dave submitted an interesting story about how some baseball teams are having their pitchers study past games on their video iPod.

Three hours before a start against Florida, Colorado Rockies pitcher Jason Jennings sits in front of his locker, puts on his headphones and stares at his video iPod. He isn't watching the latest Coldplay video or catching up on an episode of "Alias" as a way to relax before the game.

Jennings is doing some last-minute cramming: The Rockies' video staff has downloaded every Marlins hitter into his iPod, and Jennings is figuring out how to pitch to them. He watches frames of himself delivering the pitch, followed by the result of the play. Everything else is weeded out. "It's a good way to refresh yourself on how you got guys out," Jennings said. "It's an amazing concept."

The Rockies have taken the iPod beyond entertainment. And the idea has caught on -- teams such as Florida and Seattle have called the Rockies to explore their innovative use of the iPod.

New York Mets manager Willie Randolph doesn't have a problem with a player analyzing video, but it wouldn't have been for him. Randolph, a former All-Star, preferred extra batting practice to extra film sessions. "I think it's overrated personally, but that's just me," Randolph said. "I'm from a different school."

Interesting idea, though it's not like the iPod was the first to make this possible. There have been several portable video players before this, and most of them have larger screens, too. Still, it's a pretty innovative idea.

There's a great article about an uproar in Canada's British Columbia. Apparently according to a recent mining law, it is legal for people to purchase the rights to walk around on and even create a mine on someone's property.

Bruce Essington lives in a tarp-covered bread truck on the side of Bluenose Mountain. He has been squatting on the same patch of land, not far from Vernon, for longer than any of his neighbours can remember. Sometimes he'd roam about toting a rifle and wearing night vision goggles. Recently he has begun to pay off his land in installments. And now Essington, who owns one faded set of clothes and an old leather miner's hat peppered with holes, has bought rights to about 150 acres of his neighbours' land. For $50.

He was able to do that because last year the province created an online staking system that allows anyone with internet access and $25 to acquire a miner's license and then, at $0.17 an acre, buy mineral rights to land. It doesn't matter whether that land belongs to a neighbour, the Crown, or the "miner" himself. Once you own the mineral rights, you are free to "explore" your claims, wander the property, "poke at a few rocks," in the words of MP Tom Christensen. And once you decide to start drilling and digging, even the landowner's dwelling and buildings are at risk. That's the law under the Mineral Tenure Act as of 2002, when the section prohibiting miners from "obstruction or interference" with activities (or buildings) on private land was repealed.

The vagueness extends beyond Essington's right to traipse and paint -- the very fact of his claim is somewhat fuzzy. The Mineral Tenure Act has a clause forbidding "nuisance staking," preventing people from staking claims to other people's land for the sole purpose of aggravating them. But the onus is on the surface rights owners (the people who paid for the acreage, the house, the barn, the upkeep, the taxes, etc.) to prove a staked claim is just a nuisance. It's not enough to point to the fact that Essington has no mining history, or that he lacks the cash and experience to run a mining company.

That's awesome. So you could buy an 80-acre lot, but Hobo-Joe can buy the rights to come prowl around your property and create a mine in your backyard, and you can't do anything about it.

Yep, looks like there's now an Amazon grocery store where you can buy all sorts of non-perishable items. It's a very cool idea since it could potentially provide a wider selection than what's available at your local grocery store, and hopefully it's cheap. At a quick glance, it appears as though many of the items are in bulk, much like a Sam's Club or CostCo.

dave submitted a story from boston.com about how FEMA paid millions of dollars in fake claims for assistance.

Agents from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, went undercover to expose the ease of receiving disaster expense checks from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The GAO concluded that as much as 16 percent of the billions of dollars in FEMA help to individuals after the two hurricanes was unwarranted. The findings are detailed in testimony that will be delivered at a hearing today by the House Homeland Security subcommittee on investigations.

To dramatize the problem, GAO provided lawmakers with a copy of a $2,358 US Treasury check for rental assistance that an undercover agent got using a bogus address. The money was paid even after FEMA learned from its inspector that the undercover applicant did not live at the address.

