World cup group last round prediction

Already finished:
Group A: Uruguay & Mexico (France's out!)
Group B: Argentina (Yes!) & Korea

Next two days:
Group C: Slovenia & England (USA & England)
England will beat Slovenia (yes) & USA will tie Algeria (nope)
England has to be hanging there to play Argentina

Group D: Germany & Serbia (Germany and Ghana)
Germany will beat Ghana (yes); Serbia will beat Australia (nope)
German always sticks to the end

Group E: Netherlands & Denmark (Netherlands & Japan)
Denmark beats Japan (nope); Netherlands ties Cameroon (nope)
Japan and Denmark is almost 50%-50%, but Japan traditionally loses to more physical teams

Group F: Paraguay & Italy (Paraguay & Slovakia)
Italy beats Slovakia (nope but ha!); Paraguay beats New Zealand (tie)
If Slovakia could beat Italy, it won't be at the bottom of this weak group

Group G: Brazil & Portugal
Portugal ties Brazil; Cote d'Ivoire beats Korea
Even Portugal loses to Brazil, it will still advance unless... but Ronaldo?

Group H: Spain & Chile
Spain beats Chile; Switzerland beats Honduras (tie)
Who would thought that this is a tough group? Now there's a real possibility that a team with two wins wouldn't advance, unless Spain ties Chile. In that case, I wouldn't be heart broken, but it would be a real pity to not see Spain play more.

The Pirates are for Real this season

This is the NCAA football news of the weekend:
The Pirates have done it again!

They beat then No. 8 West Virginia by a large margin: 24-3. If anyone (including me) says that they were just lucky last week beating (then) No. 15 ranked Virginia Tech by 27-24 thanks for a last minute block conversion, now they (or we) can all shut up. You don't beat West Virginia by chance, not by that large margin.

After these two wins against ranked teams, the Pirates landed their first top 25 spots (14th in AP and 20th in USA Today) in 9 years. Last time they did that was in 1999 when they beat Miami Hurricanes (Florida) after the devastating Hurricane Fran flooded Greenville.

Lip syncing: a must for Olympics?

Just as nobody had predicted the magnificent opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics Games, no one had expected that one of the low point of this Olympics is not doping but lip syncing by a 9-year old.

While most of people using this as their Olympic gossip, they didn't know the following fact:
First, it is the music director of the ceremony disclosed the lip syncing voluntarily as a "behind the scenes director's comment" as well as publicly giving credit to the girl who did the singing. What he didn't realized is that while he said "not perfect looking" was transformed by the media as "ugly". And this is the media claimed that they were worried about the psychological damage to both girls.

Secondly, it is common practice in Chinese and Hong Kong films to have a professional singer to sing for the picture perfect actors/actresses. Guess the director of "Momma Mia" didn't know this is an option. To many, this is a show that you want to be perfect for the audience to enjoy the performance. It turned out some (or most) of them may not care whose voice it is.

Thirdly, don't be surprised, this may be the Olympic tradition. In 2006 at Turin, the great Pavarotti was lip syncing to his tape; in 2002 at Salt Lake City, the televised opening ceremony was not live (except for the athletes), but a rehearsal taped earlier. What most shocking is that in 2000 at Sydney, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra was string-syncing to a pre-recorded symphony and, wait for this, part of the recording was done by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

The amazing part is that all these facts at other Olympics were not disclosed voluntarily. The organizers admitted the syncing facts only after been caught. However, unlike the Beijing Olympics, none of these made to main stream news. No wonder the Beijing organizers and the Chinese felt they were treated unfairly.

Here is a blog on the Times: Sydney Comes Clean on Olympic Miming. Comparing to the front page coverage of the Beijing lip syncing, this is not even on the printed edition, but only on the web site.

The original source is from the Sydney Morning Herald:

"As a result, the Sydney Symphony's confirmation that it mimed its entire performance at the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics comes as something of a shock. Even worse, it admits the backing tape was recorded, in part, by its southern rival, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra."

2008 Beijing Olympics Games: The director's cut

Today's closing ceremony is short and sweet. Given the magnificent moments (the grand opening, Phelps, Bolt, ...) all on high definition for the first time ever, I'd wish there will be a Blue Ray DVD set with all these fantastic memories. Of course, I'd like an Opening Ceremony: Director's Cut, not the NBC version.

Here's an interesting comments about the over all experiences.

"If the Beijing Olympics has done anything, it is to push people to be more realistic, more grounded, and have a better grasp of China. If that means a good bit of their romanticism (e.g. respect) is lost with their pre-conceived notions about China, so be it. It’s a net positive because they come ever closer to experiencing China and all of its problems as Chinese themselves do."

Best moment of the 2008 Olympics

It's from LA Times' online entertainment section.

