Olympic moving sport?

by philg

After observing some guys pack our stuff into three containers on the last day of Tokyo 2020, an idea for future Olympics: See who can pack stuff, with a range of fragility, into boxes and furniture blankets, move items into 16’ container, and then pull everything back out the fastest. Containers get shaken in the middle and points are deducted for anything broken. A team sport with 5 team members that combines a mental and a physical challenge.

Readers: would you prefer to watch this compared to a running race, for example?

16 thoughts on “Olympic moving sport?”

  2. I’ve read the rules of the folks over at the Darwin Awards, and I believe that it is permissible to nominate someone who willingly leaves a highly scientifically-educated community in order to live in a state where a University is capable of producing a pedestrian bridge that collapses under its own weight.

    • “Educated” these days means hopelessly brainwashed by Marxists. At least in the late USSR kids were inoculated against that mental disease from early age, and it wasn’t as destructive to their minds.

      And, yeah, anecdotes as arguments surely show the high degree of intellectual sophistication. A propos… even in Florida universities are Marxist strongholds. When you teach class struggle to engineering students you end up with falling bridges, LOL.

    • Gregor: I’m not sure which parts of Florida you think are uneducated, but our new apartment is just a few blocks from the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, the Scripps Research Institute, and Florida Atlantic University’s Jupiter campus. You can’t spit in the street without hitting a Ph.D. scientist.

      Separately, I think that you’re referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_University_pedestrian_bridge_collapse and that bridge was not designed by people at the university that was the customer, but by https://www.figgbridge.com/ (230 bridges around the world). The lead engineer on the project also designed the Zakim bridge in Boston (see https://heavy.com/news/2018/03/denney-denny-pate-figg-florida-fiu-bridge-collapse/ ). This engineer did not attend university in Florida (see https://www.artba.org/foundation/hall-of-fame/full-inductee-list/w-denney-pate/ for his background).

      (I.e., the bridge collapse that you’re citing actually demonstrates that impressive credentials are no guarantee of success. FIU could not have picked a more elite bridge engineer for the project.)

    • Huh? FIU didn’t build the bridge, a female-led engineering firm did. So, if the female-led engineering firm was selected ahead of a more qualified firm, because of gender preference, then maybe affirmative action is to blame for the failed bridge. But, then I guess you’re right… FIUselected the engineer.

    • Thank you all for proving my point. Implicit in so much of what you are saying is a disregard for the big picture.

      “Oh, we’re going to be in a nice neighborhood, so we don’t have to worry about the fact that when you zoom out, it’s a dumpster fire.”

      “Oh, we can’t make the University that commissioned a bridge actually have to take any responsibility for its failure, now can we?”

      “Oh, there are plenty of stupid people who have gotten credentials, so let’s just dispose of the whole credentialing system.”

      Again, this is the stuff of Darwin Awards. Ignore reality at your own peril.

    • When you go across the road from Abacoa (our “nice neighborhood”), you’re in a gated community called “Admiral’s Cove”. There is a three-bedroom house for sale there right now for $15.5 million.

      https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/230-Commodore-Dr-Jupiter-FL-33477/46815202_zpid/

      Since a lot of the richest people in the world have houses in Florida, either for full-time or part-time residence, I think your argument can be simplified: “rich people are stupid.”

    • @The Ghost of Gregor Mendel, given true observation that in every American disaster of XX century there is at least one man from Harvard and its continuation in XXI-st century, usually more as in conduct Vietnam War, @philg made long expected survival of the fittest move out of Harvard habitation areal.

    • Mendel’s Twin Brother Geoffrey: The big picture is that there is no freedom left in your “elite” universities and woke neighborhoods.

      Would you give a Darwin Award to East Germans who left before the wall was built?
      Those who tried to leave after the wall was built got shot at the wall.

      While this is metaphorical and I don’t claim that Masterchusetts is going to build a real wall that keeps people inside, there are many virtual walls and virtual capital punishments.

      And there most certainly is a nomenklatura at the universities and in politics, so they got that step right already:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura

    • Anonymous: Oh, if only I had faith in elite universities and woke neighborhoods! I’m afraid my view of the world is far darker. I think America has become a bastion of Mental Illness, and the rest of the free world is not far behind — in fact, some places are ahead (e.g. Turkey, Russia)

      The incidence of people complaining of anxiety is now 40% — and that’s just the people who have owned up to it! In truth, it seems the number is even higher. And the people who don’t have anxiety don’t understand what gift they have been given, so they attribute it to their own exceptionalism, and develop an unfounded superiority complex.

      What happened to the idea that humans are innately good? To where has that disappeared? Let’s find it, dust it off, and place it at the center of every mantel.

  3. I don’t know about it’s international appeal as an Olympic sport, since a lot of the kind of moving you’re talking about happens in America and other developed countries and doesn’t really apply around the world so much. Americans like to move, they have lots of stuff to move over long distances, and many of them do every year, and that’s why mailing companies have to run their lists through various kinds address verification and correction (NCOA for example.) Targeted mailing lists “spoil” quickly!

    It could be a very cool “Extreme Sport” though! A kind of Reality TV / X Games / WWE / Logistics collaboration. Bring in some consultants from well-known shipping, moving and logistics companies, add color with truckers, bikes, and music, and award awesome prizes and assess punishing penalties. I’m game. I think we’ve got a winner on our hands.

    Or at least, we used to.

  4. I once had to help a friend move in a heat wave. The Olympic sport we had was “Whoever passes out first is out!”.

    You are lucky you got to be part of the “spectator portion”. As an “athlete” in this space sometime, I can say that I’d like to retire from the sport all together.

    JJD – Takin’ home the bronze

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