The Reality-Based Community

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

  • Home
  • About
  • Cannabis Science & Policy Summit
  • MJ Legalization: The Book
  • BOTEC Analysis
You are here: Home / Dumb nationalism

Dumb nationalism

February 22, 2010 By Michael O'Hare

I don’t understand the endless obsession of Olympic commentators and event organizers with the countries competitors come from: parading in national costumes at the opening, keeping score by country on the front web page of the NY Times, Canadian whining about not winning enough medals, event winners swanning around waving their flags.  It’s pointlessly nationalistic, but it’s also stupid: counting, much less comparing or “scoring” Olympic medal numbers per country, is like obsessing over a one-heat race among cheetahs, walruses, hares, tortoises, and trees.

Here are the numbers of medals per million population of the top eight medal winners so far:Given that Canada has a little more than a tenth the population of the US, they’re “beating” us three to one by any reasonable measure; given that Americans mostly live where it’s much less wintry than any of Canada, so what? Given that Austria and Norway are rich, mountainous, and cold, why wouldn’t they rack up lots of wins at a winter sports party?  Enough already; lets let the kids compete and have fun, and not coopt them as cannon fodder in a silly and jingoistic PR battle.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Sports

Popular Posts of the Week

  • Advice to Alex M
  • Unlearning How White People Ask Personal Questions
  • Television Was Not Always a Vast Wasteland
  • The Secret Dubbing of Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady
  • Witnessing Violence and Death: What Happens to People and How Can They Be Helped?

Blogroll

  • Balloon Juice
  • The Belgravia Dispatch
  • Brad DeLong
  • Cop in the ‘hood
  • Crooked Timber
  • Crooks and Liars
  • Echidne of the Snakes
  • Firedoglake
  • A Fistful of Euros
  • Healthinsurance.org Blog
  • Horizons
  • How Appealing
  • The Incidental Economist
  • Informed Comment — Juan Cole
  • Jonathan Bernstein
  • Kevin Drum
  • Marginal Revolution – Tyler Cowen
  • Marijuana Monitor
  • The Moderate Voice
  • Obsidian Wings
  • Patheos
  • Philosoraptor
  • Plato o Plomo – Alejandro Hope
  • Political Animal
  • Politics Upside Down
  • Progressive Blog Digest
  • Progressive Blue
  • Slacktivist
  • Snopes
  • Strange Doctrines
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • The Volokh Conspiracy (Washington Post)
  • Vox Pop

Recent Posts

  • Television Was Not Always a Vast Wasteland
  • Home
  • “I take it the answer is: ‘No comment’?”
  • There’s ordinary genius. Then there’s this video
  • The libertine’s one-way ticket from Prague

Archives

Topic Areas

Copyright © 2017 The Reality-Based Community  •  Designed & Developed by ReadyMadeWeb LLC