You Want Info on Fog in Liverpool? There's a Blog for That

Over on The Rainout Blog, a project I've been playing around with for the past six years – or has it been seven? – I've written a brief note today about the fogging night in Liverpool and the gloriously beautiful snow game played in Manchester Saturday. Carry on.

Oh, and yes, I hope to begin posting soon about my upcoming book project. Stay tuned.

(Did I just write "stay tuned"? Yuck! So cliché.) 

Tired Excuses

Wait! What?

Referees get tired too?

Yep. That's what Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini said last week after his club exited the Carling Cup following a loss to Liverpool.

''The refs sometimes are tired - to play every two or three days is difficult for the players, and for the referee. The referee is like me, like the players. They can be tired sometimes.''

If this is true – who am I to second guess Mancini – perhaps Premier League refs need to find themselves a better fitness program, just like National Football League officials did several years ago when they hired this dynamic fitness and nutrition duo I wrote about last week.

The husband and wife team conducted a 10-game study on NFL officials a few years go, and data showed the league's officials ran an average of 6.1 miles per game. It was far more, they said, than anyone, officials included, guessed before the study was completed.

I wonder how many miles the average Premier League referee gallops per game. I'm sure this number has been calculated, but I haven't found such data in my few minutes of searching.

However, I did find this Guardian story from March 2010 about football (soccer, whatever) referee Peter Walton, who said he trains four days a week to keep in match condition.

The interview is fun, and it's particularly interesting to learn what Walton sometimes eats for breakfast. Ummmm, baked beans!

  

Lost in Space Writing

I took this photo last night. No, I didn't.
It's from National Geographic/Getty Images 

After talking an hour with a physics/astronomy professor yesterday, I now know that I know nothing, absolutely nothing, about our galaxy.

I'm almost embarrassed by how little I knew and how wrong I was about all the things I thought I knew. Does that make sense?

Ok, that's all I have to say about my lack of galactic knowledge, but I can say I am making a little progress toward getting started on my book, which – I'll give you a little hint here – has nothing to do with the Milky Way or space in general.

People who know me know I'm a bit of a sports guy, and yeah, my book is going to be sports related.

What? That's not enough of a hint?

Ok, I'll also say that I love baseball, and while I do hope to work on a baseball writing project soon, my book will be all about a particular football game. I may even narrow it down to a book about one single play. Imagine that.

I've talked with a few people about the book, and they all seem excited and eager to help. So, I hope to get started on more formal interviews in the next couple of weeks and then be able to provide more information on this blog throughout the interviewing, research and writing process.

Now, back to writing about galaxies, dark matter, intergalactic space and such.