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Hacker Uncovers Chinese Olympic Fraud
SkeptOlympics writes "A new chapter in the ongoing controversy surrounding China's women's gymnastics team opened today, as search engine hacker stryde.hax found surviving copies of official registration documents issued by China's General Administration of Sport of China. The incriminating documents, expunged by censors from the official site and from Google's document cache, still appear in the document translation cache of Chinese search giant Baidu, here (1) and here (2), showing the age of one of China's gold medal winning gymnasts to be 14 instead of 16, the minimum age for competition presented on her government-issued passport. Now that official government documentation is available, how long will the IOC be able to keep a lid on this scandal?" I imagine the answer is "Forever."
Uh oh, some poor sysadmin at Baidu is in need of "re-education".
China has already taken their official stance. They just don't care about the rules and don't care what other people think about it.
The IOC are making themselves look pretty scummy by association at the moment. They seem complicit in various pieces of fraud and dodgy dealings, and perfectly willing to help cover everything up.
But then I've never held them in that high a regard anyway. They're a business and they make the world's governments beg like puppydogs to be allowed to hold their games.
Frankly I find the whole thing to be something of a joke, and an incredible waste of money.
Now let's move onto something that the entire world didn't already know. It's not like they're going to do anything about it, the Chinese will scream that those documents are forged, and everybody will forget about it.
Why is there a minimum age to begin with? I think if a 14 year old can compete at the level of those a few years older, she should be allowed to. Is the age requirement only in gymnastics? Wasn't Michael Phelps 15 in his first Olympics in 2000?
Easy, it depends on how many millions the chicoms pour into their private bank accounts. The IOC is the biggest joke in all of sports.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
So they've had two years less of training and they're able to compete at an Olympic level? On the flip side, at 14, the athlete's body is smaller and less developed. Cheating is cheating.
is this seen as a scandal the world over, or just in America? No doubt many in China will believe that the gov on this and ignore the evidence (even if the girls and their parents come forward and admit it as well). But Do many in EU, South America, Africa, Asia Minor, Japan, South Korea, oceana, etc see this as a pretty wicked scandel of both Chinese gov AND IOC?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Most of the girls on the Chinese team don't look like they've finished puberty - childish faces, no hips, scrawny. Even for Chinese, these athletes would be extreme cases if they were even close to their 'official' age. Cheng Fei is the only one that does. I can't wait to see what they look like in 3 or 4 years.. I guarantee they will all be taller, heavier, and curvier.
Even if nobody is going to admit anything it's nice to see what everybody suspected in black and white.
Nobody from the IOC is going to say a word about this before they've left China. It would be rather foolhardy to do otherwise.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Ironic that that go to such lengths to cheat in order to win only to make themselves look bad in the end.
The IOC is going to lose a LOT of credibility over this (as if they have much left to begin with) if they don't do something about it soon.
I wouldn't even mind if they didn't award the gold to the American women. Let them keep the silver, but it needs to be stripped from the Chinese. This is only proof of one of them being underage, but from what I've been reading, it's starting to seem pretty certain that at least 3 of them are underage.
And if China was willing to cheat this blatantly in this event, it makes you wonder what might have been going on behind closed doors with the rest of their athletes.
Sigh. I blame the Chinese government for this.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Prediction: IOC will turn a blind eye, being that they said the passports are their proof of age and that China is the host country.
let alone there has to be lots of emotional strain.
I think it was done after Nadia, wasn't she 14?
Granted some people mature faster than others but who is to judge?
I look at it this way, the IOC turns a blind eye to Tibet so I seriously don't think something as age is important to them either. They won't do anything until the Olympics are done, let alone acknowledge it. They won't do anything if it affects how much money the IOC gets.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
She's 16 in Chinese years, which is 14 is US years.
I suspect that the IOC will turn a blind eye during the actual Olympic competition in order to allow China to save face, but then the issue will be quietly looked at in a year or two when most people no longer care. I have no evidence for this, but it would explain why the IOC is refusing to investigate now in spite of pretty strong evidence.
"how long will the IOC be able to keep a lid on this scandal?"
Basically forever. This is not, you may suspect, the first time something a regime of this sort has played fast and loose with the rules. About the best one might expect is an asterisk in the record.
Who didn't assume the Chinese would "cheat to win" at least a few times in this Olympics? They want to dazzle the world and win as many medals as possible. One has to assume they'll resort to unsavory tactics as long as plausible deniability exists.
On another Olympics note, does anyone else think there have been an unusually high number of errors in the technical events this year? Perhaps I just wasn't watching that closely in previous years, but I thought there have been an inordinate number of falls (off balance beams), poor landings and other substantial technical failures by the competitors. We've had outstanding performances by the likes of Phelps and Bolt, but otherwise there's been a lot of sucking by these elite athletes.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
So much for don't be evil...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Of course now the ages of the three competitors in question are a matter of public record. Should they show up in the next few years trying to compete in age limited venues it could get interesting.
I say carbon date 'em!
Oh, yes, the media should give the same preference to Iraq news over the Olympics that is demonstrated by such responsible, independent organizations like Wikipedia.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Where the movie "Wag the dog" made a fake war to get the attention away from alleged sexual behavior of the president. "Wag the dog II" will be about the alleged sexual behavior of the president to get the attention away from war.
My, how times have changed.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
That explains why Team GB have been winning so many Golds this year!
Summation 2
Considering what the Chinese gymnastics team looks like and what people were saying about them, how does proof of [at least one of] their minority change anything?
This gossip and tabloid type scandal is perfect for more distraction of the public. Even if nothing happens now, in China- The US news will be plastered.
What war in Iraq?
Dude, the war in Iraq isn't going anywhere.
Neither is the war in Georgia/Ossetia.
And the Olympics are over in a few days.
Everyone with a tv or radio knows that Condi Rice is skipping the closing ceremonies because of emergency NATO meetings about Russian & because Musharraf just resigned.
Part of the reasons the IOC chose China was to shine a spotlight on their censorious, opaque and human-rights-violating ways. The idea being that, if the Chinese government gets enough egg on their face, they might decide anything is better than being humiliated/embarrassed in front of the world. At most, that high wattage bulb is going to be shining for another week.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I was listening to commentators a few days ago. Here is what they say... IOC's official duty is to check the passports and they did that. They are not obliged to do any further investigation unless someone presents evidence directly to them. But, of course, due to fear of retaliation in other (or even current) competitions, no one dares to do so.
Kinda fishy reason, but then again, seems to be the case so far.
Even when they're controversial its boring. Is there anything the olympics cant make dull and unimportant?
Commie Chinese cheating children
People in many western countries have an expectation that governments and businesses behave in a mostly honorable manner. Chinese have no such expectation as citizens of a one party communist government. History, if the party decides, will be changed, and changed, and then changed again in order to match the truth of The Party.
Was the name of that poor sysadmin Winston?
That doesn't mean that Google modified the cache, it just means that the cached version has been modified.
Recall that Microsoft Office applications do not always remove deleted data, and Google's search engine operates on the raw data in a file (which means that Google will return search results that seem less than obvious if you just look at a rendered copy of the file... something search engine spammers find handy). That means if someone in China deleted that row from the spreadsheet, it would still show up in Google's search.
And then there are sites like this popping up everywhere to take advantage of news like this.
Seriously!
If anyone puts the 1st of January as their birth date, it is only because that is the most convenient fake birth date to enter on an HTML form.
01/01/ and then whatever year you need to be to apply for whatever it is you are applying for.
Even though you have tons of sports in the Olympics, each sport is different, especially in culture.
In order to groom a good gymnast you have to start very young and you have to practice constantly, training for much of her life. You must be physically strong, flexible, have incredible coordination and balance, have low weight and low body fat and be relatively fearless. The types of things female gymnasts are asked to do are best performed by teenage girls who have made a life long career out of gymnastics. The problem is that once you realize this, you press gymnasts to train harder and harder, faster and faster. You get into situations were girls train too much, ignore schooling, get injuries because they push too hard, begin to suffer from bolemia and anorexia, etc. To top it off, you typically only get 1 shot at olympic gold, if at all, because in 4 years your "washed up" because the next girl who comes along is the new star and at 20 you can't do the same things you can at 16. At that young age, all you want to do is get your moment in the spotlight, make your coach and your parents happy, and get your pony. You aren't thinking about your long term future, and most gymnasts don't have a future in gymnastics outside of their teen years. If you look at this culture, women's gymnastics no longer looks like such a pretty sport.
At least in men's gymnastics, they can attend at least two olympics, because their events are based more on strength and men can continue to get stronger past their teen years
Just to paint a little more broad picture, look at swimming this year. There's a 40 year old woman swimming for the american team this year. Phelps has been in two and could be in three olympics. Swimmers train hard, but in general they can get better as they get older, as Phelps did, but gymnasts peak early. When have you seen a woman gymnast in more than 1 olympics? When have you seen a 24 year old female gymnast, much less a 40 year old one?
The point of the rule is a stop gap to prevent downward pressure on the average age of a gymnast, and allow them to grow up at least a little bit in the hopes they can make better decisions for themselves, and so that coaches and countries don't start pushing 12 year olds as gymnasts. A 14 year old is a little more fearless than a 16 year old... in a very bad way. One bad decision could cause severe injury, and pushing a girl that young will have lasting effects on her life, mostly bad. I would not put it past communist regimes like China to have a state run program where they don't care about their girls and create a program which churns out 12-14 year old world class gymnasts who in turn are discarded with severe emotional and physical problems later in life.
So in short, it's their to protect the girls from themselves and everyone else who would push them too hard to early. Personally, I'd want the limit higher, because calling those gymnasts "women" is downright upsetting to me, and they still start incredibly young for a fleeting chance at a bit of stardom.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Screenshots
http://ledworklights.com/images/He-Kexin-1.png
and
http://ledworklights.com/images/He-Kexin-2.png
Post yours too. Honesty is the best policy, but if they won't be honest, at least we can retain the proof.
Download the spreadsheets. If someone has a copy of the one from Google's cache and can do a raw text search on it instead of just looking at the rendered version it might be possible to determine who removed Kexin's entry thanks to Microsoft's leaky file formats.
