- Stat dorks and sabermetrics enthusiasts have been a
growing part of sports for a few years now and their obsession with the most
mundane and detailed minutiae of games is clearly influencing the sports they
love. The Oakland A’s sabermetric ways were the subject of a book and a movie
starring Brad Pitt, but perhaps no sport has embraced in-depth statistics the
way the NBA will this season. The league announced Thursday that it will install motion-tracking cameras in every arena
this season to provide coaches, players and fans reams of data covering every
sector of the action on the court. Along with STATS on the SportVU cameras, the
NBA is growing a system that began with a single arena during the 2009 NBA
Finals into a league-wide initiative. This technology monitors every move
players make on the court and measures characteristics such as fatigue, injury
recovery and referee performance. With this upgrade, the NBA is the first
professional basketball league in the world, and the first sports league in the
United States to use the technology to analyze player movement. "At this
point, given the value of the data both at the team level and the league level,
and the promise that it holds for unlocking some of the secrets for what makes
great basketball teams, both for our basketball operations people and for our
fans at home, we thought it was the right time to make it a league-wide
effort," NBA executive vice president of operations and technology Steve
Hellmuth said. The system is predicated on six cameras and software that
compiles the data those cameras record. Over the past three seasons, 15 teams
installed the system and began using the data it provides. What data is that?
Shooting percentages, results of each head-to-head possession, player
efficiency, where a player touched the ball on the court in a given half and
how effective a defender was against a specific opponent are all part of the
output. The chance to accurately measure how bad officials are on a given night
should also be enticing to fans, even for the non-stat dork crowd……….
- The Ubinas volcano in Moquegua, Peru has been busy of late. It has
erupted eight times in the past five days and may not be done blowing its top
just yet. The “go boom” madness began on the evening of Sept. 1, when the
volcano registered two small eruptions. A third eruption occurred the following
day and a day later, two more took place to bring the total to five eruptions
in less than 48 hours. Scientists are attempting to determine the specific
cause behind the eruptions, which have caused a heightened level of anxiety in
the surrounding area due in large part to a column of volcanic gases and ash
that has reached a height of more than one mile. A team from the Volcanological
Observatory of the Institute (OVI) of Geology, Mining, and Metallurgy – the
rock stars of the geological, mining and metallurgy community – are already on
the ground, scaling the mountain to search the crater site for clues as to the
cause of the eruptions. “We have two hypotheses right now, and in the coming
days, through evaluations that we’re doing, we’ll find out what’s really going
on with Ubinas,” said Jersey Mariño Salazar, head of the OVI team. Salazar went
on to postulate that the explosions are likely the result of one of two things:
either the eruptions are phreatic, caused by precipitation buildup causing
pressure inside the volcano, or they are caused by an “eruptive process
generated by rising magma.” That column of ash the eruptions have
produced has reportedly deposited ash on the ground as far as six miles away
from Ubinas, although Mariño Salazar insisted the ash column does not pose a danger to people
or livestock at this time because the wind is blowing it towards a mostly
uninhabited area. Local officials are monitoring the situation and if the
volcano stops going boom any time soon, they may have a real chance to find
concrete answers………
- Color the world stunned. Will Smith just
might accept a sh*t load of money to appear in an overly CGI-ed, futuristic
sci-fi drama involving aliens. That NEVER happens and yet, here we are with
Smith once again a possibility to reprise his role as Steven Hillier in
“Independence Day 2.” Smith has been mostly an afterthought for the film
because director Roland Emmerich
said Smith would not be a part of the movie because he is now "too
expensive.” Emmerich spoke about the issue in June, when the project was given
its official release date of July 3, 2015. His logic seemed sound, as Smith
commands a massive payday even though most of his films are bad, what with
being one of the biggest names in Hollywood. Yet three months down the road,
Emmerich is revising his theory and whatever the reason, he seems open to the
possibility that his leading man from the iconic 1996 movie “Independence Day”
could return. "I sometimes say no, Will Smith will not be in it because he
didn't want to do it at first. Now we have a meeting planned, we want to talk
