Another one for my Vets. One of the most asinine rules in the Armed Forces (At least in the Army & Marines), is the no hands in pockets rule.

In Korea during cold weather training? Fuck you man, no hands in pockets.

There is a scene in a Few Good Men that has way more significance to me, now.

I'll be in my bunk.

The case of the giggles I got off of this was ridiculous.

That made my day.

Here's my link. I use Goodreads to manage my To Read list, which is extensive.

From a pure engineering standpoint, I again challenge anyone to find another product that in less than a year doubles its graphics and processing speeds while increasing screen size (and resolution) while maintaining battery life and actually getting physically lighter/thinner.  Not to mention all the other "minor" improvements to the camera, sound, antenna, LTE, etc.

I guess you missed the Moto Razr HD announcement. 

Uh, no, I'm looking at the pixel density of my iphone and ipad and there are only a small amount of devices on the market that come close to the crispness (yes, Calvera's example is one of them).  To say "all high end phones have retina" is disingenuous. I am a designer, I do know a thing or two about resolution and pixel density (as well as marketing buzzwords )

Frankly I find the Evo too large for a phone, so I'm glad Apple kept the screen down to a size that can fit comfortably in a pocket still.

The presently available top end offerings from Samsung and HTC offer comparable pixel density. The already announced and soon-to-be-available top offerings from Moto, Nokia, and LG also offer comparable pixel density (Nokia's is tops I believe). I don't think it was a disingenuous statement; I think it was an accurate one. The Retina advantage is over.

I think I just lost an hour at work watching that over and over again ....

Fair enough. The point I'm making (very badly) is that it's pointless to compare one from the 1930s to one from today, let alone comparing a track and field athlete to a swimmer. It's sorta like saying that 1950s American football players are more athletic than today's soccer players. It's an inane argument. Comparing raw medal count is pointless as well. Comparing success rate would be significantly better as far as a raw comparison, though I don't quite understand why you would even want to. 19 medals is an amazing accomplishment, let it stand on it's own.

What difference does past to present have to do with a discussion about Olympic achievements based on medal counts? I'm not saying Phelps would beat Owens in the pool or that Phelps would beat the best swimmer from the 30s in the pool. I'm saying that, as an Olympian, from a purely athletic perspective (i.e., I'm discounting for this discussion Owens' social and historical significance) Phelps achieved more than Owens. That's based on the fact that Phelps has medaled at three different Olympic games and the fact that Phelps has dominated his competition at the Olympics in a manner never before seen.

At this point, however, I think I need to take a moment to talk about Owens the athlete, since many credit him with the single greatest athletic achievement in the history of sports. I'll let Sports Illustrated tell the story:

It still looks like a misprint.

Four world records in three-quarters of an hour. Not 45 weeks or 45 days but 45 minutes.

Seventy-five years ago Tuesday, at the 1935 Big Ten Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Mich., Jesse Owens didn't rewrite the record book -- he tore it up.

In less than an hour, the 21-year-old Ohio State sophomore tied the world record in the 100-yard dash and then set the world record in the long jump, the 220-yard dash and the 220 low hurdles.

One year later at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the black son of an Alabama sharecropper became an athletic legend when he grabbed Adolf Hitler's toxic theories of racial supremacy and stuffed them in the fuhrer's face by winning gold medals in the 100 and 200 meters, the long jump and the 4x100 relay.

Owens' dominant week in Berlin is part of American athletic lore, but his Olympic performances have been duplicated or surpassed. Carl Lewis won the same four events at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Speedskater Eric Heiden captured five gold medals at distances ranging from 500 to 10,000 meters at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Games.

Swimmer Mark Spitz won seven gold medals, all in world-record time, over eight days at the 1972 Munich Games. Michael Phelps won eight golds at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

But Owens' one-day blockbuster in Ann Arbor has no parallel, not only in track and field but in any sport. It is the greatest single day performance in athletic history, superior to Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point outburst or to the Redskins' Sammy Baugh throwing four touchdown passes and adding an NFL record four interceptions in one game.

That Owens took care of business in less than an hour -- and with an injured back -- adds even more luster to a name that has always ranked near the top of American sports heroes.

"People are surprised at how competitive Owens would still be as an athlete today," said Robert Gary, the current Ohio State track and field coach and meet director of the annual Jesse Owens Track Classic in Columbus. "I don't think many people realize what a phenomenal athlete he was."

Indeed, 75 years later, Owens still holds the Buckeyes' school record in the long jump.

Owens' time in the national spotlight was short -- only about four years. He first drew attention when he tied the 100-yard dash world record of 9.4 seconds as a Cleveland high school senior in 1933. He followed with a record four individual titles at both the 1935 and 1936 NCAA championships (Owens scored 40 of the Buckeyes' 40.2 points at the '35 meet) and then exited track shortly after draping himself in glory in Berlin.

