Europe's new soccer 'Super League'

Real Madrid players, left, duel with Getafe players at the Alfonso Perez stadium in Getafe, Spain, Sunday

A battle is brewing between Europe's top soccer clubs and their governing bodies--one that could cost billions of dollars in television rights payments.

 

Twelve of Europe's richest and most powerful soccer teams from Spain, Italy, and England will abandon the existing Champions League and create a rival Super League.

 

The Super League's 12 Founding Clubs include Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, and Real Madrid. Three more clubs will be invited to join before a potential inaugural season.

The Super League believes a new competition is a necessary change following the global pandemic which, the group said in a statement, "has accelerated the instability of the current economic model of European football."

The Super League's statement said, "A strategic vision and commercial approach is needed to increase value and support for the benefit of the football pyramid as a whole."

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), as well as the English, Spanish, and Italian soccer federations immediately attacked the breakaway Sunday, and called the efforts behind the Super League "a cynical project."

 

UEFA said any participating teams in the Super League will be banned from playing in any other competition at the domestic, European, or world level. Players could also be denied the ability to represent national teams.

"We will consider all measures available to us, at all levels, both judicial and sporting."

Global television and commercial rights now are worth more than $3.3 billion annually.

 

Super League organizers found a revenue sharing alternative: they will grant teams a share of a one-time payment of €3.5 billion (or $4.18 billion) for joining.

 

From NPR (edited)

One restaurant meal at a time

Cafes in and around the town of Miami (population 13,000) in Oklahoma’s northeastern corner have put up “receipt walls,” allowing diners to pre-pay for meals for those who can’t afford them.

The idea of providing free, pre-paid meals spread from restaurant to restaurant a few months ago.

Many recipients are homeless or are facing hard times because of the pandemic and the two snowstorm that paralized the town in February

Jennifer White, who owns the gourmet hot dog spot The Dawg House, transitioned from food truck to brick and mortar last September, a bold move in the middle of a pandemic. She was the first to put up a giving wall. Within eight hours, she had a wall full of meal receipts.

So far, customers at The Dawg House have provided more than 600 meals.

“And we have only eight tables in our restaurant, so that says a lot about how amazing our community is,” White said.

Lasay Castellano, a nursing student and manager of Zack’s Cafe, said the diner serves about 600 people a day.  “We have a lot of homeless people here. A lot. Within a day we had almost $600 in meals on the wall,” she said. “We’re having a hard time keeping tickets on the wall.”

When the snowstorms hit the town in February, everybody helped those without places to stay. Mayor Bless Parker moved homeless into hotels and supplied them food from the restaurant walls.

Life in Miami, in an area where lead and zinc mines ruled more than 100 years ago, is slowly moving closer to something that looks like the old normal every day. The area’s plentiful casinos are open, and restaurants like The Dawg House are welcoming back in-person dining, with fewer tables to provide for social distancing.

  Article from York News Time  (edited)

Prepositions of time song

 

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New dinosaur discovered in Argentina (audio)

 

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Spider web music

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have turned spider webs into music -- creating a soundtrack that could help them better understand how the arachnids spin their complex creations and even how they communicate.

The MIT team worked with Berlin-based artist Tomás Saraceno to take two-dimensional laser scans of a spider web, which were stitched together and converted into a mathematical model to recreate the web in 3D in virtual reality. They also worked with MIT's music department to create the harplike virtual instrument.

"The web has a lot of internal structures and you can visualize and look at them, but it's really hard for the human imagination or human brain to understand all these structural details," said MIT engineering professor Markus Buehler, who presented the work on Monday at a virtual meeting of the American Chemical Society.

"Listening to the music while moving through the VR spider web lets you see and hear these structural changes and gives a better idea of how spiders see the world".

"Spiders have vibrational sensors, they use vibrations as a way to orient themselves, to communicate with other spiders".

"Spiders are able to build their webs without scaffolding or supports, so having a better idea of how they work could lead to the development of advanced new 3D printing techniques!",  Buehler said.

They scanned the web while the spider was building it and Buehler compared it to a stringed instrument that changes as the structure becomes more complex.

"While you're playing the guitar, suddenly you're going to have new strings appear and emerge and grow," he said.

Buehler said they recorded the vibrations spiders create during different activities and are using artificial intelligence to create synthetic versions.

"We're beginning to perhaps be able to speak the language of a spider," he said. "The hope is that we can then play the vibrations back to the web structure to communicate with the spider and perhaps induce the spider to act in a certain way, to respond to the signals in a certain way."

He said that work is still in progress and that they've had to shut down their lab because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Buehler has been interested in the connection between music and materials on the molecular level for years and has used similar techniques to show the subtle differences between the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines and between two different variants of the Covid-19 virus.

