No Olympics In Philadelphia
I just saw on CNN.com that Philadelphia is now officially out of the running for the 2016 olympics. This doesn’t really upset me. I don’t have much desire to have the Olympics in my city (or at least the city I live pretty close to). I think the Olympics are better reserved for smaller cities that need the attention and publicity. I thought it was pretty ridiculous that the final cities in the running for 2012 were New York, London, Paris and Moscow.
What really caught my attention about the article was that it hit on a pet peeve of mine, the “hasn’t since exaggeration” (yes, I just made that term up). The article includes the sentence, “The U.S. has not hosted the Summer Games since the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.” Last time I checked, the Summer Olympics are only held every 4 years. Which means this sentence really should read “The U.S. just hosted the Summer Games in 1996.” You see this a lot if you start looking for it, especially in sports. “The Yankees havn’t won a World Series since 2000″ was already getting said in 2003! There are 30 baseball teams! Or in the NCAA tournament when they’ll say things like “This is the first time that 3 11-seeded teams have made it to the Sweet 16 since 2001″ Look, if it’s happened in the last 10 years, it’s not rare enough to warrant being mentioned, and you just sound foolish pointing out how long it’s been since it happened. And if it’s truly a rare occurance and it happened within the last 10 years, then what you mean to say is “Holy Crap! This is the second time that 3 11-seeded teams have made it to the Sweet 16 since 2001″