RF Generation Message Board

The Olympics are here! Hooray! :D

Opening ceremony is in 2,5 hours, who else will be watching?


(Of your country), who do you think has a chance of winning a medal?

For Belgium, it'll either be Tia Hellebout for High Jump or maybe our female team for the 4x100m.
Filip Meirhaege or Sven Nys might make a chance for winning a medal in mountainbike-cross country. Our hockey team isn't that bad either :)

Anyway, post your Olympic thoughts here :D

Saw the opening ceremony. It was spectacular. Lots of choreography and stuff; very nicely executed :) And each act had 2008 performers because *surprise* it's the year 2008 ;)

Then came all the different countries with their atlethes walking in the stadium which is fun at first but boring after like 30min (and it takes 2hours!), so I stopped watching :P

Some cool stuff, but it dragged on for awhile...

It's on right now in the U.S.  You must have watched it already?!

Yes of course. The opening ceremony was at 8PM local (china) time. China is like 6-7 hours ahead of Belgium, we got the live broadcast but it started at 2PM here.
Belgium is like 6-7-8-9 hours ahead of the US (depending on what part of the US), so if you'd watch it live in New York it'd be like at 8AM and even earlier the more you go to the west.

It's logical they'd air it later in the day in the US, to get more viewers, don't you think ;)

I was watching some Fencing and Weight Lifting last night. Fencing is crazy fast, I figured there was more swordplay, but it's more just hope your poke hits them before theirs hits you.

Fantasy Football hasn't even started :P

Get me when soccer finals show up. Also, 2010 has a much more interesting world spectacle.
(Go Deutschland!)

If you'd want to see Deutschland, you could've in the European Cup, just 2 months ago :P

It's actually 12 hours along the east coast, up to 15 hours along the west coast.  Worse for Alaska and Hawaii.

So far, we have been getting highlights of the afternoon's events from noon on, and then starting at about 8:00PM they have live stuff from the next day's morning events.

Yes I know, but I (with the 6-9 hours) was referring to the difference with Belgium, you'd have to count the 6-7 hours for Belgium-China aswell, to get to a number like you said, for US-China ;)

Hawaii has it pretty good, I think, they can watch alot of the events in the afternoon (while they're taking place in the morning in Beijing.

I've heard about how they put the swimming events in the morning (Beijing time) so the US can watch it in prime time at night. Typical for the US, wanting things their way  ::)  This is a bit odd because normally, swimmers are trained to swim in the evening.

Here in Belgium, we're 6 hours prior (would've been 8 if it wasn't for our summer-hour nonsense  >:() to Beijing, so when events start at 10AM, we should get up at 4AM to watch them (pretty crazy :P)

[img width=700 height=403]http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/images/world_time2.gif[/img]

PS: It's pretty crazy that we (Belgium) are 2 hours off from our geographical time zone. We should be in the GMT zone (same hour as the UK) but for some stupid reason, we use the hour of the time zone to the east (Central European Time, like Germany)

BUT, during summer, we switch to our "summer-hour" where we move yet another time zone to the right and use the time of Eastern Europe, which is totally crazy because Belgium lies in Western Europe. Geographically we should be in "0" but we use "+2" right now. That's 2 time zones we're off!!! Oh well...

They'll be back in 2010.

Pray tell, do Belgians hate Germany as much as Dutch people make their hatred out to be?

Hmmm, I'm not sure. They were the enemy in WWII, but that's a long time ago. From where did you get the impression we hate them so much?

In fact, there's a small region of the country which is German, in south-east Belgium.

One thing I can tell you though, if there's any nation that hates Germany, it's France. There's always been a sort of competion between them because they are two large European countries close to each other.

Back in the 19th century, there were people who predicted that the "balance of powers" (not too sure how to call it in English) would be disturbed once the Germans would get united. This happened in 1871 by Otto von Bismarck. In that same year, Germany dared France to a war, but because the Germans were sly, it was in fact France who declared war upon Germany first. The Germans won and that started alot of feelings of hatred and wanting to get revenge by the French. They got their revenge after WWI when Germany got defeated. The contracts which stated what parts of Germany got lost to what countries (a part went to Belgium too, the one I spoke about earlier) and the "war-payments" Germany had to make to the European countries.

These sanctions against Germany were very much pushed by the French wanting to take revenge, which (ironically) started alot of revenge feelings in Germany which ended up in WWII. In fact, you could say that WWII was bound to happen, once those contracts for WWI got signed in Versailles in 1919.

