I enjoy watching sports on occasion, and despite the fact that most of the world is engrossed (some astronomical figure of worldwide viewers) with watching the World Cup games. I still have a hard time wrapping my American mind around the idea that a "football" is round and has alternating panels made up of different colors. Ah well, to each their own. :laugh:
But were I Soccer/Football fan and had paid $1000's of bucks to go watch the games I would have to admit being irked at what the South African fans have been up to lately. They are one of the tournament host countries for this edition of the World Cup (every 4 yrs IIRC). It is a tradition of theirs to bring an obnoxious air horn called a "vavuzela" (I heard it pronounced VA-VOO-ZE-LA) to games. This little plastic air horn emits a piercing 130 db sound, that's 10db "above" human hearing pain threshold. Imagine a stadium with 60,000 of them.
Article from a news source link: South Africa denied as World Cup carnival kicks off - CNN.com.
Honestly it's no worse that the cheers/singing/other sound makers (more cow bells anyone?) that other countries the world over utilize. I've never seen a "quiet" soccer game on any continent other than the US. That's part of the uniqueness of a futbol event.
Also, this is the host countries "normal" tradition...who are we (or anyone else) to tell them to stop? That would be like a contingent of fans coming over for the Super Bowl (or any other football game) and saying that the fans yelling and screaming (while their team is on defense) in an effort to cause the offense to (a) have trouble hearing, (b) have trouble communicating on the field and (c) possibly cause foul ups on the plays (ie: penalties). Hmm, that's what a bunch of players and people are complaining about.
Come on people, it's two weeks long. Mute the TV and watch the commentary. Not like you need the announcers anyway if it bothers you that much. On TV it becomes white noise after about 5 minutes for me.
It seems they are going to filter the noise out on Norwegian television. Technologically speaking that's easy enough to do.
[INDENT]'..tolerance when fog rolls in clouds unfold your selfless wings feathers that float from arabesque pillows I sold to be consumed by the snow white cold if only the plaster could hold withstand the flam[url="http://bit.ly/foT0XQ"]e[/url] then this fountain torch would know no shame and be outstripped only by the sun that burns with the glory and honor of your..'[/INDENT]
Unfortunately it's put me off watching as much as I'm normally wont to do. I don't think it's anything to do with tradition as such, but the things are given out to cover up for the fact that attendances ar poor and if it wasn't for the horrible racket there would be no atmosphere at all.
The problem is that football is almost an entirely black sport in South Africa, white South Africans are only intereste4d in thugby and cricket, and sadly most black South Africans can't afford the tickets. Only 40,000 to watch England's first game for example, I think that's the lowest attendance at an England game of any type ever.
[QUOTE=Darth Gavinius;1096098]Distrbution of games, is becoming a little like Democracy (all about money and control) - in the end choice is an illusion and you have to choose your lesser evil.
And everything is hidden in the fine print.[/QUOTE]
On the plus side South Africa must be getting several years worth of tourists in one summer. That must boom the local tourist industry a whole lot.
I really want to go to South Africa some day. The language is absolutely facinating for anyone who understand Dutch. We know that much from the imported South African wines.
[INDENT]'..tolerance when fog rolls in clouds unfold your selfless wings feathers that float from arabesque pillows I sold to be consumed by the snow white cold if only the plaster could hold withstand the flam[url="http://bit.ly/foT0XQ"]e[/url] then this fountain torch would know no shame and be outstripped only by the sun that burns with the glory and honor of your..'[/INDENT]
Unfortunately one of the repercussions of the world wide recession has been a disappointingly low number of tourists for the world cup, well down on what they were anticipating. Resulting in them selling tickets at a big discount, but not enough of a discount for most natives. A bad world cup for the touts though, so not all doom and gloom!
Given how long Afrikaners have been severed from Holland, talking to someone who speaks afrikaans must be like entering some sort of linguistic time warp for you Tricky.
[QUOTE=Darth Gavinius;1096098]Distrbution of games, is becoming a little like Democracy (all about money and control) - in the end choice is an illusion and you have to choose your lesser evil.
And everything is hidden in the fine print.[/QUOTE]
It has evolved on its own from whatever dialect the Golden Age mariners were speaking. Even if I don't always get what South-African means, it's usually quite easy (and fun) to trace it back to Dutch.
[INDENT]'..tolerance when fog rolls in clouds unfold your selfless wings feathers that float from arabesque pillows I sold to be consumed by the snow white cold if only the plaster could hold withstand the flam[url="http://bit.ly/foT0XQ"]e[/url] then this fountain torch would know no shame and be outstripped only by the sun that burns with the glory and honor of your..'[/INDENT]
[INDENT]'..tolerance when fog rolls in clouds unfold your selfless wings feathers that float from arabesque pillows I sold to be consumed by the snow white cold if only the plaster could hold withstand the flam[url="http://bit.ly/foT0XQ"]e[/url] then this fountain torch would know no shame and be outstripped only by the sun that burns with the glory and honor of your..'[/INDENT]
Great game this afternoon, gotta love it when the underdog sticks it to the number one favourite, unless your Spanish of course. Typical cup football, that game wouldn't have been out of place in the FA Cup 3rd round.
