Delhi underthinking so far

So last week, I talked about how much I dislike the Commonwealth games, but I am a sports addict and if something is on, I will watch it.
A couple of things I have learnt so far....

1/ Moss Burmeister is fat

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/commonwealth-games/swimming/4196524/Its-a-Burmester-Comm-Games-bellyflop

 Okay so they didn't explicitly state he was fat, but this quote caught my eye.


"The theory is that Burmester's big-boned frame was assisted by the streamlined suit more than his rivals." 

This was in response to the fact Moss has failed to post impressive times since the full body suits have been made illegal.
Now I have been around enough PC people to know what big boned means....

Hey, I am not fat, I am just big-boned

What I want to know is how good are these body suits, I mean I knew they took like 6 days and a team of 7 to put on, but I wasn't aware it was because the swimmers were overweight

Without swimsuit

With Suit

If that actually work that well, why aren't more fat people just wearing them around under their clothes, like those special undies that get advertised on tv at 3 am between the total gym and the magic bullet, that remove your little pot belly.

2/ When running a commonwealth games it is not important to invest in quality measuring devices.

Two stories here the first

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/commonwealth-games/other-events/4196186/Boxing-weigh-in-farce-at-Commonwealth-Games

So on the weigh-in day at the boxing, the scales being used were 1.4 kilo out. So all the boxers thought they were 1.4 kilos heavier than the actually were.
Big whoop I hear you say, I fluctuate that much over lunch. The problem is for boxers every gram is critical. In the muscular human beings power-to-weight is a fairly linear thing, so the closer you can get to the upper limit of your weight class the better. Boxers therefore tend to push the boundaries, this is why you see them stripping to their undies or further during weigh-ins.

I told you I was wearing my 2 kilo undies.

So thinking your 1.4 kilo over is a big deal, the boxers all got into a panic sweating furiously to meet their weight requirements only to be told the scales were out. This means many of the boxers will not be at their peak.

What do you mean the scales were out?

The other story was on the radio, there are reports coming out of India that the 10 metre diving board is actually 10.7 metres high.
That's almost a metre, that's not an insignificant distance.

Honey I told you NOT to use the guys from Dehli games.

Again these athletes have been training for years, getting their timing perfect, so that they can complete all their rotations before hitting the water. Being 0.7 metres out is going to mean a lot of the divers will be over-rotating. Although this could help boost the audience, more chances of crashes, its what I like to call the NASCAR effect

Only reason any one watches NASCAR

Underthinking Commonwealth

First of all I must lay my cards on the table, I do not understand why we need the commonwealth games. I have never gotten into it, I don't understand it, and to be honest I would be happy if it was gone.
For starters you don't even have to be a real country to attend the commonwealth games. There are only 54 nations in the commonwealth, yet 71 teams attend the games. How you may ask?

"....53,54....fifty-..nah I can't see anymore."

Well for starters Great Britain decides since they are the leader, then they should probably get more than one entry, so for the purpose of the games they seperate not only into the 4 home nations (Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland) but also declare any bit of land not physically attached to the mainland a country (Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man). I mean if they can do that why don't New Zealand send a South Island, North Island, Chatham Island and Stewart Island delegation?

Norman unveils the mascot for the 2010 Chatham Island team

To be fair to the Motherland though, us colonies have joined the party ie NZ with Tokelau, Cook Islands etc and Australia with Norfolk Island. Despite the fact made up countries can compete in these games...

The people of Starwaria are always proud when their team enters the stadium

....we still don't get a great cross section of the world competing at the games

There are more places not highlighted than highlighted.

But that's not the end of it, so we are starting with roughly 20% of the worlds countries. So the talent pool is already severely limited, then the top competitors from nations that are eligible to compete don't because they don't view it as prestigious (Usain Bolt, Caster Semenya, even our own Greg Henderson).
What exactly do you claim to be if you win a commonwealth medal?
I mean for example in weightlifting as far as I can tell the highest ranked commonwealth country is Canada at 16th equal, so at best you are 16th best in the world with a gold in commonwealth. (Presuming of course each country only has one good guy which is unlikely so you maybe barely cracking the top 30)

From a limited number of countries, and out of the people that actually decided to turn up I am the best at my sport

Then some of the other sports they have at the commonwealth games? They have greco-roman wrestling despite the fact neither the Greeks nor the Romans attend the games, they have Judo despite the fact the Japanese aren't there, they have table tennis yet no Chinese. When is the last time you saw a non-Chinese competitive table tennis player? This is second only to being a white sprinter in poor sporting career decisions.

Arthur Spriggs the last competive non-Chinese Tennis player sadly passed in 2003

Out of the other sports that are involved, I think the only one where the commonwealth games is the pinnacle is Lawn Bowls.
I mean the rugby 7's, quite a commonwealth dominated sport is without places like Italy, France, Ireland (real Ireland), Argentina, USA (Shown some promise of late), so hardly the pinnacle of the sport.
The netball, a sport only played in the commonwealth as far as I know, is really only a competition between Australia and NZ, an event that occurs every other Tuesday, just with different made up titles on the line, so hardly pinnacle. Netball in that sense is kind of like WWE where the competitors just decide to which titles to put on the line, imagine if that was the case.....

