Short and sweet article on the new football used in this year’s games. Basically, the ball was designed to frustrate goalies and produce higher-scoring games. It’s essentially designed to behave like a baseball; slow the rotation and the stability goes to hell. It’s interesting to note that, so far, the games have been scoring in the normal range. Of course, the first game that goes 6-0 will raise some eyebrows.
[via Digg]
ESPN’s site for the World Cup doesn’t work in Firefox. The entire site is driven by a DHTML drop-down menus which disappear whenever you move your mouse to choose something. So most of their content is locked away behind a menuing system that (I’m guessing) was designed with only Internet Explorer in mind. I don’t have time to debug their site, but I’m assuming it’s broken in other browsers as well.
Nice work ESPN, guess I’ll head back over to Fox Sports. Their coverage isn’t as good, but at they don’t lock me out of their content because my browser doesn’t work.
Robin van Persie took Arjen Robben to task for the one-man show Robben decided to put on Sunday. Robben, who did have the games only goal, was virtually unaware that other teams members were actually on the field at points, choosing instead to take low-percentage, high-risk shots on goal. The Dutch, long known for solid team and precision play, played Robben’s game this past week. Serbia and Montenegro made it a nail biter in the second hald as they took advantage of Robben’s new-found solo career but didn’t manage to get the equalizer.
Hopefully the coach means it when he says that he means to balance the play. They have Ivory Coast to polish up their play before the Oranje play Argentina on the 21st. Hopefully this isn’t the beginning of another bickering Dutch team.
Dutch dissent as Van Persie criticises Robben
Back to more mundane topics, the House of Representatives today voted against Internet neutrality. Why should you care? Because now your Internet Service Provider (ISP), which is often given a monopoly by your local government, can choose not to deliver certain kinds of content.
Say you have SBC as your ISP. They get into a dispute with eBay over something that SBC doesn’t want sold (say a modem that can be modified to allow faster web surfing) and eBay refuses to pull auctions for that modem. SBC can now, legally, give preferential service to an eBay competitor. They can also block access to eBay, if they so choose. Read that again. A phone company can legally block traffic to any site they want.
This will, of course, be sold as a “for the children” measure; your ISP can protect your kids from the evil porn sites. But this law didn’t start this way. It started as a pissing match between telephone companies, who missed the boat on providing Internet service, and the big players like Google and eBay who have built their businesses on the backbone of a free and open Internet. Your representatives (which, I have to say, voted almost straight down party lines, mostly Republicans voting for more laws) have put this on you. You no longer have the right to choose what content you get via the Internet. Thanks to government mandated monopolies, you can’t even choose a different ISP.
Remember this the next time you vote. Did you ask your representative to take away your rights? Because that’s exactly what they did today.
House rejects Net neutrality rules
Have to scroll down a bit. Thanks to Comcast for not partnering with anyone to provide expanded coverage. You do know that this is the largest sproting event in the world, right? (That’s right, America, Super Bowl isn’t the biggest.)
soccerTV.com
Ah, Flickr is going to be an endless source of entertainment for the games. Check out this Dutch fan. Better yet, check out the Oranje photo pool.
Hup Holland!
It’s finally here and once again the Oranje are set to face Argentina (although not until June 21).
As always, one of the best places for World Cup coverage is the BBC. Their World Cup page is here and you can download a PDF wallchart here.
Of course, for all the latest, check out The Official Site of FIFA World Cup site. More posts to come.
This is an open question to any of any conservative: How can anyone support someone who says about the widows of people killed on 9/11 “these women got paid, they ought to take their money and shut up about it.”
Right. The widows have profited from the deaths of their husbands. I’m sure that whatever money they received more than compensated for losing their husbands. Ann Coulter does one thing well: she hates very, very well. The marketing obviously works because I’m giving her press. But the inconceivable idiocy of this woman has reached a level that makes one’s head spin. If you call yourself a Christian, a Conservative, or a Republican and support this tripe, you are just as she is: the worst this society can produce.
Tune in next when Coulter calls for Arabs to wear a patch sown to their clothing. If anyone should shut up, I think we know who that should be.
For a nice breakdown about why Ann is a flaming idiot, read this Crooks and Liars article about Keith Olbermann’s breakdown of the evil this woman has unleashed.
Mothers have induced the births of their children to avoid the day. Hell is having a party. But is it really 6/6/06 today, or did we miss it by 4 years? Is 666 even the number we should fear, or is it 616?
Whatever is going on today, you can be sure that one movie is insanely glad for the bruhaha.
Seniors at a Maine high school released 10 goslings and 45 chicks into their school as prank. School administrators freaked out and closed the school. My favorite line?
When students arrived, they were taken to the school gym, which had been sterilized, before being sent home.
Which had been sterilized?! How do you sterilize a gym, exactly? And do it in less then 2 hours, since the first teacher to report the birds came in a 6am, and I’m guessing some enterprising students showed up around 7:15. That’s an impressive feat.
I remember senior pranks getting pretty crazy when I was in high school, but never did I hear of the school even considering closing over one of them. The last bit of overreaction? A court date is still being considered.