Virgin America, the airline that invented the sassy in-flight safety video, has rolled out a brand new sassy in-flight safety video: A live-action musical number. It's still heads and shoulders above most airlines, but is it the best?
     |
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/dAUAARXqyFo/the-12-best-airline-safety-videos-reviewed-1454868194It seems that everyone is talking about MMA fights being allowed to continue for far too long, lately. There was Junior Dos Santos' memory-erasing drubbing at the hands of Cain Velasquez at UFC 166 and then there was Jessica Andrade's brutal, extended beating of Rosi Sexton last week.
While we're on the subject - here's a video of UFC veteran David Loiseau being allowed to knock out his opponent from a fight this past weekend not once, not twice but three separate apparent times in just fifteen seconds by an overwhelmed referee. Loiseau last fought an lost in the UFC back in 2010 but has rattled off four straight wins since that time.
His most recent came last Friday against Mike Kent at the Extreme Cage Combat 18 card in Canada. A left hook from "The Crow" just seconds into the bout put Kent out and flat on his back for the first time.
Instead of rushing in to stop the contest, however, the referee watched on as Loiseau followed up with strikes on the ground. His head hitting the ground opened Kent's eyes back up.
A right punch to the head moments later appeared to knock Kent out for the second time, however. Unbelievably, the referee missed that as well and didn't step in until Loiseau's punches had woken up Kent and put him back to sleep for a third time a few seconds later.
Refereeing is an very difficult job and most will never have the combat understanding, vision and reaction time to do it well. Those that can't really should be trained more before fighters' lives are placed in their hands or should not do it at all.
In the Dos Santos and Sexton fights, we worried about refs, corners and doctors allowing game fighters to take damage for too long while not mounting their own effective offense. In Loiseau and Kent's bout, the decision to stop the fight should have been much easier because Kent was out cold. The referee clearly had difficulty recognizing when Kent was unconscious on two separate occasions, before finally picking up on it when it happened for a third time.
Congratulations to Loiseau, who simply followed the rules and kept fighting until the ref stepped in. We wish Kent a speedy and as close to full recovery as he can have.
Follow Elias on Twitter @EliasCepeda
Major League Soccer playoffs are right around the corner, and if you’re into this kind of football, it’s bound to be an exciting time. There are plenty of Android apps out there to help you keep tabs on scores, get in the spirit, and otherwise enjoy the last few matches.
Most of these are widely applicable to football all around the world too - even if you're not into MLS specifically, these apps can help you keep tabs on everything regardless of league. Of course, it's not all just scores and stats - we've got a few games kicked in there too just to keep you occupied once you're caught up on news.
| |
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/wZAjT7a2QIk/story01.htm
Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports
(As the UFC turns 20, we revisit each year from 2013 to 1993 with 20 articles in 20 days.)
Maybe it wasn’t actually the case, but at UFC 100, Frank Mir looked about as happy to hear the referee say "alright, now bring it on" as a clay pigeon might upon hearing the word "pull." It was Brock Lesnar at the other end, after all, restrained for one long last second before the shackles would come off and the rivening could commence. The only thing we required as spectators was Mir’s courage in the ordeal
And that was how we celebrated 100 events in the UFC. By feeding Frank Mir, who’d defeated Lesnar famously a year and a half prior in Lesnar’s ballyhooed debut at UFC 81, to His Sworded Thorax. A record-breaking number of households paid for the courtesy. Mir hung around until the second round, but he wore the macabre scene on his face by fight’s end.
Lesnar, ever eloquent in such matters, described it as extracting the horseshoe that had been lodged in Mir’s hind region. That was right after he began somewhat rabidly frothing about the mouth, and just before he said he was going to drink himself some Coors Light (while standing on the Bud Light emblem) and, heck, if we’re keeping it real, maybe even "get on top" of his wife later that night.
It was a lot to digest.
And that piece of theater was the crescendo moment in the UFC’s PPV numbering system, which is now careening off towards UFC 1000 and beyond. Georges St-Pierre had dominated Thiago Alves in the co-main event even with a torn groin muscle for half the bout. And Dan Henderson, to the gratitude of patriots from the Puget Sound to the Everglades and on up through the Adirondacks, knocked Michael Bisping out with a ridiculous right hand. "To this day people thank me for it," Henderson says.
(Note: Why Bisping was circling into that power right now becomes the problem of future generations to solve).
All of this was fine in the wholesome sense. But, at the same time, all of this paled next to the hair-raising moment just before Lesnar was loosed on Mir. That was when Bruce Buffer, the evangelist of the Octagon who whips everyone into a frenzy with his introductions, pulled off the unthinkable.
The Buffer 180º -- which Buffer himself modestly called a "whip turn" before fans apothesized it -- was always more than we could ask for. But Buffer chose UFC 100 to unveil the Buffer 360º, a ridiculous maneuver of lithe acrobatics and aerial illusion, and he stuck the landing while pointing his cue card right between Brock Lesnar’s blond eyebrows.
Game. Set. Match.
"You know, when you do something that’s different and out of your realm, you want to pick the right time," Buffer says. "So with that being the case, there was no other event. It would have to be UFC 100. And I didn’t tell anybody when I was going to do it. If you watch Joe [Rogan]’s video after, he thought I wasn’t going to pull it off, but I saved it for exactly the last precise moment when I was right in front of Brock Lesnar’s face."