No. Everyone with a TV or radio knows that Phelps won 8 medals, when the next season of Stuck-On-An-Island-With-A-Film-Crew starts, and how the evil gas companies are making gazillions of dollars at our expense.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Speaking narrowly to the issue of rule-making and rule-enforcement in general, and ignoring he question of the truth of the specific allegations in this specific case:
Any rule not applied fairly is a risk to equal competition. Just because you don't know whether a rule introduces a bias on the outcome does not mean that it doesn't.
For example, let's suppose some country (any country) did have an athlete participating in an event contrary to some rule. It doesn't matter if it's age or drugs or taste in music. If some number of countries select from their entire population and others select from only the people in the approved group, then whether or not any given country was able to show its most competitive face is purely a question of whether the excluded group contains the most competitive person.
Let's suppose the games are closed to anyone who likes hip hop music, for example. Why might it matter if some hypothetical Foozania were to field a swimmer who secretly likes hip hop music when the other countries voluntarily held back? Absent Michael Phelps (we all know from US airtime allotments that there are not really any other swimmers of note in the US), who would be voluntarily withheld because of his professed like of hip hop, the Foozanian swimmer's scores might seem very good. By your reasoning, which seems to amount to absence of competition, he deserves his medal fair and square, right? But if the absence of competition can be caused by uneven application of rules, that's where the problem comes.
But beyond this, there is also a human rights question: Are there sports in which people are pressured at a younger and younger age to get into the sport, before they are ready to make a free choice? Are there sports in which the toll the sport takes on the athlete is damaging before a certain age? These are complex questions of ethics that it seems fair for the Olympic committee to at least consider, so you can understand why there might be such rules. And once there are such rules, my examples above hopefully show why they must be applied fairly in order for the Olympics to mean anything at all.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Dunno if that's good or bad, when the public outcry about a senseless war is considered worse than the outcry of a prez cheating.
I vote for good.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A couple of elderly women (70+) are being reducated for wanting to protest their eviction and their sin was timing their application during the Olympics. That and the incident where their poster golden boy broke down from too much training and his coach said the extreme pressure from the regime was to blame convinces me there is a god up there and he was looking after me for I was not born in China.
Yes, I am being melodramatic and I think it's apt.
This is old news. There were already some discussions regarding this on various Chinese forums. People have dug up webpages showing reports of her age as 14, all coming from the same source, namingly the "6-city competition". Insiders said it's actually the local gymnastics team which He belongs to that forged her age as 14, in order to get the highly skilled olympian into this event,which has a underage group meant for young gymnastists under 15. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how this new discovery of hidden spreadsheets is going to fit in the story.
Where's the hacking part come in? Give him credit for his search and chinese language skills but hacking?
What I do know, however, is that there needs to be more coverage of women's beach volleyball signals.
--- What?
My concern isn't with the IOC, my concern is with google changing history. Cache is considered a history - an accurate representation of how something was at the point it was captured. If the cache has been altered we can't trust any of google's data to not have been tampered with. How do you know they aren't altering your gmail, your website content on click-through, or your spreadsheet data? Perhaps something like a less centralized version of grub is in order. Heck, we are all browsing websites... combine a less scary FOSS alexa-style toolbar to search and crawl and offer opt-in to sharing your cache with a crawler, keep a couple megs open for the index, and run the search like a gnutella client with the results/search bar right in the browser.
Get a web developer
Let's be real here, he just knows the advanced commands that both Google and Baidu provide. It is not hacking.
...that some of the gymnasts were confused by the registration process and misprinted their ages on the registration form. Fortunately this minor error was corrected when their official passports were issued.
Short of sawing a few athletes in two and counting the rings, that's probably the best you're going to get.
Age of consent in China is 14 for boys, 14 for girls, and 20 for gymnasts.
Part of the reasons the IOC chose China was to shine a spotlight on their censorious, opaque and human-rights-violating ways. The idea being that, if the Chinese government gets enough egg on their face, they might decide anything is better than being humiliated/embarrassed in front of the world. At most, that high wattage bulb is going to be shining for another week.
If that was the plan, it backfired big time. What remains of the public outcry against the human rights violations in China? Did you hear anything about it? All I hear is gold medal here, incredibly tight finish there, new world record... Do you hear anything about China and human rights or censorship in any news? Some brief tempest in the teapot before the games, when reporters were complaining that they didn't have full internet access, but since?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I see nothing here that says these 'numbers' have anything to do with birthdays. 1988 even appears here in a couple of places. Also, if you know a little Chinese you'll see that the character nan2 appears (meaning 'male'). Explain that.
I think what happened here is somebody wanted to find the number they wanted, and looked until he found himself to be right.
Even if the Chinese team cheated, the USA team gave a 2nd place effort. So take China's golds away, but the USA doesn't deserve it. Winning by default is too petty for the Olympics.
Part of the reasons the IOC chose China was to shine a spotlight on their censorious, opaque and human-rights-violating ways.
Actually, it's much more likely that the IOC chose China because of the rather large bribes which were presented to their selection committee.
That IS how they operate after all. Free dinners, big parties, free alcohol, and free jewelry for their wives or cars for the husbands so they can honestly say "No, I didn't get anything".
I know what you're thinking, and yes, the jewelry should be worth more than the cars if you want to be the winner...
But maybe I'm just being cynical.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
i can't read chinese, and i have little idea the context in which these docs exist other than the domain they were apparently hosted and the authors implications.
however, the first two lines do translate to "Gymnasts reported to the National Registry"; the third '"No.", "name (in)", "Sex" and "Date of Birth", "native", "birth" and "registered", "Remarks"' and the last 'Note: The total registered 1050; which recognizes 753; first Note 297; exchange 13' according to google translate.
The sweetest outcome of this would be if after the olympics, the truth was exposed by one of the Chinese gymnast. Then, China would get to hang their head in shame, fire up the stadiums again, and hold medal ceremonies for each and every person that should have been awarded medals. Then, banned from all future olympic competition.
I swear she told me she was 16...
People didnt want to make a big stink during the compeition from fear of Chinese and scoring.. Wait a sec... Mostly all of the judges were NOT chinese.. So what gives. I think after its done, now is the time to act. And that the Olympics should never be hosted in China ever again. IMHO I think that this will get slid under the carpet.. Nothing to see here move on.
There's no Freedom like UFP-dom
...that I think is most important:
Olympic level competition is more a JOB than a sport.
And many countries, China among them, would have no compunction about working a child mercilessly if she shows talent and the ability to gain her nation the prestige of a gold medal.
It's not, IMO, as much about unfair competition. It's about having standards as a modern society that a person should have free will and children should be protected from exploitation. The cutoff has to be made somewhere, and right now that cutoff is 15.
They will be legal to look at.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Hmm.. I guess in China, Forever means Eight Months.
Where in the World did you hear this?
What makes you think the Chinese Government actually cares what the rest of the World thinks? They have well over a trillion dollars in cash, they are getting more and more business from the West regardless of their human rights record, they know we won't do anything about it (The Dalai Lama asked the US for help when the Chinese first invaded and we turned a blind eye because it wasn't in our interest i.e. no oil) and even if we did, corp America would immediately put a stop to it and the Chinese have enough military power to stop anything we throw at them. That's assuming we could actually put a force together to do something - someone has our military jerking around in the Middle East while real threats go unchecked.
Oh, yes, the wikipedia should give the same preference to Iraq news over the Olympics that is demonstrated by such responsible, independent organizations like Uncyclopedia or The Onion.
What? Me worry?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
That would explain how they contort themselves in a non-human fashion...
Off-topic but it's S. Ossetia and while I am in no way taking sides, the Russian response was directed at Georgia's military action after Georgia refused to let South Ossetia's action of breaking away and claiming indepdence go unpunished.
This (Russian invasion of Georgia) is not even close to what happened in Iraq (full scale invasion by US led forces with a deceitful claim about WMDs that UN led inspectors said Iraq had none of).
Would you please cite your sources where you claim "Part of the reasons the IOC chose China was to shine a spotlight on their censorious, opaque and human-rights-violating ways.". Also what's the rest of the reason?
These various young athletes make money eventually endorsing products, and having a gold over a silver or bronze is a direct monetary benefit. I would imagine there could possibly be some lawsuits over this eventually, even if the IOC is "satisfied". They are going to have a hard time explaining the documents and the blatant trying to hide the original sources. A big mess and fits in with the other fake stuff connected to these olympics, the fake fireworks newscasts, the fake lip syncing singing, etc.
Clearly, passports cannot be trusted for age verification purposes. The only reasonable solution I see is to take a core sample from each of the athletes and count the rings.
I can't believe how people keep criticizing China for this. I mean this is ridiculous.
If the country officially changes the date of birth on the certificate or passport it should be OBVIOUS that this is for good reasons and as we all know, it's a valid legal document. Whatever's true for you, is true for you -right? I would love to see the IOC go to a Chinese court over this.
I mean, that's like if the U.S. claimed they had proof a foreign state was a threat to their nation and then invaded them only to gain control over the natural resources in the area and later on admit that they had fabricated the evidence or once again engaged in "preemptive disinformation". Who are these rumor-spreading freedom-hating enemies of democracy? What a ridiculous discussion. When states lie it's not evil, it's politics.
*Cynicism sponsored by the Peoples Republic of Dystopia*
Bware muh mad skillz, yo! I can cliq on de link most ppl don't.
Lets step back a little bit and look at it with a clear mind, shall we?
I think there are two things worth considering in all this:
- Certain people have been screaming "Fraud" every day of the Olympics over such issues as the pretty girl who mimed to the voice of another girl and the allegedly doctored video of the opening ceremony. I mean, isn't this because those people are going over things with a fine brush trying to find anything that could look bad? And if so, isn't it remarkable that they have only found - how much? Three or four items? I wonder what we would find if we subjected all the Olympic Games that have been held to the same scrutiny. How much would the US turn out to have "cheated"? Well, we'll never know, I suppose. But do we really have to be this petty-minded? If there is something real to criticize, by all means criticize; but this kind of nonsense only detracts from what else you have to say.
- Looking at the evidence, I find a number of questions unanswered; such as whether there is any proof for the authenticity of the said documents? If you accuse somebody of fraud, you have to be able to back it up with evidence that holds in criminal court. Ie. can you prove your accusations beyond any reasonable doubt? If you ever stand accused of a crime, I'm sure you will be able to see the point in that.
But of course, this is not about actually proving that the Chinese are guilty - you have already decided that, proof or not - this is just about scoring cheap points by spreading rumours, isn't it?
