Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Generic Gymnasts

No more tears
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Mr. Smith is a judge in the gymnastics at the Olympics. He goes out one evening and has a pizza, but it tastes like crap. Even without knowing it he has, by association, made a link between Italy and crap.

The next day, he is sitting on his judge bench with his judge friends, carefully watching the gymnasts fall about the floor with style. Mario, an eminent gymnast, walks into the area and executes a perfect sequence of somersaults and tumbles. As he finishes, the crowd applaud and cheer, and the other judges look suitably impressed. But Mr. Smith can only think of that disgusting pizza, and thusly gives Mario unnecessarily low marks.

I can think of 2 ways to get around this. The first is the use of a standardised costume for all the gymnasts, the only difference between each being the number which identifies each. Instead of watching the actual event, the judges would be shown a recording with the gymnast's face blurred out. They could then make an accurate analysis of the performance of the gymnast without being distracted in any way by their race.

The second way would be to record the event with the gymnast wearing a special suit with markers in key locations, as done in motion capture for CGI. In fact that is what this is; feeding the body movements of each gymnast into a computer and applying them to a standard generic gymnast to eliminate any kind of -isms on the judges part.

pooduck, Jul 23 2005

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       "And here come the Belgians. A poor display but the chocolate the judges were eating last night seems to have sealed the gold."   

       Why just gymnasts?
hidden truths, Jul 23 2005
  

       No particular reason. Could be for figure skaters too.
pooduck, Jul 23 2005
  

       You could have them cover their skin in purple latex, including a mask.
Antegrity, Jul 23 2005
  

       I'm sure there are any number of specialist websites that already do that, [Ant]
gnomethang, Jul 23 2005
  

       chuck chuck chuck Obviosly skin color is an issue with this idea.
Antegrity, Jul 25 2005
  

       I think that anybody capable of judging gymnastics would already be able to recognise a good few gymnasts by body mechanics and technique. Then again, I guess they'd never be certain.
st3f, Jul 25 2005
  

       Funny, I was considering something similar - an "airport burqa"; it covers your entire body and face. People who want to be searched/not searched without regard to racial profiling can pick one up at the airport for free. Enough people do this and racial profiling is no more.
phundug, Jul 25 2005
  

       Suits schmütes. The Greeks invented the solution when they invented the Olympics!
bungston, Jul 25 2005
  

       Bungston is right. And wrestling was much more fabulous back then.
moPuddin, Jul 25 2005
  

       I was even wondering if you could feed the captured movements into a computer and have it compare them against a perfect model and judge accordingly. It wouldn't be very good at analysing artistic expression but could check for technical performance.
pooduck, Jul 26 2005
  

       [bung], I don't think my heart could handle naked gymnastics. I'd sure like to give it a try, though!   

       As for the idea itself, [+].
elhigh, Aug 02 2005
  


 

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