Greetings on the cruelest day: Tuesday, July 27, 2021: National Scotch Day (as always, I’ll have a Springbank). It’s also National Crème Brûlée Day, National Chicken Finger Day, National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day (see below under 1953),and Bagpipe Appreciation Day. And in North Korea, it’s a national holiday, the Day of Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War.
Posting will be very light today as I have two zoom calls, one about Antarctica.
News of the Day:
It’s now 188 days until the Bidens moved into the White House, and there still is no First Cat. Just sayin’
Predictable News: The Senate is still squabbling about Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan, and it’s hit a pretty big speed bump:
Lawmakers must still sort through lingering disputes over how to spend billions of dollars to upgrade the country’s railways, for example, along with thorny policy issues around broadband spending — including efforts by Democrats to ensure Internet access is affordable.
Both sides also have failed to come to terms on the formula for doling out money to improve the nation’s highways, as well as the exact funding available for water improvements. And lawmakers remain at odds over provisions sought by Democrats that aim to ensure any federal spending to improve infrastructure will pay workers prevailing wages to do the job.
I have no idea whether this bill will pass, but if something isn’t done, the country will fall to pieces. At least there’s a hint of bipartisanship going on. Will the bill need 60 votes to prevent the dreaded Filibuster?
The final victim in the Florida condo collapse has been identified: Estelle Hadaya, who died at 54. That, at least, leaves no families with relatives still missing. The search continued for a long time, but only one person was found in the rubble. Final death toll: 98, including Ilan Naibryf, a third-year physics student at the University of Chicago set to graduate next year.
Reader Woody called my attention to a yahoo! news piece reporting that Facebook, trying to repair its image among Americans disillusioned with the site, is now partnering with churches, helping them develop attractive online platforms. It’s also a way to increase Zuckerberg’s bottom line, by sucking the goddies onto Facebook:
Facebook, which recently passed $1 trillion in market capitalization, may seem like an unusual partner for a church whose primary goal is to share the message of Jesus. But the company has been cultivating partnerships with a wide range of faith communities over the past few years, from individual congregations to large denominations, like the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ.
But what about the “nones”, Zuk? Aren’t you one of us?
The first openly transgender athlete has competed at the Olympics: their name is simply Quinn (Quinn uses the they/them pronouns), and they played for the Canadian women’s soccer team last Wednesday, in a game that was a 1-1 draw with Japan. From the AP report:
Quinn, who plays professionally for OL Reign in the National Women’s Soccer League, is not the only transgender athlete participating in the Tokyo Games. Probably the most visible is Laurel Hubbard, a transgender woman competing in weightlifting for New Zealand. Chelsea Wolfe, a transgender cyclist, is a reserve on the U.S. women’s BMX Freestyle team.
There was the possibility for several more elite transgender athletes to compete in Tokyo. Nikki Hiltz did not qualify in the women’s 1,500 meters at the U.S. track and field trials, while CeCe Telfer was declared ineligible in her bid to run in the 400-meter hurdles. Volleyball player Tiffany Abreu did not make Brazil’s final Olympic roster.
The International Olympic Committee has allowed transgender athletes to participate at the Olympics since 2004, but until this year, none had done so openly. In addition to Quinn, Hubbard and Wolfe, some transgender athletes are competing without discussing their transition. Some have been outed and harassed online by people who oppose transgender athletes competing.
Speaking of the Olympics, the winner of the women’s “street skateboarding event” was only 13 years old! Japanese athlete Momji Nishiya got the gold, and the total ages of the three medalists was only 42. But who could be younger than 13? Well, someone 85 years ago was:
Marjorie Gestring, [an American] diver who won gold at age 13 years and 268 days at the 1936 Berlin Games, is the youngest gold medalist in history, according to The New York Times. Nishiya, approaching her 14th birthday, is a bit older than Gestring was.
Here’s a 5-minute video of the skateboarding event, which I’m dubious about. There is another skateboarding competition besides this one: “Park Skateboarding”.
