Ontario Empoblog

Starting here : Kiira Korpi's Musical Choices The heffa skated to "Hello" by Lionel Richie and didn't get a medal for her trouble. Yes, she's not a very good skater, but come on! Perhaps she should have used a Lionel bust as a prop and would have won...? Which reminds me of an old joke, but we need this to put it in context: for starters, her name is nicole richie. not nicole r-i-t-c-h-i-e. she is the daughter of everyone's favorite commodore, lionel richie. remember him? his hello music video had him seducing some flashdance wannabe sculptor. she was a very skilled blind artist managing to make a bust that looked exactly like lionel from her imagination. tangent. anyway, her mom is brenda harvey-richie. she is sometimes credited as a song writer, singer, and production assistant. her parents divorced after her mom caught her dad banging another woman. the mistress, diane alexander ended up as lionel's second wife. um, they're divorcing too. Anyway, s...

This is something that would best be covered by DadTalk , but in the interim I'll go ahead and interject my one and one-half cents. From AP/Yahoo : Divorce put David List and his 2-year-old daughter on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and he worried that she would soon forget him. She hasn't, though. List's divorce agreement guaranteed him "virtual visitation" — the chance to talk with his daughter through an Internet video connection — and he and Ruby Rose, now 5, usually connect at least twice a week. The chats sustain them in between their in-person visits, which come only a few times a year.... Advocates of virtual visitation want states to spell out in their laws that judges can make it part of a divorce agreement. The benefits go beyond helping parents and children stay close, supporters argue. They say noncustodial parents are more likely to pay child support regularly if they can stay in touch, and electronic visits can help keep children from getting...

You Passed the US Citizenship Test Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct! Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test? Upon reflection, I wonder if these questions were truly the important questions. I'll grant that it's nice to know when the President's inauguration occurs (and by the way, websurfers who took this test in 1928 would have given a different response), but the one thing that I didn't see in the questions was any question having to do with separation of powers (well, there was one, I guess). It's more important for a potential citizen to know the roles of the different branches of the Federal government, and it's even more important to know the roles of Federal vs. state governments (in other words, why you don't call your Senator when your neighbor's dog barks at 3am). From the Ontario Empoblog (Latest OVVA news here )

Those of us who are bad writers have to work hard at it. It takes a lot of effort to come up with really bad stuff. Of course, some choose to use a shortcut and steal bad stuff from others. Consider the latest in the Lindsey Jacobellis saga. Esteemed writer Ed Laubach, while writing for the Express-Times of Easton, Pennsylvania, came up with the following gem in his February 19 column(as noted here ): My personal Olympic moment so far, Dude, is Lindsey Jacobellis showboating to a silver medal in the snowboard cross. She could've had the steak but chose the hot dog. Now that is a groaner. Steve Dilbeck may have been over the top, but at least you didn't want to bang your head against the wall after having read it. Now why would you bang your head against the wall? Because the idea is so unoriginal. Look at the February 17 San Jose Mercury News' reprinting of a Fort Worth Star Telegram article by Gil Lebreton (as noted here ): Lindsey Jacobellis could have had the steak. ...

[29 Jan 2007 - my Kiira Korpi del.icio.us tags are here .] Last night, after returning from Vince's Spaghetti and watching a 20 year old Jeremiah Films production on the Mormon Church (a film which had the look and feel of Jack Chick, in a way), I went to my in-progress recording of the NBC Olympics coverage, rewound it, and was surprised to see that NBC actually covered Kiira Korpi's free skate program. Looks like she (understandably) had a bit of nerves (she waited a minute before actually going on the ice to start her routine), but she did well - a lot better than I'd ever do. People a little more knowledgeable about the sport have made the following comments. Tuuliiki (must be Italian): So. Susanna Pöykiö came 13th, Kiira Korpi 16th. Good for Kiira - she was 20th after short program - bad for Susanna, but... it happens. Incidentally, I believe the NBC commentators described Pöykiö's routine as either "slow" or "sluggish" (I forget what term the...

