Sports and Weather at 11

I know I had all sorts of stuff I really wanted to talk about, but most of it has left my consciousness. Let's see what I can do anyway.

Olympics

I'm willing to believe that the 3rd graders on China's gymnastics team are old enough to compete, as long as China gives us back our nuclear secrets. The nucular secrets they can keep.

My favorite part of watching Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh win the gold medal was seeing them on the podium while the national anthem was played. I mentioned earlier that I liked seeing the women's eight all sing the national anthem. M-T and Walsh didn't sing the whole thing, but they each sang parts of it. I think they were overtaken a little by the amount of emotion you could see coursing through them at the time. It would be insufficient to say they looked happy. I'd use the word "joyful" or "euphoric" instead. I think they embody what I loved so much about the teams of Hamm, Foudy, Fawcett, Chastain, etc. Namely, the obvious love that they played with, both for the game and for each other. They are very worthy champions, great examples for America to show off to the rest of the world, and I wish both of them well in their plans to start having kids with their husbands.

As for women's soccer, the US team won an exciting gold medal match against Brazil thanks to a great strike from Carli Lloyd in overtime. There is no sudden-death in soccer overtime. They play two 15-minute extra periods, regardless of who scores first or how many goals are scored. Lloyd scored in the 6th minute of extra time, meaning the US had to hold out against 24 more minutes of desperate Brazilian attacking.

Brazil has Marta, generally considered to be the best women's player in the world. I'm rather partial to Wambach, but Marta is terrific and very, very dangerous. She carved up the US defense several times, but was stoned either by late defensive play or in one case, a great save by Hope Solo. Solo has had a tough time personally since she spouted off about Greg Ryan's decision to bench her against Brazil in the 2007 World Cup.

Solo was banned by her teammates from playing in the consolation game. She was banned by her teammates from eating with the team. She was banned by her teammates from flying back to the United States with the team. That's bringing down the heavy hammer. She lost a few friends along the way.

I wrote that this sort of thing was pretty unprecedented for this team, and that I didn't want the women's game to become more like the men's game, with players criticizing each other and calling each other out. But part of me feels for her, and sort of likes the fact that she was so open and honest about what she thought. If she had waited a month and then sat down in an interview with some soccer mag, people would have come down on her and said, "Why didn't you say anything a month ago?" and accused her of being whiny. She's a good player, and she hasn't lived the easiest life in the world, so I'm glad to see her take home the gold.

So who "won" the medal count? The United States had the most overall medals, but China finished with 51 golds to 36 for the US. How did they do it? See here. They dominated in Gymnastics and Diving, kept their top status in table tennis, broke the strangleholds of Korea and Indonesia in Archery and Badminton, respectively, and put a lot of effort into some relatively lightly-contested events like Trampoline and Sailing. The biggest surprise to me was the EIGHT golds in weightlifting. I thought the Eastern Europeans had that stuff down pat.

Weather

Gustav is on his way to Louisiana, expected to make landfall with the eye to the west of New Orleans. Meteorology review:

Hurricanes are like big energy machines. They draw energy from warm water areas. The longer they stay over water, the stronger they get. They weaken when they get over land. They rotate counter-clockwise, meaning that the Eastern part of the storm is stronger and more damaging than the Western part. I think of it as a big right hand coming in to land a punch. If Gustav were to the West of New Orleans, the wind and rain would be less severe, since the stronger part would have already come over a bit of land before coming around to reach the city. Of course, that would also be bad news for whoever is sitting a few hours east of N.O.

I grew up in a state that had a general feeling--in spite of having been hit with devastating storms before--of "Hurricanes? Whatever. I'm not leaving my house, thank you very much." Now I'm seeing reports that 90-95% of the Louisiana coast has been evacuated. Some estimates have only 10,000 people staying behind in New Orleans. That's what seeing your city under ten feet of water for days on end will do for you. We'll probably get a lot of rain in Natchitoches, and I expect there will be some wind damage and a lot of picking up limbs in the yard afterwards. Gah.

Football

College football season started this weekend, and I was very happy to watch LSU beat Appalachian State yesterday. Game time was 10am due to evacuation concerns, so I guess tailgating started at 8pm Friday night. I didn't like the sluggish third quarter, but the lines were great, the tackling was good, and the game was never really in doubt. Not a bad way to start the season, and hopefully they'll get better each week leading up to the Auburn game in Week 4.

Sarah Palin

I have seen three pretty funny reactions related to John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his VP running mate.

1) Someone writing in to Jack Cafferty saying "If I had known that being an inexperience hockey mom was qualification enough to be vice president, I'd have told my wife to apply for the job."

2) Cafferty apologizing for being late to a segment with Wolf Blitzer to talk about Palin. "Sorry I'm late. I was under heavy sniper fire on the 4th floor." (using a "misremembered" Hillary story for an excuse. I like it) This was followed by Wolf talking to Glenn Beck, who also apologized for being late. "I'm also sorry I was late. I was on the 4th floor adjusting my scope." Now that's funny.

3) This video from the Red State Update guys. I'd never really watched any of their stuff, but this made me giggle.