And here’s Gestring diving at the 1936 Olympics:
Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 610,722, an increase of 275 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 4,184,307, an increase of about 8,100 over yesterday’s total.
Stuff that happened on July 27 includes:
- 1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre is arrested after encouraging the execution of more than 17,000 “enemies of the Revolution”.
- 1866 – The first permanent transatlantic telegraph cable is successfully completed, stretching from Valentia Island, Ireland, to Heart’s Content, Newfoundland.
- 1890 – Vincent van Gogh shoots himself and dies two days later.
This is the only known authentic photo of Vincent van Gogh, taken in 1873. If you see any others, they’re either fakes or photos of his brother Theo. Also, note that a recent theory about van Gogh’s death involves him being shot by a kid rather than him trying to kill himself.
- 1919 – The Chicago Race Riot erupts after a racial incident occurred on a South Side beach, leading to 38 fatalities and 537 injuries over a five-day period.
The riot started when a raft containing black kids accidentally drifted into a “whites-only” area of the 29th Street Beach. Whites pelted one black swimmer and killed him. The rest is history. Here’s part of a series of photos of the riot; this one shows a black man being pelted with stones. He died.
- 1921 – Researchers at the University of Toronto, led by biochemist Frederick Banting, prove that the hormone insulin regulates blood sugar.
It was only two years before Banting and John Macleod won the Nobel Prize for this achievement. At 32, Banting remains the youngest Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine. He split the prize money with his colleague Charles Best. Banting is at the right in this 1924 photo:
- 1940 – The animated short A Wild Hare is released, introducing the character of Bugs Bunny.
Here’s part of that cartoon. Bugs appears at 2:21:
- 1949 – Initial flight of the de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner.
They mean the first jet-powered commercial airliner. Here’s one, the model 4B:
- 1953 – Cessation of hostilities is achieved in the Korean War when the United States, China, and North Korea sign an armistice agreement. Syngman Rhee, President of South Korea, refuses to sign but pledges to observe the armistice.
- 1974 – Watergate scandal: The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee votes 27 to 11 to recommend the first article of impeachment (for obstruction of justice) against President Richard Nixon.
- 1996 – In Atlanta, United States, a pipe bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Remember when Richard Jewell, who found the bomb, was accused of planting it? (It killed one person and injured 111.) The real perpetrator was one Eric Rudolph (photo below), who’s spending the rest of his life in America’s most secure (and most horrible) prison, the ADX Supermax in Florence, Colorado:
- 2016 – At a news conference, U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump expresses the hope that Russians can recover thirty thousand emails that were deleted from Hillary Clinton’s personal server.
Notables born on this day include:
- 1667 – Johann Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician and academic (d. 1748)
- 1768 – Charlotte Corday, French assassin of Jean-Paul Marat (d. 1793)
- 1870 – Hilaire Belloc, French-born British writer and historian (d. 1953)
- 1905 – Leo Durocher, American baseball player and manager (d. 1991)
- 1922 – Norman Lear, American screenwriter and producer
Lear’s still with us at 99!
- 1939 – William Eggleston, American photographer and academic
Eggleston is known for his color landscape photos. Here’s one:
- 1948 – Peggy Fleming, American figure skater and sportscaster
- 1949 – Timothy Groves, retired schoolteacher and principal, active fud, and friend of your host since 1967
- 1975 – Alex Rodriguez, American baseball player
Those who took the Dirt Nap on July 27 include:
- 1946 – Gertrude Stein, American novelist, poet, and playwright (b. 1874)
Here’s Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas in 1934. I still don’t understand why authors like Hemingway admired her so much; in my view, she was a dreadful writer.
- 1984 – James Mason, English actor (b. 1909)
- 2003 – Bob Hope, English-American actor, comedian, television personality, and businessman (b. 1903)
- 2017 – Sam Shepard, American playwright, actor, author, screenwriter, and director (b.1943)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn: Szaron is busy in the orchard, but nobody knows why he has to count apples.
Hili: Where are you going?Szaron: I have to count apples on the ground.
