Rust Valley

[This is neither about Pittsburgh nor about technology, but it's a Friday night so cut me some slack.]

I love the Olympics.  I’m one of those people who normally doesn’t care at all about sports (tough to live in Pittsburgh without caring about sports, I’m learning) but I love the sports that you can see at the Olympics that you cannot see at any other time. This year, there are fascinating stories of the drama and controversy with China hosting the olympics (human rights, lying about competitors’ ages, polution, Tibet), the wonderful swimming stories, and of course the medal race.

Normally the medal count is straightforward:  most golds, most total medals.  Those are the two rankings that make sense.  The BBC, however, has a hilarious and fascinating proposal of five alternate medal total rankings.  They propose some interesting alternative rankings, including highest medals to GDP ratio and highest medals to athletes in the olympics ratio.

In both of these ratios, the tiny West African country of Togo comes out in the top 10.  As is turns out, I was born in Togo.  Had I been willing to do the mandatory military service, I probably could hvae had Togolese citizenship.  In which case, maybe I could have been on the Togolese summer Olympics team.  I swam a little bit in High School.  I can dream.

Anyway, it’s pleasant to see Togo in the top-10 of some medal ranking. Go Togo!