Mod parent way up. :)
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Speaking of sexuality, does this mean that the various networks who transmitted the gymnastic event are guilty of pandering to paedophiles ? I mean, they transmitted video of underage girls in tight clothes bending every way on public television.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Hmm, I dunno about the "egg on their face" thing... The mainstream media and sports journalist just agree that the olympics are fun. A dictatorship cheating? Never happened before! I bet you don't remember the days when the russian judge would give out a completely different (and biased) score from the american judge's and vice-versa, out of spite and political bullshit.
Plus, China is ugly as HELL. concrete, concrete, concrete - maybe they've got one or two mystical-foggy-mountains-mysterious-beautiful forests left, but the rest of the country isn't worth much. Let them fester.
i wonder if anyone would complain if these kids were , say, weightlifters. what then? would full grown men cry that they got beat by little kids? forget it - let them keep the medals. better yet - lower the age limit in olympics. if the kids can do better job then their adult counter parts - they should be given some credit.
Then you really need to peek outside your door. Maybe you haven't noticed, under Bush's tenure: extraordinary rendition, torture, a $3 trillion+ war of aggression, colossal hypocrisy, illegal wiretapping, disgusting cronyism and profiteering, a million dead civilians, galloping environmental destruction ... Need I go on. Bush (and his cabal) has earned the absolute hatred of every civilised individual on the planet. We wait for their Nuremberg.
you had me at #!
So I see that most of the posters here still watch the Olympic Games on television or other media. The IOC, the sponsors and the media conglomerates will NOT change their behavior, unless they realize that the public is not interested in the games anymore. Therefore everyone who watches this years Olympics is part of the problem, not part of the solution!
Americans need to understand the world is no longer centered in America.
Btw, the French press reported one of the Chinese won gold is Korean by mistake, they apologized. Chinese press reported the age by mistake, they apologize. Why don't the media here care about that and claim the girl is Korean?
If I'm the IOC, what am I supposed to do, China provided the legal documents -- passports, archive video back in 2003 showing the age of the girls, where America media like to use cached page mistake as the basis for argument.
I thought there was another official government statement from a previous event last year that dates one of the team members as being 13. Even though there was had proof from an official Chinese government statement, the IOC said they'd do nothing.
I imagine they'll do nothing here as well.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I own a TV and all I knew of was the third. Although I replaced gazillions with a real number.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
The age issue can be debated, but there is a bigger scandal with China's gymnastics.
How does a Chinese gymnast perform a vault, landing on her freaking KNEES, and get a Gold Medal. I watched that vault over in slow-mo and I swear that very nearly a failed vault, but she gets a gold medal. Whatever.
Yeah, but I'm sure may of the other competing countries had 14 and 15 year old gymnasts that could also have competed and likely bested the young Chinese gymnast, but all OTHER countries followed the rules (*gasp!*) and left them at home. Thus, results aside, they still cheated by sending their best, regardless of age, while we sent the best we had within the age restriction.
stop looking for ways to discredit winners
Several people have suggested they remove the age limit. In gymnastics especially, it seems like some athletes reach their peak at a very young age. What if Shawn Johnson were a year younger and couldn't compete? 4 years from now she'd by 19, and you generally don't see anyone that old in Olympic gymnastics. Because of timing she'd be screwed over.
I wouldn't be opposed to lowering the age to 14, or even eliminating the limit for gymnasts. However, the rules are the rules right now and cheaters should be punished.
If China wanted younger athletes in, they should have petitioned the IOC for a rule change rather than cheating.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Or, more accurately, his Administration is tyrannical. It's no Genghis Khan, or Caligula, or even Napolean, but between describing the administration as benevolent and thinking first and foremost of the people or as authoritarian and largely out for the ends of a few the latter clearly wins out.
The guy may not be entirely unredeemable, but it is not inappropriate to (constantly!) remind everyone living under his Administration that he ain't no nice guy.
[Ego]out
"Authoritarian" tyranny. China is not ruled by capitalist trends, though they use that as leverage. It is ruled by a strong, centralized political apparatus.
[Ego]out
Rules exist for a reason.
:wq
They just don't care about the rules and don't care what other people think about it.
you had me at #!
Good point. But there is always news out there that the media is going to press to get their ratings up. Ratings = $$ Cha-ching $$ when they show commercials.
-Your Friendly neighborhood post-and-go
Is there a biometric or chemical means of testing someones age? Or we can verify their parent via DNA, then is there a test for the mother to verify when she last gave birth?
Jim Fallows Translates: http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/on_the_ages_of_the_female_chin.php " These are Chinese charts that show name, sex, date of birth, place of birth. The name in question is ä½åæ£, and one of the lines where it appears says: 618,"ä½åæ£","å¥","1994.1.1","æ-åOE--" (# 618, He Kexin, female, Jan 1 1994, Hubei) "
Exactly, 14 is too young... Please only show 16 year old kids in tight cloths bending every way!
- These characters were randomly selected.
Absolutely amazing!! A thread about the Chinese lying about the age of an Olympic attendee sparks political debate bashing Bush? I fail to see the link. I think some people just hate him because its popular!
If the Chinese gymnasts are under 16, then they broke the rules and they don't deserve their medals. That's all there is to it. It's not fair to all of the gymnasts who may have had the skills to compete in the Olympics at 14 but had to wait because they were too young. Why do the Chinese (if their gymnasts are indeed too young) get to break the rules?
Why is everybody so upset that someone won the gold medal and that she may have been 14. She was the best she won, full stop. It's not as if she used drugs or anything to get an edge. Also why is there an age limit on gymnastics while a 13 year old boy took part in the diving for Britain, and nobody cares. Probably because he did not beat the American divers. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/diving/7251148.stm
Clue: Being younger in gymnastics is an advantage. Your logic is completely wrong.
16 is already 'underage' in a few places anyway so what difference does that make? Plus other sports allow people as young as 14 to take part. I actually thought that gymnastics was one of the sports that had been doing that for years already?
which is totally what she said
I've got a fever, and the only cure is more Camel Toe!
"But your honor, her passport said she was 16."
The way I see it, it is possible that China is acting within an ethical framework - albeit one that most Western societies don't agree with. From their point of view, they're putting their best athlete forward - and doing so seems natural. The age restriction is something that is there to satisfy Western mores; that children should not be competing at that level. Actually, I think our objection there is rather poorly defined. Why don't we allow children to compete?
From that point of view, China is adhering to the idea that you break rules you find unreasonable. What makes their actions unethical is that they're not owning them - presumably out of desire for the gold. They could very easily say "Yes, the girl is 14, but she won - the rule is bad." The IOC could take away the gold at that point (would possibly have to), but that is all the more reason that China could give as to why the rest of the world is not as awesome as they are; that they have to take away gold medals from true winners and hide behind some sort of age discrimination.
What is the correct western action? I actually think it's to embrace the idea that not sending children to the Olympics is a value we find important, and a rule we will adopt for ourselves - in our regional or country Olympic Committees - and not attempt to enforce on other contestants. It speaks much louder to say, "We could put forth an underage contestant but we find that unpalatable. Therefore we will act in accordance with our beliefs and put in only older athletes." Of course, the consequence to both ethical actions is fewer gold medals.
That the argument becomes about whether or not China adhered to an arbitrary rule set for, you have to admit, somewhat obfuscated reasons is a travesty. What is really objectionable to the West is how they treat people; they raise their athletes in creches, training them from birth to be the best they can possibly be in the one thing - but never giving them a choice. Our fault here is that we allow ourselves to shift the argument to whether a rule was broken, obscuring the actual actions that matter by talking about the lie.
The worst part about that is it follows our general trend of failing to get at the root issues that are of true concern; people suffering under an authoritarian regime is of real concern. That regime lying is, well, almost to be expected. Yet, of these two issues, the lie is the thing we will argue endlessly about - and throw our hands up at the actual suffering. The deepest part of the cut, though, is that we do this so that we can sate our own egos; we refuse to take a high moral stance because we're too concerned ourselves with getting gold medals to do so. The medals, and arguments over them, become a proxy for the real conflicts in values. But it's a meaningless proxy, and not one worth our time or emotional energy - nevermind the loss of character we incur when we ignore actual wrongdoing for the sake of winning a contest.
[Ego]out
I think Americans should put this issue to rest and stop whining about being beat by a fourteen-year-old. Even if the girl or her coach lied about her age, have some dignity, people. She won the competition at such a young age and that's even more impressive.
Stop your whining people. When Nadia won the gold medal for Romania at 14, no one said "oh she is too young." Bela is just making an up roar because the US won't let him bend the rules. Bela knows just as well as anyone coaching gymnasts, 14 is a valid age.
Maybe it is a cultural difference.
In the United States age is calculated from the date you were born. Maybe in China age is calculated from the date your parents become sexually active?
The oil companies make less percentage in profit than apple! Apple is evil! We should be taxing their profits into oblivion! Ok, enough of the flamebait.
Did the cache refresh on schedule after the change or did China pressure Google to manually dump the data?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Thanks for the spoiler alert. Booooo!
If I went around claiming I was an emperor...they'd put me away!
14 year olds have natural advantages over older gymnasts. They are smaller and lighter so the same force applied means more rotation in a given period of time. Also, they haven't had as many injuries so they have less fear of a difficult routine. Finally, at puberty women's bodies change in ways that moves their center of gravity from the middle of their bodies lower which makes gymnastics much more difficult. It would be rare for a group of seniors (over 16s) to beat a group of juniors at international competition.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
If every highly competitive athlete had annual digital-digests filed for their current photograph, current dental and bone x-rays, current physical measurements, DNA, and birth certificate, and every local sports authority published a digitally-signed digest of the digests of all of their athletes on file with the national sports authority, and the national sports authority had a signed digest of all of the information reported to them on file with the IOC, and the IOC printed a digitally-signed digest of all the information reported to it every year, it would make it much more difficult to fake information.
Basically, to fake information on an athlete already in the system, you'd have to "lose" the original information. This would raise an immediate red flag. Requiring that local sports authorities store multiple copies of records in multiple places would make any such "information disappearance" even more suspicious.
Of course, non-digest forms of athlete's faces, birth certificates, and height and weight are probably already part of most competitive teams' records. The DNA is there to prevent identity-switches and the x-rays are there to estimate ages and raise red flags when something is too far off.
