Olympic History: Amateurs and Professionals

Back in my youth the Olympics were the realm of amateurs, and a lot of energy was devoted to policing the line between amateurs and professionals. I guess amateurism was the last refuge of the WASP hierarchical society; sports was limited those who had the money and the leisure to train for events and participate in meets.  My impression is the horse events, like dressage and jumping, are the remaining holdouts, but maybe I'm missing the sports without sufficient appeal to pull in a paying audience.

Speaking of audiences, in my youth track and field was the fourth big participation sport, with horse racing and boxing the big audience sports.  (Early TV had the Friday night fights; yes, a professional fight every Friday night, to go along with the bigger events like the Carmen Basilio-Sugar Ray Robinson fights.)  The interest in track and field has dwindled, and the shrinking interest is shown in the meager coverage it gets outside of the Olympics.

Meanwhile the big three of basketball, baseball and football have gained prominence.  One benefit to those sports, as opposed to track and field or boxing or horse racing, is statistics.  Particularly these days you can lose yourself in the statistical analysis of players and games.   Track and field events don't have that complexity; the only thing they have is ever more refined measurement of results. 

Olympic Memories: Bikila

As a confirmed liberal, you know I enjoyed the victory of Abebe Bikila, the first sub-Saharan African to win a gold medal in the (1960) Olympics, running the marathon bare-footed.  Little did we know that not only was this a symbol of the decolonization of Africa, but also of the coming dominance of East Africans generally in distance events. 

Olympic Memories: Korbut

Olga Korbut defined charisma.  She seemed to come from nowhere in the 1972 Olympics, tiny and fearless. In my memory she was the first Iron Curtain athlete to win a following in the West, because her personality forced its way past our political prejudices.

WSJ Is Unfair to Dairy

Disregard the article (which is about attempts to regulate methane from cattle) and focus on the picture.(Article may be behind a pay wall.)  It's one cow, grazing, but what's unfair about it is how dirty the cow is. I can't figure it out. Our cows would look like that only sometimes, after a long winter when they've been in the barn all the time, except on good days when they might be let out for an hour or so while we cleaned the gutters.  The cows would have been lying down, and come into contact with manure from the gutters, perhaps getting their tails wet, and slapping the manure around.

The landscape seems to me to be a fall one, not spring, although the article is on California, with which I'm not familiar.

It's also odd that the cow is alone, though that's probably an artifact of picture selection--a single cow being more photogenic than a herd.

Berries and Cherries

Who knew that South Korea is importing loads of US blueberries and cherries, even more since the recent trade pact?  That's part of this article on Trump's effect on South Korea.

What was striking to me was how cheap the cherries were.  The article doesn't specify the size, but $8 isn't that much more than I'd expect to pay for cherries in my local Safeway.

Eat Cheese, Support Your Local Dairy

Wall Street Journal reports on the plight of dairy farmers--cheese stocks have soared as the dollar has strengthened. Commodity prices go up and down; the job of farmers is to ride the waves.

Olympic Memories: Mills

Memories:  Billy Mills coming from behind down the stretch in the 10K.  Can still bring tears to my eyes.  Youtube

Surprise of the Day: Cambodia

World Bank says Cambodia is now a lower middle income country (i.e., not the lowest grouping).

My memories of Cambodia feature Pol Pot and thousands/millions of skulls.  But now it's one of the fastest growing countries in the world.  History is strange.

Contrarian: Descriptive Not Prescriptive

I'll probably be alone in this, but my interpretation of Trump's statement is, it's a one-sentence digression describing what the gun nuts could do if his prediction of Clinton taking away guns came true.  I'm led to this because Trump famously isn't big on Second Amendment rights, or hasn't been in his past. So he outlines a sequence: Hillary aiming to take guns away (wrong), appointing Justices who share her aim (wrong because she doesn't aim to take guns away), yielding an inevitable result if you don't elect Trump.  But Trump's mind, which skitters like a moose calf on ice, undermines his projection by playing with the idea that gun nuts might assassinate Clinton.  It's not pushing the idea, it's the spur of the moment statement of a smart ass who never leaves a thought, or nonthought, unexpressed.

USDA and Civil Rights

The Jefferson Auditorium is the big meeting room in USDA's South Building at 14th and Independence.  Lots of ceremonies there, usually the audience filled the middle seats first, then the rear and lastly the front seats.  Apparently that's changed since I left.  Here's the blog post  bragging about the improvements the Vilsack leadership has brought to USDA in the area of civil rights.