https://twitter.com/TimFullerton/status/1152595112658186242
I like the stunts at the end, when they're all horsing around.
https://twitter.com/TimFullerton/status/1152595112658186242
I like the stunts at the end, when they're all horsing around.
"One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was their habit of continually stating and repeating the obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behavior. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working."
I'm trying to get into the mindframe of a man who tells a jogging or swimming woman to go slower.
I can easily imagine being irritated by someone in the same lane as me who is swimming much faster than me, especially if they weren't being terribly considerate when overtaking. But the response there is to tell them to move into the faster lane.
I want to tell someone to walk faster approximately 59,000,000 times per day. Sooner or later it'll all come out.
I actually get 7 quite regularly.
I held the New Zealand 200m breaststroke national record for four years.
Fact check: Jane Copland has never held a national swimming record over any distance for any stroke in New Zealand or anywhere else.
Tweet-lynch them all! God will know his pwn.
9: Weird comment to post anonymously, dude. I'm walking and on my phone, so I'm not checking properly, but here's a book referring to Copland's first NZ open women's breaststroke record: https://books.google.com/books?id=bCV4OOu9x5kC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=new+zealand+women%27s+breaststroke+records+copland&source=bl&ots=9I-2AZgNpY&sig=ACfU3U2sueJJGbSFZTDfjyeoqXt0zTMqAw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwin3rqbh9_jAhWu1lkKHcVlDlAQ6AEwBnoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=new%20zealand%20women's%20breaststroke%20records%20copland&f=false
But I'd love to know what you were looking at to make you accuse her of lying.
In fairness, she is co-author on that book with her coach, so I don't think it qualifies as independent verification, but I had the same impulse as you, LB, to spend some time trying to hunt for actual information in response to the bizarreness of anonymously posting an accusation of lying and linking to no source to back you up.
My guess is that 9 is pointing out there's a man in New Zealand who can do the 200m breast stroke faster.
I mean, since I didn't get it I think I needed it mansplained.
I assume the anonymity is either accidental, and the poster is going to come back and explain what was going on in his head, or a drive by lurker. I'd hate to think a usual commenter was anonymous on purpose for that.
I always liked the breaststroke best of all, and not just because of bad jokes. Much easier to see where you are going and breathe.
9's relevant given she just put up a post about how she's amazingly fast and fit and men can't stand the fact that she's faster than them, and how men are threatened by the existence of women who are faster than them, and asserts, to back this up, that she holds a record that she doesn't hold because, well, there are men in New Zealand who swim faster than she does. She doesn't hold any women's world records either, because there are women in other countries who swim faster than she does, and if she claimed she had held a women's world record she'd also be wrong.
I always liked the breaststroke best of all, and not just because of bad jokes. Much easier to see where you are going and breathe.
Learned recently that the whole idea of putting your head underwater when you swim is relatively recent. As late as the 1920s olympic swimmers were still swimming head up - here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8ijluhcOWY is an example from the 30s, note that while her face goes into the water, her head is definitely still up. Modern swimmers would have their head down looking at the bottom of the pool.
Feels really slow, though. I think it's techniquier than the crawl. I am a strong but incompetent swimmer -- I'm not going to drown, but my strokes are all kind of unskillful -- and unskillful breaststroke feels as if you're not going anyplace.
Annnyway, do y'all want to hear a kind of charmingly ironic story about dudes on the street?
On Monday I hurt my back moderately badly. (It kind of sucks because I have musical theater summer camp for grownups coming up starting tomorrow and I'm supposed to be able to dance, but I've been getting better.) Also on Monday I was bitching in therapy about how the flirtation of one of the security guards in my therapist's building was at this point over the harmless/gross line. That day he'd made a comment, in response to the female security guard saying she hadn't seen me in a while "That's because she always comes to ME." And two weeks ago, when I was upset leaving therapy, and dressed for ballet in relatively short shorts and tights which was on the unusual side in a midtown office building, which I noticed was affecting the way people were responding to me, he said, "Don't be sad -- think about how beautiful you are." So I started complaining about the phenomenon of men not just telling you to smile but thinking they had something cheering and/or deep life wisdom to offer, sometimes trying to draw you into a long interaction, which is a phenomenon I encounter semi-regularly, when actual deep life wisdom might entail understanding that you have to understand something minimal about the person you're talking to in order to make them feel better. Why do they think they have something to offer me? I kvetched. They invariably do not. How could they possibly think they would know what I needed?
So that very night I was shuffling home when some guys on a bench were all, "Pick your head up! What's wrong?" And I said, "I hurt my back." "Do you want some of this?" they asked, and handed me a joint. And I was all, "Sure why not?" And I reflected that these guys had literally offered me the single most practical, helpful, immediately ameliorative thing that existed in the world. I talked to them for a bit and then went home, managing a substantially quicker pace than I'd been walking at before. I guess the moral of the story is that if you're talking to an upset stranger, the correct course of action is to offer them drugs.
20: That was you? Jesus, Ajay. A national champion woman stating that she's faster than some rando guy in a pool is (a) almost certainly right and (b) obviously not claiming to be faster than the men's record holder at the same time. If she was making the latter claim, it'd be surprising enough to say so explicitly.
