Wednesday, June 23, 2010

What a day

I'm sure everyone in America by now has heard about the dramatic victory of the US soccer team over Algeria to not only advance to the round of 16 of the World Cup, but also to win its group for the first time since 1930, the first World Cup ever. I'm sure fewer have heard about the epic battle going on between American John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon.

The 91' minute score by Landon Donovan to put the US up 1-nil in the last game of qualifying at the World Cup is more exciting, but Isner's match is more historic.

Not only have the pair played the longest Wimbledon, Grand Slam, and overall tournament match in Open history with 118 games and 6 1/2 hours played in the 5th set alone, but they're not finished yet. At about 4:13pm ET (9:13 pm in London), the game was called due to darkness and will have to be finished tomorrow. Oh, and both men have over 90 aces in the match, shattering the old record of 78 set by Ivan Karolvic.

I was going to rant a little about about some of the terrible officiating in the US/Algeria game (another bad disallowed goal and several other bad calls), but I've spent too much time reveling in the victory and being amazed by the determination of the two tennis players mentioned above. I once played a 2 1/2 hour 8-game pro set in high school and thought I was going to die. Those two men are champions no matter what.

But still, go John Isner. And go USA.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Ice Cube

Sometimes pictures say more than words.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Competing for a Piece of History

I mentioned the impending decommission of the NASA Space Shuttle fleet in an earlier post, but never really thought about what would happen with the Atlantis, Discovery, and the Endeavour. Apparently NASA is holding a competition to see what site will house two of the retired shuttles (the Discovery was already promised to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in DC, a logical final resting place).

Where should the two remaining shuttles go? The most historically logical (Kennedy Space Center)? The site with the probably the highest chance of heavy traffic (the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York Harbor)? The one with the best campaign?

My vote goes with the Kennedy Space Center and the Intrepid. Johnson Space Center in Houston is a close third. Why send such an important part of our nation's aerospace history to a location in Tulsa, OK or Dayton, OH that won't get the exposure of these other sites?