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Our church recently had a carnival/festival and there were some contests for children. Some of the contests (throw a football through a tire, carry an egg on a spoon, pop the balloon with the darts, etc.) had prizes, and one particular contest was awarding live goldfish (in plastic bags filled with water) as the prize.

No one in my family won a goldfish by playing that game. But we knew the people manning that booth and, unfortunately, they had some fish leftover at the end of the day. That meant that they had to get rid of them somehow, so they gave us a fish.

We already had an empty fishbowl from years ago, and the fish-givers gave us fish food, so we thought it wouldn’t be too bad. It could have been worse: someone else there was giving away puppies (not for a contest, but for anyone who wanted one). So we took the fish home and setup the fishbowl.

The fish did not have a name. We got the fish on a Saturday, and my wife named the fish on Tuesday. I came home from work, and we sat down to eat dinner. As part of the dinner conversation my wife referred to the fish as “Floaty”. Sure enough, he was quite floaty. So now he resides in a different plastic bag – until next Tuesday when he moves to his new home courtesy of the garbage truck.

“Therefore the land mourns, And everyone who lives in it languishes Along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky, And also the fish of the sea disappear.”
– Hosea 4:3

The current Olympics in Beijing, China, are interesting to me because of the medal count. The official method of listing the winning countries is by order of gold medals, not by total medals won. This is interesting because out of the last few Olympics, the total medal winner has been the same as the gold medal winner.

This Olympics is different, because China is winning the gold medal count and the USA is winning the total medal count. I thought I would do some research on this, and you, the reader, get to benefit from that. How? I don’t know yet.

At first I wondered if it had to do with China’s being the host country. Some may argue that the host does receive favorable treatment and scoring, but I looked at the trend and I think it just has to do with China’s effort to improve themselves in international competition.

First up, China’s medal count trend. Look at how both the gold medals won and total medals won have been increasing from effectively zero several Olympics ago. Now they’re one of the leaders.

Next up, China’s increase in gold medals trend. Look at how their percentage of medals has been changing toward more golds and less of the other medals. I have extrapolated the data and found that, if the current trend continues, all the medals that China wins will be golds by the year 2028. They won’t even bother with the silver or bronze medals. If the Olympic ranking system goes for gold, not total medals, then that is how countries should play – for the gold. China is the only country whose gold medal count is more than half of its total medal count.

Don’t worry though. Even though all of China’s medals will be gold by 2028, they won’t win all the events that year. So there will still be gold medals available for a while. I also checked out how long it will take for China to win all the events, and that should occur in the year 2108, at a venue still to be decided by the IOC.

So either China will end up with all the medals, or their rate of medal winning will level off at some point. If they haven’t claimed all the medals by 2108, then you can find me and I will try to revise this post with the correct information.

“Also if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules.”
– 2 Timothy 2:5

We had nothing scheduled for this evening, so we decided to do some things in the yard. First was to plant some mums that we had bought recently. We didn’t really plant them – we left the mums in their pots but set the pots down in the dirt a little. That was somewhat for better curb appeal but more to keep the wind from knocking over the pots.

Next was to water the vegetable garden and the potted flowers. That’s an easy job – the kids are eager to volunteer. “Who wants the hose?” I ask, and they come running. The hard part is making sure they take turns and don’t drown some plants while ignoring others.

Then, since the hose was out and running, the kids asked if we could get out the sprinkler. I thought that would be a fine way to keep them outside, so I got the sprinkler. It’s the type that spins, but they don’t like it to spin. Once it was setup, they started pulling plastic toys out of the shed. They also pulled out the lawn chair. I think it was meant to hold their towels, but I commandeered it so I could sit and read the issue of the Inspire that came today.

It was quite peaceful – the kids had found the T-ball set and placed it right next to the sprinkler and were playing waterball.  There were no bugs, particularly mosquitoes.  I don’t know whether that was because of the slight breeze or because I had sprayed for them last week.  I was thinking “This is what summer is supposed to be.”

Then I noticed some dark pick-up truck stop on the side of the road, just after our driveway.  A couple of people came around the side of the truck and started moving things in the bed.  I figured they just had to adjust their freight.  Then some more people appeared.  I saw the freight, and it was a cooler.  The local high school cross-country team was on a training run, and they decided to place their water break right in front of our house.

