Friday, August 29, 2008

Olympic Bragging – Medals, Medal Counts & Other Observations by Louis Evan Palmer

Another Olympics, Beijing 2008, has finished with an especially sublime opening ceremony to remember it by. And world records by Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt. Even if Michael's unlikely run seemed a little too luck-struck by half. How long was the Croatian swimmer suspended in the water about a single millimeter from the touch bar?

There has been the requisite chest thumping and teeth gnashing. Medals counts broadcast and fawned over. Reporting that probably can't help being boosterish although a few stars so overshadowed everyone else that we could cheer for them without impairing our patriotic credentials. Usain Bolt leaps to mind.

We were told ad nauseum that the USA “won” the 2008 Olympics because they won the most medals. This is almost equivalent to saying that if China won 49 gold medals and the USA won 50 bronze medals then the US “won”. In effect, we are weighting gold, silver and bronze the same which doesn't make sense even to the great unwashed hordes.

Simon Forsthye, a researcher in Brisbane, Australia has worked on several more logical ways of representing medal counts. The first mandatory step is to weight the medal count. He and others rate gold as twice the value of silver which, in turn, is rated twice the value of bronze – therefore, gold counts as 4, silver as 2 and bronze as 1.

Refer to related articles listed below:


We can be sure if the ranking was more favourable to the USA if it was weighted, we would have seen it that way instead. The mass audience would have been educated as required. The slant in the western media is, in this case, blatant. If they can educate people about some of the obscure “sports” they have in the Olympics like biathlon or equestrian or sailing then a simple weighted medal count is child's play.

Some argue that medal counts should only focus on gold. In fact, this is completely backwards, For some sports, where there is a lot of competition and it is therefore more difficult to place, we should have more than just 3 medals. Marathons with hundreds of runners and some other track events come to mind. For those events, 5 medals seems more appropriate. Say, a brass medal for fourth place and copper for fifth place.

Here is a partial table using data on Simon Forsythe's site. The first column showing an unweighted medal count is the tally that was almost exclusively used by the mass media. Followed by the rank if the medals are weighted (4 for gold, etc). The last 2 ranks are by population, per 1 million persons, and by GDP (per 1 trillion $). It attempts to account for population and wealth assuming that it is easier for a populous or wealthy country to compete well.



Country RANK Unweighted Medal RANK weighted medals RANK Weighted medals per million POP RANK weighted medals per billion GDP
United States 1 2 43 65
China 2 1 65 50
Russian Fed. 3 3 34 38
Great Britain 4 4 22 44
Australia 5 5 6 27
Germany 6 6 33 52
France 7 8 32 51
Korea 8 7 24 42
Italy 9 9 37 53



On the vein of Olympic sports, the Olympic head body should publish the
criteria for what constitutes a “sport” or “event” including requirements such as a certain threshold of persons who actually play or participate in a given sport or event. For example, should we continue with equestrian events – very expensive with relatively few participants, it seems to qualify as the epitome of elitist events.

The weighted medal count rank is shown below. Countries like China and Jamaica with high gold medal counts benefit from this more accurate tally.



Country RANK Unweighted Medal RANK weighted medals RANK Weighted medals per million POP RANK weighted medals per billion GDP
China 2 1 65 50
United States 1 2 43 65
Russian Fed. 3 3 34 38
Great Britain 4 4 22 44
Australia 5 5 6 27
Germany 6 6 33 52
Korea 8 7 24 42
France 7 8 32 51
Italy 9 9 37 53
Japan 11 10 54 71


Using the GDP as a way of weighting medal counts does reflect at a high-level a country's ability to fund excellent training. Typically, though, GDP is not evenly allocated so we can, and do have, wealthy countries that relatively speaking underspend while some very poor countries redirect inappropriately large amounts of scarce resources to glamorous propaganda-rich events like the Olympics.

Using population also suffers from problems as a measure in that most world-class athletes train around the world. Many get scholarships and sponsorships and train in the best facilities with the best coaches wherever they may be. Being born poor does not mean anything at a certain point and at a certain level. At the highest levels, it becomes difficult to attribute where the resources used by a given athlete come from.

Another phenomenon that's been emerging for a while now is the effective buying of athletic excellence by offering citizenship and other benefits including money. This is well-funded fast-track stuff well beyond the easy immigration policies of the past.

The next 2 charts show ranking by population and by GDP. Zimbabwe would be a case in point regarding misappropriate use of funds. Their winning athlete apparently trains abroad all year.



Country RANK Unweighted Medal RANK weighted medals RANK Weighted medals per million POP RANK weighted medals per billion GDP
Jamaica 20 18 1 2
Bahamas 59 72 2 7
Iceland 81 80 3 23
Bahrain 74 61 4 24
Norway 22 21 5 36
Australia 5 5 6 27
Slovenia 40 40 7 17
New Zealand 24 26 8 20
Estonia 62 54 9 14
Mongolia 45 33 10 3



Adding a population component to the medal weighting formula seems legitimate but again if we look at poverty-stricken disease-burdened peoples, does it matter how many of them there are? Does it really contribute to their pool of top athletes?



