Meet LA's Chinese American Gun Owners

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting report.

You may remember the experience of some Korean Americans in LA some time ago.

Time for More Pre-Turkey Family Touch Football!

ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE?  There may be complications.

Your Feel-Good Story of the Week

Amid all the increasingly appalling political lunacy, let us take a moment to sit back and appreciate the sheer splendor of this moment as a golf fan takes on professional golfers. Hey, it ain't braggin' if it's true!

From Rio: A Tale of Two Images in Sportsmanship

The Egyptian judoka refusing to shake his Israeli opponent's hand vs. the gymnasts from North and South Korea taking a selfie together.

🔴Deux images des @jeuxolympiques, deux volontés diamétralement opposées. #Rio2016
Vouloir faire la paix ou la guerre pic.twitter.com/4UCPXY4WEW

— Jean-Paul Ney (@jpney) August 12, 2016

Crushing the Competition ... and Commentators' Puny Vocabularies

The NBC Olympic commentators have been - as a collective - ludicrously bad this time around. I couldn't believe I actually read these words just now about the US women's gymnastics juggernaut led by Simone Biles and Aly Raisman:

The commentators, whose voices normally bounce with enthusiasm, sounded suddenly weary. Would people care about a competition that wasn’t competitive? Would they grow bored of greatness? Or, as one of them plaintively asked, "How many times can you say ‘Wow!’ and ‘That was amazing!’?"

What kind of question is that? As my buddy Alessandra says, "There's no kill like overkill."  When greatness is on full glorious display, you don't ask why. You watch and are glad you were there!

By the way, commentators, let me suggest this.  On second thought, if you can't come up with words, then just be silent. That alone would improve the broadcasts immeasurably.

The Awesome Diversity of Team USA

Here's something you might not know! 48 members of Team USA were born in 30 different countries on 6 different continents. The melting pot is in the hunt for medals in Rio!

Friday Fun: Nike's New Ad

Now here's a fun ad!  You may recognize the narrator. That's Oscar "Poe Dameron" Isaac. Keep an eye out for famous cameos, too.

Rio Games Start Today

The Rio Olympic train wreck hoopla's about to start, so it's time to cut to the chase: here's a half-snarky ranking of all the Olympic events so you can plan to watch or not watch.  By the way, I totally don't think equestrian sports should rank so low ... Then again I'm living up (or down) to the stereotype that girls love horses, right?

Also: some sports are pretty much servings of world-class eye candy.  Let's make a deal, ladies and gents: let's not accuse each other of ogling and objectifying so we can get on with watching - respectively - men's water polo and women's beach volleyball, OK?

I might not have much free time these days, but I will be watching the opening ceremonies tonight because - get real - I can't resist making stupid comments, especially about fashion choices in the Parade of Nations.  Every time at least one delegation wears (designer!) clothes that look like they were pulled out of Rio's festering, disease-ridden waste dump of an ocean.  Still, perhaps this year's most fashion-forward outfit might be mosquito netting.

By the way, I will also assuredly be punching the mute button on my remote control A LOT.  For the most part the TV commentators are completely insufferable. Bob Costas at least has a streak of sassy smart-aleck that makes him occasionally entertaining, but the others are an undifferentiated mass of Joker-like Botox grins and inane hype-spewing chatter.     

I may not have reached this point of grumpiness, but I'm getting really close.  I do think this argument has some substance to it, by the way, especially given that the IOC is now approaching FIFA-level amounts of scandalous self-absorption, corruption, and Scrooge McDuck-like piles of money. 

Sweet Christmas, I'm getting annoyed just writing this post.  I have no real interest in the Rio Games other than a morbid desire to see whether they (and the media coverage) are going to be as horrendous and silly as I think they're going to be.  Oh, all right, and also because anything's an improvement on the current nonstop media coverage of Hillary and Trump.  Yup, coverage of an actual toxic stew of sewage and trash is still better than coverage of those two figurative toxic stews of sewage and trash.  

Oh, all right. One last thought: on the up side. You all know that I hate the "everyone's a winner" sappy mentality of school culture where everybody gets a trophy just for showing up.  At least the point of the Games (the brutal REAL point, not the happy-slappy propaganda talking point) is flat-out WINNING. For the next two weeks, despite all the inevitable nonsensical claptrap about whatever and retch-inducing images of NBC broadcasters attempting to samba, we're also going to get coverage about athletes training and working hard and having goals and being dedicated and embracing discipline and aiming for excellence.  We're going to get coverage of just how bloody hard it is to get really good at something.  And I'm all for that as an antidote to the milquetoast, maudlin approach that celebrates general mediocrity.  Hey, thrill of victory and agony of defeat and all, competition and contest, winners and losers on the field, and even if you didn't win, you worked and trained and competed hard in the attempt to win or at least to improve yourself.  There's a life lesson to be learned.

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated

The school year is finally coming to an end!  I can guarantee that the exhausted instructors are far happier about this than the exhausted students. Still, as I start to emerge from the black hole of school to look around at the world, all I see is TRUMP/HILLARY/BREXIT panic-mongering and media madness, and I'm tempted to dive right back into the black hole.

Anyway, as proof of life, here is a hilarious ad that I got from a friend of a friend. Let's have some fun with stereotypes and sport rivalries, shall we?

World Series!

Rejoice, baseball fans!  Arguably even better: watching my pro-Royals friends face off against the pro-Mets ones.  All's fair in love and war ... and baseball fandom.

Awesome Nerd News: Meet John Urschel, Chess Player, Mathematician, and NFL Athlete

John Urschel, offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, is one smart cookie.  He's just published a paper entitled "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector" in the Journal of Computational Mathematics.  Sound mind in a sound body, indeed, mens sana in corpore sano.