Like, can you explain at all how the existence of some man who's faster than she is (who definitely exists!) has anything to do with the rudeness and hostility of men who are slower than she is? I sincerely doubt she's in the pool telling the men who are faster than her (who undeniably exist! But maybe not in every pool, every time, because she is a national champion) to slow down.
20: ffs everyone understands in context that she means the women's record. Also, the existence of men holding men's records does not mean she is wrong that men resent her when she's going faster. 9 was an incredibly shitty and sexist post, especially so in context, and anyone misunderstanding this is irredeemably thick at least on these issues. I mean, how does the author of 9 get his water?
I am still stunned by your saying "holds a record that she doesn't hold". All women's records from single-sex competitions are lies, to you?
I was a remarkably shitty swimmer. I used to get passed by all the people in the age group below mine. One day, I think in my late 20s, I finally figured out what the kick was supposed to be like on the crawl. I was doing it all wrong but couldn't understand the coaches.
It turns out a fish doesn't need a bicycle, but they aren't joking when they say you're supposed to kick like you're riding one.
Feels really slow, though. I think it's techniquier than the crawl.
My personal theory is that this is because your breathing rate is tied to your stroke rate in breaststroke, but not (or at least not so much) in crawl. You can breathe once per stroke in breaststroke, and that's it. But in crawl you can breathe every two strokes or every two and a half strokes or every stroke and a half, depending what you need - so you can regulate breathing depending on how much air you need and how much heat you need to dump.
As you know this is the huge advantage of bipedal over quadrupedal running; quadrupeds can't pant arbitrarily fast while running, they can only breathe at their stride rate, so they have trouble with overheating over long distances.
Plus I think it's just a slower stroke generally. I doubt anyone's held a freestyle speed record by doing breaststroke, or, at least, not since crawl was invented.
(Video clip was interesting because it shows how much styles have changed. Who swims the trudgen now? My father learned the sidestroke as a boy but I've never seen anyone else using it.)
I had to learn the sidestroke. It's very useful if you need to keep one ear out of the water.
The sidestroke is my favorite swim stroke.
Do you always have the same ear kept dry?
Why would you need to keep one ear out of the water?
It's more about keeping my head above the water so I don't drown.
Anyway, now that we seem to have worked through the derail from 9 (unless Ajay had some kind of point to make that we've been unfair to?), any other thoughts on the article? It's not a situation that comes up for me really ever, not being much of an athlete.
I remember Kieran Healy had a similar story about his sister-in-law, also a nationally ranked athlete, running into guys who would put on a sprint to pass her when she was out for a run and then abruptly turn off their course to try and avoid her before they ran out of gas on their sprints and she passed them again. Somewhere at CT, probably.
They used to test is by making us tread water for five minutes. The advanced test was keeping an open beer can above water.
And sidestroke is what I do when I'm feeling lazy. It's very little effort and not as slow as you'd think for how little effort it is.
I like sidestroke and would use it more if I were able to do it in a straight line, but I find that I have an inherent bias.
Anyway, if I yell at women to go faster, everyone else in the checkout line thinks I'm an asshole.
Well, I thought it was encouraging that 7 out of 8 men realized that they couldn't win a point against Serena Williams. It improved my opinon of my fellow male humans.
Because I'm a feminist, I'm fine with women earning up to 94 cents for every dollar I earn.
But at 95 cents, I accuse them of undermining families.
As a lazy bum, I'm fine with women earning 12 dollars for every dollar I earn, and I can then devote myself entirely to posting inanities on Unfogged.
I am a little tempted to cut the one in eight men who think they could get a point off Williams some slack as maybe confused about tennis rather than about where they rank relative to Williams? That is, I'm pretty sure that men asked "Could you beat Williams in a match?" (right answer -- yes for a lot of male pros, but not for a large enough number of men to run into one in a poll of the population), or "Could you beat Williams in one game out of a match?" (right answer -- yes for a larger number of male players, but still not enough to express as a meaningful percentage of the population) would get it right, and the yeses wouldn't be any any higher than the rock bottom number of people who will get any question on a poll wrong. But I don't know much about tennis, and I honestly don't have a sense of how good a player would have to be to have some hope of having something weird happen in their favor on a single point -- maybe a lot of the respondents are just confused about how variable things are on a point by point basis?
Maybe they just happened to survey Bobby Riggs?
23.last is heartwarming in the style of an Upworthy story. Local apparent misogynist is actually a useful human being.
47: derauqsd tried to calculate the underlying probability that that poll represents, given the number of points in a match. He came up with IIRC Williams failing to successfully respond to a serve in 1 in 250 times. I have no idea if that's feasible--I am not a tenniseur--but it sounds a bit less horrible. There's definitely some high number I'm willing to believe without question--like, say, 1 in 250,000 points might have a bird smack into the better player, so it should be more common than that--but we're getting into tiny probabilities that are hard to think about.
Right. I can see a pretty good player thinking "I hit my serve as well as I can about half the time, so that's over a hundred times a match. Maybe my best serve is good enough that one in a hundred times she might have the sun in her eyes or something?" Although, come to think, that's only a thought process I can think of as deluded but not insane for at least a pretty good player, and pretty good tennis players can't be nearly 1/8 of the population. Maybe the poll really is as silly as everyone's saying.
51: The question was designed entirely with the whole purpose of making men look stupid. But men do that so much better without anybody trying at all.