Hili: Gdzie idziesz?Szaron: Muszę policzyć jabłka na trawniku.
An Olympics meme from Bruce:
From Divy:
Another superfluous sign from reader David:
As you know, physicist Steven Weinberg died on Sunday. Here’s his advice for young scientists, from a 2003 issue of Nature. (h/t: Scott Aaronson)
Steven Weinberg, one of the most preeminent physicists in history, passed away.
Here's his four lessons, published in Nature back to 2003:
☑️ No one knows everything, and you don't have to
☑️ Aim for rough water
☑️ Forgive yourself for wasting time
☑️ learn history of science pic.twitter.com/2AHICdsnqq— Dashun Wang (@dashunwang) July 25, 2021
From the Internet. Hizzoner realized that he screwed up. However, “whole wheat” is not much of an improvement over “toasted”.
Mayor de Blasio deleted a tweet in which he described his favorite bagel as "toasted" #bagelgate 🔥🥯 pic.twitter.com/QfbFMOxXRU
— Anna Sanders (@AnnaESanders) January 15, 2020
From Ken, who says, “Our 45th president, who plainly knows more about computer tech than anyone, is entranced by a new word he’s encountered: ‘routers.'”
This guy is either lying or severely impaired
— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) July 25, 2021
Tweets from Matthew. How does this beetle walk upside down below the surface of the water? Well, nobody really knows, but people have theories. . . Read the link.
¿ʎɥʍ puɐ ¿ʎɐʍ sᴉɥʇ ʞʅɐʍ ʇᴉ sǝop ʍoɥ https://t.co/p9m1l5KBN2
— NYT Science (@NYTScience) July 26, 2021
Matthew wants me to ask the readers this question about next year. So answer and then see how people are voting:
2022:
— Oded Rechavi 🦉 (@OdedRechavi) July 26, 2021
This is quite frightening. Matthew says to be sure to watch to the end. For more on this story, go here. The landslide killed nine people and injured three.
(Translation of tweet: “Terrifying video footage of a landslide in Sangla, in the Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh, shows large chunks of rock breaking off a mountaintop and rolling down into the valley below.”
Le terrificanti riprese video di una frana a Sangla, nel distretto di Kinnaur nell'Himachal Pradesh, mostrano grandi pezzi di roccia che si staccano dalla cima di una montagna e rotolano giù nella valle sottostante. pic.twitter.com/0xWSrGEEz8
— Antonio (@blusewillis1) July 25, 2021
A transparent gut:
This slug oak sawfly grub (Caliroa sp.) is so translucent it gives us a full view of how it turns a leaf into poop. pic.twitter.com/l5zkISP4xv
— Dr. Alex Wild (@Myrmecos) July 25, 2021
. . . and this termite has really weird antennae:
タイの好白蟻性のゴミダマ、Mimoxenotermes属かな。
とにかく触角の形がすごい。 pic.twitter.com/CeuoKwkQVY— わらび餅 (@warabimochi_ic) July 26, 2021
“Posting will be very light today as I have two zoom calls, one about Antarctica” – sounds exciting!
Minor taxonomic correction: the insect with the spectacular antennae isn’t a termite, it’s a tenebrionid beetle that lives inside termite nests.
Hey, Mister Deejay, do we have a tune we can dedicate to them?
Sure do. How ’bout Ms. Osborne covering Dylan?
My missus and I are season ticket holders at Harlequins Rugby Football Club, known as the Quins.The club song is The Mighty Quinn. The crowd is often exhorted to sing it when the lads are in desperate need of an uplift. (Shock revelation: it doesn’t always work)
Everyone knows you use a pencil to fix a tape, don’t they? The large speed bump the Senate hit was Donald Trump calling yesterday for them to not do it. Republicans take their orders from the idiot.
Everyone over a certain age. My kid probably wouldn’t even know what it is.
What what is? A tape or a pencil?
