Readers who are happy with their throwing skills can prove this to themselves in about two seconds. If you are right-handed, pick up a ball with your left hand and throw it. Unless you are ambidextrous or have some other odd advantage, you will throw it "like a girl." The problem is not that your left shoulder is hinged strangely or that you don't know what a good throw looks like. It is that you have not spent time training your leg, hip, shoulder, and arm muscles on that side to work together as required for a throw. The actor John Goodman, who played football seriously and baseball casually when he was in high school, is right-handed. When cast in the 1992 movie The Babe, he had to learn to bat and throw left-handed, for realism in the role of Babe Ruth. For weeks before the filming began, he would arrive an hour early at the set of his TV show, Roseanne, so that he could practice throwing a tennis ball against a wall left-handed. "I made damn sure no one could see me," Goodman told me recently. "I'm hard enough on myself without the derisive laughter of my so-called friends." When The Babe was released, Goodman told a newspaper interviewer, "I'll never say something like 'He throws like a girl' again. It's not easy to learn how to throw." [More]

Labels: culture, fun, sports

A simmering spat over food quality is fast replacing the cheap Chinese yuan as the focus of trade disputes between the U.S. and China. [More]

Politicians on both sides also need to keep their calm. There have been hawkish voices coming out of Washington demanding the US government pursue serious trade sanctions against China after the meat import bans.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in China have accused the Western media of stoking the fears over food safety in China. With next year’s Beijing Olympics fast approaching, there is a danger that China will over-react in cracking down on food safety in a ham-fisted attempt to demonstrate to the world that it treats food safety with paramount importance, punishing undeserving businesses.

Food safety and protecting the health of consumers should be a central concern of all governments. However, politicians should not lose sight of the importance of trade to economic health. Food safety issues must be looked at with a calm head – not with the patriotic zeal currently on display in some quarters of Beijing and Washington. [More]

The games had a profound impact on the city of Atlanta and many in the Atlanta metro area consider the games to be instrumental in transforming Atlanta into the more modern city it has become since. Examples of this are the mid-rise dormitories built for the Olympic village. One of these complexes became the first residential housing for Georgia State University, and has recently been transferred for use by the Georgia Institute of Technology. Other examples include Turner Field, which was a modification of the original Centennial Olympic Stadium, and where the Atlanta Braves baseball team now makes its home. Centennial Olympic Park was also built for the events and is still in use. Atlanta used no public money to finance the games, which cost US$1.8 billion to host. It was the first city in Olympic history to use ticket sales, commercial endorsements, advertising, and private money alone to fund the hosting of the Olympics. The consequence of this, however, was that many felt that the games in Atlanta were over-commercialized and were less exciting than previous games.[2] [More]

Labels: food, international, sports

Labels: sports

Season Shot is made of tightly packed seasoning bound by a fully biodegradable food product. The seasoning is actually injected into the bird on impact seasoning the meat from the inside out. When the bird is cooked the seasoning pellets melt into the meat spreading the flavor to the entire bird. Forget worrying about shot breaking your teeth and start wondering about which flavor shot to use! [More]

Labels: food, fun, sports