A Geeks Guide to Sports: Prosthetics

Oscar Pistorius - Too fast for the Olympics.

First off here are two links dealing with prosthetics in sports.

The serious one.

The funny one.

Mr. Pistorius' story might be old news to some of you, but just think for a minute we have created an artificial limb that is faster then what it replaced.

I actually think the Olympics should let him run, or at least he should host a race against the Olympics finalists. I'm sure there are those who will argue that the Olympics started out as a celebration of the human body. And as such allowing someone with an artificial limb is not in the original spirit of the games. To that I say did the original spirit include bribery and steroids? (At least their are no extra medical or ethical concerns down the line with a prosthetic.)

But really the real question I want to ask is what happens when prosthetic limbs start to encroach on other sports? Running is probably one of the more straight forward sports, what about a sport that requires a wide range of tasks to be preformed. The 2nd link makes a joke of an MMA fighter with metal hands. (No, not Jax from Mortal Kombat). What will happen to sports if there was a basketball player who was brilliant but isn't allowed into the NBA because his prosthetics give him a slight edge over other players? What if it's not so slight? Will people watch a league where the players aren't the creme of the crop just to keep the purity of  the game? What if people start to watch the prosthetic league (Yes I know it's a horrible name feel free to send in a better name for it)? Will athletes actually have to choose between cutting off a limb and playing at the highest levels of the games? Yes, I know it's all speculation, but it's an interesting turn of events. We have in a way made or legs obsolete at running, what comes next?

Any and all theories and comments are welcome. So what's you take?

A Geeks Guide to Presidents Day

B@tgirl told me she is not going to be able to post tonight, so I thought I'd fill in and let you all know about tomorrows amazing tournament. That's right the Presidents Day Massacre is upon us again. That sporting event where every dead president rises from the grave and engages in brutal combat until a champion is crowned. It's going to be pretty hard to top last year when Grover Cleveland who everyone thought was out of the event, having been shot by Teddy Roosevelt, rose again and knocked John Adams and Thomas Jefferson out at almost the same time.

What could possibly happen this time? Will Andrew Jackson beat his record of 19 kills in a single event? Will William Henry Harrison make it out of the first round for once? Will Taft again kill someone by landing on them? Will Williams Jenning Bryant try to crash the event again?

But maybe you don't know about this awesome tournament. The rules are simple each president gets to bring one weapon in to the ring and the fight lasts until 37 men are sent back to the grave, and the new champion is crowned.

This years event will be held at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan, all the major networks will be covering it from CSPAN to ESPN, from Fox News to Spike. Not to mention ABC, CBS, and NBC.

So place your predictions in the comment section, because the person with the best explanation for their pick wins a secret prize. Warning: The prize is not the vice-presidency. Don't worry.

By the way you get awesome points if you get most of the references in this article.

The Super Bowl

So since I handle the sports section, (so far, eventually Stranger and maybe Anacronus will weigh in on the subject too) I figured I should put down my prediction for the Super Bowl. Most people would do this before the game starts. Well not Geek Streak we're starting our own traditions here.

Besides I can assure you I have not seen a minute of the Super Bowl's footage yet. (I don't really care for American Football.)

My prediction is that the team that scores more points will win...although I will admit the team with the defense that allows less points has a good chance too.

Not good enough? Okay I predict it will be a team from a northern division that has been in the playoffs 26 times (Yes, both teams actually have been in the playoffs 26 times according to wikipedia), and has won more then 5 championships (I'm including pre-Super Bowl championships in that).

But seriously I will be cheering for the Packers mostly because I tend to cheer for the team that has had the longer drought in championships. Now I'm going to go drink some Warsteiner and maybe play some video games.

Before I forget I'd like to give a shout out to Sir Griff one of the new geeks who read. Also I'd like to give a shout out and thanks to the Jam City Rollergirls who recently posted a link to our blog for Anacronus' review of their game.

A geeks guide to sports: Bundesliga

I'm starting a section where I'll be discussing sports and how they work. Because I think they're are plenty of geeks out there who are interested in sports, but just don't have the right people explaining it to them. So without further ado we're starting with the Bundesliga.