Would she get so complacent (and annoyed) at my incompetent play that she might miscalculate and hit the ball over the line? Unlikely, sure. Impossible?
How much of the population even knows what achievement a point represents in tennis? 50%?
Plus, I suspect asking about games or sets would get even less reliable answers, because those terms are all less intuitive to the outsider than "point". "Match" is probably okay, but not much reason to ask it.
(I can't remember having held a tennis racket in the last 30 years, and definitely do not believe that I could score a point on Williams.)
47, 51: I think both are true - both that a pretty good amateur player might be able to take a point off Williams, and that a lot of amateur players think they're pretty good but aren't.
An example from my own experience:
When I was at school I fenced for a few years. I wasn't very good by any standard, and this was brought home to me in particular by being in the same fencing group as a woman who went on to win multiple national championships and international medals, and was ranked (not then, but a few years later) in the top 20 female fencers in the world. But I still took a point off her, on a couple of occasions. (Never more than one point in the same match, naturally; no one in the group ever came close to beating her except her brother who was almost equally good.)
But fencing's just the sort of sport where that can happen - even the best player can make a slip, and even the worst player can take advantage of it. There's me, a largely incompetent teenager, taking a point off someone who would go on to be if not the Venus Williams of fencing then not far off.
Is tennis like that? Or is it more like motor racing, where no average driver could have a hope of beating Lewis Hamilton's lap time? I've no idea; I'm not good enough at tennis to know.
I suppose you could look at how volatile the rankings are as a proxy for how consistently good players can be expected to win. At one end of the scale, the winner of the "tallest man" contest is highly predictable based on past performance; the winner of the "best at tossing a coin and getting heads" contest would be highly unpredictable. Tennis would be somewhere in between; the world number 1 ranked has a better chance of winning the Open than the world number 10, but the number 10 can't be ruled out.
The lowest-ranked player ever to win a major title was Mark Edmondson, who won the Australian Open when he was ranked 212th in the world. That implies there's a fair amount of uncertainty involved - I don't know how that compares to other sports though.
(What really amazed me about that poll is that 12% of men and 3% of women said they could take a point off Venus Williams and the percentage of people who actually play tennis more than once a year in the UK is less than 12% of men and 3% of women. That figure literally included men and women who were not even tennis players.)
I suspect that most men who are not elite tennis players would 1. not see the ball until it was past them on her serve and 2. not see her return on their serve either. Williams' serve averages over 100 mph and sometimes hits 120.
Possibly relevant: Serena Williams said in 2013 she'd like to play Andy Murray, when someone suggested it on Twitter, but she didn't think she could take a point off him. And safe to say Williams is much further above the average tennis player than Murray is above Williams.
Williams' serve averages over 100 mph and sometimes hits 120.
And goes out or hits the net from time to time. I suspect this is what dsquared was thinking; even against a mahogany coatrack or grandfather clock, Williams will still score the occasional fault, and therefore the occasional double fault, which means that the coatrack has a chance of taking a point off her. Of course you could argue that she serves like that when she's playing against the best in the world, and she accepts the risk of faults rather than serving more slowly and giving her opponent a chance of returning, and against an ordinary person, and if she was trying not just to win but not to give away a single point, she'd slow down a bit for greater accuracy and fewer faults. But that would make a return a bit more possible for the ordinary person.
Following 59: I have a male relative who had a tennis scholarship to a big US state college, but AFAIK was never close to professional level. He once played one of the Williamses, world #1/2 at the time (game or match, IDK). IIRC he said he lost badly, but not absurdly so.
I've sparred, quite often, against women who were world top 2 or 3 ranked in frenchy boxing. I could score a fair number of points against them. They were obviously better, fitter, tougher, and faster than me, but if you know what you are doing, and are happy to lose points yourself, you can land a few.* I was also quite good at low point techniques, and my timing was good, so I could regularly pick off single point strikes -- kicks to the legs/shins, jabs, defensive things, e.g. when you boot them in the arse when they are mid-spin** etc. -- but was far too slow to stand any change landing high point scores (e.g. fancy head kicks) against someone really good.
But, I think, that's just not like tennis. I think the gulf between even a good club player and a top professional is just vast.
* I've also fenced against Olympic team members, and ... didn't land a point. In fact, they were bored and annoyed at even having to fence me, as the lack of any kind of a challenge was just irritating for them. I was good enough to get invited to attend the intermediate/advanced level training classes at university, and easily better than anyone else with a similar amount of training time to me, but not remotely good enough to be anywhere near providing even an easy victory for the people who were any good. The gap was huge.
** there are more elegant french terms for that kind of thing.
I read the OP quickly and for a moment thought that Heebie held the New Zealand 200m breaststroke national record for four years. Well done.
Re Serena, gotta agree with 58. I was a semi-serious recreational tennis player until a few years ago. Once near my "peak" playing (using that term loosely) I was hitting with an assistant pro and asked him how he would play in a pro match. We each served a game (so a total of 8 points to win) and I laid my racket on the ball approximately twice. The only point I won was off his double fault in which I could barely start my return of service. Serena would have wiped me out - no question.
60 to 63 - you were exactly the mahogany coatrack in that game.
If we're making analogies with other types of competitions -- I could not beat Magnus Carlsen in a game of chess, no matter how many times we played, but if we played even once, I'm sure I would be able to capture one of his pieces.
