Sports
grrlscientist | July 11, 2010tags: Pitch Perfect, humor, funny, comedy, satire, sports, baseball, streaming video
Now this video is just sick, SICK, I TELL YOU! So of course, because it made me laugh out loud in an empty apartment, I have to share it with you. This video is a comedic look at a baseball game: a burned out pitcher who seeks advice from his wheelchair-bound coach during the biggest game of his life.
Starring Zach Anner, Chris Demarais & Brad Anner.
oracknows | July 1, 2010Regular readers may have noticed something happening around ScienceBlogs. As PZ pointed out, a little malware somehow infiltrated the ScienceBlogs collective, and many of us appear to have turned into zombies. It's a veritable Zombie Day, complete with illustrations by Joseph Hewitt, creator of Gearhead.
Obviously, with anything having to do with zombies, there's only one thing for this blog, namely a certain undead German dictator with an insatiable thirst for human brains, who leaves idiotic analogies in his wake. Unfortunately, with the 2008 election being behind us, there was a dearth of…
grrlscientist | June 30, 2010tags: How Can You Filter Out The Vuvuzela?, World Cup 2010, physics, technology, football, soccer, sports, television, Sixty Symbols, University of Nottingham, streaming video
A University of Nottingham video explains the physics that underlies the technology being developed to filter out that annoying drone from 30,000 blasting vuvuzelas in the background of all World Cup football matches. It's interesting to note that this is the same sort of software technology that ornithologists use to record (and "clean up" background noise inadvertently captured by) birdsong recordings.
drorzel | June 29, 2010The dogphysics karma joke is pretty much dead, as countries with current or future editions of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog have gone a dismal 1-3-0 in the first round of elimination play. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did, honestly.
The big story of the World Cup at the moment is the immense suckitude of the refereeing, which currently accounts for at least four screwed up goals (two not allowed for the US, one for England, and an improperly allowed goal for Argentina). It's gotten to the point where FIFA is being dragged toward the Century of the Fruitbat, and might start…
elerner | June 28, 2010Team USA's World Cup dreams may have been dashed by Ghana over the weekend, but there's nary a bad word to be said by the performance of its goalkeeper, Tim Howard, who again proved he's capable of hanging with his peers from the global soccer powerhouses. But besides his spectacular saves, the one thing World Cup coverage has brought to our attention is that Howard has Tourette's Syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system that causes involuntary movements and would seem to disqualify one from an occupation where precise muscle control is paramount. But as our neurobloggers David Dobbs and…
drorzel | June 26, 2010The last two days of group play were kind of disappointing, with two games (Brazil-Portugal and Spain-Chile) barely being contested in the second half, as the teams involved were sure to advance, and just sort of kicked the ball around idly in the middle of the field until the clock ran out. In a just universe, the teams involved would be punished with embarrassing losses in the first eleimination game; as they play each other, that's not going to happen.
Note that seven of the final sixteen teams are countries where How to Teach Physics to Your Dog has sold. Of countries who have purchased…
grrlscientist | June 26, 2010tags: FuÃball, sports, soccer, futbol, World Cup Soccer, South Africa, FIFA, humor, funny, television, The Daily Show, streaming video
This video explores the local South African opinions about the World Cup -- in one scene, the reporter asks: "What's more African than the subjugation of black people?"
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
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World Cup 2010: Into Africa - Goal Diggers
www.thedailyshow.com
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grrlscientist | June 23, 2010tags: FuÃball, sports, soccer, futbol, World Cup Soccer, Germany, Serbia, Lego, silly, satire, humor, funny, television, streaming video
This hilarious video satire is surprisingly well-done. It shows highlights of Germany's loss to Serbia in the World Cup 2010, recreated in Lego. (I am pleased to report that Frankfurt has remained pleasantly quiet all night long as a result of this loss, haha!)
drorzel | June 23, 2010The US managed to survive yet another appalling lapse of officiating and beat Algeria 1-0 on a goal in stoppage time. Simultaneously (in some frame of reference), England beat Slovenia 1-0. With South Korea advancing yesterday, countries with current or forthcoming editions of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog are 3-0 when it comes to advancing past group play. Meanwhile, France, where rights have not yet sold, was eliminated.
I'm also happy to report that Spanish translation rights have been sold, and a translation is in progress, so Spain can go into their final group play game without…
grrlscientist | June 22, 2010tags: FuÃball, sports, soccer, futbol, World Cup Soccer, France, Mexico, Lego, silly, satire, humor, funny, television, streaming video
This hilarious video satire is surprisingly well-done. It shows highlights of Mexico's shock 2-0 win over France in the world cup 2010, recreated in lego.
drorzel | June 21, 2010Three European countries, France, Germany, and Spain have suffered embarrassing World Cup losses. The French team in particular has appeared to be in complete disarray. Their combined record to this point is just 2-3-1 (W-L-T).
