Yoo-hoo. Over here.
In case you've been wondering where "And Another Thing ..." went, well, it's moved. Here is the new link.
(You may now respond in the appropriate fashion: "Ah, crud! I thought we'd finally gotten rid of him!").
-- Ben Smith
Yoo-hoo. Over here.
In case you've been wondering where "And Another Thing ..." went, well, it's moved. Here is the new link.
(You may now respond in the appropriate fashion: "Ah, crud! I thought we'd finally gotten rid of him!").
-- Ben Smith
Posted at 03:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Remember how breathtaking the Olympic opening ceremonies were?
Well, you can have your breath back. Turns out they were a little TOO breathtaking.
Turns out, according to Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times, that those Chinese and Olympic flags dramatically snapping in the wind were, um, snapping in a wind artificially created by fans or something planted in the flagpoles.
And the dazzling fireworks exploding above the Bird's Nest, the Olympic Stadium?
Turns out the Chinese digitially enhanced them to make them look more spectacular on TV than they actually were in person.
And the little girl who so sweetly sang "Ode to the Motherland"?
Turns out she was lip-synching, because the little girl who really sang the song was not as photogenic.
So a whole chunk of what you saw was fake, which makes you wonder about the rest of it, like the guy who ran around the rim of the stadium to light the cauldron. Did he really do that, or was that a digital enhancement, too?
The whole thing makes you wonder if Stephen Spielberg really should have been hired to choroegraph the ceremonies. After all, it would have right in the wheelhouse for the guy who gave the world the fake shark in "Jaws."
Looks like another world record has been set in Beijing.
Only five days in, and already these Games have, ahem, jumped the shark.
-- Ben Smith
Posted at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
In a blow to the Cult of the Six-Pack Abs, a new study reports that roughly 51 percent of overweight adults nationwide have normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels, while an astonishing number of awesomely fit people suffer from ailments usually associated with obesity.
Take that, Bowflex.
And pass the pie.
-- Ben Smith
Posted at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
This is already up on the Web, but the Wizards and San Diego Padres formalized continuing their agreement today. They're in their 10th season together this year.
Which means they've already outlasted most celebrity marriages.
-- Ben Smith
Posted at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
... in which a properly chastised Blobber, aka me, apologizes for his premature diss of the U.S. swimmers in Beijing.
Since I blogged yesterday that, outside of Michael Phelps, the U.S. swimmers had been getting their glutes kicked all over the Water Cube, they've been kicking back. Phelps won his third gold in laughable fashion, Aaron Peirsol defended his Olympic title in the 100 bacstroke in world-record time, and Natalie Coughlin became the first woman to repeat as champion of the women's 100 back.
I stand corrected. And properly chagrined.
-- Ben Smith
Posted at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
If Michael Phelps goes on to win his eight gold medals in this Olympics, he should give one of them to Jason Lezak.
Lezak's blistering final leg enabled the Americans to overhaul the French in world record time Sunday, winning the 400 freestyle relay and preserving Phelps' quest for eight golds.
Elsewhere, though ...
Well, I've gotta say, the much ballyhooed American swimmers aren't exactly sweeping the medal stand.
American star Katie Hoff has gotten dusted twice in two days, first by Australian rival Stephanie Rice in the 400 individual medley and then by Britain's Rebecca Adlington in the 400 freestyle, in which Hoff was a heavy favorite. The American women's 4x100 freestyle relay team was beaten for the gold by the Netherlands. And American Brendan Hanson was dethroned as world record holder in the 100 breaststroke by Kosuke Kitajima of Japan.
-- Ben Smith
Posted at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Interesting piece Sunday in the dinosaur editions of the JG about performance enhancement and how it's actually a natural extension of human athletic performance.
The author (Andy Miah), advances the notion that technological advances in equipment, surgical techniques and training techniques have enabled athletes of today to achieve things athletes in previous generations, denied access to those advances, could not have dreamed. The natural extrapolation is that performance enhancing substances are just another technological advance.
I'm not sure I buy that entirely, but he makes a strong case -- not for the promotion of performance enhancing drugs, but for monitoring their use rather than trying to ban them. As he says, you can't do it; ultimately advances in the enhancement area -- the newest one is gene doping, which is impossible to prove or disprove -- will outstrip any testing procedures.
His solution, if I read him right, is to allow athletes to explore any options they wish for performance enhancement, provided it's regulated and is available to everyone.
Here's the problem with that, as I see it: Technology in the area of equipment advances and training techniques are one thing, advances in performance enhancing substances another. The former likely can be made available to everyone; witness the space-age swimsuit everyone's wearing a variation of in Beijing. The latter can never be made available to everyone, because someone's always going to have better chemists at their disposal.
So. As ineffective as anti-doping strategies are, and as increasingly ineffective as they're likely to become, the people who run international athletics have no choice. They have to continue to police it, because a level playing field isn't possible, if not feasible, any other way.
-- Ben Smith
Posted at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I'll tell you right now when the U.S. men's basketball team -- nicknamed "The Redeem Team" this time around -- killed the skeptic in me.
It wasn't just the way they easily dismantled Yao Ming and the hometown Chinese today. it was what LeBron James had to say afterward -- and what he'd done before the U.S. even took the court.
What he said, in so many words, was that nothing he'd ever done could approach winning an Olympic gold medal, because he hadn't done anything yet. Which is what everyone on the team is saying. Which suggests to me the jaded, overpaid NBA players who make up the U.S. roster are actually buying into the whole Olympic thing for once.
Case in point: After Michael Phelps won his first gold medal in the 400 IM, one of the first text messages he received was from, yep, LeBron James, telling him how much Phelps' victory fired him up.
I like that. I like this team.
-- Ben Smith
Posted at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Here's what we know now about the attack on two Americans in Beijing:
* The dead man is Todd Bachman, the father-in-law of U.S. men's coach Hugh McCutcheon.
* McCutcheon's wife, Elisabeth, was a 1994 Olympian on the U.S. women's volleyball team and was in the group when the assailant, who was Chinese, set upon them with a knife. Elisabeth Bachman McCutcheon was not injured, however.
* Read more here.
-- Ben Smith
Posted at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Speaking of Beijing ... if you missed the opening ceremonies last night (and I'd understand if you did, since they lasted four hours, and nothing's good enough to last four hours), you missed some truly spectacular stuff.
Especially dazzling was the lighting of the Olympic cauldron, in which the torchbearer was hoisted aloft in some kind of harness and "ran" completely around the upper rim of the stadium before igniting the flame. Absolutely amazing.
And then ...
And then a dash of cold reality.
This morning comes the news that a relative of one of the U.S. men's volleyball coaches was killed in a brutal and apparently random attack by a knife-wielding Chinese man near the Drum Tower, a 13th-century Beijing landmark five miles from the Olympic site.
As I write this, the name of the coach to whom the dead man was related had not been released. As everyone undoubtedly knows, Woodburn native Lloy Ball is the senior member of the men's team, so I'll continue to try to pass on more details as they come.
Stay tuned.
-- Ben Smith
Posted at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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