“We’re number one!” and other fallacies

Just as there are five Olympic rings, there were five big winners in the London 2012 Olympics medal race:

United States - 104 medals (46 gold, 29 silver, 29 bronze)
China - 87 medals (38 gold, 27 silver, 22 bronze)
Russia - 82 medals (24 gold, 25 silver, 33 bronze)
Great Britain - 65 medals (29 gold, 17 silver, 19 bronze)
Germany - 44 medals (11 gold, 19 silver, 14 bronze)

Obviously, we (collectively) are the best!

Really?

Ya think?

If you consider gold medals only, the list is slightly different:

United States - 46
China - 38
Great Britain - 29
Russia - 24
Korea - 13

Again, we (collectively) are the best!

But for a completely different (and perhaps more accurate) perspective on the London 2012 Olympics, maybe we should consider this chart showing medals per capita.

Moving right along to the subject of taxation, with or without representation, consider this statement by Thomas Sowell:

Questions to ponder while waiting for the next Olympic event to begin

What might have happened if:

Two roads hadn’t diverged in a yellow wood?
They all lived unhappily ever after?
Jack hadn’t been nimble?
Jack hadn’t been quick?
Jack hadn’t jumped over the candlestick?
Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was black as pitch?
Rapunzel hadn’t let down her hair?
Peter Piper quaffed a quart of quintessential quince?
A body didn’t meet a body comin’ thro’ the rye?

These are just a few of life’s great unanswerable questions.

I’m sure you can think of others.

But we do know the answer to that last question, don’t we? If a body didn’t meet a body comin’ thro’ the rye, we would not be able to hear Alma Gluck singing “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye” on this 1914 recording (1:44).

Indeed, we might not be here ourselves.

And if you just can’t get enough of Alma Gluck, here she is on a 1915 recording, accompanied by violinist Efram Zimbalist, singing “Old Folks At Home (Swanee River)” (3:14).

I just can’t imagine someone not getting enough of Alma Gluck.

We now return you to the Olympic event in progress.

Home of Alex Turner and the Arctic Monkeys, plus an unprecedented moment in the history of sports

(Photo © Copyright by Chris Downer on April 17, 2010, and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) Licence)

This photo is part of a montage [mon-tahzh; Fr. mawn-tazh] of photographs of Sheffield, Yorkshire, England that includes photographs by Nigel Chadwick, Paul Harrop, Graham Hogg, and Neal Theasby as well.

Rumour has it that everyone in Sheffield is thinks he is a big wheel.

In other news, 86-year-old Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (the former Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary) of the House of Hanover Saxe-Coburg-Gotha Windsor Windsor-Mountbatten picked her nails in public while (Brit. whilst) the team of Great Britain entered Olympic Stadium.

Ho hum.

That is not the real news.

The real news is her hat. Never before in her entire 60-year reign has Her Majesty etc. ever been seen wearing such a trivial chapeau. For her it has always been either dazzling crowns or great big wide-brimmed picture hats, just as it was for her mother before her, the late, lamented Queen Mum (the former Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and widow of King George VI, the former Prince Albert, Duke of York).

Change is always good, though, especially when mixing with the hoi polloi.

Barack Obama is the exception that proves the rule.

All eyes were not glued on London

Mine were glued on Mrs. RWP.

Today is her birthday, so instead of staying home and watching the opening ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics from start to finish, we went out to Longhorn’s for dinner. She had the shrimp and I had the rainbow trout. We both had the baked sweet potato. While (Brit. Whilst) there, we did manage to catch part of the ceremonies on the big-screen telly in the bar area from our table, which was clear across the room on the other side of the restaurant.

My personal favorite of the few glimpses we had: The descent of multitudinous (and quite Disney-esque) Mary Poppinses like paratroopers into the stadium.

By the time we returned home, the parade of nations was in full progress. I’m just sorry to have missed the entertainment portion of the big show for the first time since 1964.

I expect, though, that I’ll become better informed about what transpired through (a) the news media and (b) the kind efforts of my blogging friends who are closer to the action.

Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the (air)waves, for the next fortnight, at least!

[Editor’s note. Yorkshire Pudding came to mind when the announcer announced, “Alex Turner and his band, Arctic Foxes, I mean Arctic Monkeys, from SHEFFIELD!!!” This hands-across-the-sea moment would never have happened if I hadn’t started blogging. --RWP]