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Alas, I must. My advisor hasn't had time to read the whole thing yet but already has things he wants me to change based on skimming it. Which I should do. Tomorrow. I need to catch up on DW and my RSS feeds at some point.
Anyway, it's still Wednesday somewhere, so let's do some reading on Wednesday.
Currently reading: Last year, I decided that I should probably read more published fiction. (Which feels like the opposite of most people I see talking about books.) And I did; I read through most of Sherlock Holmes, and my favorite fiction reads outside of Holmes were Wired Love (romance via telegraph line) and Two Old Women (a short book about two old Alaskan Native women surviving the winter).
But now I'm back to nonfiction. I'm halfway through one borrowed book about complexity sciences and the Santa Fe Institute - never has a book made me feel so jealous of not being in the room where it happened - and picked up two library books, one on poisoning and one on gymnastics, The End of the Perfect 10, which I just finished.
Have read: Perfect 10's publication date is betrayed less by its mentioning of the future Rio Olympics, and more by the fact that it knows about Simone Biles (probably) being the greatest but also happily quotes Nassar and thinks the Karyolis had turned over a new leaf about letting athletes eat. Rarely do I read a book only a few years old that feels so oddly dated.
It's a book about the end of the 10 scale scoring system and the rise of the open-ended scoring system and its effects, but also about the rise of the US in women's artistic gymnastics and how American gymnasts have come to dominate the scene. Some of which I already knew (US coaches focus hard on conditioning, whereas e.g. Chinese coaches tend not to), and some of which I hadn't heard so much about, such as US coaches probably being more willing to accept gymnasts based on their athletics rather than choosing and molding them young for a certain 'look'. While I also already knew this part, the book takes pains to point out that gymnasts nowadays are getting older on average, and in general the most successful gymnasts now look more powerful and muscular rather than being tiny waifs with surprising spring and their hair done in pigtails to make them look as young as possible (ugh). Apparently the US gymnasts are also known for being very disciplined when practicing at competitions.
It was interesting to see so much behind-the-scenes from the coaches and the judges, who had different perspectives on the usefulness of the 10 scale and the effects of the new open-ended scoring on things like how nitpicky judges are willing to be. It sounds like judging is very difficult. No wonder they're moving towards AI judging. (Still sounds waaaaaay better than FS scoring.) Early on especially, it sounds like it was difficult for the coaches, too - how do you know what to teach kids that will score well in five or ten years? Well, in part you do it by listening for rumors about which way the code is going to change.
About halfway through, it starts to get harder on the Karyolis and their training system, though I wish it had been less mixed and more negative. The author does refuse to give them full credit for the rise of the US, pointing out that American gymnasts were already on an upswing beforehand, which I hadn't known. It's also really weird to read the chapter where the author visits two gyms, Texas Dreams and MG Elite. I mean, it's cool to see a comparison between two quite different elite gyms, but even as someone who's not a hardcore gymnastics fan, I know that neither of those gyms has a good reputation. I don't know if it was different back in 2015, but Texas Dreams is nicknamed 'Texas Nightmares' and 'Texas Dreams Graveyard' because they keep breaking gymnasts, and the main coach at MG Elite has been criticized for a while and is now facing abuse charges.
The end of the book has a chapter about (women's artistic) NCAA, which still uses the 10 score and which I am pretty sure is not for me, even if it is fun for the gymnasts. I already suffered watching the Worlds team selection this year, where people were constantly shrieking the same two things - 'you've got this!!!' and 'come on!!!' - at the gymnasts, so I'm not sure meets full of theatrics and teams dancing along with whoever is on floor is for me, even if it clearly fun for many other people. Then it ends with one summarizing why losing the Perfect 10 may not be a death blow for the popularity of gymnastics - which I think should be fairly clear after another five years without it.
