Designed Double Alley-Oop

Here's video of Ike Nwamu and Deuce Bello of Westchester Country Day School pulling off a designed double alley-oop in a recent high school game [via WithLeather & Ball Don't Lie]

Best Football Comeback/Letdown Ever

Pretty happy I found this video again. It was the Thanksgiving post on KissingSuzyKolber and is a video from the 1994 high school football game between Plano East High and John Tyler High. Plano East was down 41-17 with just 3 minutes to go in the game. Plano East won an ESPY in 1995 for "Showstopper of the Year" for this. You gotta see it to believe it.

High Speed Rail in California

Saw this article on Wired about the approval of bonds for construction of a high speed rail line in California.

Before the final ballots had even been tallied, high-speed rail advocates in California were getting down to work, laying the foundation for a bullet train that will link San Francisco and Los Angeles as early as 2020.

Voters on Tuesday approved the Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act, more commonly known as Proposition 1A, by a margin of 52 percent to 47 percent. The law authorizes the Legislature to issue almost $10 billion in bonds to fund the first phase of an 800-mile high speed rail link between Northern and Southern California. Advocates of high-speed rail hailed the victory as a watershed for high-speed rail in America.

It begins almost immediately. Quentin Kopp, chair of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, told Wired.com the agency will deliver a revised business plan by the end of this week and then begin a comprehensive engineering plan. "We're going to need to do things like dig tunnels through mountains and navigate the Pacheco Pass," he explains. "This is intricate engineering, and it's a crucial part of the project."

Kopp says that the state will also spend $3 to $4 billion this fiscal year buying right-of-way land for the project.

The Authority plans a network that will stretch from Sacramento to San Francisco and on to Los Angeles and San Diego via Fresno, Bakersfield, and other cities in the Central Valley. Trains would use the same wheel-on-rail technology found in France, Spain, Korea and China and reach speeds of more than 200 mph.

Proponents say the project is essential for a state choking on jammed highways and crowded airports, and predict that a well-planned north-south rail link could draw over 115 million riders a year by 2030. Gov. Schwarzenegger, one of the initiative's biggest advocates, argued high-speed rail will not only solve California's infamous gridlock, it will give the Golden State an economic competitive advantage.

The Los Angeles Times endorsed the measure, heralding it as the dawn of a more transit-friendly environment. "We think voters should give in to the measure's gleaming promise, because it's in their long-term interest," the paper wrote. The San Francisco Chronicle also got on board, calling Prop 1A "an ambitious vision that is well-tailored to the state's transportation and environmental needs." [WIRED]

Google Is Watching

From Wired,

This bird's-eye view of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania was the first image ever seen by the GeoEye-1, the world's highest-resolution commercial satellite sponsored by Google, when it opened its camera door earlier this week.

The 4,300-pound satellite collected the image at noon EDT on Oct. 7 while moving from the north pole to the south pole in a 423-mile-high orbit at 17,000 miles per hour, or 4.5 miles per second. The spacecraft can take photos at a resolution of up to 41 cm -- close enough to zoom in on the home plate of a baseball diamond, according to Mark Brender, GeoEye's vice president of communications and marketing.

Since around the late 70s, the military has used high-resolution spy satellites capable of reading newspaper headlines in Red Square. But only in recent years the technology became available to the public and businesses while concurrently making dramatic strides in coverage and resolution. For example, when Google Earth launched in 2004, its imagery was low-res and spotty. But by March 2006, a third of the world population could get a bird's-eye view of their own homes in high resolution.

There's one catch for Google: While the GeoEye-1 will provide imagery to the NGA at the maximum resolution of 43 cm, Google will only receive images at a 50-cm resolution because of a government restriction, Brender explained. However, Google's partnership with GeoEye is exclusive, meaning the search-engine giant will be the only online mapping site using the satellite's photos.

A second satellite, GeoEye-2, slated to launch in 2011 or 2012, will have a resolution of 25 cm, company representatives promised. However, Google's satellite imagery will not likely get more detailed because of the 50-cm regulation.

The two interesting things I took from this:
1. What the hell does Google not have it's hands in and what do they do that doesn't work?
2. So the government has had and been using these high resolution satellites for almost 40 years, what kind of crazy technology do they have now in 2008?

....this provides me with somewhat of a segue to a post to come, check back soon.