FEMA said it has identified more than 1,500 cases of potential fraud after Katrina and Rita and has referred those cases to the Homeland Security inspector general. The agency said it has identified $16.8 million in improperly awarded disaster relief money.

The investigative agency said it found people lodged in hotels often were paid twice, since FEMA gave them individual rental assistance and paid hotels directly. In one instance, FEMA paid an individual $2,358 in rental assistance, while at the same time paying about $8,000 for the same person to stay 70 nights at more than $100 per night in a Hawaii hotel.

FEMA also could not establish that 750 debit cards worth $1.5 million even went to Katrina victims, the auditors said. Among the items purchased with the cards:

• An all-inclusive, one-week Caribbean vacation in the Punta Cana resort in the Dominican Republic.
• Five season tickets to New Orleans Saints professional football games.
• Adult erotica products in Houston and ``Girls Gone Wild" videos in Santa Monica, Calif.
• Dom Perignon champagne and other alcoholic beverages in San Antonio.
• A divorce lawyer's services in Houston.

To demonstrate how easy it was to hoodwink FEMA, the GAO told of an individual who used 13 Social Security numbers -- including the person's own -- to receive $139,000 in payments on 13 separate registrations for aid. All the payments were sent to a single address.

For anyone that hasn't heard, Ben Roethlisberger is in the hospital because of a serious motorcycle accident, in which he wasn't wearing a helmet and collided with a car.

Not just any bike. He was riding the fastest street-legal motorcycle you can buy. Without a helmet. Not the brightest thing to do. So dumb, in fact, that even fellow Suzuki Hayabusa riders were shaking their heads. "Wear a helmet on the field, but not on a bike?? Makes no sense to me," one wrote on a `Busa message board.

Doesn't make much sense to anyone, especially the Pittsburgh Steelers, who lectured their young quarterback to no avail about his motorcycle habits. Of course, had the Steelers shown some backbone and put a clause in Roethlisberger's contract prohibiting motorcycle riding, he might not be in the hospital today.

Joey Porter had it right last year when asked about his quarterback riding motorcycles. "What I say about motorcycles is that concrete is undefeated," Porter said.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of athletes who can't seem to figure that out. Roethlisberger was one of those, insisting on riding his bike even after Winslow crashed his last year and was hurt so bad that his young career was in jeopardy.

At the age of 24, Roethlisberger seemed to have everything. He was rich, loved by Steelers fans and already had one Super Bowl ring on his finger. He risked it all because he couldn't stay off a motorcycle, and wouldn't put on a helmet. The urge to ride and the feeling that you're indestructible is a bad combination.

Roethlisberger was lucky to escape with his life. Steelers fans will consider themselves lucky if he makes it back on the field. If he had only listened when former Steelers great Terry Bradshaw gave him the simplest advice last season. "Ride it when you retire," Bradshaw said.

Who knew listening to Terry Bradshaw would have been a good idea?

There's a cool livescience.com article about how the new World Cup soccer ball is a pain for goalies:

The new Adidas Teamgeist football, as it is called, has 14 panels instead of the 26 or 32 that traditionally create the hexagonal pattern. Fewer panels means fewer seams, which will make the ball behave more like a baseball, says Ken Bray, a sports scientist at the University of Bath in the UK.

Complex whirls of air cause a spinning ball to drift toward the side that's spinning away from the ball's direction of movement [learn why]. A ball that's not spinning can bounce around unpredictably. Pitchers rely on this physics when throwing knuckleballs.

A good knuckleball is crazy because the ball rotates lazily in the air and the seams disrupt the air flow around the ball at certain points on the surface, Bray said.

"With a very low spin rate, which occasionally happens in football, the panel pattern can have a big influence on the trajectory of the ball and make it more unpredictable for a goalkeeper," Bray said last week.

Bray suggests one way to watch for the effect on TV. "Watch the slow motion replays to spot the rare occasions where the ball produces little or no rotation and where goalkeepers will frantically attempt to keep up with the ball’s chaotic flight path," he said.

Crazy aerodynamics.

Yes, the posting has been more sparse than usual...I just finished moving, and the internet will supposedly start working as of next weekend. So until then my internet connectivity will be limited to none, and the number of posts should be back to normal after the weekend!

kirat submitted an article about a baby born with 3 arms. Apparently while this has happened before, in this case the third arm was very developed, which is uncommon. The article has a picture of the baby. He'd be the ultimate soccer goalie.

