- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
Is bull-fighting a sport?
No. It is animal torture.
Is bull-fighting a sport?
I was totally waiting for someone to say that. I don't want to comment any further on the right of this traditional Spanish/Portuguese sport to exist, every country / culture thinks that their traditions are the most precious ones (like gun-ownership in the US, or, well, bullfighting in Spain). But e.g. in France there are harmless variations of the sport, where the bulls don't get hurt (often there is some kind of rosette that has to be taken from the bull and that's it - the young men get hurt sometimes though). I watched one of those spectacles in Nîmes (in this arena) and it looked like a lot of fun and after the fête is over, the bulls are taken back to the Camargue to continue their relative free life.No. It is animal torture.
Does it really matter whether people are gay or not? If it does, this isn't the sport for you!
Except this makes no sense, as kyla clearly explained. CoP has already ramped up the technical elements and diminished the artistic side -- and what is the result? Lost viewership, falling attendance. Talk about doing the wrong thing. And costumes? If they're all in black boring costumes or uniforms, how will that raise attendance? It won't. Hockey and beer monkeys aren't going to watch figure skating. They need to get real, fast.
Ottavio Cinquanta was quoted recently as saying," the new judging system has improved the product. If the public doesn't like the new product, what can we do? We (the ISU) are not a marketing organization."
Ottavio Cinquanta was quoted recently as saying," the new judging system has improved the product. If the public doesn't like the new product, what can we do? We (the ISU) are not a marketing organization."
then the CoP - which I think the real reason it doesn't fare well is not so much that it doesn't work but because most of the average joes don't understand it and don't care to learn it so they just turn it off.
I think there's a tendency to write "skating is dying" when a more accurate statement would be what you just wrote: "Americans don't have much interest in the current ladies skaters". I can tell you that for me (heresy alert!) Michelle Kwan never had the wow factor that so many people see in her. She was a very good and graceful skater, but there were others I enjoyed more. Without comparing them to MK, I feel both Yu-Na and Mao have plenty of personality and know how to connect with the audience. But I agree that so long as the general public in the US doesn't have a pretty and successful ice princess to get behind, skating will be in trouble there.Another issue is that there is no female figure skater people are connecting to, including Yu Na Kim. The loss of Michelle Kwan had an enormous impact on the sport. It devastated it. She connected with the public in a way that is unprecedented, and I am including Peggy Fleming and Sonia Henie in that statement. The current Asian skaters don't have the emotional connection to the American public. They are more within themselves, unlike Michelle who was out there in full force with her incredibly appealing personality.
Math and I went our separate ways when they took away the numbers and gave me letters to work with instead :scowl:. But one doesn't need to be a mathematician to understand the IJS; all you need is to get basic arithmetic. Like Toni, I have a much easier time with this system than with ordinals, which could get very confusing, and rewarded established favorites to a greater extent than IJS. It' easier now to be judged on the merits, at least when it comes to TES.I dabble with Fermat's Last Theorem and models of the universe in my spare time, and even I don't like CoP. I think you expect too much of average people. Why should everyone have to be a mathematician to understand what is happening -- that's ridiculous.
Another thing that's needed is for whoever is broadcasting and the journalists covering the sport to actually address what's going on rather than whine endlessly about the eeeevil scoring system and the eeeevil judges...
...That having been said, there are problems with the current system that do need to be sorted out. Most importantly, I feel it's not rewarding risk-taking, innovation and creativity properly; it's rewarding checklist skating, and I agree - that's dull. The skaters know exactly what they need to do to get high levels (e.g. all the ice dancers doing the same lift because it's not that hard but gets a high level). So the artistic integrity of the programs is often compromised, because what you need for a level 4 isn't always what the program needs to be coherent, appealing and meaningful.
The lipstick/pig thing is lame. That's one expression that really needs to go away.You agree there are problems, so where should those problems be addressed? Oh, during the broadcast, since 95% of the viewers will only pay attention to it during the broadcast.
6 years? so far of CoP, and we still have "checklist skating." Why? Because that's what CoP is, inherently. CoP is the pig and you are debating colors of lipstick...