Nastia wuz robbed!

I don't always agree with the commentators on the Olympics broadcasts, and in fact find many of them annoying. But I think I do agree that Nastia Liukin of the U.S. was robbed of the gold medal on the uneven bars. It shouldn't have been a tie bringing on a tiebreaking method that really didn't make much sense. If it was a tie both should have gotten gold. But it shouldn't have been a tie at all. Nastia's performance was clearly superior.

Nice internationalism

During the final floor exercise in the Olympic women's gymnastics competition, the Russian tumbler used a quintessentially American song (written by a Russian Jewish immigrant, Irving Berlin) as accompaniment, "Puttin' on the Ritz," while the eventual gold medalist from America used the almost iconically Russian song (written by a Ukrainian and a German), "Dark Eyes" (sometimes called "Russian Nights.") (I still have Ivan Rebroff -- a German probably of Russian ancestry, but maybe that was marketing) singing it on vinyl, which I plan to digitize for the iPod now that I have the equipment.) But then the American, Nastia Liukin, was born in Moscow, and her father and mother both won gold in gymnastics for the Russians -- guess it was still the Soviet Union -- 20 years ago. But Nastia, who has lived here most of her life, seems almost more American than most native-born girls that age. All of that strikes me as highly benign internationalism.