Games

The Games of the XXX Olympiad of the modern era are almost over.  I've enjoyed watching some of the spectacle very much. I saw enough of the opening ceremony to make me feel that I want to see the entire ceremony, and dropped a hint to my kids that if they are stuck for ideas for a birthday present, a DVD of this would be welcome. The parts of the opening ceremony that I saw showed the Brits at their self-deprecating best. No other nation seems to have the same comfortable enjoyment of poking fun at themselves, as the Brits clearly do; and this self-mockery was skillfully interwoven with scenes of British triumphs, Shakespeare, the industrial revolution, the National Health Service, and capping it all, Tim Berners-Lee giving his creation, the world wide web, freely, to the world - no copyright, no royalties every time it's used, just a free gift to all humankind.  It's almost impossible to imagine anybody from any other nation giving away such immense potential wealth. Alexander Fleming's gift of penicillin to the world was another example of the British at their altruistic best, although I didn't see any commemoration of this great discovery during the opening ceremony.  Perhaps it was there, like Harry Potter, and Dr Who and the Daleks, while I wasn't watching. I missed the first hour or so of the televised performance. As for the games, there was Usain Bolt from Jamaica, a superb sprinter and a great showman, Michael Phelps, a magnificent swimmer, David Rudesha winning the 800 meters in record time, and the highlight for me, the Canadian women's football (soccer) team who outplayed the Americans and would have won convincingly were it not for several appalling decisions by the referee, who penalized the Canadians several times and was blind to worse violations by the Americans. One especially egregious and erroneous decision by the referee ultimately determined the outcome of the match. My admittedly partisan opinion about this was unanimously shared by the commentators, even the American ones. Another referee showed similar bias in the match for the gold medal which the Americans won only because the referee failed to penalize them for blatant violations against the technically superior Japanese side. But enough already of my whining. Another impressive aspect that I've noted before has been the fact that many of these superb athletes are obviously also intelligent and articulate, able to communicate clearly in well-chosen words, even in a language that isn't their mother tongue. Like many other people, I'm perplexed that some events are regarded as olympic sports, sports of any kind if it come to that, for example synchronized swimming, beach volleyball, trampoline (although a Canadian girl got Canada's only gold medal in this event).  And many times I longed for the advertising-free BBC, rather than the ad-infested TV that is the only kind available here. I didn't time it, but advertising must have occupied at least an order of magnitude more time than the broadcasting of the sporting events themselves. It's ironic too that the greater part of the advertising time was taken up with ads for MacDonald's fast foods and cola cola.  It would be hard to imagine two kinds of foodstuffs less healthful than these! It's churlish to be critical, however.  The spectacle has been well worth seeing, even if I had to endure such a plethora of advertising breaks.

An afterthought: Sometime during the games there was a news item about condoms, specifically, about the prodigious number provided and presumably used at each of the past few Olympic Games.  I was reminded of this by several vignettes at these games. There were the teams of women sprinters joyfully embracing each other after the women's sprint relay, each team exuding sexuality that almost made the pheromones perceptible through the TV screen. I had a momentary vision of the revelry and romping that I imagine went on that night in the Olympic Village...  At the TV presentation of the Closing Ceremony the emphasis was on the spectacle but from time to time the camera zoomed in on the athletes, all relaxed and thoroughly enjoying themselves, their competitions over and done, but the assortative mating beginning in earnest.  What a superb selection of the best of the human race was at play here! The sight set me wondering what the world might be like nine months from now if there really was a night of assortative mating without condoms when this celebration ended.  I think the world might be a better place, because so often athletic superiority is matched by intellectual superiority.  The sum total might be a significant increase in the proportion of excellent humans in the world.   It's an  attractive dream.