2016 Olympics Dump

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I don't know if anyone's following, but here's a place to talk about it.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

The first gold medal of the 2016 Olympics *would* go to a white American for shooting. Of course.

[Dalty]

Did they shoot a black person? That would be really American!

[Space Tycoon]

And Brazilian, too, kinda.

[neglet]

The first gold medal of the 2016 Olympics *would* go to a white American for shooting. Of course.

But at least it was a lady.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

A Facebook friend asked, recently, "What's the best criticism of the Olympics currently out there?" Here's what I said in response:

If you're asking for a piece of peer-reviewed literature, I'm sure there are plenty of things out there. You're probably in a better position than I am, resource-wise, to find some decent stuff. If, on the other hand, you're also asking Facebook friends for their personal criticisms of the Olympics, I'm willing to contribute.

The total medal count, when arranged by "Combined Total," may invite some criticism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-time_ ... edal_table

There's something wrong with a series of games that rewards one country as often as the Olympics rewards the US. I don't mean to suggest that cheating or bias is the issue. The athletes who have earned medals for the US have been, for the most part, exemplary athletes who have poured their hearts and minds into their wins. (Many of them have also utterly destroyed their bodies, of course. Therein lies another potential criticism.)

If I mean to suggest anything, it's that I have the same problem with the US's Olympics dominance that I have with the University of Alabama's football program or the New York Yankees winning championships as often as they have won championships. In both cases, any victory celebration is tarnished by the apparent reality that a body can be a near-perpetual champion with the right combination of money, resources, and privileges--and to what end, where the Olympics is concerned? I don't see the US fostering international relationships as much as I see the US engaging in an unhealthy preoccupation with gaming and competitiveness, and I see the Olympics as being complicit in this.

(Here I need to step aside to say that I recognize I'm doing a broader criticism of the Olympics no favors by focusing so heavily on the US. I realize that the Olympics isn't just about the US, just as I realize that the US isn't the world. Still, my problems with the Olympics are mostly with the US's place in it. The Olympics isn't some malevolent monolith. Many countries have benefited both financially and emotionally from being a part of the Olympics.)

US sporting attitudes, in general, can be pretty unhealthy. Many in the US have charged other countries with being oppressive on a national level and with building athletes from the ground up. I heard plenty of talk of indoctrination and nationalism and inhumane training extremes and threats of punishment in cases of failure when I was growing up. This talk was generally directed at Russia. Was there truth to it? To this day, I'm uncertain, but it was such a heavy rhetorical focus of those around me (and of the media informing their opinions) that I felt it reflected poorly on the average US American's attitude toward sports. There's an arrogance to the idea that the US's major competition could only maintain its competitiveness by turning its athletes into over-trained, brainwashed robots. It's a potentially undue vilification, and the willingness of so many US Americans to buy into it is disheartening.

(It's probably obvious by now that most of what I have to say on the topic makes use of anecdotal evidence and my personal interpretation of it. I'm too detached from the Olympics to feel any desire to engage in any serious research. I apologize for this and accept anyone's decision to dismiss out of hand anything I say.)

I see an oppressiveness where the US is concerned. Where another country may have (allegedly) used an oppressive state to squeeze results out of its people, the US often--as I see it, at least--gets families and parents to do a lot of its dirty work for it. In the Deep South, it was common to see oppressive parents pushing their children into sports against their children's wishes. (I was one of these children. I was lucky enough to have a grandfather for a coach.) The parents were driven to act as they acted by what I saw as an oppressive culture. There's an idea in both Rural America and Inner City America that someone who wishes for success despite being academically disinclined has no recourse but to achieve this success through athletics.

To some degree, our country has made this idea more than an idea. If an inner city kid wants to be able to afford all the mod cons that signify success, s/he will probably come to find that s/he has greater access to the tools required to build a successful athlete than s/he has to a decent education. It's not necessarily the case that education is verbally discouraged (that is, it's not as though the people in the kid's life are constantly saying, "An education will get you nowhere!"), but it is often the case that it is discouraged by a shear lack of resources and decent instruction. (In the case of some Bible Belt families, on the other hand, education outside of the small collection of texts deemed acceptable by the more prominent pockets of Protestantism is actively and angrily discouraged. Looking in from the outside, this seems a clear act of self-preservation and self-perpetuation. I'm sure many on the inside looking out would not see it this way.)

I have the same problem with people celebrating their countries' victories that I have with sports fans celebrating their team's victories. It goes beyond its being a glorification of the achievements of others. It becomes a way for people to recast those achievements as achievements of their own. This is already weird enough, but it becomes weirder when those achievements are achievements that arguably owe money and privilege some part of their due.

It probably wasn't worth writing, and it's probably not worth sharing here, but I created this thread for Olympics talk, and the above talks Olympics. It oversimplifies the shit out of shit and ignores other shit, but hey. Little of what I write really goes into any depth or tries to discuss things that haven't already been discussed to death.

[Dalty]

3 golds and 2 silvers in a few hours for GB. Mrs Dalty is loving this as it puts us above China - and being Viet she hates China.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Too bad she didn't pair up with an American.

