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August 16, 2012
kosmo - See all 763 of my articles
Crunchy doesn’t have an article today. She does, however, have a new baby boy. He was born yesterday morning. That’s 4 little boys in her house now …
I don’t feel like writing an article about one particular thought this week, so I’ll bounce around a bit.
Olympics
I didn’t get the chance to watch nearly as much of the Olympics as I would have like. I did make an effort to keep up on what was going on, though.
My personal highlight was Jake Varner’s wrestling gold medal. Jake and I share an alma mater – Iowa State University. I’m very proud to have Varner add his name to a collection of Iowa State wrestlers who have gone on to win gold – including living legends Dan Gable and Cael Sanderson.
London organizer Sebastian Coe caught some flak for failing to state that Michael Phelps was the greatest Olympian ever. While Phelps is definitely one of the greatest ever, Coe was caught in the difficult position of trying to compare athletes from different sports. Swimming (and track) afford an athlete more opportunities to medal. Let’s take boxing, for example. If a boxer were to match Phelps’s record of 22 medal, it would require medals in 22 consecutive Olympic games, spanning 84 years. While in raw numbers, this would simply match Phelps, in reality it would be a far more impressive feat. If we only look at raw medal counts, this would mean that only athletes from a handful of sports could ever make the claim to be “great” Olympians. It’s simply not feasible for boxers, wrestlers, basketball players, or hockey players to win 10+ medals.
Melky
Melky Cabrera was one of the feel good stories on 2012. He was hitting .346 for the year and was the All Star game MVP. After years of struggling, Cabrera was putting up good seasons in back to back year and appeared to be turning into a very good major league player. The dream season came to a crashing halt Wednesday, when Cabrera was suspended 50 games for using testosterone. The loss of Cabrera puts the playoff chances of the Giants in serious doubt.
Paul Ryan
Mitt Romney selected Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. Expect the budget to become a major issue in debates. Ryan’s budget plan was the one the Republican congress pitted against Obama’sd budget.
Aside from a stint as driver of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, Ryan has worked in the political arena his entire career.
What are you watching?
I managed to get a chance to see Avatar this week. I found the story very enjoyable. While I usually don’t dig too hard to find a deeper meaning in a movie (I prefer to simply be entertained), it’s pretty hard to misss the point of Avatar. It’s a sci-fi movie, but also has an interesting love story. I definitely recommend it.
