Oh, do I ever have something to declare!

It occured to me that there would be one difference between the 2002 and 2006 Olympics for Apolo Anton Ohno. Good thing for him that when he won a gold and a silver in Salt Lake in 2002 he would not have to pass through customs with his medals during his return home, unlike this year when he brings his gold and two bronze medals back from Italy. I don't know how much the medals are worth, but according to this page on the Customs and Border Patrol website says that "U.S. residents are normally entitled to a duty-free exemption of $800 on items accompanying them." It seems to me that a gold and two bronze Olympic medals would be worth more than $800, especially if you take into account the celebrity status of Ohno, which I assume would make it worth more than the bronze medal of that of Scott Baird, the alternate on the men's curling team. Maybe there is a duty exception for things like this. I hope so.

Winter Per Capita Medal Count

As I did for the 2004 Summer Olympics, I decided to look at the per capita medal count for the 2006 Winter Olympics. For population figures, I used those from my 2002 almanac.

It something of a down year for Norway with only two gold medals (Kjetil Andre Aamodt in the Men's Super G and Lars Bystoel in the Normal Hill) considering that in 2002 the Norwegians returned to Olso with 13 gold medals. Their total medal count may have declined by over 1.3 for each Norwegian, but they still managed to lead thw way with 4.22 medals per million people (mpmp). They finished sixth in the total count. This also represents nearly four winter medals for every one summer medal in 2004.

Second in per capita medals (and fourth in total medals) is Austria at 2.82 mpmp, and not surprisingly 14 of their 23 medals came in the Alpine skiing events.

Estonia only won 3 medals, but with less than 1.5 million people, it was good for third with 2.11 mpmp, and with them being all cross-country skiing gold medals (two for Kristina Smigun and one for Andrus Veerpalu) they led the way in gold medals per capita.

Only three other nations--Switzerland, Finland, and Sweden--finished with more than 1 mpmp.

Germany was first in total medals with 29, but at 0.35 mpmp that was good for only 13th in the per capita standings. The United States won a second-best 25 medals but was only 22nd in per capita with 0.09 mpmp.

Japan was 27th and last (at 0.008 mpmp) among the nations that won at least one medal, but that one medal was Shizuka Arakawa's gold in women's figure skating.

Why is it Ladies' Figure Skating, but Women's everything else in the Olympics? On the NBC site, every sport that I saw that people who weren't men competed in was listed as the Women's _____, with the exception of Ladies' Figure Skating. The website of the International Olympic Committee uses both "Ladies'" and "Women's" to refer the event that Japan's Shizuka Arakawa just won, although it seems that the official English name of the event is the Individual Women's. The only other reference to a "Ladies'" event that I found in my limited search of the IOC site was "There were two golf events in 1900 - one for gentlemen and one for ladies." Is there anything inherently unladylike about something like biathlon? I doubt Uschi Disl or Kati Wilhelm would think so.

C(urling)NBC

I've spent a great deal of the last week and half watching the Olympic bonspiel. This year curling has been aired on the USA network, often live at either 5:00 AM (all times EST) or 8:00 AM, in the morning, and then a taped delayed match at 5:00 PM on CNBC, with sporadic extra matches on MSNBC.

I think I saw some of every match the US played, and so I watched more CNBC than I have, well probably since the 2002 Olympics, when I first saw curling. According to Stefan Fatsis on All Things Considered yesterday, I am not alone in this. The television ratings for the 5:00 PM curling on CNBC have been seven times that of whatever CNBC normally shows at that time slot! Why on earth do they not show more curling on CNBC?

Twice during the last week I have turned on my TV with it still on CNBC later in the evening after the curling was over to see this show Mad Money, which has been bumped from its normal 6:00 PM time slot until later for the Olympics. I had heard of this show and its crazy host Jim Cramer but had never seen it. It is pretty odd, with the yelling and the slamming of buttons to make the appropriate sound effects and the shameless plugging of his book by his callers, but I think what really caught my attention what how dynamic the show was. He paces around behind his desk telling us to buy, sell, or hold stocks, but more interesting is how the camera is never still. I don't know whether it's steadycam or it's on a crane, but it floats around this bald guy opines on which restraunt chains are hot stocks with animated bulls running across the screen. I don't plan on watching any more of it, but I must give it kudos for is cinematography.