Med gymnastiken i minnet

Och sen säger dom att sport inte hör ihop med politik…

–Michael Wiehe

Nikolaj Andrianov, 1976

Gymnasten Nikolaj Andrianov har efter en lång tids sjukdom avlidit. Han kommer att minnas som en av de mest prisbelönta gymnasterna genom historien och under åren 1971-1980 kom han att erövra sju guldmedaljer, fem silvermedaljer och tre bronsmedaljer bara i olympiska spel. Totalt fick han under sin karriär inte mindre än 45 utmärkelser. Gott sällskap hade han under 1970-talet av rumänskan Nadia Comănecis perfekta tia som ändock inte lyckades nå upp till samma nivå i mått av medaljer som sin ryska medgymnast Larisa Latynina (18 medaljer).

Nadia Comăneci, 1976

Shawn Johnson, 2008

Närmare i tiden ligger det kinesiska herrlagets totala dominans under OS i Beijing 2008. De kunde gå av arenan med inte mindre än 7 guldmedaljer av totalt åtta tillgängliga och från alla grenar utom hopp. Beijing 2008 var de första olympiska spel som graderades efter den nya 15-poängiga skalan. Om man tidigare fått betyg uppåt beroende på utförande, utgår 15-poängssystemet ifrån en grundsvårighet som ger någon poäng mellan ett och femton, och sedan drar domarna av poäng för varje miss i rutinen de tycker sig se hos gymnasten. På damsidan blev Shawn Johnson alla grenars ständiga silvermedaljör, men med ett gott leende och fantastisk akrobatik (!!) kammade hon hem guld på bom. Tydligen ska man försöka införa högre krav på det artistiska framförande snarare än det akrobatiska till nästa OS, vilket jag i och för sig inte tycker är någon särskilt bra idé.

Cătălina Ponor, 2004

Det något kantiga framförandet på bom av Cătălina Ponor under OS i Athen 2004, som då gav henne guldmedalj, är enligt mig det mest stilrena framförandet jag någonsin sett och förmodligen blir det också det mest stilrena jag någonsin kommer se. Krav på artistiska framförande ger smala och små (med undantag långa) gymnaster med överrörliga leder. Shawn Johnson och Cătălina Ponor är i jämförelse rätt kraftfulla vilket man ju också ser på dem. Egentligen är bilder nog inte det bästa sättet att representera gymnastik, så jag har letat upp lite YouTube-videos med gymnasterna nämnda ovan.

Nikolaj Andrianov, fristående

Nadia Comăneci, bom

Li Xiaopeng, barr

Shawn Johnson, bom

Cătălina Ponor, bom

Vissa kommer säkert lägga märke till att jag verkar ha en förkärlek till både rumänska gymnaster och damgrenen bom.

Knowless society

I have studied mathematics which perhaps goes to show in that I manage to intuitively pick out only mathematicians from this article about women in science. Okay, So I already knew about Sophie Germaine. Maria Gaetana Agnesi was, however, an intuitive discovery. Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya as well. Her husband went insane and killed himself. It seems to be a curse of male mathematicians (ref.: Georg Cantor). Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel also died, although not by insanity but lung disease. Maria Cunitz didn’t have a cruel fate other than gender bias.

In Sweden the number of female medical professors was around 20% in 2004 (generous estimation). This is due to a problematic shift in the number of male students, now considerably fewer than before. I don’t know if it says anything about science when Swedish Läkartidningen (”Doctor magazine”) says that many female students means that the profession needs to stay attractive in the future anyway.

Measures such as very clear application rules for becoming a lecturer or professor at Swedish technical universities have long created a heated debate on the quotation of women. Some even consider such measures an insult to women.

If you are a female mathetician, rules remedying that women have to be at least twice as good and considerably better networkers than men, may even be single-minded (but for reference, I didn’t like Wolfram Alpha as much as I liked Free Textbook on Tensor Calculus).

