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How do you get Americans interested in soccer? Ultimate Tazer Ball claims to have the solution. For one thing, you make the balls much bigger and the teams much smaller. For another, you arm each of the players with a stun gun. More »
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Sure, M.I.A.'s waggling middle finger caused a grand mal kerfuffle among the 37 Super Bowl viewers who were still sober enough to notice it. But far more insidious symbolism was at play during the 2012 halftime show. We are referring to, of course, the subliminal Satanic-Illuminati-Freemason messages that permeated Madonna's set. More »
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To round out their squadron of flying boats and UFO project, an estimated 3,500 Iranian women are training in Japanese ninjutsu, according to a state-run news station. It's official — the Iranian government is in cahoots with COBRA from G.I. Joe. More »
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Some people take their golf extraordinarily seriously. One such group of die-hards were the proprietors of the Richmond Golf Club in Surrey, England, who drafted an interim set of rules explaining what players must do should Nazi aircraft bomb the greens mid-game. More »
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This is not your father's pogo stick. Unlike the spring-driven toys many children use to bounce up and down, an extreme pogo stick can propel you over 8 feet into the air, leaving plenty of time for airborne spins, flips, and other tricks. How does it work? More »
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Back in the day, you could shove all sorts of goods containing that miracle chemical radium in your body. There were radium-infused beers, chocolate, and suppositories. But radium-mania didn't stop with quack remedies. More »
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Back in October we told you about an in-depth study of a phenomenon known as "hot hands" — the term sometimes used to describe basketball players who appear to have transcended the limits of their normal hoop-shooting abilities. And after examining free-throw statistics from 6,150 games, the researchers concluded that there is strong evidence for the effect's existence. More »
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How cold of a temperature do you think you can survive exposure to? 0°F? -20°F? -50°F? How about -166°F, and you do it intentionally? A group of French scientists studied various ways that people recover after intensive workouts, including whole body cryotherapy, which sounds like something out of Futurama. Tested on a group of experienced runners, the cryotherapy involved exposing them to temperatures as low as -166°F (-110°C) to aid recovery from a workout. More »
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Life on the International Space Station has its ups and downs (well, technically its ups and ups or downs and downs). Thanksgiving dinner comes in bags, but the views are undeniably ravishing. Another added perk of microgravity? You can play baseball by yourself. Allow ISS astronaut Satoshi Furukawa to demonstrate. More »
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If you've been convinced for years that John Madden has been replaced by an iPod filled with generic football commentary, you might be excited to learn that Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne has been working on an even more advanced version. This one is equipped with artificial intelligence so it can actually see what's happening on the field and provide commentary. More »
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Roboticists at China's Zhejiang University have built a duo of blank-faced machines named Kong and Wu whose programming and dexterity make them formidable ping-pong players. The 5'3″ robots use cameras to track the ball and can hold their own against human opponents. More »
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In Australia, the local fauna is so casually badass that a day on the greens can quickly turn into the plot of Shark Night 3D. More »
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Basketball fans are all familiar with terms like "hot hands," "on a roll," or "in the zone," that are used to describe players demonstrating what appears to be a streak of above-average performance. For over two decades, scientists have debated whether the phenomenon actually exists, or if basketball fans simply attribute non-random patterns to completely random data (something we humans have been shown to be very good at). More »
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Science fiction and fantasy are full of weird games, from Quiddich to Pyramid. There are games of death. There are games of skill. But most of all, there are games that you'd have to be nuts to try and duplicate in real life. More »
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Live out your zombie chase fantasies with this amazing 5K zombie run. Participants in the 5K will race through a challenging obstacle course, while zombie volunteers chase them down. More »
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I was recently told that there is a game called 'baseball' being played in this season of the year. Intrigued, I looked into this game of "bases" and "balls," only to discover a physics mystery. More »
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After many carefully controlled collisions and hours of video of bats striking balls, a group of physicists at Washington State University came to the conclusion that the relationship between a baseball and a bat was inelastic. More »
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Athletes have used steroids, amphetamines, hormones, and who knows what else in search of an unnatural advantage, and no sport is more notorious for doping than professional cycling. The newest potential performance-enhancer is safe, legal...and yeah, maybe a little ridiculous. More »
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For as long as there have been sports, there have been fans complaining about referees whose terrible calls rob their team of victory. The oldest - and most brutal - example of this can be found on a gladiator's epitaph. More »
