Per Capita Medal Count

The US achieved its stated goal of 100 medals in the games of the XXVIIIth Olympiad with 103, which should be enough padding to account for any appeals. This is more than any other nation, but does that make the US the best sporting nation? I decided to look at the medal count per capita.

The Bahamas easily led the way, setting the bar at over 6.7 medals per million people (mpmp). They only had two medals, both from women's track and field. Tanique Williams Darling won gold in the 400m, while Debbie Ferguson took bronze in the 200m. However, when you don't even have 300,000 citizens, I think that's a job well down.

The Aussies did nothing to shake their sport crazy stereotype, coming in second, with 2.5 mpmp. This includes more that one swimming or diving medal per million people.

The Cubans are the team that you don't want to meet in a dark alley. They won 2.4 mpmp with 18 of their 27 medals coming in boxing, judo, taekwondo, and wrestling. Plus, I'm sure the gold medal winning baseball team could help out with their bats.

Zimbabwe took 2.2 mpmp, but they were all won by backstroker Kirsty Coventry (gold in the 200m backstroke, silver in the 100m backstroke, bronze in the 200m Individual Medley).

Fourteen other countries did better than 1 mpmp: Estonia, Slovenia, Jamaica, Hungary, Latvia, Bulgaria, Greece, Denmark, Belarus, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Croatia, and Slovakia.

The US ended up 41st out of the 75 medal-winning countries, with only a measley 0.37 mpmp, just behind Canada and Mongolia, and just ahead of Israel and Portugal. Here are the complete standings

India brought up the rear with just one silver medal (Rajyavardhan S. Rathore in the men's double trap) to show for its one-sixth of the world's population, although it can draw some solace from the fact that the two largest countries that did not win a single medal are its neighbors Pakistan and Bangladesh. Vaccinations for Olympic fever are apparently not required to visit the subcontinent, or at least while cricket is not an Olympic sport.

Kudos must also go to the Hungarian team, who led the way with 3 of the 7 medals stripped due to failure of drug tests. If you're gonna try to cheat, at least do it well enough to make a difference. They were men's hammer throw gold medalist Adrian Annus, men's discus gold medalist Robert Fazekas, and weightlifting silver medalist Ferenc Gyurkovics.

Behind the Blog

I can't believe college football season sneaked up on me with me only realizing that the first game was tonight three hours before kickoff. I am very pleased with one aspect this years annual tinkering with the BCS formula. (It's something that's imposible to get "right," but I like to see them try.) They have gotten rid of the ordinal rankings on the AP and USAToday/ESPN poll components in favor of one based on the total votes received. I suggested this two years ago, but in a better way, I think. The use of ordinal rankings is bad because it doesn't reflect any closeness in the voting. The difference between 1405 and 1404 points is quite small but that is not reflected by an integer based ranking scheme that has those close teams ranked 4th and 5th. The BCS will use a percentage of possible points, or (points received)/(possible points). For the AP that's 1800, or getting 25 points from being selected first by all 72 writers. The coaches poll can vary slightly in the number of voters every week. So from the preseason AP poll, USC was ranked first with 1603 points, or a percentage of 0.891. This is an improvement, but I think it can be better with what I call the non-integer ordinal rank (NIOR). I say it should be 26-(points per voter). This still says that a team receiving all first place votes or all eighth place votes is still ranked 1 or 8. Look at the following table of the AP preseason top 10. Team Pts. Received. % for BSC Rank NIOR USC (48) 1603 0.891 1 3.736 Oklahoma (11) 1529 0.849 2 4.764 Georgia (5) 1480 0.822 3 5.444 LSU (1) 1446 0.803 4 5.917 Florida State 1291 0.712 5 8.069 Miami (Fla.) 1287 0.715 6 8.125 Texas 1236 0.687 7 8.833 Michigan 1223 0.679 8 9.014 The Ohio State 1005 0.558 9 12.04 West Virginia 937 0.521 10 12.99 The NIOR really highlights the closeness of the voting. The fact that is says there is a "first ranked" team quickly illustrates that several voters did not select USC as the best team. (The first place votes in parentheses.) Also, the fall off from the second tier of 5th-8th places to the third tier of 9th and 10th is made apparent.