about it again. Anything can happen," Emmerich said. Whether Smith and his
ginormous ego return or not, Emmerich has already confirmed that Bill Pullman will be back as President
Thomas Whitmore and Jeff Goldblum will be returning as computer expert David
Levinson. Levinson will have to make a colossal leap forward for the film, as
so much has happened with computers and technology in the past two decades that
20 years might as well be 200 years. Emmerich wrote the script for the original
film, which centered on a heroic effort to throttle an alien invasion taking
place on July 4, with Dean Devlin and the same duo collaborated on the script
for the sequel before passing it on to James Vanderbilt (“The Amazing
Spider-Man,” “Zodiac”) for revision. Whether Smith ends up uttering any
of the lines those three men have put down on a screen is to be decided, but
matching the success of the first movie is going to be an immense challenge
either way………
- Not throwing enough money away on your technology
addiction? Not nearly obsessed enough with your smartphone, tablet and laptop
and need another device to spend big money and major time on? T-Mobile and
Samsung have your back. T-Mobile announced Friday that it will launch Samsung's
Galaxy Gear, the company's newest smartwatch, on Oct. 2 for $299.99. Other
major cell service providers will also carry the gear, but T-Mobile is the
first to announce firm plans for when and how much. AT&T only mentioned the
Gear in passing in its most recent statement, while Verizon and Sprint have
said nothing at all about their plans for the watch. One (allegedly) leaked
internal document said Verizon may bundle the smartwatch with the Galaxy Note 3
for $599.99, which makes sense because Samsung recently highlighted the
interactivity between the Gear and its newest smartphone, the Galaxy Note 3.
T-Mobile will carry the phone for $199.99, but those wanting to own it will
also have to chip off an additional $21.00 per month for two years. AT&T’s
lofty price for the device will be $299.99 with a two-year contract or $724.99 off the shelf.
What makes the Galaxy Gear unique is its status as the first corporate effort
to get into the smartwatch market. That puts Samsung ahead of Apple and
Microsoft, but the Gear hasn’t received rave reviews so far and it may end up
being a case of rushing to be first without delivering sufficient quality to be
successful long-term. Its lofty price tag could be a deterrent as well and with
cheaper options available, consumers could elect to aim lower on the price
tree. Samsung also has much work to do when it comes to informing consumers about
which phones and devices will specifically work with the Gear and what is
required to make that happen. Bogging the Gear down with a need to connect with
other Samsung devices to work properly won't help either……..
- Police in Greensboro, N.C. must be pretty happy with
themselves today. A team of undercover officers went out into the city to
tackle a pressing problem this week and emerged from their endeavor with 52
tickets issued, thousands of dollars in easy revenue generated for the city and
the satisfaction of knowing that they are 2/6 of the way to having the wardrobe
for all six Village People in their closets. The officers went undercover as
part of the Aggressive Driving Campaign on Wendover Avenue and donned
construction worker attire in order to combat growing concerns over speeders,
seat belt avoiders and distracted drivers in construction zones. “We get a lot
of complaints from the workers in these construction zones, how motorists just
come through there with disregard to their safety,” Greensboro Police Officer
J.B. Price said. Price and his fellow lawmen left their police uniforms in the
locker room and donned hard hats and reflective safety vests in order to look
the part of loafing, coffee-break-loving construction workers on the corner
of Meadowood and Wendover Avenue. They used orange cones to block off
one lane of traffic and keep up the illusion that they were a real construction
crew. Once the trap was set, two officers patrolled the “construction zone” and
kept an eye out for violators. Those two officers identified
violations and called them in to other officers waiting on each
of Wendover to pull drivers over. For the day, their clandestine operation
handed out 52 tickets — 35 of them for seat belt violations. Price made it
clear he and his colleagues weren't trying to be sneaking or conniving and
instead were focused on changing driving behaviors because the situation they
created could really happen on the road. “You just never know there could be a
police officer in it [construction zones],” Price added. The city launched the Aggressive
Driving Campaign about a month ago and the police department plans to station
officers in actual construction zones in the coming weeks to continue the
crackdown………
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