The difference between men and women

"The gender gap in athletic performance, as shown in records from Olympic competition, has remained stable since 1983. The mean difference has been about 10 percent between men and women for all events. The mean gap is 10.7 percent for running, 8.9 percent for swimming and 17.5 percent for jumping. When performances improve, the improvements are proportional for each gender." 

A well trained, in shape, female athlete can out perform a male non-athlete. Female equestrians can compete on a par with males because of their physical balance and concentration.

 
This article will probably be taken down as "hate research," (2018), so read it while it's available.

https://www.sportsrec.com/6580144/how-do-men-and-women-differ-athletically

The memory of the media

                    

Perhaps not many noticed (it seems a record low are watching), but NBC in the Sochi opening glossed over the 70 years of hell of the USSR, as a "pivotal experiment." 62 million of their citizens were killed by the government in that "experiment?" Want fairness? No one was missed. Young, old, male, female, sick, healthy, all sorts of ethnic groups as well as Russians, rich, poor, powerful, weak, Christians, Jews and Muslims. They were equal opportunity monsters. If this was an experiment, the U.S. didn't learn the lesson if such a stupid statement could be made to please the left.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.CHAP.1.HTM

http://washingtonexaminer.com/soviet-hammer-and-sickle-symbols-featured-at-sochi-olympic-opening-ceremonies-in-russia/article/2543661

Frozen track and swimming pools

When Leno asked if such laws [about homosexuality] would impact the upcoming Winter Olympics, Obama said he felt Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia "have a big stake in making sure the Olympics work, and I think they understand that for most of the countries that participate in the Olympics, we won't tolerate gays and lesbians being treated differently."

"They’re athletes, they’re there to compete," Obama said. "And if Russia wants to uphold the Olympic spirit, then every judgment should be made on the track, or in the swimming pool, or on the balance beam, and people’s sexual orientation shouldn’t have anything to do with it."

The Winter Olympics, it goes without saying, will not have events on the track, in the swimming pool, or on the balance beam.

 http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Sports/2013/08/06/Obama-Confuses-Sochi-Olympics-for-Summer-Olympics

Richmond Oval Skating Complex in Vancouver

A lovely building. With some interesting features.

"Each ribbed panel is clad in standard 2x4 plywood, milled from trees reclaimed from the forest floor—victims of the insidious pine beetle that decimated much of the local tree stock. There are nearly 1 million board feet of this wood—tinged slightly blue as a result of the infestation—in the roof structure. The 2x4s are staggered, and the resulting openings (which look like linear perforations) expose acoustical material to help dampen sound in the arena."

The site I'm checking says the USA has 32 medals, gold 8, silver 12, bronze 12. After the Olympics this building will be used as a community center with room for basketball, badminton, and iceskating. The architectural firm, Cannon Design, will begin the retrofit process after the Olympic crowds leave.

China in 1925

This summer at Lakeside I heard an excellent sports and religion lecture on the life of Eric Liddell (Chariots of Fire), who was born in China, educated in Scotland where he achieved Olympic fame, and who died in China in 1945 in a Japanese prison camp during WWII. This week I've been reading "Eric Liddell; something greater than gold" by Janet and Geoff Benge, part of a very well written series for middle school. I thought their brief summary of the China he returned to in 1925 was one of the better ones I've read. And since China now owns us (our debt) and their national memory may be better than ours, maybe we need a refresher.

"Eric's father had written that there were basically three groups involved in the struggle. There were the local warlords, the Nationalists, or the Kuomintang, as they called themselves, and a new group, the Communists, who patterned themselves after the Bolsheviks, who had seized power in Russia and transformed that country into the Soviet Union. The Kuomintang was the largest and most powerful group and found most of its support in the cities. It was also recognized as the rightful government of China, though it by no means controlled the country. The Communists were a small but growing group, and most of their support came from the rural areas in the south of China.