The 31th is Morgan Freeman's Visa commercial:

"There are 6 billion of us. We all come from unique places with unique ways of looking at the world. We don't always agree. But for a few shining weeks we set it all aside. We come together to stand and cheer and celebrate as one. We forget all the things that make us different and remember all the things that make us the same."

The gymnasts' age problem at the Olympics

In most cases, age is quite a sensitive question that one should be very careful to ask. Of course, one reason for this sensitivity is because of the "desired age" is always not what the real age: be that a teen wants to look older (to be taken seriously or ...) or I being happy whenever someone ask me which school I'm attending (trust me, this doesn't happen often, if at all).

The real reason behind this puzzle is that it is impossible to tell how old someone really is, at least not within a small margin of error, say 2 years. At the same time, unlike doping steroid, there is yet a test that you can trust. The bone age test have a fairly large margin of error (only ~80% accurate) that it can't be used with court-proof confidence, according to this study. Besides, it only tells the biological age, not chronological age.

X-ray radiography of a 9-year old girl with a bone age of 8.

Now you will understand that why everybody can speculate the chronological age of the small Chinese gymnasts: They can say whatever they want, there is just no true proof.

Disclosure: I'm not implying here that you should trust whatever government document says or everything from news media. For those in doubt, please check out what Cheney (or everybody in the Administration) said about WMD and the infamouse Jessica Lynch/Pat Tillman circus.

Here's a funny column about this by ESPN's Jim Caple.

"Hasn't the IOC been paying attention to American Olympic coverage over the decades? Our Olympians are always clean. It's the other athletes who cheat like foreign accountants in offshore tax havens."

"The Olympics aren't about which country wins the most gold medals; they're about which country wins the most medals, period. ... Besides, the "official" gold tally neglects all the multiple golds we've won on relay teams and in other team sports. This just isn't fair."

"Something, after all, must be done to prevent immature, underage girls from being thrown into an intense, pressure-packed international competition they are far too young to handle emotionally. Forcing a young girl to compete like that would be like entering a 6-year-old in a beauty contest, or a fifth grader in a national spelling bee, or expecting an 11-year-old boy to compete in a worldwide baseball tournament on national TV. Americans just don't believe in placing that kind of pressure on children."

The tiebreaker, the US gymnastics, and the Karolyis

In today's Olympic Gymnastics competition, there are two ties in over all score for gold: one is men's vault and the other is women's uneven bars. Going through a specially designed tiebreaker process (up to six steps) instituted by the International Olympic Committee after the 1996 Atlanta games, the ties have been broken and Leszek Blanik won the gold medal for vault and Kexing He got the gold in uneven bars.

To me, this is just the same as Phelps the great won his 100 butterfly two days ago, there are a system of rules to follow and that is it. In fact, both athletes in these events are real champions. Especially for Nastia Liukin, who handled the situation extremely well, considering the difficult circumstances. All Americans should be proud of her.

She was quoted the following in an article on the Times:

"Liukin said she thought the scoring was fair, even mentioning that she thought Yang, the bronze-medalist, might have been underscored. In a subjectively judged sport, outcomes like this sometimes happened, she said."

At the same time, her fellow Americans, sadly including some so called journalists, were not that graceful. Many started to call the rule obscure and unreasonable, just short of following the idiotic Bela Karolyi that "the Chinese stole the medal again!".

In the overwhelming comments on these news stories, I'm glad there are quite a few rather rational about this. A good comment on the Post's explanation of the tiebreaker article is quoted here:

"One comedian captured this fracas succinctly: "why is it that after watching the Olympics for an hour, everyone suddenly thinks that they are experts in a sport they've rarely watched before?"

People like Bela Karoyli do not help in this situation - why is he even getting so much coverage? His wife is the coach! It's so unbelievable that NBC is letting him scream and cry (literally) like some lunatic on prime time television when he's basically the coach of the US team.

I for one am proud that the athletes themselves have not descended into this "sour grapes" mode that a lot of the commentators have, and that their own coaches have. If the scoring process is flawed, complain about it and work to fix it, but don't denigrate the sport with such pettiness.

Posted by: rhadams | August 18, 2008 1:27 PM"

My take on this is almost the same as this one on the same article:

"1) I will not try to second-guess human error or bias in judging;
2) Nastia behandles herself like a true olympian and (co-)champion.
3) As long as the rule is set beforehand, I have no problem with it. The same tie-breaker is used in men's vault today - and I didn't heard a lot of support for the French siler mealist.
4) Last but not last, please and please do not use Bella Karolyi's NBC comment to support you arguments. Would you use a judge's wife's comment to support a judge's decision?