This would not prevent people who "appear out of nowhere" to fake data when they first enter the system. For example, if a 12-year-old in a non-competitive gymnastics class was spotted by a talent scout, he could enroll her in a competitive team with a fake birth certificate making her a year older. But once she's in the system, her age can't be "magically changed" without it being obvious to everyone that the current information doesn't match the original records.
To those who say "why digests, why not the full document?" If a full document leaks to those without a need to know, there it's a huge privacy problem. If a digest leaks the damage is mitigated. If a digest of digests leaks, it's not much of a problem at all. In fact, at the digest-of-digest level, you probably want it to be public information.
Once the athlete applies to compete at the top international level, all original documentation and all digests for his or her entire history are checked for evidence of fraud.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
A vault isn't just running, jumping and landing; there are other parts to it. All that silly stuff they do in the air, that actually means something. The more of those silly things they do, the harder the vault is. I know it's a hard concept to understand, but the world is a scary place sometimes.
Sacramone:
Vault 1: A: 6.30 B: 9.450 - Total: 15.750
Vault 2: A: 5.80 B: 9.525 - Total: 15.325
Final score : 15.537
Cheng Fei:
Vault 1: A: 6.50 B: 9.575 - Total: 16.075
Vault 2: A: 6.50 B: 8.550 - Total: 15.050
Final Score: 15.567
A is diffculty, B is execution
If you'll notice, the BOTH of the Chinese vaulter's routines were more difficult than the U.S. vaulter's. They award you more points for trying something more difficult. And you'll also notice they HEAVILY deducted from the Chinese vaulter's second routine when she landed on her knees. If the U.S. vaulter hadn't done a cupcake second vault, she would've won.
IANAL, but I play one on
On both the women's and men's sides, there is corruption and manipulation. It is only more obvious in the Olympics, where the whole world watches with more interest.
The current head of FIG is an Italian. Perhaps this scandal will force them to be more diligent in their recordkeeping. In fact, perhaps a solution is to agree to accept the 'current' information about age, but to them require the national governing bodies to backdate previous results. This might have the effect of rendering some gymnasts ineligible for qualifying events, and then render them ineligible for their Olympic team, and there goes the medal... And the 'blame' if there is any, could fall on the national authorities. the IOC sure doesn't want to address this, for to do so is to admit failure.
But fixing this is as impossible as fixing figure skating.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Here is another page from sina.com, popular Chinese internet portal (baidu cache since original now gives 404)
You can see that the article is from Nov 3rd, 2007 and for those who can't read Chinese: in the middle it says "13 years old Wuhan-athlete He Kexin..."
Actually, I don't know if there's necessarily a difference of scale. It might be, but it's not really necessary.
See, I don't know much about China, but at least in the USSR the age of mass deportations and millions of people in Gulag ended with Stalin. Then it evolved in something cheaper, more subtle and more efficient: the idea that anything you say _might_ be recorded somewhere and _might_ be used against you. Not even necessarily by a visit of the secret police. Sure, it _could_ be the secret police too, but maybe it'll be something else. Maybe you'll never fly out of the USSR ever again, because you can't be trusted to come back. Maybe you'll never get a job past a certain level. Maybe it'll bite you in the arse in some other way. Or maybe noone wrote that in your dossier after all. But you don't know.
And you don't know who's spying and reporting on you. Maybe comrade Piotr is really rabidly against the government and you could start building a resistance together. But maybe he's an agent provocateur.
They actually had very few political prisoners past a point. The people held themselves in line admirably, given that Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
I wouldn't be surprised if they actually had less political prisoners than the USA has in gitmo. The actual gulag was more kept as a reminder of what _could_ happen if you really cross the line too far, than as something to be used immediately and lots. Sorta like how the nukes are more for threat value, than actually used in wars.
And I find that the USA had been taking an eerily similar direction during the Bush years. The whole surveillance mania, and the repeated leaks about what else they monitor and try to connect (including laughable stuff like data-mining the grocery purchases for people who buy arab food), it's like they actually _wanted_ people to get the idea that someone's watching and they better behave. Even some of the few terrorism trials, it's like they chose the most laughable and/or most suspiciously looking like entrapment. It almost begs thinking that the moral is, beware of who's asking you dubious stuff, he might be an agent provocateur.
Now I'm not saying it's some deliberate conspiracy to leak them. Probably more like not caring what gets leaked. Give enough minions orders to spy left and right, and you can pretty much count on it that some of them will botch it or run to the press. Which can actually be good if that's the message you actually want to give to your population: watch it, we've got our eyes on all y'all.
Look at the other details about the USSR in that list. Flight restrictions for people they don't like? Check. Done in the USA too. Your pool of available jobs might depend on how much of an politically loyal you make yourself seen as? Check. The Bushies politicized half the government departments. Etc.
Gitmo and torture kept as the ultimate stick, where you probably won't land, but you _might_ if you're really undesirable? Check. Same role as the Gulag had post-Stalin.
Not saying that the USA is a perfect equivalent to the USSR dictatorship... yet. But it looks to me like they've been working real hard to push it in that direction. If given more time, I don't doubt that it would have got a lot worse eventually.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You asked if they know, they do and they don't care.
No one seems to get it. Its countries like these (Iran is another) that you cannot just talk to. They don't care. They will let you talk their ears off while beating the snot out of people right next door. They don't have to care. Who is going to do anything about it?
Hell the real disgrace is the IOC and every country that calls it self civilized for allowing China to have the Olympics. To them they aren't cheating, they are simply winning. They are more likely emboldened by the fact they staged the Olympics. I figure that every abuse will simply get worse in the coming years because at least up until the teams showed up they had to show restraint.
So where will the restraint be after the Olympics are done?
World level scandal : Yeah, the world is China's accomplice
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Has anyone reverse-engineered a GUUID from the spreadsheet document to find out if the copy of Microsoft Excel was legally purchased?
No, the IOC chose China as a reward for saving the Olympics from oblivion in 1984 when the Russians boycotted along with 10 other countries. Originally the Soviets were going to take something like 100 countries with them, but the IOC chairman went to China and they agreed to come which then took the wind out of the Soviet Union's boycott.
The IOC is going along with China on the age thing because they have already decided that they are going to give a pass to the Chinese government. The IOC literally believes that if it had not been for the Chinese in 1984, the Olympics would of been a shadow of itself today instead of the Commercial/Political monster it is now.
I actually think it's to embrace the idea that not sending children to the Olympics is a value we find important, and a rule we will adopt for ourselves - in our regional or country Olympic Committees - and not attempt to enforce on other contestants.
Where to begin with a moron such as yourself? The same could be said about steroids. Steroids, like children competing in Olympic-level gymnastics, ruins your body. Our Western philosophy says you shouldn't ruin your body to compete, so according to your logic we should compete without that ruinous aid but allow others to compete with it. This is pure idiocy.
According to you, if snapping the heads off babies and eating their milky insides gave you a 1% edge as an athlete, then what the hell, we should allow countries to do that if it doesn't offend their morals.
What an ass you are.
I guess you'll be fine when Russia decides that greasing up the pommel horse so their competition falls is not against their morals, so that's OK too.
Apparently, mutually agreeing to rules and then fraudulently breaking them and then repeatedly lying about it is not always wrong to you. It's always wrong to me.
Like there was any doubt they were cheating, come one just look at the girls you can tell they are not 16. How nice that games are in China, and it just so happens that China issued the Chinese team Chinese passports...hmm...
Also if you've been following the games any event that is not dependent on judges to decide who wins has very very few Chinese winners. Seems like any game that requires them to perform by themselves causes them to not barely rank at all. Cheating bastards, how lame.
They are all one big front, attempting to show their superiority and they will do anything to get to that goal.
i'm not saying other countries dont cheat but they, as Host, should be transparent.
Sys admin's family gets the bill for the 9mm bullet.
Yes, I know, it has supposedly been debunked.
Or, sys admin is now walking a post in the Sunny Happy People's Paradise of Tibet.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
The actual page is gone from the site, but google has a cached version:
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:A5YfIIsOJjQJ:www.chinadaily.com.cn/olympics/2008-05/23/content_6707927.htm+site:www.chinadaily.com.cn+he+Kexin+14&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a
People see the world as they are, not as it is.
The IOC is the biggest joke in all of sports.
The NHL would like thank you for your opinion and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
-Jon in Canada
When have you seen a 24 year old female gymnast
Actually there was a 32 year old woman competing (her 5th olympics) who won a silver in the vaults.. so there is life after 20 for those with the will to keep working at it.
I had noticed that there seems to be quite a few 'old timers' across many disciplines in this olympics.. dunno if its more the usual or I just didnt notice before but I found it interesting.
Not sure if its better medical/physio care these days or more funding for more competitors enabling them to devote more time to training rather than working for a living.. or a bit of both.
What two wars are we fighting? I don't see any declared hostility with any nation.
Oh please. We never officially declared war against Vietnam. Does that mean we weren't at war?
And whenever a single Judge decides that there is a new "Right", not enumerated in the Constitution, whereby taxes are leveled to provide said right to everyone (I'm talking HEALTHCARE), then you ignore the Constitution.
Oh, because if it's not enumerated in the Constitution, it's not a right? Your thinking is exactly the kind that Alexander Hamilton worried the Bill of Rights might foster.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Regarding increased number of mistakes:
I think this probably is a result of the change in scoring. With the addition of "difficulty" as a separate score which is added to the execution score, to remain competitive with each other, each gymnast is trying to really push the difficulty of their routine.
With increased difficulty, seeing some greater number of mistakes seems reasonable. Your potential score is higher because your routine is more difficult an mistakes are easier to make. Risk vs. Reward, etc...
14 & practicing or 16 to compete?
if they aren't allowed to compete because they aren't old enough yet-- don't you think if they are olympic hopefuls they are trainig every bit as hard at 14 to do it as a win at 16-- so where is the savings against personal injury?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Speaking as someone with no knowledge of the gymnastics, it seems to me that the sport is just broken and this is a symptom of the problem.
Why is it that when women start developing (gasp!), they are hugely disadvantaged in the world of competitive gymnastics? It seems *that* is the fundamental problem, and it doesn't appear to be a problem that's too difficult to solve. To have a women's sport where the best competitors are the farthest thing from actual women seems silly.
Yes, I understand that with the current gymnastic events it is an advantage to be smaller, lighter, not as curvy, etc. But while we cannot control the woman's figure, of course we can control the sport and its events. Why not choose or create events that aren't hindered by a woman's curves or emphasize artistic moves that prefer a adult's center of mass, rather than a child's, etc.?
