I've read some comments about Matthew Mitcham's gold medal. There's been complaints that NBC did not choose to mention Mitcham's orientation in the broadcast. They did say that he had quit diving for a while due to depression.
Many people say what does his sexual orientation have to do with his diving as justification for not mentioning it. However, it seems obvious many things are mentioned that have very little to do with athletic prowess. The most obvious, and it's obvious it's simply organized this way, is the nationality of the athlete. Does Bolt being Jamaican have anything to do with his running? What about Phelps being American? Or that he's from Baltimore? Or that his mother is divorced? Or that he had ADD as a kid?
To be fair, Mitcham may not have been the favorite, but there's one undeniable fact. With over 11,000 athletes, he was the only out male, and one of ten gay athletes (the rest were women). Statistics would say that there are far more gay athletes competing in the Olympics, and yet no one is willing to admit it out of fear, either fear because their home country is too repressive, or at the very least, fear that they will lose endorsement money.
This is still a real fact of life. Martina Navratilova, perhaps the most famous of gay athletes, had a tough time getting endorsements after she admitted she was gay. Greg Louganis, who only came out after he retired, had similar issues, especially considering how decorated he was as a diver.
It might be fair to point out that Mitcham is Australian, and had he been American, there would have been more press about it. I suspect that is true indeed. Then, he would have announced he was out in the US. I think it was occasionally mentioned that Rudy Galindo was an out gay male figure skater.
It's funny because I suspect people think that one of David Boudia or Thomas Finchum or both American divers were gay, but again, they've never mentioned it.
The point is that people try to trivialize these matters saying it has nothing to do with athletics, but if that's the case, then why bother talking about girlfriends and spouses during the Olympics? What do they have to do with anything? They have to do with the emotional support of the athlete.
Mitcham credits many people with helping him get through a difficult time in his life, including his partner, Lachlan Fletcher. They needed sponsors to help fly both his mother (his mum) and his partner out to the Olympics, and they needed to get him there as an assistant of sorts. At the very least, it was mentioned in Australian press, so rare it is for a diver to get gold in Australia.
Indeed, Mitcham's past is fascinating outside his orientation. In particular, he used to be compete in trampoline before he was apparently discovered by an Australian diving coach of Chinese origin. (Coincidentally, trampoline is now an Olympic event). Matthew competed in both as a teen before focusing on diving.
There was a focus on Usain Bolt from Jamaica. However, the 100m and 200m is something Americans have traditionally done well and so there's interest in watching a Jamaican do well. The kind of exuberance that Bolt showed is not so different from what an American might do either, and with plenty of Jamaicans living in the US, it's perhaps not surprising that Americans might adopt Bolt as one of their own.
Contrast this with the Kenyan and the Ethiopian and Moroccan trying to win the marathon. The marathon is not typically filled with name American athletes, who often fare poorly at the longer distances. Americans, even African Americans, don't relate well to Africans from Africa, probably imagining them to be some weird running freak that speaks in clicks. Usain, on the other hand, seems like a nice T.O., a bit of a showboat.
This goes to show that a guy like Mitcham can be appreciated, given how much time NBC spent on Boudia and Finchum who both had relatively poor Olympics for the Americans. However, to celebrate Mitcham too much would be to delve into topics that NBC didn't feel comfortable dealing with.
And so it's sad that they had to ignore something and that there are people who back this decision up.
Mitcham's orientation was worth mentioning because so few other athletes would step up and do the same, and to at least acknowledge this would go a little way to saying that this social problem should be a thing of the past.
One of the highlights of the Chinese Olympics was architectural. The "water cube" is basically built with an exo-skeleton that looks like honeycombs or molecular shapes. A bit question was what to put inside the exo-skeleton. Quickly ruled out was glass, which was simply too heavy.
The answer was ETFE, a plastic using technology based on teflon. This plastic is very thin, as thin as plastic that you might put photos in. Yet, it is also strong. There were two big fears: fire and earthquake. Turns out ETFE doesn't burn, it melts. You can put a blowtorch to it, and it begins to drip. Remove the blowtorch, and it stops melting. Thus, you wouldn't see the structure catch fire.
The other fear was earthquake, and they had to show that the structure could withstand that.
The Chinese looked to an Australian firm to help design the structure, while they built it.
The Chinese not only wanted to showcase their athletes but the architectural marvels. To be fair, they did it at a hefty price, but price seemed no object.
OK, so someone is going to win gold, right? Why pick Matthew Mitcham. He's not American. He's Australian.
The world of athletics, despite the closeness of competitors, is still rather homophobic. Out of the 11,028 competitors only 10 are out, and of those, only 1 is male. That male, as you might have guessed, is Matthew Mitcham.
There has been, for example, no out active male basketball, football, or baseball player. There are no out male tennis players that I know of. There have been several women: Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, Conchita Martinez, Gigi Fernandez, and Amelie Mauresmo. Still, there are likely many others that haven't come out.
Most people are scared of what happens to their advertising opportunities if they come out.
Although this is likely not to make huge news, the way Michael Phelps made news, the way Usain Bolt made news, the way the "Redeem Team" made news, such a trait, so incidental to the competition, but so fundamental to who Mitcham is should serve notice that it's OK to be out.
The Olympics claims to be the ideal of competition, but it should also allow competitors the freedom to be who they are too.
