the Dutch championships are a good enough place to tell whether it's positive or negative
And I'm sure if there was a problem there people would have been complaining that they were used when they were "untested".
But then it's the athlete's decision. Some try something new to gain an edge, whereas the ones at the top probably stick to what they know works for them. If lots of new guys with the new stuff do well, next time more people will use it. That's how it worked after the invention of the clap skate ("klapschaats"), and it's a great model for innovating in a sport without putting all your eggs in one basket.
To some US competitors those *were* the Olympics.
Having no national competition will very likely hurt you at the Olympics. True, many smaller countries just don't have enough good skaters to fill a good competition, but surely the US is big enough for that.
Also, if you believe that people play harder in competition (creating a better test), then you probably believe that people play harder in the Olympics, so the Dutch championships still wouldn't have been a good enough test.
They as good as it gets without risking your chances at a European, World or Olympic championship. Competition here is unbelievably tough. Perform badly at the national championship, and someone else will go to the Olympics in your place. And it doesn't really matter that much which skater we send to the Olympics; we tend to get lots of medals at speed skating anyway. (Except for the 500m until now.)
You can usually still send enough athletes to take all the medals if you're that good. Medals per capita is not meaningless, but you do need to make sure you've got a really good competition to select those athletes. (And it helps if they use the same tech in that selection as they'll be using in the final event; some take to it better than others.)
Tougher competition can certainly explain part of it. The Dutch have lots of innovation and competition in training techniques, and the pay off is clearly visible at the 500m, which was always the one distance we totally sucked at. But then you'd expect the American world record holder in 4th place, not 8th.
Any professional skater can tell you after a month of testing that your suit sucks. But chances are the US Olympic committee didn't want to listen. That clue was dropped by the coach:
U.S. national long-track team coach Ryan Shimabukuro declined to discuss the suits or Under Armour. "I'm not going to criticize them, even if I was allowed to," he said.
I'm betting there was bitching all along.
In an interview for Dutch TV yesterday, Shani Davis made it as clear as he was allowed to, that he wasn't allowed to say anything negative about the suit, and that's why couldn't say anything about the suit.
Shani Davis holds an impressive number of world records, regularly improving upon his previous record. Yesterday, he finished 8th. That's just not where he belongs.
Better question is, who the hell tries to gain an unfair advantage
It's not an unfair advantage. There's lots of innovation in speed skating. But using something untested in a major tournament like this, requiring all athletes of your country to use it, well, that's pretty stupid.
Last I checked it was the Dutch leading in Speed Skating.
Amazingly even on the 500m, which was the only distance we always sucked at (and where Shani Davis ruled).
Big part of the difference is that while most countries have a single national team, we have a lot of competing teams with their own ideas about training, tech, etc. Through this competition, what works and doesn't work is quickly proven. Also, skating is a popular area of research here. I suspect we're the only country where skating has professionalized to this level. As a result, it's the only truly international sport that we utterly dominate.
It's like the US's situation in basketball, baseball or American Football. Having the most professional competition in the world pays off.
Problem here is it every US athlete was required to use this untested gear. Had it been optional, some would have used it hoping for an extra edge, others would have stuck to their guns, and the new tech would get to prove itself without throwing all eggs in a single untested basket.
Also, maybe start at something smaller than the Olympics. The Olympics are kind of a big deal. Not the best timing for a big screw-up.
So where should they have tested them? In competition? I hope not without testing them in competition before that!
There are smaller skating tournaments than the Olympics. Though it's possible that a factor here is that most countries, including the US, are focused entirely on the Olympics, whereas the Dutch also want to perform at small tournaments a few months after the Olympics. Or before, for that matter. If someone tries something new, the Dutch championships are a good enough place to tell whether it's positive or negative. And usually Dutch skaters have a choice whether to use something new or not. And if it's good, they will, because otherwise they fall behind. Competition is unbelievably stiff here.