But if Owens' career was abbreviated in years it was long on achievement, and never more so than at Michigan's Ferry Field on May 25, 1935.

At the start of the day, Owens didn't know if he could finish even one event. He had injured his lower back falling down the stairs five days earlier while roughhousing with his fraternity brothers and was still hurting as he warmed up.

After debating with Ohio State track coach Larry Snyder on whether to compete, Owens decided to take it one event at a time.

And what a time it was.

3:15 p.m. 100: After a slow start Owens' tremendous acceleration put him ahead at 30 yards. His official winning time of 9.4 seconds tied the world record, yet more than half of the race's official timers clocked him in 9.3, a new world mark. Rules of the day, however, stipulated that a runner be given his slowest time. The first official 9.3 100 would have to wait for 1948.

3:25 p.m. Long jump: Owens needed just one leap to improve the world record by more than a half-foot to 26 feet 8¼ inches. Only Bob Beamon's legendary 29-2½ jump at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics has improved the long jump record by a greater distance. Beamon's altitude-aided record lasted 23 years. Owens' mark lasted 25. Seventy-three years later at the 2008 Olympics, Owens' 1935 jump would have placed seventh.

"The scary part to me always has been how good Owens was for the very little long jump training he did," said Jon Hendershott, associate editor of Track and Field News. "And the back problem restricted him to just a single jump at the '35 Big Ten. Yet he set a world record that lasted for a quarter-century. Pretty stunning stuff."

3:34 p.m. 220: Until the 1960s, the 220 in the United States often was run on a straightaway rather than on a curve, and the sight of the smooth-striding Owens in full flight over a furlong must have been breathtaking. Owens ran 20.3 seconds to crush the old mark of 20.6. Because the 220 is more than a yard longer than 200 meters, Owens also received credit for breaking the world 200 straightaway record.

Ohio State's Gary said photos of the 220 make it appear "like no one else is in the race."

4 p.m. 220 low hurdles: Low hurdles stand only 2 feet, 6 inches (high hurdles are a foot taller), allowing Owens, who was not a gifted hurdler, to use his great speed between the barriers to defeat more technically superior opponents. He became the first runner to break 23 seconds with a time of 22.6 to win by five yards. He also received credit for the 200-meter hurdle record. The low hurdles event was discontinued at U.S. national meets after 1962.

Owens had averaged a world record every 11 minutes. To find a similar scale of achievement one has to journey to the realm of art and think of Mozart needing only six weeks to compose his final three symphonies in the summer of 1788 or of Shakespeare writing Henry V, Julius Caesar and As You Like It in the same year.
Owens, perhaps the smoothest sprinter of all time, was an athletic artist and with each record the Ferry Field crowd of 5,000 cheered louder. So many fans wanted to congratulate Owens after the meet that he had to leave the locker room through a bathroom window.

He was a national story and would join boxer Joe Louis as the best-known black athlete in the country. His startling achievement impressed even those not normally associated with sports.

Humorist Will Rogers observed: "Mr. Owens ... broke practically all the world records ... with the possible exception of horseshoe pitching and flagpole sitting."

Honors and financial opportunities were slow to flow Owens' way. For all the talk of being snubbed by Hitler at the '36 Olympics (some reports say the German leader actually offered a small wave to the American champion), Owens always said he was more upset by never having received recognition from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In neither 1935 nor 1936 did he win the Sullivan Award, emblematic of the nation's top amateur athlete.

Only weeks after his historic triumph in Berlin, he was suspended by the Amateur Athletic Union for not competing in a minor track meet in Sweden. Owens preferred to get back to the U.S. to see his family and take advantage of endorsement opportunities that, ultimately, failed to materialize.

White Olympic swimmers like Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe could play Tarzan in the movies. Such avenues weren't open to Owens. To make money he had to run in exhibitions against horses.

Finally, in 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower honored Owens as an "ambassador of sport" and he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Gerald Ford in 1976. He also worked as a roving ambassador for Ford Motor Company and the U.S. Olympic Committee.

A decades-long cigarette habit eventually caught up with Owens and he died of lung cancer in 1980 at the age of 66.

Owens' records seem almost quaint today. Jamaica's Usain Bolt can run 100 meters about as fast as Owens covered 100 yards even though the metric sprint is more than 9 yards longer.

Bolt, however, doesn't compete in the hurdles or the long jump. Unlike Owens, he doesn't run on dirt tracks or without the benefit of starting blocks.

`With prize money and commercial endorsements now permissible in international track and field, Bolt can train year round and doesn't have to work in a gas station as Owens did in college. Bolt can compete as long as his body allows him. Owens last raced when he was 22.

One can speculate what Owens might have accomplished had he competed longer. Carl Lewis recorded his best marks in the 100 meters and long jump when he was 30.