That’s when I realized that summer was officially closing.  Cross-country camp, football starting across the nation, planting mums – they all add to equal the start of fall.  All good things, but summer needs to last a little longer.

“You have established all the boundaries of the earth; You have made summer and winter.”
– Psalm 74:17

What makes a game a game and a sport a sport?

Games are something that people can do for fun. Sports are not. Track and Field is generally a sport, because you don’t have people playing a pick-up game of pole vault.

They’re called the Olympic Games. There are a lot of games in there, but there are some real sports too. Swimming is mostly a sport – who swims the butterfly for fun? But diving could be considered game-ish.

Things that require subjective judging are usually games, as sports have clear and obvious scores. If you have the fastest time or longest distance or whatever, then you’re the winner. Watching some of the Olympic events, I wondered what would happen if we applied subjective scoring to other events. What prompted that was the interminable wait after some of the gymnastics events until the gymnast’s score was determined.

What if that same method was applied to something else, such as the 100-yard dash? Okay, officially it is known as the 100-meter dash, but we all know they just renamed the event to make it sound internationalish. Anyway, what if the race finished, but we had to wait until they added individual level-of-difficulty to everyone’s time, and then they subtracted some deductions for things like bad form? That would make for a very tedious competition and would not be very entertaining. Hmm… now that I think about it some more, that sounds a lot like the BCS formula.

But not all things that are objective are sports. Table tennis has obvious scoring, but it is a game. People play it for fun – the same with volleyball. Plus volleyball is too much fun to be a pure sport. Sports are things that are not fun in and of themselves, like marathons. Sure the event of the marathon may be fun, with live bands and people cheering. But the running part of the marathon, without those other things, is no fun.

“Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.”
– 1 Corinthians 9:25

I bought a small bookshelf to help organize the toys in the living room. The bookshelf was the assemble-it-yourself kind. I have done some of those before, so I expected it to be no problem. I got out the instructions and set all the boards in nice little piles according to their type.

The first page of the instructions said which tools were needed for the project. If you can see the picture below, you’ll notice that it shows only a hammer is needed. I thought that was nice – a simple shelf that needs only some dowels and nails pounded.

I then looked at the second page of instructions. If you can see the picture below, you’ll notice that it shows that I was to attach some screws. I thought that was odd – how am I to attach screws using a hammer?

I briefly contemplated hammering in the screws. But I ignored the instructions and used a screwdriver instead.

“So the craftsman encourages the smelter, {And} he who smooths {metal} with the hammer {encourages} him who beats the anvil, Saying of the soldering, “It is good”; And he fastens it with nails, {So that} it will not totter.”
– Isaiah 41:7

And the winner is…OVR. That’s right, Oversold with Improving RSI, combined with Overbought with Declining RSI, put on a very strong last leg to finish well ahead of the other contenders.

What does that mean? What is my conclusion? I think I’ll use OVR as one of the inputs of my stock-buying decisions. It might make a fine stock screener to provide a list of potential stocks. An 19% return in one month is impressive, but all that means is that it warrants a closer look.

On a related note, don’t use CCI Signals and Parabolic SAR Signals as stock screeners. Those were returning 200, 300, and even 599 stocks for one day. A stock screener that returns 599 stocks is not very useful to me, so I removed those from the list at the beginning of this month-long test. I want a stock screener that returns a few dozen stocks, at most.

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Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.
– 1 Corinthians 9:24

Since the football season is starting (and there was much rejoicing), I thought it would be appropriate to note some similarities between football and families with small children.

The first correlation is not specific to football, but to any college sport. A few weeks ago we checked into the local junior kindergarten/pre-kindergarten/young fives program. Our son has a birthday that is late in the year, but it is before the official cut-off date for enrollment in school. The principal of the school said not to think of having the extra year as holding back your child. She said to think of it as red-shirting your child. That makes it sound a lot better.

The second correlation has to do with the number of kids in the family. This correlation fits with fewer sports, but is still not unique to football. We were talking with someone who has four children. When he heard that we are expecting our third child, his comment was that we would have to switch from man-to-man to zone defense. Ah yes, our play-calling will have to change.

“So there was much rejoicing in that city.”
– Acts 8:8