Kang and Kodos... errr, I mean Wenlock and Mandeville, are the official mascots of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
If nothing else, Wenlock and Mandeville will have us all forgetting that Izzy from the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta ever existed.
I've never been to Rio, but have heard a lot of good things about that town over the years. Maybe this'll be a good enough excuse to finally check out the place :-)
Congratulations to Michael Phelps and the United States men's swim team at the Beijing Olympics!
1/100th of a second ahead of Croatia's Milorad Cavic.
If there's a single moment that will be remembered from the Beijing Olympics, that will be it. We've been re-watching it at least a half-dozen times in slow-mo the past few minutes, and... just amazing, man!
He's now tied Mark Spitz's record of most gold medals during a single Olympiad. And tomorrow, Phelps might have one more for his collection.
And no, there is not an extra "0" in that number.The New York Post reports on the special diet that has Michael Phelps breaking swimming records like nobody's business at the Olympics. The guy is on a staggering twelve thousand calories a day eating regimen. A typical person usually takes in around 6000 calories every day. Phelps has been nearing that amount with each meal! Mostly lots of carbohydrate-rich fare like pasta.
The boy better figure in some Wheaties too if he wants to have his picture on the front of their cereal box :-P
If he goes on winning gold in the rest of his events, Phelps will not only make his own record all the more unreachable but he'll break Mark Spitz's record of having earned seven gold medals in a single Olympiad.
Do it, dude!
Butterfly is perhaps the most strenuous stroke of competitive swimming. And Michael Phelps won the 200 meter butterfly with a time of 1:52:03 early Wednesday morning at the Beijing Olympics.Phelps is now the most-winning Olympic athlete in history: ten gold medals so far in his career, with four in Beijing alone. And he's got a chance to bring home four more.
Go Michael! :-)
In its place is a convoluted scheme that not only doesn't reward poise and grace, it darn nearly penalizes it: demanding that gymnasts produce "bigger and better"...
Nastia Liukin of the United States team, for example, performs a routine on the uneven bars that has a sky-high difficulty value of 7.7. Her father and coach, Valeri Liukin, crunched numbers last year to invent the complex, high-scoring routine.It seems like a minor thing to be upset about. But what bothers me is that this move represents something that has become very widespread in this world: the belief that since there is no real attainable perfection, that we can over-compensate with bulk quantity. I can envision lots of gymnasts now, coming to spend most of their at a computer trying to "calculate the best possible routine" instead of getting out there and throwing themselves at the equipment... which is the only way that anyone grows and gets better. It comes by hard work and firsthand experience, not running it through simulations. And as Retton and Comaneci and others have proved, perfection at something is possible. It just comes from being dedicated to making the most of the talents you've been given.He did the calculations on a Post-it before handing it to his daughter at practice one day. She gasped.
"I was like: Wow, you want me to do all of that? Is that possible?" Nastia Liukin said. "But then I realized that I need to do all that with this new scoring, if I even want to think about a gold medal. I said: OK, cool. I'll learn it."
And is it just me, or does practically everything about these Olympics scream out massive fail?
It reminded me of something that happened almost ten years ago. On December 17th 1997, Japanese television broadcast an episode of the popular Pokemon show. During the episode there is one scene that has intense rapid red/blue blinking. In the minutes and hours following that scene, hundreds of Japanese children were rushed to hospitals because that sequence caused those kids to suffer seizures, convulsions, fainting, extreme headaches and nausea! The flashing was taken out of subsequent airings of the episode.
So... wanna see it? Here it is, with the original video unedited. If this link goes bad just do a search on YouTube for "pokemon" and "seizures" or "epilepsy". But I'm seriously warning you: I watched this thing, and it did give me a headache. I'm just posting this as an example that the fears about the new Olympics symbol aren't necessarily frivolous.
Here it is: the banned Pokemon "seizures" sequence. Remember, you watch this at your own risk...
