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Sport vs. Art

This is a list of all the Summer Olympic Sports

Archery, Athletics(or track and field), Badminton, Baseball, Basketball, Beach Volleyball, Boxing, Canoe/Kayak Flatwater,Canoe/Kayak Slalom, Cycling BMX, Cycling Mountain Bike, Cycling Road, Cycling Track, Diving, Equestrian, Fencing, Football, Gymnastics Artistic, Gymnastics Rhythmic, Trampoline, Handball, Hockey, Judo, Modern Pentathlon, Rowing, Sailing, Shooting, Softball, Swimming, Synchronized Swimming, Table, Tennis, Taekwondo, Tennis, Triathlon, Volleyball, Water Polo, Weightlifting, Wrestling

Some of these sports have judges, determining which participant did the event better, a subjective event one could say. Sports in my mind are not subjective. Well, they are subjective in that some people enjoy some sports and not other. Some people enjoy them not at all and are rather proud of that fact (like that mother on Mommy Swap or whatever it’s called. Man, was she a nut case.)

Sports are objective – who crosses the line first, who gets the ball from A to B more times, how much did this person lift. It’s not about how, but about what. I would remove – Synchronized Swimming, diving and all forms of gymnastics. This not to say that those events are not hard. They are quite hard. What those gymnasts can do is #$#@! amazing. But just because it is physical and hard does not make it a sport. I would say gymnastics and synchronized swimming are really physically challenging art forms.

Giving birth is really hard to do, why not make that a sport? Making a nice soufflé is really hard also. Why not have cooking in the Olympics? There could be a panel of judges who then taste the soufflé and give the cook points for style, presentation and taste. They could even have cook offs with special ingredients. Oh wait, that sounds like Iron Chef.

How about writing, poetry or otherwise in the Olympics?

People get 15 minutes to write something. Give them a topic and off they go. At the end, judges read it and give a grade, I mean a score. Points for difficulty of topic and points for execution.

Ridiculous, if you ask me if cooking or writing made it into the Olympics. Those are clearly not sports. But still hard to do. So is it amount of calories burned that are a requirement for an event to be considered a sport? I’m sure that training for diving takes a lot of calories, but each dive itself can’t burn many calories to do. So if it is caloric output, I vote for sumo squats.

So is it physical difficulty that makes an event a sport? Caloric output? What?

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It’s been a while

Back home for a spell.

Getting back into the rhythm of home (married!) life. So far not so different. Except for the ring finger on my left hand is a little heavier. But it doesn’t really fit. When the ring was purchased it fit fine. My ring finger was still slightly swollen due to a torn ligament or tendon. It had been that way for a long time so I thought it was thicker permanently. Now that I have been eating Aleve like it’s candy due to my knee, my finger is back to normal. Go figure.

Anyways, go see the film Tell No One. Good stuff.

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Blue Tooth

Yesterday*, or was it the day before?, K and I went to the AT&T store near us to get a hands free device to comply with the law that will be coming into effect July 1st. Being the law abiding citizens that we are, we want to comply. So we purchased two of those clip on blue tooth hand free gizmos. Went home charged it up, synced it with the phone. Carried it around with me. After returning home, I promptly put it back in the box and returned both the devices today.

Returning them in SF cost me 20 cents as the sales tax is greater in Oakland than in SF by .25% Go figure. Maybe lower taxes really do stimulate the economy. Ha ha ha.

I must say those blue tooth things are lame…one more thing to keep track of, one more thing to charge, one more thing to lose and have to buy again. And I question the findings that people who talk on phones are as bad as drunk drivers. I mean, will the hands-free devices enable people to drive better? They will still be engrossed in a conversation with someone who is in another location. And as for the argument that hands-free will prevent people from looking at their phones and pushing buttons while they drive…the radio!! Hello, who doesn’t look at the radio while driving or the A/C, pushing buttons and not paying attention to the road.

I think it’s just a scam foisted upon us by phone company lobbyists so that we have to buy more s#$t.

Reminds me of the switch to digital TV broadcasting.

“What is the TV Converter Box Coupon Program?Congress created the TV Converter Box Coupon Program for households wishing to keep using their analog TV sets after February 17, 2009. The Program allows U.S. households to obtain up to two coupons, each worth $40, that can be applied toward the cost of eligible converter boxes.“

Why are we wasting tax payer money on coupons for people to convert their TVs? TV is not a right, it is a privilege. Maybe if people watched fewer hours of TV, they wouldn’t be so fat. Less of a drain on health care.
I guess what it comes down to is that I do not want to have my tax dollars going to coupons so people can buy TVs.

*if there is a yesterday, is there a noterday?

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Is McCain trustworthy?

Can John McCain be trusted to be in charge of the nation’s checkbook? I say he is not to be trusted with money. His own wife of 28 years does not trust him with money.

from Wikipedia – “they made a prenuptial agreement that kept most of her family’s assets under her name; they would always keep their finances apart and file separate income tax returns.”

So if John McCain is not trusted by his own wife with her money (estimated to be $100 million), can the American people trust him with their money ( estimated to be a lot more than $100 million)?

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The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways

Could this be the work of Satan, or the Lord’s punishment for homosexuality? Well, since no one died, maybe just punishment for a fleeting homosexual fantasy. Or maybe someone in the van said abortion. Who knows? Lord knows!

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A mishap involving a church van during rush hour on Friday evening injured five people and shut down the highway.The wreck happened between Taylorsville Road and Interstate 64. Sources told NewsChannel 32 one of the van’s tires had blown.The 15-passenger van was from the South Jefferson Christian Church in Louisville and showed it had flipped onto its side on the northbound Gene Synder Expressway.Vince Luney of MetroSafe said the injured passengers were taken to University Hospital. Officials said the wreck closed the two northbound lanes and forced the closure of one of the southbound lanes.

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US strike on al-Qaida kills children

So, how is Iraq better off now than it was when Saddam was in power?

Instead of Saddam’s henchmen making folks disappear, and holding them indefinitely while torturing them, the CIA or some contractor outside the rule of law (whatever that means now!??!?) does that. We have stepped in and filled the power vacuum…

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Outdoor Stop Motion Animation

A friend, V, sent me a link to this video. Don’t know much about it other than it is #@$@!! cool. Can’t imagine how much work it took. How many hours and gallons of white paint. What pigments did they use? Interesting obsession with heads opening up. How much was set beforehand and how much did the idea evolve as the film was made?

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/993998 w=400&h=300]
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

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Classifications

Thought of a way to classify dance companies into classical, modern, post-modern:

Classical – named after a place -> Ballet Russes, American Ballet Theater
modern – named after a person -> Martha Graham Dance Company, Paul Taylor Dance Company
post modern – named after anything else -> Lower Left, Body Cartography

Is this true for every case? No, but I think there is some truth to it. Takes us back to the question of what defines classical, modern or po mo. Is it the tool, the aesthetic or the logic? See picture below for relationship. Much work done now is still modern in terms of logic but the tools are different than the tools of traditional modern. Maybe that is what contempory work is – modern/classical logic with post modern tools.