Life of Buraian

For all of you who love muscles...

Say what?  My sister works for a gaming company and sent me this video for a Japanese game for the Nintendo Wii.  As she describes it:

"It’s a downloadable game for the Wii. Hilarious!!! What happens is these muscle men bust through walls in different formations and you have to follow them and mimic the formation to get through the wall as well. Check out their bums, they made them shake with the walking. Awesome I tell you. Awesome. Please tell Rika I love her country."

I couldn't agree more.  Here's the trailer for the game.  It starts of with the following line: "For all of you who love muscles..."  The rest is self-explanatory...

Craziest goal I've ever seen

I can't believe I haven't posted anything for two months.  This blog is really slackin'.  Okay, I'm slackin'.  I'll get back to it soon, but in the meantime, here's the craziest goal I think I've ever seen.  I did something like this in practice once, except it was on accident, the ball hit me in the back of the head and the goalie got it.  Almost the same thing.

The No Stats All-Star

Shane Battier has always been one of my favorite players.  I'm not a Duke fan, but he almost made me like them when he was there, and I'm not a Rockets fan, but I root for them more often than not because he's on the team.  I remember telling a friend a long time ago that Shane Battier was underrated because nobody measures the stuff he does.  Looks like I was right.

This article by Michael Lewis, though long, sheds some light on the new probabilistic view that some are taking in basketball, and explains what sets Shane Battier apart from other players in the NBA.

When football and philosophy collide

I thought this was brilliant.  Thanks Josh!

King of Beijing: Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt?

I made a new Squidoo lens (my first in a couple months) about the debate that's been raging recently.  Who was the King of Beijing: Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt?

If you've been following the Olympics, you no doubt have seen the amazing performances put in by these two incredible athletes.  And you probably have an opinion--biased or not--over which was more difficult, more amazing, more improbable.  Well, this lens is the place to share that opinion!

I hope you'll stop by and tell everyone what you think!  (And don't forget to check out my other lenses in the sidebar to the right!)

College Basketball Prestige Rankings

I like when someone assigns arbitrary point totals to things and then makes a list.  Especially when they do it so well that I basically agree with it.  ESPN just ranked the top 50 college basketball programs by "prestige factor".  They came up with an extensive list of point categories, both positive and negative, and then probably sat up many a night filling in Excel sheets.  And they got paid for it.

They counted all seasons from 1984-85, when the 64-team tournament was started, so UCLA didn't get to count it's early dominance.  I agree with that.  The only thing I disagree with is that a title in the 1980s is worth a title in the 2000s.  Not when you're talking about "prestige".  Case in point: nobody gives a crap about UNLV anymore.

Anyway, that's my small beef.  In general, I found it pretty entertaining and spot on.  Here's the link to the top ten: 1-10

But the real question for all you Bruins fans: was the Steve Lavin era a net positive or a net negative for UCLA's prestige?

Indian finger billiards

The first time I ever saw carroms was at the park near my grandma's house.  I think.  Anyway, it was the typical carrom board with white and red pieces, but the kids played with sticks like pool cues.  I remember playing often and being quite good.  I now know that I was playing American Carroms.

Fast forward to last year, when I spent some time in Hong Kong with my wife.  There was an International Carrom Championship shown on TV.  But this wasn't American Carroms.  This was Indian Finger Billiards.  They were shooting with their fingers, flicking the pieces and banking them into the pockets.  I remember thinking it looked so simple.

Now I'm in India and what do I find in my company's cafeteria?  Carrom boards.  And not just carrom boards, but people playing carroms.  And not just people playing carroms, but people who play well!  So I sat down to play with them.

Performance-enhancing drugs: more evidence cricket is just like baseball

When I got to India and reset the clock on my computer, my Yahoo Messenger Insider automatically switched to Indian news.  At first I just thought it was a weird news day, but when I saw Bollywood stars staring at me from the ads and when all of the sports news had to do with Cricket, I started to get the hint.

The one news story that I can actually semi-follow has to do with a Pakistani cricketer named Mohammad Asif.  Asif just failed a drug test.  His "A" sample showed traces of nandrolone, which is one of the less subtle steroids out there on the market.  I put on my investigative journalist cap (read: I did a blogsearch on Mohammad Asif) and picked up the scoop.