some of the more telling passages to me from a brilliant article about Liu Xiang, china’s great hope at Beijing 2008:
At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, China finished third in gold medals with 28, its most ever. But within this success, officials also saw a telling disparity: 21 of those medals came in table tennis, diving, badminton, weight lifting and gymnastics. China struggled in other sports, especially in swimming; other water sports like rowing; and track and field. At the time, these events offered 119 potential gold medals, yet China won only 1 in Sydney. Thus was born Project 119: a government program that has poured money into these sports in pursuit of a larger share of those medals (the total is now 122). New training centers were built. Foreign coaches were hired for water polo, synchronized swimming, canoeing and rowing, as well as for other events like field hockey, fencing, basketball and cycling. The program bore fruit in Athens, where China won 32 gold medals, second only to the United States.
..and even more interesting is the way they implemented ‘project 119′:
Doctors and coaches examined and tested his bone structure, concluding he would not grow tall enough to be an elite high jumper. This selection process, so Orwellian to Western sensibilities, is not unusual in Chinese sports schools. A system so intensely focused on producing Olympic champions regards X-rays and bone tests as practical tools to help project which kid among thousands might one day become a medalist.
we ? we have athletes who have to fund themselves for the olympics. who have to make do with substandard training and substandard coaches, coz the government will not provide enough for them to actually focus on something that they actually want to do.
who are all moved to goddamn cricket coz thats the only place where the money is. even if we do suck at that too.
upgrading wordpress 2.6 finally killed k2, much to my dismay. i’ve gone back to an older theme, with far fewer fancy notions and most importantly, managed to customize it to my liking. editing code eventually gets to be so much more fun than actually just throwing in some widgets or modules n shit.
i have no idea why i’m posting, i guess i just had to mention the fact that i have successfully changed the theme after far too long.
p.s. being too bored to think up a title is fun. i am thinking i should have different versions of ‘blah’ in my title for a while, and see how challenging that gets.
some of the things that have struck me recently. and none of them via the many blogs i read
a 20 year research experiment on evolution has yielded its first results. a lot of analysis remains, but some truly shattering ideas have been formed as a results.
wiredhas a bunch of articles on a recent ruling in the 1st ever P2P distribution case to come to court wherein the judge decided that no actual true proof of distribution of copyrighted content is required to prove guilt. this plaintiff had the genuis idea of using a consistent online identity everywhere including on kazaa. there are counterarguments, but it is to be noted that the off-chance of unauthorized distribution and making whole-sale copies for unauthorized distribution are essentially the same ‘crime’ for the MPAA, and should be classified together. one of my favorite cases is the one where the RIAA downloaded illegal songs from a guy to prove intent of unauthorized distribution, and are now facing an appeal as this means they implicitly authorized the download
as a side note i wonder why wired has a poll on whether mccain should learn to use a computer ? i further wonder why such a guy is being encouraged to lead the US. then i realize that the US is always, always going to be the zenith for stupidity.
to round it up, a highly inventive video: [via digg]