A cassette – although in the wake of the “vinyl revival” cassettes are making a rather improbable comeback, too! https://thevinylfactory.com/news/uk-cassette-sales-grew-90-percent-first-half-2018/
We only used pencils for ‘cassettes’, not for the ‘ordinary’ tape on those big spools. Pencils fitted perfectly in those cassette holes.
It turns out that the very youngest ever Olympic winner was the cox for the winning Dutch team in the 1900 coxed pairs rowing event. He was between 7 and ten years old, but his name isn’t known. (He was grabbed from the crowd by the Dutch rowers to replace their adult cox after they were beaten in an earlier heat by a French team using a child in that role, giving them a lighter weight advantage.)
You can read the strange story (and those of other young Olympic winners) here: https://www.grunge.com/149086/the-youngest-gold-medalists-at-the-olympic-games/
Just watched the QI episode where that came up last night!
I think the most famous young winner of Olympic gold was Nadia Comăneci from Roumania. At 14 years of age she got the first ever perfect 10 on the uneven bars in the 1976 Montreal Olympics. She added six more perfect 10’s.
In that context we may think of ‘ogling’. Nicu Caeusescu Jr (the son of dictator Nicolai) ‘ogled’ her and kept her as his personal sex-slave for years. I think that her overcoming that ordeal, and becoming a friendly, forgiving and balanced person is an even greater (or at least as great) achievement than her perfect tens.
I hadn’t known that about poor Nadia. Lovely family, the Ceasescus. Right down there with the Trumps.
I knew she had been abused, but the Ceaușescu connection is a new one on me.
Whoops, left out a “u” in Ceausesçu. Nasty folk!
Ah. Banting and Best in three-piece suits, starched collars and ties, phi beta kappa keys on display. Those were the days. No Hawaiian shirts, shorts, or flip-flops. When and how did we decide to be comfortable?
The Banting diet (without sugar or starches) is now -over the last 2 years- considered the Best (no pun) diet for Diabetes type 2 . Apparently sugars and starches are poison to to those predisposed to diabetes type 2 .The whole understanding of DM2 is shifting.
Well, diabetics are certainly much more comfortable today, due to Banting&Best’s work—excluding of course the dead ones, dead from that condition in days prior to 1920.
Best having been robbed, by the Nobel committee and science politics of the day, is one example of a reason not to be too impressed with intellectual contests. But it is likely true that competitions do produce a small amount of motivation, however vain.
I think Steven Weinberg (a different science of course) was and is the exception rather than the rule, in not putting his name on his students’ papers. Doing so, though not much in straight pure mathematics, seems still to be very common. But getting a Nobel like McLeod, for essentially being the person running the lab, is beyond the pale.
One can only hope to become as adorable an old man as Norman Lear has become, well, assuming you aren’t a woman.
I don’t have a twitter account, but I would vote that next year will be worse. Twenty twenty-three will be better, though. And if not, you can say good-night to England, home, and beauty. Err…I mean America.
I have no Twitter account either, but I noticed the choice was between ‘better’ and ‘worst’, no ‘worse’.
I don’t think 22 will be the worst ever, but maybe just worse.
I was going to comment on the “worst”, as well.
Speaking of”worst”, I may have mentioned this family in-joke before. When my parents lived in Nigeria, their gardener, who was illiterate, accidentally dropped some kind of tool on a glass-topped table. He went to a scribe who wrote him a note for my parents in very Shakespearean English. He described the incident in great detail, “the part affected”, etc., and including s “Ho! The worst!”, and “i will be around if needed.” Poor guy. My parents were very touched by his note and made it clear to the gardener that they knew it had been an accident.
Are there any airliners that are not commercial? Maybe a troop transport aircraft would count, but certainly none had been jets by the time the Comet came out. Someone had to discover the metal fatigue caused by repeated pressurization (and unluckily focused by the square corner of a window), but what a shame it was DeHavilland.
If you recall, the whole top of a 737 came off over in Hawaii several years ago. Caused by the same reason, metal fatigue and corrosion.
