Just a few updates on the Olympics after my travels have concluded. First, my in-laws just returned from China. They were able to attend the opening ceremonies and a number of the events. It was an amazing opportunity and the host country made things run very efficiently. Aside from the various “don’t look behind the curtain” issues, they were awed by the opening ceremonies. They also were very impressed with the “Water Cube” where they were able to see Phelps’ first gold in 2008 and Dara Torres’ medal.

The ‘Puter aptly pointed out differences between sports and, maybe I’ll call them physically difficult activities previously. NBC last night had a brief segment with Tim Daggett, Béla Károlyi and Bob Costas where they discussed the Individual Women’s Vault Final. Upon watching the clips shown, I am reinvigorated by my compatriot’s opinion that a “judged” event is not a “sport”. While there isn’t any direct accusation of homerism (here, defined as voting for the home team’s gymnast because you’ve been impressed by your host country as the gymnast’s country’s judge cannot participate in scoring their own athlete’s attempts) or other foul play, it does seem odd. At a superficial level, you see one gymnast vault (doing a move named after her) and land on her knees. Ouch. And you watch the other vaults, particularly in my case, the American gymnast, and you see a very good and difficult vault. Maybe we need some more Elean judges. Tim Daggett broke down Cheng Fei’s vault pointing out a number of errors that should have been deducted but weren’t. However you interpret the results, it’s a judged event and not a sport….of course, the next thing up on the screen was the Trampoline. Sigh. More cowbell!

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.