NBC's Olympics coverage is like the Big Brother TV show. Because the Olympics coverage is on tape delay, they can assemble the "best" bits out of all of the tape that they have, and then put it into a story line. This is different from what Howard Cosell claimed to be able to do. Cosell maintained that his talent (one of many) was to establish a story line for an athletic event as the athletic event was going on . NBC and Big Brother come up with the story line after the event is over. But I bet that they both cheat beforehand. I'm sure that NBC's reality show writers started working on tonight's show well before the event actually concluded. And what did they use for source material? Stuff like this , printed in Myrtle Beach Online way back on February 10 after having been compiled by the Dallas Morning News. In their list of Olympic duels, this one was included: World champion Irina Slutskaya of Russia vs. U.S. champion Sasha Cohen. What contradiction in riv...

Dejah : They just showed Kiira Korpi during the ice cut, but I was uploading. Nothig I could do. Poor kid did not skate well. From the ISU forums : Rosie Joined: 03 Nov 2005 Posts: 159 Location: UK Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:46 pm First two groups : Great skates from Olympic new girls Korpi, Leung (technical score of 51.83) and Yan Lui - Efremenko also good. Programmes littered with errors from the Olympic veterans Liashenko, Sokolova and Sebestyen. Sokolova held up by PCS. From skatingforums.com : #11 Today, 03:02 PM Laetitia_Hubert Registered User Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 103 ... There seems to be a lot of pressure on these ladies and many of them are so overly focussed on getting their components done that they have this panic look on their faces on the ice because they're so nervous. #20 Today, 03:27 PM jcspkbfan Registered User Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 1,124 Quote: Originally Posted by charmainia Miki Ando fell on her quad att...

I went to Dejah's site (which I visited on Tuesday) to see if she had coverage of today's ladies' program yet, and I noticed that she answered a question that I had previously asked . Here's part of her answer , which illustrates the similarities and differences between Russian and American Olympic coverage: I am watching the Russian Sports channel RTR on webcast . In Russia, skating is a popular sport, just like here. Except unlike the US, skating gets some respect in Russia. They treat it like a "real sport." RTR runs most skating events live, often in their entirety. A subscription is $9/month, payable via Paypal, and this was the best $9 I ever spent on skating. Though the announcers yammer on—some things don't change form American TV—it's all in Russian, which I know very little of. It's easy to tune out.... Most interesting, perhaps, is the post skating mike-in-the-face interviews. Of course, they only seem to interview the Russians, but th...

Kiira Korpi is in second place - for the moment : 1 LEUNG Mira 145.16 2 KORPI Kiira 137.20 3 LIASHENKO Elena 134.08 4 EFREMENKO Galina 125.37 5 KARADEMIR Tugba 123.64 However, the free skating competition starts with those who placed last in the short program, so the people who scored higher on Tuesday still have to skate. Whoops, she just dropped to third. 1 LEUNG Mira 50.61 (14) 94.55 (2) 145.16 2 SOKOLOVA Yelena 46.69 (18) 95.66 (1) 142.35 3 KORPI Kiira 44.84 (20) 92.36 (3) 137.20 4 LIASHENKO Elena 52.35 (13) 81.73 (5) 134.08 5 EFREMENKO Galina 41.25 (24) 84.12 (4) 125.37 6 KARADEMIR Tugba 44.20 (22) 79.44 (6) 123.64 7 FONTANA Silvia 42.47 (23) 77.90 (7) 120.37 8 PAVUK Viktoria 46.40 (19) 73.45 (8) 119.85 9 MAXWELL Fleur 44.53 (21) 65.04 (9) 109.57 And as I formatted the text above, she dropped to fourth. From the Ontario Empoblog (Latest OVVA news here )