All athletes try to get a technical advantage. Usually the Dutch have the advantage, because a lot of speed skating research happens here (the clap skate that everybody now uses is also a Dutch invention, for example). Now the Americans tried to get an advantage on ill-thought-out terms (little practice; there's no way back), and it blew up in their faces.
They perform far worse than expected. Shani Davis does not suck. He used to win everything, now he's 8th. Had he been 4th, you could blame it on the excellent crop of Dutch sprinters, but he's 8th. Yesterday in an interview (where he explicitly wasn't allowed to say anything bad about the suits), he hinted that getting disqualified might be better than finishing 8th again.
It's a fine example of how ambiguous the word "test" is. If my code has unit tests, it has technically been tested, but if nobody has looked at it in anything resembling a production environment, what is that test worth?
So I guess the producers should change the rules. It's not the contestant's fault that the most effective strategy is not fun; that's the producers' fault.
I do wonder why Watson didn't play this strategy, though. Surely he should be able to figure out the best strategy.
Yes but land predators do not want to deal with 30 or 40 mud-covered primates with pointy sticks, so they stay the hell away. Nothing chases us. We can, however, chase the shit out of anything.
So go chase a bear on your own. See how far you get.
The fact that theoritically we can run down any animal, does not mean that any animal will always try to run away from us.
Yeah Vegans are the ones who spout nonsense like "milk is murder."
Of course I call out any vegetarian who eats fish as a hypocrite: if it's animal flesh then it's meat.
That's not so much being a hypocrite as simply not really being a vegetarian.
I used to be a vegetarian. Not so much for the "meat is murder" aspect, as for the "meat is terribly inefficient, unsustainable, and I don't want to fund the structural mistreatment of animals" aspect. So I do eat meat and fish, but only when sustainable (to some rather arbitrary degree). So that means free range, preferably local, no growth hormones and crap like that, and fish only when they're not being overfished, no ecosystems being damages, and no other animals unnecessarily killed. So line-caught albacore tuna is fine, but the blue fin tuna you usually see is not.
As far as I understand, B12 is only really necessary for young children and pregnant women, and if everything works right, you get enough during your youth to last you the rest of your life. Also, I believe they're in eggs and cheese (though I'm not entirely sure). Not vegan, but vegetarian sounds feasible.
But sometimes not everything works right, apparently. When I'd been a vegetarian for 10 years, I somehow developed a B12 shortage.
Now I do eat meat occasionally. Not often, certainly not daily, but I'm not a vegetarian anymore. I still eat a lot less meat than most Europeans and Americans, though. We don't really need nearly as much meat as we eat. Hunter/gatherers generally get most of their food from the gathering, rather than the hunting. Meat once or twice a week was plenty. And it still is.
We may not be "the fittest", but we are still around.
That's all that fittest means: being the one that survives. You don't have to be able to run; evolutionary speaking, you just have to eat and reproduce.
It takes a remarkable amount of calories to run each mile. Lean meat has very few calories. You're quite unlikely to come out ahead with this strategy.
Meat is for protein. Most of our calories come from vegetables.
And persistence hunting doesn't require an all-out run. Ultrarunners (which is basically the same trick, just without prey) generally alternate between running and walking. That mix apparently gives the best combination of speed and endurance.
Ambush and a short chase is a much better plan.
And yet we suck at short chases. Almost any land animal runs faster than us. For a short while. And then we catch up as it gets tired.
There's a reason no actual predators use the "run until the prey dies of exhaustion" strategy.
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the Dutch championships are a good enough place to tell whether it's positive or negative
And I'm sure if there was a problem there people would have been complaining that they were used when they were "untested".
But then it's the athlete's decision. Some try something new to gain an edge, whereas the ones at the top probably stick to what they know works for them. If lots of new guys with the new stuff do well, next time more people will use it. That's how it worked after the invention of the clap skate ("klapschaats"), and it's a great model for innovating in a sport without putting all your eggs in one basket.
To some US competitors those *were* the Olympics.
