MIENFOKS

Not sure when or where this happened , but thanks Dave !!!

Shown here at some trick shot challenge sponsored by Cub Cadet — your number one stop for premium outdoor power equipment — smiles David Kalb, a warehouse worker from La Habra, California and LeBron James, a four-time NBA All-Star and Olympic gold medalist. I assume you know who's who.

Kalb, left (you're welcome), won an online contest — thanks to this ridiculous shot — to play H-O-R-S-E against LeBron at Venice Beach yesterday. Like an '07 Spurs team, Kalb destroyed The King.

"Kalb's bag of trick shots including one where he bounced the ball very high in the lane, raced around the goal post, caught the ball as it came down, and tossed it in the basket. James missed his try, and after losing the first game, declared best two-of-three. Each made, among other shots, left-handed free throws, but Kalb went on to win the second game as well.

After he missed his final shot, James tossed the ball away in mock anger."

Marcel at SLAM thinks this beach exhibition is precisely why stars no longer want to take part in All-Star Saturday night festivities like the dunk contest or H-O-R-S-E, which the NBA is contemplating adding: "LeBron loses to a nobody in September and it makes national headlines; just imagine what he'd have to go through if he lost with millions of eyeballs tuning in."

Yeah, that, and H-O-R-S-E sucks to watch.

from The Superficial & Daily Mirror
Lily Allen and Elton John presented the GQ Men of the Year Awards last night in London. Things got out of hand when Lily kept downing champagne like it was the antidote which pissed off Elton John and ended in the two exchanging words on-stage over who could snort the most coke. The Daily Mail reports:

When she came to announce '...and now the most important part of the night', Elton chipped in 'What? Are you going to have another drink?'
She fired back: 'F*** off Elton. I am 40 years younger than you and have my whole life ahead of me!'
The shocked audience fell silent.
A clearly rattled Elton replied 'I could still snort you under the table'. To which she replied: 'F*** off. I don't know what you are talking about.'
On more than one occasion, Elton could be seen having a stern word with her in the wings between awards. She barely made it off the stage after the awards ended - before drinking even more at the afterparty.

Folks, we've got ourselves a Snort Off. Okay, first one to OD and die, wins. Ready... GO!

The power of ultrasonic waves has been harnessed to produce "virtual" objects in mid-air.

The field of haptics - integrating computing and the sense of touch - has been around for some time but has required gloves or mechanical devices to impart a sense of feeling.

Now, a team of Japanese researchers has developed a system that uses focused ultrasound to do the job.

Its inventors may soon commercialise the approach.

Sense and sensibility

With the expansion in multimedia on the web, our eyes and ears are flooded with sensory information, but the sense of touch has been largely left behind.

The popularity of vibrating gaming handsets has proven that it is a rich but untapped way to increase interaction.

Takayuki Iwamoto and colleagues from the University of Tokyo have now demonstrated a simple haptic device that employs a number of ultrasonic transducers, which emit ultrasound.

Sound is a pressure wave, meaning that as the inaudible sound waves from each of the transducers interfere, they can create a focal point that is perceived as a solid object.

The team's prototype system includes a camera which tracks the position of a user's hand and shifts the output from the transducers to move the focus around with the hand. The result is a feeling of tracing the edge or surface of the virtual object.

At the moment, the system provides a small force only in the vertical dimension, but the team is improving the geometry of the array and the amount of power it can produce so that future devices will provide a stiffer feel and more contoured objects.

It's great to have something that you can just walk up and use
Stephen Brewster

Prof Iwamoto envisions marrying the approach with 3-D modelling software and video games, and says that the team "received several proposals from industrial companies" when the prototype was demonstrated at a conference in California last month.

The system is "the first of its kind", according to haptics researcher Stephen Brewster of the University of Glasgow.

"You can feel it with both hands, rather than having just a single point of contact, and multiple people can use it at the same time," Prof Brewster says. "The kinds of things we use are connected through mechanical arms or you're wearing some kind of exoskeleton.

"It's great to have something that you can just walk up and use and not need any other kind of hardware you have to hold or wear."

The team is working to adjust how the transducers are driven in order to produce realistic textures as well as shapes.

However, the approach is limited in how much force it can produce, which in turn limits how hard or stiff the virtual objects can be. Beyond a certain amount of force, the device could scatter enough ultrasound to risk ear damage.

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