Tonight on ESPN, they showed USC vs. Virginia Tech, but over on ESPN2, they pealed back the veil and showed all the behind the scenes production that goes on to bring you your college football. So, tonight I will do the same with my blog. The first challange was with the HTML involved with splitting the blog into two subblogs. My initial effort to put a vertical bar between them has failed. The Blogger.com input window doesn't seem to like the HTML I'm giving it. Here I was distracted by watching the game for a little bit. More distraction by the showing how the "1st and 10" line is superimposed on the screen. I cannot understand why there is all this blank space here when I insert the table. It is very frustrating. To celebrate getting this table to work right on the first try, I will take a break with a glass of Fanta. It appears that I just computed these numbers on the fly in the middle of writing by blog, but in fact, I had precomputed the numbers in a spreadsheet prior to writing to save time. I hope you have enjoyed this look behind the curtain. Unfortunately blogging is generally uneventful with me just sitting at my desk. Sorry about that.

Milos Milos

I've just discovered another actor 50% of whose films were nominated for Best Picture (see the July archeive under the topic of John Cazale). The Yugoslavian-born actor Milos Milos was in two films--a small role in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (nominated for Best Picture in 1967), and he played the title role opposite William Shatner's Incubus, the only esperanto-language American film. He only appeared in these films because in 1966 at the age of 25, he committed suicide after murdering the Barbara Anne Thompson with whom Milos had had an affair. She was the fifth wife of Mickey Rooney.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Yeah, the trailer for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is available for downloading. While you're waiting for the film, I can heartilly recommend Wes Anderson's previous three efforts 1996's Bottle Rocket, 1998's Rushmore, and 2001's The Royal Tenenbaums.

I Heart Huckabees

Yeah, the trailer for I Heart Huckabees is available for downloading. While you're waiting for the film I can heartily recommend David O. Russell's previous two efforts 1996's Flirting with Disaster and 1999's Three Kings.

No Gold (and it's cold)

I decided to turn to the Winter Olympics for more prolific non-gold medal winning athletes.

Finnish cross-country skier Harri Kirvesniemi has won six Olympic medals--all bronze. His only individual medal was in the 1984 15km, but he was a member of the 1980 and 1984 4x10km Individual Relay. I'm not totally sure what "Individual Relay" means, but it was replaced by the 4x10km Classic/Free Relay in 1992, 1994, and 1998, all of which gave the Finn men bronzes. Harri's wife Marja-Liise Hämäläinen-Kirvesniemi was a more successful Olympic cross-country skier. She won only four bronzes but more than made up for it by winning three golds, although all the golds and one bronze came prior to marrying Harri. Her father Kalevi also won a cross-country gold medal in 1960.

Chinese short track speed skater Yang Yang (S), not to be confused with teammate Yang Yang (A), has the most winter silvers without a gold. She won silvers in 1992 in the 500m and 1000m and the 3000m relay. In 2002, she won again won silver in the 3000m relay, but slipped to bronze in the 1000m. (Yang Yang (A) was also on the 2002 3000m relay, and took gold in 500m and 1000m.)

Two Norwegians deserve recognition here: Speed skater Roald Larsen won two silvers and four bronzes--silvers in the 1500m and Combined events in 1924 and bronzes in 500m, 5000m and 10000m, in 1924, and then again in 1928 in the 500m. Countrywoman cross-country skier Anita Moen was on the silver medal winning teams in 1994, 1998, and 2002, plus took individual bronzes in the 15km Classic/Free in 1998 and the 1.5km Sprint in 2002.

No Gold

Tonight I've been looking for the athletes with the most silver and bronze Olympic medals without winning a gold medal. Here are my findings:

The most silvers with no gold is Soviet gymnast Viktor Lititsky, who won 4 silvers in the 1964 games--Team All-Around, Vault, Floor (2-way tie), and Individual All-Around (3-way tie)--and won silver again in 1968 in the Team All-Around.