Having no national competition will very likely hurt you at the Olympics. True, many smaller countries just don't have enough good skaters to fill a good competition, but surely the US is big enough for that.
Also, if you believe that people play harder in competition (creating a better test), then you probably believe that people play harder in the Olympics, so the Dutch championships still wouldn't have been a good enough test.
They as good as it gets without risking your chances at a European, World or Olympic championship. Competition here is unbelievably tough. Perform badly at the national championship, and someone else will go to the Olympics in your place. And it doesn't really matter that much which skater we send to the Olympics; we tend to get lots of medals at speed skating anyway. (Except for the 500m until now.)
You can usually still send enough athletes to take all the medals if you're that good. Medals per capita is not meaningless, but you do need to make sure you've got a really good competition to select those athletes. (And it helps if they use the same tech in that selection as they'll be using in the final event; some take to it better than others.)
Tougher competition can certainly explain part of it. The Dutch have lots of innovation and competition in training techniques, and the pay off is clearly visible at the 500m, which was always the one distance we totally sucked at. But then you'd expect the American world record holder in 4th place, not 8th.
You don't tweak your form in a month. You train for it all year. Several years, maybe. If your suit ruins your form, the suit is wrong, not your form.
Any professional skater can tell you after a month of testing that your suit sucks. But chances are the US Olympic committee didn't want to listen.
That clue was dropped by the coach:
U.S. national long-track team coach Ryan Shimabukuro declined to discuss the suits or Under Armour. "I'm not going to criticize them, even if I was allowed to," he said.
I'm betting there was bitching all along.
In an interview for Dutch TV yesterday, Shani Davis made it as clear as he was allowed to, that he wasn't allowed to say anything negative about the suit, and that's why couldn't say anything about the suit.
Shani Davis holds an impressive number of world records, regularly improving upon his previous record. Yesterday, he finished 8th. That's just not where he belongs.
Better question is, who the hell tries to gain an unfair advantage
It's not an unfair advantage. There's lots of innovation in speed skating. But using something untested in a major tournament like this, requiring all athletes of your country to use it, well, that's pretty stupid.
Last I checked it was the Dutch leading in Speed Skating.
Amazingly even on the 500m, which was the only distance we always sucked at (and where Shani Davis ruled).
Big part of the difference is that while most countries have a single national team, we have a lot of competing teams with their own ideas about training, tech, etc. Through this competition, what works and doesn't work is quickly proven. Also, skating is a popular area of research here. I suspect we're the only country where skating has professionalized to this level. As a result, it's the only truly international sport that we utterly dominate.
It's like the US's situation in basketball, baseball or American Football. Having the most professional competition in the world pays off.
Problem here is it every US athlete was required to use this untested gear. Had it been optional, some would have used it hoping for an extra edge, others would have stuck to their guns, and the new tech would get to prove itself without throwing all eggs in a single untested basket.
Also, maybe start at something smaller than the Olympics. The Olympics are kind of a big deal. Not the best timing for a big screw-up.
So where should they have tested them? In competition? I hope not without testing them in competition before that!
There are smaller skating tournaments than the Olympics. Though it's possible that a factor here is that most countries, including the US, are focused entirely on the Olympics, whereas the Dutch also want to perform at small tournaments a few months after the Olympics. Or before, for that matter. If someone tries something new, the Dutch championships are a good enough place to tell whether it's positive or negative. And usually Dutch skaters have a choice whether to use something new or not. And if it's good, they will, because otherwise they fall behind. Competition is unbelievably stiff here.
All athletes try to get a technical advantage. Usually the Dutch have the advantage, because a lot of speed skating research happens here (the clap skate that everybody now uses is also a Dutch invention, for example). Now the Americans tried to get an advantage on ill-thought-out terms (little practice; there's no way back), and it blew up in their faces.
