In a live broadcast Christer Fuglesang set the new MTA record by keeping a disc in the air for 20 seconds, claiming the new MTA world record.
Fuglesang’s first attempt, was a dud. As fellow astronaut Thomas Reiter, a German pilot, counted down – “Three, two, one, go!” – Fuglesang released his white Frisbee. The two floated together for a bit, but then the Frisbee went askew and Fuglesang caught it, laughing, after a few seconds.
Then Fuglesang tried again. “Ten seconds,” Reiter reported, checking his watch. “15.” As he announced, “20 seconds,” Fuglesang grinned broadly, let out a triumphant “Aaaah!” and grabbed the disc.
Perhaps a political move as he could have waited longer, but nevertheless very cool!

(artist’s impression of a disc in space, but watch this space: when the video on YouTube comes out we will add it here)
UPDATE:If you have a decent connection, you can watch the footage at http://www.tv4.se/nyheter/fuglesang/512491.html. Scroll down about 25% of the page until you see a big headline that says “Hoppas vi får ett besök på slottet”, right underneath you can click on the link “Se Fuglesang sla varldsrekord med frisbee”
UPDATE 2: Link to WFDF press release

Discovery’s seven astronauts are among the most culturally diverse of any space shuttle crew. There are two African-Americans, an astronaut of Indian descent, the soon-to-be first Swede in space, a British-born mission specialist, an Alaskan and a Jersey Boy.
The Swede, Christer Fuglesang, is a former national Frisbee champion and plans to bring a Frisbee up to space. During a live satellite link-up with children on Earth, he’ll try to set the record for maximum time aloft! (more…)
Link to ABC’s story: How long will a Frisbee fly in space?
UPDATE:

Discovery took off early Sunday morning, and now the time schedule is official: Friday December 15 GMT 19:07. That’s when the first ever officially sanctioned sports event will happen in space ! ESA (European Space Agency) have been granted official sanctioning from WFDF and the Swedish Frisbeesport Federation for an MTA (Maximum Time Aloft) competition.

“One University of Washington psychiatry professor has identified a strange correlation — schools with top-ranked ultimate Frisbee teams also have higher graduation rates. Michael J. Norden analyzed the Ultimate Players Association’s performance ratings for men and women’s teams and discovered both public and private schools with top-ranked ultimate teams have higher graduation rates than schools with lower-ranked teams.” Read more
Hmmmm…. I don’t know, but this sounds like questionable use of statistics…

No, this is not advertising for the Beach Ultimate Lovers Association, but funny nevertheless:

Link to more on the story and some video

We were shocked to find out that Thyl ‘Kuki’ Luyckx died on the night of 14-15th of October. Thyl was a big part of (Beach) Ultimate in Europe. He helped organize, and was a passenger on, the Magic Bus that went from the World Championships Grass Ultimate in Finland to the World Championships Beach Ultimate in Portugal in 2004. There he played for the German Master’s team and was a big help to the organizers. He visited many other Beach Ultimate tournaments and was always fun to have around. His death is a loss to us all and we wish his family and friends strength in coping with his loss.

(Thyl is the one to the left of the baby in pink)

This is wild! A 1969 Cheerios commercial with a focus on Frisbees

It ain’t easy, picking out evil-doers in the urban canyons of the Middle East; there are so many places to hide. Taking ’em out can be even harder, what with all those noncombatants hanging nearby. But the Air Force thinks it might have an answer to this most vexing problem in counter insurgency: FRISBEES. (More…)

Not at funky as the South African commercial, or as well known as Nike commercial, or highly promoted as the Lipton Frisbee Golf promotion in Holland, but this commercial from the Czech Republic again shows that Frisbee is becoming something that can help sell products.

(and at least it does not misrepresent Ultimate like the Michelob commercial)

All the way from South Africa, a very cool video ad where Frisbee Fever takes over the city. Link

Old-timers among you may recall the original “Ultimap Locator” hosted at the University of Rochester. This allowed you register yourself (or your team or your favorite playing field or whatever) using a then-state-of-the-art clickable graphic map. You could then search for people by name or by map–great for finding a pickup game on the road (or finding the guy whole stole your cleats at Worlds). Well, sometime in 2002 the scripts that ran the system broke and there was never time to fix them. Now that has changed and someone created the new and improved Ultimap at its own URL: http://www.ultimap.org
It uses Google Maps for the mapping, so the results may actually be geographically meaningful. There are RSS and Google Earth feeds available (see the FAQ).
Anybody wants to start beachultimap.org? BULA will pay for the domain name and hosting…