Time For Sports

This whole overtime question, or lack of overtime in the case of the AFL Grand Final, allowed me to look at a cultural difference between North American sports and sports in the rest of the world.

• North American sports count time down to zero. For sports in the rest of the world time counts up (except apparently in Aussie Rules).
• North American sports are never split in halves.
• North American sports stretch playing time by stopping the clock for penalties, fouls, injuries, booth reviews, commercials etc. Time never stops in sports in the rest of the world.

Counting down to zero is a far more dramatic device than counting up to an arbitrary number, increasing the urgency of the game. When the clock hits zero, it's over, it's done. Bye Bye. It's also clear. No faffing about with extra time, injury time, a referee or an official deciding for the rest of the stadium how long the game is supposed to last. Ideal for Americans who will use any excuse to sue your ass.

Creating more opportunities and artifacts to break the game up in multiple pieces accomplishes several things for Americans. 1) more opportunities to show commercials. 2) short chunks of plays are easier to follow and talk about, rather than long drawn out periods of play. It's better for Americans who have short attention spans to begin with. If it's not good, they switch quickly to something else.

So, the way time is measured in sports is a reflection of the society the games are played in.

Closure

For all the shit the NFL does with the overtime rules, and all the complaining everybody does with penalty kicks or penalty shots at the close of drawn hockey or soccer games, they probably don't think about the alternative...

This is what happens if you don't have a tie breaker at the close of a game. Imagine the Super Bowl ending in a draw after four quarters, and then having to wait another week and to start over. Imagine the World Cup final having to be played again the next weekend. (Yes. THAT World Cup final.) Or the Olympic hockey final. Or the Rugby World Cup final. It's totally ridiculous. Even the players themselves are upset.

I'm sure somebody will be able to make some money out of the situation either way, but a one off final... that deserves to get resolved in the most dramatic way possible, even in a game of chance. Not by making a do-over.

Jobs and sports

In football (both American-style or rest of the world-style) it seems we're heading to work stoppages. Usually about who gets what part of the big pile of cash the audience gives the sport every year. It's also about how to make the pile of money bigger, by putting players in more games.

How quickly those discussions turn to money. When you start out, in fact when you talk to children starting out, they all talk about wanting to play the sport just because. In fact they won't understand why people wouldn't want to play the game the love for free anyway.

Of course, when you actually get to the pros, and suddenly your livelihood is connected to "the game you love", you might want to introduce some security measures. You might want to rake in as much cash as you can. And you might want to do it without an extreme amount of broken bones and torn muscles.

For the owners of teams, sports are a means to an end. Owners support the cause wholeheartedly perhaps, but they are in it to win it, either for cash or for glory. They are not doing it out of charity, and they are not just giving money to players who can barely play. Anything they can do to improve their investment, they will do.

And now we enter the situation where the interests of the one side are vehemently opposite to the other. The speed at which these differences get resolved, depend on how quickly one side is making the other think they are getting a good deal. The players get an extra weekend off. The owners can schedule games on every day of the week. Something along those lines.

Approaching Nervous Breakdown

Here are some telltale signs you're approaching nervous breakdown:

• you think everything you do, is extremely important.
• everybody else is annoying
• what anybody says is annoying
• energy levels? wildly flaying all over the place
• in order to avoid unnecessary discussion, you accept everything: work, gossip, alcohol

How To Be Truly Malicious

True malice requires one of the following:

• intelligence - because you need to be an astute politician and strategist, a psychologist to manipulate your way to reach your goals. Being dumb doesn't typically lead to malice. Usually dumb people end up doing random things, some of them evil, but not by purpose.
• emotion - feelings are basically the great equaliser. Even the most pious of men can go completely berserk when the right wrong buttons are pushed.
• psychopathy - if your moral horizon is skewed opposed to the general public's you might not even believe you act maliciously. But you are.

So generally stupid people, calm people, empathic people don't typically spend their time finding the best way to bring you down.

Toilet Hygiene in the East

In the West we can often make disparaging remarks about the hygiene in third world and eastern countries. How come the toilets over there are always accompanied with things like washlets, shower hoses, while over in the West there's nothing?

I mean here's an example of an installed washlet:

Does the West really think that wiping once is good enough?