What?? Participatory content?? How... Web 3.1415.

Nuts to that. I demand to be spoon-fed bullet-points!

Welcome back. Here's one: are we overdoing it with our Olympic medal target? Should we be concerned, striving for more from a national perspective? Could it have been just fine?

Answer: we doing fine. Our average medal count since 1988 was 15, so we were ahead of that. We finished 14th and we have a goal of 12th for London. Doable, but why are we worried about it? (I know, it's good to have targets/goals...) There must be some medal-predicting model that considers population, wealth, the level of nationalism/state-ism, domestic popularity of certain sports, and national climate (weather). But, I'm not proposing one. 8-)

Ok, we're not going to catch the US, China or Russia in the Summer Olympics. What about the other G8 (or soon to be G7)? We have one of the highest GDP (PPP) per Capita, but surely population is a big factor in the number of medals you'd expect to see. Not the only factor, but a big one. At 33.3 million, we are the smallest in population among the G8, with the next closest being Italy at 59.6m. Then UK (61m), France (64m), Germany (82m) and Japan (127m). Spain has a G8-ish per capita GDP (PPP) and has a population of 45m. Should we expect to be ahead of Spain?

And then there is a country like Belarus. An anomaly maybe, but you have to consider its state involvement and maybe just local popularity of various sports. Maybe young athletes aren't dreaming of playing the Belarussian Premier League, they're pumping iron or running track. Should we expect to beat Hungary and Croatia in water polo when it is a popular sport in these central/southeast European countries?

Also, what about weather/climate? We hear lots about us vs the Aussies, but if you add up winter and summer medal counts, we're not too far off. There were 958 medals presented in Beijing, but only 252 at the last winter games. We finished 5th at the last Winter, with 24 medals -- the winning country, Germany, had 29. We finished ahead of the UK, France, Japan, Italy and Spain. ... and Australia. 8-)

If there were as many medals in the winter as the summer games, how would we do overall? Maybe there could be ice hockey skills medals, tandem/synchro slalom skiiing for runs of varying lengths, etc etc.

Hey, our athletes did fine. I must be out of touch with the national psyche, as I was not "startled" when Adam van Koeverden didn't medal in the 1000m, nor was I "slack-jawed" that he finished 8th. That was kind of a creepy post-race interview. Glad he got the silver later.

Good medal haul, good mix of sports. Nothing to complain about as far as I can tell. Any other topics out there? I have been away for nine days, you know. Something must have happened in Canada.

How about that weather.. Cold at night, excellent for evening walks/runs and sleeping, kills off the nasty deerflies. I have seen many trees in my neck of the woods starting to turn a bit here and there..

Plenty of reddening maples starting in the Green and White mountains on the way down and back - even with the temperature floating around 30C.

Topic: I plan to be nicer given how pleasant I feel after a week in Maine. Comments?

I'm agin it.

So should the provincial libs consider shutting down brewers retail? Chudleigh's petition makes a reasonable case for it.

How about the live vest business with Jazz? I mean seriously, how many times have you seen a plane crash in the ocean and see survivors floating about waving for help on the news.. never. Its the perception of safety that is upsetting folk even though they ignore the facts. Plane crash means you are likely to not survive...Life vest just means your body is eaten by sharks instead of crabs.

Ha! I didn't go near your blog for two days! And I even knew you would be posting after such a long absence. So who is really zooming whom, eh? The blogger or the blogged?

P.S. I second Renee's comment. Spoon-fed bullet-points please.