Here's the abstract:

In this paper, we develop a cascadic multigrid algorithm for fast computation of the Fiedler vector of a graph Laplacian, namely, the eigenvector corresponding to the second smallest eigenvalue. This vector has been found to have applications in fields such as graph partitioning and graph drawing. The algorithm is a purely algebraic approach based on a heavy edge coarsening scheme and pointwise smoothing for refinement. To gain theoretical insight, we also consider the related cascadic multigrid method in the geometric setting for elliptic eigenvalue problems and show its uniform convergence under certain assumptions. Numerical tests are presented for computing the Fiedler vector of several practical graphs, and numerical results show the efficiency and optimality of our proposed cascadic multigrid algorithm.

I have no idea what that means, but I do know how hard it is to get published in a scholarly journal.   Congratulations, John!

On the NFL's Behavioral Issues

The same people who helped drive Tim Tebow out of the nation's spotlight for being too "God-y" and nice are upset the NFL's full of thugs.
— Hugs n Kisses (@Coondawg68) September 20, 2014

Totally Worth It

Never pass up a chance to hug your grandma, even if you get a yellow card for it.

Nerd News: Student Athletes, Profit, and the NCAA

New ruling: the NCAA can't forbid student athletes from profiting.  Well, college sports have become a HUGE bazillion-dollar business ... a business that basically doesn't pay its talent on the field.

World Cup 2014: Germany Wins It All!

Die Mannschaft beat Argentina 1-0 and the Germans are now the Weltmeister.  I was also amused by the various sartorial antics of the fans, not to mention this comment on the president of the hilariously corrupt FIFA and his companions:

Angela Merkel at the World Cup with a venal, authoritarian leader. And Vladimir Putin is there too. pic.twitter.com/otQ2nskfG5
— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) July 13, 2014

Since this IS 2014 and no event is complete without a selfie or two, here you go. The selfie game is strong with this one.

AHA! pic.twitter.com/iK5hbfm7Hr
— Lukas-Podolski.com (@Podolski10) July 13, 2014

Selfie 2…:-) pic.twitter.com/RJh7RnXXUw
— Lukas-Podolski.com (@Podolski10) July 13, 2014

Congratulations to the Germans!

UPDATE: The Onion comments hilariously.

World Cup LOL: What If We All Behaved Like Soccer Players?

World Cup 2014: Brazil Was Die Mannschaft-ed 7-1

You don't have to like soccer to appreciate the historic moment in sports history.  You don't even have to like sports to appreciate the epic quality of the German victory.  The match happened yesterday, but it's taken this long for the results to sink in.  At the time, all that my buddies and I felt was shock and disbelief ... and we were cheering for Germany!  Even the great Beckenbauer tweeted, "What was that? Hard to believe."

Was war das? Kaum zu glauben #BRAGER
— Franz Beckenbauer (@beckenbauer) July 8, 2014

I thought the match was going to be a tough fight that Brazil would barely win in the end given the absence of injured Neymar.  I wasn't expecting a brutal 7-1 beatdown that looked as if the Brazilians were a Little League team going up against the New York Yankees.  As the demoralized Brazilians completely collapsed in appalling fashion, the rampant Germans scored 5 times in the first half hour, and there are no words for this:

UPDATE: I had linked to a Vine of the first 5 goals, but that's been taken down since this post went online.  As a consolation prize, let me give you another Vine.  The French sports publication L'Equipe just made this Vine of a LEGO version of the poor Brazilian goalie. Aw, just look at his expressions:

The sports commentary in the aftermath of the match has been wild.  How do you describe such an epic performance?  It's World Cup history being made in front of you.  My crew and I ended up feeling bad for the Brazilians being destroyed on their own turf even as we marveled at the impeccable Germans.  You almost wanted a mercy rule to kick in and put Brazil out of its misery.  How the mighty have fallen indeed.  

The game summed up in a picture. pic.twitter.com/VWRouf1sHo

— World Cup 2014 (@PostWorldCup) July 8, 2014

Up in the ESPN booth, former German team captain Michael Ballack was over the moon, and who could blame him?  (Lookin' goooooood there, Mike!)

Updated. Michael Ballack. #BRAvsGER pic.twitter.com/Lh3ZhKRzfo
— Alexi Lalas (@AlexiLalas) July 8, 2014

The Netherlands take on Argentina today for the other spot in the final.  I like the Dutch very much, but I think a Germany-Argentina final would be just brilliant ... especially if (when?) the Germans crush the Argentines into dust.

Oh, and the German team is being classy in victory.  Good for them.

Tour de France 2014: Suggested Reading

Three books on the iconic sporting event that has this year claimed its first victim on the first day.

World Cup 2014: Great Run, Team USA!

It was a great run, and just think: we made it into the Round of 16, something that supposedly better teams could not manage.  We lost to Belgium 2-1, and the last 15 minutes were insane.

Man of the hour: US goalie Tim Howard, who racked up a record-setting 16 saves.  Absolutely amazing.  After the match Belgium team captain Vincent Kompany went on Twitter to salute him:

Two words.. TIM HOWARD #Respect #BelUSA
— Vincent Kompany (@VincentKompany) July 1, 2014

Howard is currently the darling of the Internet (check out the hilarious hashtag #ThingsTimHowardCouldSave) and rightfully so.  Look what one fan did on Wikipedia:

LOL: Nobel Peace Laureates and the World Cup

Hey, we're all for peace and harmony and the brotherhood of man ... except when it's World Cup time, because we must crush the other team into dust and dance on the grave of its championship hopes.

Say what you will, but Nobel laureates hilariously talking trash is a LOT better than the disgusting spectacle of Uruguay's reprehensible Luis Suarez biting Italy's Giorgio Chiellini yesterday.  The Onion was right about him.