Okay so its agreed we are competing for the Fisher-Paykell, World Champ, Asia-Pacific Champ, but not the South Pacific or Commonwealth titles?

I mean I don't want to detract from the effort all the athletes and competitors put in, but at the end of the day if you are not good enough to be the best in the world, should you actually be a professional athlete? Perhaps you have underthought your profession?

Underthinking Profiles

Forgive me Father, it has been over a week since my last blog. For all you faithful readers I am sure this has been an eternity, making your procrastination time empty, and for that I apologize.

WHY HASN'T HE WRITTEN A BLOG!!!!

What to write about though, see normally I sit idle thinking about weird and wonderful things but lately I have been rather busy, my models in my thesis are actually working, I have a delightful new lady friend and also a flat with mySky leaving my about 10 seconds a week to observe underthinking. In the last week I attended the NZIHL Skate of Origin Match, I am a pretty awesome goalie you see, the following photo was taken at said match.

My Mother and I, we should be in magazines.

Now I cropped the photo to use as my profile picture, the cropping removed my mother. It is not because I do not like my mother, in fact I am rather fond of her.
The reason for the cropping is that I believe profile photos should be a clear photo of you, for some reason a lot of people don't understand this, and come up with all sorts of weird and wonderful pictures as their profile. I shall now give some examples that irk me.

1. The Inanimate object

The point of a profile photo is to show your friends what you look like, or used to look like. Not show them the picture of something you find interesting, that is what your photo album is for. My favourite time to encounter these photos is when I am looking for an old friend with a common name. i.e. Fred Smith. There are over 500 Fred Smiths on facebook, on the first search page I found these pictures.

Is that you Fred? Did you have a haircut?

Fred? Have you been working out?

Clearly the photos above give me no further clues to whether the Fred Smith I have clicked on is my friend Fred or not. Incidentally I have no friends called Fred Smith, so there is a position vacant for anyone who is looking.

2. The Cause/Event photo

Oh these are good, I want to save the world so I will change my photo to a picture of the poster promoting the cause. Or I am going to be attending this great event that people should also attend so I will make my profile photo the advertising photo for that.

Harriet Gray (apparently)

I understand you feel strongly for you cause/event. But you do realise facebook has mechanisms for you to promote these that don't include you getting plastic surgery so you resemble a planet right?

Greg was really committed to the recycling cause.

For causes that are ongoing, you could start a facebook group or fan page, and people that are likeminded could join it, you could even invite your friends that don't feel as strongly as you to join, and continously check to see if they acceped so that next time you can guilt trip them for not caring about whales, mines, forests or whatever it is hippies like these days.

"Remember when you didn't join "Whales have feelings too", that is why Timmy is dying right now, jerk"

And for events, facebook is even more explicit in helping you promote this, there is a section for creating events its step by step, you can tell people when, where, and why the event is happening. I tend to find for parties its best to make the end time at 5am two days after the party started, so that people will know it will be a really wild time.

3. The multiple people, where you are the least relevant person in the photo


These photos annoy me a lot. If the photo is of someone else but you are kind of in it, pick a different photo. If you don't like having your photo taken, just use the facebook silhouette, I mean that doesn't tell me much either but at least I don't think you are now on the run from the law and have had complete re constructive surgery.
Generally speaking the people that use these photos don't think of themselves as attractive people, but think maybe their friend is.

The guy in boat thought his friend Herb was way more attractive

Why do they do this? Are they hoping someone that obviously has never meet them in real life, will be trawling through facebook photos, see the picture of that babe Herb and want to jump his boots?
Even if that is the case how does it help them? I mean as soon as you meet, the person will realise you are clearly not the super stud Herb.

Man in Boat; He is no Herb

 What do you do now ? Just yell surprise and say well we got on online so it doesn't matter what I look like? True, but now the entire relationship is now built on a lie. The Facebook creeping relationship will be doomed.

Stalking: The most romantic way to meet.

4. Not a Photo, but shared Profiles.

The other thing that irks me about profiles is couples that share their profile. I don't mean do facebook relationship thingy, no these people are sharing the one profile.
They have names like Dave Mary Smith, were Mary is not his middle name, its his wifes name because they both use same profile. (Incidentally my grandmother's middle name is Bruce.)
Why are they doing this? Are they concerned they will run out of facebook pages, and they won't be using theirs much so they should just share?

Malik, It happened we just ran out of internet

Is this vestigial from the days where couples shared an email address? I mean I know sometimes people feel like the other person completes them, but they are still two separate individuals and should have separate profiles to reflect this.

Do Siamese twins get separate facebook profiles?

These people when making comments on walls and stuff append their messages with the name of the person that is writing the message, that is the point of separate profiles people, it tells people who are commenting on their stuff so you don't have too.