Category: Sports

Fans as LCD

South Korea: boys cheering for their soccer teams. the most amazing thing is that they do this with their CLOTHES (not holding up cards). they have a jacket that is one color on the back, one on the front, and that they can open or close to show a third color shirt on the inside. One school has also figured out how to use their pants to make shading

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Most Dangerous Golf Course

AFP: The hazards of golfing in Afghanistan
KABUL (AFP) — Mohammad Afzal Abdul says he has been jailed twice for playing golf: once in the early 1980s after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and then again by the hardline Taliban government more than 10 years later.

Both times he was accused of being a spy because he mixed with foreigners at the Kabul Golf Club, which sits under the steep wall of the Qargar Dam and looks down a gently sloping valley towards the capital.

Abdul, now the pro at Afghanistan’s only golf club, doesn’t rule out his hobby landing him in jail again.

The extremist Taliban, who banned all sport including even kite-flying, were removed from government in 2001. But now, as an insurgent movement, they often accuse any Afghan who associates with foreigners of spying — and have killed several.

“Even right now, I feel some danger,” Abdul says in a dusty room, surrounded by donated clubs for hire and caps and t-shirts embroidered with the club logo for sale. “But I won’t leave,” he says.

“This is a place for fun and people need it. People always need to have a good time, even during war.”

50% more Home Runs with 10% More Muscle

Tufts E-News: Study: Steroids Can Power Home Runs
Tufts physicist Roger Tobin found that increased muscle mass that can be generated by steroid use could help batters knock 50 percent more baseballs out of the park.

The 10 percent increase in muscle mass helps a batter swing five percent faster, increasing the speed of the ball leaving the bat by four percent. This extra speed, applied to a model distribution of trajectories, could result in 50 percent more home runs, Tobin found.

For pitchers, the results are good but less sensational: pitch speed can increase by approximately five percent, or four to five miles per hour, for a pitcher who throws a 90-mile-per-hour fastball, dropping his earned run average by a half-run per game, Reuters reported.