The Bundesliga is the top German league for association football/soccer. I'm using Germany and the Bundesliga because I'm more familiar with them. The other most famous ones are the English Premier League (England duh), La Liga (Spain), and Serie A (Italy). These 4 are the most popular leagues (although all 53 countries in UEFA (the Union of European Football Associations) have a league that are similar.) Most of the leagues work in a similar manner.

In the Bundesliga there are 18 teams. Unlike American sports where we divide everyone in to Geographical regions, every team plays each other twice (once at home, once away). Making the season 34 games long. The team with the most points at the end of the season (3 for a win, 1 for a tie) are the champions. No playoffs. To Americans that sounds like blasphemy, but bear with me. For every year there's also a 64 team knockout tournament going on between almost every team in Germany, not just the Bundesliga, but 2nd Bundesliga (this would be like AAA...sort of.) 3rd Liga (AA), and the regional leagues of Germany (A ball). This massive tournament is called the DFB Cup (or the DFB Pokal (DFB simiply means Deutscher Fussball Bund or the German Football Association)).

This tournament is like the countries' play offs, but they go on pretty much while the regular season is going on. So then you say, but why worry about the regular season. 2 reasons, A) If you come in the top 5 you get to play in next years international tournaments. (Champions League and Europa League. We'll get into these more later.) and B) if you get any of the bottom 3 spot you could get sent down to a lower league (called relegation). (The last and 2nd-to-last place team get sent to 2nd. Bundesliga while the 3rd to last plays the 3 best team in 2nd Bundesliga in a 2 game tournament. The winners get to be in the Bundesliga next year. The loser is sent to 2nd Bundesliga.)

This may all sound strange but I'd like you to realize that because of the multiple tournaments and weekly schedule it is possible to watch soccer almost all year round. Heck during some years you will have Bundesliga, DFB Cup, Champions Leauge, Europa Leauge, and either the European championships or the World Cup going on. (The years the European championships or World cup aren't going on, then the national teams are trying to qualify for these tournaments.) And that's just for European teams add to it the fact the MLS is going on while Europe takes it's summer break, and you really never have any point of the year when there isn't a soccer match going on somewhere.

I hope this is helped some what and feel free to leave any questions you have in the comments. And now I'm going to leave you with St. Pauli's entrance music. No, seriously this is what they take the field to.

Sports from around the world.

Yeah I know my last post was about politics and this post is about sports. And this is supposed to be a geek blog now. The sports thing will eventually make sense, and as far as politics go...somebody has to keep an eye on that stuff, it may not be fun but it's important (if only so you know who to vote out when the time comes.) Also we're in a transitional phase here, so bear with me. Thanks for your patience.

From Germany: Stuttgart wins the 1st German National Roller Derby Championship. They've only been playing this sport for 4 years and there's already a national champion? Hey America time to get on the ball.

From Qatar: World Cup maybe moved to Winter in 2022. From the World Cup that is being dubbed "The FAIL that keeps on giving". So when in Qatar Don't be gay, don't be drunk (outside the stadium), don't be improperly dressed (if your female), we may need our neighbors to help us pull this off, and now they might not be able to get the climate controlled stadiums they promised? Might I suggest that if they can't get it together we just move the event to America.

UPDATE: I realized after I wrote this I should specify why a winter world cup is a problem. The problem is that a winter world cup will disrupt Europe's leagues (I'm not sure about other continents.) Granted they do have 12 years to deal with this problem and the others I mentioned above, but it seems like this wasn't thought all the way through when FIFA voted on who would host the World Cup.

From Canada: In 1995 Quebec lost a hockey team, 1100 fans of this team invaded New York last week in order to send a message that they would like a team again. You can read the aftermath here.

Not bad though a team that hasn't existed in 15 year getting 1100 people to go to another country for a single game. Especially when the game is being played by two teams who can't seem to draw a crowd to save their teams. (This statement maybe literal quite soon.)

Keeping with hockey, two goals that will make you say. Holy Crap.

Oh yeah tommorow is the last batch of games in European soccer until the new year so if you want to see some games go to ESPN3 (even if the games are too early for you, you can watch them on replay all weekend.) See you tomorrow.