Saw the opening ceremonies. Thought it was ok. I think there's going to be a lot of money wasted at these things trying to top the previous open ceremonies. I wish they'd just come out with a mime or something and do a little song and dance, and say "That's it, we're feeding the homeless with the rest of the cash we were going to use for this show".
Meet The Stuntman Who Parachuted Into The Olympic Opening Ceremony Dressed As The Queen http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexrees/meet-the-stuntman-who-parachuted-into-the-olympic
Will Athletes Ever Stop Breaking Records? Even if athletes never got any stronger or faster, and if their techniques and training never changed, they would still break records from time to time. That’s because the ability of each person who decides to compete, and the outcome of each competition, are affected by random processes. What happened on the way to the track that might affect the athletes’ performance? What’s the weather like? And so on. Every sporting event is a matter of chance as well as of achievement, and chance always offers the possibility of a breakthrough.That said, the mathematics of record-breaking—also known as “extreme-value statistics”—tell us that, all things being equal, the frequency of world records will tend to diminish. At a certain point, we’ll have rolled the dice so many times that the chance of our beating our best score drops close to zero. That’s why new sports and new classes of competitors typically produce more records than old ones. Women athletes weren’t allowed to compete in the Olympic marathon until 1984. Since then, their record time has dropped by about 10 minutes, while the men have managed to shave off only five.All things are not equal, of course: Athletes are much better conditioned than they were in the first modern Olympics, held in 1896. Many competitors are now professionals instead of amateurs, they’ve developed new techniques (high jumpers used to go over the bar face down; now they flop over backwards), and they have new equipment. Each of these developments accelerated the pace of record-breaking, and any projections for the future must take further innovation into account.(Extreme-value statistics can also be useful for spotting patterns outside of sports. For instance, researchers have tried to apply record-breaking calculations to the study of climate change, to figure out the likelihood for any given day to be the “hottest on record” as the atmosphere heats up.) more... http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-07/fyi-will-athletes-ever-stop-breaking-records
I haven't watched any of it except by accident when I turn on something only to see they're having Olympics instead.
I think this was almost Rodney Dangerfield's "Triple Lindy" http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/diving/highlights-german-diver-lands-on-back.html View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDMMYT3vkTk
