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Some snapshots from the mass Brazilian protests (and an explanation)

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:20:10 +0000

(GENTE, olha esse reflexo na fachada de um prédio na manifestação do Rio, no centro da cidade! #ProtestoRJ/@brunoernica)

Brazil is up in arms. Hundreds of thousands are in the streets. The capital building in Brazilia was surrounded, then stormed. Here's some pictures of last night's goings-on, and above, a video explaining some of the reasons for the uprising.

(Manifestantes concentrados em torno do Congresso Nacional (Brasília, 2013)/@FotosDaHistoria)

(Thanks, Spark!)

Brutal police crackdown on protesters in Sao Paolo

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:57:49 +0000

Diego sez, "Protestors - mainly students - are taking the streets of Sao Paulo. The problem: the government just raised the bus fare from R$3 to R$3,20. The protests are getting a really violent reception from the police. You can see a video of the police action. The problem isn't the 20 cents. I think the real problem is that we are having so many issues of inflation, very high taxes, corruption - 2014 World Cup stadiums being built with public money, costing about $1 billion each pop - so future looks really bleak here. Everything seems to be boiling after this 20 cents. If you ask me, Brazilians are getting tired of being treated as clowns. Tonight (6/13), there's going to be a new protest. People won't stop until they get what they want. Hopefully, with some international attention, Sao Paulo's police may stop hitting students with their batons and tear gas."

Highest-paid state employees: usually a school sports coach, sometimes a med school dean

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:42:54 +0000

Good to see America's educational priorities on such sound footing:

You may have heard that the highest-paid state employee in each state is usually the football coach at the largest state school. This is actually a gross mischaracterization: Sometimes it is the basketball coach.
Based on data drawn from media reports and state salary databases, the ranks of the highest-paid active public employees include 27 football coaches, 13 basketball coaches, one hockey coach, and 10 dorks who aren't even in charge of a team.
...Coaches don't generate revenue on their own; you could make the exact same case for the student-athletes who actually play the game and score the points and fracture their legs.
It can be tough to attribute this revenue directly to the performance of the head coach. In 2011-2012, Mack Brown was paid $5 million to lead a mediocre 8-5 Texas team to the Holiday Bowl. The team still generated $103.8 million in revenue, the most in college football. You don't have to pay someone $5 million to make college football profitable in Texas.

Infographic: Is Your State's Highest-Paid Employee A Coach? (Probably) [Reuben Fischer-Baum/Deadspin]

(via JWZ)

The silent soccer matches of North Korea

Rob Beschizza — Sat, 11 May 2013 14:23:53 +0000

North Korea's coach, Kim Jong-Hun, received tactical advice during matches from Kim Jong-Il himself using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye. [Tim Hartley / BBC]

Vintage ad for cockroach racing set

David Pescovitz — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:03:35 +0000

Early 20th century ad for a cockroach racing kit (complete with roaches) sold by the International Mutoscope Reel Company, makers of arcade machines and dime museums. "Holds the crowd… Gets the money." (via Weird Universe)

Homophobic, player-abusing coach sacked

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:54:26 +0000

Rutgers University somehow didn't get around to firing its abusive, homophobic, slur-spewing basketball coach until months after someone filmed him at it.

March community-building-and-tribal-unity/Madness

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 20:02:15 +0000

At the Wall Street Journal, Eric Simmons writes about the psychology of March Madness, which is really the psychology of relationships and the deep emotional bonds underlying communities and tribes. When you cheer on the Wichita State Shockers in the Final Four, what you're really doing is introducing other people (and other groups) into your definition of self.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford about to lose his job coaching high-school football?

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 21:57:22 +0000

Critics of Rob Ford, Toronto's laughable bumblefuck of a mayor, will tell you that at least he's good at teaching high-school football (maybe the only thing he truly enjoys). So it's newsworthy that the schools for which he coaches are considering firing him, and he won't show up to meetings to discuss his misconduct.

The school board is examining a Sun interview in which Ford made disparaging comments about the school community that have been called inaccurate by the board, parent council members, teachers and even one of Ford’s assistant coaches. The mayor asserted that Don Bosco players come from “broken homes” and would be dead or in jail if not for football.
Some parents have called for Ford’s removal.
“We haven’t made any decision whatsoever,” board spokesman John Yan said Thursday. “We’re trying to meet with the mayor, because we have to have an opportunity as part of the process to discuss his comments.
“Part of that process is for Mr. Ford to provide us with either with an explanation or a commentary on what transpired on the March 1 interview.