[Dalty]

Nobody really cares about where the Americans come anymore as it's predictable, zero excitement.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Naturally. I done said.

If she wants to stick it to China, though, the US appears to be the way to go. Granted, it means as little when the US wins an event as it means when a rich parent's kid skates his way to a Harvard degree.

[neglet]

Except maybe the African American swimmer winning an individual gold. That kind of symbolic win is still a big deal.

[Dalty]

Naturally. I done said.

If she wants to stick it to China, though, the US appears to be the way to go. Granted, it means as little when the US wins an event as it means when a rich parent's kid skates his way to a Harvard degree.

I think considering the US sends more athletes to the games than any nation (nearly 100 more than the host nation this time round) and has a sports development apparatus funded so richly it would be interesting, and not a positive outcome, to look at a per capita and per $$ view of medals won over time. I imagine it would show a pretty poor return.

I would guess Australia and Finland would come out of that metric quite a long way ahead of the US?

Has anyone ever done that maths?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I'm on your side, if it isn't already abundantly obvious. My suggestion that Dalty, Jr.'s mother should have paired up with an American was meant to be seen as sarcasm, and it was meant to be seen as my continuing to be critical of the US's Olympics presence.

I'm sure there's all sorts of stuff. You should dig around for some of it and post it here, Steve Jobs's ghost be damned.

I wrote another 900+ words following the above 900+ where I continued to bitch about the US presence in the Olympics. I didn't subject you to it because I love you, and because I'd already subjected you to so much.

The US presence in the Olympics is generally shameful. It only has any real use or currency when, like neglet suggested, it results in women or minorities gaining some positive exposure and entering themselves into the US's cultural lexicon. Even that can be iffy, though, depending on how stuff gets talked about. And it should be noted that, while a US woman's win or a US minority's win can be a positive thing within the US, it might not be a positive thing for the rest of the world. A win for the US is still yet another win for the US.

[Dalty]

It was obvious, and I like reading!!

[Adam54]

Has anyone ever done that maths?

Negs, can I request an English to American grammar ruling here? Should this be "those maths" or is Dalty correct in his adorably British usage of "that maths"?

[Mal Shot First]

Naturally. I done said.

If she wants to stick it to China, though, the US appears to be the way to go. Granted, it means as little when the US wins an event as it means when a rich parent's kid skates his way to a Harvard degree.

I think considering the US sends more athletes to the games than any nation (nearly 100 more than the host nation this time round) and has a sports development apparatus funded so richly it would be interesting, and not a positive outcome, to look at a per capita and per $$ view of medals won over time. I imagine it would show a pretty poor return.

I would guess Australia and Finland would come out of that metric quite a long way ahead of the US?

Has anyone ever done that maths?

Observe:
http://www.medalspercapita.com/#medals- ... a:all-time

Yugoslavia is ahead of the U.S. in the all-time per capita medal count.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

You go, Slavia!

[Adam54]

I refuse to even dignify that with a

[Dalty]

Has anyone ever done that maths?

Negs, can I request an English to American grammar ruling here? Should this be "those maths" or is Dalty correct in his adorably British usage of "that maths"?

It is not "Mathematic"

There is more than one type. It is "Mathematics". Plural.

Therefore "Math" is wrong.

[Dalty]

I refuse to even dignify that with a

You just did!

[Mal Shot First]

Has anyone ever done that maths?

Negs, can I request an English to American grammar ruling here? Should this be "those maths" or is Dalty correct in his adorably British usage of "that maths"?

It is not "Mathematic"

There is more than one type. It is "Mathematics". Plural.

Therefore "Math" is wrong.

His point was that you should use a plural pronoun if you claim that there is more than one type of mathematics. Therefore, "those maths" would have been correct, rather than "that maths."

If you're going to be doing it wrong, then at least do it wrong consistently.

Edit: By the way, as far as I know, American English also uses "mathematics" as the term from which the abbreviation "math" was derived. Like "politics," "mathematics" is treated as a noun in the singular - the S at the end makes it confusing because an S at the end of a noun usually signifies the plural.

In any case, I assume that Americans, being the lazy sort they are, at some point dropped the S in "maths" because it's just cumbersome to pronounce an S-sound following a TH-sound. Imagine how Germans must struggle with it!

[Adam54]

I refuse to even dignify that with a

You just did!

You smelled what I was cookin'! Consider my calendar marked appropriately.

[Mal Shot First]

Has anyone ever done that maths?

Negs, can I request an English to American grammar ruling here? Should this be "those maths" or is Dalty correct in his adorably British usage of "that maths"?

[Dalty]

[neglet]

Has anyone ever done that maths?

Negs, can I request an English to American grammar ruling here? Should this be "those maths" or is Dalty correct in his adorably British usage of "that maths"?

You cannot get the British to give up their maths or their plural verb conjugations with team subjects ("England score! England win!") or my personal peeve, "orientated." (You don't need that extra syllable, dammit, you sound like you're making it up!)