Archive for September, 2010

Calvin Johnson catch: Another silly NFL rule

Monday, September 13, 2010 by:Vlae Kershner

Oakland Raiders fans still burning about the tuck rule have some company today, after the Detroit Lions were victimized Sunday by another silly NFL rule.

With 24 seconds to go and the Lions trailing the Chicago Bears 19-14, Lions’ receiver Calvin Johnson got two feet, a knee and his rear end down with the ball in the end zone, but the ball hit the ground after he rolled over. The verdict: He didn’t maintain possession through the completion of the play. No catch. The Bears hung on to win, handing the hapless Lions their 21st consecutive road defeat.
Former NFL officiating supervisor Mike Pereira explains the call here (the play starts at 1:04):

Many fans were outraged: Gather.com blogger Keith Testa wrote:

NFL rules state that a player must complete the “process” of the catch, meaning Johnson had to maintain possession after landing on the ground, crochet a sweater for his grandmother, whip up a pot of chili and pick up the kids after school before the pass was rule complete.

Even fans in Chicago think it should have been a catch, with 80 percent voting that way in a Chicago Tribune poll.

Some writers think the refs got it wrong, but the more common opinion is that they were right but the rule is stupid. According to Matt Snyder, a referee who writes Zebra Report on NFL Fanhouse:

No, that’s absolutely not a catch by letter of the rulebook and casebook. Not only is the rule clear that the receiver completes the catch by holding the ball throughout the act of falling to the ground (not just while falling to the ground), but there are examples in the casebook that back up the ruling of this play.
Basically, I agree with the masses that it should have been a catch and touchdown, but the angst of those directed at the officiating crew is misguided. It should be at the NFL rules committee.

By the way, if you Google “Calvin Johnson catch,” you also find this amazing play from his Georgia Tech days. Calvin would probably prefer you watch this one.

San Bruno CA explosion raises questions of gas pipeline safety

Friday, September 10, 2010 by:Vlae Kershner

The natural gas line explosion that struck San Bruno, CA last night, killing at least four, is a rare but not unheard of failure from the pressure cooker of lines that run across the nation.

Marketwatch reported: “Over the past two decades, there have been 846 ‘significant’ accidents from onshore gas transmission, resulting in 33 fatalities, 173 injuries and $757 million in property damage, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.”

A firefighter stands atop an engine to survey the fire in San Bruno, CA, after a gas line explosion on Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010. (Brant Ward, San Francisco Chronicle)

In perhaps the most infamous incident, on August 19, 2000, corrosion of a 30-inch diameter natural gas pipeline caused a major explosion in Carlsbad, N.M., killing a dozen people, including four children, who were camping under a bridge that supported the pipeline over the Pecos River.
The cause of the PG&E explosion in the San Francisco middle-income suburb of San Bruno is not known. PG&E is checking reports that neighbors had reported a gas smell to the utility in recent weeks, and an engineering professor told KCBS that corrosion in a 24-inch transmission line was a possible source. (UPDATE: News sources put the size of the line at 30 inches).

A Wikipedia list of gas line accidents shows about 20 explosions that have caused fatalities in the U.S. over the last 40 years. While the gas industry says its safety record is outstanding compared to other means of transportation, industry observers told the Washington Independent that federal oversight by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is weak.

Google Instant: Quit reading my mind!

Thursday, September 9, 2010 by:Scott Sunde

And now for the people who don’t have enough excitement in their lives.

You can try to see whether Google, which will apparently soon rule the world, can also read your mind.

The uber power introduced Google Instant on Thursday.

Type a letter, and results start spitting out.

I typed “I,” and there was Ikea. Sorry, Ingemar, I don’t need furniture.

“A” brought up Amazon. But who needs a book? After all reading takes, like, time.

“B” was Bank of America. Good idea, if this keeps up I’m going to need a loan.

“C” was for Craigslist.

“D” was for dictionary. I’m out of money and need to find a word that means “crass commercialism.”

The Official Google Blog promises: “As you can imagine, searching even before someone types isn’t easy—which is why we are so excited today to be unveiling Google Instant. Google Instant is search-before-you-type. Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.”

Here’s the official promo from Google:

At 44, Star Trek has lived long and prospered

Wednesday, September 8, 2010 by:Dwight Silverman

On Sept. 8, 1966, NBC aired the first episode of what it touted as a science fiction series for adults. Star Trek went on to air for only three seasons, but grew into a towering TV and film franchise and a cultural touchstone that transcends generations.

The first episode aired on a Thursday night and was called The Man Trap, and TV viewers were introduced to characters who would become iconic. You can watch the full episode on YouTube, and here’s the teaser NBC ran to entice viewers to watch the first installment:

The episode that aired 44 years ago was actually not the original pilot. The Cage had a substantially different cast – the captain of the Enterprise was Christopher Pike, played by Jeffrey Hunter – and was initially rejected by the network as being “too cerebral”:

A second pilot was commissioned, this time with William Shatner playing Captain James T. Kirk, but that installment – Where No Man Has Gone Before – became the third episode of the first season.

Now, you may think Star Trek is little more than a geek obsession, but consider this: The original series spawned a total of seven feature films and five additional TV series (including one that was animated), as well as a slew of novels, video games, toys and other spin-offs. Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but estimates on the Web put the value of the the Star Trek franchise at around $4 billion.