Rob Ford: Mayor cancels meeting with Toronto Catholic board to discuss his coaching future (Thanks, Gord!)

Sailing is hard work

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:50:23 +0000

Rome Kirby is an extreme sailor. When they tried putting him on a heart-rate monitor, they found he was burning 9,000 calories a day. (via Super Punch)

Soccer match-rigging, straight out of a Gibson novel

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:00:57 +0000

Here's a brutal, must-read article from Brian Phillips detailing the bizarre, globalized game of soccer-match-rigging, which launders its influence, money and bets through countries all over the world, in what sounds like an intense, sport-themed LARP of a William Gibson Sprawl novel:

Right now, Dan Tan's programmers are busy reverse-engineering the safeguards of online betting houses. About $3 billion is wagered on sports every day, most of it on soccer, most of it in Asia. That's a lot of noise on the big exchanges. We can exploit the fluctuations, rig the bets in a way that won't trip the houses' alarms. And there are so many moments in a soccer game that could swing either way. All you have to do is see an Ilves tackle in the box where maybe the Viikingit forward took a dive. It happens all the time. It would happen anyway. So while you're running around the pitch in Finland, the syndicate will have computers placing high-volume max bets on whatever outcome the bosses decided on, using markets in Manila that take bets during games, timing the surges so the security bots don't spot anything suspicious. The exchanges don't care, not really. They get a cut of all the action anyway. The system is stacked so it's gamblers further down the chain who bear all the risks.
What's that — you're worried about getting caught? It won't happen. Think about the complexity of our operation. We are organized in Singapore, I flew from Budapest, the match is in Finland, we're wagering in the Philippines using masked computer clusters from Bangkok to Jakarta. Our communications are refracted across so many cell networks and satellites that they're almost impossible to unravel. The money will move electronically, incomprehensibly, through a hundred different nowheres. No legal system was set up to handle this kind of global intricacy. The number of intersecting jurisdictions alone is dizzying. Who's going to spot the crime? Small-town police in Finland? A regulator in Beijing? Each of them will only see one tiny part of it. How would they ever know to talk to each other? Dan Tan has friends in high places; extradition requests can find themselves bogged down in paperwork. Witnesses can disappear. I promise; you'll be safe. Who can prove you didn't see a penalty? We're fine.

Best part? Pro soccer is so corrupt that they don't give a damn, despite the fact that there is no game there, just a network of frauds that may exceed $1B:

Let me answer that question by referring you to the phrase that I hope will be your primary takeaway from this piece. Soccer. Is. Fucked. Europol announced the investigation Monday, leaving everyone with the impression that this was an ongoing operation designed to, you know, stop a criminal, maybe catch a bad guy or something. On Tuesday, multiple journalists reported that Europol is no longer pursuing the investigation. They've turned the information over to the dozens of prosecution services in the dozens of countries involved, which should keep things nice and streamlined. The man at the center of the whole story, the Singaporean mobster Tan Seet Eng, known as Dan Tan, has a warrant out for his arrest, but the Singaporeans won't extradite him and Interpol won't pressure them to do so.3 UEFA and FIFA talk about stamping out corruption, but, and I'll try to be precise here, FIFA rhetoric is to action what a remaindered paperback copy of Pippi in the South Seas is to the Horsehead Nebula. FIFA is eyeballs-deep in its own corruption problems, being run, as it is, by a cabal of 150-year-olds, most of them literally made out of dust, who have every incentive to worry about short-term profit over long-term change. They all have streets named after them, so how could they have a bad conscience? FIFA sees the game as a kind of Rube Goldberg device, or, better, as a crazed Jenga tower, and their job is to keep it standing as long as the money's coming in. Doesn't matter how wobbly it gets. Nobody look at the foundations.

