Ichiro Suzuki's streak of consecutive 200-hit seasons is about to end at 10.

Nate Silver, who has written mainly about politics in recent years, returns to his baseball roots, examining where in history the September collapse of the Boston Red Sox ranks.

Defending national college-football champion Auburn had its 17-game winning streak snapped today, with a 38-24 loss to Clemson. Auburn, which started off 2-0 this season, was 14-0 last season and had closed out the 2009 season with a bowl win.

Texas Tech quarterback Seth Doege had the hot hand in leading the Red Raiders to a 59-13 win at New Mexico. According to this game article:

Doege tied a school record by completing his first 15 passes en route to finishing 40 for 44 -- a 90.9 completion percentage, a national record for quarterbacks with at least 40 completions.

With yesterday's loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates clinched their 19th straight season with a losing (i.e., sub-.500) record. Among major North American sports leagues, the Pirates franchise holds the record for consecutive losing seasons and has for some time.

As discussed here, the NFL futility record (at least for the modern, Super Bowl era) is held by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who went 14 years (1983-1996) without a winning season, whereas the NBA mark belongs to the Kansas City/Sacramento Kings franchise (15 years, 1983-84 through 1997-98). In the NHL, the Vancouver Canucks hold the record at 15 straight years of losing (1976-77 through 1990-91).*

Going back to the 2011 Pirates, it looked for a while this season that the team might finally end the streak. As this game article from the loss to St. Louis summarized: "...the Pirates were 51-44 and led the NL Central by a half-game before play on July 20. But they have gone 16-38 since, leaving them at 67-82."

In fact, as the August 1 trading deadline approached, the Pirates became "buyers" (teams within striking distance of the playoffs who trade for players who could put the team over the top) rather than "sellers" (teams that are hopelessly out of contention and trade their veterans to the buyers for young prospects) for the first time in a long while, acquiring veterans Derrek Lee and Ryan Ludwick.

Pittsburgh's trade-deadline moves obviously didn't have the desired effect, but at least they showed the team's fans (all three of them; just kidding) that management was willing to take some initiative when a winning season seemed within reach. Assuming the Pirates end the season with a win total in the low 70s, will they be able to win an extra 10 games or so next year to finally exceed the 81-81 break-even point? I'm skeptical.

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*Vancouver fans didn't exactly go through 15 years of suffering, however. Through the NHL's policy of letting a large percentage of its teams into the playoffs and the historically high upset rate once the postseason begins, the 1981-82 Canuck squad actually made the Stanley Cup finals. This, despite the team's regular-season ledger of 30 wins, 33 losses, and 17 ties.

Top 6 Best Concept Phones

People always wonder, does technology has its limit? NOPE, you can never imagine how far it could go beyond your expectation. Now let's look back for a moment, have you ever thought that nowadays most people use a touchscreen phones, just imagine that like 5 years ago, is it possible at that time? Not a hint, that's just a simple image of how technology have went from fast growing sector to something like lightning speed evolution.
Here is some nice mobile phone concepts for you ^_^

The iPhone 5

This week I’ve heard that Apple finally decided to go with Samsung as its next CPU maker, although TSMC seemed like the favourite for making the A6 for a while… Also, inside sources are saying that the same case size of the iPhone 4S will be kept, but the screen will be made bigger, so maybe we’re talking edge to edge display here. These are all usual rumors, that we’ll be hearing for a year now, till the iPhone 5 gets released…

Nokia N10

Nokia N10

 Here we are again, with a beautiful Nokia concept phone, this one created by Mohammed Shihuzaan. Dubbed the Nokia N10, this model is a triple boot phone, that runs Android 2.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, Windows Phone Mango and MeeGo Harmattan.

Onyx

Onyx from Synaptics. This touch interface was designed to show what can a phone do through only one touch, as well as to illustrate how different applications can work simultaneously.

Nokia Scentsory. Is famous for its interesting form, and for the ability of pleasant smells, which can be set for each different caller (as a ringtone).

Scentsory

Asus Aura - touch phone with a large display and a sliding keyboard. Beautiful, convenient and… seem impossible before but it's everywhere nowadays. 

Asus Aura

Nokia Open

Nokia Open - a phone with a pullout flexible display.

