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Russia sticking their OARs in: Winter Olympics 2018

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    Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
    I am curious about how the Winter Olympics came to be and if there might not have been just a bit of a racist element behind it all. Or at least, nobody cared that they were creating a supposedly international event with sports only pursued in a small group of predominantly white, wealthy nations. Indeed, it appears that the whole thing might have just been a scheme to increase tourism in the alps.

    Then again, in those days - and now too, I suppose - the summer games were dominated by the rich countries (what were racistly referred to as “civilized” countries back then) and, in many cases, by rich individuals (euphemistically called amateurs) and that didn’t seem to bother the IOC.
    HP - in the aftermath of World War 1, a lot of people felt so strongly about the racist (also sexist and classist) nature of the Olympic Games that they started their own socialist alternative. I wrote a piece about it on Previous OTF, here (a shameless plug, sorry).

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      Nice!

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        Originally posted by Fussbudget View Post
        As per ursus's link, the point of A sizes is the constant ratio of height to width across all the sizes, and the doubling/halving to get from one standard size to the next one. It's very neat.
        I thought paper was just made on big rolls and then cut however. So just having every size have a simple 2:3 aspect ratio would seem easy.

        But I suppose it makes sense for the size and weight of boxes (or stacks) of cut paper to all add up in even increments.

        But this could be done in metric or English, couldn’t it? That article suggests that the A system started with a meter square and then derived everything smaller off that, whereas the US system started with 8.5” x 11” for reasons lost to time and then made everything larger *and* smaller off that. That seems really difficult, unless there wasn’t much demand for anything but 8.5x11.

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          Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
          If it were up to me, I'd create a new international standard halfway between the Euro/Olympic one and the NA/NHL width and see if that worked in the professional game. I believe Finland has some rinks like that, but I havent seen any games on them.
          Do you (or anyone else for that matter) happen to know which ones?

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            Originally posted by Muukalainen View Post
            Do you (or anyone else for that matter) happen to know which ones?
            No. Sorry. It’s just something I heard some announcers say in passing. I’ve also heard, from numerous announcers during Olympics and WJCs, that Finnish hockey development has, over the years, made a concentrated effort to teach players a style that can work in NA or Europe. And that is one reason why Finland routinely punches above its weight, both in terms of the success of individual players in the NHL and it’s international teams, even when playing in North America. I always root for Finland when the US is out of it.*

            And there are a number of Finnish players playing college hockey in the US without even having played junior hockey here first. For example, Penn State has Erik Autio from Espoo Blues and we’re going to get his brother too. Erik was not quite good enough to make the Finnish WJC team, and I doubt he’ll be much of a pro, but he’s a good two way defensemen at this level - moves the puck pretty well - and I’m sure playing college hockey while studying at a big American university is an appealing option for a lot of young people over there (just as it is here.)

            *Monty Python earworm.

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              Originally posted by Furtho View Post
              HP - in the aftermath of World War 1, a lot of people felt so strongly about the racist (also sexist and classist) nature of the Olympic Games that they started their own socialist alternative. I wrote a piece about it on Previous OTF, here (a shameless plug, sorry).
              Fantastic stuff. I had no idea. Sadly those pictures no longer show up.

              I think one of the things it shows is that it’s really hard to keep a nice egalitarian vibe going when one or more of the countries is supported by its government for political purposes. That’s inevitably going to lead to, at best, the athletes being professional. Professionalism in athletics is not the moral outrage the posh founders of the Olympics thought it was, but if the idea is to give ordinary working people an outlet for sport and fellowship, showing up with the Red Army team is kind of, um, unsporting, to say the least.

              And at worst, making sports a political tool leads to abuses of the athletes and widespread cheating, and when that means steroids it’s both.

              The US system is neither nor. In the old days, US athletes really were amateurs or certainly no more than semi-pro, but they were exploited by the blazers in their respective federations in ways that make the NCAA look beneficent - there’s that movie about Steve Prefontaine that makes this point very clearly. Relative to the eastern bloc athletes, they didn’t have the time or support to train full-time the way they’d need to to succeed.

              Many American fans and politicians have always wanted to see US Olympic victory as a triumph for America and capitalism and liberty and all of that, but there’s never been really any public money behind that.* Sure, a lot of our sports development is funded by public schools but they’re not part of a cohesive Olympic development program, and the overlap between sports played by high schools and sports in the Olympics isn’t that great anyway, so any success we have in something like figure skating is largely an accident, rather than the logical outcome of a well-organized National pyramid. There is also some military support for athletes, but that’s pretty eratic and doesn’t seem to add up to much.

              So American athletes are competing for the greater glory of Coke, Snickers, Home Depot, Oakley, Nike and, in the case of Michaela Schiffrin, Barella pasta, which I find amusing, because I doubt she eats it. Perhaps that’s a far more accurate reflection of how America really operates as a culture than if there were some kind of national lottery money scheme or whatever for athletes.

              American politicians and fans tend to treat American athletes the way the English press treats Andy Murray - when he wins he’s British, when he loses he’s Scottish. When Shaun White wins, he’s American, when he loses he’s a stoner from California.

              Very few of theses sports have any profile whatsoever outside the Olympics, so American fans and media just tend to rally around the winners and not know anything about the rest at all. It’s handy that way.



