This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Mostly Games
Aug
15
2008
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
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 10:52 pm and has been carefully placed in the Sports category.
August 16th, 2008 at 9:17 am
I HATE the subjective events like gymnastics and figure skating. They’re essentially glorified exhibitions that award medals. I’m a little more torn when it comes to stuff like the half pipe or the fun acrobatic ski jumping, because I really enjoy watching those, but in the end there’s just one real standard there: either they fall or they don’t. So even if I enjoy watching some of the events, I still get frustrated at the end because the standings are almost entirely subjective and largely meaningless. The commentators talk breathlessly about how one person edged out another by ONE ONE-HUNDREDTH OF A POINT, ISN’T THAT THRILLING?!, when in reality it just means a few people liked that one person just slightly more. On a different day or with one different judge, the other person could have just as easily “won” by the same margin. Contrast that with Phelps’ extremely narrow victory, where they could actually go to video replay to verify the results based on a legitimate absolute standard of measurement, and it’s pretty obvious why I hate the subjective events.
August 17th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Sometimes it’s a little more than that. I was with diving and gymnastics for a semester each. Diving has a set number for each dive. I can’t remember what it is all for, but the difficulty is based on the type of dive. The judges look to make sure you complete each rotation, turn, twist and entry. For the most part, scoring is standard based on what you said you were going to do and what you actually did. Gymnastics is similar. Each routine has certain elements that need to be included. Extra things can be added for more difficulty. No matter ehat you do, everything is graded to make sure you completed everything the way it was supposed to be done. So much is taken off for not completing something half way or all the way. Watching gymnastics, the announcers explained that taking a step is so much off and taking a step longer that a meter is so much more off. So, it’s not all subjective. You just have to know the sport to understand what is going on.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
A guy at one training thing I had to go to a while ago was at a job which did not require much of his time while at work, so he and fellow workers had plenty of time to do things not related to work. One of those things was to define “sports”, and I liked his definition. It had three elements, although I don’t know if I will remember them exactly. It was something like this:
1) Must be physically demanding, at least somewhat aerobic (i.e., no golf, probably no baseball [has anyone ever collapsed from exhaustion while playing baseball?])
2) Must involve some sort of confrontation with your opponent, with at least the chance of physical contact (so swimming is probably out, but tennis is probably in [there could be contact at the net, or you could hit the person with the ball])
3) I think the last was some sort of “athleticism” requirement, or it may have been how it was scored. I’m not sure, and I don’t remember thinking it was as important as the other two. If the guy still works for my employer, I’ll send him an email as soon as I’m set up here, asking him.
Anyway, that was the definition a bunch of guys interested in sports with a bunch of free time came up with.
August 18th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
I don’t dispute that artistic competitions are objective in theory; I dispute that the theory translates to reality with any consistency, and I think the most recent kerfuffles in the olympic gymnastic events only highlight that. As long as the competitions are dependent on the opinions of judges, there are going to be problems and inconsistencies.