Tag: sports

Photo of the Day that was Actually Taken Some Time Ago: Over the Plate

A Baltimore Oriole watches the ball come over the plate in a game against Toronto on a sunny Sunday in August in the Skydome (er, Rogers Place…whatever). More photos here.

Sports, schmorts

Orson Scott Card writes an extended rant about sports that echoes many thoughts of my own, as a non-athletic kid. I particularly liked these lines: There is no excuse for athletes being more respected and honored in school than scholars. But few indeed are the high schools that provide scholars and musicians and actors and …

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Hey, that’s me on Newsworld!

My interview on Newsworld regarding the science of soccer did indeed air today at 11:15 a.m. I captured it and YouTubed it for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Me on Newsworld

Yesterday CBC Newsworld contacted me about doing a short segment on the science of soccer, in honour of the FIFA Under-20 World Cup now being played in Canada. (If you google “The Science of Soccer,” the column I wrote in 2002 is the first hit.) I did the interview this morning on the lawn outside …

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Photo of the Day: The Kickoff

Kick-off for tonight’s Canadian Football League game between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and B.C. Lions, as captured by my cellphone camera: Unfortunately, this was as close to winning as the Riders were all night. More (and better) photos here.

Nanotechnology marches on…

…to the soccer field. Near-microscopic robots playing soccer. Is this a great time to be alive, or what?

Practice makes perfect?

Nope. Turns out: “The main reason you can’t move the same way each and every time, such as swinging a golf club, is that your brain can’t plan the swing the same way each time,” says electrical engineering Assistant Professor Krishna Shenoy, whose research includes study of the neural basis of sensorimotor integration and movement …

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From tennis elbow to hot-tub lung

Once upon a time, most of the injuries people suffered were the result of the hard physical labor they had to perform day-in and day-out to survive. Today we have a whole new set of injuries and ailments that are the result, not of hard work, but of recreation. Take hot-tub long, for instance. This …

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Robocup

  Picture this: it’s World Cup 2050. The preliminaries are over and the two finalists are facing each other in the first-place game. Onto the field trot two teams–but only one of them is human. The other is made up of robots. Today we’re accustomed to robots that do everything from build cars to defuse …

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Soccer

Watch me explain the science of soccer on CBC Newsworld, July 22, 2007: Hundreds of millions of soccer fans are now tuning in to the World Cup, where they’ll see, not just exciting games, but a fascinating display of scientific principles. Let’s start with the ball. The basic physics haven’t changed: when a ball is …

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Bicycles II

It’s summertime in Saskatchewan, and that means the roads are full of joggers, walkers–and bicyclists. The first bicycle was the “celerifere,” or wooden horse, invented in France in the 1790s. It had a fixed front wheel, so it couldn’t be steered, and the rider propelled it by pushing his feet along the ground, like Fred …

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Of bats and balls

The Subway Series is not, as a non-sports-fan might be forgiven for thinking, an exciting new lineup of sandwiches from a popular restaurant chain. It is, instead, this year’s World Series of baseball between the New York Yankees and the New York Mets, and even if you’re not interested in watching New Yorkers battle each …

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