|
| Daigo Umehara - Article from Eurogamer More to follow. | | |
| I love freshly paved roads. Recently, through a stretch of relatively undesirable real estate, judging by the boarded-up windows and houses in ill-repair, the city has repaved the roads.
With a light-absorbing black surface, the road grips one's tires with new found vigour, allowing a quiet and satisfying ride through once pot-hole laden stretches.
Somehow, it transforms the area from decrepit to a place with some modicum of hope.
I smile to myself, enjoying the change. Renewal for this city would come with no mean cost. It's been in such a protracted spiral into an everpresent gloom.
My car wheels onto the highway, and I find myself obeying the speed limit, staring off into dove-gray winter-ish skies. Age has that effect on you.
To my left, I notice a blur of black bobbing across the short concrete wall separating the flow of high speed traffic. My eye is drawn to it, as I accelerate to 70 mph. At the angle it makes with my vision, it looks like a rectangle of black rubber. But the bounce suggests something I find preposterous. It's a tire, spinning and bouncing in the opposite direction as my car.
As it passes my car, and into my rear view mirror, I find myself wondering what it might have been like had the tire, complete with metal hub, collided with my windshield. It looked as if it had flown free from a car traveling on the opposite side, with a velocity of around 30-40 mph. A collision with my windshield might well have been fatal.
What a morning.
| | |
| More to follow:
-------
I have Fedor winning by submission in the first.
-------
http://www.sherdog.com/news/news/were-all-human-fedor-critiques-rogers-fight-20867
Okay, so I was wrong. Fedor, TKO 2nd round.
The above interview was short and sweet. I love his humility... I hope that however I practice medicine, or achieve in the future, I will always have this kind of humility.
| | |
| Machida vs. Shogun - Previous Entry
I finally got to watch this match yesterday, having forbidden myself from reading any news on the match until I got back from Asia. After watching it, I must admit that I was both a tiny bit disappointed, for I personally thought Shogun had taken the victory and thus disagreed with the judges' decision. On the other hand, it was a brilliant fight; probably one of the most technically impressive striking matches I've seen in the UFC, ever. Both fighters performed to their potential, and it was pyrotechnic. They both displayed excellent intelligence, and executed the strategies well.
While I, and it appears most sites, seem to give the nod to Shogun, looking at the match from UFC judging criteria, I could see it going to Machida. That said, in an extended fight, Shogun's strategy should have eventually resulted in defeat for Machida, as in rounds 6-10. The beating that Machida's legs were taking is nothing to sneeze at.
Honestly, Shogun performed far better than I had expected. I had not expected him to return to the form we remember from the Pride middleweight GP fight form. That is, his conditioning and physical prowess. The intelligence and strategy that he now employs is superior to what he had before. Both Machida and Shogun are impressively formidable. Neither destroyed the other, and neither embarrassed themselves.
I can't wait to see either of their next fights. A rematch would be nice, but I think that it was brilliantly fought, and near even, with the advantage to Shogun.
This was TMA at its best.
(Pro's Picks from Sherdog prior to the fight...)
| | |
| Food Glorious Food - From the Economist Regulating Health Food - From the Economist Omega 6 and Omega 3's - From the Economist
A lot of money is made from convincing wealthy patrons that they might live a little longer by spending quite a bit of money on foods and supplements. This is a long established pattern of behaviour that one can see even in legendary Chinese Emperors dispatching armies to search for immortality -- Even French adventurers such as Ponce de Leon. Though some might scoff at such gallantry, smaller forays are often done at health food stores and pseudo-medical interventions. Much may do no harm, and some might do some good, but almost all share one trait: no strong evidence for doing good. The Placebo effect grants that a person perceives benefit 20% of the time, despite no actual drug (established using drug and sugar pills). If this effect is present in health foods (which it no doubt is), then one might surmise that many people are paying a lot for a psychological effect. Small benefits are hard to prove; and harder still to disprove to an undiscerning public. If any of you are loyal consumers of high priced health foods, recall that many such fads have come and gone, and some gone only after vast sums of money have been exchanged. Of course, the worst fads do harm. Ciao. | | |
|
Lifetime