…then you might enjoy this: it’s the Solowheel. It’s proclaimed to be a “self-balancing electric unicycle”, but I prefer to think of it more as a “hipster identification device”. It’s the perfect accessory for your tight-jeaned friends that don’t have the luxury of Asian girlfriends or vintage bicycles.

Weighing only 20 pounds and consisting of little more than a simple wheel with a fold-up foot platform on either side, you can easily throw it in your backpack or briefcase once you reach your destination, or carry it by its convenient handle.

That is convenient. Not-so-convenient: the $1,500 price tag. Whatever. You could do double shifts at the coffee house and take the semester off from art school.

–Inventist, via Cool Hunting., via ShareBro Jack.

Programmer/designer/baseball nut Steve Varga has put together one of the most impressive baseball apps you’ll see all year, and it’s called, appropriately enough, Pennant. The interface on this app ($5 on iTunes) is gorgeous, and it’s loaded with more information than you could swing a 34-inch Louisville Slugger at.

As we now find ourselves with access to every live game detail imaginable across a multitude of devices, we must now ask ourselves the question “Where does all of this information go?” Pennant is both an attempt to explore the vast amount of baseball data that has been collected in the last sixty years as well as a study in using interactivity as a means for investigating the extremely large data sets that are becoming increasingly available.

–Vargatron (Steve’s Site), via Wired.

My only grip about this is that all of the data seems to be organized by team, not by player, which might be a dealbreaker for guys looking to get an edge in fantasy games. But the video of the demo is certainly worth your time. Eventually all of us will be watching games and checking box scores and then re-watching games on tablet computers. That’s cool. I can live with anything that doesn’t involve aluminum bats.
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Perhaps the the big Holy Shiitake Mushrooms moment of the sports weekend was free agent point guard Stephon Marbury opening up his own channel, streaming video of himself through a webcam for the better part of last weekend. It has either been the best piece of performance art from a “current” NBA player, or the worst reality show ever. Yes, even worse than TO’s.

Yesterday he was shirtless and screaming at the viewers. At one point my wife was scared at what I was watching on my screen — literally Marbury frightened her with the sound on mute. With it turned up, you realized that after a weekend of doing this his voice was so hoarse you could barely understand his ramblings. Is this the future of celebrity? Please say it’s not. via.

But Starbury TV is already losing steam, as you can see from the video above, he’s kinda tired. And so are we. But there’s something nice about having an NBA player at one’s virtual beck and call. It beats being ignored for autographs or paying to watch him shoot 43 percent from the field.

ASYLUM POLL: Is Marbury Insane?

FINA, which is the world’s governing body of swimming and not a cold, refreshing fruit juice, imposed a ban on the full-body swimsuits that are getting a lot of the credit for the 105 world records in swimming broken in 2008. The suits, whose construction allows for more buoyancy and less drag in water, will be forbidden after Sunday’s world championships.

FINA has banned bodysuits altogether for the men, limiting them to so-called “jammers” that go only from the waist to the top of the knees. Women will be able to wear suits that must stop at the shoulders and the top of the knees.

It’s a stunning change for a sport that took its first drastic turn at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, when Ian Thorpe showed up wearing a daunting black suit that covered everything but his head, feet and hands. via.

I’m not a big fan of imposing limits on technology in general. It’s one thing when race cars are flying around a race track at over 200 miles per hour; it’s quite another to pitch a fit just because you’re sick of re-writing your record book. And then there’s Britain’s Rebecca Addington, who climbed onto her moral high horse just in time to avoid getting punched in the face:

‘These costumes are technological doping,’ she said. ‘Just like I have never used doping to go faster, I will not use these costumes that I think are illegal.’

‘I’m aware that everyone else I’ll be racing against will be in one of these new suits…I know it will be a massive disadvantage and I know that some people will criticise me for that.’
via.

Whatever, kid. Just remember that your opinion only matters once every four years. In the meantime, let’s enjoy Aussie swimmer Stephanie Rice, who decided not to wear a full-body swimsuit, either, but for much more enticing and benevolent reasons. Does this count as caring about swimming? No? Eh, whatever.

This popped up a couple days ago on Youtube, and I can’t decide if it’s genuinely revolutionary or just the latest new piece of shit. This virtual air hockey table is actually a 103-inch plasma television with a touch-sensitive overlay that picks up your finger’s movements. Hence, no paddles necessary. No word on whether it can tell when you’ve hit puberty and suddenly lost interest in playing air hockey. This looks like it would be totally awesome at first, and then five minutes later I’d be all, “So does this TV pick up the Playboy Channel?”