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I was watching the news this morning and saw something that made me go what the f%**!  9 News was doing a piece on the Olympics, and they were covering Trampoline competitions.  TRAMPOLINES!  What is up with this, I thought that the Olympic Committee was on drugs when the allowed Curling and Synchronized swimming in.  (I will admit, that Synchronized Swimming is more of a sport that Curling and bouncing on a Trampoline.)  I personally think that I will boycot the Olympics.  I understand that the REAL athletes work hard to prove that they are the best of the best, but with having the Olympics in a country that has a huge pollution problem, lets products out of their borders that could potentially kill kids and then evicting some (I think the number is) 1.5 million people so they could build the Olympic grounds is just something that I do not feel encompasses the Olympic Spirit.  Also with the addition of Trampoline events, (god knows what else they will allow in, maybe walking or going down a slide, or maybe swinging on swings!) just puts the icing on the cake.  If I upset some people  :hatred: with my little rant, I apologize, I just feel that the Olympics could be so much more.

Just my two cents.....

John

You should probably add "I never pay any attention to the Olympics" to the poll.

I don't really pay attention.

But they have Olympic trampolining and not Olympic bowling!!!!   Ludicrous.

I would love to see cricket at the Olympics: yes, I know it can be boring sometimes but the new 20/20 version of the game where each side faces 120 balls (all done in less than two hours) and you have to clobber the ball like in baseball is undeniably exciting.  :wink:

I think some of the events are just plain stupid, like snowboarding.  A bunch of stoners doing what they do every weekend, and getting Olympic medals for it.  Why don't they have skateboarding?  Every single thing they do in snowboarding is ripped off from skateboarding.  Why is it an Olympic sport?  Because market research shows that it attracts the all important under 18 and 18 - 24 demographics, and they can charge more for advertising time.
 
Or mogul skiing, good grief.  Wouldn't you love to get a medal for being able to ski over bumps? 

My main gripe with the Olympics is that you'll be watching some event, and the announcer will say something like"See this guy?  He's probably going to finish in 80th place, out of 92 competitors.  But he had a real hard life growing up.  His brother had a rare disease, and we'll tell you all about in in the next 30 minutes.  The event itself, by the way, is 32 minutes long."

Growing up I'd always watch the Olympics with my father.  Nowadays, I have no clue when its on.  If anyone should celebrate 15 minutes of fame its many of the Olympians.  I vaguely recall reading a story a long time ago about former Olympians selling their medals to pawn shops. 

Jack, I gave you karma for the snowboarding commentary.  It basically mirrors my feelings on it. Same thing with the curling competition which I've yet to figure out.  Back when old Hercules and his buddies supposedly started the event they kept it simple.  Nowadays, anything is a sport. Here are some other things the Olympic committee should consider.

Hopscotch
Jacks
Jumprope (I heard on the radio the other day some schools are making this a sport)
Four Corners
Dodgeball
Tag
Guitar Hero
Limbo
Hot Dog Eating Competitions
Table Hockey
Ski Ball
Dance Dance Revolution

Anything else you guys can think of?  I'm sure theres plenty. 

Trivial Pursuit
X-Box
Monopoly
Lighting Farts
Lawn Mowing
Scrabble
Beer Drinking
Bar Fighting
Dwarf Tossing
Cat Juggling
Belly Bucking
and that carnival game where you use a water gun to fill a balloon.

Come to think of it, that Olympics would be more fun than the real one.

Whack-A-Mole...I'd participate in that one. 
The Birthday Game (where you put a quarter on a month and if it is rolled you win)
Poker (don't say I didn't call it)
The Biggest Bowel Movement
Bad Movie Reviewing (hehe)

Karama to AndyC for the suggestion for the poll.  I will try and change that now.  Plus the great suggestions like Darksider. :thumbup:

Karma for the Darksider for some great suggestions. :thumbup:

Can't forget Olympic Bingo. I can just see those old grannies, dressed in their countries' colours, smoking away as they dab at a few dozen cards each. It would add a whole new dimension to the games.
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3129/2638298938_e44b615a27.jpg?v=0)
Amazing what you can do in a couple of minutes with GIMP and a graphic tablet  :teddyr:

Andy C, love the bingo idea.  Although most competitors would be in danger of breaking a hip. 

How about...
Stratego
Frisbee
Paddle Ball
Beat Boxing/Free Style Rapping
Paper Scissors Rock
One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato Four
Odds Or Evens

Olympic Idol!

Or maybe Olympic sport fishing. That would be another one that would open the Olympics up to less conventionally athletic athletes.

Other potential Olympic sports are:

Tobacco Spitting
Tractor Pulling
Cow Tipping
Graffiti
Freestyle Cursing
Masturbation
Standup Comedy
and Telemarketing

Yes, Olympic bass fishing...I can see it clearly now.  Perhaps you could parlay that into Olympic hunting.  Which would parlay into fish fillet and wild game prepping competitions. 

