Looking around

This story reminds us of why we really need to be friendlier with our neighbours. Of course if you live in a house the neighbours would probably be more upset at the weeds and overgrown lawn. I guess neighbours checking to see if you're dead could be another plus for home ownership but I doubt if it will ever make any marketing plan.

It's really tough to accept sports that have judges. Especially when the judges admit to problems of coercion or where it is obvious to everyone watching that the score wasn't right. First we had skating problems and now we have the problems with gymnastics. If you watched this event you saw one athlete get ripped off when another scored what turned out to be an impossible score considering he actually fell on the vault. And of course there is the Paul Hamm thing. In all these cases the athletes are the victims. It's a shame. My take on this? Shewfelt should be given a bronze medal and Marian Dragulescu should also keep his bronze. Hamm should keep his gold and Yang should only be awarded a gold if the video showed no other glaring errors in the scoring. Why the difference? Because in Hamm's case the video replay exposed the scoring error while with Shewfelt the scoring rules were not followed. You don't need a video replay to see that Dragulescu fell on the vault and the scoring rules clearly define the mandatory deduction for that. The scoring rules also clearly define the procedure to follow when the scores don't add up. In both cases the athlete who was originally awarded the medal is not penalized for the judges not doing their jobs.

Speaking of the Olympics...this story bears a remarkable resemblance to the Canadian hockey experience at the last winter Olympics. Personally, I think the American talent will prevail but I like seeing teams beat individual talent. But usually teams without enough talent have to be perfect to overcome the talent they lack. Now with the Americans starting to play better as a team and being able to rally under the "us-against-the-world" banner, I expect their talent to mesh as a team. And that's bad news for the rest of the field.