I would have to agree that the Olympics would be improved with sports that people actually participate in during snowy weather. Snowball Fights, Snowman Building, and Hot Toddy Drinking are right up my alley, but I will leave Dogsled Racing to those who are more experienced. Video examples of each are included. Link
Although Carrie Underwood did a fine job singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl, this offering by Marvin Gaye at the 1983 NBA All-Star game will never be topped.
The ski report for the Eastern U. S. is a chart-topper this weekend, so to get you in the mood -or if you’d like to have your eyes popped- take a look at Grant Gunderson’s excellent work on the subject. For the shot above, this caption:
Dana Flahr throwing a very large lawn dart front flip over the Mt. Baker road gap at dusk while filming for Teton Gravity Research.
Photo District News has a nice collection, but be sure to check out his website and blog.
Sport Pong is an experimental game in which a pong board is projected onto a flat surface. Players use their hands and feet to move virtual pieces around the playing space, trying to score a goal against the opposing team’s wall.
via DudeCraft | Official Website | Previously on Neatorama: Pong Prom
Super Bowl Sunday is nearing fast. Who’s it gonna be, Colts or Saints? Either way, you have to love what Slate V cooked up here; a great imagining of what the game might look like if it were directed by Quinten Tarantino, David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, or Werner Herzog. Happy game day, everyone!
via Cinematical
The American TV musical show Glee was just released in Japan. This video is a commercial for it, featuring the Hawaiian-born sumo wrestler Akebono Taro singing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
via Topless Robot
GoPro HD – Skimboarding In A Storm! from Patrick Lawler on Vimeo.
High riptide warning, watercraft advisory, flash floods, tons and tons of rain, extreme danger! These are all words that David doesn’t really pay attention to…
In Patrick Lawler’s video, aside from the fun attempts at skimboarding some decidedly unskimmable water with mixed results, there’s a scene at 1:08 where the camera’s monopod (which was crafted from a broom handle) does something amazing, and I can’t quite figure out how they did it, but it rocks.
The Dolphin Research Center in Marathon, Florida is where people can swim with the well cared-for marine mammals, but it’s much more than that. It’s a rescue operation for not only dolphins, but sea turtles, manatees and other Florida Keys species. When the dolphins aren’t busy with that, or doing their research, they maintain an informative blog, where they post videos of themselves like this one. Amazingly smart creatures.
Seriously though, the DRC is top tier when it comes to places like this. Here’s a snip from Hannah’s five star review on Yelp:
After an afternoon at this terrific research center, I learned more about dolphins than I ever thought I’d know. We came here as a group, with the BF and his parents. For $20 a person, you get admission, which allows you to walk through the center and watch the public shows. The place is very low key – it’s obvious that all their money goes towards taking care of the dolphins,and not on frills.
Link (Photo: DRC)

How well do you know your world leaders, or NFL placekickers? You’d think this Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss would be easy, but you may need some real luck to identify these twelve names. I didn’t know any of them! So I scored 50%, just like the odds said I would. Link
The fastest human alive, Usain Bolt, can run 28 MPH. But a new study proposes a theoretical maximum of 40 MPH for the human body under ideal conditions:
This provides a new twist on the old school of thought that speed limits depended on how much force a runner could exert against the ground. Past studies showed that sprinters can apply up to 1,000 pounds of force with a single limb during each sprinting step, and so researchers thought that humans simply could not push beyond that point.[...]
One-legged hopping produced ground forces greater than those applied during normal running by 30 percent or more, and active leg muscles also generated about 1.5 to 2 times greater force during one-legged hopping. That shows how humans don’t exert the maximum possible force during the act of forward sprinting, the researchers say.
Going one step farther, the researchers also found that the “critical biological limit” depends upon how quickly runners can exert ground force while sprinting. Elite runners have foot-ground contact times of less than one-tenth of a second, and max out ground forces within one-twentieth of one second when their foot first hits the ground.
Link | Photo: US Department of State
Elephants at the Island Safari Centre on Koh Samui, Thailand have been trained to play basketball:
“It takes two or three months of intensive training to teach them basics, but fortunately their standards are improving with each passing day”, said organiser Ning.
