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Baxyjr

Entertainment & Gaming

Double Amputee Sprinter Cleared For Olympic Competition

By Posted on 5.16.2008 30 Comments
Its about time. After an excruciating and absurd debate, double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius will be allowed to compete in the Olympics. Pistorius won his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport today which immediately overturned an asinine ruling by the International Association of Athletics Federations which stated Pistorius gained an unfair advantage from his prosthetics.

5.19.2008 at 01:51pm - Comment by Baxyjr

tanstaafl83- "Those prosthetic lower legs are completely passive - any energy put into his gait comes from a completely human source (mostly his upper legs in this case)." Kind of like a Bicycle... Let me make an analogy comparing a normal runner, with the gentleman in the article. Here is the comparison: When you drop a stone, does it bounce? No. Where does the energy go? Vibration. A normal runner (with legs) has to use energy to recover from the impact and propel himself forward. What happens when you drop a rubber ball? Boing! Pops right up. That is the difference. It is like standing on the roof and one guy drops a wood pole, and the other guy drops a pogo stick. Any study that would say that a prosthesis like this would not be more efficient than a human leg is bollocks. It is all about elastic and inelastic collisions. This is grade school physics everybody. Not only are the weight savings huge, the guy has calves that return a substantial amount more energy to motion than human legs. PLUS, there is no risk of injury, and no lactate buildup. This is not fair by any means. I’m sure he’s a great guy and an inspiration to you all, but he does not belong in an exhibition of raw human athleticism (he doesn’t have human legs).
Entertainment & Gaming

Double Amputee Sprinter Cleared For Olympic Competition

By Posted on 5.16.2008 30 Comments
Its about time. After an excruciating and absurd debate, double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius will be allowed to compete in the Olympics. Pistorius won his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport today which immediately overturned an asinine ruling by the International Association of Athletics Federations which stated Pistorius gained an unfair advantage from his prosthetics.

5.18.2008 at 02:54am - Comment by Baxyjr

So because the guy has led a hard life (which I seriously doubt) means he should be allowed to cheat in the Olympics? If he is allowed to run, all the other runners should be allowed to wear spring stilts as well. I don't care how much he loves the sport, I don't care how much of an "inspiration" he is--the guy has an UNFAIR advantage. Period. And having no calf has nothing to do with it. If you knew anything about the mechanics of running you would know that his spring is fulfilling the same purpose (only without using energy or creating lactate) as a normal calf. The guy is being used as a novelty.
Entertainment & Gaming

GTA IV: Perfect Isn't Perfect

By Posted on 5.7.2008 9 Comments
You heard the hype, you read the astonishing array of perfect-score online reviews. So you bought a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, sat down to play and . . . what's going on here? How can a perfect game be ticking you off? I'm not saying that GTA IV is less than amazing, but it most definitely is less than perfect, particularly if you're not one of the professional gamers writing those frothing-at-the-mouth-with-delight reviews. Some of the most basic elements in the game are just plain aggravating.

5.7.2008 at 01:35pm - Comment by Baxyjr

After playing the game and reading the reviews I had the same thought: "Say What?" The controls are weak at best. Even walking around in a tight space can be a chore. I can't count how many times I have fallen to my death because Niko can't do an about face.
The Environment

Scientists Weigh in on Biofuels vs. Food Debate

By Posted on 4.16.2008 15 Comments
The first annual BioMass conference, attended by biofuels researchers, manufacturers, equipment suppliers, and farmers, is underway here at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Prime on the agenda in the opening session this morning was a question lately blaring from headlines, for instance in a story in today's New York Times: can we grow crops for converting into fuel without catastrophically upsetting the world's food supply?

4.18.2008 at 03:11pm - Comment by Baxyjr

It doesn't matter what they make ethanol of. The problem is it requires a b-load of space to produce it in the quantities needed. This leads to deforestation i.e. brazil (now the 4th largest carbon emitter in the word due to BURNING the rain forest to grow crops). Ethanol is not the solution.
The Environment

New Plastic Bags Biodegrade in Four Months

By Posted on 4.18.2008 10 Comments
On the heels of our reporting about Canada's probable move to ban BPA plastics comes a story about researchers working at Missouri University of Science and Technology to develop hybrid plastics that would biodegrade in landfills within four months. As our editor Nicole Dyer pointed out in a comment to the BPA post, the larger and more important issue facing plastics is their propensity to stick around forever.

4.18.2008 at 03:05pm - Comment by Baxyjr

Another crap idea from some hippies that can't look 2 feet into the future. Why don't we just start building everything out of things people eat, like rice or some other staple food? Yay for hunger! Yay for deforestation!
The Environment

Biofuel Diversity at the University of North Dakota

By Posted on 4.15.2008 6 Comments
Today's New York Times has a front-page story about how biofuels are driving up food prices around the world and how they therefore may not be a such a great idea after all. That could be true if the only feedstocks available for producing biofuels were food crops, as the article implies, but that's far from the truth.

4.18.2008 at 08:23am - Comment by Baxyjr

The problem is that there is not enough of that type of waste to support the need for ethanol. So the problem is (other than the fact that ethanol doesn't burn clean) is that they are going to have to grow some sort of crops to support it--switchgrass, algae, whatever. So guess what the Brazilians are doing to keep up w/ demand? Making space. Where? The rainforest... I'm pretty sure that thing is important, plus brazil is now the 4th largest Carbon emitter because of all the burning. Ethanol has pretty much put carbon pollution into hyper-drive. Yay! Lets detroy the world to make it cleaner! I will say that hysrogen is a much better idea, but I'd like to see some information on what happens when you start moving stuff around like that...
The Environment

Biofuel Diversity at the University of North Dakota

By Posted on 4.15.2008 6 Comments
Today's New York Times has a front-page story about how biofuels are driving up food prices around the world and how they therefore may not be a such a great idea after all. That could be true if the only feedstocks available for producing biofuels were food crops, as the article implies, but that's far from the truth.

4.16.2008 at 08:53am - Comment by Baxyjr

I'm sick of hearing about biofuels. It's a step in the wrong direction. I don't know about hydrogen, where will it come from? What happens when we start breaking down the air that we breathe and the water we drink so we can fuel our cars? I think electric power is the way to go, as long as the energy source is clean i.e. hydro-electric, nuclear, wind, so on... I guess anything is better than oil...
Science

When Science and Justice Clash

By Posted on 3.31.2008 6 Comments
Paul Offit has written an op-ed in todays New York Times which hastens to point out what other news stories have largely misrepresented in the Hannah Poling autism lawsuit: The outcome of the court ruling does not mean the government is admitting to a causal link between childhood vaccines and the onset of autis

4.3.2008 at 04:23pm - Comment by Baxyjr

We don't know (for sure) the cause of autism. Plain and simple. However, It *appears* to be genetic. The form of mercury in vaccines is NON-TOXIC, and DOES NOT convert to a toxic form in the body. Sorry your parents have bad genes, kiddo. Such is life. I guess you can link any sort of birth defect to someone with money if you want to...