Jamaican (and now Slovenian) sprinter Merlene Ottey has three silvers and five bronzes from her seven Olympic Games. In 1980, she bronzed in the 200m dash. In 1984, she repeated bronze in the 200m, and added another bronze in the 100m. After an off Olympiad in 1988, she rebounded with yet another bronze in the 200m. She won three silvers in 1996 in the 100m, 200m, and the 4x100m relay. In 2000, after being cleared of charges of using nandronolone, she was on the bronze medal winning 4x100m relay. After Jamaica said she was too old to compete anymore, she took Slovenian citizenship in 2002 and is competing for them in Athens.

Two athletes have won 5 bronze medals without winning anything better. Canadian doctor and middle distance runner Philip Edwards was on the 4x400m relay in 1928 and 1932, and won individual bronzes in the 800m in 1932 and 1936 and also the 1500m in 1932. Netherlandish fencer Adrianus de Jong was on the bronze medal winning Sabre teams in 1912, 1920, and 1924, plus the Épée team in 1912. He also took the individual Sabre bronze in 1920.

Penalty Turn

It's the Olympics which means there's sailing on TV. Growing up in a landlocked state and not being fabulously wealthy means I haven't done much sailing. None actually. But with the last couple of America's Cup races, I have a growing appreciation for the sport. One little thing I like about Olympic Sailing is the way you're penalized for failure to yield right of way or running into the officials' boat--it's the penalty turn. Screw up and you have to turn around 360 or 720 degrees.

Haute tension

Very rarely do I get angry at a film, but Alexandre Aja's Haute tension (apparently it also goes by the English title "Switchblade Romance") is an exception. The first 70 minutes is some of the most taut filmmaking I've seen in a while, and an interesting twist on a standard serial killer/rapist kidnaps someone while another character tries to rescue her story, although the first two-thirds is apparently closer to Dean Koontz's novel Intensity than the American made for TV verison of the novel, but without crediting him. This may however be good for Koontz since all of that tension is thrown away by the incredibly awful twist ending. How a filmmaker can be skillful enough to make the first two-thirds and still think the ending works is beyond me.

AGFIS - General Association of International Sports Federations

To celebrate the convergence of various sports in one giant competition, it seems like a great time to look at AGFIS - General Association of International Sports Federations. From them, I learned of the TWIF, the Tug-o-War International Federation; the WMF, the World Minigolf Federation; and FIC, the International Timekeepers Federation. Plus, I am so glad that they led me to ISTAF, the Internation Sepaktakraw Federation. I have been trying to find out the name of this fascinating Southeast Asian sport since seeing a brief spot on television about it many years ago.

I wonder if there is an International Federation of Meta-Federations.

Baby got back (vowel)

Given two otherwise equally attractive women--one named Susan, the other named Suzanne--Susan would generally be found to be slightly more attractive according to the research of Amy Perfors, grad student in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. She can tell you about it herself at her website, or you can just stay here and let me tell you about it.

Perfors submitted multiple copies of the same photos of her friends but under several different names to www.hotornot.com and she found a small but statistically significant effect in the names. Males with a stressed front vowel in their first name tend to be "hotter" than those with with stressed back vowels. For women, it was the other way around, with the stressed back vowels, like the -u- in Susan, being preferable to the stressed front vowels, like the -a- in Suzanne.

There is no "Eye" in "TEAM"

Is it just me, or does American softball pitcher Jennie Finch, voted "Hottest Female Athlete" by ESPN.com Page2 readers, seem less attractive for the amount of eye make-up she wears during competition? She herself has said, "I think there's so much beauty in female athletes, no matter who it is," and I agree and wish that she'd trust her own natural beauty and dominating talent to make her attractive. Who am I to say what an athlete "should" look like, but to me it seems just as out of place as Red Sox Johnny Damon's unfrozen caveman centerfielder look, which no one has shied away from criticizing. And I don't think there's a double standard here since I would definitely criticize a Major League pitcher if he took the mound wearing a lot of eye make-up. Of course, eyebrows plucked for the previous night's gala event aren't going to grow back that quickly and so some of this can be excused. But in the locker room, do you apply the eyeshadow before or after stretching? This just seems wrong. Although, the more I think about it, the more I'm wondering if there isn't some sort of on-field advantage to this? I've never seen a picture of her wearing sunglasses, and so perhaps she uses the dark mascara as a form of eye-black to cut the glare without obscuring her vision? Or maybe she sees it as a potential way to distract the batter, just as it has distracted me?