The keepers begin by teaching the elephants basic ball control skills, and how to hold the ball in their trunk. The animals are then taught to stand on their hind legs, walk with the ball and finally shoot it through the hoop.
Link | Photo: Barcroft Media
Monta Ellis of the Golden State Warriors lands a basket. He’s been “trying to extend his range”. I think maybe he succeeded. Link -via Unique Daily
These folks in South Carolina have another innovative use for heavy equipment. You don’t need a lake and a boat to go skiing! -via Buzzfeed
When he gets bored with doing double backflips on his bike, skydiving without a chute, or inventing new sports like the Hydrojump, Travis Pastrana takes life easy with a casual drive in Long Beach, CA. Watch him sail this rally car 269 feet with the precision landing of an experienced pilot. Don’t miss his celebratory backflip into the water!
26-year-old Travis Pastrana set the world record for a rally car jump on New Year’s Eve, flying his Subaru 269 feet over water and landing on a barge in the harbor of Long Beach, California. The record blew away the old one set by Ken Block at 171 feet. Pastrana had to throw the car sideways and slam it against a wall at the end of the barge to stop the car, as he said the ramp was slick with dew. (Brian Lohnes)
Parkour is a sport consisting of running, climbing, crawling, and jumping over any obstacle in a path through an urban environment. Vimeo user saggyarmpit, a graphics design student in Singapore, created this amazing flip book animation video showing a parkourist in action.
via CrunchGear
When Alistair Hodgson was 21, he was a British paratrooper stationed in Northern Ireland. A booby trap exploded and tore him apart. His horrific injuries healed, except for the leg that was blown off and the other leg which had to be amputated. That was 17 years ago. Now Hodgson is the British National Freestyle Skydiving Champion. Besides training in his sport and coaching other skydivers, Hodgson works to inspire other disabled vets returning from Afghanistan.
“It’s so hard. But you have to rehabilitate yourself, find a focus…something to hold on to. If I can inspire just one other person to lift themselves out of that same dark place I was in – train for the Paralympics in 2012 or something, then it’s worth it.
“There was a time I thought my life was over and I still have very dark times when it’s difficult to deal with. Sometimes people poke fun at me or I catch sight of myself in a mirror and think, ‘You’re in a hell of a mess’.
“But when I’m in the air it’s like it never happened. I can compete at a world level – alongside people who have all their limbs – and have found a way to fly.”
Hodgson will compete against able-bodied skydivers for the world championship in August. Link -via Fark

Photo: michelle.hayes [Flickr]
Who says that wedding gowns have to be white and traditional? Check out these fantastic photos of Liz and Dave’s roller skating-themed wedding by photographer Michelle Hayes: Link
More colorful wedding photos at COLOURlovers – via Rue The Day
When you’re trying to figure out where to build your next ski resort, you don’t have to use guesswork to pick the ideal spot — there’s an app for that.
Geographers at the University of Delaware have developed a geographical information system (GIS) that can identify the location that would best suit your winter sport needs, whether you want a small, exclusive resort or a large, mass market venue.
Professors Jordan Silberman and Peter Rees have taken into account humidity levels most likely to produce snow, as well as road accessibility, slope geometry (to avoid avalanches), threats to wildlife, likely erosion from tree felling, and the availability of electricity to run the lifts.
“This lets us rank the locations for skiing, snowboarding, ice-climbing and snowmobiling,” says Silberman.
So before you break ground for that chalet, consult this GIS-based model. It beats a Magic 8-Ball.
Links: io9, New Scientist, Applied Geography; image via Freaking News

Whether scuba diving where no man has scuba dived before, or surfing the chilly waves, you’ll really stand out in one of these wetsuits offered at Roddenberry for an out-of-this-world price. I think we all know which color is shark bait.
Developed exclusively for the RDT by JMJ Wetsuits, these one-piece full suits feature iconic uniform colors & rank insignias from Star Trek: The Original Series. These wetsuits are not novel gimmicks, they are the real deal, made using the highest quality materials and expert craftsmanship. Each individual wetsuit is custom made and tailored to your exact measurements for a perfect fit and unmatched performance. This is the ultimate in warmth and exposure protection when exploring strange new worlds!
