A miraculous story from SportsPickle:

Moments after a slide tackle dropped him to the ground and left him writhing in pain with what seemed to be a broken femur or some other serious injury, Paraguayan midfielder Christian Riveros popped up and continued playing after referee Hans Kimmel failed to produce a yellow card.
“It’s amazing. I see it all the time in matches,” said Kimmel, a longtime referee. “I seem to have the power to heal serious injuries simply by deciding if the felled player was taken down legally or illegally. I can’t explain it, but I guess you could call me a miracle worker.”

I'm glad they got tough on this stuff a few years ago. The diving and whining and whinging is mostly absent from the English league but still happens in every Central and South American match I watch.

(What? Yeah, I'm American. You want me to watch Asian golf tournaments, 9-ball pool, and 90lb weightclass boxing all day? Of course I watch soccer. And rugby. And cricket. Want to make something of it?)

Posted by: cbjohnson at 04:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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England has been invaded. No, not by rampaging hordes of All Qaeda 'martyrs' (though they are probably here as well) but by England flags.

They are everywhere. Hanging from office buildings, shops, homes, fluttering from (not very well secured) antenna on cars and trucks. Even painted on people's faces.

Its World Cup time and England at least is looking as confident and patriotic as it always is just below the surface. Of course I feel sorry for my poor Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish brethren, whoÂ’s teams didn't make it to the finals (ha ha!) but at least my non-English fellow Britons seem to be taking this football* inspired burst of Englishness with good humour.

Not everyone is of course. The usual suspects are complaining that the flags which you now cannot now avoid are 'racsist' and 'intimidating'. Can you guess who those usual suspects are?

That's right, some of those who voluntarily came to this country to escape their own homeland's despotic regimes and their defender's in the 'we hate ourselves' liberal so-called elite.

Of course, what they really object to isn't the flag itself but the confidence in the country, it's dominant culture and political freedoms that it is indicative of. The bullishness it inspires amongst Englishmen and women of all colours and creeds.

The Islamofascists and their allies have successfully undermined large sections of the media and the establishment but the disconnect between those sell-out sections of our society and the majority of the population they supposedly represent is as comfortingly wide as it has been for decades.

As with any war, the real key to victory is confidence in the cause and the values it protects. Confidence is abundant, no matter what anyone might tell you.

(*Even for my guest slot here I'm refusing to use that hideous 's' word, just as I'm refusing to spell humour incorrectly).

Posted by: Sheward at 03:37 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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We all know there's good gay and bad gay, but is there such a thing as bad good gay? The NCAA women's tournament from the bad good gay point of view.

Posted by: Rusty at 06:02 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Can't say I miss the Cold War, but it certainly did make for better Olympic Games. Decision '08:

No, the real problem is that the BIG storyline is missing. We have no good Olympic enemies anymore. The one totally tangible memory that most people have (even people who didn't watch it, in the curious way these things work) of a real athletic moment of glory is Al Michaels asking "Do you believe in miracles?' as the United States defeated the Soviet Union at long last on the hockey rink at Lake Placid. That's the Soviet Union, not Russia, and we're talking Cold War here.

Posted by: Rusty at 08:08 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I know this is a website about the war on terror, but isn't the fact that five USC underclassman have declared for the NFL draft one of the Shia signs of the apocalypse? Somewhere in Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad smiles in his sleep reassured that the Hidden Imam is about to appear in the sky, riding an A-bomb like Slim Pickens.

more...

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Apparently, the importance of the main virginity event ranks right up there with the annual royal reed dance ceremony.

Zulu traditionalists have vowed to carry on with the controversial practice, which involves inspection of girls' genitalia, usually on the sidelines of cultural festivals.

Posted by: Richard@hyscience at 02:50 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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Baseball: sport of geeks.

Hat tip: TC Leather Penguin

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Is it me, or are ALL tennis players hot? A fatwa has been issued against Sania Mirza, who became the first Indian woman to reach the fourth round of a Grand Slam at the US Open last week.

Mirza's crime? I guess she just looked way too hot in that tennis outfit. I've posted a Sania Mirza image gallery below. For a tennis player, her outfits aren't all that revealing at all.

Telegraph:

The fatwa - in effect, a demand that she cover up - was issued by a senior cleric of the Sunni Ulema Board, a little-known group. Similar fatwas have been issued against Mirza, who comes from a devout Muslim family, but none has ever gained popular support among India's 130 million Muslims.

"The dress she wears on the tennis courtsÂ…leaves nothing to the imagination," Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui told The Hindustan Times. "She will undoubtedly be a corrupting influence."

He said she should follow the example of Iranian women who wore long tunics and headscarves to play in the Asian Badminton Championships.

Posted by: Rusty at 11:19 AM | Comments (31) | Add Comment
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Bambi vs. Godzilla, Auburn vs. USC Arianna Huffington vs. Victor Davis Hanson.

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By Demosophist

Today a Texan with a name that sounds like it ought to belong to a character in a Buck or Roy Rogers movie won the most grueling elite endurance contest on the planet for the seventh straight time! If he had never been near death with the "big C" today's accomplishment would've been enough. Indeed, it would have been enough had he stopped six years ago, after winning in 1999, but his recovery and return to bicycle racing not only at the top of his sport, but to create a legacy that will probably never be matched, has inspired people I love to fight against a similar infirmity. (Isn't it odd that he's the second great American cyclist in 20 years to live such a lesson?) more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 06:54 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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Pat Tillman could have gone back to the NFL. Instead, he stayed in the Army Rangers and paid the ultimate sacrifice. Hero to the end.

Posted by: Rusty at 08:42 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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D'oh!. Update: What is this base-a-ball you speak of?

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