Match-Fixing in Soccer [Brian Phillips/Grantland]

(via Schneier)

(Image: FIFA visita as obras da Arena Fonte Nova, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from agecombahia's photostream)

Supersonic ping-pong-ball gun leaves cartoonish ball-shaped hole in hapless paddles

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 02:27:24 +0000

The finest moments in physics instruction always involves something going bang, blam, or boom, and this is no exception: Purdue's prof Mark French and grad students Craig Zehrung and Jim Stratton built a supersonic ping-pong-ball gun that attains supersonic muzzle velocity:

To demonstrate the conversion of subsonic to supersonic flow, Prof. French and his team designed the gun shown above. The end of the pressure vessel is sealed with laminating tape. Both the nozzle and the barrel are evacuated so the the gas flow is unobstructed. Overall, the gun is a bit less than 12 feet (3.65 m) in length.
To fire the gun, the pressure is increased in the pressure vessel until the tape breaks. French found that two layers of tape ruptured at about 60 psi (414 kPa), and three layers at about 90 psi (620 kPa). The speed of the ball was measured using a high-speed camera viewing the ball moving against a calibrated scale. A typical velocity was a bit over 1,448 km/h (900 mph) – nominally a velocity of Mach 1.23, which is about the top speed of the Soviet-era MIG-19 fighter.
The lead photo should convince the reader that this ping-pong gun is not a toy. The energy and momentum of the ping-pong ball is roughly the same as that of a .32 caliber ACP pistol – not the best choice for defense, to be sure, but quite lethal under the right circumstances.

Ping-pong gun fires balls at supersonic speeds [Gizmag/Brian Dodson]

(via DVICE)

Friendly, trusting Japanese system for lining up for sports tickets

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 02:05:49 +0000

Murdo sends us a video showing "an Englishman in Japan showing how the Japanese queue for local football games. They stick sellotape to the ground with their information on it, marking their places in the queue so that they can return to that point in the future. They even do it the night before the actual queue forms!"

Japan Culture Shock! Unbelievable lining up queue system at Japan sports events! MUST SEE!

Beyonce and the Illuminati

David Pescovitz — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 17:08:22 +0000

At the Super Bowl on Sunday, Beyonce flashed the Illumanti triangle and it caused the stadium lights to fail. Either that or she was referencing her husband Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella Records "dynasty sign." I prefer the former.

"Super PAC: Yes, Beyonce's Super Bowl Halftime Performance Was the Work of the Illuminati" (Thanks, Rick Pescovitz!)

Pee-Wee Herman cycling skinsuit

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 14:10:31 +0000

Podium Cycling sells this boss Pee-Wee Herman skinsuit for your Big Adventures. They also do Spider-Man and various other novelties (light-up Tron, "hipster," etc), but Pee-Wee takes the cake.

Pee-wee Inspired Skinsuit (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Pogo insanity in New York City

David Pescovitz — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:20:49 +0000

Glen Wexler's photo of us for Fast Company a couple years ago (right) perhaps led you to believe that we Boing Boingers are masters of the pogo stick. That is true, but sadly we are no match for the Xpogo team seen above in New York City.

R2D2 and Walking Dead surfboards spotted at Surf Expo

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 23:07:58 +0000

My 17yo niece Katie Graef cruised the halls of the 2013 Surf Expo in Florida this week, and spotted two particularly Boing-y items: Above and below, boards shaped by Ricky Carroll and airbrushed by Josh DelRocco, of rickycarrollsurfboards.com. R2D2 and The Walking Dead.

Oh, and Katie also spotted a bulldog on a skateboard.

Photos: Katie Graef.

Junior Seau had brain disease caused by "two decades of hits to the head"

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 19:43:50 +0000

ABC News reports that a team of scientists who analyzed the brain tissue of the late NFL star Junior Seau after his 2012 suicide "have concluded the football player suffered a debilitating brain disease likely caused by two decades worth of hits to the head."

Woman whose ex- won't return her suitcase retaliates by auctioning the locations of his secret fishing holes

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:13:01 +0000

Angela Potter, a teacher in Waikato, NZ, has a funny definition of "vindictive":

"My ex-boyfriend is an avid and very successful fisherman who asked me to protect his collection of GPS fishing spot co-ordinates [with my life no less]. Not a problem," she wrote on the auction.
And sold secrets tend to make for an angry man - Miss Potter said her ex was less than pleased to find out they had been shared.
Miss Potter said she would never have sold the co-ordinates had it been an amicable breakup, however, the man packed his belongings into her suitcase, which had sentimental value, and fled the country.
"When he refused to return my suitcase that's when I sold his co-ordinates," she said. "I didn't list them to be vindictive. I listed them as a bit of a laugh."

OTOH, she's now dating a new fisherman and says that she has not shared her ex's fishin' holes with him.