Sarah Reinertsen was born with a birth defect called proximal femoral focal deficiency. Her left leg was small, and wouldn’t grow with the rest of her body, so it was amputated when she was seven years old. Still, she always wanted to be an athlete. Reinertsen began running at age eleven, and competed in the Paralympics at age 16. In college, she started running marathons, but that wasn’t enough.
She is the first female amputee to win an Ironman competition. She climbed the Great Wall of China and scaled a giant cliff in Vietnam during the 10th season of the CBS television show The Amazing Race. And when she’s not running or biking or swimming, she’s trying on artificial limbs to test the latest body armor for a company that makes prosthetics. She also rallies soldiers who have lost their limbs to war. She is a hometown hero talking to runners who have known her since she was an 11-year-old who climbed into a sneaker and began running for her life.
Read more of Reinertsen’s story for a real inspiration. Link -via Digg
Sony Ericsson hosted a promotional tennis tournament that was bathed in ultraviolet light in order to recreate the atmosphere of the movie Tron. It’s far more scenic than the Medieval version.
via DVICE
Some scientists say that bowling has existed since Egyptian times and that one of the earliest Egyptian pharaohs was uncovered with primitive bowling pins and balls in his tomb. Others dismiss these findings, but historians agree the sport has existed in some form or another since at least 300 AD in Germany. Needless to say, the sport has come a long way in the last millennia. In fact, it is now the most popular sport outside of soccer (football) worldwide and there’s even an active movement to make bowling an Olympic sport.
The sport was referenced in writing for the first time when the English King Edward the III banned his troops from lawn bowling in order to prevent their being distracted from archery practice. While the game is now considered to be largely blue collar, Henry VIII is said to have been a fan of the game and used cannon balls in sport.

Meanwhile, Germans continued playing a traditional outdoor version of the sport known as skittles, which used heavy balls to knock down small pins called skittles. This game served as the inspiration for the more popular modern forms of bowling, starting with ninepin, which was introduced in America in the colonial era. Unfortunately, the sport began being associated with gambling, workplace truancy, and crime, leading to its illegalization in many cities.
In 1841, the entire state of Connecticut banned ninepin bowling, which some claim led to the invention of tenpin bowling by people who were circumventing the law. Others claim the game started earlier though and that it only gained popularity in the area due to the outlawing of the more common ninepin game. It is said that the wooden version of the modern bowling ball was invented on December 29, 1862, but it’s difficult to find more information on this claim than the date. Regardless, the first standardized rules for tenpin were undoubtedly established in New York City in September 9, 1895.
Sources #1, #2 Image Via John McNab [Flickr]

In 1914, Brunswick improved the game switching out wooden balls with hard rubber balls. In 1936, bowling became a lot quicker and less expensive because the pinboys were replaced with semi-automatic pinsetters. In 1946, AMF created the first completely automatic pinsetter, which was soon replaced by a 1955 Brunswick model. The later versions of this machine are in operation in the majority of alleys today.
The game’s popularity exploded in the U.S. in the 1970s after automatic scorer became commonplace in bowling alleys across the country. Because the scoring for bowling is somewhat complicated, bowlers before this invention came out had to have a somewhat detailed understanding of the game. Nowadays, casual bowlers, professionals and kids can all share the same lanes and not have to worry about the difficulties of keeping score.
Source #1, #2 Image Via Hryck. [Flickr]

I’m sure most of you know that in bowling, when you knock down a pin, you get a point for that pin. The confusion about scoring comes into play when the bowler gets a strike or a spare. When you get a strike, you get 10 points, plus the points for the next two balls thrown. When you get a spare, you get 10 points and the points for the next ball thrown. So, if you got a strike and then you get four pins and then six pins (a spare) and on your next frame you get one gutter ball and then one pin, you would get 20 points (10+4+6) for the strike, 10 points (4+6+0) for the spare and then 1 point for the open frame, for a total of 31 points for all three frames. In the last frame, if you get a strike, you get more balls.
One reason the experts will still count their games by hand sometimes is that the pinsetter will occasionally knock down a pin that moved positions during play. The automatic scorer will often count these pins, but according to the official rules of the game, only pins that fall over on their own are supposed to be counted.
