Link Banana

Uncommon Knowledge highlights interesting facts about the Olympics. This one was new to me:

the disruptions in the host city - or at least the perception of disruptions - are actually a major boon to competing locales. In 2002, the year Utah hosted the Winter Olympics, counties with ski resorts in Colorado netted an additional $160 million in retail sales, according to sales-tax data.

This on isn’t surprising, but it’s still interesting:

Male athletes were seen as more composed and intelligent in victory, and less committed in defeat. Female athletes were seen as more courageous in victory, and weaker athletes in defeat. A similar pattern was found [in NBC’s coverage] with regard to nationality. Americans were seen as having more concentration, composure, commitment, and courage in victory, while non-Americans were granted more athletic skill. The authors note that “parallels between long-held racial stereotypes (e.g., blacks being ‘born’ athletes and whites being superior intellectually) may transfer in similar ways within the domain of nationalism.”

The Economist reports on a trend you’ll likely either find fascinating or disturbing:

Bloomington, a suburb of St George, has built a cul-de-sac around a huge boulder marked with petroglyphs—a model that will soon be followed by a developer near Salt Lake City. A site near Cortez, in Colorado, which is dotted with more than 200 Indian ruins, is being marketed as “America’s first archaeological development”: buyers can do their own excavations, but must bequeath what they find to a local museum. Perhaps the most extraordinary example is Mountain’s Edge, a half-built suburb near Las Vegas, where an ersatz archaeological dig has been incorporated into a park. Clearly, if a site lacks history there is a need to invent it.

Though I’ve known of this for a while — being a resident of the state — I finally decided that if it’s good enough for the New York Times, it’s good enough for Link Banana. The Representative, Douglas Bruce, has been censured by his colleagues. I also like the Times history of western lawmakers.

The situation harks back to a day when Western statehouses were halls of brawling, boozing and ill repute. Some legislatures, like that of neighboring New Mexico, have not entirely shed that reputation. But though political divisions can be bitter here, modern-day Colorado lawmakers have mostly remained civil toward one another.