Jennie Finch Johnny Damon

I suppose it can be difficult to somehow be both a world-class athlete and still remain "feminine," but this seems the wrong way to go about it. I believe both the LPGA and whatever the tennis governing body is have both called for their athletes to appear more sexy for the good (read TV ratings) of the sport and have both been rebuked for it.

November 23, 1998

I was looking through my computer and found this account of one day six years ago. Life in the Fast Lane
10:30 a.m.	My eyes are wide and if I had a tail, it would be would be bushy as I leap out of bed to face the day. Of course, it is just a Saturday morning, and I don't have any big plans for today, except for watching big rivalry college football games. But, as I listen to the wonderful call of Keith Jackson, "The Voice of College Football," I have omitted one thing from my normal lazy Saturday morning routine. That is breakfast. Why do that? I usually have a nice big omelet with sausage and biscuits, but not today, for I am fasting. That's right, one day without eating. I will drink water and nothing else. This is no hunger strike to protest anything. It is not an attempt to know the pain of hunger. It is not an attempt to lose weight for wrestling. It is not anorexia. It is not Ramadan, or any other religious celebration. I am simply fasting for the sake of fasting. So far, it has not been very difficult. Of course, I did eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before going to bed at midnight. I will provide more updates later.
2:45 p.m.	I am still going strong although I am not really going anywhere. I sit at my desk, watch football, and work on the German version of my website. This is actually my second attempt to fast for a day. A few months ago, I tried on just a regular day, but with all of my classes, work and student government responsibilities, I underestimated the amount of energy I would need during the day. Thus when I tried to find another day to fast, I looked for a day when I wouldn't expend much energy. No work today, no jogging today, only sitting. Unfortunately, that is a little boring.
6:40 p.m.	Well, it is now dinnertime, and I am hungry, although not very hungry. I have not often felt that I need to fill a gnawing hole in my stomach, but I have been tempted to run into the kitchen and fix something to eat. I should be cooking now, and I feel a stronger urge to do the act than to quench the desire that the act would fulfill. Also, football has distracted me all afternoon, but now I must find a new distraction, but the choices on TV are slim. And I have that extra time I would be using to cook and eat.
11:40 p.m.	As time marches on towards midnight, the time when I will break my fast with my aforementioned usual Saturday breakfast draws near. A day without food is not all that difficult. Yes, I am hungry, but I rarely think about it. Even when I was not distracted by close football games, a rerun of The X-Files, old-school U2, and Melville's account of Stubb killing a whale, I did not think about food that often. My stomach made only one audible growl. I could probably keep going for another few hours without much troub-There goes my alarm. It's midnight and time to eat.
Epilogue	Fasting isn't all it's cracked up to be. I was expecting some kind of transcendent epiphany, but I didn't transcend anything. I just got hungry. I spent the entire day not doing anything so that I would not expend a lot of energy, but what I gained wasn't worth sacrificing an entire day. Of course, I just fasted. I did not devote the day to something to the extent that I ignored the basic desire of hunger. I devoted my day to ignoring that desire and looking for distractions. Unguided asceticism really isn't worth anything.

Forget the Fashion Police; I Need the Fashion FCC.

tonight at Wendy's, i saw this ten-year-old kid wearing a t-shirt from a Vietnamese restaurant with a big steaming bowl of phô' above "It's phô' king great."

Noise Polution

How on earth could I have been so unaware of the size of all female AC/DC tribute band genre?

Apparently AC/DShe was the first to take the stage in 1999. (Their lead guitarist goes by Agnes Young.)

However Hell's Belles may be the best, having been endorsed by Angus Young.

Plus there's Thund/Her/Struck and also Whole Lotta Rosies.

(I make no endorsement for any of these bands, as I have not seen or heard any of them.)