I can’t get enough of those “how stuff get made” videos. The World Cup is this year. Here’s how they make the balls.
Category: Sport
YouTube Tuesday: Goal
FIFA’s goal of the year candidates are pretty special. You
Football Hero
Tim posted this a while back. I’ve been meaning to use it as a YouTube Tuesday video ever since. It’s brilliant. Check it.
Things that take less than two minutes
- Almost cooking two minute noodles.
- Almost reheating anything in the microwave on high.
- Trying to buy a packet of chips in a crowded pub.
- Danny Green beating Roy Jones Jr in a boxing match.
I went to the pub to watch the match tonight. I had been quite excited all day. My inner pugilist was looking for a tough encounter. Probably going the distance.
How disappointing. You should have heard the lull in the pub when people realised it was over.
Ox off to the Bulls
Manly Captain Matt Orford is heading to England to play for the Bradford Bulls.
He led us to successive grand finals and won us a premiership.
But he has a crap kicking game.
I’d say I’m ambivalent about this piece of news.
A night at the football
We went to the Fury game last night. And despite what Joel says about football there is something thrilling about a tight, low scoring game that isn’t really decided until the final whistle.
And there’s something beautiful about a player who knows the rules gazumping a pack of whingers who don’t…
Robbie Fowler is a class player. Tim was going to post this video too – I don’t think he has yet…
Knight to south paw
Chess boxing is my new favourite sport.
“The basic idea in chessboxing is to combine the #1 thinking sport and the #1 fighting sport into a hybrid that demands the most of its competitors – both mentally and physically.
In a chessboxing fight two opponents play alternating rounds of chess and boxing. The contest starts with a round of chess, followed by a boxing round, followed by another round of chess and so on.
A contest consists of 11 rounds, 6 rounds of chess, 5 rounds of boxing. A round of chess takes 4 minutes. Each competitor has 12 minutes on the chess timer.”
I can’t help but think that it’s one of those sports that will be forever dominated by participants from the former USSR.
It would seem that in order to ensure chess players can last more than one round one of the only qualifications for the competition is the ability to play chess… but competitors should be a little worried.
One of the Klitschko brothers, Vitali, holds a PhD in sports science. He’s no dummy. And he and his brother are both keen chess players and world heavyweight boxing champions… from Wikipedia…
“Both Vitali and his brother are avid chess players. Vitali is a friend of former world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik and the two have played, with Kramnik always winning. Vitali has commented that “chess is similar to boxing. You need to develop a strategy, and you need to think two or three steps ahead about what your opponent is doing. You have to be smart. But what’s the difference between chess and boxing? In chess, nobody is an expert, but everybody plays. In boxing everybody is an expert, but nobody fights.””
On the stupidity of pluralism
There’s an evangelical Christian quarterback in the NFL who paints bible verses in his eye paint. The stuff they put on their faces to avoid glare.
An American sportswriter can’t handle the idea that this quarterback believes that Jesus is the only way to avoid hell. So he wrote a feature on it. This is a triumph of pluralistic dumbness. The writer asserts that the player’s view that his way is the only right way is wrong – thus placing his own “enlightened” views over the players – and being the intolerant fool he is accusing the player of being.
If there’s one thing that annoys me more than the new atheists and their anti-dogma dogma it’s the pluralists and their confusing inconsistencies.
“But should we be pleased that the civic resource known as “our team” — a resource supported by the diverse whole through our ticket-buying, game-watching and tax-paying — is being leveraged by a one-truth evangelical campaign that has little appreciation for the beliefs of the rest of us?”
But wait, there’s more dumbness…
“But there’s a shadow side to this. If their take on God and truth and life is the only right one — which their creed boldly states — everyone else is wrong.
Really? You’re only just figuring that out. It’s pretty much what Jesus says. You know, the “I am the way” bit, where he says “no one comes to the father except through me”…
Not a mere abstraction, this exclusiveness sometimes morphs into a form of chauvinism and mistreatment of non-Christians. Witness the incident with the Washington Nationals baseball team in 2005, when the Christian chaplain was exposed as teaching that Jews go to hell.”
How dare the church teach that anyone go to hell… oh, but wait, that’s what the Bible says… you know, that those who aren’t Christians (which is their choice) go to Hell.
Freedom of religion does not make a value judgment on the religions people adhere to – all religions are not equal. All people have equal rights to choose what religion they adhere to. And the state shouldn’t make quality judgments on these religions (unless they’re pursuing them for tax fraud).
Our pluralism is a defining and positive reality of American life — but not one that is much valued by those who define the faith coursing through the veins of sports culture.
If America’s lifestyle is defined by pluralism and not freedom then they’re getting a lot of things wrong.
I don’t know why I read that article. I knew it was going to be stupid.
Collision course
Back when I was casting all sorts of aspersions on Rugby Union I was told I needed empirical data to support my opinion that Rugby League is the superior sport… how bout this… from the SMH… regarding Fui Fui Moi Moi and just how much force he generates in a tackle.
