The World Championship of Golden Tee is held in Orlando:

Steve estimated he's made more than a quarter of a million dollars playing the game over the course of his Golden Tee career. Every year, through the Incredible Technologies website (which keeps stats for all its registered players), Steve prints out his stats and earnings and then sends that print-out to the IRS. That way, he's able to declare the money he puts into Golden Tee as a tax write-off.

And Steve doesn't let injuries hinder his game. Many players suffer cuts on their hands from how violently they swing forward on the game console's trackball to get power on their shots. Players have even broken hands playing Golden Tee.

"I'm usually the one bleeding," Steve said. "But I just say, 'Patch me up so I can keep playing!' I even learned to play left-handed. Nothing's gonna stop me. I'll take the pain, if that's what it takes to win."

EA Sports strikes a deal with Nike and other shoe manufacturers to have the authentic shoes worn by players appear on their virtual counterparts:

Not only does the game boast a store, where gamers can use points they rack up to purchase a host of items including shoes the Nike Shox Supremacy, the Air Max and, of course the most expensive, the first Air Jordan, but Nike and EA plan to release 50 cheat codes throughout the year to allow players to unlock old retro favorites or shoes that are hitting the market.

"When making the games, we not only look at the rulebook to make sure we have everything right, but seek to touch on relevant cultural hot points," Chin said. "And shoes definitely fall into that category."

So far, three codes have been released — for the Nike Shox BB4's (the shoe Carter was wearing when he dunked over poor Frederick Weis in the 2000 Olympics), the famous Air Jordan III's (the first Jordan's featuring the now very recognizable Jumpman logo) and the LeBron James' Air Zoom Generations, which became unlockable on the night James plays his first game on Oct. 29.

EA Games releases the Quidditch World Cup, featuring the fantasy Harry Potter and friends with real-life nationalism:

Starting with any one of the four Hogwarts house teams — including Harry Potter's Gryffindor — players learn Quidditch basics with five original challenges and the Hogwarts House Cup competition. Once completed, players can enter the Quidditch World Cup, choosing from a range of international teams including the USA, England, France, Germany, the Nordic Team, Japan, Spain, Australia, and Bulgaria - featuring Viktor Krum. Each national team sports its own Quidditch gear, has a unique stadium environment, and different strengths that lend depth and strategy, especially when two gamers face off in two-player competition for the first time ever in a Harry Potter video game.

smithers:

[Aside] I am posting from the Ontario Science Centre, just because I can.

(Note: the Sports section sucked…)

[Exit]

[T]his stage of serial reproduction (that of the industrial mechanism, of the factory belt, of expanded reproduction) is ephemeral. As soon as dead work wins out over living work — that is, as soon as the era of primitive accumulation is over — serial production yields to generation by means of models. And here it is a question of a reversal of origin and finality, for all the forms change once they are not so much mechanically reproduced but even conceived from the point-of-view of their very reproductibility, diffracted from a generating nucleus we call the model. (Baudrillard, Simulations, p.100).

Practically and historically, this signified the substitution of social control by the end (and by a more or less dialectical providence which surveys the accomplishment of this end) for social control by anticipation, simulation and programming, and indeterminate mutation directed by the code. Instead of a process which is finalized according to its ideal development, we generalize from a model. Instead of a right to a prophecy, we have the right of registration. There is no really radical difference between the two, only the schemes of control have become fantastically perfected. From a capitalist-productivist society to a neo-capitalist cybernetic order that aims now at total control. This is the mutation for which the biological theorization of the code prepares the ground. There is nothing of an accident in this mutation. It is the end of a history in which, successively, God, Man, Progress, and History itself die to profit the code, in which transcendence dies to profit immanence, the latter corresponding to a much more advanced phase in the vertiginous manipulation of social rapports (Baudrillard, Simulations, p.111).