Sports, and football specifically, has been accussed of being too business oriented where clubs and players are only after money (example, all players heading to chelsea ).

The business of football is growing at a rate faster than most other businesses, and this is evident by the salaries of players increasing and sponsorship deals rising.

To get an idea of how much sponsorships cost, here is a breakdown of the top European clubs -

1. Real Madrid - BenQ € 20.6mil per year
   
2. Manchester United - AIG, €20 mil per year
3. Juventus - Tamoil, €18.5 mil per year
4. Bayern Munich - Deutsche Telekom, €17 mil per year
5. Chelsea - Samsung, €16 mil per year
6. Brussia Dortmund - E.On, €12 mil per year
7. Lyon - Renault, €12 mil per year
8. Bayer Leverkusen - RWE €9.5 mil per year
9. AC Milan - Opel €9 mil per year
10. Arsenal - Emirates €8 mil per year

Obviously this is alot of money, and only from the shirt sponsporship! These clubs are clearly the top clubs in the world, but there is one big club missing from the list, and that is Barcelona.

I am not a big fan of the team, as many of you might know by now, Im a hardcore Arsenal fan, and Barcelona beat Arsenal in the Champions League final last year, which doesnt help in making me like them any more!

But no matter what, you have respect the team for their record and gameplay in recent years. Also, the reason they are not listed in the sponsorship group is because they have a proud tradition of keeping their shirt without a sponsor for 107 years. That deserves respect!

After more than a century of holding out, they broke tradition this year, but not by looking for a record breaking sponsorship deal, which they couldve easily gotten…instead, they partnered up with UNICEF and for a change, the deal states that THEY WILL DONATE 1.5 mil a year to Unicef programs!!
That is incredibly refreshing news in a business that seems to be full of corruption (Italian league scandals, Chelsea, shady deals with West Ham recently, scandals in Greek and Portugese leagues….etc). I have a newfound respect for FC Barcelona, and I hope this step is a first and more clubs and businesses will look for the same!

After my failed attempt in writing about the evolution of humans, I will now turn your attention to the evolution of clothes!

If we look at clothes and how they have progressed in history, very little has changed! The look has changed, but the same basics have been used since the old days of textiles and sewing them together to make something to wear. Nothing really changed clothes, except maybe jeans, and how their durability has been very helpful for many different reasons.

Recently, a whole new breed of designers and scientists has been involved in creating what is called “smart clothes”.

Smart clothing, or intellegent clothing, is basically clothing that interacts with the environment around it or the body using technology. There are many incredible examples of this technology, and it looks like a science with infinite potential! This is a hot topic nowadays, and is considered to be a new revolutionary trend.
Examples -

• Clothes that respond to your body temperature, emitting heat when you’re cold and cooling you down when you’re hot, doing it by monitoring the shivering of the body
• Clothes that adapt according to the environment around them, emitting light when exposed to rain.
• Clothes that are integrated with technologies like mp3 and wireless telephones.
• Clothes that monitor your health, measuring your heartrate, temperature, and even blood pressure and so on.
• Clothes that can have changing images on them through technologies like LED and so on (very cool video)

All of the mentioned above has been already developed and used in recent years.

 
Two more interesting links about the subject -

A company that produced these clothes & An article about intellegent clothes

How quick do you think this technology will progress, and how could it affect our local clothing here, what would you like to see added to your clothing??

اليوم و أنا رايح الدوام أسمع نقاش بين اثنين انجليز عن إعانة الحكومة لطبقة الدخل المحدود لحمايتهم من الانجراف للجريمة ..

كان الطرف الأول ضد الإعانة و مع قيام الدولة بالاستثمار في مشاريع اجتماعية و تربوية

و الثاني أيضا ضد الإعانة المادية و يقترح نقل سكان الدخل المحدود مع الدخل المتوسط و عدم حصر الطبقات في أماكن معينة …

الاثنين كانوا متفقين ضد الإعانة المادية لأنها ممكن تخلي هالناس تعتمد على الحكومة

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بالكويت يبون منحة .. يبون اسقاط القروض … يبون 50 دينار بونص شهري … يبون إجازة العشر الأواخر … يبون و يبون

In the past two days, I read a couple of articles that are related in some way and made me think about us humans.

First, an article about a new study that says men over 40 are much more likely to have autistic children, in fact, the chances are six times those of fathers below 30!