What do these three countries have in common? None of them have purchased translation rights for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. Meanwhile, the seven countries with current or forthcoming editions (the US, Brazil, Portugal, England, Italy, Japan, and South Korea) have a combined record of 5-2-7.
I think the lesson here is clear: translation rights for Spanish, French…
drorzel | June 20, 2010There's a blog post making the rounds of the science blogosphere titled If Sports Got Reported Like Science, which imagines the effect of applying the perceived restriction on scientific terminology to sports reporting:
HOST: In sports news, Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti today heavily criticised a controversial offside decision which denied Didier Drogba a late equaliser, leaving Chelsea with a 1-all draw against Sunderland.
INTERCOM: Wait. Hold it. What was all that sports jargon?
HOST: It's just what's in the script. All I did was read it - I've got no idea what it's really on about.…
drorzel | June 20, 2010Friday's games showcased everything that makes international soccer maddening for Americans to watch: dreadful officiating, lack of scoring, and annoyingly conservative strategy. The referee in the Germany-Serbia game handed out cards like it was a poker tournament, with the result that, in the second half, every time two players got within about a meter of each other, both fell down, figuring it was about 50-50 that he would call something.
The cavalcade of cards eventually got German striker Miroslav Klose thrown out (for a nothing little tackle), so Germany spent the last hour or so of the…
grrlscientist | June 18, 2010tags: FuÃball, sports, soccer, futbol, World Cup Soccer, Germany, Australia, Lego, silly, satire, humor, funny, television, streaming video
This video shows the highlights from Germany's 4-0 thrashing of Australia. Like the others being created in this ongoing series, it's quite accurate, even though all the players are made of Lego!
grrlscientist | June 17, 2010tags: FuÃball, sports, soccer, futbol, World Cup Soccer, Niederlande, Dänemark, Lego, silly, satire, humor, funny, television, streaming video
This hilarious video satire is surprisingly well-done. It shows a clip from the Netherlands versus Denmark game.
grrlscientist | June 17, 2010tags: FuÃball, sports, soccer, futbol, World Cup Soccer, USA, England, Lego, silly, satire, humor, funny, television, streaming video
This hilarious video satire is surprisingly well-done. It shows a clip from the USA versus England World Cup game. (This is a great video for those who didn't see the game since this video shows the highlights).
grrlscientist | June 16, 2010tags: Black Market Soccer, sports, soccer, futbol, World Cup Soccer, human trafficking, slavery, documentary, investigative reporting, television, streaming video
Sadly, slavery is not dead after all. This video shows a scene from the documentary "Soccer's Lost Boys." In this video, correspondent Mariana van Zeller goes undercover to explore the last, desperate hope of young West African players living illegally in Paris: a pick-up game with sketchy middle-men who try to sell the players to outside agents.
The reason that FIFA, the governing body of the sport, has decided to hold the World…
drorzel | June 16, 2010So, how do things stand with the Uncertain Principles World Cup Contest at the end of the first round?
We have completed the first set of 16 group play games, and to this point, we have 6 ties. Extrapolating from that to the final result (because, of course, you always start with a linear extrapolation) you would expect a total of 24 tie games. The contest also asked for the total number of goals in the tournament, for use as a tiebreaker (since we can't make commenters do penalty kicks), and there have been 25 goals scored to date, which extrapolates to 100 for the final total.
In the naive…
drorzel | June 15, 2010We're several days into the World Cup now, and I have just about settled on my rooting strategy for countries I have no personal connection to: I'm going to root for countries where we've sold the rights for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog over countries where the rights haven't been sold yet.
This is a good strategy for producing a mix of teams-- I get to root for both Brazil and Portugal, for example, and also underdogs like Japan and South Korea-- but it has one major flaw: we've sold Italian rights. And I find it really hard to root for Italy, one of the flopping-est, whining-est,…
drorzel | June 11, 2010This was supposed to go up earlier, but it turns out that thinking you selected "Scheduled" in the MT back end is not, in fact, enough to schedule the post to appear. So this is showing up after games have already begun, but nothing of consequence has happened yet, so it's no biggie.
Anyway, the soccer World Cup has begun, making this one of the rare summers with sporting events worth watching on television. And time for the quadrennial spectacle of Americans pretending to know/care about soccer.
So, anyway, there's a big tournament going on, and it seems only fair to offer space to discuss…