I promised myself that this blog would be all figure skating today, but I heard something on the radio this morning that deserved comment. I'll often listen to the 7:00 am CBS radio news on KNX as I drive in to work. (Sorry, KOER staffers, but I have to listen to real news at least once in a while.) Christopher Glenn was doing his news thing, talking about port deals and other stuff, when all of a sudden Charles Osgood's voice was heard. I figured it was some type of commercial, but it turns out that Osgood was announcing that Christopher Glenn was retiring. Osgood then talked about Glenn's career, including the show which first brought him to my attention years ago. Those of you who are really old may remember "In the News," which popped up among the Saturday morning cartoons. This was part of CBS News' mandate to serve The Public (in this case, The Citizens of Tomorrow) by providing simple, straightforward, yet meaty news for those of us who weren'...

I have been on 10+ hour plane flights, and completely sympathize with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen regarding this story: Were Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen wearing itty-bitty binding crankypants when they landed in Australia this weekend? The Sydney Morning Herald snipes that the twin titans, 19, who are Down Under to stump for their new tween-targeted clothing line, appeared "tired," "irritable" and "thinner than ever" in their ubiquitous super-sized sunglasses as they beat a hasty retreat from the airport with their burly bodyguards running interference. But Ashley is firing back at this assessment, countering that the paparazzi-packed incident perfectly illustrates how tough it is for them to strike a balance between their private and public lives. "We don't really like our photos being taken when we're not working," Ashley tells the Daily Telegraph. "Over the weekend here we had about 20 photographers at the airport and we'd just...

The start list for the ladies' free skating competition in Turin on 23 February has been posted . Here are the first and last groups. Current rank and points after the short program are listed for each skater: 1 FONTANA Silvia ITA 23 42.47 2 PAVUK Viktoria HUN 19 46.40 3 EFREMENKO Galina UKR 24 41.25 4 MAXWELL Fleur LUX 21 44.53 5 KARADEMIR Tugba TUR 22 44.20 6 KORPI Kiira FIN 20 44.84... 19 GEDEVANISHVILI Elene GEO 6 57.90 20 COHEN Sasha USA 1 66.73 21 ARAKAWA Shizuka JPN 3 66.02 22 SUGURI Fumie JPN 4 61.75 23 MEISSNER Kimmie USA 5 59.40 24 SLUTSKAYA Irina RUS 2 66.70 From the Ontario Empoblog (Latest OVVA news here )

Here's part of a comment I made earlier this morning: I should probably do one of my exploration thingies and try to look at the view of other countries toward the Olympics, especially the smaller ones. What about the countries that only send a few athletes to the Games, are given no chance of winning, and are generally ignored (not only by NBC, but by most other networks outside of their own countries)? I'm sure that these countries are looking with disbelief at the sight of American silver and bronze medalists arguing with each other at a press conference. Maybe Disney should produce some more movies about these so-called "losers." (Remember the Jamaican bobsled team?) Enter the Bermuda Winter Olympics team . All one of them. From the Royal Gazette : TODAY Bermuda's sole athlete in the Torino Olympics will jump on his skeleton and fly down the dangerous icy track at Cesana Pariol at speeds reaching 85 miles per hour in an attempt to win the island's first...

I said I'd blog about this Steve Dilbeck column from the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Excerpts ( emphasis mine): It was youth. It was the culture. It was the moment. Yeah, sure, and it was not very smart. That's it in the end. That's what Lindsey Jacobellis has to live with for, oh, the rest of her life .... Jacobellis gave us the anti-Olympic moment Friday in the women's snowboardcross final.... [A]s Jacobellis approached the last of two jumps before the finish line, she turned certain victory into the biggest giveaway since the Indians unloaded Manhattan for a handful of beans.... Jacobellis went hotdog. Went showboat. Tried to add a little snowboarder flare to her victory. Instead of just taking the jump routinely and cruising to victory, she twisted her board in mid air and clutched it momentarily with a hand. Hope it was worth it. She landed on an edge and flipped over. Frieden came over the jump and couldn't believe her good fortune. Jacobellis got back up,...

