In the spirit of the Olympic Games, I will be writing about these games and sports in general. Since the games originated from Greece and are held in Athens, I decided to take a look at the Greek alphabet (which is also useful for reading mathematical text, although it seems like Greek letters are disappearing from modern textbooks outside Greece). So I set down with my lab-mate Efstratios Ioannidis and we were both amazed at how similar it is to Hebrew. For example, they pronounce "Beta" as "vita", and when it is doubled it sounds "B". The famous "Pai" is pronounced "fi", and the name of "Tau" is actually "Taf". It is striking how much the meaning of Greek letters names and their drawings make sense in Hebrew. For instance, if you take the Hebrew handwritten "Sin", which is a drawing of a tooth, and reflect it for writing from left to right, you get the little "Sigma".
I highly recommend going over each letter
and looking at the "name" and "shape" fields. Both Hebrew and Greek alphabets evolved from the Phoenician alphabet. To understand more complex relationships such as between the handwritten Hebrew "Alef" and "A",
take a look here
(by the way, the Phoenicians probably didn't invent their letters).
Now, I can hear some of you asking what does it has to do with sports. Thanks for asking, I will explain. The Olympic spirit is about reminding people that despite the differences, they have a common origin.
Of course, it is not the Olympic spirit that brings people to the games. People want to see winners breaking records. For me, it is good enough if they replay in fast forward or just slow the clocks a little bit. But that is too fair.
Anyway, Canada, whose population is five times larger than Israel, won 12 medals. They are much stronger in winter games. Naturally, most of the medals came from water-related sports. Just to get into the Canadian national team the athletes have to be ranked at least 12 in the world.
If their athletes can't win a medal, there is another thing they could do to make Canadians happy: to beat the Americans. Of course, the USA is a nation of winners. They like to beat the whole world, and invest a lot of money to do that (in comparison, the earnings of 70% of the professional athletes in Canada is below the poverty line).
That takes me to my favorite sport, basketball. The creator of basketball, James Naismith, was Canadian, and a similar game was already played by the Aztecs, but it is really an American game. Now, in this Olympic Games the USA dream team was defeated by Puerto-Rico. For your general knowledge, the official president of Puerto-Rico is George Bush.
In their defense, it should be noted that NBA players were confused representing a country instead of a shoe company. I think American basketball is declining. Players like Shaquille O'neil are very effective, but they are not really flying. Basketball needs a modern American redesign. Imagine the players flying in the air, like jumping on trampolines.
Nothing makes the crowd more excited than watching players clashing in the air. The court has to be shortened, because viewers don't have patience for passing the ball from side to side. It has to be colored with strong colors, as a McDonald's branch.
Finally, an aggressive name: SlamBall (watch the video clips). So, we started with the Olympic spirit, and ended up with a watch only, "don't try it at home" game, ideal for selling hotdogs. Stay in shape,