If the olympic events naturally favor younger girls, then expect more and more younger girls to compete and succeed. To put a restriction which are contrary to nature the sport itself - you are guaranteed they will be protested and circumvented.
http://www.talknerdy.org
China? "They are all forgeries by Nepalese separatists in an attempt to embarrass us." Nothing will be done.
Your logic is weak; if you find the rule, "Thou shalt not kill", to be unreasonable, you should break it. If you find my existence unreasonable to the point that it makes transparent the weakness of the rule, then, yes, on that basis you should break it - but you have to make that connection first. Realize, of course, other people will quite reasonably react, and you have to accept the consequences that result. Just like China should accept the consequences of breaking a rule they don't believe in.
[Ego]out
"Although I replaced gazillions with a real number."
Yeah, they are like making surd(327832787832832382838) dollars of profit from us!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
I think the point that the GP was trying to make was that what's happening in Iraq and Georgia are not "Wars" per se. They're military activities. War was never declared in either case. It's easy to call them war, because everyone else has already legitimized them as wars.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
1. Does this represent a crime, in China?
2. Will this "error" on a web page supersede China's "official documentation" in any Chinese court?
If the answer to either of these questions is "no", there's simply nothing to do about it, right?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
He's got me scared to visit his blog! I'm so scared, I'm gonna post this anonymously!
Please don't hack me!
Spider-man got better and better as time went on. Granted, until McFarlane came along, he never looked quite as flexible as when Ditko drew him, but he could do some great tricks.
This isn't about law. This is about the Olympics. At the Olympics, the IOC has the final word on who gets a gold medal, and who doesn't. The 'laws' which are alleged to have been violated are the rules of the IOC, not the rules of Chinese law. What could be done about it is to disqualify the Chinese gymnast, and take away any gold medals which were awarded to her. That would be pretty extreme, and as you say, I doubt that will be done, because China would, as you say, just deny any evidence that she is too young, and brush it off as a clerical error which has been 'corrected'.
i think if the IOC strip the chinese that's ok. However, they can't give that medal to the USA or anybody else.. In the end.. lets face it.. a bunch of 13 years old beat the 16s years old.. and now they whinning? Really.. if the chinese didn't get medal .. do the OIC still take disciplinary action?
4 years from now she'd by 19, and you generally don't see anyone that old in Olympic gymnastics.
Alicia Sacramone (21)
Chelsie Memmel (20)
Nastia Liukin (19)
Samantha Peszek (17)
Ivana Hong (16)
Shayla Worley (16)
Shawn Johnson (16)
I'm glad that I "generally don't see" 3 out of the 7 US gymnasts in that age range. I'm also glad that I "generally don't see" 19 year old Nastia Liukin win 5 medals in this Olympics. 5 medals being tied for the largest number of medals won in a single Olympics by a female gymnast (tied with the like of Mary Lou Retton).
Ms. Kexin was 16, therefore she was always 16.
So there is a clarification on the rules that are misquoted in the linked article: The gymnast must turn 16 at any time during the year of the Olympics. Therefore someone born on 12/31/1992 is legal to participate.
Beyond that:
While I agree rules should be followed, in general, I tried to find my outrage at the age issue and really came up short. Isn't the Olympics about 'the best in the world' versus 'the best in the world'? It isn't as if other gymnasts would have been able to suddenly do anything differently: they couldn't have somehow taken advantage of the rules if the age limit had been lifted...they still would have been the same age themselves. The only disparity I see is if the US Women's team had some 14yo phenom that wasn't allowed to compete because they followed the rules. Otherwise, I don't see how it short-changes the athletes that are there. Certainly, complaining you got beat by someone who is younger than you sounds pretty petty.
I understand that perhaps the rule is in place for the safety of the participants, in that those under 15-16 may have more fearlessness...it's not like they aren't already doing some pretty crazy stuff in gymnastics at 12-13 anyway, so I don't see how safety couldn't be waived in the interest of seeing the best competitors in the world compete.
There is some outrage at the scoring/judging bias that seems to be so prevalent, but I just can't get too worked up over the age issue.
http://blog.slaingod.com
Let me just say, right out of the box, I appreciate that you started off with an ad hominem attack. It really supports your position, and lends credence to your rationale.
You are, however, absolutely correct; the same could be said about steroids. We absolutely have a choice to support the use of steroids and the lie to cover it up, or frown on the use of steroids but actively work to not cover it up. Bodies are ruined by steroids, as are lives, and we have a choice to partake in it or not. Everyone else has that same choice.
Where you start to put words in my mouth is the part about snapping off baby heads. (A minor aside; contrary to popular opinion, babies do not have milky insides.) We absolutely should strenuously object, and even take action against - perhaps even boycotting such multicultural events as the Olympics - people who are engaged in harmful activities against other people. This includes athletes who like the taste of baby meat for the 1% edge it gives them, and authoritarian regimes that raise athletes from birth for a specific event. What we should not do is ignore those actions, or the frameworks that allow for them, and instead focus on rules violation.
It is simply unacceptable that the anger here is at the fact that "China broke the rules!" and not at "China is ignoring human rights!" It's entirely wrongheaded, and why those underlying issues are never addressed.
Finally, since you seemed to not be able to catch my original meaning; I do not find that lying about rule breaking is right action. To the contrary, it's not acceptable. There is a value system, though, wherein it is, and the point in that value system wherein I diverge from having any further iota of agreement is where the decision to lie about the rulebreaking occurs.
To spell it out; I don't agree with having kids in these events - but other people, parents, children, athletes and cultures are going to disagree with this. It's a whole big issue that I'm not addressing. I do agree with breaking rules you find unjust. I don't agree with lying about it - and at that point, when you lie about it, you lose your right to claim a morally viable underlying framework.
One final point, because I feel that your straw man argument regarding the Russians can be turned to something worthwhile saying; if you are actively sabotaging other people - well, clearly you are capable of doing that, but it doesn't lend legitimacy to the victory. Therein lies the problem with China; because we're arguing about the lie, we're lending legitimacy to the way they go about the important things by putting pressure on the minor point; the rule breaking that is, at best, only debatable. If Russia were to grease a pommel horse, well, it would be clear and no one (ok, realistically, few) would count the victory legitimate. When we fail to act ethically we lend legitimacy to others acting unethically.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Obviously these girls train and compete at a young age already, so In my mind there had to be more to htis as well.
The commentators mentioned that at the younger ager they are less aware of all the pressure on them. So when they compete they tend to have fewer things to worry about, allowing them to concentrate on the routine.
Let's say the IOC grows a pair, strips China of it's team gold medal and strips any other medals won by the gymnasts not of age... Would the people of China ever hear about it? Will the masses ever know their government purposely cheated to win a few more medals?
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
I doubt it.
Will it further embarrass the IOC? Unlikely.
Will anything further be done about it? In the interest of profit, and further donations to the IOC - no.
The more I read Americans talk about the subject the more it sounds like sour grapes. Nobody - I repeat, NOBODY! - has the authority to decide what age the girl is but the Chinese government. There's no such thing as an "officially forged" passport. The ultimate authority that can decide upon such matters decreed the girl is 16. Whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant. Now, is 16 an appropriate age to compete? Maybe not, but I remain convinced that girl herself is very happy with the way things turned out. She's adulated in her country and achieved more than most of us will achieve in a lifetime (no, making babies is not an achievement!). Personally, I find arbitrary ages an aberration. Also, besides extremely naive people, everyone knows fair has never been much of an issue in the Olympics. If you want fair, let them all eat the same things, have access to the same doctors, juice with the same state-of-the-art shots (don't pretend to be surprised) and compete in categories. I am staunchly opposed to the Chinese government's abuse. But this is a non-issue that's being blown out of proportions because...somebody lost a medal. Focus on what the little girl achieved instead of trying to downplay her performance. The medal is China's. Get over it!
Res publica non dominetur
Look, everyone knows these gymnasts are under 16. China knows it, the IOC knows it. Even that paragon of ignorance, NBC, knows it and their commentators commented on it. Clearly, nobody cares, and they deliberately turn a blind eye to it. Seems to me that if there's going to be a restriction, it should be enforced. Otherwise, you're simply rewarding cheaters. So, since apparently the governing bodies have no interest in enforcing the rule, it should be repealed. If that's not the case, then every country should do what China has done -- issue passports with the wrong age on them to any world-class underaged gymnasts they have. It's the only fair thing to do.
Well, its almost impossible to count the ways that statement is false. For one thing, the concept of honorable can be very different in different places. It reminds me of the Catholic Church's reaction to priest pedophilia scandals. Canon law enjoins the hierarchy against doing anything that would bring the Church into disrepute, so of course that meant they had to cover it up. In case you didn't notice, that was sarcastic. It takes a special kind of blindness to interpret what would otherwise be a useful rule in such a damaging way.
Same thing here. The Chinese authorities used various kinds of trickery in the opening ceremonies. One you might not have heard of is the children representing 55 ethnic minority groups were all Han (Chinese) children dressed up in ethnic costumes. The constant theme of all these various stories is this: they treat keeping up appearances as a critical matter of national prestige, almost national security.
Now, let's move off the culturally relative topic of honor onto firmer ground of administration. The problem with any system in which the bureaucracies are allowed to manage appearances is that the people in those bureaucracies lose their capacity to recognize irony. Bureaucracies are good at handling complexity, but terrible at subtlety. Too many people taking their cues from other people just like them. Too much groupthink. Any reasonably clever individual would have foreseen that the torch relay business was asking for trouble, and that acting surprised and offended about the inevitable protests would play into the hands of the protesters. If you're a tough guy, when somebody kicks you in the groin, you're supposed to ... raise one eyebrow, or laugh it off or something like that. You don't dance around holding your crotch in one hand and pointing an accusing finger with another and shout "unfair!" That tells everyone the protestors hit you in a weak spot, so if you aren't prepared to take it with a grin, you don't offer them the opportunity.
Any reasonably clever individual could figure out that trying to look even better than you could possibly be during the opening ceremonies would end up with people questioning even the bona fide amazing things you do.
Anybody with enough brains to be a top level government planner could figure out that hanging so much national pride and prestige on something like this, and doing it so transparently, is as good as hanging a sign on your national back saying "Kick me!" But you take all those excellent brains, and you embed them in a bureaucracy nobody's allowed to question, that is hermetically sealed from independent thought and touchy about criticism, and those individually excellent brains end up trudging along together, stuck in the groove of groupthink.
