Every Baseball Is Rubbed with This Special Mud Before It Gets Used [Video]

By Casey Chan Oct 16, 2011 4:00 PM 25,742 39

Baseball, America's past past time, is a pretty quirky game with quirkier players and quirkiest traditions. Chew tobacco! Sunflower seeds! Rally caps! Seventh Inning Stretch! And even a "special mud" that gets rubbed onto every single baseball in the major and minor leagues. Huh?

The mud is called Lena Blackburne Original Baseball Rubbing Mud and it comes from a secret spot in South Jersey off the Delaware River. Jim Bintliff, who owns Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud, skims the top inch layer on the muddy riverbanks for collection and then puts the mud through screens to refine it before packaging it, aging it and shipping it to all the baseball teams in the MLB. Bintliff says the texture of his special mud is like chocolate pudding. Tasty.

The mud is applied because new baseballs are much too slick for pitchers to grip properly. Baseball ended up using Lena Blackburne's special mud because its fine-grain sediments properties added grip without scratching the leather and messing up a ball's trajectory. The tradition of manually rubbing this special mud into balls started in the 1950's and continues to this day. [NewsWorks]

Related Stories

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Did Steve Jobs Leave a Special Four Year Plan for Apple? [Apple]

By Jesus Diaz Oct 10, 2011 12:00 PM 9,048 10

I don't know where these people are getting this bit of information from, but they're claiming that Steve Jobs "worked for more than a year on the products that he believed would safeguard the company" during the next four years.

Four year plans seem normal to me—any company should have a roadmap for at least the next four years. It's only logical if they want to make strategic decisions that would give them benefits in the long term.

Apple is a perfect example of this: they made contracts well in advance to secure a steady supply of low price flash memory and touch screens over the next several years. They did it for the MacBook Air, the iPhone, the iPod touch and the iPad. That's why their prices are lower than the rest of the industry and their margins higher, as Tim Cook reminded everyone last January:

[...] we have historically entered into certain agreements with different people to secure supply and other benefits, and the largest one in the recent past is that we signed a deal with several flash suppliers at the end of 2005 that totalled over a billion dollars, because we anticipated that flash would become increasingly important across our entire product line and incredibly important to the entire industry, so we wanted to secure supply for the company.

Long-term plans are also needed to guarantee smooth research, design, development and manufacturing phases. In fact, during the same conference call Tim Cook admitted they were spending lots of money on something they couldn't reveal, something looking "way ahead."

So yes, the future is happening now at Infinite Loop's dungeons. Apple has such a plan in place and yes, most probably Jobs supervised it like he did with everything else.

But is this a special plan? The Daily Mail—a well known English tabloid newspaper with zero track on Apple coverage—is implying that Jobs put extra care on it, perhaps fearing that the company would steer away from his vision too soon after his death.

They don't name their sources which claim that Jobs dedicated the last year of his life planning the new Apple campus, the iCloud project and "masterminding" a plan for the "iPod, iPad, iPhone and MacBooks, ensuring at least four years' worth of products are in the pipeline." No more information is provided.

I don't really know if this is true or not. What I can imagine is him obsessing over the future rather than the day-by-day, thinking that he was running out of time and that, once gone, nobody in the company would be able to carry on his vision. [Daily Mail]

You can keep up with Jesus Diaz the author of this post, on Twitter or Facebook. Related Stories

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

The Air Force Special Ops Receives Its First C-130J Combat Shadow II [Military]

The C-130 is an old reliable. It's been hauling soldiers, dropping supplies and refueling planes for 60 years. And with the arrival of the new MC-130J Combat Shadow II, this model will be around for another 30.

The Combat Shadow II is lighter and more powerful than earlier C-130s. It has five turboprops and, at 91,000 pounds, is the lightest MC-130 ever produced. As a result, the plane has 25 percent more takeoff power and 20 percent more cruise power than previous models. It's a monster plane, but it'll run lean and mean.

The first MC-130J Combat Shadow II rolled off the Lockheed Martin production line and landed at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico this week. It's the first of 20 planes on order for the Air Force Special Ops and the first of 10 expected to arrive at Cannon Air Force Base this year. [PNT Online]

Related Stories

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

SEAL Team 6 Wants Special Remote Cameras for War Dogs [Weapons]

War dogs fight! War dogs get shot! War dogs cry! War dogs rappel down walls! And soon, war dogs will be feisty canine war cameras. Their human pals in SEAL Team 6 want mobile, furry eyes in battle.

DefenseTech reports that DEVGRU—SEAL Team 6's formal name—requested the following hookup from the Pentagon:

The contractor shall provide a a canine transmit and receive kit (1.0 - 1.5GHz) comprising of Transmitter/Camera Unit; including a battery and antenna. Includes Receiver includes battery and antennas. Six-way Battery Charger, Peli-Case, and user manual shall be included.

Send out your cameradog, and get ground-level footage beamed back to you from cover. Just strap the (presumably night vision) camera on a war dog's bulletproof back, and you've got recon that runs faster than a robot, and can bite people. A bot may be harder to kill, but it's certainly less multifarious than a dog sidekick, and much more intimate than a drone. Not bad! And we're glad the user manual will be included. This will also mean the advent of first person war dog video, which has me grinning like an idiot. [DefenseTech]

Image via U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Elizabeth Rissmiller

You can keep up with Sam Biddle, the author of this post, on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. Related Stories

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Bowers & Wilkins Gives Its Customers a Special AirPlay Party Mode [Apps]

Airplay's pretty great, right? You can zap whatever music you like on over to your compatible device. Fun. Great. Just one problem: Only one person can be AirPlayin' at any given time. Minor quibble? Maybe, but it's a tad antisocial.

Think about it: Your friend wants to show off his knowledge of the Greenpoint IndyFolk scene by playing a song over your Wi-Fi-savvy device. No problem. Until you want to one-up him by playing something else—he's got to hand the connection over.

One more reason to wish we were rich enough to own the fabulous $600 iPod dock that is theB&W Zeppelin Air:: Starting today, it has a special app that lets multiple people jump on its AirPlay feed at the same time. It's kind of like a closed-circuit turntable.fm, allowing anyone who has the app to hop on the airwaves and play songs from their iOS device's music library. And whoever starts the session has veto power.

The app will work with any AirPlay product right now, so you can bet your fanciest shoes that Apple will ape the functionality in a future iTunes build, destroying yet another of its partners' competitive advantages.

Related Stories

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.