A Nimrod (military version of the Comet) had some horrible fatigue-cracks in it’s re-fulling interior plumbing when flying to or from Afghanistan about 2005. It was one of the events that led to the Nimrod being retired from service shortly afterwards.
Obviously, being a Crown entity, the military couldn’t be sued or held to account for killing any of their staff, which is why they were still using the Nimrods.
Yes. But they knew about metal fatigue then. De Havilland had to learn about it the hard way as pioneers (as they learned other hard lessons with the DH108 midair disintegration which killed Geoffrey DeHavilland and the DH110 disaster at Farnborough). One of the great aviation leaders of the 20th century.
This was a case where being first to market was a disaster. According to the Wikipedia article, people from “American manufacturers” told John Cunningham (De Haviland’s chief test pilot) they would have made similar mistakes without the horrific example of the Comet.
The redesigned aircraft was pretty good, but by then De Haviland had been overtaken by Boeing and Douglas.
Yes – at least until recently. The military version of the “comet” – the Nimrod – only came out of service about 10 years ago. Most of the airframes worked at air-sea rescue, airborne control centres, electronics warfare, but some also worked as airliners for moving troops around.
Gertie seemed like a lot more fun when played by Kathy Bates in Mr. Allen’s Midnight in Paris:
I’ve never read anything she wrote, but my father did have a Gertrude Stein stein. That was pretty cool. It looked (vaguely) like her face.
A limerick (from 1931, apparently):
There’s a notable family named Stein,
There’s Gert and there’s Ep and there’s Ein.
Gert’s prose is all bunk,
Ep’s sculpture’s just junk
And nobody understands Ein.
No Twitter, but I would vote for “better.”
According to Wikipedia, the South Korean short track speed skater Kim Yun-mi “won her first Olympic gold medal at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer at the age of 13 years and 85 days, making her the youngest-ever Olympic gold medalist.” Shortly after, the sport introduced an age limit of 15 years.
The reference cited by the article is: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/63807-youngest-olympic-gold-medallist
“..the sport introduced an age limit of 15 years”
Feeble joke: less than 16—, or greater than 14??
Actually that particular sport isn’t too much in the show-offy category of some new ones (on skis anyway), so good for her. But you’ll never see a 13 year old come even close to world class times in traditional speed skating (he arrogantly asserts!)
Some late breaking news: Simone Biles has dropped out of the team competition in gymnastics. It seems to be medically related, but details are not clear yet.
Update: She says that she doesn’t have a physical injury but some sort of mental issue that will be resolved in a few days. What could that be? Boyfriend/girlfriend trouble at home?
From what I’ve gathered she was feeling over stressed to continue being the very best ever.
Indeed. I might be reading it wrongly, but my understanding is that she’s still hoping to appear in the individual, as opposed to team, competition?
Jez, I really hope you’re right, she is one of the best, if not the best, extant gymniast. Although I do not particularly favour US athletes, Biles is about the best in her field, and the Olympics would definitely be poorer without her.
According to the BBC, ‘She has reached all five individual finals and is undecided on whether she will compete in her next event on Thursday, when she will attempt to become the first woman to retain the Olympic all-around title since 1968.
“We’re going to see about Thursday,” she said. “We’re going to take it a day at a time and see what happens.” ‘ : https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/57982665
🤞🤞
I don’t know, but I hope you’re right. I love watching her.
Man, the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater video games made it seem so easy…
Amazing to win a gold medal at only thirteen years old! Just incredible.
Yeah, for my money, they are pretty serious athletes, and it’s NOT a safe-looking sport. Possibly they are all so young because they die (or, well, develop a lot of injuries) by the time they get much older.
Yup, the Philippines contestant Margielyn Didal was limping from an early stage in the competition and I couldn’t help wondering whether she should have been allowed to continue. She’s 22, so an adult, but you’d imagine that an official would make an assessment of her fitness to participate. (Maybe they did away from the cameras, I suppose.) Anyway, she stuck it out but dropped to 7th place.
Definitely serious athletes, but stuff like halfpipe and other such events are even scarier when it comes to potential for injuries.
