I don’t know why this is so surprising though. The conflicts are not even close to ancient history, and there are people still alive who can remember them. The monstrosities committed there are just… it’s horrifying what humans can do to other humans.
Oh it is, but strangely, there is a different mindset with my coworkers about North Korea, which isn’t happy, but isn’t hatred. It’s still one Korea. There are split families all throughout both sides. And with as much danger as North Korea is to the south, you would think that hatred against Japan/China would be lower in comparison to a neighbor with nuclear capability, not that far away, that rattles sabers and spouts what we hear as bloodthirsty talk. Not to mention one that has caused deaths on the South Korean side in more recent history.
Then again, this is mostly anecdotal summarization by me of how my Korean counterparts speak about things. I just find if kind of facinating to hear. For all I know they have a different mindset because they work for an international company and are exposed to business dealings with other cultures more often.
Jean-Claude Killy is one of my early memories of the Winter Games. The other is the US Hockey team win in 1980, watching the last period on a training room TV with my section chief.
I think I started with 1992… very famous one… so I basically grew up with highly dramatized figure skating but when the judges were caught cheating… I stopped following the only sport I ever really followed. I went to gymnastics, sort of, years later which… well sports are just less appealing to me now and they were never that appealing to begin with.
I have always dislike Olympic sports that were determined by judges, and I have always been uncomfortable with sports in which the participants were not yet old enough to get a drivers license.
They’re supposed to be 16 or 16 that year… aren’t most states giving licenses at 16. Am I so old they increased the age and 16 year olds don’t drive anymore?
I think most states now do provisional licensing at 16 i.e. parent/adult required in passenger seat, and solo drives delayed to 17.
Out of my ass though.
We didn’t get “full” (unrestricted" licenses until 18 in TN. It was graduated up from learner’s permits at 15 (14 if you had a pressing family need, IIRC) through increasingly unlimited regular licenses at 16, 17, and finally 18.
In California if you pay privately for drivers ed and training you can still get a license at 16, otherwise you can get a license at 18. It is surprising how many kids don’t get licenses in their teens anymore or don’t get one at all.
Wow. I got my permit at 15.5 and could get and did get my full license at 16. I had terrified relatives in the passenger seat like everyone. I don’t think they had diaries then… maybe they did… loose tracking about practice hours.
California has proposed a program whereby you can, for a fee, get your drivers license picture retaken. The money raised is supposed to go towards putting drivers ed and training back in the schools.
The state is counting on the vanity of California’s drivers.
And yea, it used to be a rite of passage to get your drivers license on your 16th birthday.
There’s a lot of really fascinating history around the conflicts that have happened in that region. I particularly enjoyed Extra History’s Admiral Yi series, and the Korean movie The Admiral that’s based on part of his story. And of course there’s some interesting differences when you look at the other side, such as how such events are portrayed in Japan.
More P&R I guess, but really, the xenophobia is the same in Japan, and the whole hatred thing probably isn’t very different from what was going on in Europe before some funding fathers tried to solve it with the early ideals behind the European Community.
Sapporo, 1972 (I was 8.) We were living in Misawa AFB at the time. Can’t tell if the coverage was any good since it was in Japanese, but I do remember the ski jumping.
After that, Franz Klammer at Innsbruck, '76 stands out as an iconic Olympic moment for me. Still one of the best downhill runs I’ve ever seen.
There was a story this morning on Weekend Edition on NPR talking about the Paralympics. After the real Olympics, I always forget these exist.
Are they showing any events on NBC? Or is it only on their cable channels? Wheelchair Curling sounded intriguing. As did blind downhill skiing.
Edit:
Looks like we get something tomorrow on NBC, and then a highlights show on March 24 on NBC. The rest is either streaming online, or NBCSN or Olympic Channel.