If you happen to make strikes the entire game, you get 300 points for the twelve roll game. This is known as a perfect game.
Source Image Via Roadsidepictures [Flickr]
While you may have laughed at the pathetic professionals in the movie King Pin, bowling celebrities, particularly in the 60’s were actually a big deal. In fact, the first athlete of any kind to receive a million dollar endorsement deal wasn’t a basketball or football player, but instead a bowler. Don Carter received this extraordinary deal in 1964 when he signed a multi-year deal with Ebonite International.
In more modern times, there are still some notable celebrities in the sport, like Jeremy Sonnenfeld, who, in 1997, became the first person to ever roll three perfect games in a row in a three-game series. Also impressive was 2006’s 10 year-old star Chaz Dennis who was the youngest person in history to bowl a perfect game.

With 1024 possible outcomes in a game of bowling, it is easy to see just how hard it is to achieve the perfect game. Still, a number of bowling purists claim that technology has been making this feat increasingly easy to accomplish. Changing materials in balls, synthetic lane materials, oiling machines that lay out the oiling patterns in ways that make it easier to hit the pins, have all made bowling increasingly easy. Reports of perfect scores have increased by several thousand percentage points between the 80s and today. As a result, these dedicated bowlers have developed a specific set of rules for what they call “sport bowling,” that makes the game more challenging, as it was in the 1970s.
Source Image Via Johnathan Cohen [Flickr]
Like all sports, bowling has its own jargon that can be difficult for non-bowlers to understand. In case you want to hold a conversation with some league players, here’s a few terms you may want to know (note the number of food-related terms, should bowling replace American football as the national Thanksgiving Day sport?):
-Bedposts: A 7-10 split
-Dutch 200: A game where the player consistently alternates between strikes and spares, resulting in a score of exactly 200
-Goal posts: A 7-10 split
-Golden turkey: Nine strikes in a row
-Ham bone: Four strikes in a row
-Six pack: Six strikes in a row
-Thanksgiving turkey: A perfect game
-Turkey: Three strikes in a row
-Turkey sandwich: When someone gets a spare and then a turkey, followed by another spare
-Wild turkey: Six strikes in a row

While most people have a less-than-athletic image of bowlers, the sport can actually be a good form of exercise and may help improve social relationships. Studies have shown it helps burn calories, regulates blood pressure and prevents osteoporosis and works muscle groups that are not normally exercised.
Source Image Via calaggie [Flickr]
Baseball, football, bodybuilding — so many sports have been impacted by athletes secretly using performance-enhancing drugs. Sadly, even competitors in pie-eating competitions have resorted to such nefarious cheating. But officials at the upcoming World Pie Eating Championships in Wigan, UK have taken steps to keep athletes honest:
Championships Executive President Tony Callaghan, owner of Harry’s Bar, said: “Gravy has traditionally been the performance-enhancing drug of choice amongst pie eaters at this level, but since we banned it after a series of questionable concoctions were created by contenders, they’ve been trying to find other ways of generating lubricative advantage – and we’re hearing rumours that cough mixture is the new Bisto.
“In tests we’ve found this can take around two seconds off the time taken to eat a regulation Championship pie.
“We’ll be putting a couple of big blokes on the door to search pockets randomly for cough mixture.”
Link via J-Walk Blog | Photo: US Department of Homeland Security
Teddy bear tosses are promotional events, typically at hockey games. The stuffed animals are collected and donated to hospitals and other charities. The very cheerful video above shows “the London Knights teddy bear toss on December 4th, 2009 against the Guelph Storm. The bear count was 8232.”
Via Unique Daily.
There is a more comprehensive (and professionally composed) video at this link that follows a Hungarian teddy bears toss from the rink through the distribution to children.
I am a little under the weather today, and maybe the paper airplane thing was fake. But if this is fake, at least it also fooled The Huffington Post. The obvious question is, What is he thinking?

Hidden in a Chicago suburb is a funeral home with a 9-hole mini golf course in the basement! Fred Abercrombie made a stop in Palatine, Illinois to visit Ahlgrim Acres, a community room hidden underneath Ahlgrim Funeral Home and took quite a few pictures of the infamous golf course with a haunted theme.