I personally much prefer the winter games, but I’ve always been a winter sports player (except for tennis). I love the snow, I love the events, I love the danger, and I love the sports. The summer games just don’t do it for me.
Still can’t believe both Osaka and Barty are out. Coulda had the draw of a 5th Major. Sigh.
I’ve never been interested in country when it comes to tennis. I mean, I’m not interested in country of origin or for which a player plays in international tournaments no matter the sport, but it’s irrelevant to me even in a purely individual sport. Sure, I do love to see the US rack up medals out of some small sense of patriotism, but when it comes to a sport I love, it’s the specific players I care about.
As I’ve said before, I’ve loved Osaka since she was playing junior tennis, and I will never forgive Serena Williams for her absolutely disgusting display during and after her loss to Osaka in the US Open final, where Williams turned a young girl’s greatest dream into her worst nightmare all because Serena can’t be humble for even a moment. Still, Osaka’s recent refusal to do any media and her acting as if that’s somehow taking a brave stand has put me off rooting for her (granted, her fans and various sports bloggers have carried that torch and poured a hell of a lot more gasoline on it). I still like her and hold no grudges when she wins, but I don’t actively root for her against my other favorite players, like Barty, Halep, and Muguruza. The whole media thing just doesn’t make sense to me. This sport has made her tens of millions of dollars before the age of 25 and she can’t spare five minutes after a match (and only matches she’s won, unless it’s a slam final! It’s not like she has to give an interview after losing matches) and a press conference later? It’s part of the contract; you know, the contract that makes a player those millions and gets people excited about players’ personalities and the sport in general, thus injecting the money into the prize pools and sponsorships that pay for her now lavish lifestyle. She’s already made about $20,000,000 in prize money alone. Imagine how much her sponsorships are worth.
Anyway, when it comes to players, I largely base my interest in them on how interesting and/or beautiful I find their play, which is why Andy Murray was never a favorite of mine, but I try to never miss a Gael Monfils match and am excited about Auger-Aliassime. I also love Diego Schwartzman because he’s a short Jewish guy who has somehow made it as far as he has so far 😀 I also like watching Richard Gaquet on the rare occasion that he’s playing well, as he has one of the most beautiful backhands to ever grace the game. It’s a shame Gasquet has such a lovely game, but it’s in service to nothing most of the time. I could go on, but I won’t for your sake…
The winter games? Nah, Norway wins about half of all events, too predictable
Don’t care about the flag. It’s beautiful and exciting to watch! Plus, Norway never wins in sports like ice hockey, any kind of downhill skiing, snowboarding, etc.
“…never wins in ……any kind of downhill skiing…”
You’re completely wrong there. Look it up carefully. It’s not a just one exception, I’m quite sure.
And watch Klaebo, and the also youngish Russian Bolshunov, making the difficult downhill sections of nordic ski races look easy, and the rest using more balance muscles and so more calories to keep up. After 50km, deleted energy has its effects. Those two have come to dominate, esp. Klaebo, at a much younger age than normal.
Norwegians (population about a fifth of the world’s larger cities’ populations) dominate in many winter sports because youngsters still regard them as heroes and they aspire to imitate.
But hockey—we went to the fights and a hockey game broke out—leave that ‘sport’ to the Swedes, etc., says a Canuck.
I’m always happy to be proven wrong, but it seems the only downhill event in which Norway has been at the top is Super G in the men’s, and none in the women’s.
If there’s one thing I know, it’s hockey. Fights rarely happen in hockey anymore. It’s become a game almost purely of skill. There’s maybe a fight once every ten or fifteen games, and even then it’s usually perfunctory. Of coyrse, I’m talking about the NHL here, as that’s what I watch, but I have to imagine that pro leagues in Europe have even fewer fights, though I can’t be sure. Regarsless, trust me: if you love speed, skill, agility, the ability to use every muscle in one’s body all at once to make the perfect move, fighting through fatigue, and split-second decision-making at extremely high speeds, watch some ice hockey. The NHL is the best league in the world. Norway doesn’t really have much of a hockey league to speak of, but try to watch some games from at least the SHL (pro Swedish league) or KHL (pro Russian leagye), if those are more available in your area. They’re not at the same level and the game is slower due to international ice being bigger, but it’s still a great game. NHL is preferable both because it’s the best in the world and the ice is smaller, and the latter necessitates even greater skill and “hockey IQ.”