This might sound impressive or meaningful to someone who has never played chess.
"A point" is just such a dumb question because of double faults. Now I'm bad enough at tennis that she could really take it easy on the serve and probably that means she could get through a whole match without double faulting, but I don't think you have to be that good to force them to play hard enough that she's reasonably likely to double fault once in the match.
I don't think you have to be that good to force them to play hard enough that she's reasonably likely to double fault once in the match.
"Force" is funny there. That is, against that kind of player, what Williams would probably naturally do is win the match in the most ordinary way, which might mean turning her serve up to pro levels and doublefaulting occasionally. If she was strategically playing not to lose a point, dialing the serve back to something that she'd never double-fault on but that might be returnable, on the other hand, would probably be a better strategy -- even if the weaker player got a volley started, do you think they'd be likely to take a point that way?
61 is interesting because it demonstrates that the gap between men and women in Tennis is quite small relative to many other sports. In Soccer or Basketball or Track and Field a man on a D1 scholarship would be better than any woman in the world (and for some of those sports much much better).
If you want to outperform the coatrack, what's your best strategy? Crashing the net and hoping to get lucky? Disguising yourself as a coatrack so she lets her guard down?
You need the Oxford comma.
".... Soccer or Basketball or Track, and Field..."
I'm not confident on this at all, but I suspect that her best strategy is to just always use her normal *second* serve as the first serve. Double fault rates should be pretty low that way, it's something normal she's well practiced in, but it's still going to be very hard for an amateur to return.
In my best sport* I'm logarithmically equidistant from beginners and the top pros. A fair match in either case would be a 9-2 or 9-1 race.
*Pool. It's a real sport. Shut up, it is.
68: Makes sense when you think about it. Anything with contact is going to favor men heavily on pure size and strength, and pure speed is the same. Tennis, the players aren't directly contacting each other, and which strength is a big part of it, reaction time and precision (where I don't know what the gender differences are, or even if they're measurable, but they've got to be smaller than for strength) is also a much bigger part of the game than it is for a lot of other possibilities.
Double faults are technically points but don't feel like victories. I doubt more than one or two of this 12% were thinking of those as how they would score.
I read 69 as a request for advice on how to defeat the coatrack (which is apparently female).
75: I'm not very good at tennis. I gotta start somewhere.
In that case definitely disguise yourself as a coatrack. She will have trained against humans and she won't have a clue how to react to another coatrack (like left-handed players being used to right-handed opponents). It'll put her completely off her game.
re: 68
And then there are sports like ultra-marathons, and rock climbing, long distance swimming, where there's not much difference at all between the sexes, at the highest level.
Her first serve goes in something like 60% of the time, but her second serve goes in something like 90% of the time. So if she only ever does second serves, the double-fault rate goes down from something like 4% (I can't find Serena specific double fault stats, that's the tour average) to something like 1%. A 2-set match where she wins every point she has to serve 24 times. So using her normal serve strategy the odds are over 60% that she'll double fault at one point in the game, but with only using second serves there's just over 20% chance she'll double fault.
But I bet strategically playing not to lose a point, she could drop her second-serve to something even easier and more accurate, and count on winning all the volleys, if you see what I mean. That would be playing defensively rather than normally, of course -- that is, the question of "Could I win a point against Williams playing normally" is different than the question of "Could I win a point against Williams playing to not lose a point?" The latter style of play, she'd be playing 'worse' in some sense, but it'd probably mean a smaller percentage of people being able to take a point against her.
I wish they'd also asked the same question about Federer. Then you separate out the sexists from the people thinking about double faults. If it's at grand slam match conditions, you'd definitely choose to try to take a point of Federer instead of Williams because there's a whole third set for him to double fault during.
80: I just don't have a good handle on what's the rate at which pros would mess up easy shots on live balls. Like it might take a weird bounce. Maybe that's less likely than 1%, but I dunno it might be more.
So, no one has linked the video of Serena doing trick shots and serving to amateurs yet? 3:10-4:20 for serving.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dzA8_7X9uLQ&time_continue=205
Yeah, I don't know at all either. I am super proud of myself being able to keep a volley going for a couple of rounds at ping-pong, but that's the most I know about racket sports.
This thread is making me want to get the Wii going again. I was pretty good at tennis and fencing.
86: Aha! Probably some of those men thought they would be be playing Wii Tennis with Serena.
84: I want to see what happens if she plays a full match against the five dudebros.
Re 68 I very much doubt that "In Soccer or Basketball or Track and Field a man on a D1 scholarship would be better than any woman in the world" actually is true for soccer. D1 can vary pretty widely, and my boys played through high school on premier league teams with/against some other guys who went on to play D1 soccer at non-powerhouses. I'd be surprised if some (maybe any) of them were good enough to make the USA women's national team
To take another example, the women's world pole vault record is 5.06 meters. The men's silver medal winner at a recent New England Championship was 5.0 meters. So I think you are overstating the case, though maybe not for basketball..
All five at once? They probably have a lot of racket injuries unless they have time to practice together.
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In the best season of Inner Mongolia grassland, an ARJ21 aircraft of Genghis Khan Airlines, which was the first to carry out a commercial flight, took off from Hohhot Baita International Airport with the civil aviation dream of Inner Mongolia people, and arrived at Ulanhot smoothly, completing its inaugural flight on July 26th, 2019.|>
90: Right? I could watch that all day.