I gotta say, as a casual fan, I really don't buy the argument some coaches and judges had that open-ended scoring is unclear to casual fans. Yeah, I might not necessarily know if a 13 is a good or a bad score, but you can figure that out if you watch more than one routine, or listen to the commentators, or watch the reactions. NBC even had dumb little color-coded symbols that they explained five times an hour to indicate what was a good or bad execution score during the last couple of Olympics. And I just don't understand how a 10/10 is supposed to mean anything in a sport that keeps evolving - if 10/10 is doing a double twisty double flippy, and then Simone Biles does a triple twisty double flippy, is that the new 10 even if nobody else can land it yet? And what does the previous 10 become? A 9.95? That seems at least as confusing to me, and it's just as arbitrary. What's the advantage of having a ten-point scale if placing comes down to a less than .1 difference over four events?
Anyway, it's a decent book with an interesting look at the history of the sport, if repetitive in parts, but the cognitive dissonance is real if you know anything about the past few years of USAG scandals. No, the food at the Karyoli ranch was not great and yeah, the overtraining was real and oh no, please stop quoting Nassar. There were some cute anecdotes, however - the author observed gymnasts at one work-out session struggling to jump rope, and one of the coaches said that in her day with the Karyolis, talking around the chalk buckets was banned, so they all learned to talk without moving their lips.
The focus is almost entirely on women's artistic gymnastics side, with one chapter that focuses more on the men as an explanation for why the scoring system finally changed. (I know rhythmic also moved to an open-ended scoring system recently, but rhythmic is almost impossible to learn to understand and a very different sport. And I have no idea about trampoline and its scoring.) Although perhaps not in the scope of the book, it would have been interesting if the author had pursued the question why women's gymnastics in the US is doing so well, and men's is doing more poorly, and I think a lot of that (fewer NCAA scholarships for men in gymnastics, maybe less difference in training style?) could have easily been integrated into the existing text and made it more complete. Still, thumbs-up on the whole.
Will read: The poisoning and complexity books. I'm also eyeing a very new book about fighting racism in figure skating, written by Emmanuel Savary's brother (still sad Emmanuel had to WD from Nats!), since it's only $5 for the ebook, but first I should at least finish the other library book. Might read some more sports books afterwards.
Anyway, it's still Wednesday somewhere, so let's do some reading on Wednesday.
Currently reading: Last year, I decided that I should probably read more published fiction. (Which feels like the opposite of most people I see talking about books.) And I did; I read through most of Sherlock Holmes, and my favorite fiction reads outside of Holmes were Wired Love (romance via telegraph line) and Two Old Women (a short book about two old Alaskan Native women surviving the winter).
But now I'm back to nonfiction. I'm halfway through one borrowed book about complexity sciences and the Santa Fe Institute - never has a book made me feel so jealous of not being in the room where it happened - and picked up two library books, one on poisoning and one on gymnastics, The End of the Perfect 10, which I just finished.
Have read: Perfect 10's publication date is betrayed less by its mentioning of the future Rio Olympics, and more by the fact that it knows about Simone Biles (probably) being the greatest but also happily quotes Nassar and thinks the Karyolis had turned over a new leaf about letting athletes eat. Rarely do I read a book only a few years old that feels so oddly dated.
It's a book about the end of the 10 scale scoring system and the rise of the open-ended scoring system and its effects, but also about the rise of the US in women's artistic gymnastics and how American gymnasts have come to dominate the scene. Some of which I already knew (US coaches focus hard on conditioning, whereas e.g. Chinese coaches tend not to), and some of which I hadn't heard so much about, such as US coaches probably being more willing to accept gymnasts based on their athletics rather than choosing and molding them young for a certain 'look'. While I also already knew this part, the book takes pains to point out that gymnasts nowadays are getting older on average, and in general the most successful gymnasts now look more powerful and muscular rather than being tiny waifs with surprising spring and their hair done in pigtails to make them look as young as possible (ugh). Apparently the US gymnasts are also known for being very disciplined when practicing at competitions.