The second article is about the British Fertility Society recommending that women put their fresh young eggs on ice at 30 to improve their chances of conceiving at 40-plus, another reason why conceiving earlier is better.

So both are saying that people should have children earlier….and that at 40 your body is telling you that its a bit too late.

My question is….how long will that last?? I mean evolution is part of nature, and the definition of evolution according to the Encyclopedia Britannica is -

“..theory in biology postulating that the various types of plants, animals, and other living things on Earth have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations.”

Modifications in successive generations is what I’m interested in. Humans now are very different than humans 400, or even 100 years ago! Unlike our predecessors, we do not live according to what nature has provided us, for example, in the past, the day started with the break of dawn and ended at sunset. Now we have electricity and therefore have enough light to stay up during the night, to the point that many of us have became nocturnal beings, living in the night! This has to be a radical change in our biological systems, but will this change us eventually?? Will our grand-grand-grand-children evolve to have better night vision for example??

Another example of how we abandoned nature is the relation between women’s menstural period and the moon. I read this somewhere before but don’t remember where, that women’s periods are affected by the cycle of the moon, and that back in the day, it was a practical thing because when the moon was at its fullest, the men used to go hunting or whatever and leave their women behind, and it was during that specific time that women went through their period. Its pretty interesting, but irrelevent now! That has to be some sort of evolution process.

Now we come to the two articles above. Nowadays, it is common for people to marry in their late twenties and mid-thirties, and consequently, have children at around that age. Compare this to how things were back in the day, not so far back, even to the time of our grandparents, when they used to get married early in their teens, and have children at around 16 or 17 if not younger. Biologically, this is probably how it should happen, since both bodies are able, but socially, it is unacceptable in our age! We are having children at an older age than before because of work and career and so on (I am talking worldwide, not just us), so will our bodies adapt to this as time moves on??

Very philosophical topic today, but I think its interesting

Also, how would you like to evolve?

A friend of mine emailed me this peice he found in the Arab Times newspaper earlier this week, in the section where they have the events of the week and some information for expats.

I’m not quite sure what KPCC is, I’m guessing its Kuwait Philipino Cultural Community (i just came up with that), anyway all thats clear is that its an organization that has to do with Philipinos in Kuwait.

This is a weeky contest they have published with some questions and multiple choice answers…..I couldn’t stop laughin when I saw the last choice they had for the second question! lol

I discovered earlier this week a new radio station, 100.1 FM, which is the BBC world service in English, and I love it! It has an excellent ballance of news and other programs that are interesting!

In the car, I never listen to CDs or an iPod, for some reason I have always favored the radio, I guess I like the fact that you don’t know whats gonna be on next! I also used to always have music stations on, now I rarely do, mostly BBC Arabic or English …… I feel old!

My schedule using the radio has been as follows - In the morning, it always used to be the Arabic BBC, but to be honest I was turned off by them from their coverage of the war in Iraq and to some extent in Lebanon. I switched to BBC English now, and so far its been great.

From 12 PM till around 5 PM, when I leave work, nothing beats 87.9 FM, old Kuwaiti music, excellent music for after work!

At night I switch through stations, but usually end up on 99.7 or the BBC, but on Wednesday and Friday nights after 10 PM, it has to be 99.7, great music with DJ Maha!

103.7 is not even set on my car radio, 88.8 I listen to every now and then, but whenever one of their presenters speaks, I get annoyed and change it! I also hate their entertainment programs alot!

All of our radio stations here are directed to people aged 13, which is understandable to a certain extent, but at the same time you need to hear something that makes you think once in a while! In the US, I used to realy enjoy NPR (national public radio), which always had shows that made you think. What’s the closest we got to this??

هذه صفحة من مجلة المصور سنة 1968 … أم كلثوم تغني بالكويت و تلتقي بالأمير

أيام حلوة

أنقر الصورة للتكبير

I really get very annoyed when it comes to spelling mistakes…and I don’t mean spelling mistakes in a blog or an email or something simple like that, I mean when it’s in something that’s public and especially if its something that is printed or paid for like a menu or a billboard and so on….

These two I saw last weekend, one from Fuddruckers and the other from Bredz. The Bredz one is not as bad because its a small paper that they can change, but the Fudds one was something they had on their mats that they put on every table for every customer! How can they go ahead and print something like that (they definitely print thousands of copies) without double checking the few words there?

This second one from Bredz is more funny that frustrating, more for the fact that Bredz have Machboos than the spelling!! lol!