Champions....Again....

San Antonio Spurs. Champions of the NBA. AGAIN.

And they did it the classic way. By playing as a quintessential team. By having a sense of chemistry. By relying on each other to pick themselves up off the floor. By using the power of team to win the winner-takes-all Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

Maybe they do not always run and run and run in the up-and-down style of basketball that epitomizes the Harlem GlobeTrotters and street ball. Maybe they do not have the flash and dazzle of show-offs. But if you have ever really watched them play, (missive to the people that complain that the Spurs are boring..have you ever really tried to watch them play without having that preconceived notion in your mind?) if you ever can think of basketball as being something else in addition to run, run and then run some more, you will atleast begin to appreciate their excellence.

In the present double-speak ridden world, it is a pleasure to be able to see a team with no ego hassles, no humility issues, no problems paying attention to the coach, and no problem giving their opponents their due respect. It is a pleasure to watch this team not preen and pout and draw attention to themselves like most superjerk players do. And yes, they epitomize almost everything that America says it wants its sportsmen to be...talented, full of character and ability to put team above self. But, didn't I just say "double-speak" ridden world?

So naturally, America turns its back and gets back to tired and irritating cliches: boring half-court team.

My retort: its a pity you missed it.

You missed this most international of NBA teams getting players assembled from three continents to play together as one cohesive unit. You missed this chameleon of a team that (surprise surprise to all you who missed it) beat the Phoenix Suns at their own game, and then turned right around and played Detroit Pistons at their own game and won. You still want to insist that the Spurs are boring? Too sad and too bad for you.

Get used to it. The San Antonio Spurs, along with the Detroit Pistons, are potential dynasties in the making.

Its Tuesday..no...its Wednesday...

Recently, my job afforded me with the rare privilege of pulling an all-nighter in order to get some segments of the system ready for a client presentation. It almost felt like I was back at "school", slogging it out over a course presentation/project/thesis/what-have-you.

Anyway, having consumed boat-loads of caffeine through the course of the two days, it turned out to be pretty easy to stay awake through to the night of the second day..

And then sleep hit..with an irresistible force..and I was the immovable object stuck in its path. So, an estimated 9 hours of sleep on a weeknight ought to be enough. So you would think. Even if it came after being awake for 40 hours straight.

And you would be correct. For the most part. Atleast for the physical part.

But apparently someone really forgot to tell it to my mind..and to my biological system. I woke up the following morning, all refreshed and sprighty...only to realize that my mind was still in "yesterday".

The calender said it was Wednesday..my mind insisted it was Tuesday..and the tug-of-war was on. You see, one of my worst nightmares is this fear that somehow, one fine day, when I wake up, ALL the clocks and calendars in the house would be all pointing to the wrong date and time and throw me completely off-kelter. That meant that in that initial wave of post-nightmare-panic, I could not convince my own mind rationally that it was indeed Wednesday and that I had pulled an all-nighter through Monday night into Tuesday.

Somehow, somewhere, thank goodness, rationality set in and my mind accepted that it was indeed Wednesday and not Tuesday. I consulted with Answers dot com about this, and it spat back with an answer...

Circadian Rhythm..the Biological Clock.

If only it was as easy to reset that clock as it is with the mechanical ones.

You better come with "It"

A splendid ad spot for Gatorade proclaims, amongst other things..."Football is football, unless it is foot-ball. A bat is a bat, even if it is flat. Ten feet on the West side, is Ten feet on the East side. No matter what, you better come with it because it is 90 feet to first, no matter where home is.

(For the uninitiated, the 90ft statement is based in baseball, where the four plates that make up the diamond are 90 ft apart (Home to 1st to 2nd to 3rd to Home is 90 feet each)).

Two profound thoughts in the bolded sentence...

you better come with it...Effort.
Its 90 ft to first no matter where home is. Focus on goals.

Sports cliches maybe, but profoundly true in regular life as well. If only we are able to treat challenges of life as something akin to the challenges of sport..because for whatever the reason, sport seems to get the adrenaline pumping for people.

Until that happens though, we can sit back, and appreciate such wonderful specimens of advertising...

Trivia and Gender

We are just days removed from the revelation of Deep Throat, and in the spirit of revealing information, below is a possible explanation to the wonder of why trivia and trivia-pursuit related games seem to be a domain of the Gentlemen, with not much participation from the Ladies.

Courtesy National Post via fact.on.ca and Trivia Hall of Fame comes this piece of interesting trivia news.

The University of Ulster at Coleraine, located in the northern part of Ireland, conducted a test with 1500 university students taking a 182-question general knowledge test (designed to measure the knowledge in the 19 major domains of what is normally considered as general knowledge, including areas such History of Science, Politics, Sport, History, Classical Music, Popular Music, Jazz and Blues, Art, Literature, General Science, Geography, Cookery, Medicine, Games, Discovery and Exploration, Biology, Film, Fashion and Finance), balanced to eliminate gender bias and also gender differences in memory or in IQ.

Surprisingly, the men beat the women in just about every category, even in fashion. The main explanation left appears to be that men see general knowledge tests as a competition with other males for status and power.This is utterly fascinating considering women tend to do better than men in schools and seem to be outperforming men at jobs in the real world as well.

Now for some really curious facts. Regis Philbin, host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, has lamented about his contestants being male. Almost half of Trivia Hall of Fame's online quiz game are women, and other research suggest that women are very much drawn to online gaming, provided that they are competing only with themselves.

It may be that most trivia environments are too cut-throat for women, who prefer not to be surrounded by men competing to see who has the biggest ... brains.

Whodathunkit?

Also, you wanna pick up a girl? How about showing off some of your muscles upstairs...in the brains? This link details using those muscles to pick up girls. Check it out here...