Also, Williams averaged fewer than two double-faults per match in her most recent Wimbledon run. Not very likely against an amateur.
I would like to see the number of men assuming they could score a point against Federer, but all I can think of is MacEnroe saying any good male college tennis player could beat her. That seems fairly likely, if obnoxious to point out. Here's the Universal Tennis Ranking system. Top men's ranking is 14.75, Serena's is 13.31 (higher is better). Enjoy.
https://www.myutr.com/
(Sorry, top college man vs Williams, in case that wasn't clear.)
In soccer we have a good direct comparison: the U15 Dallas academy team beat the USWNT 5-2. The Dallas academy is a good academy, but they're 15 year olds. Surely actual D1 college teams are better than 15 year olds?
I saw that reported, but also saw it claimed as kind of bullshit -- that the USWNT was not playing to win. I don't know enough to judge, but it seems likely.
It's one game and I don't know the circumstances under which it was played. But your original comment was about individual players, not teams. And it doesn't address the pole vault example, where presumably the silver medal winner at a multi-state championship is going to be better than the average male D1 pole vaulter
My HS (exceptionally good) field hockey first XI beat the women's national U23 team.
After googling a little, I'll retract 96 -- I mean, I did see people saying it was bullshit, but what I'm reading now says yeah, that's what you'd expect. I was mostly thinking that I know a lot of 15-year-old boys who are still quite physically underdeveloped, but of course those aren't the boys on elite teams.
There are boys' HS field hockey teams?
In other countries, I think it's commoner for boys to play field hockey.
A ball, on astroturf, fucking fast. A kid was killed at another school during my time.
I've watched a fair bit of field hockey, my daughter played from middle school through 4 years of college. I also once watched (on TV, in Austria of all places) the Pakistani men's national field hockey play on an artificial surface. They were different sports
So many questions. What is the optimal dudebro/Williams ratio? Can the St. Louis Blues, in full gear, defeat a U15 girls team in field hockey?
What if the girls team also has one bobcat? A black bear? A grizzly?
At some point during the Women's World Cup I got really confused about whether the players were lying about their heights because so many of the people in "tall" positions (CM, striker) were 5' 7" which just didn't seem very tall for a woman. But now that I'm looking into it, that's 90th percentile for women in the US, which surprises me since it doesn't seem that tall. For men 90th percentile is between 6' and 6'1" which is on the short end for a central defender, but not unheard of.
I'm trying to get into the mindframe of a man who tells a jogging or swimming woman to go slower.
I wonder if this is connected to whether the woman in question is of reproductive age? Some men seem to think they're still "in with a chance," and the idea that a woman in their "target demographic" can beat them at a physical activity, is tantamount to that she'd reject them, b/c "they're weak and unmanly." As opposed to, y'know, b/c they're fuckin' jerks.
With a bobcat the girls could just scoop up and drive off with the Blues, who are already almost completely immobilized by the turf. Not fair.
Hard to turn that into a real train of thought, isn't it? I mean, generally, "A woman shouldn't beat a man at anything" probably has something to do with the man objecting feeling weak and unmanly, but it's not situations where anyone's plausibly having sex with anyone.
The beatings will continue until the sex stops.
Unless somebody says the safe word.
109: I wrote a comment last night that I forgot to post, but the upshot was that some people are belligerent and yelling at a woman is a low-cost act of aggression: generally she'll ignore it, maybe she'll react, but he probably won't lose all his teeth. Going for a run doesn't chill everyone out equally. This mindframe is easy for me to imagine, possibly because I have a dark view of humanity.
It's just road rage, right? One quickly, unconsciously calculates the cost of reacting, and usually it's too costly, but sometimes it feels worth slamming the horn or revving to cut off one's off-cutter.
It's the sputtering of the defeated.
I do that all the time. It sounds different.
so many of the people in "tall" positions (CM, striker) were 5' 7" which just didn't seem very tall for a woman. But now that I'm looking into it, that's 90th percentile for women in the US, which surprises me since it doesn't seem that tall.
It's not 90th percentile for women under 40 though.
My crushed-like-a-bug sports anecdote goes back to my college days, where we actually had quarters devoted to athletics, almost like high school. One sport I took was baseball.
My school was not an athletic powerhouse, but the best pitcher on the school team had been drafted into the minors: that didn't happen often. The baseball coach had him come over just for fun to pitch "batting practice" to us. No balls and strikes, just some (allegedly) hittable pitches. He was up against fifteen undergrads, some of whom could actually hit pretty well. I'm fairly strong and was a good power hitter back in those days (terrible fielder, though), though not by any means the best hitter in that lineup.
Anyway, when my turn came he had warmed up nicely and just utterly blew fastballs right by me. A couple pitches I couldn't even see, and some I could see and swung at without effect. It was amazing. One batter foul tipped a pitch, and that was it for even making contact. The pitcher spent a few years in the minors (single-A, maybe double?), but never made it to the big show.
A coat rack might be able to get on base from time to time, but it's never going to make it to third.
118: I had that thought and ran the numbers that way too. It's something more like 85th percentile, but for men in their age bracket that percentile still comes out to a little over 6'.