I gotta say...I'm a Matt Walsh fan. Back on the Upright Citizens Brigade, he was hilarious. Then he was a Daily Show correspondent for a while. He's also great in the movie Martin and Orloff. So of course when I saw the commercial for Comedy Central's new show Dog Bites Man, I was immediately excited. The show will premiere tonight at 9:30 central on Comedy Central. I was trying to find some more information about it (the main point is a parody of local news) and all I can say is Holy mixed reviews!

The bad - Newsday: "This bite needs a shot in the arm"

There may well never be - never was, and never will be - a world more ripe for scorn, parody or flat-out ridicule than the local TV newsroom....

So, how did the team behind Comedy Central's "Dog Bites Man" so thoroughly muck the whole thing up? This isn't to say there aren't a couple of funny lines here (there are) or that the characters aren't ridiculously implausible (they are, and that's fine to a point). But it's almost as though the production team - led by Dan Mazer of "Da Ali G Show" - wandered into a candy store and, not knowing what to grab off the shelf, decided to grab everything. In its zeal to zing local TV news, "Dog" loses any flavor of authenticity, which is absolutely essential for effective satire.

When the station manager calls to tell Tillie she's got to get four extra minutes on the Iron Man story - four minutes that, for some reason, are impossible to get - she worries that she'll lose her job. Not to worry, says old pro Beekin: "We can save any segment ... remember that segment when we did the world's fattest pets" and all the tapes were lost? "You mean when we got those two rabbits," she asks, "and we tied them together to look like a big fat one?"

Kind of amusing, right? Kind of ridiculous, too, and "Dog Bites Man" never rises above this level.

The good - Relish: "GOOD BOY: Comedy Central's Dog Bites Man is all about the laughs"

For anyone worried that Comedy Central peaked in recent years, fret no more -Dog Bites Man (10:30 p.m. Wednesday) is here.

The improvised sitcom, about the workings of a local TV news department, is the best thing to happen to Comedy Central in years. Dog skewers local TV news in the same way that Reno 911! does local police departments.

The correlation between the shows is extremely close. Both are about reality-show crews following the day-to-day workings of an office of loonies. The employees are dimwitted and highly inappropriate, lacking in depth or decorum.

If anything, Dog might be a little too much like Reno, minus the redneck element. But, hey, replicating Reno is hardly the worst sin that a show could commit.

Of course, UCB and similar things always had a quirky sense of humor that people either get and enjoy, or are turned off by. This could be the reason for such mixed reactions. At any rate, I know I'll be checking it out.

TVGuide.com: How did Dog Bites Man come together? Matt Walsh: It was originally a pilot for NBC, and then Comedy Central picked it up. Dan Mazer, the creator, basically wanted to do a show where he could bring together improv with a scripted sitcom type show. He [put together a cast that includes] myself, Zach Galifianakis, who plays the director, Andrea Savage, who plays the producer, and A.D. Miles, who plays the production assistant, and we acted out scenarios and developed scenes in an office before going out and hitting the road as this local news crew.

TVGuide.com: Do you watch local news broadcasts? Walsh: Yes, and it's really funny stuff. Recently, I think I saw a story on what cereal stays crispiest in milk. I saw another one on the difficulties women face when they are bra shopping. It was during sweeps, so obviously they thought it was a good idea to mix some breasts in to their news coverage.

dave submitted an article about how Rexall Place double-booked their venue.

The quest for a sixth Stanley Cup has put the Edmonton Oilers on a collision course — with a 7-year-old cartoon girl and her monkey sidekick.

Dora the Explorer's stage show is booked at Rexall Place for June 17, the same day the NHL has scheduled Game 6 of the Cup final, should it be necessary.

Northlands Park became aware of the issue when the NHL released the schedule Tuesday morning, spokeswoman Bonni Clark said. Rexall Place, the arena where the Oilers play, is run by Northlands Park.

The NHL, arena and organizers of the Dora show were trying to come up with a solution, Clark said.

Maybe Dora plays hockey and they could combine the 2 events. Make the monkey a goalie.