Nokia 888

Nokia 888. Once this concept has shaken the minds and imagination of all those who have been closely following all the new developments and technologies in the field of mobile phones. Communicator-braslet has a flexible shell and flexible display, a touch interface, and can take any form. This concept became the winner of “Nokia Benelux Design Awards”.
Also check out my Top 5 Best Laptop Concepts post. ^_^

Top 7 Unique / Unusual Restaurants in The World

Here's a very unique thing for you, 7 Unusual Restaurant in the world. Do you like to travel? Do you like to eat something special or in some unusual manner? So this post is totally for you! Here you will find the most incredible and unusual restaurants in the world. From restaurant that located at the highest ground to the ones placed underwater, from children waiter/waitress to free food, everything is here. Believe me, after reading this post you'll know that there's so much in this world to explore, there's more in this world than just working our everyday job, let's go back to chasing our dream and make it come true, don't give up !!!


Kinderkookkafe Amsterdam, Netherlands - The uniqueness of this restaurant is that their serving staff consists only of children, because it is originally targeted for parents to have their child's birthday party here.

Kinderkookkafe

Big Texan Steak Ranch Amarillo, USA - This is for anybody, you'll get 2 kg steak with garnish for free if you can eat it within an hour, but if you fail then you'll have to pay the regular.

Big Texan Steak Ranch

Dinner in the Sky Brussel, Belgium - Have you ever have your lunch up in the air? Here in Belgium, Dinner in the sky Brussel, people can have their lunch table with guests suspended in the air.

Dinner in the Sky

Chacaltaya ski resort Cordillera, Bolivia - This is what i'm talking about before, let me present to yoy the most highly placed restaurant in the world. 5340 meters

Chacaltaya ski resort

De Kas Amsterdam, Netherlands - Healthy restaurant, this is all i can say about thiss restaurant, and also for you vegetarian, you'll love this place, vegetables are collected in the restaurant.

De Kas Amsterdam

Ithaa Rangali Island, Maldives - Dining with flying fish, can you really eat in a place like this? here's an underwater restaurant for you.

Ithaa Rangali Island

Modern Toilet Taipei, Taiwan - You are seated at a bathtub (your table) surrounded by toilets (your seats). Your food comes in your own sizzling toilet bowl with a little “poop” on the side.

Modern Toilet

Honorable mentions:

BED New York, USA - Big beds instead of chairs

BED New York

Sounds of Silence Ayers Rock, Australia - Astronomical dinner in the desert near the Uluru Rocks.

Sounds of Silence

O’Noir Montreal, Canada - You will eat in darkness, sometimes with blind waiters.

Top 5 Best Laptop Concepts

These are the list for you, gadgets lovers, especially concepts, includes concepts made by laptop manufacturers for one particular purpose, the better future that is. Here it is...


Compenion

 The laptop prototype of the future designed by Felix Shmidbergera. It has two OLED displays, one of which could be used as a keyboard or as an additional display. Also it has an unusual form, Compenion is a slider.

Unnamed Prototype by HP 

This is one of several concepts presented by Hewlett-Packard company at the end of 2006 during “HP Invent” event. This laptop is not an existing prototype, so it only shows how laptops will look like in future.

Canova

Designed by the studio V12 Design, another laptop of the future with two displays. Both are presumed to be touch with the support of technology multi-touch. Additional display can be useful for working with graphical editors, or drawing. While working with the text, the touch display can turn into a keyboard.

Unnamed Prototype by Fujitsu

The current prototype from Fujitsu which was firstly presented at the CEATEC exhibition. In addition to a touch keypad with a backlight, the notebook has a virtual 5.1 channel surround sound and can function as a digital player, which is outside. There also are additional keys for music, and a small display, displaying information of the song playing, so that it would be possible to manage music without even opening the laptop.

Vaio Zoom

Authors of the conceptual laptop Vaio Zoom believe that users want to see such laptops in the future. Holographic Concept has a glass display and a touch keyboard. When the laptop is not used, the display becomes completely transparent, and the keyboard is opaque. At the same time the concept has, as you can see, a very, very thin shell. But since this is not the official concept of Sony, it is difficult to say whether it will ever become a reality.


Also check out my Top 6 Best Concept Phones ^_^