Happy Halloween!

Yes, that's a pumpkin, not my face!

Keep your friends close...

The Italian jury is still out on the murder of English student Meredith Kercher...

Rudy Guede has now been found guilty and sentenced to 30 years, while American student Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, also accused of the murder, are still awaiting trial. In two days they will have been incarcerated by Italian authorities for a whole year.

This trial gets stranger and stranger...it seems the Italians believe three people committed this murder, and there is sufficient evidence to convict. I happen to think they arrested the wrong people in the intial investigation, but that a trial needs to take place to save face, but then again, I just re-watched the Godfather films. Am I wrong?

"It was you Fredo, it was you...You broke my heart."

The Prayer for the Current Financial Situation

The Prayer for the Current Financial Situation is a prayer launched in September 2008 by the Church of England to offer the opportunity for prayer and reflection during the credit crisis.

As noted by our friends at wikipedia and my good friend Valentin Katz, the prayer notes that "we live in disturbing days", with rising prices, increasing debts, job losses and collapsing banks, and calls God to be a "a tower of strength amidst the shifting sands" of the economic turmoil. Since the prayer was published by the Church of England on its official website, it pushed up traffic to the website by more than 25 percent.

Lord God, we live in disturbing days:
across the world,
prices rise,
debts increase,
banks collapse,
jobs are taken away,
and fragile security is under threat.
Loving God, meet us in our fear and hear our prayer:
be a tower of strength amidst the shifting sands,
and a light in the darkness;
help us receive your gift of peace,
and fix our hearts where true joys are to be found,
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Chess Gladiator - those who are about to die, salute you!

Dear England, after a long wait the World Chess Championship began on October 14th between chess titans Viswanathan Anand of India and Vladimir Kramnik of Russia. Even to non-believers, chess never got so exciting! And that's saying something. The website is http://www.uep-chess.com/cms_english where previously played games are free to watch, and you can pay to watch the games live - if you have time!

In the meantime, check out the above image which allows you to play chess for real money against other competitors, and you can decide your own level of ability and risk. See http://www.chessgladiator.com/ or click on the above gladiator pic!

Let the best Paul Morphy win!

F. Scott Fitzgerald's briefcase!

Dear England, I'm a big F. Scott Fitzgerald fan, and here is...his briefcase! Funny the things you can find on the internet (internetS - ed). The monogram reads: "Scott Fitzgerald 597 - 5th Ave.New York" and the address is of Fitzgerald's publisher, Charles Scribner's Sons.

I'm amazed that Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe all had the same editor - Maxwell Perkins. A great biography of how Perkins juggled, guided and encouraged these three temperamental writers is A. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. While Fitzgerald was always broke and Hemingway always getting into scrapes, Wolfe quietly wrote one endless manuscript (on the top of the fridge, standing up!) that Perkins would have to cut down into publishable novels!

Who was the most troublesome, it's hard to say?

Check it out!

Picture (for no reason at all) #5

Sushi - like it should be! Fresh from the biggest fresh fish market in the world, Tsukiji Market in Tokyo, Japan. Check it out here!