They perform far worse than expected. Shani Davis does not suck. He used to win everything, now he's 8th. Had he been 4th, you could blame it on the excellent crop of Dutch sprinters, but he's 8th. Yesterday in an interview (where he explicitly wasn't allowed to say anything bad about the suits), he hinted that getting disqualified might be better than finishing 8th again.
It's a fine example of how ambiguous the word "test" is. If my code has unit tests, it has technically been tested, but if nobody has looked at it in anything resembling a production environment, what is that test worth?
I should think "Release the photons" would be more sensible
But you can already release photons with regular non-laser headlights. Nothing new about that.
The brick builder charges accordingly. Since 90% of programming is debugging and testing, you could concur and demand a 1000% pay rise.
Exactly. The one who carries the risk gets the extra pay.
So I guess the producers should change the rules. It's not the contestant's fault that the most effective strategy is not fun; that's the producers' fault.
I do wonder why Watson didn't play this strategy, though. Surely he should be able to figure out the best strategy.
Yeah, he sucks. The deer in the woods could get out of sight and run-rest-run-rest, while man chase-track-chase-track.
Depends on the ground conditions. I'm not convinced a skilled tracker always needs a long stop to follow recent tracks.
Yes but land predators do not want to deal with 30 or 40 mud-covered primates with pointy sticks, so they stay the hell away. Nothing chases us. We can, however, chase the shit out of anything.
So go chase a bear on your own. See how far you get.
The fact that theoritically we can run down any animal, does not mean that any animal will always try to run away from us.
If you're defending them against fascism, you're not doing a very good job.
most modern man do not get to choose with whom they want to fornicate, it is now the female who choose with whom they want to fournicate
Have men lost the ability to say no? I wasn't aware of this development.
Yeah Vegans are the ones who spout nonsense like "milk is murder."
Of course I call out any vegetarian who eats fish as a hypocrite: if it's animal flesh then it's meat.
That's not so much being a hypocrite as simply not really being a vegetarian.
I used to be a vegetarian. Not so much for the "meat is murder" aspect, as for the "meat is terribly inefficient, unsustainable, and I don't want to fund the structural mistreatment of animals" aspect. So I do eat meat and fish, but only when sustainable (to some rather arbitrary degree). So that means free range, preferably local, no growth hormones and crap like that, and fish only when they're not being overfished, no ecosystems being damages, and no other animals unnecessarily killed. So line-caught albacore tuna is fine, but the blue fin tuna you usually see is not.
As far as I understand, B12 is only really necessary for young children and pregnant women, and if everything works right, you get enough during your youth to last you the rest of your life. Also, I believe they're in eggs and cheese (though I'm not entirely sure). Not vegan, but vegetarian sounds feasible.
But sometimes not everything works right, apparently. When I'd been a vegetarian for 10 years, I somehow developed a B12 shortage.
Now I do eat meat occasionally. Not often, certainly not daily, but I'm not a vegetarian anymore. I still eat a lot less meat than most Europeans and Americans, though. We don't really need nearly as much meat as we eat. Hunter/gatherers generally get most of their food from the gathering, rather than the hunting. Meat once or twice a week was plenty. And it still is.
We may not be "the fittest", but we are still around.
That's all that fittest means: being the one that survives. You don't have to be able to run; evolutionary speaking, you just have to eat and reproduce.
There's a good reason why hunting predators bigger than you is not a very popular strategy.
Ah, I get it. You've never heard of the art of tracking. That explains it.
It takes a remarkable amount of calories to run each mile. Lean meat has very few calories. You're quite unlikely to come out ahead with this strategy.
Meat is for protein. Most of our calories come from vegetables.
And persistence hunting doesn't require an all-out run. Ultrarunners (which is basically the same trick, just without prey) generally alternate between running and walking. That mix apparently gives the best combination of speed and endurance.
Ambush and a short chase is a much better plan.
And yet we suck at short chases. Almost any land animal runs faster than us. For a short while. And then we catch up as it gets tired.
There's a reason no actual predators use the "run until the prey dies of exhaustion" strategy.
Wolves do it in a way.