I'm temporarily breaking my "all figure skating all the time coverage" (although I'll note that I...uh... deplore NBC's piecemeal coverage of the Olympic figure skating competition) because I want to find out why I'm getting a bunch of Tim Liotta hits on my blog. I mentioned Tim Liotta in passing on December 30, 2004 when I quoted from an sfgate.com article : Morning simulcast: KNBR (680 AM) has announced it will simulcast its morning show on sister station KTCT (1050 AM) beginning Jan. 3. The afternoon drive-time show with Ralph Barbieri and Tolbert also has a dual airing. You can read two things into the morning-show move: 1) It's a vote of confidence for Tim Liotta and former Chronicle sportswriter Brian Murphy, who took over the morning-show duties last month. 2) It's a vote of no confidence for the Van Earl Wright-hosted Fox Sports Radio syndicated morning show, which has run on KTCT. In October, Wright replaced Tony Bruno on the Fox program. If...

Ladies' figure skating short program results are available here . U.S., Canadian, Swiss, and Finnish results: 1. COHEN Sasha, USA 5. MEISSNER Kimmie, USA 7. HUGHES Emily, USA 9. ROCHETTE Joannie, Canada 10. MEIER Sarah, Switzerland 12. POYKIO Susanna, Finland 14. LEUNG Mira, Canada 20. KORPI Kiira, Finland All of these people (in fact, all of the top 24 of 29 skaters) qualified for the free skating competition on Thursday. From the Ontario Empoblog (Latest OVVA news here )

At some point [OE 2/22: see this post ] I'm going to blog about the Daily Bulletin writer who referred to an "anti-Olympic moment" when someone messed up and got a silver medal instead of a gold medal. I'm sorry, but an "anti-Olympic moment" is when terrorists kill people in Munich or when a bomb goes off in Atlanta. Those who think that silver medals are stupid will not appreciate DFL, "Celebrating last-place finishes at the Olympics. Because they're there, and you're not." (Incidentally, this is by the same guy that does The Map Room .) Here are excerpts from the most recent entry : Bobsled: In the women's bobsled, the Japanese team of Manami Hino, 26, and Chisato Nagaoka, 29, finished 15th with a time of 3:57.49 -- seven and a half seconds behind the gold medallists and a bit more than two seconds behind the next-to-last-place-finishing Austrians.... Speed Skating: 22-year-old Li Changyu of China was 40th in the men's 1,500-metr...

Dejah's Figure Skating blog includes running commentaries on the ladies' program. Figure Skating SPOILERS: Ladies Short G1 includes Kimmie Meissner, the two Finnish skaters (Susanna Poykio and Kiira Korpi), and others. For Suomi-like people, here's what Dejah said about the Finns: FIN POYKIO Susanna pink with criss crossy white straps and 3 tier skirt darkening to magenta heroic music 3Z-2T nice. jazzy music/ arm waving steps to 3F wonky lancing slying came; inside halt beill. slinky music. nice 2A. arm waving. ugly spiral to nice side spiral nice f spiral ch edge steady back beill spiral ugly sideway lean to layback to beill. back to jazzy music SL FW slow carefully done. not selling it. camel sit cannon layback foot to head ch sit inside catchfoot. Jazzy music for a skater who cannot sell it really doesn't work all that well. 28.43 + 25.31 = 53.74 FIN KORPI Kiira bubblegum pink with chiffon sleeves and skirt. Pretty, but VERY pink. Korpi is, as usuall gorgeous vilion...