I have a few gripes with the Olympics in the modern era.

First, the biggest, is that they changed the 'rule' and started letting professional athletes enter.  I remember a time when you had to be an amateur, just some shmo who ran, or high jumped or swam or whatever.  Nowadays, it is people who 'what they do' is their sport to the point of the NBA sending a team a few years ago.

In my opinion, that single rule change completely destroyed the spirit of the "Games."

Second, when they changed it to every two years - summer/winter cycle.  When I was a young, I remember the Olympics being "special" because it only came every four years, and it was on/talked about pretty much from January through the summer.

Third, all the yacking.  JUST SHUT UP and let me watch some (the few that are left) otherwise ordinary people achieve greatness in what they love to do.  Man, I just don't really care about ALL this backstory...some, a comment or two, is cool.

Fourth, and I'll stop here, I get aggravated that the programmers decide NOT to show certain sports that I like and DO show, ad nauseum, the same stuff over and over.  We'll see EVERY conceivable swimming event and gymnastics and fair amount of track and field.  Sculling, sailing, archery, shooting, etc won't get any air time.  Too "slow," not "MTV" enough.

So, to sum up: I really got into the Olympics when I was younger; now, I really could not care less (about the coverage, at least).

Good points Ulthar.  The way too much talking thing sticks out when Bob Costas hosted it years ago.  For some reason he kept bringing up the worst history in each nation's entry into the stadium.  I really think Costas like the sound of his own voice.

As for professional athletes, yeah that is ridiculous.  Especially with the original Dream Team who didn't bother to hide they were cats playing with mice during their games.   :lookingup:

Olympic barbecue competitions! Or even chili cookoffs!

It's become commercialized like everything else. I remember when it was all amateurs. Back before the 84 Olympics, we had a genuine Olympian visit our class. He wrestled in the 76 Olympics but was, in 1984, a dentist practicing in a nearby town. That was cool. Your country's greatest athletes were regular people, living and working in their communities. I've met a number of Olympians and they've generally been regular folks with day jobs, unless they were successful enough to get into public speaking.

Let professionals into the Olympics (which is all about getting viewers and sponsorship dollars), and it just puts athletic excellence - or at least recognition for it - that much further of of most people's reach. A great athlete, today, must be a highly-paid professional, a celebrity, a member of the elite who must distance himself from his adoring fans. What a crock.

Ya'll ever see the movie COOL RUNNINGS?

John Candy has a great line in that movie - one of the best lines anywhere of any time.

Speaking of an Olympic Gold Medal:

"If you are not good enough without it, you'll never be good enough with it."

I paraphrase that to my wife and children all the time..."If you are not pretty enough without makeup, you'll never be pretty enough with it," etc, etc.

The Olympics used to be about personal (or team) excellence, the ability of ordinary people to rise to incredible heights.  Now it's about who spends the most money on training and technology to push human achievement beyond what is "natural" and into what is "engineered."  At least in some sports, the "pop" ones that are televised.

Used to be not so much about "winning" and how many Gold Medals (the Medal Count is a new phenomenon I think) as just being there was a privilege.  I think the degradation of the Olympics is part of the same "me" culture that has spawned such things as parents getting into fights at Little League games or high school football coaches getting fired after one losing season.

Reminds me of a news report I heard about Speedo's new swimsuit that is so form-fitting it takes 20 minutes to wriggle into. And swimmers are so crazy for the perceived edge it provides that some of them are trying to dump their present sponsors so they won't be left behind. That kind of kills the whole "Olympic spirit" thing for me. There's no honour in clamoring for the latest bit of technology and weaseling out of deals to get it. Screwing over people who supported you, just so you can gain a few hundredths of a second, that's something to be proud of. A$$holes.

Olympic DDR!
Olympic Pillowfighting!
Olympic Drinking!
Olympic Typic!

and...
Olympic Candy Bar Selling!

How about an Olympic event with girls in bikinis jumping up and down? 

Oh, never mind...they've already got that.

Olympic overclocking.

Come to think of it, that would be an interesting downside to Olympic videogaming. You'd see some team stripped of their medals after officials discover they were using overclocked computers. Oh the scandal! Oh the disgrace!  :teddyr:

Indeed.  Making the team was an honour and a privilege.

We used to get excited and inspired by a good performance; who did it and what country they were from were just details.  It was about sport and human achievement.  Greatness.  Funny how we had a much more 'global' attitude back when we were less connected.

As for the amount of interest: I think that has a great deal to do with whether one is actively involved in a sport that is represented. (And yes I do take offense at what is classed as 'sport' these days.)  Maybe that is why they are so eager to include so many ah, 'new' activities?  Just for the viewer numbers?

