One half of next weekend's MLS Cup final pairing has been set

The LA Galaxy defeated the Houston Dynamo 2-0 in extra-time last night and will be coming to Seattle for next weekend's MLS Cup. Los Angeles will face the winner of tonight's match between the Chicago Fire and Real Salt Lake.

Last night I rooted for the Dynamo, mostly because of their long-standing association with the Soviet secret police. Unfortunately, due to an inaccurately disallowed second-half goal, Houston lost.

Below: Galaxy goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts leaves the field during one of the two power outages that halted the game.

What I have been reading lately #17

I just finished reading Piers Paul Read's Ablaze: The Story of the Heroes and Victims of Chernobyl.  (Pictured above: the ruins of reactor number 4 before it was encased in a concrete sarcophagus) 

Above: Author Piers Paul Read

Above: The abandoned city of Pripyat.

Pripyat was designed and built in the early 1970s to provide a home town for the workers at the power plant.  Apparently, Pripyat was a rather nice place to live - a brand-new, planned city with roses everywhere and surrounded by beautiful countryside.  It also had very clean air because there were no coal-burning power plants near by.  After the explosion and fire in 1986, Pripyat had to be permanently evacuated. For more information: http://www.chornobyl.in.ua/pripyat.htm