As we near yet another Olympics, the old debate about how to rank Olympic Medals is likely to come up once again. I’ve written about it in 2008 and 2010, so probably best to do an update as we kick off the London Olympics in 2012.
Under the Olympic Charter, there is no “official” list of medals by countries. It is forbidden:
The IOC and the OCOG shall not draw up any global ranking per country. A roll of honour bearing the names of medal winners and those awarded diplomas in each event shall be established by the OCOG and the names of the medal winners shall be featured prominently and be on permanent display in the main stadium.Since the games in Australia however, the press office started to issue “advisories” showing how nations were doing, and in these advisories the rankings were by the number of Gold medals first, followed by Silver, then by Bronze the so-called ‘Gold First’ standard. The United States media, and their counterparts in Canada, have consistently ranked medals in a different manner, the so called ‘Total Medals’ standard. In 2008, this led to a ‘split’ where the world’s media declared China the “Winner” of the 2008 games as they had the most Golds, but the US media also felt the US did the best as they had the most “total medals”. However, in 2010, Canada had the most Golds, followed by Germany, then the United States, which also had the most medals. This confused many in the European press as the official Olympic tally from the Vancouver Press office was listing in the ‘Total Medals’ format which showed Canada not have the best record. At the close of the 2008 Olympics, IOC President Jacque Rogge said that the IOC had no position on which table is better.
“China has won the most gold medals and the United States of America won the most total,” International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said during a news conference Sunday. “I believe each country will highlight what suits it best. One country will say, ‘Gold medals.’ The other country will say, ‘The total tally counts.’ We take no position on that.”So as we move into the London Olympics, I found it interesting to see the official ‘medal table’ on their website goes both ways. Those who want the Gold first standard can click the sort button by Golds, but those who prefer the Total medals count can sort by the totals. We won’t likely see a determination as to what is better / worse in this Olympiad, but more and more voices are starting to complain the emphasis on “Gold” is neglecting the development of some athletes and sports in countries with limited resources to put forward for their Olympic team. Whether we see a further discussion about this after the Olympics remains to be seen. Maybe I’ll do another post when we get to 2014. ]]>
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[caption id="attachment_3841" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Follow this line to outer space."]
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A classic scene from the must see movie 
comes at the beginning when the townspeople of tiny Coalwood, West Virginia step outside on the night Sputnik is flying by, looking up on the dark sky until they can see the fast moving speck of light heading across the night sky. With this observation (and hundreds if not thousands of others around the country) the space program was launched. I myself remember seeing the moon during the days of the Apollo program and saying to myself “Mission Control is in the moon”, my five-year-old self not knowing any better (and my older self much more disappointed to discover we did not already occupy the Moon). Does a child who has never seen the moon wonder similar thoughts? I wonder if the lack of seeing the stars will keep my sons from dreaming of visiting them one day. I wonder if the lack of stars present to most Americans as we see the new urbanization and suburbanization off the farms has started to diminish our support for sending people up into space. How do you drum up support to send probes or people to someplace most people cannot even see?
Beyond the technical implications of sending rockets into space, the other importance of a clear night sky is that there is something about the unpolluted night sky that actually helps ground a person a bit better. While I’ve spoken of looking up and dreaming of the stars and places yet unseen, there is also a sort of a 
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As far as the acting goes, basically the first half of the movie was Iron Man, and the second half was the Hulk. While the story is being set up you find yourself basically waiting for the next Tony Stark quip and witty sayings while everyone else does their superhero bits, some of which came across as a bit wooden. But the second half, or more appropriately, the finale, is really all Hulk. The Hulk’s simple comic touches outdoes the cracking witticisms of Robert Downey Junior, and when the Hulk meets Loki “monologuing” it was definitely the high point of the film. From taking out the giant armored turtlefish (yea, you’ll see) to simply wiping the floor with Loki, the Hulk simply stole the show.
If I had to nitpick, I guess I would quote Loki when he talks about people being ants and he the boot. In all too many alien invasion movies we see the aliens come down and due combat with the Earth “one on one”. If you are a superior civilization with advanced technology, the last thing you are going to do is go around trying to kill each and every person in each and every corner of the planet. No, you’re going to nuke the place from above and then clean up after the smell is gone (i.e. just like you do with bug spray and bugs). I’d also have to say the 3D is pointless. I found myself barely noticing it when it was taking place, and wishing it was more prevelant in other scenes. I mean, if you are going to show Scarlett Johansson’s curves in spandex, why can’t that be in 3D?
Anyway, this isn’t going to have you talking to your friends about the meaning of life, but if you are sitting around this weekend and want a good “fun” movie that your geek friends think is “awesome” and that you’ll probably enjoy while eating some popcorn, you won’t go wrong this film.
p.s. Thanks to the folks at 
I’d like to say that I “discovered” 
to 
which even won an Oscar a few years back. But like the first drops of rain that has you questioning “is it raining” my experience with their films has been on the periphery, rather than a torrential soaking.
But now that I have kids the excuses have come to an end.
About a month ago I made the kids sit through “Arrietty” or 
as it was called in the US. We followed that up this week with 
which has been on basically daily rotation with the boys. Watching the giant forest spirit Totoro bounce and pounce and smile has the kids humming along the theme song, even though the lyrics are in Japanese. We followed up with 
and I watched “Spirited Away” the other night while nursing them through some colds (thank god for the iPhone). The kids watched a bit of 
but it was in Japanese so they tired quickly from the subtitles.
Ghibli is called the “Disney of Japan” but that’s really a misnomer. The cartoons are far more complex than your standard good vs. evil with an odd speaking sidekick that passes for Disney animation today. Often told from the perspective of a young female lead (as compared to the more 
There is also quite a bit about a casual, rural lifestyle that comes out in several of these films. The sounds of the crickets and grasshoppers and the rainbow of fresh flowers and plants are common elements in many of these films, harkening to perhaps a more simple way of living through the more complex reality that we now face. I think one regret about Hong Kong is that my boys have not played in the mud frequently enough, worried as we are about the polluted air or dengue-fever dripping mosquitoes.
You’d think PIXAR and Ghibli would be almost opposed to each other, but apparently there is a great deal of mutual respect between the two. Miyazaki has visited the PIXAR offices where he found all sorts of stuffed animals and other hints of Ghibli merchandise strewn about, and Pixar employees would often get together to watch these films, even giving Totoro a small cameo appearance in Toy Story 3 (I guess I should mention that Disney has the rights to distribute Studio Ghibli movies in the USA).
But as I sat googling more information about the films and whatnot, I found myself frequently pulled back to Youtube for musical clips from the different films. The soundtracks of some of these films has been all I’ve listened to this week, and got me to realize that I’ve been away from classical (even the neoclassical music) a bit too long. Such is the life of an uncultured slob.
Most of the works are done by a Japanese composer named 
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