Country RANK Unweighted Medal RANK weighted medals RANK Weighted medals per million POP RANK weighted medals per billion GDP
Zimbabwe 44 39 44 1
Jamaica 20 18 1 2
Mongolia 45 33 10 3
Cuba 12 14 13 4
Georgia 37 31 14 5
Kenya 18 17 42 6
Bahamas 59 72 2 7
Armenia 35 55 20 8
Belarus 13 16 12 9
North Korea 34 32 52 10


At the very least, the common reporting practice should become weighted medal rankings.

In the interest of demilitarizing the Games and lowering the jingoism potential, maybe the Olympics should start allowing “clubs” to compete where the clubs can have members from anywhere in the world. This would be similar to professional sports teams in that the club would have the best team they can afford and manage with the widest pool of talent possible – basically, the entire world. If they win, play club anthems and raise club flags.

On a practical note, instead of marching in nation by nation at the beginning, let's have teams / nations march in from all four stadium entrances at 60 second intervals. Over each minute, four teams enter. This has got to be the most tedious part of the opening ceremony.

Finally, people must really wonder about the cost of staging this type of spectacle. Did China really spend over $70 billion dollars?! We must pare it down dramatically. Fewer, more popular events. Perhaps 8 days instead of 16. We should think about capping spending. Revisit the idea of always holding the Olympics in Greece. Or, having a set of sites we rotate through. The games should inspire and uplift us not confuse and bankrupt us.


Olympic Bragging – Medals, Medal Counts & Other Observations, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.


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Saturday, August 16, 2008

Making Things BIGGER or smaller by Louis Evan Palmer

Their job, self-appointed or paid for, is to make us see a mountain when we're looking at a molehill and, alternately, to make us see a molehill when we're looking at a mountain. By controlling what we perceive and telling us what we perceive, they will control what we think and feel and from that, how we'll act.

How we see things is both an art and a science. There are the organs of perception. There are various aids that we have constructed to help us perceive - to see farther than we could otherwise, to hear more, to see smaller things, to detect elements and energies. Microscopes. Telescopes. Spectrometers.

There is also the psychological aspect of perception, in that, we perceive what we're conditioned to perceive; we unconsciously blind and deafen and otherwise insensate ourselves either individually or collectively to what is outside the realm of the expected.

We rarely perceive things as they are; if there is that as a real condition - "as they are"? We see them as larger or smaller or much larger or much smaller or vast or invisible. We also colour everything with our judgements and opinions and attendant feelings and thoughts.

Agendas are also in play in determining what we perceive and what it means and how important it is or how important it should be. The list of groups with claims is long, heavy with organizations (both conceptual and real) that typically comprise 1,2 or 3% of something. Small groups, vanguards whether they know it or not, whether they consider themselves as such.

Two examples: This comes into view when we look at the claims as to how many homosexuals there are in any given country. The long-standing claim was 10%; the recent census in the US has it as not far past 1%. It's important to that group to have as big a number as possible to support rights and protections that accrue more easily to a larger group. But exaggeration is eventually uncovered and may generate substantial negative feedback.

This is also on display when discussing something like the porn industry. Those in it like to claim it's vast, even that it's mainstream and it shouldn't be harassed. The US apparently produces well over 90% of the world's porn using something like 20,000 persons mainly in southern California. As a percentage of the US population, that's 0.000067 %. It may seem like porn is everywhere and everyone but it's only employing 1 person out of 15,000.

What these and other groups use to increase the impact they make on society are various types of amplification. The main type of amplification being the mass media. The mass media is a very powerful amplification tool which is why it's used extensively for propaganda and advertising. Another method of amplification is the law. If you can influence what laws are made or how they're argued or interpreted, you can amplify your opinion because you can call into its service the full force of a society.

The opposite force, minimization,occurs when groups or issues are ignored and not reported; occasionally, it's achieved by trivializing or marginalizing a group or issue. Burying it in an avalanche of other information is another way to undermine its impact.

Societal norms are the measuring stick we use when deciding what's allowable in our public and semi-public forums. In the courts, it's a moving measure and it's typically not measured very well. In the cases where the media is involved, the people who have a big effect on societal norms are the same ones who are supplying and interpreting them. Why should the public give any extra access to industries that comprise 0.000067% of the population? Coincidentally, this percentage would also apply to the very rich.

We need to take control back of our own societies. We need to be able to establish what is proper and permissible in public forums and who should have access and what controls should be permitted. Otherwise we're going to lose our public forums to small and various groups who are more aggressive and energetic in their advocacies and stakes but who represent minorities. The usurpation of the public forum should be stopped. It shouldn't be a democracy of the loudest or the most litigious. No more of the tail wagging the dog.

MAKING THINGS BIGGER OR SMALLER, Louis Evan Palmer, The Wat It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.


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