Maybe Owens would have run a 10.1 100 meters, which wasn't accomplished until 1956, or notched the first 27-foot long jump, which didn't happen until 1961.

Yet considering how transcendent Owens was at Ann Arbor and again at Berlin, it would be like asking Michelangelo to touch up the Sistine Chapel or for Mark Twain to rework Huckleberry Finn.
The masterpieces speak for themselves.

As Hendershott noted, Owens' day of days in Ann Arbor "is likely never to be equaled, let alone beaten, in any sport."

Ferry Field still stands. Outside the track a plaque commemorates Owens' record-shattering day. It is, perhaps, the ultimate compliment in college sports that a University of Michigan athletic facility continues to honor the achievements of an Ohio State Buckeye.

Owens never had a chance to compete at multiple Olympics, so we're only left to speculate how much he could have accomplished on that particular stage. We don't have to speculate about Phelps, and I think its easy to defend a claim that Phelps accomplished more as an Olympian. But that magical day in Ann Arbor puts Jesse Owens behind no man. I'd say both of them have earned spots on the Mt. Rushmore of sports.

Put in historical context, Jesse Owens is maybe history's most significant athlete. In pure athletic terms, I think Phelps has accomplished more.

If you completely ignore the technological progress that has occurred between then and now, I don't think that argument holds much water. e.g., changing his swimsuit enables him to swim faster...

I don't think the article you quote makes the point you think it does. According to the article you cited, Phelps was one of the last to switch to the advanced suits and held world records before switching. More importantly, what does the advance in technology have to do with Phelps' medal count? Unless you think Phelps is the only one out there with an advanced suit, the playing field is equal, just like it was equal in the past. On an equal playing field, Phelps has dominated his competition to a degree never before seen. I stand by my earlier comment about Phelps' athletic achievements.

In terms of greatest Olympian ever, fraid not. That honor goes to Jesse Owens who won 4 gold medals at a single olympics (1936) in an era of far fewer events.  And in the process of winning those he longjumped over Hitler's NAZI arrogance and ran Goebel's racist Aryan supremecy theories into the ground. IMO Phelps' is going to have to do quite a bit more before he tops that. 

While I'm not going to contest Jesse Owens' greatness, I don't think its true that there were far fewer track and field events for him to compete in. Comparing the 1936 Results to the 2008 results, it looks like the number of track and field events were the same (i.e., a lot).

Its also worth noting that Phelps beat Owens' 4 golds in TWO different Olympic games - 6 Golds in Athens and 8 Golds in Beijing. It's also worth noting that in Beijing, in 7 of the 8 races where Phelps won the gold medal, HE SET A WORLD RECORD (he only set an Olympic Record earning gold in the 100m butterfly).

Put in historical context, Jesse Owens is maybe history's most significant athlete. In pure athletic terms, I think Phelps has accomplished more.

I think the people downplaying Phelps' accomplishments because he's just a "swimmer" are freakin' bonkers. While swimmers, gymnasts, and track&field athletes dominate the list of most decorated Olympic athletes, the next closest swimmer to Phelps is Mark Spitz, with 12 medals. Spitz earned his medals about 40 years ago. Two of the athletes in the top 10 earned their medals in canoeing and cross-country skiing. If Phelps was nothing special, I would fully expect the top 10 to be dominated by swimmers and for the gaps between them to be quite small. The data says exactly the opposite. In a sport that emphasizes speed, strength, and endurance, Phelps has qualified for three Olympic games. In terms of the talent and training required for swimming, all you have to do is look at their bodies to see how much training must be required for that sport.

Phelps' achievement is one for the ages. He has six more gold medals than any athlete in any sport from any point in history. Throw stones if you want; I'm just going to clap.

Stop posting snu...what?  Oh, he's fine.  Carry on.

Wear your seat belt. He's incredibly lucky.

 

Think about how close that car was to rolling over him. Yeeeeesh.

This looks like some kind of parody. And I totally want to see it!

[Spoiler]

We're talking about the sequel to the animated series. The Legend of Korra, she's the avatar in line after Aang.

Spoiler for Hiden:

I was surprised as how much they wrapped up in the season finale. But they have a second season. It's clear that this first season was a test case to see if it was worth it. The kind of animation they're doing is expensive, much more so than a lot of the flash, or vectorized motion graphics, based animation you see coming out of studios these days.

So, I think they wrote the first season to be self contained so that if it ended there the story would be over. Now, they'll have to write a new threat, which will be difficult since it wouldn't have been there from the beginning as a driving force. I'm okay with Amon being who he was, I was just surprised at how quickly they revealed and dealt with that.