Here are NBC's results for the first seventeen skaters . The four numbers are Total Element Score, Total Program Component Score, Deductions, and Total Segment Score: 1 MEISSNER Kimmie 34.20 25.20 0.00 59.40 2 GEDEVANISHVILI Elene 33.25 24.65 0.00 57.90 3 HUGHES Emily 31.71 25.37 0.00 57.08 4 ANDO Miki 29.12 26.88 0.00 56.00 5 ROCHETTE Joannie 28.87 26.98 0.00 55.85 6 MEIER Sarah 30.69 24.88 0.00 55.57 7 POYKIO Susanna 28.43 25.31 0.00 53.74 8 LEUNG Mira 29.38 21.23 0.00 50.61 9 YAN Liu 27.24 22.60 0.00 49.84 10 SEBESTYEN Julia 26.75 23.83 1.00 49.58 11 HEGEL Idora 26.74 20.32 0.00 47.06 12 SOKOLOVA Yelena 21.13 25.56 0.00 46.69 13 PAVUK Viktoria 26.78 19.62 0.00 46.40 14 KORPI Kiira 23.84 21.00 0.00 44.84 15 MAXWELL Fleur 24.33 20.20 0.00 44.53 16 KARADEMIR Tugba 25.70 18.50 0.00 44.20 17 GLEBOVA Elena ...

If you believe the Olympics people , today's ladies' figure skating competition is timed down to the second. For example, here are the start and finish (Torino) times for the first warm-up group. 19:07:00 19:13:45 1 KARADEMIR Tugba TUR 19:13:45 19:20:30 2 MEISSNER Kimmie USA 19:20:30 19:27:15 3 POYKIO Susanna FIN 19:27:15 19:34:00 4 KORPI Kiira FIN 19:34:00 19:40:45 5 ROCHETTE Joannie According to schedule, the last skater (Sasha Cohen) will start at 23:14:00 and end at 23:20:45. That is 2:20 pm local time in California. Here are some excerpts from NBC's running coverage . They are not covering all skaters (no mention of Kiira Korpi, for example). Meissner, dressed in a black dress with pink and silver trim, takes the ice. Her triple Lutz-triple toe loop is her first element. She landed it. She didn't have much speed coming out of the Lutz, but got the toe around. She's showing good speed now. Footwork into a triple flip -- nice. Then a laybac...

http://www.iceskatingintnl.com/current/content/OWG06_Ladies.htm Blank at this moment. http://www.isufs.org/results/owg2006/CAT002RS.HTM Blank at this moment. http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/torino2006/figure_skating/results?day=21 Blank at this moment. http://www.torino2006.org/ENG/IDF/FS/X05.html No link to results yet. From the Ontario Empoblog (Latest OVVA news here )

Whew. Christians talking about Mormons, Mormons talking about Christians, Mormons talking about Palestinians, Mormons talking about Jehovah's Witnesses, Jehovah's Witnesses talking about Mormons . Mormons talking about Muslims, Christians talking about Mormons and Muslims, Mormons becoming Muslims, Muslims becoming Mormons, and both groups rooted in Freemasonry . Freemasonry is a Jewish plot against Muslims, or it's a Kabbalah/Babylonian plot against Jews, or it's part of a Marxist/Christian/Jewish plot against Hitler, or Hitler was a Jew bent on destroying Christians . For those who think the "cults" are aligned against Christianity, notice how the non-Christian movements end up fighting each other half the time. So let's read Psalm 109 : Psalm 109 (New International Version) New International Version (NIV) Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society Psalm 109 For the director of music. Of David. A psalm. 1 O God, whom I praise, do...

In my last post , I quoted from someone who stated that the similarities of Mormonism and Islam are due to the fact that both are related to Freemasonry. Guess what the Muslims say about Freemasonry? They're about as complimentary as the Catholics, and they have some wonderful things to say about the Jews ( emphasis mine): In the first place, we would like to note that a Muslim should show loyalty only to Allah, his Creator and Sole Protector. His first priority should be his religion and the interests of his faith, since it is that faith only that makes his life brighter. A Muslim should never affiliate himself with any organization that works for the destruction of his religion; rather, he should regard the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) as sources of his conduct.... Coming to the question in point, the prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a Senior Lecturer and Islamic Scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Cana...