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Here's some bittersweet news from the world of beer. In the largest-ever study of its kind, research scientists have shown that the consumption of wheat beer has a positive effect on athletes' health, with one caveat: the study was conducted using non-alcoholic beer as the test beverage — a not-so-minor technicality decried by beer-enthusiasts the world over as "totally lame." More »
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This blurb appeared in a 1937 issue of Popular Science. In London, two fellows donned asbestos suits and feigned a boxing match while their pyrotechnic doppelgangers exploded alongside them, like some sort of spontaneously combusting conjoined twins. More »
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It's Memorial Day here in the States. The sultry weather makes my mind turn to stupidly awesome comic books, namely DC Comics' Strange Sports Stories, a short-lived 1973 anthology about the unfathomable cosmic dangers inherent in physical activity. More »
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16 years ago, Sports Illustrated ran an article that examined the growing symbiosis between sports and digital technologies. Along with several terrifically prescient predictions, it also pegged one of history's worst video games as the wave of the future. More »
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According to researchers at Frankfurt's Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, the sight of certain swimming strokes can evoke colors in synesthetic swimmers. More »
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Golf runs in my family, although I don't seem to have inherited that gene; I was nonetheless interested to read about an air-conditioning network embedded in the ground itself at this year's Masters Tournament, dehumidifying the course from below. More »
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First we had marathon man. Now we have marathon machine. Osaka started the world's first Robot Marathon yesterday. Four robots will be competing in this historic race, and although they are only around a foot tall, they will be made to complete a full 26.2 mile marathon. One of them even comes with a helmet cam, so you can watch it run. More »
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Check out this strange trailer for Robert Rodriguez's Nike movie called The Black Mamba. Apparently Bruce Willis, who is the devil, wants Kobe Bryant's shoes (because Kobe's the greatest player in the world... *cough*). And now Bryant has to play on a basketball court of fire (OK that part was cool). Danny Trejo's makes a cameo, naturally, and so will Kanye West. Huh? We're confused, hold us. The full flick will be released Feb. 19th, but will it make you want to buy shoes? More »
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The founders of the RoboCup competition have a simple, reasonable dream: to build a team of robotic soccer players who'll win the World Cup by 2050. Here's a sample of the finest fútbol-bots from Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanics Laboratory. More »
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A new scandal's rocking Dubai's robotic camel racing circuit. Criminals are covertly outfitting the camels' mechanical jockeys with stun guns that give their mounts an extra charge. In other news, this is one of the stranger headlines I've ever written. More »
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When you say the words "sumo wrestling," the first thing most people think of is two portly fellows locked in a deadly embrace. Robo-sumo is a different spectacle. Two tiny bots spasmodically twitch for 6 seconds, and then somebody wins. More »
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For many readers, 'tis the season to be press-ganged into dull holiday functions. Why not spice your boring social obligations up with some deathsports? Here are five deadly competitions from scifi that don't require lightsabers or battlebots. More »
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We were already excited for Real Steel, Hugh Jackman's movie about robot boxers pounding each other to scrap — but now we've read the script, and we're twice as stoked. This is the robo-rumble you've been waiting for. Spoilers below. More »
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We imagine that real-life archers are constantly frustrated by the inaccuracies of movies and comic books. Namely, the fact that no one realizes you can only hit a target if you're aiming somewhat away from it. More »
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I love these sports team shirts, featuring creatures from the Dungeons and Dragons monster pantheon. You can pick up one of these tees for $20 a pop at MySoti - there's also a Mind Flayer team! [spotted on Fashionably Geek] More »
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You'd think a totally smooth surface would be better at flying through the air with the least amount of wind resistance. So why do golf balls have all those little indentations? So they can use the air against itself. More »
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Stupid World Cup, breaking my sorta-but-not-really-interested-in-soccer heart every 4 years. Well, I'm done. This is the only sport I'm following. In 2012, nobody's going to be watching fútbol or checkerball or whatever. They'll be watching this. Trust me. [Japanator] More »
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A group of researchers have discovered an objective way to measure the most important members of a soccer team. Yes, there is a scientific reason why you love Lionel Messi. It all comes down to statistics. More »
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We knew that Jackman was playing a washed-up fighter who trains a promising droid to compete in the World Robot Boxing League — but we didn't quite realize he'd be standing there, Mickey-style, in an automaton's corner. More »
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Sad that you never got a chance to properly say goodbye to Better Off Ted? Well you may have your chance after all. If the NBA finals end in the next two games, ABC will air the never-before-seen final episodes. More »
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