The Olympics might have been everything China dreamed for them to be, if the government had grasped one fundamental and ironic fact: you gain national prestige in something like this by doing really well while acting as if it wasn't important at all. The jingoistic, quasi-religious, neopagan ceremony of the Olympics is a trap. The more you act like this is supposed to be proof of national superiority or virility or something, the less you are measured by what you achieve. People start watching for how far you fall short of what you pretend to be.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2F64.233.167.104%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dcache%3AlKKNqX5NgnwJ%3Awww.sport.chengdu.gov.cn%2Fescpecial%2Fdetail.asp%253FEventClassID%253D030308%2526ID%253D28022%2Bsite%3Acn%2B%25E4%25BD%2595%25E5%258F%25AF%25E6%25AC%25A3%2B1994%2B%252B.gov%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26cd%3D3%26gl%3Dus&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=zh-CN&tl=en
You clearly have little understanding of the physics, anatomy, or psychology that forms the basis of the age limit.
Hint: It's easier to tumble when you're smaller, more flexible, and have less fear of damaging yourself.
because it isn't calling itself "the leader of the free world" or prides itself on being the exporter of democracy.
It's like which is worse: a paedo or a paedo who is a senior politician? Or senior judge? Or senior priest? Or senior police officer?
The ones who we accede to because of their supposed probity. We take their word by default above "Joe Average" and we therefore expect (or at least SHOULD expect) better from them than Joe Average.
Else why not treat them no better than Joe?
Confucius say "Even in China it is hard to find 16 year old girl to play games."
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
350lb American gold medalist in the women's shot put "Stevie" Leadbetter produced a passport and a doctor's note stating that her five o'clock shadow was caused by a gland condition. Ms Leadbetter's coach said that the fact his athlete had pronounced breasts should be proof enough that he...er she was in fact a woman. The Chinese protested that Ms Leadbetter kept staring that their team member's asses. Ms Leadbetter's coach angrily commented that remarking on her being a lesbian showed sexual bias.
Berlin, 1936.
Why is everyone appeasing the Chinese?
I think the best solution is simple: If a gymnast weight 70lbs and another weight 100lbs, and they both do the same flip with the same execution, the gymnast weighing more deserves more points, because is _was_ harder for her/him. Maybe just an increase of 0.05 more or perhaps 0.1 in the "difficulty" rating that the committee assigns. This would solve the problem in the best possible way: by taking away the incentives to be as tiny, therefore taking away the need for countries to potentially lie about their participants ages. The Chinese gymnasts weigh an average of !30lbs! less than the Americans (and probably around that same amount less than the others as well). With even a small correction factor for weight, they would have incentives to use older girls that were of a healthier body weight. Unfair? Tell me it _isn't_ harder for a big gymnast to do the same flips as a smaller gymnast, I'd argue that the current system is the unfair one, unfair to the larger (and by that we're still talking about 100lbs) gymnasts.
The US crowd seems to be compelled not only to prove they lost but that they lost to some sort of 14 years old super human! Anyway "Search engine hacker" found stuff on google cache... *gasp*
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Actually though, this particular rule is just illogical.
As GP stated, gymnasts are better when they're younger, and have trouble when they start to develop more.
So, why aren't they allowed to compete? This just smacks of "Think of the poor children..."
It's about as logical as banning athletes from middle and long-distance running if they're over 30. That's actually the age at which long distance runners tend to perform their best (early 30's.) So, should we ban them for having an "advantage" over younger runners?
Parallel to the "Poor exploited children" argument, I'm sure we could come up with one about the health risks of over-exhaustion at that advanced age causing shortened life spans, etc. etc.
I know I'll be modded into oblivion for this, but as far as I'm concerned it's just another example of imposing Anglo-Saxon morality on the rest of the world.
Alas, sweet karma....
http://clightnirish.wordpress.com/
Oksana Chusovitina won a silver medal in vault (and she won her other olympic medal in 1992 :).
... look at swimming this year. There's a 40 year old woman swimming for the american team this year...
Female swimmers also peak before their twenties, just not as early as the gymnasts. This forty year old swimmer is most likely doping. Back in the 90s there was an European female Olympic swimmer in her late 20s. Everyone marveled how she could win let alone stay competitive when most female swimmers peak before or around 20. She later got suspended.
There are participants from every country cheating, the difference is that there is evidence to support systematic cheating in some Chinese sports. See http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/drugs/stories/top10.html#6
By the way, the U.S. is not immune from cover ups, see http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/drugs/stories/top10.html#3.
Now, now. Don't stoop to false dichotomy. Both China and Bush are a disgrace. Bush may not be a tyrant, but I'd argue that his offenses in the realm of human rights differ from China's primarily in scale, not in degree. Bush limits himself to a few hundred Gitmo inmates (or so we hope), China oppresses much larger segments of the population. I'm fairly sure that a human rights travesty remains a travesty even if it only affects a single person.
So you're basically claiming that if someone commits a wrong, no matter how small, he's just a smaller version of a criminal that commits a far greater wrong?
Taking stationary from work home is just scaled down grand larceny? Spitting on someone else is assault and battery?
You have managed to take the "slippery slope" argument to another level completely. Congrats.
BTW, it was the Clinton Administration that created and implemented "extraordinary rendition". Both Bill Clinton and Al Gore were well aware of what it was.
So, was Bill a Little Hitler too? Was Al a Mini-Mao? In your own words, isn't excluding them from the ranks of tyrants a "false dichotomy"? Just a question of scale, right?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Same goes for cheating by age. China is just trying to stretch the rules just a little bit more. They'd prefer to win than be genuine.
People find it scandalous because they are appalled when someone stoops to a new low. It ruins everything, because if it's allowed to continue, then one of a two things will happen:
The cheating child doesn't realize that everyone can see it, and they just smile politely at the ignorance. Such a child has no courage to just be themselves.
The scandal isn't wicked because it's by the Chinese governmemt and IOC. The scandal is wicked because the behaviour is degraded and childish.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Yeah, the US loves free speech. That's why we set up fenced-in free speech zones at political conventions. And how about the fact that in two years the FBI has issued more than 143,000 National Security Letters, that include a provision that makes it illegal for the recipient of the letter to discuss the letter with anyone? America may love free speech, but its government, not so much.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I think americans whine a little bit too much about this issue. There's no doubt the Chinese broke the rules, but the way people are reacting, it sounds like the Chinese has been pumping steroids on those girls for the last 16 years. I mean, how ridiculous do you sound when you whine that a young adolescent beat you? And I suppose that if a 12 year old beat you in sprinting, you can just say, "Well it wasn't my fault. The 12 year old only weighed 80 lbs and I weigh 160lbs: that's a lot more weight to carry around you know." I mean this argument isn't like 50 year old vs 20 year old, this is 16 year old vs 12 year old. I don't know what kind of bullcrap you learned to make you believe that somehow the physique and neuroanatomy of a 12 year old would give them any kind of advantage in any task (short of climbing through very small holes) over a 16 year old. Rules have been broken, but stop trying to exaggerate it so much; people bitch more about this than they do about the entire Bush administration lying over WMDs.
I've watched every day of the Olympics so far on NBC's broadcast, and at one point I remember the announcers saying the minimum age was 16 to compete. However, when one of the Chinese gymnasts went up to perform an event, under her name and country, they put up "Age: 15." I don't remember the gymnast or the event, just that it confused me.
I thought this difference was incredibly obvious with some of the Chinese girls. Not the top couple, but there were a few that just seemed totally zoned out and were obviously just going through the motions that their coach told them to go through without registering the magnitude or the stress of the event. For them, this is what they've done all day every day since they were 3, and the fact that it's the olympics doesn't even register as a concern.
However, I don't think that's part of the reasoning for the rule - but it does increase the unfairness when the rule is broken.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
That is a good point. They are also less scared about the potential consiquences of failing to land a trick and killing themselves. At twelve they are still feeling pretty invulnerable.
That the parents and coach of He Kexin lied about her age to the higher level sport administration in order to get in the national team, because they wouldn't take one exceeding certain age? Of course, this is as guilty as faking a higher age to qualify for the Olympic. Some Chinese scholar has already pointed out that the biggest social issue in China is lack of trust -- everyone would deceive others for a very fringe benefit.
Actually, since most of the genetic variation of the human race is on the African continent, the only feasible racially-targeted plagues would be ones directed at non-Africans.
you are either a cheater or a loser.
I hope all this is safely ensconced onto WikiLeaks.
And yes, just like with doping those medals need to be revoked - preferably while the proper medals can still be awarded during the run of the games.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
So a 14 year old kicked a bunch of 16 year old gymnast asses.
Kudos to the girl for stomping her older competitors. That's all I have to say. That's all I think really matters.
Spoken like the typical slashdot libertarian....rules schmoolz...
Thanks for the link. I did just put Cheat or Beat up recently, but I had already been working on the idea before that. It seemed like a good idea for a site, because I doubt we will ever be rid of scandal and cheating in sports, so I will never be starved for topics to discuss.
Not only that, look at Phelps' proportions (in which his arms span appear to be of a person of one height, his legs of another, his height another, and look at that rib cage, containing lungs that outstrip capacity of other swimmers who cannot hope to beat him on the return leg of the pool swim, even when he is not in first place until the LAST fraction of a second...):
http://peakoiljournal.com/topic/michael-phelps-freakish-physique-7359.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/956775/body_types_figure_into_olympic_champions.html
Now, some say he's freakish, while others argue his dimensions are not.
Fortunately, he apparently has no "keel fin" dimension/projections drag problems. If so, he would be too embarrassed to emerge from the pool...
OTOH, if swimming is rigged, then it might be proved by ripping off the swim head gear and looking for ear buds sending the instruction ("slow down JUSSST a bit... Phelps is on your tail... let him hit the Chronos buzzer pad first...")
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
So the Olympics are on already, I take it?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Actually, it's much more likely that the IOC chose China because of the rather large bribes which were presented to their selection committee. That IS how they operate after all. Free dinners, big parties, free alcohol, and free jewelry for their wives or cars for the husbands so they can honestly say "No, I didn't get anything".
Its funny, you just described the American political process perfectly.