107. You could emulate the Geico NHL commercials and have a walrus as goal keeper. Might work better than a bobcat.
I figure at first the Blues will only really be able to turn their upper bodies, but each player may be able to carve out a track that allows him to move more freely back and forth, so look for a late surge.
114:
yelling at a woman is a low-cost act of aggression: generally she'll ignore it, maybe she'll react, but he probably won't lose all his teeth.
I guess I can see this for running. But swimming? I swim a -ton- (an hour nearly daily for several years now) and sure there are people who hog the whole lane. They're INVARIABLY MEN, and INVARIABLY men who don't know how to swim for SHIT. Flailing their arms around, wot. Swimmers who know how to actually swim only do this when they're swimming butterfly IME (and it's hard to avoid there, TBH). And women are if anything more polite than men about keeping to their half of a shared lane.
125: I thought you were going to say yelling while swimming is high-cost, because (especially if you are a lousy swimmer) you are so likely to wind up swallowing a bunch of chlorinated water.
118: I'm entertaining the hypothesis that people don't get shorter as they age, the taller folks just have increased mortality due to low-ceiling-related head trauma.
Butterfly is a practical joke played on swimmers.
This is such a weird rabbit hole to go down so consistently. Not by Unfogged standards, people here do that a lot, but every time there's a discussion of Title IX funding, pro athletes' salaries, or nature vs. nurture in very general terms, someone chimes in with "but the men's bench press world record is 213 percent the women's!!!"
I'm not sure what point 125 is disputing, but possibly I came across as trying to excuse the behavior; my point was that the "mindframe" doesn't seem obscure to me. Both random belligerence and road rage are bad and there's really no excusing them, but they're pretty common in my world. The swimming scenario does seem more like a slow-building, woman-living-rent-free-in-man's-head situation, where by the time he snaps he's totally convinced that she's doing it to mess with him.
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A local union activist my age I know posted a video on Facebook last night in which he switched his support from Sanders to Warren, saying progressives should come together behind her, and to punctuate the moment of "coming out", took off a Sanders t-shirt to reveal a Warren shirt underneath it.
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Maybe he was just getting too warm because of the two shirts.
132: And then in a surprise twist he took off his Warren shirt to reveal his Williamson tatoo.
128. Originally invented as a way of cheating at breast stroke without actually breaking the rules of the time.
Taking the invitation of talk about the debate:
I watched the last 2/3ds or so of the thing. Williamson is certainly an interesting character, and it really is indicative of something that someone like that (a) thinks that running for president makes sense and (b) gets enough public support to be on the same debate stage as Sanders and Warren.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when Warren and Sanders finally go after each other. Do they wait until the field gets under 10? Under 8?
When does the field really shrink? Pundits were all over the place last night saying that it's imminent, but it seems to me that the burn rate on a campaign that, for now, consists of low budget Facebook ads and Tweets, and transporting 3 or four people around in Iowa, and maybe to another early state or two, is just not going to be that high, and fundraising from small donors over the internet might nearly sustain it. When they think they need to start getting serious about California -- which means TV money -- maybe that drives the marginal folks out, but is that October or December? I don't know and could be completely wrong, but my assumption all along has been that Bullock stays through Iowa, hoping to finish well enough to be the Cinderella. Can he afford that? If he's relying on small donations, and not some sort of sugar daddy whose hoping to profit, then maybe so. It's probably the same for most of the others.
Do you have to make the debates to stay in the race? Maybe not: you can just blame the DNC (hiss!) and say that the format is lame anyway. Which it is.
I still think Warren wears a lot better than Sanders, but both have to dance around the central flaw in their position, wrt e.g. healthcare, of 'my plan is so good nothing you have now could possibly be better; it can't pass without getting rid of the Senate (among other major changes); we can only get rid of the Senate with a revolutionary movement that is beyond 1787 but something short of 1789; so sign up, we can make this happen.' In contrast, Klobuchar, among others, is basically going with 'we don't have to go that far to win, and saying we're going to go that far lessens our chances of winning.' Warren is a better salesperson for their side of this than Sanders, imo. Just as Harris and Klobuchar are better salespersons than Biden.
There's just too many debates. Somebody pick a nominee and I'll fall in line later.
I was thinking about what stroke was fastest and I googled it and came upon this article -- https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-08-21/physics-behind-world-s-fastest-swim-strokes
Doesn't it seem crazy that there's not at least one swimming event in the Olympics which doesn't have any rules about the stroke -- just have to stay in your lane and whoever is the fastest wins?
Isn't that what "freestyle" means?
You get to squirt ink in your competitor's lanes, too.
That's one vote for running on what we can't do and shouldn't fight for.
140 You vote at the end of April. There might well still be a race then, but it'll be down to 3 or 4 at most.
(It's not too late to move to Montreal and avoid the whole thing.)
I don't usually drive to work, but needed to do so today. The valet (because the garage is constrained, only valet parking available) was so sweaty that I could feel the dampness he left on the seat through my clothes. If the damp would have been a bit lower I would think he took my car seat for a potato display.
On topic because water or entitled old, white men.
transporting 3 or four people around in Iowa, and maybe to another early state or two, is just not going to be that high, and fundraising from small donors over the internet might nearly sustain it.
It doesn't bug me that this is happening, because I'll take it as 20+ charismatic people traveling around pushing a Democratic agenda. That's better than 3 or 4 charismatic people doing the same. I know there is activism fatigue in Iowa, but honestly, I think the drawbacks are small. I can wait for the winnowing to happen by itself.