It was interesting to see so much behind-the-scenes from the coaches and the judges, who had different perspectives on the usefulness of the 10 scale and the effects of the new open-ended scoring on things like how nitpicky judges are willing to be. It sounds like judging is very difficult. No wonder they're moving towards AI judging. (Still sounds waaaaaay better than FS scoring.) Early on especially, it sounds like it was difficult for the coaches, too - how do you know what to teach kids that will score well in five or ten years? Well, in part you do it by listening for rumors about which way the code is going to change.
About halfway through, it starts to get harder on the Karyolis and their training system, though I wish it had been less mixed and more negative. The author does refuse to give them full credit for the rise of the US, pointing out that American gymnasts were already on an upswing beforehand, which I hadn't known. It's also really weird to read the chapter where the author visits two gyms, Texas Dreams and MG Elite. I mean, it's cool to see a comparison between two quite different elite gyms, but even as someone who's not a hardcore gymnastics fan, I know that neither of those gyms has a good reputation. I don't know if it was different back in 2015, but Texas Dreams is nicknamed 'Texas Nightmares' and 'Texas Dreams Graveyard' because they keep breaking gymnasts, and the main coach at MG Elite has been criticized for a while and is now facing abuse charges.
The end of the book has a chapter about (women's artistic) NCAA, which still uses the 10 score and which I am pretty sure is not for me, even if it is fun for the gymnasts. I already suffered watching the Worlds team selection this year, where people were constantly shrieking the same two things - 'you've got this!!!' and 'come on!!!' - at the gymnasts, so I'm not sure meets full of theatrics and teams dancing along with whoever is on floor is for me, even if it clearly fun for many other people. Then it ends with one summarizing why losing the Perfect 10 may not be a death blow for the popularity of gymnastics - which I think should be fairly clear after another five years without it.
I gotta say, as a casual fan, I really don't buy the argument some coaches and judges had that open-ended scoring is unclear to casual fans. Yeah, I might not necessarily know if a 13 is a good or a bad score, but you can figure that out if you watch more than one routine, or listen to the commentators, or watch the reactions. NBC even had dumb little color-coded symbols that they explained five times an hour to indicate what was a good or bad execution score during the last couple of Olympics. And I just don't understand how a 10/10 is supposed to mean anything in a sport that keeps evolving - if 10/10 is doing a double twisty double flippy, and then Simone Biles does a triple twisty double flippy, is that the new 10 even if nobody else can land it yet? And what does the previous 10 become? A 9.95? That seems at least as confusing to me, and it's just as arbitrary. What's the advantage of having a ten-point scale if placing comes down to a less than .1 difference over four events?
Anyway, it's a decent book with an interesting look at the history of the sport, if repetitive in parts, but the cognitive dissonance is real if you know anything about the past few years of USAG scandals. No, the food at the Karyoli ranch was not great and yeah, the overtraining was real and oh no, please stop quoting Nassar. There were some cute anecdotes, however - the author observed gymnasts at one work-out session struggling to jump rope, and one of the coaches said that in her day with the Karyolis, talking around the chalk buckets was banned, so they all learned to talk without moving their lips.
The focus is almost entirely on women's artistic gymnastics side, with one chapter that focuses more on the men as an explanation for why the scoring system finally changed. (I know rhythmic also moved to an open-ended scoring system recently, but rhythmic is almost impossible to learn to understand and a very different sport. And I have no idea about trampoline and its scoring.) Although perhaps not in the scope of the book, it would have been interesting if the author had pursued the question why women's gymnastics in the US is doing so well, and men's is doing more poorly, and I think a lot of that (fewer NCAA scholarships for men in gymnastics, maybe less difference in training style?) could have easily been integrated into the existing text and made it more complete. Still, thumbs-up on the whole.
Will read: The poisoning and complexity books. I'm also eyeing a very new book about fighting racism in figure skating, written by Emmanuel Savary's brother (still sad Emmanuel had to WD from Nats!), since it's only $5 for the ebook, but first I should at least finish the other library book. Might read some more sports books afterwards.