              * At the time, the 1980 Miracle on Ice was talked up as a great victory for Liberty over the filthy Commies, but history - at least for those of us who really care - see it mostly as a great victory not for America per se, but for US *college hockey* and American hockey overall. It was a flukey result, and some of those players were one-hit wonders - Eruzione and Jim Craig especially - but there were also some really good players on that team who went on to have good NHL careers. That victory woke a lot of NHL scouts in both the US and Canada to the potential of the talent pool in the US and US college hockey especially, which had generally been seen as third rate. (A lot of the dumber Canadian fans still think that.) And it gave a lot of American players and coaches more confidence. The golden generation that won the 1998 World Cup probably wouldn’t have happened if not for 1980.

              The 1960 gold medal deserves a greater place in US hockey lore, because to win that one, the US had to beat *Canada* and the USSR. (Edit: In Squaw Valley).
              Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 18-02-2018, 19:50.

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                Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                The 1960 gold medal deserves a greater place in US hockey lore, because to win that one, the US had to beat *Canada* and the USSR. And do it outside the US.
                I believe California is part of the USA

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                  Oh fuck, you’re right. Somehow I just got the idea in my head that 1960 was in Zurich. I don’t know why I thought that.

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                    Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                    No problem. We are on the same page now.

                    I don't know what A4 paper is, but oragami usually uses square paper, doesn't it?
                    Traditionally, yes, and the majority of models still do, but it's generally accepted that you can start with any uncut regular sided sheet nowadays, e.g this cuckoo clock starts from something like a 10x1 rectangle:




                    It's relatively trivial to fold a square (or rectangle) into the shape of another polygon - e.g you can create an A ratio from an American letter size with a couple of folds. Doing so would leave you with a lot of redundant paper in your model though, so most origamists are happy to skip that step.

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                      Originally posted by Ray de Galles View Post
                      As happy for Laura Deas holding on to Bronze as for Yarnold winning Gold.
                      Especially now I've belatedly discovered she's Welsh.

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                        Originally posted by SouthdownRebel View Post
                        The BBC Sport app is promoting its video from yesterday of its own commentators behaving unprofessionally during the Skelton final (labelled “Commentary Box Chaos”) ahead of stories about the actual athletes that were published this morning. It’s this kind of thing that really puts me off watching any international sport, but Olympic sports above all. Which is a shame, but presumably I’m in a minority and would be seen by most as an unpatriotic miserable bastard for preferring a bit of old-school decorum.
                        I love Olympic sport and international sport in general but I have deliberately avoided that clip precisely for the reasons you describe. Some moron on another forum stated it was the "Highlight of the Winter Olympics so far". Not the British medals, the commentators making twats of themselves afterwards, I despair.

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                          Shared gold medals in the two-man bobsleigh, as Canada and Germany record the same time (down to the hundreths of a second) after four runs.

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                            The GB women beat the Swiss in curling. Though Japan beat Sweden, which is not a result they would have wanted. Two games left, win both and they are into the semi-finals. Unfortunately, those two games are against the Canadians and the Japanese.

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                              Women's Ice Hockey with the eternal final as both the US and Canada win their semi-finals 5-0

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                                Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                Shared gold medals in the two-man bobsleigh, as Canada and Germany record the same time (down to the hundreths of a second) after four runs
                                'Dead-heated'? Thanks, BBC.

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                                  http://www.sportingnews.com/athletic...r1foctam5k0vby

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                                    I am loving the Winter Olympics. That is all.

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                                      Originally posted by Ray de Galles View Post
                                      I love Olympic sport and international sport in general but I have deliberately avoided that clip precisely for the reasons you describe. Some moron on another forum stated it was the "Highlight of the Winter Olympics so far". Not the British medals, the commentators making twats of themselves afterwards, I despair.
                                      The commentary highlight of the games for me so far was the non-NBC feed of the women's GS. I think this is the official Olympic feed, and the commentators are trying to make small talk to find anything to say about the later competitors who're going to do nothing of note: "Well, she's been runner up twice in the Uruguayan nationals and has competed in four World Cup events with a best finish of 26th..."

                                      They were doing the same about our Czech snowboarder, and then began to go increasingly ballistic. It was fantastic because they're basically impartial but got insanely excited. And immediately after she finished, and won, the commentators had to go back to their mundanity about whoever skier number 27 was.

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                                        I quite like the official (OBS) feed, it's 95% of our coverage in NZ because Kiwi athletes aren't involved in most events. The voices are anonymous, as the anchors just say "and now the bobsleigh" without any matey link to the commentators. Then, as SB says, they basically just read out their prepared press pack ("he studies physiotherapy, his hero is Franz Klammer", etc) which is dull but neutral. I don't think I'd want all sport to be covered like that, but it's a nice break from jingoism.

                                        There's sometimes an amusing Best in Show vibe to it, especially when the commentators are of different nationalities. The Tony Gubba-ish all-purpose waffler says "she's going to want to win this one!" while the expert tries to explain the technical side.

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                                          Magnificent ice dance finale. I was jumping on the Shibutani bandwagon but jumped off again when they chose Coldplay.

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                                            It's all over for Bambi, mercifully.
                                            Last edited by Mumpo; 20-02-2018, 10:30.

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                                              I don't want to be as jingoistic as some of those making uneducated comments on Twitter but it does seem extremely harsh that Christie has been DQ'd again! I don't profess to be an expert by any stretch of the imagination but if someone like Wilf O'Reilly can't understand the decision it does kind of make a mockery of the sport

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                                                She's talking to Eurosport now.

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                                                  'I don't know why I've been given the yellow card. My belief is that they didn't think I was safe to carry on... I have total respect for the referees'

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                                                    You want brutal DQs? Watch race walking.

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