Once the seem­ingly sole domain of annoy­ing tweens at your local shop­ping mall, it seems push-scooters have actu­ally become kewl.

Thanks to the likes of Ryan Wil­li­ams, the ages-old tricks occupy­ing the skat­ing world (along with some awe­some new ones) have been invoked and updated for use with this rel­at­ively new craze.

Check out Ryan Wil­li­ams in action, below…

Any­one else here feel­ing slightly old and past it?

Japan­ese Bin­ocu­lar Soccer

Another rol­lick­ing phys­ics demon­stra­tion from Japan­ese TV

By Adam Weiner Pos­ted 11.13.2008 at 10:27 am

I was very pleased to find out about the exist­ence of “bin­ocu­lar soc­cer”. It’s a whim­sical, silly romp, another mani­fest­a­tion of that dis­tinctly Japan­ese sense of humor. Check out “human Tet­ris” for another delight in the same genre. The inher­ent dif­fi­culty of play­ing this game has much to do with fun­da­mental prin­ciples of optics.

Why is it so hard to kick the ball? Because your eyes per­ceive the image of the ball to be in a dif­fer­ent loc­a­tion than it actu­ally is. Bin­ocu­lars are basic­ally two tele­scopes moun­ted side by side. Each bar­rel in a pair of bin­ocu­lars has two lenses — an object­ive lens (the one closest to the object being viewed), and a second lens called the eyepiece.

Bin­ocu­lars mag­nify rel­at­ively dis­tant objects. This is how it’s done: The object­ive lens gath­ers light com­ing from the object being viewed. This light is refrac­ted so that an image of the object is formed inside the focal length of the eye­piece. This image is very small, but because it forms inside the eyepiece’s focal length, the eye­piece acts just like a mag­ni­fy­ing glass. Look­ing through the bin­ocu­lars, your eyes per­ceive a final enlarged image in front of where the object actu­ally is. Notice how the play­ers always seem to miss the ball by kick­ing too far in front. That’s where they see it.

Japan­ese Bin­ocu­lar Soccer

This walk­way now serves as an aproach to Makino­dromo, the fam­ous climb­ing sec­tor of El Chorro in Spain’s Andalu­cia. And it is the hair­i­est path. The area of El Chorro situ­ated in the south of Spain is renowned amongst trav­el­ers and moun­tain hikers for its stun­ning scenery and climbs, yet this is not the main attrac­tion on offer, El Chorro is host to one of the most dan­ger­ous walk­ways in the world, built by work­ers to trans­port mater­i­als between the Chorro and Gaitanejo Falls.

El Chorro

Source: http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/scariest_path.html

…to F*ck up a party.

(more…)

…some­thing other than a World Cup final.

Too gross!

Paris — North Korea’s foot­ballers risk being sent to the coal mines, while Nigeria get slapped with a two-year ban from inter­na­tional football.

England’s World Cup flops should count them­selves lucky that their most press­ing con­cern is trial by tabloid.

On their arrival home the North Korean squad was described as ‘stony-faced’, which could be a bad sign given what former national coach Moon Ki-Nam told report­ers after the 7–0 group stage humi­li­ation by Portugal.

What made it worse was that it was beamed live into the reclus­ive Com­mun­ist state after they had per­formed respect­ably in a 2–1 defeat by five-time cham­pi­ons Brazil in their open­ing match.

“The play­ers and coach are rewar­ded with huge houses when they win,” said Moon, who fled the coun­try in 2004.

“But they have to atone for los­ing by being sent to work in the coal mines.”

There have been legendary tales down the years of the treat­ment meted out to foot­ball fail­ures under unscru­pu­lous regimes.

The late Uday Hus­sein, son of the former Iraqi dic­tator Sad­dam, had novel ways of pun­ish­ing Iraqi play­ers who did not come up to scratch.

Hussein’s favour­ite pun­ish­ment meth­ods reportedly included flog­ging with an elec­tric cable or being forced to take a bath in raw sewage.

Nigeria flopped at the World Cup, fin­ish­ing bot­tom of their group in South Africa with just one point from three matches. They lost to Argen­tina and Greece and drew with South Korea.

On Wed­nes­day, Nigeria Pres­id­ent Good­luck Jonathan banned the national team from inter­na­tional com­pet­i­tion for two years fol­low­ing their dis­mal showing.

France’s chaotic first-round exit promp­ted French Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion Pres­id­ent Jean-Pierre Escal­ettes to step down.

Escal­ettes and coach Ray­mond Dome­nech have also been called to appear before a par­lia­ment­ary commission.

Pun­ish­ment and retri­bu­tion come in many forms.

The most poignant was the fate that befell Colombia’s Andres Esco­bar, whose own goal in the 1994 World Cup clash with the United States led to a sur­prise defeat and the fan­cied South Amer­ic­ans exit­ing at the first hurdle.

On his return home, Esco­bar was gunned down, the vic­tim of a con­tract killing ordered by gang­sters who blamed the defender for cost­ing them huge bet­ting losses on the tournament.

http://www.sport24.co.za/Soccer/WorldCup/TournamentNews/And-you-thought-you-had-it-bad-20100701

It’s a GAME people!?