get to watch it. I'm not sure I understand how this licensing dealio is supposed to work anymore.

Work

Meh. DBs. Servers. The 3 Ps. Nothing interesting happening, but there's a lot of it. Have to use MySQL on one thing. Given that I always use / used Postgres whenever a free RDBMS is / was needed, this slightly pisses me off, as they both do roughly the same kind of thing (your holy wars notwithstanding), just that the syntax is different in annoying ways.

Birthdays

They always gang up at this time of year. Have to attend three over the next week or so. Those balmy days of late summer ...

World Cup Crib Sheet: The Offside Rule

One of my colleagues emailed me the following this morning, ostensibly to see if it passed some kind of "validation check". It's a summary of football's (sock-uh) notorious offside rule as translated for women. Before you feel the urge to get your flame on (uh!), bear in mind that it was apparently written by a woman, for her fellow sistren, and I'm just passing it on. Unfortunately, the extent to which it is applicable (and it's actually 'not bad') has been greatly diminished over the past two years [see below].

In preparation for the World Cup, the "offside rule" explained for women:

You're in a shoe shop, second in the queue for the till. Behind the shop assistant at the till is a pair of shoes which you have seen and which you must have.

The female shopper in front of you has seen them also and is eyeing them with desire. Both of you have forgotten your purses. It would be rude to push in front of the first woman if you had no money to pay for the shoes.

The shop assistant remains at the till waiting.

Your friend is trying on another pair of shoes at the back of the shop and sees your dilemma. She prepares to throw her purse to you. If she does so, you can catch the purse then walk around the other shopper and buy the shoes.

At a pinch, she could throw the purse ahead of the other shopper and "whilst it is in flight" you could nip around the other shopper, catch the purse and buy the shoes.

BUT, you must always remember that until the purse has "actually been thrown", it would be plain wrong for you to be in front of the other shopper, and you would be OFFSIDE.

Or, for the rational reasonable shoe-unbeholden official version, you could always just check the rules:

Offside Position

It is not an offence in itself to be in an offside position. A player is in an offside position if:

• he is nearer to his opponents' goal line than both the ball and the second last opponent.

A player is not in an offside position if

• he is in his own half of the field of play or
• he is level with the second last opponent or
• he is level with the last two opponents.

Offence

A player in an offside position is only penalised if, at the moment the ball touches or is played by one of his team, he is, in the opinion of the referee, involved in active play by:

• interfering with play or
• interfering with an opponent or
• gaining an advantage by being in that position.

The "problem" is that last section. "interfering with play", "interfering with an opponent" and "gaining an advantage" are all subjective terms and have, historically, been interpreted and applied with gross inconsistency across differing countries, leagues and individual referees. FIFA (the global governing body) have attempted to clarify these laws but, in reality, it has just added to the confusion. Some argue that simply being in an offside position is both 'interfering with an opponent' and 'gaining an advantage' by definition, as the defence have to take into account that the player is there, and must try and predict what they may do (i.e. should they become legally active) in future. This was the original (unambiguous) interpretation of the law but it was changed (those last caveats were added) very recently. For the truly curious, the official FAQ document is here [PDF]

In fact, I think it's safe to say that, in the current climate, nobody really knows what the offside rule is as it modulates with any given set of match officials.

We are all women now.

Two weeks, biznatches. Two weeks.