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Episode 76- Favorite Sports
In regards to Ryms things of the day, MY BRAIN IS ON FIRE. THE IGNORANCE IS SUFFOCATING. I also have to agree with Rym regarding whether or not cheerleading and the like are actually sports.
Comments
Sports I can't stand: Tennis. I can't tolerate pro tennis, mostly because of pro tennis players. I enjoy playing it, though. Same deal with soccer.
Everything else is either meh, feh, or both.
Remember Fulton?
I submit, then, that judges for figure skating or what have you perform EXACTLY the same function as refs/umpires in "real" sports, and that one must therefore conclude that by Scott's definition, figure skating is as real a sport as hockey.
As for sports, I've drifted away from most spectator sports, save for the odd ice hockey game. Really, seeing a spectator sport live is pretty much the only way to go; televised sports blow.
Nothing, of course, beats PLAYING a sport, like American football or That Sport Everyone Else In The World Calls football.
F1 is the most perfect sport in this sense because the vast majority of refereeing is done by a computer. Specifically the Tag Heuer timing system which is accurate to more than a thousandth of a second. Most of what the race officials do is simply enforce the rules based on the results returned by the timing computer. For example, in the last race one team's mechanics stood next to the car for too long on the grid according to the timing system. They received a penalty. And while he was in the pit for that penalty the timing system made sure he did not go too fast in the pit, or else he would have been penalized again.
In a performance sport you don't have true and false. It's not goal or no goal. It's a sliding scale. There might be objective guidelines as to how to set those scales, but they cannot possibly cover the entire scale objectively. Take diving for example. Someone dives into a pool and a bunch of judges hold up cards with numbers saying how well the dive was performed. They know what a 10 looks like, anyone can recognize a perfect dive. They know what a 0 looks like, it's a cannonball. But when someone messes up a little bit do you give an 8? a 9? 8.5? No matter how objective you try to make it there will always be subjectivity.
The figure skater with the hotter body, the sexier dance and the better music will edge out. The marching band who happened to select music in line with the judge's taste will edge out. These sports are all performances, works of art. It is absolutely impossible to judge a work of art objectively. Thus is the nature of things.
Imagine trying to come up with a set of rules to objectively judge a movie. Theoretically you could use this to rank every movie ever. Do you seriously think that any two people on earth would even come close to having the same scores? No. The movies that appeal to their personal taste would score higher on average. This is why we do not have a World Series of movies. Instead we have the Oscars which do not pretend to be objective. Corruption nonwithstanding, the Oscars are the opinion of the MPAA.
If you want to make a semantic argument then just about any fun activity can be considered both a sport and a game. But I could care less about semantics. What I'm saying is that athletic performances and athletic games are so completely different from each other that putting them both in the same category of "sport" is wrong.
As for his examples regarding figure skating and diving, know that he doesn't actually know anything about these sports or how they're scored. In a discussion we just had, he had no clue as to the strict and largely objective rules the judges are forced to follow. Whether or not a diver's toes were pointed properly, or a figure skater landed in one motion are just as boolean, scoring-wise, as whether or not a puck entered a net.
Also, in regards to "Even if there is a video replay, two people looking at it might see something differently. Thus is the nature of the universe. There is no way to know for sure what happened in the past, so we decide that the referee's point of view is the definitive one. If we had time machines we would not need referees. But quantum physics defeats us."
That is perhaps the stupidest argument I've ever heard. Invoking quantum physics in an argument about sports is the geek equivalent of Godwinning.
And I only invoked quantum physics as an example to reinforce the idea of needing a single authoritative observer. I'm not actually making any sort of scientific argument. Not like those psudoscience scammers who will sell you a "quantum crystal" to keep away evil, disease-bearing spirits. :P
Also I recently saw this trailer:
I can't wait to see it