If thats true then maybe the IOC should take away the medals on the spot and sanction china for intentional rule breaking. That would definitely embarrass them and increase the likelyhood the IOC actually has some integrity and ethics. I won't hold my breath for it though.
.. a new body needs to organize *amateur* sport competition. No NBA players, no professionals.
TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs
So the real question is, why didn't they just change the one digit on the document? Seems to me like we have people that are really bad at lieing.
Actually, the doping tests basically have similar problems. They often keep the test mechanisms and thresholds basically arbitrary, sometimes secret, and not dependent on body parameters that are different for different people, so there is an unknown number of false-positives. A recent paper on this subject...
Of course the media reports such tests as unassailable, so when a rumor of a certain result surfaces, it basically becomes a pseudo-fact (instead of an interpretation of a test presented with other required evidence). Even though it's generally conceded that most of the atheletes are probably on the far extremes of the normal distributions in various attributes already, it seems that collectively people feel that there should be some sort of statistically valid test for various mechanism that people might use to physiologically "cheat" the system.
I doubt there could be any trustable test for age (including a passport or a birth certificate). But given the "anti-doping" mania, I don't doubt there will be someone that crawls out of the woodwork and gives people a test for what they are yammering for even if it isn't based on any sound scientific principles. The media will no doubt report it as a long awaited for "age-doping" test (or some other nonsensical name) panecea which will eventually get enough traction to revoke olymic medals, and overturn results of college and highschool athletics contests... Maybe we should all start an IPO watch on PWC-GMBH and CeresNano...
Women lying about their age.
Sheesh. Next you're going to tell me they don't look the same without makeup.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
That name is pretty common name in China for girls.
You sure it is the right girl we are talking about?
Also in 1992 or 94, I don't think MS spreadsheet existed in China.
I don't doubt there might be a problem with the ages, but the searches performed seems a bit fishy to me.
...is paved with the best of intentions. I believe that Bush believes everything he has done is for the right reasons, he just doesn't see that his 'solution' is worse than the problem. However, just because you take up the role of a tyrant by accident or to prevent some catastrophe doesn't make you any less of a tyrant.
Ever read 'God Emporor of Dune'?
I am a Chinese, I can read Chinese fluently. Not to say this is necessary fake, or any attempt to defend the Chinese Government. What I want to point out is that these document merely have names and born year, not picture attached to them, nor any actual serial numbers directly associated with the person in any way.
There are a lot of people who share the same name in Chinese, probably hundreds and thousands over the country. Before we call this evident, don't be too hasty to jump onto someone without something more solid.
By the way, the document is for country wide athele registration on 2006. Not limited to olympic.
Not just one, but three of them are 14: He Kexin, Yang Yilin (), and Jiang Yuyuan, based solely from that same government document linked in the article. He Kexin was born 1-1-1994, Yang Yilin was born 8-26-1993, and Jiang Yuyuan was born 10-1-1993. Their passports show the same dates, but with different years.
From a communist country? A country that claims to have invented everything thousands of years before anybody else?
You realize that China has a long history of fraud, every ruler that came into power re-wrote the history books to suit himself.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
what is the big deal we need to dope our athletes to be more competitive,even buy people from other countries so they win using our colors,cmon guys even we pay judges to give medals for free(Phelps vs the Russian swimmer)....men i feel so sad.....we even saw the openning almos half day later coz nbc pay almost half billion.....now guess who got the most scandal and corruption....china almost doubled us on gold medals....
Then there should be minimum age for training, not competition. Gymnast start training when at a very young age, wouldn't training harm their body? If it's such a problem, we should ban the sport altogether.
Whether or not this is true, I think the IOC should be taking this more seriously. They should look at the evidence and if it is sufficient to suggest that fraud may have occurred, perform a further investigation into the gymnasts age.
The sad thing is that, even if the Chinese did commit fraud and are stripped of their medal, it will be a false victory if the runner up is handed the gold, simply because they still lost to a 14 year old.
Maybe they should have separate gymnastic competitions based on weight classes, so that age isn't even an issue.
everyone knows the 2 Chinese women gymnasts are 14 when the required age is 16. I heard this story on CBC about 2 weeks ago. The Chinese communist party once again shows their true colors - and the only one that matter to them is gold.
> At this point, it seems overwhelmingly apparent that the Olympics is simply big business
I probably should have been self-aware enough to understand that this is why I'm really, really, not interested in the Olympics, but I have to admit that your comment really opened my eyes. I do know that all of the doping scandals (or whatever you want to call them) also have contributed to turning off my spectator interest in competitive sports in general.
It reminds me of how the behavior of the **AA have turned me off of their commercial offerings, also. Luckily, I still have Slashdot....
Of course Bela Karolyi wolud think the age restriction is stupid. If he agreed with it, then he'd have to admit it was probably wrong that his star Nadia Comneci got a gold medal for her perfect 10 in 1976. Not that I agree with the age restriction either, but expecting Mr. Karolyi to present an unbiased view is kinda silly, no?
I'm guessing there will be an "inquiry" after the Olympics is over where they determine that some of the Chinese girls were indeed underage. But because medals cant be withdrawn or awarded after the Olympics are over the measure will be largely symbolic and will likely garner little attention.
This coupled with the crap judging over the past week of gymnastics has made it frustrating to watch. The results for the vault and uneven bars were especially ridiculous.
I'll give the Chinese credit where it's due, they were phenomenal in men's gymnastics and in diving. But their scores were far too generous, they weren't deducted nearly as heavily as the Americans for obvious mistakes. And the North Korean girl winning gold over the German despite two crap landings takes the cake.
I've heard excuses about their degrees of difficulty. But don't they routinely deduct points from difficulty is the execution is poor? By that rational I could enter the competition with an insanely high degree of difficulty, bust my ass and still win.
So if it's a size issue, why is the limit placed on age instead of size?
Question everything
There is suspicion some female gymnasts use hormone or hormone-suppression to delay puberty. Its not clear how you'd test for this.
This is not new. Male opera singers used to cut their balls off to keep saprano voices. I recall some tv newsmagazine story about parents keeping a severely retarded(?) child from turning into an even more unmanageable adult.
when I compare google and baidu cache for the same document, I notice that google only displays the first 300+ rows, while baidu lists the full document (1000+rows). appears really near the end of the document.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6qw35e (baidu)
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5jr7df (google)
So, it's not like google cache had kept all names but one. It just does not display the end of the file. So, I tried to search for another random big .xls file, and noticed that on that random file, google also cuts the document at some point.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5hgksx (.xls document: 600+ lines
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5ff568 (google cache: 450+lines)
So, google does not displays end of large .xls files, probably for every big files. So I don't think there's censorship from google, just technical limitations, but it's not like *someone* had pushed a button to delete those data.
Anyway, it's a nice catch to have found those data in baidu's cache
and to who? I do think the IOC is being ridiculous in at least not investigating cheating just a wee bit further.
But normally, instead of just posting online, I do try to write a note to a senator, or a company, or a school. Even the IOC IOC's Sitemap page doesn't have a "feedback" link.
Suggestions?
The 14 year old did what she did. Perhaps with "help" from the judges, whatever, I don't care. Even in a collectivist society like China, there's room for at least the outside world to reconginse that individual achievement. That said, this comes about because China is being enabled. Principally by the United States. And this IOC goofiness is just one of many symptoms. Obviously, Nixon was wrong. A policy of engagement is a failure, and should end. At the very least Americans should endevour to economicly isolate China. The means the world currently pursues with China do not lead to a useful end (besides what amounts to virtualized slavery, who's utility I'd debate).
One thing that should be obvious by now is that the Chinese regime is will do anything they can get away with in order to "further the national interest." They make the corrupt American government look like naive children. It demonstrates all the more clearly the dangers of an all-powerful central government that we're all heading for.
And who really cares? It's a game. Winning and losing medals shouldn't be a pursuit of nationalism. Just assume everyone is probably cheating somehow. There has to be so many undetectable performance enhancers that we just don't know about. THG is just the tip of the ice berg.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
From the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) Technical Regulations:
Reg. 5.2 AGE OF PARTICIPANTS
For the official senior competitions of the FIG and for the Olympic Games the participants must, in the year of the competition, have the following
minimum age:
Men's Artistic Gymnastics: 16 years
Women's Artistic Gymnastics: 16 years (except that in the year immediately preceding the Olympic
Games, gymnasts of 15 years of age are
authorised to participate in the World
Championships). From 2009, 16 years
without exception.
RULES OF ELIGIBILITY
2. In any competition sanctioned or conducted by the FIG, each National Federation is responsible for certifying the eligibility of gymnasts from its country.
The FIG never states what is acceptable documentation of eligible age. They never even would have seen the Chinese gymnasts passports had their ages not been questioned since China's National Federation was responsible for certifying eligibility. I would guess that the FIG might add some specifics to the technical regs before 2012, but there's not much they can do this year.
While we're at it, why don't we add time to Phelps and Bolt for having better bodies, and adding points for NBA players who are short.
This is another government page, still live, that proves her age. It's from 2007, and cites her age as 13. I include the direct URL and google cache URL. Get this before it goes down like the others.
http://www.whjs.gov.cn/whty/content/2007-11/05/content_127093.htm
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:rxinCSd3z28J:www.whjs.gov.cn/whty/content/2007-11/05/content_127093.htm+site:.gov.cn+%E4%BD%95%E5%8F%AF%E6%AC%A3+%2213%E5%B2%81%22+2007%E5%B9%B4&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us
Now this is sarcasm right? Stalin was just trying to further the cause of Communism!
Very few times in politics are the stated reasons the real reasons.
Lets look at what has been done.
A step closer to a police state? check
New powers for the elite? check
New restrictions on travel? check
Transmission of information on citizenry between countries, continents? check
"Compare that to the Patriot Act which was supported by Bush for a means to an end" lol, oh ya, it is a means to an end, just not the stated end!
I don't know, but it looks more like he is laying the groundwork for a world governing body to me. H.G. Wells called this "A new world order"
Actually, I don't believe he is intelligent enough to do this. For this to be true, there would have to be others pulling the strings, he would have to be just be a puppet.
Anyone ever considered that the online spreadsheet is actually wrong? Of course it would be the only wrong information that would have been ever published on the internet ...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/05/1334203
I took 5 minutes of Googling. There is plenty of cases out there I'm sure.
