"Take Speedo's LZR swimsuit, which was introduced in February. Fully 38 of the 42 world swimming records that have been broken since then have fallen to swimmers wearing LZRs." .... "The results are a suit that costs $600 and takes 20 minutes to squeeze into, and a widespread belief among swimmers competing in the Beijing Olympics this summer that they will have to wear one or fail." - Karen Padham Taylor via Bookmarklet
"the suit has what Speedo calls an “internal core stabiliser”—like a corset that holds the swimmer's form." Ha! Except for the 20 minutes it takes to squeeze into, sounds good to me! :P - Anne Bouey
That should do wonders for the Speedo brand image. - Thomas Brox Røst
It probably does make a difference, but they fail to point out that Speedo dominates professional swimsuit sponsorship anyway, so in almost any given period the vast majority of record breaking is done in Speedos (with occasional exceptions, like Ian Thorpe - sponsored by Adidas) - Nick Lothian
Oh, these are full-body suits... I was trying to imagine a pair of briefs that acted like a corset and took 20 minutes to squeeze into. It wasn't pretty. - Jim Norris
Some of us could probably benefit from wearing an "internal core stabilizer" on a daily basis... - torque
They're not all full body - there's a half and 3/4 version as well. - 3rdincome
This would have been even more impressive if it was a 747-sided diamond, which is what I first read. - Louis Gray
Liked, for the @Louis comment, which I have to admit made me chuckle. - Bradley McSpinn
One of my friends was in this skydive! Liz sent me the photo the day it happened...11/21/07 http://people.tribe.net/b2c9ca... Not real happy that this reporter makes 8 month-old news sound like it happened yesterday (twisted reporting). But Liz-will probably to like to hear about her jump making the news again, I just Facebook-mailed her the article. Thanks Karen. - Mitchell Tsai
The data density of this crop circle is 10E-16 GB per sq inch ( http://www.google.com/search?h... assuming 33 bits of data (log2(10E10) on 0.5 acres) compared to 250Gb sq inch on a modern hard drive platter. I know it's only corn, but I'd still hope for a ratio better than 1:2.5 quintillion to earn the name 'complex'. :-) - Kevin Fox
Um, no. I've seen fractal crop circles, like the Mandelbrot bug & others. - Tanath
Tanath, but the data density of a fractal crop circle can be compressed down to lim(x(n+1) = x(n)^2 + c) and boundary coordinates, which might be smaller than 33 bytes. :-) - Kevin Fox
"The Intelligence Toilet can measure the sugar levels in your urine, test your blood pressure, your body fat and weight, and then give you recommendations for diet and exercise." - Karen Padham Taylor
"Japan, land of innovations you never knew you needed because you don't need them, once again wows the world with the Intelligence Toilet, which makes our standard western toilets look like the stupid family dog, hungry for feces but offering nothing in return beyond blank stares." - Kevin Fox
"It's funny, though, because we have swimmers who come here at 6am every morning to do laps. It's still dark then and they mustn't have even noticed it was there." - Anne Bouey
Interesting.. I am pretty sure I don't want to live in any of these places.. They seem like a bit of a nightmare to buy, own or live in. Prob. make sense as investments - Bindu Reddy
"We're familiar with drug testing for athletes, but officials at the Beijing Olympics will be taking things one stage further and examining competitors whose sex is in doubt. And it is far from being a new problem, as Emine Saner discovers" - Karen Padham Taylor via Bookmarklet