Bakker Bugle Blog Say it three times fast. In Luxembourgish.

27 August 2008

Olympic Summer Fun continues!

Filed under: award,sports — Tags: , , , , , — Will @ 3:04

Here at the Bugle, the Olympic fun doesn’t stop just because the events in China came to a close!

The Bugle staff wants to know: Which Olympic events are the best preparation for the coming collapse of civilisation as we know it?

We’ve given you a few choices regarding the end of days, but what we really to see is your own ideas in the comments. Write a comment with the name of the event and the reason why that event’s greatest athletes will survive the post-apocalyptic wastelands. We’ll add it to the polls and you might just win the Post-Apocalyptic Prize*!

Which (summer) Olympic athletes would survive the collapse of civilisation as we know it?

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* Prize not warrantied in the case of Snowball Earth or Exotic Physics in Switzerland. Prize may not be available during (or after) A Zombie Apocalypse. The Bugle Empire and its subsidiaries provide an “as-is” Prize and therefore admit no warranty of the Prize for a particular purpose, including the prize-winner’s (or the prize-winner’s progeny’s) survival of a supervolcano.
By accepting a prize, prizes, from a Bugle entity, you agree to release and hold harmless Bugle Inc., and its distributors from any liability, and/or any mutated bacteria, ancient latent viruses, or species-jumping prions either directly or indirectly arising from or resulting from the use or misuse of the Prize.
While we have made every attempt to ensure that Bugle readers will survive a global food crisis, Bugle Inc. and its
distributors and vendors are not responsible for any errors or omissions in advice given herein. For purposes of product warranty and truth-in-advertising, Bugle Inc. endorses the Doomsday Argument, although it accepts no liability for readers’ decisions based on that line of reasoning.
Unauthorized attempts to actually use, in an apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic situation, the methods suggested on this website, or any other product of The Bugle Empire, will result in voiding the warranty and total release of all Bugle entities from all liability or responsibility — especially in the cases of Divine Destruction, any Sudden Loss of a Breathable Atmosphere, and/or Grey Goo. Any litigation must be resolved in the state of Delaware. Should that state cease to exist due to The Aftermath of Peak Oil, the prize-winner shall have no right to litigate.
Prize not available in the New Confederate States of America, the Pacifist Haven of CalifOregon, any Technological Singularity, and the City of Detroit. Please check with your local warlord before commenting on this post.

15 August 2008

Olympic “Nations” — Who Decides? Part 1

Filed under: sports — Will @ 18:03

Dave asked,

Great Britain enters a team into the Olympics, not the UK. So, I think that England, Wales, and Scotland play as one team. I think that Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland also play as one team in the Olympics. In FIFA Soccer competitions, all of these “countries” enter their own teams. What’s going on?

Note that this is even weirder considering that Puerto Rico, a territory of the US, has it’s own team in the Olympics. I just don’t get it.

First, an introduction to the relevant parts of the Olympic Charter. (more…)

12 August 2008

Olympics Coverage on RTE

Filed under: ireland,sports — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Will @ 19:10

Radio Telefís Éireann (RTE) is the Irish national broadcaster, and it is my source for the 2008 Olympics on television. Its coverage consists primarily of three programs: Olympics through the Night, Olympics AM, and Olympics Today. All three consist of live broadcasts as well as overviews and highlights. At any time from about midnight to 4pm, the Olympics is broadcast on one of RTE’s two television channels — but never both to this point.

I record all three programs every day, so I see all the events that RTE chooses to show — although I see many of them at 12x or 30x speed. RTE’s choices are shaped by the sports for which Irish athletes qualified and the events of (putative) Irish interest. These are quite different from what I remember of US coverage, but that should be no surprise.

Still, I am surprised by what I’ve seen. (more…)

11 August 2008

Newsflash: Baby Pigeon Sighted

Filed under: entertainment — Will @ 22:12

Where are all the baby pigeons? In my garden, for one.

About six weeks ago, pigeons built a nest on the balcony of the second floor of my building (that’s the first floor for European readers). Every day, they make an unholy mess of my basement-level deck and the nest sits precisely above a spot where I like to sit in the sun.

Today, the flying-rat-spawn (as Anita calls it) ventured from the nest. (more…)

2 August 2008

Kippure Mountain & Me

Filed under: entertainment,ireland — Tags: , , , , , — Will @ 21:43

Anita left me the car on Monday and the sun was out. Naturally, I headed south into the Wicklow Mountains. (Technically, I stayed in County Dublin some of the time, but you get the idea.)

I wanted to spend some time outside the city, and the harshness of the Wicklow Mountains always attracts me. I’d planned to bike on the Military Road at some point during the week. The weekend was beautiful (as you saw at the Kings of Concrete). But rain was on the way and it was getting too late for a real adventure.

A walk up Kippure Mountain was perfect for my purposes. (more…)

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