“Imagine standing looking up at the sky. From a leaning tower someone drops a 20 kilogram bag of cement from a height of 22 metres. Dr Nicholas Armstrong, a physicist, says that when you try to catch the cement it will have the same energy as Moimoi generates when he surges into the defensive line.
Moimoi is able to accelerate from jogging pace to 26 km/h within two seconds. His top speed on a treadmill is 31.2 km/h and he has been measured at 32km/h in game situations.
Of course, it is nothing like Usain Bolt, the world record holder for the 100 metres, who reaches 43.9 km/h, but combined with his mass, Moimoi is a deadly weapon. He is one of the three fastest Parramatta players in a 40-metre sprint.”
The secret, apparently, is that he eats horse.
Punch drunk
A photographer in the US has produced a series of photos of boxers before and after their fights.
It’s pretty cool, check these out…
Via Kottke.
Extreme Chess
I’ve always laughed at the idea of Chess as a sport. But this concept called “Blitz Chess” is how the game should be played.
Nine ways league is better than union
- More points scored through tries.
- The ball spends more time in motion.
- The players spend more time “in play” because they’re not waiting around for scrums or line-outs.
- A better “tribal” club system.
- More meaningful domestic representative games.
- Better television spectacle.
- Better athletes (when was the last time League signed a Union player?).
- Better scoring system (that creates an incentive for attack).
- Clearer rules.
The union war
K-Rudd has declared an end to the History Wars that crippling battle for supremacy between Australia’s academic elite… but there’s one philosophical battle between the elite and the working class that will not be ended by Prime Ministerial decree…
We’re flying to Brisbane this weekend. We’re heading south for a Rugby match. Of all the things to head south for… I don’t really like Rugby. But Robyn does. So we’re going to watch Australia play South Africa.
Robyn really likes Rugby. She owns a number of jerseys and actually understands the rules enough to yell at the ref about an infringement before he gives a penalty. This is what marriage is about.
But, so that my protest is recorded for posterities sake – here are three areas where Rugby League is clearly the superior game…
- Pointscoring – the union point scoring matrix is messed up. It discourages attacking play. Union can not hope to be a spectacle while a penalty goal is worth more than half an unconverted try. There is no incentive to chance your arm for a try when you can do half the work and score more than half the points. Drop goals are also significantly overvalued. If Union swallowed its pride and adopted League’s point scoring methodology attack would be suitably rewarded.
- Penalties – Penalty goals are only such an issue because penalties are so common. Seriously. Is there anything in Union that you’re actually allowed to do? Every time the ref watches the play closely he blows his whistle and the team in possession boots the ball between the posts.
- Scrums – The claim by Union fans that I find most risible is that their scrums are superior to those used in League. Contested, yes, superior, no. 98% of scrums contested in a Union test are packed more than once, 65% result in penalties. 12% result in wins against the feed (I made these stats up). They’re just as pointless as the scrums in league – it’s like a coin toss to see whether the attacking side gets a penalty or has to stand around in a hemorrhoid inducing group hug.
But I’m a good husband. So I’ll go along without pointing out too many of these areas.
Feeling the burn
The Ashes are, without a doubt, the single most important piece of post colonial national pride. There is no other contest so closely fought between Australia and England. It’s important. People who don’t understand sport can’t see the influence that cricket has on the national psyche. But our sporting dominance over the Poms is important because they’re better at other stuff – like comedy – than us.
Now that we’re going to lose the Ashes again, in all probability, from a seemingly unlosable position, I’m going to go on the record (again) with my statement that Ricky Ponting is the worst captain of Australia in my lifetime.
I can’t speak for previous generations – but he’s not a patch on Waugh, Border, or Taylor (listed in order of captaincy nouse from least to greatest). He is a great batsmen – but if he can’t get his players to keep their heads, and their wickets, when the pressure is on, then he absolutely should not be leading the team.
He’s also terrible at managing his players, setting attacking fields, using his bowlers, and all the other rudimentary elements of captaincy. Unfortunately, like the Liberal Party, there doesn’t seem to be an obviously palatable replacement.
Premier League: Same Same, but different
The Premier League kicked off over the weekend. Which is awesome. It is by far my favourite sporting competition in the world. This year’s competition has the added complexity of another team bankrolled by people who place no real value on money.
When Roman Abramovich took over Chelsea a couple of years ago they were tipped to take over the world thanks to a seemingly bottomless pit of money. That experiment hasn’t proved to be particularly successful – they’ve won more than they used to. But Manchester United, thanks to some astute signings of young players who were then groomed into superstars, are world beaters. They’ve won the Premier League three years in a row, along with a bunch of other trophies.
This year it’s Manchester City making a big splash in the transfer market thanks to money from an Arabian oil conglomerate/Abu Dhabi royalty.
Man U enjoyed a win over the weekend. But they lost the earlier Charity Shield on penalties. Patrice Evra, one of United’s backs, was injured in the match by a terrible tackle.
My Premier League prediction for the year is for more of the same. The top five will no doubt be Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City.
Sadly, and this is the point of my rather long winded preamble – the Fox Sports reporters were unable to distinguish two of Manchester United’s players. Despite Nani having his name clearly emblazoned on his back.