I really didn't like the way they handled the love triangles, too much of it, especially for what was supposed to be a very strong character. You could pretty much see where the triangle was heading. Just too predictable. Although that's not surprising considering the weird love stories in the first series.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Korra was originally intended to be 12 episodes, but an additional 14 episodes (Season 2) were added to the order while the original 12 were being produced. If the initial run was a test case, it was more for Nik execs to see what the show looked like, rather than to see how an audience would respond to it. Nik actually asked the Avatar folks to break the stories into stand-alone seasons before they started producing any of the episodes, rather than having a three-season story arc like the original show had. So wrapping up the Amon story line after 12 episodes was always in the cards. I kind of like this approach, because now there is not really any kind of built-in end point for the show. It can go on for as long as the show is making money for Nik.

I really like the characters and setting introduced in the first season, but the plots need some work. It was very frustrating to see the bending world completely unable to compete with the equalists during the course of the show.

I need Popehat coverage on this, STAT!

[Avatar]

Your list sucks because most of those movies aren't bad at all. They may not be great but they aren't bad (except  for Over the Top and GI Joe, WTF man).

A lot of people don't like them.  I'm not even talking critics, but general intarweb dislike.  Some of these films have started flame wars, in some cases reminiscent of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crap, so in terms of "movies you love that others hate", there has been a lot of hate directed toward almost all films on my list.

Heh. But the thread title is "Movies YOU love that everyone else HATES." You listed Avatar! It's literally the highest grossing movie of all time; second highest if you adjust for inflation. I don't think that meets the criteria. Turns out, a lot of people liked Avatar. 

 

Did Homeboy just pick up that dog's scat and monkey sling it at the owner?

Last night's episode was really exceptional. It was nice to have Sue fit in a little bit better (and her dig on Artie's wardrobe was maybe the greatest Sue line of all time, with the possible exception of "Other Asian", which may be un-toppable), and the show really had a nice balance of plot and musical numbers. They squeezed a lot into that episode and basically everything worked. While I didn't particularly love the song Emma sang for her solo, I thought the montage was cute. I could have done without the surprise ending, though. I'd really love to go the rest of the season without a major Finchel relationship plot element to work through, but I guess that is impossible. Really looking forward to the MJ tribute episode and to having the Warblers become a factor in the show's story lines again. A Sebastian vs. Santana Smooth Criminal sing-off seems kind of inspired.

I am so grateful that my kids are satisfied with what the roulette wheel of the universe provided them. I consider myself liberal and extremely progressive, and I'm pretty sure transgender issues would throw me for a loop. Like being gay, true transexuality doesn't go away and isn't something you grow out of, but pulling the trigger on hormone therapies at such an early age seems incredibly bold (although, nothing irreversible has happened yet, and the child is receiving counseling to ensure that the best choice is made before surgery becomes available at 18). I don't know if I could process the information rationally enough to make the right choices for a child that young. The parents are in their 50s (the dad is a hunter who identifies himself as a political conservative and his a hunter) and I really applaud them for doing their research, educating themselves, and standing behind their child, even though (s)he is manifesting behaviors that are incredibly painful for them to deal with. No matter how much it has rocked their world, the child's journey is much harder, and it really sounds like they have stepped outside of themselves to try and support their kid. Hats off to them for opening up the book on their lives. Such a difficult thing to do, but they may really end up helping a lot of other families by doing so.

As someone who didn't watch the Glee Project, I'm happy that Damian isn't getting a lot of screen time. Honestly, I don't really know what his merits are beyond the fact that he has a pretty decent voice, but in a very crowded bullpen of regulars, I'm glad that we've been treated to story lines that feature Santana, Mercedes, Tina, Mike, Puck, and Quinn (praise be to the heavens that they've turned off her psycho switch), and Finn and Rachel stories that don't turn on whether they'll stay together or not. If anything, Mr. Shue needs more to do these days. There's only so many minutes an episode available, so my preference is that new guy just stand in the background, look happy, and snap his fingers (particularly since Brittany no longer thinks he's a leprechaun).

After a somewhat shaky start, I'm pretty much enjoying the season. The last few episodes have been strong. I don't like the split, but it gives Mercedes more to do, so that's a good thing, since she was criminally underused in the first two seasons. My biggest gripe with this season is that Quinn out of nowhere has become plain psycho. I could handle her going back to being a bitch, but this season she's just completely unhinged. That's kind of dumb and feels like it came out of nowhere.

Looking forward to the return of Trouty-Mouth next week. 

And another +1. Buffy Season 1 is by far the worst season, but even Season 1 finds its stride in the back stretch. Seasons 2 and 3 are glorious. Some of the best writing you'll ever find on television.

Safe to try at home...if your name is Ceekay.

 

Not terribly interested if their selection is comparable to Netflix's (i.e., mostly books I'm not interested in reading).

Tarp rollers stop for no man!

Oh, forgot OmniOutliner. If you're creating a lot of written material, great tool for organizing your thoughts and work product.

If you use Google Reader a lot, then Reeder is a must.

 

iOS app is out.