DailyDirt: More Olympic Trivia

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The technology used behind the scenes at the Olympics is getting better all the time. It's not an easy task to measure people moving with extreme accuracy, but it can be done. There are some other tasks that aren't so easy to do as well, and the judges are relying on robots and lasers to get these jobs done. Here are just a few examples of more technology creeping into the games.

• The speed of sound is apparently too slow for the Olympics now, so the starting pistols have been replaced by electronic beeps. Perhaps there shouldn't be a starting pistol at all, and the judges should simply measure when the athletes start and finish? [url]
• Robotic cameras are catching more action at the Olympics. Not too surprising that cameramen can't run alongside Olympic athletes and keep up.... [url]
• The modern pentathlon is using laser pistols instead of real guns this year. No sound effects like "pew pew pew!" will be tolerated from the audience. [url]
• While the testing for performance enhancing drugs has generated some controversy, the testing of athlete gender seems a bit trickier to handle. Does a person with XXY compete in the male or female events? [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: accuracy, gender, olympics, robots, testing

DailyDirt: The End of Men?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The battle of the sexes has been a long-term skirmish for centuries, if not millennia. There's really no winning, but there have been some recent suggestions that women are gaining ground. It's time to fight back, men! Or not. It might be better to just nod and say, "Yes, dear..."

• Japanese scientists have grown mice sperm cells in a test tube. Someday, this could either cure male infertility... or completely obviate the need for men, depending on how you look at it. [url]
• Dilbert-creator Scott Adams sparked a bit of debate over the men's rights movement. Adams should know better than to compare women to the mentally handicapped -- even if he wrote it in a tongue-in-cheek way. [url]
• The sense of touch can affect how people perceive gender. We'll leave it to the comments to come up with a joke about how squeezing a soft ball tends to get people to classify a face as female... [url]
• Men in the US are becoming less educated than their female peers, but they don't have to commit to long-term relationships as much. The laws of supply and demand affect relationships, too. [url]
• To discover more interesting gender-related issues, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: gender, men's rights, scott adams