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Official BBO Hijacked Thread Thread No, it's not about that

#2681 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2015-April-17, 08:48

From Timothy Egan's op-ed titled The Boat to Lift All Tides in today's paper:

Quote

Out on Lake Washington, you hear them in the predawn murk: coaches barking, rowers gasping, sounds as familiar to the morning as the Canada geese that clack above the boys and girls in the boats. In Seattle’s first light, you see the slender crafts cutting through the chop of the lake, oars dipping in strained union.

“Harmony, balance, rhythm,” said the legendary designer of racing shells George Pocock. “There you have it. That’s what life is all about.”

People who go looking for life’s meaning in sports will usually find themselves belly up at the wrong bar, crying over a walk-off homer by the bad guys. The hulk who made the game-saving tackle was bulked up on performance-enhancing drugs. The basketball player who tossed up the buzzer-beater is also a wife-beater. That winning home run was slammed by a man who has shamed the game and all the great names he’s now passing. What meaning is there in corruption? Just that it has the same reach in sports as in politics, law or education. Oh, and the banality.

But in crew, the sport of rowing, we may have found something better than the sum of all other games. When Daniel James Brown showed me his galley for “The Boys in the Boat” a few years ago, I was thrilled, but had somewhat modest hopes for his memorable book. Americans don’t watch, or even think about, rowing, one of the oldest of organized human competitions. As for history, well, we like our past-tense narratives filtered through gauze and served with plenty of blood.

But against all odds, Brown’s book has become a global phenomenon. It’s up there in the high reaches of Fifty Shades of What Women Really Want and the latest “killing TK” tome to roll out of the joyless factory of Bill O’Reilly. Hope, this spring, is the enormous audience that has responded to an obscure story about a bunch of scrawny college kids who took on the world in 1936.

“The Boys in the Boat” is about who we used to be. And who we still could be. Like the best history, it’s then and now wow factor is both embarrassing (to the present) and inspiring (to the future).

In a nutshell: The book tells the story of the 1936 University of Washington men’s crew team (full disclosure: I’m a Husky grad), who beat their rival California, then defeated the Ivy League’s top oarsmen, and ultimately prevailed over the best rowers in the world, upsetting Hitler’s choreographed display of German superiority at the 1936 Olympics.

They were nobodies and castoffs, the eight-man crew and a coxswain, sons of loggers and mill workers, farmers and factory hands. The central character, Joe Rantz, had been abandoned by his family and rowed to win back his dignity.

After winning Olympic gold, they went on to lives of dutiful anonymity. They could not be any different from, say, the one-and-dones (college basketball players who leave for vast riches of the pros after their freshman year) who dominate that game.

The class element — blue-collar kids, from a public college, beating the sons of inherited wealth from the finest universities in America and the aristocratic spawn of Europe — is a big part of the story. And so is the dedication of coaches and technicians to their craft. Their boat maker, George Pocock, could see in a cedar tree what Michelangelo saw in a block of marble.

Crew may not be a metaphor of life, or a microcosm of it, as some of its enthusiasts claim. They point to the solitude, the work ethic, the sublimation of ego — all elements of success.

But there is joy, and something lasting and true, in the distilled essence of what those kids were doing in 1936 — that is, a base competition, a race, to be won by whichever side could endure the most pain in a coordinated burst. “A symphony of motion,” Pocock called it. On water, at least, there was no more beautiful music.

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#2682 User is offline   gwnn 

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Posted 2015-May-13, 00:57

Is this the right room for an argument?
... and I can prove it with my usual, flawless logic.
      George Carlin
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#2683 User is online   Cyberyeti 

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Posted 2015-May-13, 07:24

View Postgwnn, on 2015-May-13, 00:57, said:

Is this the right room for an argument?


5 minute or full half hour ?
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#2684 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2015-May-13, 08:07

That's not argument; that's just contradiction.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
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#2685 User is offline   gwnn 

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Posted 2015-May-13, 08:22

It is.
... and I can prove it with my usual, flawless logic.
      George Carlin
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#2686 User is offline   helene_t 

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Posted 2015-May-13, 08:26

As long as you are arguing two different things then it is the right place.
The world would be such a happy place, if only everyone played Acol :) --- TramTicket
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#2687 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2015-May-13, 11:00

View Postgwnn, on 2015-May-13, 08:22, said:

It is.

No, it isn't.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
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#2688 User is offline   Aberlour10 

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Posted 2015-May-13, 13:08

I add some facts to objectify this nascent discussion



Posted Image
Preempts are Aberlour's best bridge friends
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#2689 User is offline   kuhchung 

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Posted 2015-May-13, 16:55

View PostWinstonm, on 2015-May-13, 08:07, said:

That's not argument; that's just contradiction.


Look, if I'm to argue with you, I must take up a contrary position!
Videos of the worst bridge player ever playing bridge:
https://www.youtube....hungPlaysBridge
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#2690 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2015-May-13, 20:03

View PostAberlour10, on 2015-May-13, 13:08, said:

I add some facts to objectify this nascent discussion
Posted Image

Acorn fed or non-gmo grain?
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#2691 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2015-May-13, 20:31

View Postkuhchung, on 2015-May-13, 16:55, said:

Look, if I'm to argue with you, I must take up a contrary position!


You are quite wrong about that.
Ken
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#2692 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2015-May-14, 09:35

View Postkenberg, on 2015-May-13, 20:31, said:

You are quite wrong about that.

An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
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#2693 User is offline   kuhchung 

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Posted 2015-May-14, 11:49

Sorry, the five minutes is up!
Videos of the worst bridge player ever playing bridge:
https://www.youtube....hungPlaysBridge
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#2694 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2015-May-14, 13:56

View Postkuhchung, on 2015-May-14, 11:49, said:

Sorry, the five minutes is up!


That was never five minutes!
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
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#2695 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2015-May-25, 06:06

Posted Image
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#2696 User is offline   jjbrr 

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Posted 2015-June-03, 20:25

brag: i beat a NM at chess. I don't recall ever beating a titled player before
OK
bed
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#2697 User is offline   WellSpyder 

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Posted 2015-June-04, 02:42

View Postjjbrr, on 2015-June-03, 20:25, said:

brag: i beat a NM at chess. I don't recall ever beating a titled player before

Congratulations! Was it luck or skill :) ?
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#2698 User is offline   gwnn 

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Posted 2015-June-04, 05:29

cool jjbrr!! What time control?

We gotta have a BBF indy chess/bridge combined tournament one time!
... and I can prove it with my usual, flawless logic.
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#2699 User is offline   jjbrr 

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Posted 2015-June-04, 10:25

he may have just been screwing around because he opened with a Grob which led us to a weird closed position

10|0
OK
bed
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#2700 User is offline   kuhchung 

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Posted 2015-June-04, 11:00

Ben Finegold plays bridge as well! Has anyone played with/against him before?
Videos of the worst bridge player ever playing bridge:
https://www.youtube....hungPlaysBridge
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