Fishing spots sold on Trade Me after breakup [Jenna Lynch/Stuff.co.nz] (via Neatorama)

What to do on Mt. Everest when you're dead

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:35:00 +0000

We all know that people do sometimes die while attempting to climb Mt. Everest. But it's easy to overlook what happens to those people after they've died. You can't bring a body down from the mountain. In fact, many of the people who have died there had to be abandoned before they were dead because they couldn't walk and no one could carry them safely back to a place they could get medical care. And that means Mt. Everest is littered with dead bodies.

Between 1922 and 2010, 219 people died on the mountain. In death, many of these bodies have become famous — some even serving as landmarks that help climbers gauge where they are and how far they have to go.

Smithsonian.com has a fascinating short piece about the lives and afterlives of the dead on Mt. Everest. This excerpt is about the body whose boots are pictured above:

The body of “Green Boots,” an Indian climber who died in 1996 and is believed to be Tsewang Paljor, lies near a cave that all climbers must pass on their way to the peak. Green Boots now serves as a waypoint marker that climbers use to gauge how near they are to the summit. Green Boots met his end after becoming separated from his party. He sought refuge in a mountain overhang, but to no avail. He sat there shivering in the cold until he died.

Read the rest at Smithsonian.com

Image: detail of a photograph of Green Boots by Dominic Goff

Extreme card flourishes

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 17:38:43 +0000

MagicPeaceLove sez, "The Virts, a trio of skilled cardistes from Singapore, up the ante of ECM (Extreme Card Manipulation) with a beautifully shot & edited short promo showing off their Extreme Card Prowess. The closing set, an unbroken, 25-second take, is a dazzling display of technical virtuosity with a deck of cards."

What's the best deck for card flourishing? (Thanks, @magicpeacelove!)

Cairollers: Cairo's first rollerderby team

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:57:44 +0000

Lex sez, "I've just posted an interview with Indie Hannah of the Cai Rollers, Cairo (and Egypt's) first roller derby league. They're a mixture of local women and international residents, and are finally practising after the project has been over a year in the making. They're had to fight hard to get to this point, and have plenty of struggles ahead of them."

Who are the CaiRollers? Many leagues in far-flung places are conglomerations of ex-pats with little local involvement. Something tells me that's not the case for you...
Nope, CaiRollers are as diverse as the city. Right now, we have about eight skaters, one coach and two volunteers who make up the foundation and are all working equally as hard to get this league going. Skaters include Egyptian natives, Egyptians with dual citizenship who are third world kids having grown up around the world, and some ex-pats from other parts of the world including America and Argentina. Our volunteer--hopefully future refs--are equally as diverse from Africa and America. Our belief and value systems range from Muslim to Christian, Agnostic to Buddhist. We range from teachers and nonprofit workers to female entrepreneurs.

Up Close and Personal with the CaiRollers of Cairo, Egypt

Improvised footballs from Africa

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:30:26 +0000

Photographer Jessica Hilltout travelled Africa documenting homemade footballs/soccer balls improvised across the continent. Shown above, a ball from Mozambique, made by Domingo. Left, a Ghanian ball from the Anokye Stars.

Balls (via Kottke)

Ronda Rousey becomes the first woman in the UFC!

Jamie Frevele — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 22:12:35 +0000

Well, this is exciting! The UFC, the owner of which said less than two years ago that it would never include women, now does! Ronda Rousey will be taking her vicious armbar to the UFC in 2013. But she won't be left without an opponent -- rival Meisha Tate has also signed on, and possibly Sara McCann and Cris Cyborg.

This is a big deal for a kickass lady. Rousey is not just a Strikeforce champion, she's also an Olympic athlete, having been the youngest judo competitor in the 2004 games. Since that global debut, she has become the tenth ranked female MMA fighter in the world. The world.

Now, my question is this: Now that the UFC includes both genders, when will we get to see bouts in New York?

Photo credit: Ronda Rousey Official Site

Ronda Rousey Reportedly Becomes UFC's First Female Fighter [Bleacher Report]

Ohio State Marching Band halftime show of video game theme songs

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:20:00 +0000

Halftime performance of The Ohio State University Marching Band during a game against Nebraska on October 6. A "video game" theme, with music from Zelda, Halo, Pokemon, Tetris, and others.