Posted by: Anonymous | August 18, 2008 2:21 PM"

By "almost", I had more disguise to the Karolyis. They are basically making money from training the US women's gymnastics team in Texas. They have monetary interests in bashing China in the hopes that their own incompetence may be overlooked. For example, in this story on the LA Times, he was quoted:

"If that sounds complicated, former U.S. national coach Bela Karolyi didn't understand how the tiebreak process worked. He thought the scores from qualifying were used, and that would have given Liukin the gold medal."

For someone doing this for a living, if he didn't understand the rules, which has been instituted since 1996, he is incompetent. If he continues to basing the judge, the system, and the opponents with racist demeaning language, he is a pathetic looser.

Please note that his highest career point is to coach Nadia Comaneci to the first perfect 10 in the 1976, when Comaneci was only 14 years old. While calling the Chinese "half people" on national TV, he is the most vocal opponent of the 16-years age limit instituted by the Federation of Gymnastics.

To me, this is the real disgrace to the Olympic spirit.

For NBC, they could use some better misjudgment themselves so to avoid using such a lunatic on prime time national TV. Oh, that may be too high an expectation for NBC who decided to get rid of Jay Leno.

For the LA Times, who continues to quote the Karolyis, this is why "the Times" is for the New York Times.

The Opening Ceremony’s memorable moments from an NFL sports reporter

It is a pretty good piece about the opening ceremony.




"Maybe the only way to understand how fulfilling the 2008 Opening Ceremony was is to think four years in advance to the 2012 games, and pity the city of London. "

"This was the oddity of the night. Behind the Chinese president and the entire national team, the one athlete who appeared to get the loudest ovation was none other than Kobe Bean Bryant. The moment was so odd that even U.S. journalists were looking at each other in puzzlement. The Russian, Chinese and American presidents were here, but Kobe was the head of state tonight."

"You know an Olympics has gotten off on the right foot when the torch lighting ceremony really grabs you. Muhammad Ali at the 1996 games in Atlanta was a proud and heartfelt moment. The flaming arrow in the 1992 games in Barcelona was inventive and daring. But Beijing set a mind-bending standard that defied belief."



Read the full story here at Yahoo Sports!

Beijing Olympics 2008: best show ever

The opening ceremony is spectacular! The imagination, creativity, and performance are breathtaking and magnificent. This is also the first year that the Olympics are on high definition. The picture quality are awesome.

My favorite funny superbowl XLII commercials

My favorite Superbowl commercials:

The Doritos ads in which the guy with a mouse trap was hilarious.



The screaming squirrel for Bridgestone


Budlight: the ability to fly:


Moment of Truth with Chad Johnson




And the Yahoo top five list sucks! The only one close to be funny is the Pepsi featuring Justin Timberlake.

Cancun trip: Wind surfing lessons

The resort did offer free short lessons in windsurfing and sailing on catamaran. Unfortunately, it's pretty windy throughout our stay except one day. They also only have gears with large sails that is difficult to beginners.

I took on the windsurfing despite these problems. In the first day, after a short on the beach lesson, I made the mistake that drifting to deeper water and ended up about 100 meters from shoreline. In this picture, I'm the small dot on the left of the peer.



Since I hadn't master the basics on getting up the sail from water by myself in strong wind, they ended up having to rescure me using a moto boat.

Farewell to Andrew Agassi

After a lost at the US Open, Andrew Agassi finally left professional tennis. To some, "... some part of you want a better ending..." To me, I want to see him playing at least a few more matches. And he sure can do that, competitively.

Professional sports is everything about testing limits. Why can't the limit be how long someone can keep competing at a professional level? Why someone has to retire at their peak? For some, may be it's time for something else. But for some others, there is just no other choices. Professional means money and it turns to give most of money to just a few top players. The rest, like the waiters and waitresses in Hollywood, dream one day they will be on top. For these "Andrew Agassi"s, since it's down hill from there, so why bother?

Some may argue, this is how professional sport gets where it is today. But I will say, this is because it's not real sports anymore. Remember something called higher, faster, further?

World cup: USA vs. Italy

The USA put up a good fight with the Italians,
but it was a very bloody game.

The worst part of the game is ABC's commentator, who wanes too much about the red card the Americans got and the goal nullified because of an off side player. I can't believe ABC will have some idiot like this for national TV.

May be he had worked in the NHL group too long?

Yes, De Rossi disgraced himself with that ugly elbow. But one should had seen this coming after seeing the first 20 minutes' play by team USA. If the referee Jorge Larrionda from Uruguay had acted more strict earlier, this might be better controlled. Although the two other red cards are more or less correct according to the rules, well, the game went down hill from there.

One more thing on the nullified goal by DaMarcus Beasley. Yes, although McBride didn't touch the ball, he was clearly not only off side but also blocked the view of the keeper and even made the move to confused him. To me, there's no doubt that McBride gained advantage from his off side position on this play.