[QUOTE=Darth Gavinius;1096098]Distrbution of games, is becoming a little like Democracy (all about money and control) - in the end choice is an illusion and you have to choose your lesser evil.
And everything is hidden in the fine print.[/QUOTE]
I hate them, hate them, hate them, hate them. Just check my twitter if anybody was in doubt.
I want them banned, they're ruining football atmosphere where fans sing and chant and cheer. Just a monotonous and ugly and annoying and hateful and despicable and "I want to kill somebody before myself" sound instead.
It is the most stupid thing FIFA ever did allowing those obnoxious horns on stadiums. I've seen television channels complaining, people complaining, players complaining about the horns. Heck - I saw BBC would try to filter them out as well.
They've done studies to show that they even carry more dB then a chainsaw and I would rather listen to a chainsaw.
I've actually taken to watching the matches either without sound or by manually turning down 300Hz on my telly just to minimize the anguish from the annoying stupid horns.
Oh how I hate them and everybody blowing them.
Saying it is a tradition is all well and good. But 99% of the more obnoxious things that fans may do are not physically harmful. Fans should be able to have fun yes, but so should ALL the fans at the game. They should not have to worry about having their ears damaged.
Fans sitting behind the end zones of American football will wave things trying to distract kickers of the opposing team. Same thing with fans behind the basketball goal when players are about to shoot a free throw. I may not care that much for it, but I can accept that.
If I watched the games I would turn the sound down. But as I originally mentioned had I been one of those to spent thousands of dollars, euros, etc. to go attend this once in four years event in person, and arrive to discover that the host country has this obnoxious, (and physicaly harmful) "tradition" I would be really ticked off. What a disappoinment it would be. Not a good way to boost your country's tourism IMHO.
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On Norwegian television they started using noise reduction filters to cancel out the noise. I'm curious if this is something they are doing for other countries as well.
They made a classic mistake however. Normally on tv the volume is equalized. That's like making Winamp play all your mp3's at the same volume, despite the actual volume at which they were recorded. The noise reduction filter was in effect BEFORE the equalizer, which means we were hearing this constant sort of a bad-Skype connection kind of digital.. murmer. Rather than reducing the noise it was making whatever was left of it a lot louder than it had to be.
It was worse than the vavuzelas.
[INDENT]'..tolerance when fog rolls in clouds unfold your selfless wings feathers that float from arabesque pillows I sold to be consumed by the snow white cold if only the plaster could hold withstand the flam[url="http://bit.ly/foT0XQ"]e[/url] then this fountain torch would know no shame and be outstripped only by the sun that burns with the glory and honor of your..'[/INDENT]
[QUOTE=Darth Gavinius;1096098]Distrbution of games, is becoming a little like Democracy (all about money and control) - in the end choice is an illusion and you have to choose your lesser evil.
And everything is hidden in the fine print.[/QUOTE]
Loki[D.d.G] wrote:Yup. Most exciting game thus far. Imagine what would have happened had Korea equalized in the second half
Heheh. With the risk of getting chewed out by certain people, I just have to say that Spain-Switzerland was my favourite game so far. Spain was THE attacking force during the entire game, taking it all the way up to the goalie every single time. But the Swiss never let a single one in. All they did was hold on to that single goal they made. I was at the edge of my seat during the entire game.
[INDENT]'..tolerance when fog rolls in clouds unfold your selfless wings feathers that float from arabesque pillows I sold to be consumed by the snow white cold if only the plaster could hold withstand the flam[url="http://bit.ly/foT0XQ"]e[/url] then this fountain torch would know no shame and be outstripped only by the sun that burns with the glory and honor of your..'[/INDENT]
Right now there is one thing mre unpopularf in England right now than the [expletive deleted] horns, it's Wayne "Looney" Rooney. Not only did he play absolutely dreadfully, he then slags off the fans for booing him; what did he expect after that performance, a bunch of roses?
[QUOTE=Darth Gavinius;1096098]Distrbution of games, is becoming a little like Democracy (all about money and control) - in the end choice is an illusion and you have to choose your lesser evil.
And everything is hidden in the fine print.[/QUOTE]
Luckily, the tv company here has already filtered the noise to agreeable level. It's still irritating to hear that monotonius sound, but at least I can hear the commentators and other sounds as well.
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Kipi wrote:Luckily, the tv company here has already filtered the noise to agreeable level. It's still irritating to hear that monotonius sound, but at least I can hear the commentators and other sounds as well.
Same on my side, but damn they're still annoying even after the filtering. Probably would be worse if you happen to be in the stadium watching the match.
''They say truth is the first casualty of war. But who defines what's true? Truth is just a matter of perspective. The duty of every soldier is to protect the innocent, and sometimes that means preserving the lie of good and evil, that war isn't just natural selection played out on a grand scale. The only truth I found is that the world we live in is a giant tinderbox. All it takes...is someone to light the match" - Captain Price
Ah well, to each their own. :laugh:
