Netball is a game played the world over (including Sri Lanka) but as far as I am aware, only by women. It is superficially similar to basketball in that the goal is to throw the ball though an elevated hoop. The main difference is that you cannot move while you have possession of the ball and must pass it to another player within three seconds. This means no dribbling but actually results in a fast-moving game with plenty of passing since the non-ball carriers have to move rapidly around the court to try to get free to accept a pass from a team mate or block an opponent from passing or receiving. [Read more…]

I am not a natty dresser. I almost never wear a tie or jacket. My hair is usually ruffled. My clothes are inexpensive and off-the-rack from department stores that aim at the mass market. I never iron my clothes so they frequently look rumpled and I often wear them until they are so worn and frayed that there is a real danger of holes appearing. I hardly ever polish my shoes, with the result that they look scuffed all the time. I would not go so far as to say that people cross the street when they see me approaching but clearly I am not going to be on the cover of GQ magazine. Disheveled is the word that probably best describes me and I have little interest in putting in the effort to become sheveled. [Read more…]

This is pretty impressive. Incidentally Ravi Fernando, the person doing this trick, is the son of one of my oldest friends, going all the way back to middle school days in Sri Lanka, and so I was really pleased to stumble across this video on a news site quite by accident. [Read more…]

Yesterday morning we had a mixture of rain and sleet that resulted in the streets and sidewalks having the kind of icy slush that makes walking tricky. As I was making my way across campus for a seminar, I slipped and fell. It occurred at almost exactly the same time as a plane slid off the tarmac and ended up stuck in the grassy median while taxiing to the terminal at the Cleveland airport, which gives some indication of the slipperiness. [Read more…]

These tricks do not involve skilled sleight-of-hand but are the kinds of things any one can do with friends or at parties, and are kind of fun.

My recent post on the pastor who scrawled on her meal receipt an ungracious note to the server in an Applebee’s restaurant resulted in an interesting discussion in the comments on whether the server was justified in putting a photo of the receipt on the web with the name of the customer visible but other information (the name of the restaurant, the date, and the credit card number) omitted. [Read more…]

I once had my pocket picked. It was on a bus in Sri Lanka and I never even noticed that I had lost something. But the thief made a mistake in that he mistook a case containing keys for a wallet. When he discovered his error, he threw the case away and left the bus. When I later discovered my loss I asked the conductor if he had seen my keys and he said that he had found them and gave them back to me. So I had a lucky escape. [Read more…]

The world of wrestling was stunned by the news yesterday that all categories of their beloved sport have been recommended for elimination from the 2020 Olympic games. The demise is not quite certain. Wrestling can be re-instated, but it has to now compete with baseball/softball, squash, karate, sport climbing, wakeboarding, wushu, and roller sports and the betting in wrestling’s favor is not good. [Read more…]

I have never understood the appeal of golf as a spectator sport. It seems to take forever for the players to hit the ball, and even then you can’t even see the ball’s trajectory or where it lands. But the big tournaments draw big crowds, even though you can see only a tiny bit of what is going on. At least with other slow games like cricket and baseball, you can see the entire action. I also find it hilarious that there has to be pin drop silence when a golfer is about to hit a stationary ball, when in tennis or baseball the players have to hit a ball traveling at around 100 mph with crowds screaming in their ears. [Read more…]

Neetzan Zimmerman recounts the story of Alois Bell, pastor of a St. Louis church, who took a group of her flock to her neighborhood Applebee’s for dinner. The bill included an 18% gratuity built in, which is the restaurant’s policy for groups of 8 or more people, something that is fairly common. Serving large groups is tricky (especially if they order separately and want separate bills) and unfortunately some customers try to stiff the wait staff by under-tipping. (This whole business of tipping is a complex one and I expressed my own views on it back in 2005.) [Read more…]