OlympicsFan

Ok, I don’t know anything about the situation in Argentina. Personally I don’t think that my life would have been any different the past 4 years if Clinton would have been elected. Of course the election will have consequences for Germany as well, but I am not sure how it will affect normal people outside the US. Also this still doesn’t explain why you have to stay up all night and follow the live results, when you could as well just wait for the final results.

I am really surprised to see how obsessed many people on here seem to be with US politics in general and the 2020 elections in particular. Are there really non-American people who will stay up all night in the middle of the week to wait for the results?

No, nowhere did I say that. By the way: I just read about a study in Spain that claims that very year in Andalusia alone 2.6 million birds are killed during olive harvest season (they use automated machines instead of humans and those machines kill a lot of birds). https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01456-4

LOL ... I remember researching about this topic when I read „Upheaval“ by Jared Diamond. Here is what I learned: In the US roughly 45000 birds are killed by wind turbines every year, at the same time ONE cat kills roughly 300 birds per year. There are roughly 100 million cats in the US, which means that roughly 30 billion birds are killed by cats every year in the US. In addition to that many more birds are killed by plastic garbage and CO2 every year. So in general wind turbines certainly aren’t a big danger to birds, although I have to admit that certain birds (for example white-tailed eagle or red kite) don’t get killed by cats, but can get killed by wind turbines. I can only recommend to you to read „How to Lie with Statistics“ by Darrell Huff ... You always have to put numbers into context.

The United Nation‘s Security Council has a clear position on this matter. 1) Why should European countries oppose that position? 2) Why is the only possible reason for European countries not opposing that position that Germany „forbid“ them to do it, especially since you admit that other European countries (Italy included) are in the same boat and therefore also wouldn’t have an interest to be on Armenia‘s side? Obviously Germany (Europe) is somewhat dependent on Turkey when it comes to the whole refugee problem, but I am not sure why you think that this would be the only possible reason for them not supporting Armenia. Like I said: Your world view is way too simplistic. Just because Germany (Europe) is somewhat dependent on Turkey doesn’t mean that this is the only possible reason for not going against them. Turkey and Russia for example over the past couple of years have fought both on the same and different sides in various conflicts. Just because you are on one country‘s side in a certain conflict doesn’t mean that you have to be on the same side in a different conflict. Your criticism might have been more appropriate on a different matter, for example when Germany didn’t really bother to do anything against Turkey‘s „invasion“ in Syria (possibly because Germany was afraid that Turkey would open the gates for Syrian refugees). In the end i believe that morality has no place in (foreign) politics. Every country should have certain values that it stands for and you have to defend those values in your home country, but it is not your job to tell other countries what they should do at home. In this day and age it is impossible to survive as a country while only interacting with other countries on the same level concerning morality. Germany for example couldn’t get gas/oil if they would only do business with democracies and if you want to get less dependent on those countries by switching to renewable energies, you will have to do business with African countries where you have child Labour and a lot of other bad stuff. It is a dilemma you can’t get out of. The goal should be to reduce the dependency as much as possible.

Why do the European countries have to take side? We have international organizations who are responsible for evaluating situations like that and I am sure that all the experts on here (who think that they can have a clear opinion on every geopolitical conflict) know for example about the United Nations Security Council‘s position ... Personally I think that if European people/politicians would realize that they can’t „save“ the whole world and that it is not their responsibility to do it, a lot of things would get much easier. The only responsibility of European politicians is to serve their own people and to make life as easy as possible for them. You can’t force other countries to take over your values and if the people in those countries want change, they have to make it happen on their own.

I wish I could have such a simplistic view of the world ... makes life much easier.

Funny ... after 1 year and when nobody was talking about it anymore (at least in western countries), he finally felt the pressure and decided to step down. Great win for China!

I agree. If his wife wasn’t chinese and/or beautiful, his cheating wouldn’t really matter, but since she is chinese and beautiful (apparently), it is completely unacceptable.

I don’t really care whether there are lightweight rowing events or not, but I have to agree with you. Why is there lightweight rowing but for example not lightweight canoeing sprint or basketball only for people who are less than 6 feet?

I don’t think that one can take anything away from this competition. It is very likely that many athletes couldn’t prepare properly. Based on the high number of corona-related deaths in the Netherlands I would assume that they didn’t have a proper lockdown there, which probably helped them to prepare better for this competition than other nations.

Yeah ... „only“ the player who won the tournament last year and is the current world number 1 (Barty), the player who won the last slam (Osaka) and the player who won the US Open last year (Andreescu). Combined they won 4 of the last 6 slams before this. Obviously it is easier to dominate when the field is weaker. First you were talking about no other player being as dominant in a single match and now you are talking about dominance over a whole tournament, so what is it. There certainly have been many players who were more dominant over a single match (slam final) and there were other players who were extremely dominant over a whole slam, for example Serena at the 2017 Australian Open.

There are other women who have been that dominant recently, for example Osaka. No one knows how close everyone is to 100 % and some players didn’t even bother to enter the competition. Personally I put an asterisk behind every result this year after the Australian Open. I don’t think that we will see girls like Trevisan or Podoroska repeating those results. Hopefully we will see everyone back at normal strength next year.

