Olympianisms

Having watched and lived the Olympics for the past few weeks, I thought I'd share some thoughts:

1. Dressage should be called Horse Dancing. And the horses should have to be born in the country they're representing since they're doing all the work. And also this shouldn't really be in the Olympics.

2. I followed both the Heptathlon and Decathlon for the first time. These struck me as being the Liberal Arts degree equivalents of sports: be good at many things, but probably not great at any. This isn't completely true of course since Jessica Ennis would've won the gold medal with her 100m hurdle time, and Ashton Eaton would have qualified for the finals in at least the long jump, but still... watching some of the athletes in some of the events seemed cruel almost. The 1500m final for the men was an awkward watch.

3. Maybe the best achievement of the games -- a Maasai warrior setting a world record in the 800m. Kenya dig it! If the Kenyans keep getting bigger and stronger they're going to start Jamaican us crazy in the sprint events too.

4. The medal count thing is ridiculous. And so is all the bickering and accusations of cheating. The teams and coaches from all of the big countries are using any advantage they can all the time, and calling out anyone for anything -- apart from taking steriods -- is a bit small. The whole medal table should be re-ranked by some sort of GDP and population algorithm.

5. Cool that the rowers don't stand on the podium for the medal ceremony. Weird that they give two bronzes in judo and wrestling.

6. Little disappointed that I didn't get any love for the "I say Lightning, U-sain Bolt" post. Thought that was pretty clever.

How to make an extra-small wool sweater

1. Take one part warm water
2. Mix with one adult large wool sweater.
3. Enjoy!

I say "Lightning",

usain "Bolt"

My contribution for The Onion

Would be something to do with the rider of a fixie (fixed gear bike with no ability to coast, no brakes, and narrow handle bars) in a big city being incredulous about crashing fifteen times in one day.

Fifty shades of awkward

Number of people sitting next to me on my flight yesterday who were shifting nervously while reading Fifty Shades of Grey: 2

Later I would learn that they were husband and wife.

As for me, I played Tiny Wings and slept with my mouth open. 

The Day of Er/uk

This article crossed my mind yesterday afternoon when I was peeing while eating a bowl of cereal: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/garden/the-freedom-and-perils-of-living-alone.html

Ponyriding on volcanos

I once read that real men should only walk or run. There is apparently no dignity in skipping or half-running or crawling or limping or speed walking. And I mostly agree that those are not ideal.

Horses of courses have more well defined gears: they walk, they trot, they canter and they gallop.

But not all horses.

Icelandic horses are very small. Perhaps in an effort to compensate, they decided to do more. So they learned to tölt, and some even learned to do the flying pace. The flying pace! It's like the human equivalent of parkour.

6 gaits! Or 5 if you lump cantering/galloping into one gait, which to me just seems petty.

Well done Icelandic horse.