Chinese Bulldozer Battle!

China’s economy is shrinking, and the construction industry accounts for one quarter of it, so things are getting quite competitive. That’s why a bunch of front loaders in Xingtang county, Hebei Province, were duking it out last Saturday.

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Contest With a Twist

“After three days of competition in the 2013 Rubik’s Cube World Championships at the Riviera, Feliks Zemdegs of Australia was crowned the new champion on Sunday ….

There were 15 events and 575 competitors from 37 countries from Friday through Sunday, and Zemdegs, in an orange hoodie, was victorious, completing his 3×3 Rubik’s cube in 8.18 seconds.”

— “Aussie wins 2013 Rubik’s Cube World Championships at Riviera,”  Don Chareunsy, Las Vegas Sun

World-Class Competition

What with all the hype about those badminton, horse-dancing, and bikini-ball contests in London, you might have missed last week’s really big sports event, the Rubik’s Cube U.S. Nationals in Las Vegas:

The Good, The Bad, & The Badminton

The modern Olympic Games have seen some scandals and controversies in the past, but as Laura McLay observes, “I never thought I’d hear the words ‘badminton’ and ‘scandal’ in the same sentence.”  In the Olympic Badminton preliminaries several national teams decided to throw matches in order to draw weaker opponents in subsequent rounds. The big-time birdie-chasers weren’t world-class cheaters, though, and the whole mess became a big shuttlecock-up. The woman athletes were so obviously unsporting that the IOC Racquet Squad threw them out of the Games. Two were from China, four from South Korea and two from Indonesia. The pair from China have been identified as Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli, the world doubles champions.