The French getting totally smashed by the Americans in the 4x100 relay after talkin so much trash was the highlight of the whole games so far!

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/share.html?videoid=0811_HD_SWB_HL_L0194

I had Dutch people from Rotterdam work for me many moons ago when I worked at an amusement park. They did a major faux pas, telling a Jewish kid " Do it right or I'll kill you like a German." I've never seen someone so horrified when they found that out. Luckily, he didn't sue the park, and I later found out that something "German" is a slanderous term in Holland.

Maybe that was just those persons in particular. Also, I'm not sure about the Dutch attitude towards the German in Holland. I speak Dutch too, but I'm from Belgium :)

My mistake, I misread your original post.
I'm blaming:
[img width=286 height=111]http://bp2.blogger.com/_I3vmEn_AWgA/SCLmOOGqXPI/AAAAAAAAAYY/9gTHEJ4KJeU/s400/13538717.gif[/img]
Rogue Ales (http://www.rogue.com/)

The Olympics are advancing nicely, lots of great moments.

Michael Phelps is probably the biggest person in sports right now, currently he's at 6 gold medals (of the 8 he wants, this olympics) and he's already the greatest Olympian ever, with 14 medals (12 gold, 2 bronze) :o

Phelps has officially played a perfect Olympics. Huzzah for USA!  ;)

[img width=700 height=393]http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i32/LordofNothing/phelps.jpg?t=1218948796[/img]

Also:

[img width=525 height=341]http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i32/LordofNothing/continentsoftheworld.png?t=1218948938[/img]

There have been unbelievable athletic performances in every event I've watched so far.  The entire world has stepped it up with new world records being set left and right.  Oh, and go USA!

Indeed.

[img width=490 height=310]http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/08/marioswims.jpg[/img]

Yes, not only in swimming but in pretty much everything the world records are being broken like it's nothing.

Have you seen the men's 100m?

Truly spectacular how Usain Bolt set a new world record (9,69 seconds now) like it's nothing :o

[img width=240 height=462]http://blog.oregonlive.com/olympics_impact/2008/08/medium_Bolt3.jpg[/img]

The athletics in this years Olympics have been truly amazing. You guys are right, there were SO many world records broken it's not even funny.

This is the first Olympic Games that I have watched more than 5 minutes of.

Here are a few pictures from this years games.
[img width=610 height=367]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0eOIdi75F6bst/610x.jpg[/img]
[img width=340 height=487]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/04fk8bB23SfPB/340x.jpg[/img]
[img width=340 height=424]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/07uU85E2rU5pw/340x.jpg[/img]
[img width=340 height=379]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/04accfq8omaD1/340x.jpg[/img]
[img width=610 height=437]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/06eR3lufYQ6xp/610x.jpg[/img]
[img width=610 height=458]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0aAN1Q6al6b7W/610x.jpg[/img]
[img width=610 height=357]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/04CUgiefxM5QF/610x.jpg[/img]
[img width=340 height=501]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/00SR9w73c56uG/340x.jpg[/img]
[img width=340 height=444]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0cNQ6sy0c67IE/340x.jpg[/img]
[img width=610 height=357]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/07Ua9w79nLbSj/610x.jpg[/img]
[img width=610 height=511]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/05SHfqY8xW1b9/610x.jpg[/img]

[img width=340 height=345]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/01ji4Q31QLb4y/340x.jpg[/img]
[img width=610 height=421]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/03eZc7G38N1ac/610x.jpg[/img]

[img width=340 height=490]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/055Q1xe4he6iS/340x.jpg[/img]
[img width=610 height=426]http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0ag5eRh4rV8Gx/610x.jpg[/img]

Ah did anyone else see the weightlifter who destroyed his arm? I had it up live in the background while I was watching a movie when I hear ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH...

Nasty

Wow that is nasty.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI0Zl-tMRf4

"Janos Baranyai was trying to snatch 148kg(326lbs.) in his third lift in the men's 77-kg division, when his elbow popped out of socket. No longer able to support the weight of the barbell, his right forearm bent backward. The 24-year-old Hungarian fell to the floor in shock, shaking and crying out in pain."

"Oh noes, an assplant in the making!" :D

Just kidding

Glad I missed that.

He set a new record for the 200m with 19.30 seconds.  This guy is a monster (in a good way) ;D

The new "fastest man on Earth" @_@

I never thought that record wall fall.

Well, the Olympics are officially over. :(

It were some good games though, with 36 world records broken :o

I can't wait for London 2012 :D