Future Poltergeist

Back in 2014, I put together this post in which I figured out how the medal to population ratio played out during the Olympics.  I'm now doing the same thing for the Rio Olympics.  From the Sochi description: Anyway, the idea was to sort the medals by population of the country. Therefore smaller countries would get more credit per medal. This makes some sense. The larger the country, the easier it should be to find an elite individual. So I decided to crunch some numbers. Note: I'm going to figure medals per million people. My population numbers are from Wikipedia and I'm simply hoping that no one cared enough to mess with this info. Also, I rounded to the nearest million so there may be some messiness with the numbers. Also, I'm not doing the entire medal count. Just the top ten, with a few extras that are special. This time I'll do the top thirteen.  I have my reasons. 13. China - 19.66 medals per million people.  The Chinese did very well in this ...

How could I not click on a link called 'The 10 Best Books About the Olympics' ?  (Btw, I think I've read precisely zero of these.)

In the summer before the London Olympics started, I 'live-blogged' a coffee table book about past Olympics.  It was wildly successful.  The FP Gal even said she was enjoying it.  The posts are findable under the 'Olympics' label but I'm going to put them all in one place. 1896-1906 is here . 1908-1924 is here . 1928-1932 is here . 1936 and 1948 are here . 1952 and 1956 are here . 1960 and 1964 are here . 1968 and 1972 are here . 1976 and 1980 are here . 1984 and 1988 are here . 1992-1996 is here . 1998-2004 is here . These were a bunch of fun to put together.

When I put DF to bed, he asks me questions before we turn on his music.  Tonight, his last question went like this: DF: What does a cowboy wedding look like. Me: ...uh, I don't know. DF: (thinking) Would the pinata be shaped like a horse? Me: ... DF: Maybe with a crown on it.  (pause)  And a cape? Me: I have no idea. I love the way his mind works, but I won't pretend that I understand it.

The Harvard Public Health Review is calling for the Rio Olympics to be delayed or moved to a different city , and I'm not so sure that they're wrong.  The problem is the Zika virus.  Rio is right in the heart of the problem area.  As the review points out, not only is it a risk for the people traveling there, but when they leave, they will spread that risk to (literally) the entire world. Which leads to a simple question:  But for the Games, would anyone recommend sending an extra half a million visitors into Brazil right now?    Of course not: mass migration into the heart of an outbreak is a public health no-brainer.  And given the choice between accelerating a dangerous new disease or not—for it is impossible that Games will slow Zika down—the answer should be a no-brainer for the Olympic organizers too.  Putting sentimentality aside, clearly the Rio 2016 Games must not proceed. So, what happens?  I don't believe that the IOC wil...

During the Opening Ceremonies for the 2012 Olympics in London, there was a sequence that I really enjoyed.  It was titled 'Pandemonium' and it was a kind of history of the Industrial Revolution. The visuals were great, especially the rings at the end, but what really got me was the music.  I simply loved it.  But there was a problem.  I couldn't find it to buy, anywhere.  I quickly tracked down the artist, Underworld, and the name of the music, 'And I Will Kiss', but I couldn't buy it.  I couldn't find it as a stand alone single.  Couldn't find it on an Underworld album.  It just wasn't available. Well, that's not completely true.  It was on the soundtrack for the Olympics, called 'Isles of Wonder', but iTunes didn't have that either.  Amazon didn't either.  I was stuck.  Until I happened to try a couple of weeks ago and found that Amazon had somehow let some used copies slip through the embargo.  Less than $5 later...

I had a wonderful call today.  The admin called, and after I confirmed her name, I asked for her phone number.  She started giving me a set of numbers and then stopped.  "Oh", she said, "I almost gave you my home number."  I laughed and said that the office one would probably be better.  She continued, "If you called my home number, you would have ended up speaking to my senile mother.  And you wouldn't want that."  I laughed again.  "And then I would have gotten home and she would have said [thick German accent] 'I had ze strangest call today...'". Lady, you made my day.

Tonight, I read to Leo.  We read 'Make Way for Ducklings'.  This book has made a reappearance at our house as it has been in storage for some time.  I have not read it with Leo before and I wasn't sure if he had read it all.  He assured me that he has, in fact, read it with mama. Fair enough. We got to this page: And I said, "Doesn't he look nice?" Leo said he did not.  Again, I asked him if he had read this before.  The policeman (who is named Michael) is awfully nice.  Later on in the book he stops traffic for the ducks and even calls in a car from Central to help direct traffic for them.  This is a nice policeman. When I asked him if had read it before, he assured me that he had.  So I asked him what happens later on.  He pointed to the night stick and said, 'he takes that and stabs the ducks'.  Whaaaat?  I told him that isn't quite how I remember it. We read on.  Sure enough, there is no stabbing.  The po...