Strange & Stupid: Amusing News

New academic research claims cricket is not English, but was imported by immigrants from northern Belgium.

A poem thought to have been written in 1533 has been uncovered, which suggests the game originates from Flanders.

In the work attributed to John Skelton, Flemish weavers are labelled “kings of crekettes”, according to Paul Campbell of the Australian National University.

The discovery challenges the long established theory that the sport evolved from English children’s games.

The first definitive references to the game appeared in England in the 1600s, when fines were handed out for those missing church to play.

THE IMAGE OF IPOCRISIE
O lodre of Ipocrites,
Nowe shut vpp your wickettes,
And clappe to your clickettes!
A! Farewell, kings of crekettes!

Poem attributed to John Skelton

Phelps, on taking hetty bong rips:

“I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I’m 23 years old and despite the successes I’ve had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again.”

But the real kicker:
Debbie Phelps, his mother, cried at the news.

“That hurt worse, maybe, than anything,” Phelps wrote. “I had never seen my mother that upset.”

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A group of boys who stole a golf buggy from a resort in northern Australia sparked a low-speed highway chase when they were pursued down a major highway by two resort employees in a second buggy.

The chase occurred last Monday when the five boys, aged between 10 and 16, took the buggy from the resort near the city of Darwin, the Northern Territory police force said in a statement on its Website.

After running along the main Stuart Highway, the chase ended when police arrived and the boys abandoned the buggy. One of them, a 10-year old, was arrested, but the others escaped.

The buggy was retrieved and returned to the resort undamaged, police said.

How much did NBC pay for broadcast rights to the Olympics: $894 million.

I’d say: worth every penny.

From the ~Questionable~ Daily Mail - The bleak concrete walls topped with razor wire and the sentries in towers at the gates are a chilling reminder of a different era.
On the nearby roads, heavily armed guards patrol relentlessly, checking both drivers and pedestrians, constantly alert.

Meanwhile, less than 30 miles away, the world’s attention is focused on the world-famous ‘Bird’s Nest’ Olympic stadium and the other venues where a global audience of two billion is watching the Games and enjoying the spectacle of the ‘new’ China.

The Beijing regime has deployed an army of 500,000 smiling volunteers to help foreigners find their way around the teeming capital city.
Blades of grass have been individually combed. Signs have been erected in English.
Spitting has been banned and taxi drivers have been told to wear ties.

But there’s none of that here in the suburb of Daxing, where the only ‘venues’ are the five camps into which thousands of China’s ‘undesirables’ have been swept from the streets of Beijing and locked up.

Here, down bumpy, unlit roads, is where old habits die hard for China’s brutal totalitarian communist regime.
These camps are being used to imprison - without trial or legal representation - people that the regime wants the world to believe do not exist amid the miracle of modern China.

From street children, hawkers, the homeless and prostitutes, to the mentally ill, black migrants, drug dealers and gays caught in public bathhouses, the camps on the outskirts of the city started filling up with Beijing’s ‘undesirables’ last year as part of the Chinese regime’s determination to present what it sees as an acceptable face to the world.

It is all eerily reminiscent of the build-up to the 1936 Games in Berlin, when the government cleared similar ‘undesirables’ from the streets.
Under Hitler’s regime many of the Nazi concentration camps bore the slogan Arbeit macht frei (Work makes you free) at their gates.
In China, the camps bear the slogan ‘Re-education Through Labour’.

Working up to 16 hours a day and held in cramped, unsanitary cells with only one toilet bucket for dozens of inmates, the existence of the jailed ‘undesirables’ is something China has done its best to hide.

As the Czech Republic’s Katy Emmons was on the verge of winning the first gold medal of the 2008 Olympic Games on Saturday, there was at least one person in the venue more nervous than she — her husband and fellow Olympic shooter, American Matt Emmons.

“Whenever you’re watching the other one, you’re always more nervous than the one shooting,” Matt Emmons said.

Matt and Katy Emmons are living an Olympic fairy tale. They met in 2004 in Athens, where Katy won bronze and Matt not only won gold, but also made history … albeit not the kind he was hoping to make.

Matt entered the finals of the 50m rifle 3 position final with a huge lead, and essentially only needed to hit the target to win. But instead of securing his second gold of the games, he aimed at the wrong target, received a score of zero, and plummeted to eighth place.

Katy, who was watching the match, felt so bad for Matt that she approached him at a beer garden later that day to console him. The chemistry between the two was instant. They began dating, and the couple married in 2007.

Beijing is their first Olympics competing as husband and wife.
“Whenever you’re watching the other one, you’re always more nervous than the one shooting,” said Matt Emmons after watching his wife win the gold medal.

Katy is hoping to help Matt remember to aim for the right target at his events on Aug. 15 and 17. Taking home four gold medals between them would certainly add a storied chapter to their Olympic romance, but for Katy and Matt, the happily-ever-after doesn’t depend on hardware. They are going to try to add a little Olympian to their family.

“We’re hoping to start after the games. We’re hoping to start soon. That’s something that’s very important to us,” Matt said. “Family is much more important to us than sports, so we’re looking forward to it.”

“Eat, sleep and swim. That’s all I can do,” Phelps, who won two more gold medals today, told NBC when asked what he needs to win medals. “Get some calories into my system and try to recover the best I can.”

Phelps, 23, will swim 17 times over nine days of competition at the Beijing Games - meaning that he will need all the calories he can shovel in his mouth in order to keep his energy levels high.

Phelps’ diet - which involves ingesting 4,000 calories every time he sits down for a meal - resembles that of a reckless overeater rather than an Olympian.

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase “Breakfast of Champions” by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

Phelps remains on course to at least equal Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals won at the 1972 Munich Games.

At these Summer Games, a typical day for Phelps starts with a 5 a.m. wake-up call. Most of his races have taken place between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET when in China - 12 hours ahead of East Coast time.

this girl.
i love her.