Author Archives: Richard

In Sickness and in Health

This past weekend, while the press was once again ignoring all the many scandals surrounding and – to put it mildly – all the “misstatements” from Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton decided that being at a 9/11 memorial ceremony was worth toughing out a mild case of pneumonia.

She wasn’t able to do so and had to be helped off the scene, leading to yet another round of questions about her health and “fitness” for the Office of President.

In all the hubbub, shouldn’t one be asking why we care about a candidate’s health in the first place?
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MOVIE REVIEW: My Neighbor Totoro (Japan, 1988)

You know, I’m finding it difficult to understand why this animated kids’ movie is so well-liked by both people and critics. It’s got none of the things you expect and love from both animated films and kid movies. It’s billed as a fantasy, but even the non-fantastic elements reveal that it takes place in some crazy Bizarro World.

Let’s take things from the top, shall we?

The movie opens with a really lively and bouncy theme song, so you are deluded into thinking all will be right. But that’s the only song in the movie! There’s no other singing or musical number that they can sell to the kids (or their parents).

It goes downhill quickly from there. We see a father and his two daughters in a dangerously overloaded truck as they move to a new home in a small farming village. If this were a normal movie, the kids would be bickering amongst themselves, and whining to their barely tolerated dad about how they hate leaving all their friends behind and moving to someplace out in the middle of nowhere. But they are actually a happy family! Insane!

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You’ve Forgotten Them Already, Haven’t You

Assuming you knew about them in the first place….

One top medalist from every country that won a medal at the Rio Olympics.

If you won your country’s only medal, you’re in.

If you won your country’s highest medal (gold > silver > bronze), you’re in.

After that, it’s pretty much personal preference. I did try to choose a good variety of sports, and those athletes who won multiple medals.

I tried to be consistent with the captions. It’s not really easy when you’re trying to put this together as quickly as possible so it doesn’t get dated. I hope I at least got everyone’s names right.

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First Time Gold

In a lot of ways, the Olympics is about Firsts. First to cross the finish line, coming in first place in a tournament…. There are also the first times a sport has been played at the Olympics.

Some of the best “firsts” happen in the medal ceremonies, when a nation’s anthem gets played for the first time to mark that nation’s first gold medal. In Rio, this happened nine times. Ten, if you count the “Independent Olympic Athlete” team.
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So, Who Won the Olympics?

So, Who Won the Olympics?

This question pops up every two years at the conclusion of the Games (either Winter or Summer). The simple answer is whichever nation got the most medals. Usually, as was the case this time, it’s the United States. This achievement is crowed by people who seem to believe that success in an international sporting competition somehow validates a nation’s greatness. Or that individual athletic achievement only matters when your name is Michael Phelps or Simone Biles.

Let’s be fair. The United States is one of the most populous nations in the world. We have a truly vast pool of talent to draw on. And our large, vibrant, and robust economy means that when talent does appear, we can offer the best in training, technology, and equipment to help those aspiring athletes reach greatness. Well, at least in the sports we care about….

Gee, if only there were some way to take population size and economic factors into account. I wonder what the Medals Table would look like then… Continue reading →

The Other Problem With the Olympics

It happens every two years. People gripe about the Olympics. Corruption in the International Olympic Committee, doping scandals, and the like. They swear they aren’t going to follow them, and yet they keep an eye on the medal tables and whatever else the media tells them to pay attention to.

In and among their litany of complaints, they might mention how the Games have gotten too expensive for a city to host. The displacement of people, the disruption of everyday life for the residents, the oppressive security measures, the wasteful expenditures on facilities that will never turn a profit (as if making money was the only reason to host the Games).

They have a point. The Games have gotten rather expensive. But it’s not just inflation, or hosts trying to “one up” the previous games.

It’s that the Olympics have gotten too big.
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The Olympic Team to Root For

One of the more notable athletes competing in the 2012 Olympics in London was Guor Marial, a marathoner from South Sudan. A refugee from Sudan’s civil war, he managed to make his way to the US. In high school he started competing in track, and made All-American in college. Noting that his time in the marathon was good enough to qualify for the Olympics, friends and coaches encouraged him to apply.

There was a problem, though. He wasn’t a US citizen and couldn’t be on the US team. He wanted to represent the new country of South Sudan (where he was born), but that country hadn’t yet met the International Olympic Committee’s requirements to field a team. The IOC suggested that he run for Sudan. Marial’s response was pretty much along the lines of “The Sudanese Army killed almost all of my family and forced me to flee the country. Do you honestly think I’m going to compete under the same flag?”

The IOC found a loophole. They allow for “stateless” athletes to compete under the Olympic flag. Wearing a generic black and gray track suit, and being given the three-letter country code of “IOA” (Independent Olympic Athlete), he ran in the marathon, finishing with a respectable middle-of-the-pack time of 2:19:32.

Since then, the refugee situation has gotten worse. Millions of people are being displaced by civil wars and strife all across the globe. Mindful of this, the IOC wondered if any potential athletes were sheltering in refugee camps or otherwise counted as “displaced” people.

They found quite a few….
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Thoughts on the Democratic Convention

Well, the DNC wrapped up their party. As with the RNC’s version, I didn’t follow it closely. But I still have some observations….

I’m not sure that people were expecting Sen. Al Franken to go with comedy in his speech. There was little laughter from the audience. Perhaps it was just that his delivery seemed to be off. Must be out of practice. There was a lot of humor in other speeches. Have to love Michael Jordan’s – er, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s jab at Trump.

Nice touch having speakers from all the groups – minorities, immigrants, disabled – that Trump has insulted all during the campaign.

Okay – Bernie Sanders and his supporters. I’ve got no problems with Sanders. He ran a good campaign, and can be proud that he had such an influence on Clinton and the Democrat’s platform. But his supporters need to face reality. They got practically everything they wanted, except for their guy as the nominee. I heard only one commentator mention that the DNC isn’t a “democracy”. As a private organization, they can set the rules however they want, and arrange things to favor one candidate over another. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.

One other point that deserves mentioning. Clinton has been a Democrat for decades. Sanders joined the party a mere three months before the New Hampshire primary. Sounds to me like he joined up at the last possible minute, just so he could take advantage of the party machinery in his try for the White House.

Corey Booker’s speech was all over the place, but what a barn-burner! The passion was obvious.

True, Clinton isn’t that great a public speaker. She doesn’t have much in the way of charisma. But would you rather have someone all style and no substance, or no style but a lot of substance?

Not only did the Democrats have better celebrities, they had better balloons, too….

Thoughts on the Republican Convention

I was away for a while last week (and early this week), so I haven’t been able to closely follow the goings-on at the political conventions. But I have seen enough to have some thoughts and comments.

First, RepubliCon 2016:

I have to give Ted Cruz some credit for having at least a bit of honor. Whatever you think of his political views, not coming out in full support of Trump was a daring move. But since Trump insulted Cruz’s wife and slandered his father, did you honestly expect him to do otherwise?

I caught the last half of Trump’s acceptance speech. Yes, it was scary and “dark” in tone, but it wasn’t anything we hadn’t been hearing all along from him. It was basically the “cask strength” version of his views.

Donald Trump’s default expression seems to be one of self-satisfied smugness. Head tilted slightly back, with something like a cross between an inverted smile and a dismissive scowl. Most of the rare times he smiled, it was fake.

And, um, was it really a good idea to have as the closing song for the entire convention – the one bit of music you want to wrap up and summarize the entire mood of the convention – “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”?