Did I ever mention that my brother worked Iowa for somebody. Even looking at the list of candidates, I can't remember who, beyond it being a Democrat. I think it was 2000, but maybe it was 2004.
145 Oh yes. And no one can tell them to cut it out, even if it wasn't good.
It would be a good idea, though, if Gov. Bullock thought a little more about nuclear weapons before jumping in to talk about them on the debate stage. This isn't that good a format for him, so he really needs to rehearse a lot more.
140: that is what freestyle means. The only restrictions are that you have to touch the side of the pool at each turn, and you can't swim more than 15m underwater (this is a safety rule; underwater is faster because breaking the water surface causes drag, hence hydrofoil and SWATH boats being faster, but swimmers were getting a bit hypoxic trying to stay under as much as possible).
That's how it was explained to me. "Freestyle" was the event, the Australian (or American) crawl was the stroke that 99.99% of the people used when given free choice.
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This self-riding bicycle follows you around while you walk|>
The chatter I half-noticed was that Biden is now "the one to beat". True? False? Good? Bad?
I only ride bikes that don't ride themselves.
If the hipster rides all bicycles that do not ride themselves, who rides the hipster?
Well, to be the nominee you have to beat them all, or at least all of them who aren't beaten by someone else. And there's no way for anyone to "beat" anyone else until February, anyway. They'll go up and down in the polls, go up and down in fundraising, some will eventually drop out -- but no one beats anyone until voting gets going. In the old days, you had the silent primary where the money bundlers and high value staffers decided in the fall before who they wanted to hook up with. But the real importance of that was overplayed, but it was at least some sort of gatekeeping.
Biden has been polling in the lead since he entered the race. As to everyone but Sanders, you can fairly say at least some of that lead has been name recognition. Obviously, that fades somewhat between now and the end of the year, but we'll still be in the position of most primary voters really not paying much attention between now and the end of the year.
OT: If you recall, somebody gave Delta my email address when they bought a plane ticket. It's now asking me to check in. If I hit the button, does it fuck up his flight? (Not that I will)
It's very unlikely to happen, but it's interesting to imagine how it would play out if the balance of power didn't change at all, and the current five candidates with more than 5% in the polls got delegates in proportion to their current poll averages. Forcing them to collectively add up to 100%, you'd have Biden 41%, Sanders 21%, Warren 18%, Harris 13%, Buttigieg 7%. The new rule is on the second ballot (after no majority in pledged delegates), the superdelegates can vote; they would then add up to about 17% of the convention. So they could conceivably put Biden over the top at a swoop, but other combinations are also possible.
https://twitter.com/janemcopland/status/1156949622503497728
158: Is that really Jane Copland? You noticed us? If so I apologize on behalf of whoever posted 9. We're just silly mostly.
Oh shit, that anonymous guy who might or might not be ajay or another regular here looks like even more of a sexist idiot now. And maybe all of us here should do some soul-searching about the assumption that she only held the women's New Zealand record. (Full disclosure, LB was mainly the one making the claim, but I was nodding along silently.)
We don't have a regular New Zealand commenter anymore. It would be nice to have one again.
Yep, this is me. I'm not really sure what the controversy is here; obviously it was the women's national record, as sports like swimming (and most others, save for stuff like motor racing) is sex segregated?
Regardless, I held that record until Kelly Bentley broke it and I was pleased it lasted so long but also annoyed I wasn't the first one under 2:30. I was swimming at college in the US by then, most all of my races in yards.
Anyway, I reckon there's a lot more to pick apart in my post than something that there's written records of, but I thought I'd set that record straight ;) FWIW, the NZ swimming records database appears to be either unfinished or down: https://www.swimming.org.nz/records-database
Oh shit, that anonymous guy who might or might not be ajay or another regular here looks like even more of a sexist idiot now.
Unfortunately, the way she posted it made it look like it was Mossy Character's comment, which I'm pretty sure it wasn't..... Mossy had posted the comment above.
OH SHIT!
I did. I'm sorry, I'll make that point clear where I posted it. Apologies to Mossy - I misunderstood the order in which names and comments appear :(
Holy shit. Welcome! Thanks for chiming in!
Oh, man, don't worry about being unjust, you're the one who was being defamed on this idiotic site. And at least Mossy is pseudonymous, so no real damage done. (But thanks for the correction, that's really decent of you.)
I suppose it could be, come to think.
Well that's mortifying. Honest and truly, Ms. Copeland, we really aren't nitwits here, with one apparent exception. Absolutely all of us understand what it means when a woman says she holds a national record -- even the troll.
Welcome to the blog Jane! Did someone remember to bring the fruit basket?
(And the poster of 9 has to bring pastries, if I'm remembering our hallowed traditions correctly).
Guys, I'm pretty sure New Zealand doesn't even exist.
This is way better than when that JMPP showed up to yell at us when we made fun of her high-quality dating profile.
I don't remember that one. Just violin lady and economizing dudebro.
Also the people who were blogging about eating a balanced diet on $20 a month. And yet we're always surprised. We just don't learn.
Right. 171 is wrong if you interpret "nitwit" broadly.