Ice hockey is like soccer if every decision the soccer players made had to be made and executed in miliseconds, with someone bearing down on them ready to knock them off their skates, and the slightest mistake leading to a possible series of events that costs his team a goal. And once you learn.more about hockey, you can begin to see the intricate systems and patterns at play, from neutral zone traps to 1-3-2 setups to 2-3-2 setups to modified diamond penalty kills, etc.
Ah, sorry, I missed your reference to being Canadian. Of course the NHL is available where you are 😛 Wish that damn edit button would show up when I need it…
A 10 second look-up:
” Kjetil André Aamodt of Norway is the most-decorated Olympic alpine skier with eight medals (four gold, two silver, two bronze).”
It seems unlikely, to say the least, that all his medals are in the one discipline (Super G) you mention. After 8 Olympics he’d be about 55 years old and infinitely famous for making the team 8 times and (he’s not skiing Alpine for Nigeria) in his 50s, much less winning a medal at that age.
But when it comes to gold and, it seems, overall medals by country, my initial statement was exaggerated, but not incorrect once that’s taken into account, especially as I was speaking in the present tense.
By the way, Norway is 7th in the world overall Olympics in Alpine skiing with 36 medals–e.g. both gold and silver in mens downhill in 2018.
With a population of 5 million, that would (somewhat unfairly I realize) translate into approximately 660 medals for USA, whereas they do well anyway. But 47 is somewhat less than 660.
Furthermore some of tNorway’s 36 are for women, including the women’s team bronze medal in 2018 Pyongyang.
Besides #1 Aamodt, Norway has 3 others in the top 7 mens alpine ski olympic medal winners. And Bode Miller won’t catch up to Aamodt—perhaps Miller’s retired by now.
I’m far more interested in the endurance plus sprints (approx equivalent to 1500 meter run) of nordic, than I am in the mostly speed of the alpine fat skis with both feet nailed down at front and back, so muscles are all poling and balance. Still they are athletes closer to what fundamentally the physical prowess of the human species requires, than is doing 6 or 7 aerial summersaults for various (most likely somewhat corrupt) judges to adjudicate.
I am embarrassed as a math prof for 55 years and counting—that 660 medals for USA to equal Norway should have been 2376.
But we’re too high and mighty to be expected to get arithmetic right!!
As to “present tense” you say, Norwegian men have won 4 of the 9 available downhill medals in the last 3 Olympics.
Random connection between two of PCC(E)’s interesting facts of the day: Johann Bernoulli was the father of Daniel, whose work on fluid mechanics included the discovery of Bernoulli’s Principle, which finds a practical application in the design of aircraft wings, including those of the De Havilland Comet.
Very sad about Simone B., but the wascally wabbit cheered me up🤓
On Trump and his routers, I have to disagree. He is crafty like a fox. He’s creating an imaginary object to which his followers will ground their beliefs in a stolen election. The fact that no one knows what these routers are and how they could really tie into the vote counting is a feature, not a bug. He sees that the AZ “fraudit” is evaporating, so he’s inventing a new unobtainable thing that, if obtained, would reveal that he really won the 2020 election.
The Maricopa County voting machines WERE NOT connected in any way to the internet. Thus, the “routers” (assuming someone like Trump could even pick a router out of a room full of computer equipment) could not possibly contain any information relating to the ballot count. (Maybe Trump thinks the Maricopa County routers are buried in a plot next to the one in Ukraine where he thinks the DNC servers are hidden, per his “do me a favor, though” phone call with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky.)
