Category: Useless knowledge

Information you have no need for. Ever. Usually about me, but possibly about other trivial crap in the world.

Dan Gilmor’s comment on the Floyd Landis Tour de France drug uproar

I agree with Dan here – I don’t care if athletes are using drugs.

But for the cycling world, Thursday’s announcement was a measure of achievement. Cycling is doing more to test its biggest stars at its biggest event than most other professional sports. The depressing news of Landis’ drug test is a reminder that the entire professional sports world should be doing more to catch cheaters.

The real story here is not what our media watchdogs and sports authorities say. It’s blatant, gross hypocrisy.

Right now I’m using a performance-enhancing drug, which I need to function well. It’s called caffeine, and is part of the coffee I drink each morning.

Later I’ll use a drug that helps me relax. It’s called alcohol, and it comes in the wine I’ll drink with dinner.

Drug laws are insane enough. Sports drug bans are beyond hypocritical, because they punish one kind of enhancement while pretending that all others are okay.

I don’t care at all if professional athletes use drugs. They have already been modified in all kinds of other ways — such as diets, blatantly unhealthy, that turn pro football linemen into people the size of large refrigerators.

As I said, I agree with him. I’m not bothered by professional athletes taking drugs and I’m not been bothered by college athletes getting paid. People complain that this will result in the biggest colleges always having the best athletic programs, but why is it so wrong for colleges when pro sports have it (NY Yankees, anyone)?

[tags]Dan Gillmor on Tour de France drug ruckus, Athletes and drugs – so what?[/tags]

New Wii games, pink DS Lite announced

Again with the pink console thing.  I get liking pink, but why all the pink consoles?  That’s the thing I don’t get.  Regardless, Nintendo has announced more games for the Wii as well as announcing a pink DS Lite for Europe on October 27th.  What still has not been announced is a price.

Nintendo announced a new Mario sports title for the Wii, called Mario Strikers Charged (working title). The sequel to Super Mario Strikers is likely to make full use of the Wii controller–the game is playable at Leipzig, and GameSpot will bring you more information as soon as we can. German footballer Philipp Lahm was featured in a video to promote the game, and it was demonstrated on stage by a Germany TV star.

Battalion Wars 2 for the Wii was also announced and will be playable on Nintendo’s stand at Leipzig. Very few details of the game have been released, although Nintendo did say that it was abbreviated to BWii. The original Battalion Wars was released on the GameCube in late 2005.

[tags]Nintendo, Wii, Nintendo Wii, Battalion Wars 2, Mario Strikers Charged[/tags]

PS2 gets pink and price drop, PSP to follow in color

Joystiq has mention of the current price drop for the PS2, from $149.99 to $129.99. pinkps2_sitting.jpgTo go with this, it seems Sony is releasing a pink model (at least, in Europe). I don’t get the draw of pink, but it worked for the RAZR phone, and I’m guessing it will work for the PS2. On top of this, it seems a pink PSP is in the future as well (again, at least in Europe).

Oddly, shortly after these posts were made on Joystiq, there was a post discussing the ever-important question of why there aren’t more female gamers? I was worried that I would read the article to find that companies thought it was because there weren’t enough pink consoles. Fortunately, I was wrong – instead, the lack of female developers gets the blame.

pinkpsp.jpg

Set for release in Europe only – at the time of writing – the limited edition pink PlayStation 2 will hit shelves on November 8 this year, bundled with two pink DualShock controllers and a pink Memory Card.

. . .

The pink PlayStation 2 will retail at €159.99 across coutries united by one glorious currency, while the UK can expect to fork out £129.99. Us Brit-types do get a copy of SingStar Pop bundled with the whole shebang, however.

. . .

Set for release on October 27 in Europe only, the P!nk PSP Value Pack will cost €229, or £169. Anyone picking up the pack will gain access to exclusive P!nk-related downloads, courtesy of Sony’s YourPSP.com service.

The mention of P!nk-related downloads refers to the collaboration with the artist Pink, by the way. So it looks like buying a pink PSP will get you some music by Pink to go with it. We’ll see how that all pans out when the Pink console is released closer to the end of the year.

[tags]Sony goes pink, Pink PS2, Pink PSP[/tags]

Wal-Mart Image-builder resigns

(via Blue’s News)

Here is a case of someone saying something they shouldn’t have said.  And it comes from the kind of person you wouldn’t expect to say this kind of thing.  So, here are the comments made by the man Wal-Mart recently hired to help build a better image for the company.

“You see those are the people who have been overcharging us,” he said of the owners of the small stores, “and they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs.”

Wow.  Not the thing you’d expect to hear from someone trying to help build a better image for a company with as bad an image as Wal-Mart.  So, who is this outstanding symbol of good image and what did he do about it?

Mr. Young, 74, a former mayor of Atlanta and a former United States representative to the United Nations, apologized for the comments and retracted them in an interview last night.

