The odd bit

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is an enemy action.

Monthly Archives: September 2006

Referees In Football: Laughing Or Crying?

Attention all decks: this is a rant!

A football game can be a pure beauty to watch, but there’s one man who can destroy it for everyone: the referee. And it seems to be a growing problem in modern football. I’m even having trouble finding one good referee (first division and European level).

The biggest problem is consistency. If both Team A and Team B make exactly the same foul, they should be treated in exactly the same way. How simple that may sound, it is very rare these days. This is very frustrating when you’re watching a live game because it’s much more apparent there.

Another problem is they’re too lenient on agressive tackles. Football is football. If you want to play rugby you’ve chosen the wrong sport. The players who want to play football should be protected and the lawn mowers should receive a yellow card on their first tackle that’s over the limit.

And last but not least, I really do not understand why UEFA doesn’t intervene. They want to have the best football competition in the world (read: Champions League), but they keep giving matches to those that aren’t even worth being called amateurs. Get with the times and stop being the bureaucracy that you are.

Alright, ladies and gentlemen. I just had to write that out to get it off my chest. End of rant :-)

PS: For the American readers, replace “football” with “soccer” in this post.

Stardust@Home

About a year and 9 months ago, the Stardust spacecraft returned to Earth after its encounter with comet Wild-2 a year earlier. The craft was equipped with an aerogel collector to capture comet particles. Scientists estimate that Stardust also collected around 45 interstellar dust particles. That would be the first time ever and the search to find them in the aerogel has started.

Because it would take years to complete the search, the people at the Space Sciences Lab @ Berkeley decided to ask volunteers to look at scanned images of the aerogel and identify the tracks left by the interstellar particles. And the volunteer they’re looking for is you! The Stardust@Home project provides you with so called focus movies, a series of images of one point with a different focus. Then it’s up to you to spot the tracks left by dust particles.

Before you can do the real stuff you need to take a little test to see if you’re up to the task. But it’s not that hard and they have tutorials and stuff. Interested? Go and register!