h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I used to follow the Olympic trials and then the Olympics itself closely.Loved all the track and field events and the swimming and diving. Enjoyed the gymnastics. Generally liked all of it. I don't have the interest any longer for some reason. I'm basically too tired to care about much of anything these days. So what I know about this year's events is through news stories and comments from other people.

I don't remember badminton being an Olympic sport. Did I just miss it all those years? It makes me wonder if things such as badminton are added to the Olympics in order to give small nations a chance to compete in something. I mean, surely no one actually gives a toss. And I am gobsmacked to learn that there is actually an international governing body of some sort for the sport. I didn't even realize it was an actual sport. A backyard game for kids, yes. A sport of Olympic caliber, I'm not so sure. Having it as an event seems to diminish the importance of the games. jmho.

You know, I like odd Olympic events, but I may be taking the idea too seriously that it was all originally supposed to be about goodwill, rather than the excellence of the sport itself. After all, my favourite Olympics movie was 'Cool Runnings'.

But that takes me back, Hyp. The summer we first moved to Western Pennsylvania. We didn't have too many kids to play with, because it was a new neighbourhood. When we helped my mom unpack, we found the old badminton set, so my sister and I got it out and taught ourselves how to play, sort of. For awhile, we weren't too good, so we just practised trying to keep the birdie in the air.

Fred, a local cat, used to come and 'help' by sitting under the net.

We must have gone at it pretty hard, because one night, my sister had a dream: we were both the Olympic world champions in badminton, and we tied for first place.

I remember laughing at the idea of badminton as an Olympic sport. (Oh, and us as sport figures...)

I'd love to think that the Olympics is primarily about goodwill. I seems to me - hope I'm wrong - that it is more about nationalism and winning. Otherwise, why would we need flags, national anthems and medal counts? And why would countries spend so much money to try and ensure that their athletes are better than everyone else's? I'm not saying there is anything wrong with any of that.

olympics

i hate the olympics, all that running and jumping and standing still, i think they should give medals for "post" events press interview

RJRT, if they make photography an event, you'll be sure to win a medal.

I could win a medal in crankiness.

, as the EG points out A87734505, the modern Olympics used to have categories in art and painting. So why not photography?

We're taking a gander at this badminton. It seems to be a pretty fast-paced game here.

Dmitri, that's what Tom told me. He watched a bit of it and said it is a lot different than the way we played as kids.

I think part of my problem is that I don't have the competitive spirit, that killer instinct that so many people have. If I play badminton or croquet or mlonopoly or whatever, I want to have fun. When a game becomes serious and people get mad and mean-spirited over it, then I'm not interested in participating. When you add the huge sums of money involved with professional sports, it becomes very serious indeed. And the fans are worse than the competitors for downright nastiness. Some of the remarks made by baseball fans make my hair stand on end. It is spoiling part of my pleasure with the game.

Boy, do I agree with that.

When I saw these talented professionals, I couldn't help comparing my own early badminton memories: in the 1950s, this was a fun lawn pursuit for my parents and their young married friends, while they waited for the barbecue to be ready.

Ladies in flat shoes and wide cotton skirts, laughing, with their husbands in short sleeves and khakis. It makes me smile and get a little teary...

hry hyp
Ta!

Hypatia, Badminton has always been a very popular sport in Indonesia, Malaysia and other south-east Asian countries. I know that Indonesia is a small country by American standards - only 140 million people if I remember rightly; why it's not much bigger in population terms than California! - but it's a respectable sport.

It looks like I clearly wasn't as observant as I should have been when watching the Olympics in the past. Gnomon, my impression of badminton is very like Dmitri's. A sort of gentle, light game. Live and learn.

Indonesia is the 4th most populous nation with 233 million.
The U.S. is ranked 3rd with 309 million.
California has 38 million.


(This was a good opportunity to use my Wolfram Alpha app.)

I would have liked to have seen the opening ceremonies, but I give the rest of it a miss because of the nationalistic chauvinism of the commentators in the US. Haven't watched since South Korea had the games.

Is there Olympic ping-pong?

I don't know if most of y'all are aware of this, but NBC even messed up the opening credits. They heinously omitted the tribute segment, instead airing a completely vapid interview of Phelps by Ryan Seacrest. When people questioned this decision, NBC replied by merely saying that it was "tailored for the American audience" and commended Danny Boyle for making it easy for them to edit it. I can guarantee that, as an American, I was quite insulted by that reply and thought it was asinine for them to omit that segment. Can you imagine the outrage if the BBC had deleted a tribute to the 9/11 victims?

I've heard a lot of complaints about the NBC coverage. I would expect the BBC to record the complete opening and closing ceremonies and sell them on DVD, but that's not tghe point.

It's odd, I don't miss watching the Olympics this year but I do rather miss ~wanting~ to watch it all. Seriously, sometimes I feel like a completely different person these days. This isn't the only example of things I used to greatly enjoy having no particular appeal to me any more. A couple I'm glad to see depart, so it isn't all bad. *silly* I'm not sure what's going on though.

I've been noticing that too lately, and I think it's an effect of that DNA theory about getting older: "Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

It's not so much that the Olympics, or all the other things that I've started to lose interest in, are different (although they are), for me it's that the people who are organising them, the people who are involved in them, the people who are putting together the media presentation and the people who are commentating on them are doing it all for a younger audience now, and/or with the attitudes and experience of those who haven't seen what the world was like and how these things were done before I was 35.

And if feels to me that before I was 35 (1989) things weren't done with so much slickness and pretentiousness and cult of the individual and (this is the one that really gets me ) corporate influence. Whether or not that's true doesn't matter - this is entirely personal to me, to you, to everyone, and it doesn't mean I hate everything new, of course; DNA's theory is far too wide-ranging and generalised to be accurate, and 35 could just as easily be 30, or 42, but it has much truth.

I could go into more depth but I have to catch a bus for work, and I often find that no matter how clearly I can see something in my mind, the more deeply I try to explain and expound it, the more tangled up my thoughts get and the less sense I make of it

Here's a narrower but similar observation. Think of your favorite band when you were younger. Every album they released before you really got into them are great. All the ones after that are just not quite as good.

When I was in high school, I quite liked Van Halen... until their next album, 1984, came out. "Jump"? Really? A good friend of mine who's about 3-4 years younger than I loves that album and even that song. I don't get it. Of course, shortly after that they turned into Van Hagar... nuff said.

I feel the same way about Peter Gabriel as well. Loved everything he did until Sledgehammer came out. I even feel the same way about Pink Floyd. Of course, I was quite late to the game on that... The Wall was the first album of theirs I heard. I still like The Final Cut, but it's not as good as their earlier work. And I just never really took to the post Waters albums. David Gilmore is still an amazing musician and he writes some beautiful songs, but I just like the earlier stuff better.

(Of course this doesn't always apply. There are many exceptions.)

I'm a wee bit older than you, Gosho. I was 40 in '89. But everything you and BG said is spot on. I'm still able to develop new interests and habits, which is good since many of my old interests are going down the drain. I hope that never changes. My mother refuses to even discuss anything new or even slightly different. It worries me that I'll wind up like that. (Anyone who has followed my journals over the years knows that my mother is the last person I want to be like.)

is there anyone who can remember the first olympics

Barely, RJR. A former lifetime, you know.