A society of knowledge is being constructed. Abroad. The blesséd number in triangulation of the UK Labour Party will surely, given our experiences with the triangulation of the late 1990s and the more than trihundred UK£ of increase of university fees for non-EEA students in 2004, also increase the net knowledge of the British society. Now that the number of foreign students can be decreased, and one trird of them staying in their host country will not cause the UK to ”gain from the economic benefits of having them study here, many international students stay on, providing longer-term benefits by contributing their skills to our workforce and economy,” as the New Zealand minister of immigration so amptly put it.

If you disregard the fact that I have mostly been sarcastic, the careful reader will observe that most of the news reported above are actually positive. There are more women in almost every study. Women are increasingly becoming more secure in the roles of lecturers and professors. Students benefit the economy, and on the whole there are actually quite many female mathematicians that have been and are contributing to a science usually claimed as exclusivesly male, even in grade school. What do you know? :)))

Sustainable Economy

Today I found an article in El País about sustainable democracy. Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, a sociology professor, suggests that liberalism is finally overtaking democracy, and that technocracy and economical interests will get their victory over the idea of equal participation for all citizens in the decision making processes for society.

For letting such well-made reasoning into their debate pages, El País appear to not have commented at all on the undemocratic processes around the approbation of the Sinde Act, or the Act of Sustainable Economy, that will likely be debated by a subcommittee in the Spanish senate on Monday, rather than going through parliamentary scrutiny. The reason is apparently that the parliament should not have to bother themselves with trivial matters when there are more important issues to discuss.

El País is loyal to PSOE. Ángeles González-Sinde is the Minister of Culture in the Zapatero cabinet. Zapatero is the Spanish president and chairman of PSOE.

Hidden deep in the bowels of text of the Sinde Act, among hundreds of articles on environmental sustainability, are a few articles on criminalization of file-sharing and file-sharing services. These new social phenomena have previously been declared compatible with Spanish law since anything else would be ridiculous, torrent trackers are just a socially accepted modern form of library, and you can anyway not be convicted for something you didn’t actually come in touch with.

The Sinde Act will create space for copyright owners to harass Spanish citizens in the same way Americans, Swedish and British citizens have been harassed in the past. Or leave the door open for scammers to harass citizens, like in Germany. If someone thought a constitutional ruling could provide some kind of safe-guard, through being an expression of common norms or general agreement of the values society should uphold, apparently they are wrong.

If someone thought that the legislative institutions of Spain will debate issues against which 200’000 Spanish citizens have protested in an open and democratic manner, apparently they are wrong. 200’000 citizens is nothing. Only 0.05% of the total population. Trivial.

Spain was put on the US Trade Department 301-list in 2008 and have remained there until the 2010 edition. The Sinde Act, or a law that breaks a long-standing tradition of constitutional interpretation in Spain, is a response to this listing and Spanish government representatives have of course been in contact with the US ambassador to find out how to remedy this awkward postition. Since 1974 the 301-lists give the US the right to unilateral trade sanctions. The US is the only country in the world that upholds unilateral sanctions, that is, the US decides on its own to punish a displeasing country. Is that allowed? Technically not. But the World Trade Organisation has approved the practise as long as the sanctions are passed through an arbitration panel. Through the 301-lists the US has also upheld, to the irritation of the globalised free markets, uncomfortable levels of protectionism.

These protests, the government and senate must reason, are a sign of poor understanding of global trade, probably conducted by extremists with bandwidth, connectivity and a sense for free culture. Values otherwise not present in the Spanish system. And the rest of Europe is reacting about as strongly as they reacted to the French law recently adopted which allows for arbitrary, non-judicial internet censorship. And the suspicions of professor Sánchez-Cuencas appear to be coming true a lot sooner than he probably wanted. It is three days left until the Spanish democracy is confronted with its fate.

UPDATE: It’s probably decent to say that there’s senate and parliamentary resistence, right? :)

SUNDAY UPDATE: Spanish internet full of protest-against-Sinde banners.

Music that sounds the same

I dedicate this post 22ppl.

I’m listening to Larry Saunders & Veronica Maggio and Radiohead & Evanescence, two duplets that for parts sound virtually the same.

Well. More later.