From the Upcoming
ueue, submitted by unnecessaryumlaut.

These men are beating each other senseless using fluorescent tube light bulbs as weapons. This is apparently a sport in Japan. I can’t find much information about it online, so I take it that it is not a widely popular sport. One blogger said “It’s like WWF meets WTF.” — which seems like a good summation. There are more pictures at the link. Content warning: graphic violence.
Link via Geekologie | Image: Blue Circlet
So. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know by now that Tiger Woods got into a car accident on Friday morning. A media frenzy followed, fueled by a rumor of Tiger’s infidelity and his silence over the whole thing. Today, he announced that he wouldn’t play in his own golf tournament.
Talking heads proclaim that the public is due an explanation, and that the story simply isn’t going to go away without a public accounting of who (Tiger) had done what (or whom, as it were implied).
No, this post isn’t about Tiger, his accident, alleged affair, or whatnot. I don’t care about that – but what is interesting to me is why people care about such matters. If you follow this kind of news, let me ask you: what is it about celebrities that capture your fancy? What is so interesting about Jon and Kate, or Brad and Angelina or whomever.
Jaye L. Derrick and Shira Gabriel of the Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, SUNY, published a study that "connections" to celebrities or parasocial relationships, allow people with low self-esteem to view themselves more positively:
The current research demonstrates that parasocial relationships can have self-enhancing benefits for low self-esteem people that they do not receive in real relationships. These parasocial relationships, which have very low risk of rejection, offer low self-esteem people an opportunity to reduce their self-discrepancies and feel closer to their ideal selves.
“Even ‘fake’ relationships with celebrities, relationships without any actual contact, can have benefits for the self,” the authors conclude. “We found that parasocial relationships can sometimes have benefits for people with low-self esteem that ‘real’ relationships do not.”
Or is it genetics? Duke University Medical Center neurobiologist Michael Platt found that adult rhesus macaque monkeys would pay (by giving up their favorite drink, Juicy Juice cheery juice) to look at images of dominant "celebrity" monkey of their pack.
So here’s my question to you again: What’s so captivating about celebrities?
(Photo: Jim Epler [Flickr])
Even if you’re not a particularly athletic person, there’s a sport out there for you. Whether you’re an avid ironer or are known for launching your cell phone 300 feet after dealing with an exceptionally annoying telemarketer, there’s something in the world that will play to your skills. Here are 10 of them.
1. Toe Wrestling. Yup – there’s arm wrestling, thumb wrestling… and now toe wrestling. As you might imagine, it’s a lot like thumb wrestling – competitors just use different digits. It apparently started when a group of men at a pub decided to find or invent a game that “the British could actually win,” and after a few beverages, they came up with just the thing. Ironically, the first-ever World Toe Wrestling Championships ended with a Canadian victor. Competitors have their own phalange-related nicknames: two of the most accomplished athletes are called the Itatoelion Stallion and the Toeminator. The face of the sport would probably be Alan “Nasty” Nash, a five-time champion who has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to show off his technique. “I don’t think the size of your toe has anything to do with it as I have short, stumpy toes,” he has said. Picture from Metro.
2. Cheese Rolling. You’ve likely heard of this one, but it’s too weird to leave out of the article. Every year at Cooper’s Hill in England’s Cotswolds, a large wheel of cheese is sent tumbling from the top of the hill (pictured)… and a bunch of Cheese Rollers come tumbling after. The first person to reach the bottom of the hill wins the cheese. This may not seem like an outstanding prize, but be assured that the race for the Double Gloucester round is a heated one: injuries have included concussions, broken bones and sprained ankles. Injuries are usually incurred by the Cheese Rollers themselves, but on at least one occasion the cheese (which usually weighs seven or eight pounds) took a wicked bounce at the bottom of the hill and careened into a spectator. Picture from Cheese Rolling.
