Archive for August, 2012

Olympic Winners, 2012

Since there is some debate about the best way to measure who won the Olympics (correct answer: “We all did”), I thought I would prepare the results using several different methods so that various countries could claim to be the winners.

Usually the debate centers around do only golds count or do all medals count. The seemingly official method is to count by golds, but there are some other ways.

Since there are too much data to put into one post, I’ll summarize the results in this post and also point to another page that contains the unsummarized data.

Summary: Grenada won the 2012 Olympic games

Country Medals / Trillion $ Rank
Grenada 681.20 1
Jamaica 478.66 2
Czech Republic 416.15 3

Country People / Gold Medals Rank
Grenada 109,011 1
Bahamas 316,182 2
New Zealand 721,324 3

Country Sq. Mile / Point Rank
Grenada 27 1
Jamaica 118 2
Singapore 135 3

The only category which Grenada did not win was normalization by athlete count. In other words, Grenada was very efficient as a country but not so efficient as an Olympic delegation.

For the complete data, please view the charts on the 2012 Olympics Results page.

Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

Luke 14:32

Camp Fire Wood

In our recent travels, we passed by some state parks. Just outside one of the state parks, some enterprising homeowner was selling wood. The sign on his front yard looked like this:

CAMP
FIRE
WOOD

I think they took the easy way out.

If you were to write the word(s) to indicate wood for a fire for a camp, how would you arrange those words?

Campfire wood ? Sounds like the name of a forest…
Camp firewood ? Sounds like a happy place for children…

Such a dilemma – how to make a compound word out of three words. Which word draws the short straw?

Here’s my answer:
Wood for a fire is firewood.
Fire for a camp is a campfire.
Wood for a fire for a camp is campfirewood.

Why limit a compound word to only two words?

They will not take wood from the field or gather firewood from the forests, for they will make fires with the weapons; and they will take the spoil of those who despoiled them and seize the plunder of those who plundered them,” declares the Lord God.

Ezekiel 39:10

8 Mile Movie Update

The movie 8 Mile, starring Eminem, is a bit outdated now. It played well in the US, putting some part of Detroit on the map, so to speak, for Americans who might not be familiar with the area otherwise.

It has taken 10 years, but there is now an international version of the movie. Most people outside the USA know Detroit only for the auto show, or maybe gunshots. But now Eminem’s movie has been released in an international format:

movie poster of Eminem's 8 Mile, put into metric so it is now 12.8 Km

It is available in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Japanese. And, to make all those viewers feel more included, all the measurements have been converted to metric (kilometers and such).

For example, instead of “Everybody from the 313”, now it is “Everybody from the 503.6”. I’m sure that makes it much easier for Europeans to understand.

For You have abandoned Your people, the house of Jacob,
Because they are filled with influences from the east,
And they are soothsayers like the Philistines,
And they strike bargains with the children of foreigners.

Isaiah 2:6

How to Get Your Child to Eat

You may have a habitually picky eater – the child who does not like most of what is presented to him for consumption.
Or you may have a child who is going through a phase and refuses anything but mac and cheese.

If you ever find yourself in that situation, I have a solution for you. This should not be your primary plan, but it is guaranteed to work.

You are going to need three main items:

  1. A few women over retirement age, to be helpers. They don’t have to be actual grandmothers, but it wouldn’t hurt.
  2. Some cafetria trays – one per helper
  3. A bunch of small paper cups

When mealtime comes, station the helpers around the dining room, each with a cafeteria tray full of paper cups containing samples of each item from the meal.

The kids will walk around the room, helping themselves to the cups and eating.

If that does not work, your only hope is to obtain some shopping carts and push the kids around the room (while they are sitting in the carts).

No matter what the states of the kids’ stomachs before we enter Costco, our children are always interested in the food samples. I figure that in order to entice them to eat at home, all you need to do is recreate the experience of the food-sample carts in the store.

Or just let them not eat much, and they should be hungry at the next meal.

So he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did not eat bread or drink water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

Exodus 34:28

Paper Towels

diagram of how a paper towel's perforations are not as they appear

Now consider this, you who forget God, Or I will tear you in pieces, and there will be none to deliver.

Psalm 50:22