As these different factions fought for control in various regions, it was not uncommon for some villages to change hands between a warlord, the Communists, and the Nationalists five or six times a year. Each time an army passed through a village, the village's occupants had their homes robbed and their food supplies stolen. When an army marched through the countryside, it would steal crops from the field and trample those not ready to harvest so that the other groups couldn't get their hands on them. This in turn had led to famine.

Apart from the fighting itself, China's other enemy was foreign influence. The people of China had been humiliated by the British during the First Opium War of 1839-42. China had many goods that Great Britain wanted to trade for, but the Chinese wanted nothing except silver from the British in return. When the British tried to force opium on the Chinese instead of silver as payment for the goods they wanted, the emperor had refused. He ordered all opium destroyed. This in turn angered the British, who began a war with China. The British easily won, and China was forced to sign a treaty to end the war. Not only did the treaty allow the British to import opium into China, but it also opened up a number of coastal cities where foreigners could live and trade. The treaty left the Chinese people feeling weak, powerless, and very angry.

Once China had been weakened, its neighbor, Japan, saw a great opportunity to expand. In the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, China had lost control of Taiwan completely as well as most of its influence over the Korean Peninsula.

In 1914, three years after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, WWI began in Europe. China eventually sided with the Allies (Great Britain, France and Russia) against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In joining with the Allies, China had hoped to be taken seriously as a nation and gain some respect as a country when the war was over. However, things did not work out that way.

At the Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended WWI, the Allies completely ignored China's demand that in return for fighting in the war, foreign powers should pull out of the country and leave China to govern herself.

The people of China were furious at this result. They felt they had been betrayed by the Allies. This in turn, led to even more bitterness towards foreigners than had existed before the war. To the Chinese, foreigners along with their ways of doing things were symbols of China's humiliation.

It was to this China that Eric Liddell, now 23, would be returning. . . "

And as always, because I'm a librarian, I remind you that to the victor belongs the archives.

Ghosts at the Olympics

As fabulous as the Olympics were--the opening and closing spectaculars especially--I couldn't help but feel the death. The death of millions and millions of Chinese citizens by government slaughter, starvation, relocation and reeducation and untold millions more through abortion and infanticide (family planning). In the 20th century, no government was responsible for more deaths than Communist China and its Mao led hysteria. But in this country we fell for a lot of the same nonsense and misinformation. Remember Paul Ehrlich?

In 1967, Stanford entomologist Paul Ehrlich began a magazine article by writing that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over.” He predicted that “in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now” to feed them. His article eventually became a book called The Population Explosion, one of the most influential books of the last 40 years.

None of Ehrlich’s dire predictions came true. People did die, but they died as a result of population-control efforts that were spurred by Ehrlich’s imaginary “population explosion.”

In the face of such a so-called “threat,” human dignity gave way. If people did not “voluntarily” limit family size, then coercion and deception stepped in. In India, for example, millions of men and women were sterilized against their will.

This story is told in a new book, Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits, by Steven Mosher. Read review at Chuck Colson’s column.

And so millions more will die as we rush head long into our anthropogenic global warming hysteria to add to the millions killed with the DDT ban brought on by Rachel Carson's book.

Golden boy

You might think ADHD kids can't focus, but that's not necessarily so. Some focus almost exclusively on one particular thing to the detriment of social skills or academic learning. Michael Phelps, according to his mother, has ADHD and as a child was medicated. And this is just a guess, but once she found that swimming could grab his attention, and helped him channel that energy, they were off to the Olympics. Having exceptionally long arms and being very tall with big feet, probably didn't hurt. With 13 gold medals, he's won more gold than any athlete in Olympics history.

I watched an interview with her this morning, and she still maintains a web site for parents of ADHD children. I'm against medicating kids--Thomas Edison was ADHD, too--thank goodness no one medicated him. Maybe Mom or the teacher just need to take something. Michael's mother says he was diagnosed at 9 and went off medication at 11, and that he didn't use it in the summer or on week-ends. I'm not a doctor, but most medications need to be taken consistently. If they noticed any improvement in his behavior, I'm guessing it was the placebo effect. But the medication gurus are pushing their stimulants based on the Phelps case in their publications. Unfortunate.