3. Poohsticks. Children’s lit fans (or Disney fans) will be familiar with Poohsticks from The House at Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne’s 1928 book. Milne actually played the game with his son, although we’re not sure if the game was invented for the book and then played by Milne and his son Christopher Robin or vice versa. Fans started actually playing the game, which involves dropping sticks in a stream or river to see which one crosses the designated finish line first, in 1984. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution needed some money and the lock keeper thought a Poohsticks competition – donations accepted – might help their cash flow. His hunch was correct – since its inception, the World Poohsticks Competition has raised more than £30,000. Every winner receives a gold medal and a Winnie the Pooh teddy bear.
4. Extreme Ironing. There are a lot of us out there that probably dread the tedium of pressing wrinkles out of clothes, but there are others who look at it as the opportunity for an adrenaline rush – namely, Extreme Ironers. It started out as just a fun, quirky hobby, but for the past several years an actual competition sponsored by Rowenta has taken place. EIs send in a photo of themselves ironing in strange and extreme places and points are given for place and style (just standing there with an iron will get you minimal points; striking a graceful pose while ironing underwater will get you more). Bonus: the sport has inspired cellists to do the same thing. Photo from OneInchPunch.
5. Buzkashi sounds like something made up for Borat, but it’s a real sport in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, among others. It’s kind of like polo, except the focus of the game revolves around a decapitated goat or calf instead of a ball. If you’re a Rambo fan, you might remember seeing the game depicted in Rambo III. Photo from AfghanNetwork.
6. Cell Phone Throwing. Fed up with your cell phone? Join the club. But now you can do something legal to vent your frustrations (as opposed to going Naomi Campbell on someone). Since 2001, the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships have been held in Finland. Categories include the traditional toss, freestyle (points for creativity!), team, and junior. If you’re not near Finland and don’t care to travel there just to chuck a phone, never fear: the U.S. held its first event in Massachusetts in 2008. And if you love your cell phone but hate outdated technology, you can join in the Rotary Phone Throw at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.
7. International Regatta of Bathtubs. La Regate des Baignoires was created to boost tourism in Dinant, Belgium. As you can imagine, bathtubs don’t float very well, so it’s a pretty entertaining “race.” In fact, speed really doesn’t matter at all when it comes to winning this thing. It’s more about the creativity of your tub and whether your tub actually makes it across the finish line or not. Photo from P&O Ferries.
8. Chess Boxing. The old stereotype of chess being for skinny, geeky guys with no athletic ability to speak of is totally out the window with this extreme sport. The game started out as kind of a joke in a graphic novel, but people eventually picked up on it and thought it had merit in reality. The first world championship was held in 2003 and regulated by the World Chess Boxing Organization. I like to think that when you call a checkmate, you get to punch your opponent in the face… but it doesn’t work like that. Boxing rounds are alternated with chess-playing rounds; the winner can be determined by knockout, checkmate, or a decision made by the referee. Photo from Time magazine.
9. Unicycle Hockey. It would seem to me that unicycling and hockey each have enough opportunity for injury all on their own, but combine them and you’re almost guaranteed to get a cool scar at some point. There are a few extra fouls, such as “sibbing,” which is poking your hockey stick in an opponent’s spokes to trip him or her up, but for the most part, the unusual mode of transportation is the biggest difference from regular hockey. Oh, yeah, and the lack of ice. Really, ice + unicycle = asking for a shattered femur. Here’s a group playing unicycle hockey in Telluride:
10. Rock Paper Scissors League. Yes, there’s a Rock Paper Scissors League (to be known as RPSL from now on), and yes, it’s serious. The world competitions take place every year in Las Vegas with Bud Light sponsoring. There’s skill to the game, for sure, but it’s more mental than anything else. For example, statistics have shown that women tend to start off a game with scissors and men tend to start with rock. Know your opponent and you could be a $50,000 winner like Sean Sears, who beat more than 300 contestants at Mandalay Bay last year. If that’s not your cup of tea, there are plenty of other tournaments to participate in: there’s the National Xtreme RPS Competition, the UK RPS Championship and the World Series of RPS.
In 2007, Tillman the bulldog amazed the world with his video of him riding a skateboard around a park, just as naturally as you please. Apparently the dog is still refining his moves, via Tony Hawk’s video game. (Obviously, he’s not playing the game, but he’s definitely into it.) More videos of Tillman snowboarding, surfing, and of course, skateboarding can be found here. Tillman’s website.
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