In addition to the scientific value, Buehler said the webs are musically interesting and that you can hear the melodies the spider creates during construction.

"It's unusual and eerie and scary, but ultimately beautiful," he said.

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Article from CNN (edited)

From Disneyland to Disney World

A Texas man just finished running from Disneyland in Southern California to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

Don Muchow, 59, started his goal of running across the United States in February 2020. He didn't have a specific plan involving both Disney parks, but after a conversation with a friend he decided to include them.

When he was asked why he chose to run from Disneyland to Walt Disney World he explained that it was his friend’s idea:

“I have a friend of mine, and when I was explaining the transcontinental run, and he’s a huge Disney fan, he said basically, ‘Well are you running from Disneyland to Walt Disney World? A little light bulb went on in my head and I said, ‘I don’t think anyone’s ever done that– let’s go look it up,’ and no one had. So to me it made it special, to kind of help fulfill a dream of his and it’s always been a dream of mine to run across the country.”

Muchow started long-distance running to bring awareness to Type 1 diabetes, a disease he has been living with for 48 years,since 1972. He is the founder of Diabetes and Exercise Allaince as well as Diabietic Ultra Endurance Athletes.

In March 2020 he had to put his run on hold due to the start of the pandemic. He picked it up again in Texas on September 24 and ran to the Texas/Arkansas border, where he had to pause for a second time due to spikes in the virus in October.

He restarted his final push to finish on March 2 and made it to Disney World on April 5, a trip of more than 2,500 miles

"I've been on cloud nine ever since," Muchow told reporters.

When he arrived at the park, Disney security, cast members and guests cheered and loaded him down with a custom Mickey Mouse cap, balloons and more. He then was assigned an official photographer and guest relations representative who took them into the park to the front of his favorite ride -- "It's a Small World."

Before leaving, Muchow was granted his one request -- a Mickey Mouse ice cream cone.

Two days later, Muchow finally made it to the Atlantic Ocean, completing his mission.

• MUCHOW - The professional 

        https://www.linkedin.com/in/donmuchow 

• MUCHOW - The athlete 

2019 El Paso TX to Texarkana TX: 850 Miles

Fastest-known-time (FKT) record for cross-Texas run by anyone.

2018 RelayIowa: 339 Miles

Sioux City to Dubuque. First ever solo finisher of longest US relay. First ever  T1D (Type 1 Diabetis) finisher.

2017 Capital to Coast Race: 223 Miles

Austin, TX to the Gulf of Mexico. First ever T1D solo finisher.

2017 Ironman Texas: 140.6 Miles

2.4 mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.2 mile run.

2016 Texas Quad Marathon: 104.8 Miles

4 marathons in 4 days. 3rd Place. First ever T1D finisher.

2017 Honey Badger Ultra Road Race: 100 Miles

100 miles in 100+ degrees! First ever T1D finisher.

Tour de Cure Double Century Bike Rally: 200 Miles

Texas Hill Country: Austin to Fredericksburg and back.

PLUS 30+ triathlons, century bike rallies, ultramarathons, ultra relay races, marathons and half-marathons.

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Article from CNN (edited)

The Michelin Guide is returning (audio)

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Stop using Peloton treadmill

Safety regulators warned people with kids and pets to immediately stop using a treadmill made by Peloton after one child died and nearly 40 others were injured.

New York-based Peloton Interactive Inc said in a news release that the warning was “inaccurate and misleading”. It said there’s no reason to stop using the treadmill as long as children and pets are kept away from it at all times, it is turned off when not in use, and a safety key is removed.

But the safety commission said that in at least one episode, a child was pulled under the treadmill while a parent was running on it, suggesting it can be dangerous to children even while a parent is present.

If adults want to keep using the treadmill, the commission said, they should use it only in a locked room so children and pets can’t come near it. When not in use, the treadmill should be unplugged and the safety key taken out and hidden away.

Peloton is best known for its stationary bikes, but it introduced the treadmill about three years ago and now calls it the Tread+. It costs more than $4,000.

Sales of Peloton equipment have soared during the pandemic as people avoid gyms and workout at home instead. The company brought in $1bn in revenue in the last three months of 2020, more than double its revenue from the same period a year before.

From The Guardian

Collectors bought fake wine (audio)

 

The Kurniawan story has since inspired the ‘Sour Grapes’ documentary film that was made available on Netflix.

Around 5,000 bottles authenticated as genuine and found in Rudy Kurniawan’s private cellar were auctioned this month.

More than 500 counterfeits of some of the world's finest wines were crushed at a Texas waste disposal site almost exactly two years after their maker, Rudy Kurniawan, was convicted of wine fraud in a US court. 

‘Everything destroyed here today was either counterfeit or had no sale value,’ said Jason Martinez, assistant program manager for the US Marshals Asset Forfeiture Division. 

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