Switzerland has two guys in the men’s junior semifinal. Maybe they can stay relevant even after the retirement of Federer and Wawrinka. Also nice to see a dutch guy in the semifinal. In the women‘s junior competition we have two russian girls, a french girl and a girl from the Philippines! in the semifinal. The girl from the Philippines (Eala) was born in 2005 and is currently one of the 2 or 3 most hopeful talents, in 2018 she already won the „Les Petit As“ competition (some of the previous winners were Hingis, Clijsters, Safina, Ostapenko and Andreescu).

Wow ... amazing and unexpected result for Germany. Great to see some talents, sadly I am not sure how representative those results are thanks to the whole COVID-19 situation. Maybe in a few years Germany can be good at senior level again. Mountainbike cycling should be one of the sports that get the most funding in my opinion.

Schwartzmann will be top 10 after the tournament, that is quite an achievement. Obviously he isn’t one of the most talented guys, but he is super fit and is a great fighter. You also have a guy named Torres in the junior competition‘s semifinal, maybe he could be someone to cheer for.

Switzerland for sure is a bit disappointing, but I guess all countries except the big five have off-years like that. This year Germany should have had 3 first round picks and next year Germany probably won’t have a single guy drafted (at least not in the first 3 rounds).

I am a bit disappointed/surprised that Stützle wasn’t drafted 2nd overall (especially because Marco Sturm is a coach for the Los Angeles Kings) and that Peterka wasn’t drafted in the first round. It would have been crazy for Germany to have more guys than the US/Sweden drafted in the first round. Between 2000 and 2017 Germany only had 2 first round picks (Goc was the 20th pick in 2001 and Draisaitl was the 3rd pick in 2014), but in the last 3 years Germany had 4 first round pick (two of them were top 6 picks). Overall a pretty good year for Germany when it comes to ice hockey ... Personally I would have picked Rossi ahead of Holtz, I also think that Askarov should have been picked earlier. Edit: Peterka was picked 34th by the Buffalo Sabres. Also there were 8! swedish players picked in the 2nd round, their depth is just crazy.

Yesterday the first Nobel prizes were awarded: Medicine: Harvey J. Alter (USA), Michael Houghton (UK) and Charles M. Rice (USA) for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus Physics: Roger (UK) for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity; Reinhard Genzel (Germany) and Andrea Ghez (USA) for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy Tomorrow at 11:45 CEST the prize for chemistry will be awarded, on Thursday at 13:00 CEST the prize for literature will be awarded, on Friday at 11:00 CEST the peace prize will be awarded and next Monday at 11:45 CEST the prize for economic sciences will be awarded. First edit (7 October): The prize in chemistry was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier (France) and Jennifer A. Doudna (USA) „for the development of a method for genome editing“. I can only recommend to everyone to learn about CRISPR/Cas9 (there are a lot of good introductions on YouTube), since this is probably one of the most groundbreaking „discoveries“ during our lifetime with many practical applications (already). Some of the more famous authors who are favorites for the prize in literature (awarded tomorrow) are Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, Ngugi Wa Thiong‘o, Don DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy. The committee has a history of ignoring „popular“ choices, so there might be a good chance for France (Maryse Condé) to win another prize. Toni Morrison in 1993 was the last black writer to win the prize. The last black african writer to win the prize was Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) in 1986. Second edit (11 October): The Nobel prize in literature was awarded to American poet Louise Glück „for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal“. Funnily enough „Glück“ is the german word for luck ... On friday the Nobel peace prize was awarded to the World Food Programme „for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict“. Tomorrow the prize in economic sciences will be awarded. The following scientists are among the favorites: Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, Andrei Shleifer, David Card, Ross Levine, Richard Blundell, Joshua Angrist, Avinash Dixit, David Autor, Sanford J. Grossman, John Hardman Moore and Drew Fudenberg

50.99 in the women’s 400 for 17 year old Beatrice Masilingi from Namibia yesterday. Maybe Miller-Uibo has a new challenger?

Italy is doing a great job on the men’s side. I think they could win the Davis Cup in a couple of years with guys like Sinner or Musetti, although of course Canada, Russia and maybe the US will also have the potential to do it.

Really interesting to see that the 4 countries that host a slam have only 2 players in the 4th round and both are no-names born in 2000 (Gaston and Korda). You would think that the countries that host a slam should have a better talent development program. Also interesting to see that 3 guys born in 2000 or later made the 4th round, but Auger-Aliassime, Kuhn and Molleker aren’t among them.

Really nice to see a tiny guy like him do so well. Maybe Schwartzman and Gaston will become the new „big“ two.

I think there are more players like him, but they focus on the doubles (like he usually does too). Zverev vs. Murray at the Australian Open and Brown vs. Nadal at Wimbledon were some of the most entertaining matches in recent memory, so it certainly would be nice to have more unorthodox players. Sadly Monfils doesn’t do much anymore.

I am surprised to see that the junior competitions take place. I am really excited to see what Fruhvirtová can do here. From a german perspective I hope that Vecic and Bartone will do well.