Well, that’s one way, I suppose.  But really, why would he say this?  I mean, he had to have a reason, right?  Context matters, I’m betting.  It was probably mis-interpreted.  So here’s what he had to say after the fact.  The clues that all was not as it seems.

“It’s against everything I ever thought in my life,” Mr. Young said. “It never should have been said. I was speaking in the context of Atlanta, and that does not work in New York or Los Angeles.”

OK, so he doesn’t think Jews, Koreans or Arabs are bad all over – it’s just the Jews, Koreans, and Arabs in Atlanta.  Damn, that’s some serious foot-in-mouth disease he’s got going on.

[tags]Wal-Mart, Image-building, Hating on the foreigners[/tags]

Irish technology development company conquers laws of thermodynamics

(via Engadget)
The Irish technology development company Steorn claims to have created a device which generates more power than it consumes.  Naturally, this hails the end of the oil dependence under which most of the world suffers.  Steorn is so confident in their little device that they have challenged a dozen of the world’s greatest scientists (as chosen by Steorn) to evaluate their product and attempt to disprove the limitless energy claim.

Now personally, I’m expecting an announcement that this technology is 5 to 10 years from shipping.  Around 2010, if the company is still around, we will hear that there are developmental delays, and *now* the product is 5 to 10 years from shipping.  Then, around 2016 to 2018, we’ll hear that the final problems have been worked out, and that the product will be available in 5 to 10 years.  And then the company will fade away.  But that’s just the pessimist in me.

More likely, the device will ship and then be used for the compression system that can compress arbitrary data a minimum of 10%.  With these two devices, we’ll be able to power the world and all data will be transmitted as one bit which will be perfectly decompressed and displayed on the receiving system (provided it has Steorn’s limitless energy supply device and the ultimate compression system from whoever is making that claim when the Steorn device doesn’t actually ship).

[tags]True perpetual energy, Limitless energy courtesy of Mac (inside joke), Steorn promises to end energy worries worldwide[/tags]

Too serious? Where’s the fun?

There’s been a lot going on in the world of a serious nature.  Generally, I avoid serious stuff and just let fly with the fun.  But I’ve spent a lot of time reading about and writing about the whole liquid explosive threat and recent terrorist worries in general.  I’ll get back to more light-hearted fare soon.  The latest events though touch a nerve with me, and I want to write and discuss more about the need for balance and what is not being handled well in my view.  Sometimes, when I really care about what is going on, I tend to get really focused on it.  I promise you’ll start seeing less serious posting here in the very near future.

Google’s flash of insight

(via Dan Gilmor’s blog)

I’m stealing Dan Gilmor’s whole post.  It’s only interesting because of his comment on the situation:

————–

The Independent: To google or not to google? It’s a legal question: But the California-based company is becoming concerned about trademark violation. A spokesman confirmed that it had sent the letters. “We think it’s important to make the distinction between using the word Google to describe using Google to search the internet, and using the word Google to describe searching the internet. It has some serious trademark issues.”

There’s a great idea: Force people to stop reinforcing your brand. Sounds like Google has too many lawyers…

————–

[tags]Google working to stop people from using term Google[/tags]

Transparent face mask?

OK, this one just baffles me. Over at the Modern Mechanix blog, there is an old advertisement for a transparent face mask from the March 1940 issue of Popular Science magazine. Looking at the ad, all I can see is a plastic bag which someone put on a chicks head. Haven’t we spent our entire lives being told not to put plastic bags on our heads due to danger of suffocation? And isn’t putting a plastic bag over a woman’s head something more likely to be done by a serial murderer? And why is this woman smiling?

Transparent Face Mask
Slipped over the head, a bag of cellulose tissue designed for use in skiing and other outdoor sports offers protection for the face without interfering with vision. The transparent mask can also be used as a shower cap, an apron, a tray cover, and a turban, the makers say.

[tags]Modern Mechanix, Transparent face mask?[/tags]

Worrying about the baby

I posted this image once before, on a version of this site hosted with another provider.  It’s gone now, since the host went away and I wasn’t smart enough to maintain backups at that time.  Since this has recently been getting mention again elsewhere on the web, I thought I’d post it again.  And this time, I do keep backups of my site, so I’m not worried about losing it this time.

A good write-up on the article and a check on whether or not it is real can be found at Snopes.

[tags]Jackhammer noise bad for baby, Is it the noise that she should worry about?[/tags]

Is that a bear pumping gas?

Well, I somehow doubt that it was actually necessary to put in the caption that this isn’t a real bear, but here’s a Modern Mechanix short from the December 1931 issue of Modern Mechanix magazine.

Bear Skin Garb Boosts Gas Sales
TO ADD to the scenic effects of his gas emporium, a garage owner in Thurin-gia, Germany, has bedecked himself in a bear skin. Thus he is able to provide his customers with both amusement and engine juice, to say nothing of the extra remuneration which accrues to himself in the deal.

[tags]Modern Mechanix, A bear pumping gas?, Ideas for drumming up business[/tags]