Buffer goes into depth about the Buffer 360º in his captivating book, It’s Time!, but words become such paltry things next to The Thing Itself. Why? There are very few moments in the fight game where flawless execution and…what, destiny (?)…come together as if cosmically ordained.
It was Joe Rogan that began challenging Buffer to attempt the stunt to begin with, after putting out a backstage video where Buffer dreamed it into existence. Then a million fans began echoing Rogan’s need to see it. The thing caught fire as the video went viral. From there the Buffer 360º became not only a matter of when and where, but of courage and mettle.
So what did Buffer do? He embraced the biggest stage the UFC had had to that moment…and, for a few brief moments, spun in levitation like a genie materializing from a bottle. It was a thing of cocktail elegance and grace.
"I knew what I was going to do," he says. "The thing is, I don’t rehearse. I don’t plan. I like to go out there and be organic and improvise off the energy I feel from the crowd, whether it’s 50,000 or 20,000 or 10,000 people in the audience. But that night was electric. I couldn’t have for a better script as far as a screenwriter writing a movie of how it came off…it came off perfectly in my opinion. And Joe wrote me an email after that said, ‘not only did you do it, but you did it in front of the biggest, baddest man on the planet.’"
There are obvious hazards for such undertakings. Remember, Buffer tore his meniscus while doing a "grounded 360" at UFC 129 in Toronto. He was playing injured that night with a bad ankle, and as he went into his bunny hop at the end, his knee gave out. Stoically, Buffer didn’t miss any events. How’s that? As the writer Frank Curreri once said, "if Michael Buffer is fine bottle of Bordeaux, then Bruce Buffer is a shot of Jack Daniels." That’s how.
There will of course be other monuments. UFC 200 should take place in 2016. But don’t expect to see the Buffer 540º, or even the 360º again. That bold feat is now frozen in time forever in 2009.
"I’m not an acrobat," Buffer says. "I don’t want to say anything, because again, if something’s going to happen believe me it’ll happen because I decided for it to happen at that exact moment. But the aerial thing, the airbourne stuff, that’s over."
Over, but not forgotten.
Miranshah (Pakistan) (AFP) - A US drone strike targeting a rebel compound killed at least four militants in a restive Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border Friday, officials said.
The strike took place in the Dandey Darpakhel area, five kilometres (three miles) north of Miranshah, the main town of the North Waziristan tribal region, a stronghold for Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants.
It came a day after three insurgents were killed in another drone strike that also targeted a rebel compound near Miranshah.
"A US drone fired two missiles on a militant compound, killing four rebels," a senior security official told AFP.
Another security official also confirmed the attack and casualties.
The identities of those killed in the strike were not immediately known.
North Waziristan is one of seven semi-autonomous tribal regions in Pakistan.
Washington considers these areas a major hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants plotting attacks on the West and in Afghanistan.
The incident comes a week after Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif urged US President Barack Obama to stop drone strikes during a meeting in Washington.
The Pakistani defence ministry Wednesday said 317 US drone strikes in the country's tribal areas had killed 67 civilians and 2,160 militants in Pakistan since 2008.
US drone attacks are deeply unpopular in Pakistan, but Washington sees them as a vital tool in the fight against militants in the lawless tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.
The Pakistani government has repeatedly protested against drone strikes as a violation of its sovereignty.
But privately officials have been reported as saying the attacks can be useful in removing militants from the country.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Southern California woman cited for wearing Internet-connected eyeglasses while driving says she expects to contest the citation.
Cecilia Abadie was pulled over for speeding Tuesday evening in San Diego, when a California Highway Patrol officer noticed she was wearing Google Glass and tacked on a citation usually given to drivers who may be distracted by a video or TV screen.
Abadie tells The Associated Press that she was not using her Google Glass when she was pulled over.
She says she is surprised that wearing the glasses would be illegal and that she's "pretty sure" she will fight the ticket.
Legislators in several states have introduced bills that would specifically ban driving with the glasses, which are still not widely available to the public.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-10-31-US-Google-Glass-Ticket/id-5ce8b9109c7d422fbac53a1d85dae72cIntel has been talking about 4G LTE in mobile devices for a while, but now the chipmaker is walking the walk with its first multi-mode 4G LTE modem.
The ZMM 7160 model will allow phones and tablets—presumably those with Intel chips inside—to connect to 4G LTE networks in North America, Asia, and Europe. The chip will first appear in the Asia and Europe versions of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 3, and Intel says it’s now commercially available to other vendors as well.
This isn’t Intel’s first 4G LTE modem, but a previous single-mode chip was unable to fall back on older 3G and 2G networks. The ZMM 7160 can connect to both GSM and HSPA networks, so it’s a much better fit for wireless carrier support.
Still, Intel has one disadvantage over ARM-based rival Qualcomm: The modem itself is a discrete chip, not integrated with Intel’s application processors. Integrated modems allow for longer battery life, so perhaps no surprise that the first product to feature the ZMM 7160 is a tablet, which should be better than a smartphone at absorbing any hits to battery life.
So far, Intel hasn’t made any commitments on integrating the modem with its application processors. “We will do it when the time is right,” Herman Eul, general manager for Intel’s Mobile and Communications Group, said during an August preview of multimode LTE chips.
For now, having 4G LTE and older network support all rolled into a single modem could clear the way for more Bay Trail-powered Windows tablets with mobile broadband support. As for laptops, Intel is introducing a PCIe module with support for 4G and older networks. Intel says we’ll see connected Ultrabooks as well as laptops with this module next year.