 

Now that I think about it, that Olympian who visited my class nearly 25 years ago wasn't an Olympic medalist or anything. But he was there in 76, and that was impressive enough. It was extra cool that he was sort of local, and he took time out of his workday to come and tell us about the Olympics from the point of view of someone who was proud just to have been there.

Nowadays, if an Olympian visits a school, more often than not its a gold medalist who was front-page news and now gets paid to talk to people as a full-time job. You get the same "proud just to be there" speech, but the big win is still the focus, and everybody gets to touch the gold medal. Nothing wrong with it, but the dentist who didn't win at the Olympics was impressive enough to us kids, and maybe a bit more meaningful.

Ulthar - You touched on some great points.  I totally forgot about having, overpaid profession athletes playing in the Olympics.  It should just be average joe schmoes who have excelled in what they love to play, not what the get paid to play.

I remember when it was every four years two, why did they change that?  Maybe it was for the money, the almighty $$$ is a big driving force or a Juggernaut.

And the commentators yakking it up.  I wish they would just give the pertinent facts and move one.

I was talking to my wife and mother in law about the Olympics (the paper mentioned Teakowndo, Softball and Power Lifting, to list a few) and I said why have Teakowndo and Softball???, they both said that I was just jealous because I could not do those things.  But I one upped them, I did both when I was younger.  There is nothing special about those sports.  I said to them, someone lifting all that weight (Powerlifting) is something special, not everyone can do that.

At the end of the conversation, my mother in law made a good point.  With out all of the filler sports and yakking it up, the Olympics would be very short.  How true she is.  Maybe we should make the Olympics shorter and just streamline it.

Sorry about the rambling.  I found my little soapbox.

Later,

John

What is overclocking??????????????????????????????????

You made some excellent points there Newt.  Karma for you.

I appreciate the maturity that has been expressed in this thread.  I honesty thought that complaining about a subject like the Olympics would get some mud slinging going.  I am glad that did not happen.  I also love the suggestions for the new sports,  :cheers:, my favorites are the Olympic Bingo and the Farting one.  Great stuff.  I am glad to be a part of a forum that can give great insight as well as be light hearted to.

Long Live Badmoives.org!   :cheers:

JOHN

Overclocking is changing (usually increasing) the CPU and/or bus clock on a computer from the "factory" settings.

The way it works is that the CPU clock runs at some multiple of the system bus clock.  Let's say the system clock is 100 MHz and the multiplier is 12.  That gives a CPU clock of 1200 MHz, or 1.2 GHz.

Some main boards, especially those designed/marketed toward "high end gamers," allow these parameters to be changed.  So, you can increase the CPU speed by either changing the system clock or the multiplier.

It's a good way to destroy your CPU unless you are sorta know what you are doing.  Most of the time, the speed increases are marginal and it is more about "Bragging Rights," but sometimes they are pretty incredible - doubling the speed of the computer from it's 'advertised' speed in extreme cases.

Olympic Overclocking would be a GREAT spectator sport, especially if the games used to 'evaluate' speed and stability were fun to watch.  There'd be a lot of DNF's though, watching folks fry the systems they spend big $$ on.

Olympic Starcraft.     :buggedout:

"And now.. Team Korea!"   

Olmpic Gardening.


How about Olympic World of Warcraft!

Nobody would even have to leave home.

Olympic Text Messaging
Olympic IRC
Olympic Image Editing (with GIMP or Photoshop divisions)
Olympic Network Configuration
Olympic Guitar Restringing
Olympic Vacuum Bag Changing

Why not make Olympic Commentating an Olympic Sport?

I think Kenny Vs. Spenny competitions should be looked at for inspiration...
Who can blow the loudest fart?
Who do gay men perfer?
Who can go the longest without a boner?
Who can make the better porno?
Who can stand up the longest?
Who can stay blindfolded the longest?
Who can drink the most without puking? 
Who can stay tied to a goat the longest?

Olympic nose picking. That would be a tough one to judge, since you'd have to look at technique, speed, size and consistency of the booger, how cleanly it came out and how it was disposed of (flicked, wiped, eaten, etc.) Kind of like gymnastics or figure skating, I suppose.

Olympic Eraser Chewing
Olympic Repetitive Use of the Word "Like"
Olympic Eyebrow Raising
Olympic Dry Coughing

And then there'd be a huge scandal where the judges were being paid off.  I can just see it now.

Olympic Looking Like A Total Prick As You Talk Loudly On Your Cell Phone While In A Large Crowd Of People.

Who knows? That guy annoying everyone in the elevator might just be in training.

I say extra points should be awarded for guys donning the headset. 

It would have to be done over a wide area, like a marathon. The competitors need access to parks, shopping malls, restaurants, movie theatres, etc.