So how'd they do it? A play-by-play breakdown in the Plain-Dealer:

The idea for the show came during the band’s annual brainstorming session each spring, and was first mentioned five years ago and put on the back burner until the decision was made to go for it this fall. Music arranger John Brennan helped lead the way on choosing the right video-game music and pulling it all together. Assistant director Chris Hoch guided the creation of the formations, with the final execution of the designs aided by a computer program.
The final result featured, among other things, Tetris pieces falling into place, a horse from Zelda running across the field, a Michigan flag being lowered and an Ohio State flag raised on a castle from Mario Bros. and a ghost chasing Pac-Man.
“It was a historical journey through video game music,” Waters said. “Some of the early music is a little trite, kind of tinny, so we tried to capture that in the musical arrangements. Some of the more modern stuff is very symphonic in nature and translated very well to our band. So we took all that into account and merged the music with the visual presentation we wanted to make.

In just two days, the video racked up close to 7 million views on YouTube. Insane! As a commenter points out, it's not a first: Cal did this back in 2007.

[video link; photo courtesy Ohio State University Marching Band]

TRAMPOLARCHERY: loosing arrows whilst bouncing on a trampoline

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:22:28 +0000

Ryan is a University of Waterloo Engineering grad student who has invited the world to suggest damnfool stunts that he might perform for the youtubes. In this episode, he looses arrows from a powerful bow while bouncing on a trampoline. It's TRAMPOLARCHERY!

CREATIVE DISSONANCE EPISODE 4 – TRAMPOLARCHERY (via Skepchick)

Replica vintage sports jerseys made out of new-old vintage fabric

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:21:40 +0000

Ebbets Field Flannels makes replicas of vintage baseball jerseys from various leagues (including Cuban and Japanese jerseys), using new-old vintage textiles for their projects. They also do hockey jerseys, hats, and other replicas of bygone-era sportswear.

The Stanley Cup used to be an open tournament which included non-NHL teams. In 1917, the Seattle Metropolitans of the PCHA became the first U.S. team to win the cup when they defeated the Montreal Canadiens three games to one. Several different versions of this barber-pole striped sweater were worn through the years.

Ebbets Field Flannels (via Kottke)

This Friday, procrastinate with history!

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:14:02 +0000

Perhaps you will enjoy this in-depth analysis of the history of Roman charioteers, their sport, and their role in ancient Roman society. I haven't had a chance to read through this whole thing yet (because, you know, I have to work) but what I have read is fascinating. Be sure to check out the Appendix, which has a translation of a Roman account of a chariot race — so, basically, ancient ESPN play-by-play. (Via Dr. Hypercube)

House with a skate-ramp

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:22:12 +0000

The Skate Park house was custom built for a Shibuya, Tokyo couple, integrating a skate-ramp, a piano studio, and many lovely design flourishes. I think the stair-rail looks like it'd be awesome for grinding, too -- or at least soaping.

The owners of this house, a young married couple, made a special request in regards to the design of their house, located in a quiet residential neighborhood in Shibuya ward. They wanted both a skateboard park and a piano rehearsal room to reflect their own individual interests.
There was no need for a car park on the site, so to take advantage of space a private entrance courtyard was designed. The sliding glass panels of the first floor open up onto this enclosed area and allows for the workshop and studio to expand outwards. The studio has a skateboard bowl imbedded into the floor with multiple angles for plenty of different interaction.
The piano room, located at the back of the studio, is raised about 2 feet from the ground to help with the sound-proofing of the room as well as creating an inherent stage performance space. When the doors open up onto the studio, the expanded space with the bowl transform into guest seating and completely changes the atmosphere from a mere practice room to a public concert hall.

Skate Park House (via Core77)

What is climate change ruining today?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 17:38:55 +0000

Chocolate and high school football are being affected by climate change, according to two stories published on the Scientific American website yesterday. In the case of chocolate, the cocoa its made from is grown in several countries in West Africa, a region heavily affected by higher temperatures and extreme weather patterns. By 2020, there will likely be a 1.5 million ton shortage in cocoa production. As for football, the problem is the fact that, across the United States, cool weather season is kicking in later in the year than it used to. That affects football practice. Specifically, schools are increasingly concerned about the health risks of forcing high school students to get really physical, while fully suited and padded, in today's warmer Augusts and Septembers. So I think it's safe to say that climate change hates fun. It's a fun-hater.

Why does nobody think Usain Bolt cheated?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 13:03:17 +0000

Covariation theory is a psychological idea that helps explain why we instantly suspect some record-breaking athletes of doping, while giving others the benefit of the doubt. (Via Melanie Tannenbaum)