Category: Rants and Raves

Meet the best women soccer players on the planet

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These are the smartest players in the world. They will destroy you. Watching them move the ball is better than poetry.

And we hung out with them on Wednesday.

Literally. Even though the official roster for the United States Women’s National Soccer Team has just recently been announced, we were lucky enough to host a friendly with Japan at the Cary soccer park, right here in town – and we were 15 feet from the field! And after they shredded on the field for an hour and a half, they came over to hang out with their fans and sign autographs. The US Women’s National Soccer Team been doing this for decades. They are truly amazing people.

Don’t miss this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, starting in Germany on June 26th. 16 teams battle it out towards the final match on July 17.

Here’s Amy Rodriguez (who scored the first goal of the 2-0 victory) and Abby Wambach (my personal hero) signing Wren and Reiley’s jerseys. Holy crap.






8.5 Rise Against: Endgame

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I didn’t think I could ever warm up to this kind of over-produced hard rock.

Even if it is labelled punk rock. PUNK?? What the… cmon this is NOT PUNK. This is fast-paced arena rock. It has NOTHING TO DO WITH PUNK ROCK. Thin Lizzy was writing this stuff years before the Clash existed.

But something about it caught my attention. Lyrical strenth. So i wikied the band. And discovered truth. Straight-edge vegan truth. Rockin! So I opened up and listened. And the lyrics don’t get any stronger. The videos are inspiring. And once I got that far, it became most excellent running music – I ran the hardest few miles of my life on this stuff yesterday.

So I guess I have to let it be lumped in with other dispensers of truth – like my favorites, Consolidated, who have spun into outer orbit. Oh yeah! Truth comes in many strange forms. :>

FIFA’s reward for overworked refs? “Go Home.”

~ m ~ 1 Comment

FIFA refuses to come out of the stone age, instead preferring futbol to be refereed by one human being guaranteed to make mistakes – mistakes that the world can watch in gorgeous hi-def slow motion, over and over, seconds after they occur. Players perpetually dive and shove and take cheap shots behind the ref’s back, unashamed of the camera catching their every move, simply because it pays off – the fans may boo, but the play goes on in their favor, and the only one clueless to the truth is the poor overworked referee.
Poorly distributed cards aside, the number of bad calls at this year’s World Cup has been staggering, with the most well-known errors leading to an incorrect score. Even before the World Cup began, complaints regarding the famous French handball that knocked Ireland out of qualifying were at a din. During, the US were mysteriously stripped of a winning goal against Slovania without explanation, England was denied a critical goal that was a yard inside the net, and Argentina was given a goal against Mexico when it was clear to everyone that their man was offside. These kind of errors not only change the actual score, but provide a mental blow that certainly further affects the outcome. And don’t even get me started on the red cards, apparently distributed randomly as the lone referee grapples with maintaining control.
The most shameful thing that FIFA has done is scapegoat the referees. All three refs that made the goal errors have been sent home, as well as another that sent off Kaka after some ridiculous Ivory Coast acting. Talk about not fixing the problem. Until FIFA adds more referees, implements goal-line technology, and generally decides that truth is better than drama, they will be ON MY LIST. :P

spectrial round 1, over

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Even if had money, I would rather burn everything I owned,
and not even give them, you know, the final dust from the burning, so…
(Anna: the ashes) Yeah, the ashes.
(Anna: not even the ashes) No, not even the ashes.
They could pick them up, and then give them to someone else.
They could have the job of picking it up.
That’s what I think about that media industry.

— Peter Sunde

UPDATE: …and round 2 has begun… unbelievable…

Live 2008 Olympics coverage

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I can’t seem to find much Olympics coverage on TV. NBC apparently has the exclusive broadcast rights in the US. They’re showing a few hours a night, mostly previously recorded. 1000 cable channels, loaded with junk, and they can’t take over 3 or 4 to give at least some tiny modicum of coverage?

UPDATE: I’ve found lots of information at http://www.nbcolympics.com. You just have to dig in a little bit. I have just shed a tear watching the U.S. women’s soccer team score against New Zealand in the FIRST MINUTE. A long shot from Heather O’Reilly while the keeper was snoozing. Absolutely beautiful.

Check my next post for women’s soccer info.

So… all these ugly “workarounds” are no longer necessary:

  • http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Watch_the_Olympics_Online
  • http://www.sportizo.com/sports/olympics/
  • http://www.mightyfootball.com/category/beijing-olympic-2008-football/
  • http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/08/how-to-watch-the-olympics-live.html
  • http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/08/viewers-eager-t.html

UPDATE 2018: There’s a great story on becoming an Olympic athlete, on Jen Reviews.

Plan 101

~ m ~ 2 Comments

How do you organize your life? In the past I’ve entertained the thought that the important tasks rise to the top like cream, and there’s no reason to waste time shuffling todo lists when that time could otherwise be put to productive use – oh the irony! There’s truth to that – you can’t be anal about every possible task you have. But… I HAVE TOO MUCH I WANT TO DO. I don’t want to be the jellyfish caught in the tide of life. I am pretty good at “not catching the ball” when it’s not the right thing to do, but I want a system that helps me be laser-precise in applying my limited resources. It just happens to be the time for that “sequence” in my life – no one is driven like a man in his 40’s. The requirements of the perfect task planning system:

  • responsive, intuitive – i.e., FAST task-calendar flip
  • quickly offload tasks from memory – i.e., available anywhere

UPDATE: Chandler is the current champ, and I got it working through a proxy, so I’ll give it a good strong thrubbing.

Continue reading “Plan 101” →

9.5 What Is Your Dangerous Idea?

~ m ~ 18 Comments

I wasn’t far from throwing this book in the trash at times. Essay after essay from scientists condemning “God” as the dangerous idea that stands as the blockade to mankind and her progress. Blah blah blah. Be devoted to science, and the scientific method of discovery, but don’t be one-dimensional, dogmatic and closed-minded. There will always be more to life than what we can reverse-engineer. Continue reading “9.5 What Is Your Dangerous Idea?” →