Umpire Ejects the Crowd

From the associated press just now:

WEST BURLINGTON, Iowa – An umpire has emptied the stands at a high school baseball game, ejecting the entire crowd of more than 100 fans for being unruly.

Umpire Don Briggs said he had no problem with any of the student athletes during Thursday's game between Winfield-Mount Union and West Burlington.

He said he had to take action because fans were being unruly, yelling and arguing.

However, West Burlington Superintendent James Sleister said he didn't see any unusual behavior and said he thought the umpire overreacted.

The game resumed after a 40-minute delay. West Burlington won 12-11.

The umpire called police as a precaution. West Burlington police officer Al Waterman says there were no arrests. He says he saw no unruliness himself.

What the hell was the crowd doing to warrant something like that? Furthermore, how can the umpire eject the crowd? He could have stopped the game, as apparently he did, but seriously, is it in the umpire's power to eject the crowd? The crowd?

Bling the Dead

Life Gem is a company that takes the remains of your loved ones (or loved animals) and synthesizes a diamond. The diamond is indeed real, and it is indeed made of 8 oz. of carbon from your loved ones, at roughly $1,000 per ounce: lifegem.com



You can make what you want out of it. Though clients claim that they can forever wear a piece of their loved ones, it raises a certain ethical paradigm between the diamond ring as a commodified article of jewelry and the "sacred" ashes of the respectfully dead.

Boy Hit By Meteorite

A meteorite the size of a pea hits a German teenager in the hand at 30,000 miles per hour and leaves a scar: Boy Hit By Meteorite. How could it strike the boy's hand and bounce off at the velocity at which it was traveling? Faster than a bullet and slightly smaller, yet it hardly broke skin, it appears.

45 Ridiculous Pictures of Boy Bands

Enough said.

In-N-Out Vs. McDonalds

My opinion on Golimar

In all honesty, I could take these dance moves very seriously, if someone I DIDN'T know was performing them. However, if I happened to know the person who was making a fool of himself, then I can't help but at least chuckle/giggle.

"His Signing is Good for Football"

Sepp Blatter praises Real Madrid for their record offer to Manchester United for the acquisition of Cristiano Ronaldo's services, opening up a controversial dialogue with financial ethics in football.

From soccerway.com:

FIFA president Sepp Blatter on Friday defended Real Madrid's world record 80 million pound swoop for Manchester United's Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo.

Blatter, speaking in the build-up to the Confederations Cup which gets underway on Sunday, said the huge fee proved that football was still an attractive business despite the global financial turndown.

"If we have a good market in football, it means we have a good product. But it is not only a product to sell or to buy, it gives people what they want; and that is emotions and entertainment," said Blatter.

"At the same time as Ronaldo's transfer ten years ago, there was a Picasso painting sold at Sotherby's in London for over 100 million pounds and what happened to it?

"They put it somewhere where no-one could see it or on display at a museum for a short period, but with a football player, you can see him once or twice a week.

"I heard yesterday that you could buy millions of pieces of bread to give to the people for that amount, but entertainment is also food for the people."

Blatter needs to remember, as a fan of Madrid himself, that the fans are not the ones who settle on the transfer fee. While I am sure that Ronaldo will be a nice addition to a team needing some exceptional talent (à la Messi, or Ibrahimovic, and thankfully Kaka), and while I am sure that fans won't mind this addition, Madrid's warchest is in no way correlated to the fiscal situation of the football world. Blatter hints at a commodification of football, which is certainly where things appear to be going. However, the differences between Cristiano and a Picasso oil are rather distinct. A team full of £80,000,000 players doesn't guarantee a championship; players have some lackluster performances, get injured, lose focus etc etc. A Picasso oil, by all normal measures, stays a Picasso oil, no matter how much the world around it changes. It's entertainment value is guaranteed. Signing new players, regardless of price, always is a gamble (think Real Madrid, 2004)

Golimar

India's take on Michael Jackson's thriller. Apparently it was part of a 1985 Bollywood drama. The dance moves and bass line are Jacksonian, yet somehow the whole thing is rather difficult to take seriously. I wonder why.