Lines from the series have become catch phrases – “He’s dead, Jim!”, “Beam me up, Scotty”, “I’m a doctor, not a . . . ” and “Live long and prosper”.That a 44-year-old TV series that featured hokey acting, cheesy sets and wince-worthy special effects would have such longevity is, as Spock would say, highly illogical. But Star Trek has boldly gone where no TV franchise has gone before . . . or since.

Lady Gaga wears raw meat bikini, risks E. coli outbreak

Tuesday, September 7, 2010 by:Mike Moffitt

Is that filet mignon or brisket?

What are we to make of Lady Gaga?

One day she’s requesting Yves vegan hot dogs in a concert rider, and the next she’s wearing a raggedy dress of butcher trimmings for a magazine cover.

On the September cover of Vogue Hommes Japan, the provocative singer dons an ensemble of thinly sliced cuts of presumably prime beef (kobe?) that barely covers her body.

PETA, which once asked Gaga to pose nude for an anti-fur campaign, seems to be taking the incident in stride.

“Oh, Lady Gaga’s job is to do outlandish things, and this certainly qualifies as outlandish because meat is something you want to avoid putting on or in your body,” PETA’s president, Ingrid Newkirk, told the New York Daily News.

If, however, you are not vegetarian and do happen to eat meat once worn by Lady Gaga, be sure to cook it thoroughly and use a meat thermometer to make sure it reaches an internal temperature of at least 160 degrees.

And don’t even think about steak tartare.

In the flesh: Lady Gaga dons raw meat on cover of Vogue Hommes Japan (NY Daily News)

All-meat fashion plate

Woman gets stuck in boyfriend’s chimney after he refuses to let her in

Tuesday, September 7, 2010 by:Kristi Gustafson Barlette

(AP photo/The Bakersfield Californian, Felix Adamo)

Another bizarre-0 story for you. This one is about a woman who went to visit her on-again, off-again boyfriend two days before they were to take a trip to the Netherlands. He wasn’t feeling her visit, so he refused to let her inside and escaped out the backdoor.

She banged on the door with a shovel and, when that didn’t work, went all Santa Claus on his butt and tried getting in his house through the chimney.

Since chimneys aren’t actually designed to be human transportation paths, the woman got herself stuck. Her quasi-boyfriend didn’t return till the next day and, when he saw her car and handbag, but not her, he reported her missing.

The police stopped by, saw (and smelled) nothing, and left.

A few days later a friend came by to feed the man’s fish. Something seemed fishy and it wasn’t coming from the tank. The pet sitter poked her head up in the chimney and saw the missing woman — stinky, dripping fluids and dead from lack of oxygen.

Want to read the rest of this crazy story? You can do so here.

U.S. Open fight — ‘Hey, Security!’

Friday, September 3, 2010 by:Vlae Kershner

Here’s something you wouldn’t see at Wimbledon–a fight in the upper stands at U.S. Open tennis on Thursday evening during the featured match between Serbia’s Novak Djokovic and Germany’s Philipp Petzschner. It starts with a woman fan becoming incensed over the f-bombs a male fan was throwing around and getting into an argument with him, complete with exaggerated gestures.

After about a minute, an older man, who the New York Post said was the woman’s father, got her out of the way and threw a punch (at 1:09). The younger man fought back and landed on top of him, at which point the brawl is on. It takes 30 seconds before security personnel respond to the calls of “HEY, SECURITY!” and restore order.

“It’s a hot night in New York. Things happen,” Chris Widmaier, a US Tennis Association spokesman said.

The fracas delayed the match for a few minutes. When everything got back to normal, Djokovic continued his straight-set victory. No arrests were made. As the YouTube videographer says, “Fuggedaboutit!”

UPDATE: For a bit of fun from Djokovic, check out his post-match comment about why he didn’t hit a Roger Federer-style between-the-legs shot when he had the chance.

Stephen Hawking, belief in God and the multiverse

Friday, September 3, 2010 by:Chris Preovolos

Physicist Stephen Hawking is certainly not the first scientist to dismiss thousands of years of religious belief, but he’s the latest. And he’s got a new book.

Hawking and Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow, in “The Grand Design,” tackle questions both scientific and philosophical, exploring man’s understanding of how life came to be.

The authors argue that physics, and specifically a derivation of string theory called M-theory, can explain the beginning of the so-called multiverse, making God immaterial to the equation.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” says Hawking. “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.

“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

Accepting the idea that M-theory can give an explanation for why life exists is probably a leap of faith in itself, unless you are as smart as Hawking.

Others remain skeptical, including Craig Callendar, a philosophy professor at the University of California, San Diego:

M-theory in either sense is far from complete. But that doesn’t stop the authors from asserting that it explains the mysteries of existence: why there is something rather than nothing, why this set of laws and not another, and why we exist at all. According to Hawking, enough is known about M-theory to see that God is not needed to answer these questions. Instead, string theory points to the existence of a multiverse, and this multiverse coupled with anthropic reasoning will suffice. Personally, I am doubtful. (New Scientist)

Either way, it’s pretty good buzz for a book launch.

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