The routers used by computers at the Maricopa polling places are the same routers used by the county’s emergency services. Turning them over to the QAnon-adjacent “Cyber Ninjas” conducting the Arizona fraudit would cause a hell of an unnecessary mess. Maricopa County has already been forced to incur $2.8 million in costs to replace the voting machines compromised by the Cyber Ninjas’ having obtained possession of them. It would cost millions more to replace the routers.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Donald Trump is crazy as a shit-house rat. He’s broken the cardinal rule of the long-con artiste — buying into your own bullshit.
I’m a computer guy so I’ll play a little devil’s advocate. If the voting data passed through these routers on voting and counting days, the data could have been intercepted and modified by malware installed on them. Of course, such data would likely be encrypted and the malware could remove itself after it had done its job. To people who want to believe, like Trump and his followers, this is enough. His belief in his own BS helps him sell the grift. His superpower is to make what he’s saying absolutely believable to his rubes. He’s always all-in.
If the ballots counted at the polling place match the count reported, that would appear to eliminate any routers used in the communication process as a source of error or tampering.
The clown-show Cyber Ninjas (who have zero experience in conducting election audits) have had the ballots from Maricopa County — paper and voting machines — since April.
Wonder if they’re re-routing the ballots? As is, the results seemed to be a route for Biden😬
I just love the way the big white arrow behind him seems to be doing the “you’ve got a screw loose” sign…
+1😹
On the infrastructure deal, my sixth sense says that the GOP are stringing the Biden admin and the Dems along. We’re always just a day or two, or an item or two, away from a deal. If well-meaning GOP politicians actually made a deal, the others would invent some reason why they can’t agree to it. Kicking the ball down the road is how they blow it up without being caught holding the match.
I don’t see how Biden can be so stupid falling for this crap. He was VP for 8 years. He was in the Senate for decades. And still he is the sucker. He even thinks there is some reason for the filibuster.
I don’t think he’s that stupid. I’m pretty sure he must know that this isn’t going anywhere. Perhaps he’s thinking that more and more GOP politicians will pull away from Trump. That might be true but it’s nowhere near fast enough to help. Biden also wants to play it straight and not appear as a partisan politician. Unfortunately, the GOP’s only play now is to make Biden and the Democrats into demons who are out to drink the blood of voters’ children. It is in their interest to politicize everything regardless of what Biden does.
Perhaps this all goes to him being stupid but what other choice does he really have? If he went the other way, and played partisan hardball, what would that really look like? He really doesn’t have the power to pull it off and even if he did, wouldn’t that just take the country down even further?
I think he has to play this out and hope that he can make it work. And if it doesn’t work, he can hope that voters blame the Republicans. I wouldn’t bet on any of this.
“It’s also a way to increase Zuckerberg’s bottom line, by sucking the goddies onto Facebook”
That’s an childish and dismissive insult to the majority of American not to mention greats like Darwin, Mendel, MLK and Mandela. I avoid websites with this kind of stupid name calling. This atheist will go elsewhere if this becomes commonplace.
No, you will go elsewhere from this moment on. Can’t take a little ridicule of those who believe in fairy tales? Sorry, but I don’t want your business here.
Quinn is not what I would call transgender. They were born a woman and consider themselves non-binary not male. Since Quinn has a female body with no medical or hormonal treatment, IMO, there should be nothing unusual or controversial about them competing in women’s event. I have always liked watching Quinn play.
So, if she was born a woman, where is the problem?
The only people who should have a problem with Quinn competing are the woke. If transwomen can compete as females because of their gender, then non-binary people should not be able to compete as men or women because gender apparently trumps biological sex. However, this logical step is ignored.
But honestly, I don’t think anyone has a problem with Quinn competing. The media is making it a big deal because Quinn is the first non-binary competitor which is fine but not important to me. Calling Quinn transgender is misleading to most people which is why I posted.
On another note, using “they/them” singular is difficult. Every time I typed “them” for Quinn, it seemed to refer to media rather than Quinn because media is plural but Quinn is singular.
No video in 1903. Don’t miss the modern colour picture.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Slide