can you tell that i've had a couple of really long conference calls today?
don't get me wrong -- i am definitely an active participant in these, but i can also read and type at the same time. i can't really think critically at the same time though, which is why blogging is a perfect simultaneous activity.

so anyhow, i enjoyed dave barry's silly little column today (in the miami herald) about olympic sailing. here's an excerpt:




ATHENS -- I went down to the sea to see the hot Olympic sailing action. I knew the action would be hot because the Olympic organizers put out a news release headlined: "Hot action predicted for sailing."

I got to the sailing facility and went through security, which has been (Don't tell the terrorists!) fairly relaxed so far. It seemed especially relaxed at the sailing facility, which is probably not a prime terrorism target because if it were attacked, the horrified world reaction would be: "Sailing is an Olympic sport?"

But apparently it is. I say apparently because, if you want to get technical, I never saw it. It turns out that the actual sailing is not visible from the land. To see it, I watched a TV monitor in the press area, which showed a bunch of sailboats sailing along in some body of water that could have been the Saronic Gulf, but also could have been Lake Erie.

Superimposed on the bottom of the TV screen, mysteriously, was the single word "Yngling." I decided that "Yngling" was probably a nation. When I grew up, there were like 10 nations in the entire world, but now there seem to be thousands, including (these are actual nations competing in the Olympics) Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea and Guinea-Bissau.

Anyway, it turns out that "Yngling" is not a nation: It's an Olympic sailboat class. There are 11 sailboat classes, including (I am not making these up): "Single-handed dinghy open Laser," "Double-handed dinghy men Finn" and, of course, "Double-handed dinghy open 49er."

So as you can imagine, there is a lot of hot action taking place out there in the Saronic Gulf.