August 19, 2008

The Stick vs. the Bunny Hop

I posted this in August 2004:

My wife and I are watching the contest to crown the world's top pixies (a.k.a., Olympic women's gymnastics, just as the Winter Olympics' figure skating crowns the Princess of the World), and the announcers start braying that some girl with one of those wonderful Romanian names like Oana Ban didn't "stick" her landing. My wife says, "But the bunnyhop landing looks much more graceful than those awkward, painful, arm-waving sticks." I point out to her that we've had this exact discussion about the superiority of the bunny hop precisely six times, once every four years when we watch gymnastics. We first held this conversation in 1984 when Mary Lou Retton needed a perfect 10.00 on her final vault to beat Ecaterina Szabo's Romanian team for the team gold medal. Mary Lou clearly bunny hopped the landing but they gave her the 10 anyway. "And well they should," said my wife, and she will say it again in 2008.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like my wife, except that her various (broken) alarm clocks go off about once a week.

m said...

The stick is harder to pull off thus requiring more skill and earning a higher score...I'm surprised your wife isn't smarter

Anonymous said...

Here's an interresting study: correlation of husbands' IQs with wives' IQs. I bet it's less of a correlation than that between husbands' incomes and wives' looks.

Anonymous said...

Careful guys, we don't want Steve to be 16volted.

(Besides, I love a good bit a misogyny as much as the next evolcon, but his wife's comment is perfectly reasonable.)

Anonymous said...

Trollish insult on wife=delete.

Anonymous said...

See this post again in 2012! Time sure flies, I remember the original and can't believe I've been reading you that long, and I had been reading for a little while then. I watched the Olympics for the first time in 16 years because I felt bad denying that to my children; my husband had never watched them. We just don't like watching sports.

Anonymous said...

BTW, I'm surprised you didn't mention that Murray's book came out today. I just ordered mine.