They expected to seal the deal on Super Tuesday; hence no major operations in any state afterwards, and subsequently dropped state after state. Caucuses, actual primaries, didn't matter. She didn't think those states were "in play" and therefore had an inadequate ground organization.
You can look at her inability to stay on message, her inability to recognize the "YouTube factor" in modern politics exposing both lies and blatant pandering, and in general ran a horrid campaign.
The Dem Primary was (mostly) HRC's to lose. And she did so handily.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Brings a new meaning to "Special Olympics".
Cut her in half and count the rings
They're making a new season of Total Drama Island? Cool. Best "reality" show I've seen in a while.
Its sad when most of the 2D characters have more depth than their 3D counterparts.
Why don't you YouTube Dick Cheney's interview post-Gulf War I when he's asked directly on why we didn't take out Saddam in the early nineties.
His arguments all came true. But this time he made a killing on it financially so what's a few dead soldiers, right?
Fuck, man, ideological blindness is just sad. Think for yourself. Question authority.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
When product quality and job offshoring were of concern, the economists defended China.
When Google and Yahoo were complicit in assisting the Chinese government in its (violation of human rights) deeds, the corporations and some Chinese citizens joined in.
When Cafferty of CNN stated a fact, citizens piled on by the busload until CNN caved.
When people find evidence of lip-syncing, mis-representation of one's age(protip: subtract 2 from the gold count for China for true total until stripped), protest zone traps, unremovable pollution, and slave labor, one thing happens. The remaining population of the world capable of defending China in all forms of media does so.
Perhaps those who want to defend China would do well consider one thing. It only will make it easier to build a shibboleth.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
This is probably just wishful thinking, but I wonder if enough slashdotters sent an email here: mailto://nbcolympicsfeedback@nbcuni.com
...perhaps this story might get a TV spot.
In the links it shows the date on the spreadsheet as 2006.
So the girl/s would have been 14 in 2006,
which is 16 in 2008...
DUHHHH!!
http://i38.tinypic.com/ipbimb.jpg
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
First of all, you don't have to actually be 16 to be in the Olympics. You have to turn 16 in the same calendar year.
I don't know how the IOC defines Calendar year if they bothered to define it at all.
So right off the bat, you could have someone who is 15 (by our calendar) and be within the rules.
There are other calendars in use, for example the Chinese calendar.
In addition, most Asian countries consider your age as the year you are currently working on, so the day you are born you are considered One.
So what this all comes down to is legal mumbo-jumbo. Depending on how the rules are written by the IOC, it might be possible to have someone 14 years old by our standards who technically qualifies for competition.
I find it interesting that most people said those girls were too young because of how old they looked compared to the other athletes. Ever seen a 15 year old Japanese girl who hit puberty late? They look like they're 10. Stand them up next to someone like that beefcake we fielded who's built like a brick shit-house and they look even younger.
I'm not really surprised the Chinese would attempt to cheat (or exploit a loophole) to have a chance at winning.
The behavior of the IOC judges at the events and their obvious bias towards the Chinese women in scoring was disgusting.
Two things, 1. The "forging" is normal in countries like China. Its not as major an issue as people in the western countries make this out to be. They probably don't even care. (China will completely deny any allegations) 2. All of you criticizing them for their underage-ness might be wrong. The gymnasts probably are 16. Try this, When you meet a chinese girl/guy for the first time, try guessing her/his age. In all probability, you will be atleast 3-4 less than their actual age.
Although I replaced gazillions with a real number.
As opposed to a complex or imaginary number?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
scopolamine injected into the cerebral-spinal fluid: ANYone will admit to ANYthing within 24 hours, period.
"Lecture on torture techniques by Dr. Larry Forness of the American Military University (Dec 2005). The document explains the rationale behind torturing prisoners, torture methods, and a justification for ignoring international law. Forness advocates the injection of truth serums, threatening to inject Muslim prisoners with pigs' blood, and torturing detainees' friends and family."
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Torture,_interrogation_and_intelligence
straw effigy, my ass.
Welcome to Slashdot, Mr. Samaranch. Your reputation precedes and succeeds you.
If I'm the IOC, what am I supposed to do
Tell Rogge to not go for election again?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
(1, Insightful)!?!?
seriously?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Lets ask the Saudi Arabian women's teams what they think of the IOC.
She still kicked all y'alls asses.
I wondered how china's gold medal count would look if i broke the sports down into three basic types:
Timed (almost impossible to sway the result by biased judging).
Scored goals/points (basketball, baseball, etc. where points are obviously scored, but judging can affect aspects of the gameplay - penalties and such).
Judged (all points are awarded based on whether a judge deems the point should be awarded - martial arts, gymnastics, etc. Basically, a corrupt judge can easily and drastically alter the outcome).
I then compared the number of golds won to the number of golds possible for each category. Here's how it all breaks down at the time of this posting:
Timed: China has won 2.94% of available gold medals
Scored goals/points: China has won 39.62% of available gold medals
Judged: China has won 52.27% of available gold medals.
Note that available means the medal a medal has been awarded to the winner.
So, the higher the influence judging has on the outcome, the better China does. Interesting, no?
The truth is that she is from 2010... China perfected the time machine in 2010 and sent her back to protect John Connor. :-)
As to obliterating Iraq, that was not our doing. That was the doing of a dictator who we removed.
So you assert that absolutely no damage or looting was in any way a result of the US invasion and/or the policies and tactics in force thereafter? I think you might want to reconsider that idea.
Germany under Hitler was prosperous and had a very old cultural heritage. Does that mean we should not have gone to war against them?
Consider Godwin's law invoked.
Did you skip the second two factors?
I agree, it's nice to have proof. But Slashdot is only for a day or two.
Wikipedia can be forever, and it seems to me that that's exactly what regimes like China deserve for doing this to kids.
How's about a short, to-the-point page on "Gymnastic Cheating Scandal at 2008 China Olympics" with the top-mentioned pages (in Chinese, and translated to English) and a short explanation that yes, even though the censors tried, the kids really were 14. Some of the writeups in here would be just fine.
There's been other weirdness about this Olympics. It should be remembered. Wikipedia is a fairly good collective memory.
Truth is a potent weapon and it scares dictators.
-- Thanks, Dave
The Water Cube is actually a 'parallelepiped'
So it turns out, that chinese were more smart than anybody else by raising olympic champions while in other countries they would play with dolls.
> In actuality, no. They took a recent poll that showed that
>
> a) the Chinese people were quite happy with the direction their government is taking, and
> b) Overwhelmingly the Chinese people thought that the rest of the world views china "favorably" of "very favorably".
I am no expert on China, but I guess that if I was an average Chinaman, and a government official came up to me and asked what I thought of the governments performance, then I would, err, tend to emphasize the positive !
So the complaint is that Chinese competitors may be younger than they seem? I would have thought that makes their performances even more amazing.
Is the idea that competing in the Olympics is like drinking alcohol, smoking, driving, or joining the army - too dangerous for young people? I thought sport was healthy and character-building.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
The Anti-American Gymnast global conspiracy strikes again.
Germany did a good job of hosting the games in Berlin, and even Hitler attended the games with smiles (except for when a black American athlete won a gold). It showed that Germany was a competent nation and that the Nazi party was organized enough to bring public order and improve the lives of everyone living in the city. It's also important to note that Germany learned it's lesson from Great Britain and USA in WWI and they haven't bothered us since then.
1. he will repeal the tax cuts, forcing lots of low income earners taxes to go up 50%.
2. he will tax you up the arse for using oil and living through those bogus carbon taxes (its utter fraud anyway)
3. He is spineless, wont build 50 nuke plants or drill new oil fields or arrest wall street for their illegal short stock selling (which btw is a multi billion $ fraud too).
4. all his tax policies are on his website, go read em.
He sure is for change, he'll take your dollars, and change is all you will be left after those high taxes like 1930s era pressies that hiked up rates to 94%.
Any real president would declare max taxes of 25% for all, for life flat, no scales, or deductions.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I bet someone has some massive dirt on him, hookers, gay, coke, theft, 30 wives.
Someone else calls the shots, he just listens to the secret hidden leaders in the bunkers.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
It doesn't matter why the rule is in place or the validity of the rule. It is the rule. You are not allowed to compete in gymnastics if you are younger than 16. I don't think there is an exception if you have a forged passport or if you are from China.
By participating in the Olympics, you are agreeing to following the moral code and rules required by the IOC. Believing the rule was poorly devised doesn't make the Chinese government any less craven or petty. If the IOC flaunts enforcement, it makes them comparably destitute and further begs the question: why not create an entity that would promote and embody purer ideals.
Hunger is the best sauce.
What that means, I guess, is that the Excel team are more competent than the Word team.
Wow, that's awesome stats research.
Mind if I repeat that online in the forum I got the TKD cheating story from?
Sure, go ahead. It's all publicly available data after all ;)
the IOC has ordered a formal investigation into this scandel after recent "evidence" has shown up.
MSNBC
Excerpt:
"BEIJING - The International Olympic Committee said Friday it had asked gymnastics officials to investigate whether the Chinese womenâ(TM)s gymnastics team that won the gold medal had underage athletes, saying âoemore information has come to light.â
âoeWeâ(TM)ve asked the gymnastics federation to look into it further,â IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said. âoeIf there is a question mark and we have a concern, which we do, we ask the governing body of any sport to look into it.â
The IOC, which also asked the Chinese gymnastics federation to investigate, would not give details on what new information prompted it to act now, three days after the gymnastics competition ended."
NBC just commented on this very document and how the IFG or something like that is going to look into it. Looks like this worked. Way to go
According to NBC, the details were uncovered by "a US computer expert"
I start the day with coffee and I end it with a beer. In between I wonder what the hell I'm doin' here.
Stop being so irrational.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
wow. this sounds exactly like how american politics is done. one world, done dream...i was always told that when you point a finger, 4 a pointing back at you.
So you're crying a river. You damn yanks really throw a tantrum when things don't go your way. It really pisses you off to NOT BE #1, doesn't it? Childish...really childish...
I'm late to this thread so I'm not sure anyone will see this but...
Olympic divers are not required to be 16. Take a look at this 15 year old Chinese diver and compare her to this supposedly 16 year old Chinese gymnast.
The 15 year old diver looks much more mature and developed- like she has actually gone through puberty. Just my opinion.
Well, at least the profits aren't transcendental.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
True. Tangible profits, after all, are an integer-al element in any business model.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.