Sports Illustrated decided to reproduce a famous photo of Mark Spitz when he won 7 gold medals back in 1972. Spitz had a prototypical American hunk look. That is, he looked like Tom Selleck or Burt Reynolds back when a moustache meant virility rather than its modern perception as something out of an old porn movie, which now goes by the moniker, pornstache.
The picture has Phelps wearing all 8 medals giving a toothy grin, and people then realize, athletes, as much as their bodies reflect their extreme athletic prowess, may or may not be attractive in traditional poses. Phelps has been accused of being dorky in that photo, he does look pretty dorky.
At times, Phelps can look rather striking, mostly when he is looking intense in the pool, rather than when he's all smiles.
But the point is this, and it's interesting to point out.
Why do we care?
To be fair, the old adage, sex sells, works. It doesn't hurt that fit athletes are often attractive. Sure, things can compensate. Usain Bolt isn't particularly handsome, nor is he particularly ugly. He cuts a striking figure because he's tall and the guy showboats. He really enjoys his wins, and therefore, we enjoy his wins.
Women have a higher standard to achieve. Sometimes, women's good looks are enough to be the difference. A sexy javelin player might be the Anna Kournikova of her field, unable to win the big medals, but easy on the eyes.
Perhaps the commentary on how good Phelps looks is a matter of what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Women have been scrutinized for their looks for so long, so maybe a guy, as accomplished as Phelps was during this year's Olympics, has critical eyes that eye his physique, and the odd absence of swim trunks as if the photo was taken while he was in the buff.
We celebrate the accomplishments of athletes, but in the end, one reason they are so loved, beyond their physical prowess is their physical appearances. Due to rigorous training, outside of powerlifters and pre-teens, athletes are thin, strong, and yes, even attractive, even amongst themselves (thus, the need for prodigious condoms for the athletes discrete non-competitive activities).
The reason sports needs to be live is the thrill of the unknown. Unfortunately, with the Olympics all the way around the world, many events that are being played out in China during the evening are happening in the morning in the US, when most fans are at work. NBC tries to hide this, even though, with the ubiquity of web news, you can find results as fast as they come available.
For many hours, sports websites said Usain Bolt of Jamaica had not only pulled off the rare 100m-200m double, winning both events, but did so both in world record time. The last time an athlete won both events was Carl Lewis in 1984. Bolt broke Michael Johnson's record in the 200m from 1996 which he ran in 19.32. Bolt ran it in 19.30 seconds.
Johnson ran then 200m and 400m, so the 200m is the common event between Johnson and Bolt. Johnson had not expected Bolt to run so fast. Unlike his grandstanding in the 100m, Bolt took this event seriously realizing only his fastest run would break the world record.
To keep the thrill for those who had otherwise managed to avoid the Internet, NBC did not refer to the race in the past tense until it was over.
NBC had tried to use its muscle to move events like swimming to the mornings so it could show those events live, at least on the east coast. There's a sense NBC delays the games even more for viewers throughout the US.
Although it lacks honesty, it does preserve some sense of surprise, so I'm not entirely upset that it happens.
I'm watching USA network which is covering tennis. They are one of like five networks covering the Olympics including CNBC, MSNBC, the Oxygen network, and NBC itself. They re-televised the call for the 4 by 100 medley relay. What you see is that, after the third leg, the Americans are just ahead of the Japanese, with the Australians behind them, but then the Japanese guy is just fading, especially on the back half. The Japanese guy is, for about the first 25 m, ahead of Australia, but at 50m, he's in third, and is fading towards fourth at the end.
So the most successful group of four would have been Peirsol for backstroke, Kitajima in breaststroke, Phelps in the butterfly, and finally Eamon Sullivan in freestyle. This would have maybe cut the total time by a second overall.
Michael Phelps is in his second Olympics. This is the time that people pay attention to sports like swimming and gymnastics and all sorts of other sports they would otherwise not pay attention too in the intervening four years.
People in this area pay some attention to Phelps because he's a Baltimore boy, and so his name has had some resonance, even before his success in the previous Olympics. Indeed, his name was more popular than his face. For a long time, I had no idea what he looked like.
Phelps is going for a Mark Spitz like record of some 8 gold medals. He's already won one gold medal in the 400 individual medley.
What's unknown to most people, me included, is the kind of person he is. Turns out, like many an American, he is the son of divorced parents when he was 9 years old. His mother is a principal at a middle school.
But it's difficult to determine what drives an individual. This is not Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan, where fans follow his every accomplishment. They only pay attention at the Olympics, and Phelps gears himself to perform at his absolute best during the Olympics, as do many other swimmers.
While people discuss the lives of Brett Favre to death (and really, only his professional life), there's little known (to me) about one of the most accomplished American swimmer ever.
Admittedly, there are so many people out there, and we can hardly know them all, so why should Phelps be any different from anyone else. Why should we spend any more time figuring out who Phelps is? Perhaps like anything else, the answer is, why not?
Of course, the people who telecast the Olympics realize the games are for casual observers, and do as much to promote personalities as possible, realizing you have neither the time or inclination to do the research yourself, and then hope you have a long memory and remember them the next time the Olympics run.
Thus, this is Phelps's second Olympics at 23, and he was merely 19 the previous time in Athens. He could have an outside shot of competing at 27. I don't following swimming enough to know how long careers last (the odd exception is Dara Torres, who at 41, is swimming as fast as she ever has).
Three opinions on theorems
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1. Think of theorem statements like an API. Some people feel intimidated by
the prospect of putting a “theorem” into their papers. They feel that their
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