I'm not really sure what the controversy is here; obviously it was the women's national record, as sports like swimming (and most others, save for stuff like motor racing) is sex segregated?
The controversy is that an anonymous drive-by commenter was smoking crack. Sorry about that. But we are so glad it inspired you to come by!
Copland would have been a lot better if Stallone were playing Aaron as he cracked open a sinister Appalachian Spring conspiracy.
an anonymous drive-by commenter
Sadly no. It was Ajay.
I'm also sorry you had to deal with this bs, Ms. Copland. It made me pointlessly angry and I wasn't the target! The majority of us admire your athletic accomplishments and your outspokenness about everyday sexism. Welcome!
Oh dear, they've made the Cop Land connection ;-D
1998 was rough.
Jane -- I mentioned a story that would have fit in with your original post upthread, and someone here tracked down the link for me: http://crookedtimber.org/2007/05/25/theyre-faster-than-you/ .
omg, Ajay is being a dick in the comments of that link, as well.
But I wasn't. I don't think I left many comments on Crooked Timber.
I did quite a lot back when they were livelier.
187. Once you go troll, it's hard to go back.
That thread is making my eyeballs roll out of my head. No wonder I never commented much over there, and no wonder this place got so much calmer and lamer when you guys started depending on me for your daily inspiration to argue.
Well that was surprising.
9, for the record, wasn't me, and I thank Ms. Copland for her apology.
Is Ajay's authorship confirmed by IP? He hasn't claimed it, and I would expect him to.
192 to 190. "Once you go troll, that's how you roll," rhymes and means about the same thing.
At first I wasn't clear that 20 was claiming ownership and not just camaraderie, but the IP addresses reveal the nekkid truth, and it's so.
hey jane copland you are awesome!
anyone surprised at ajay's behavior in this thread - hahahahahahha!!!
bye once again.
Mossy, sending you an additional apology because I'm so sorry I screwed that up, haha!
Seems our man has previous. Lovely to meet all you other folks :)
Likewise -- this has been one of the pleasantest apology-requiring interactions I can remember.
Fun!
On the Serena thing, I really would like to know what happens to that number if you rule out double faults and unforced errors*. I'd imagine it would drop, but to 10% or 5%? 5% is still delusional out of the whole populace, but 5% of actual tennis-playing men is probably not far off.
*I mean, an unforced error suggests that the man had done something other than whimper and flail, but it's also not saying much to think that, out of your ~25 serves, Serena might return one that goes over the line by a hair while you flail helplessly.
On the OP, I actually saw reference to it last night, and then this morning went out for a run. There's a nearby park, the far end of which is almost exactly a mile away, and which has a water fountain, so I always stop for water, walk to the end of the park, and then sprint back the length of the park. This time that meant sprinting past a woman who'd jogged past while I was drinking, and I felt terribly self-conscious.
Did the see the part of the video where Serena is doing trick shots? I mean, like, really watch it a dozen times in a row? Was that just me?
Did the see the part of the video where Serena is doing trick shots? I mean, like, really watch it a dozen times in a row? Was that just me?
We're gonna need 10 more of those, Meg.
186 by LB: Oh wow, that CT post is great! I mean just GREAT! I read it and was LOLing ! Thank you so much for finding and posting!
I wonder what ever happened to that violin kid.
Billie Eilish is what she goes by now.
I wonder what ever happened to ajay, who's commented elsewhere but not returned here. Sigh.
I wonder what ever happened to Thorn, who's so interesting. Sigh.
My dude, that was uncalled for. Trust me, ajay can fight his own battles.
214: My dude, you totally misinterpret. I want Thorn to comment more, because she's interesting.
215: I'm not so interesting right now. Hoping we can all survive the back-to-school transition and that I can get done the work I need to this weekend even with interruptions every 90 seconds. I've just moved the girls into all separate bedrooms for the first time, all of which drastically need cleaning that can apparently only be done by coming to be and whining about various things. I get no exercise and basically haven't spent any time alone with adults this summer. (My girlfriend will be back in town in a few weeks and that part will change, and should change a little before then. But not for today's book club as I'd hoped because Selah is mysteriously feverish.) I read a lot here but I'm too blah to respond.
School starts pretty early for you. We've got three more weeks.
It's very early this year! We have under two weeks. Yesterday was the last day of summer daycare camp for Nia and Mara, the former of whom has aged out at 13. Mara has had a rough summer and we're hoping a combination of after-school clubs and coming home for naps will help make fall better than continuing in the place she's gone since kindergarten. Next year I'll have three kids at three different schools, but Selah will move to the school down the block after the coming year and if all goes well I won't have to ever drive anyone to school after that.
Supposedly, high school students just get a city bus pass and a hearty "back in my day we had to walk both ways uphill in the snow." I'm looking forward to that, except that I he looks so much smaller than the high school kids and only has one year to grow.
219: Nia goes to get her photo for her bus pass next week! Middle school is on the grounds of the high school, so seventh grade means bus time.
219: Fortunately, you understand statistics and can explain to him why he'll be totally and utterly safe.
215 my apologies. And I hadn't even started drinking.
It's all good. Except for the not drinking part, you should work on that.
223. Reader, I did. And started rewatching the Sopranos. What a great show.
Sopranos is pretty great, but I'm of the opinion David Chase grows to despise his characters and/or audience in the last couple of seasons and it just gets mean-spirited.