But not everyone likes the idea of the Olympics moving from city to city, country to country.  In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Monday, former Olympic rower, Charles Banks-Altekruse, argues that the Olympic games–both summer and winter–should move permanently to Switzerland.

Banks-Altekruse correctly points out that the Olympics are hugely expensive events that can be financially crippling to the host cities and countries.  Part of Greece’s present fiscal turmoil is due, no doubt, to the 2004 games in Athens.  Meanwhile, I clearly remember how worried people were about whether the Olympic facilities and venues would be complete in time for the games.  The paint was still drying when the 2004 Olympics began.  That Greece had to build arenas and a stadium from scratch is emblematic of what makes the Olympics so costly for host cities.  Beijing built hugely expensive facilities that now lie dormant.  Sochi is building a new Olympic park from scratch that will, no doubt, cost a fortune. Rio de Janeiro will spend billions of dollars it simply doesn’t have to host the 2016 summer games.

Atlanta spent tons of money, too, but did things a bit smarter.  The stadium that hosted the opening and closing ceremonies as well as track and field in 1996 was converted to host baseball after the games concluded.  Other Olympic events were held at facilities at universities in northern Georgia.  Los Angeles, too, used existing infrastructure in 1984, and made money.  But times have changed, and expectations have changed.  I suspect that, like professional sports teams do, the International Olympic Committee now expects the latest and greatest, and an old stadium–the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was over sixty-years-old when the 1984 games began–simply wouldn’t do.

Meanwhile, Banks-Altekruse argues that potential political conflicts like the one that thwarted his Olympic hopes in Moscow in 1980, and kept Eastern Bloc nations away from Los Angeles in 1984, make it essential that the Olympics find a permanent, neutral home.  I acknowledge that that was a big shame, and, in retrospect, neither of those cities was the ideal choice, since the IOC certainly must have realized that boycotts would occur.

But I think the political climate around the world have changed in the past twenty-five years, and I doubt that we will see another significant Olympic boycott, unless future games are, somehow, awarded to Tibet or Somalia.

And, though the financial issue is a serious matter, I don’t believe that that justifies moving the Olympics permanently to Switzerland, which would, according to Banks-Altekruse, be able to afford its hosting duties by averaging out the construction costs over a long term.

No, I think too much is gained by having the Olympics move around the world.  The experience seems richer, and the international goodwill, I believe, is genuine.

I acknowledge that fuel costs have risen dramatically in the last decade, and that must cost the Post Office a fortune.  Plus, something nobody mentions is that the United States has millions more addresses than ever before.  Every new building built in America represents another stop on a carrier’s route.  And, the tendency of cities to expand in a sprawling fashion means that addresses are farther apart, and require more fuel than traditionally urban neighborhoods, where mailmen could deliver on foot.

The Post Office needs to get out of the business of everything that isn’t mail.  Stop selling random junk like holiday music CDs and mouse pads.  If they need to raise rates, raise rates on junk mail first.  I don’t want that stuff anyway.  And if first class rates go up, I understand.  Even if a stamp was fifty cents, it’d still be a bargain.  Think about it: you place an envelope in your mailbox, pull the flag up, and a person comes by six days a week, picks it up, and takes it anywhere in the country in a day or two.  I got a letter from someone in California on Monday.  They mailed it the previous Friday.  That’s incredibly fast for so little money.  Transportation time to and from the Netflix distribution center in Daytona is less than twenty-four hours.  DVDs that are picked up from my box at four o’clock in the afternoon arrive there by ten o’clock the following morning.

And the Post Office could do one more thing that would help me personally: stop taking passport applications at University Station.  There are only two clerks ever working there, and one of them is always doing someone’s passport, leaving one clerk available to help the dozens of people standing in the line that stretches out the door.

But it was fascinating to read an interactive feature in the New York Times today that explains the diminishing returns skaters receive by attempting quadruple jumps.  Plushenko had a quadruple jump in his program, Lysacek didn’t.  But Plushenko’s quad only increased his score by a point or less over these Olympics.  Recognizing that a failed quad jump would cost him up to three points, Lysacek avoided it, and concentrated on other moves that brought more points.

The data seem to show that quad jumps only get you a little if you succeed, but cost you a lot if you fail.

UPDATE: Lysacek was just on NBC talking to Bob Costas, and he seems like a class act.  Costas asked for his reaction to statements made by Plushenko about the quad jump.  Plushenko–understandably, in my opinion–believes that the quadruple jump has an important place in figure skating – that it is, in effect, the future of figure skating, and not doing it is looking backward.  Plushenko’s point is that the old scoring system made the quad more profitable.  Lysacek’s attitude is that the quad is just one element of many.  Still, both of these guys seem like nice guys who are serious about their sport, and either of them is worthy of the gold medal.

I suppose that advances in the sport make every skater feel like he or she needs to do the hardest trick.  I admit is is impressive to watch when it’s done well.  But when it isn’t done well it looks like a disaster.  Yet, teams that fall or only double jumps that ought to be triples still win medals and teams that appear to do everything right wind up way down the score card.  That’s the part I really do not understand.

I don’t dispute that the gold- and silver-winning teams from last night’s pair skate skated exceedingly well.  But the third-place German team–who looked great the night before–fell all over themselves.  On the other hand, the team I liked, who didn’t fall at all, weren’t even in the top five.

I suppose someone who knows a lot about figure skating will say that it comes down to artistic presentation, or complex technical elements.  Again, I may be missing some fancy foot movements, or not realizing that a backwards lift is much more difficult than a forwards lift.  But no one can miss the falling down.

That said, there was some good music last night.  My favorite pair, Caydee Denney and Jeremy Barrett, skated to Scheherazade, which was a fine complement to the Firebird they chose the night before.  But, later in the program, another team skated to Scheherazade, and not as well, I thought.  Another team skated to Rachmaninoff.  I was most pleased last night, though, that someone chose to skate to Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite.  That’s one of my favorite pieces of American music.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the figure skating.

UPDATE: I found the great picture on the left at this website.  If that goes down, there is another.  It’s number ten of the twelve pictures in this gallery.

UPDATE: Later in the program, two Russian skaters, Yuko Kavaguti and Alexander Smirnov, performed wearing outfits with bird designs in sequins – his white, hers black.  Before they began I wondered what other bird-themed music they could skate to.  It turned out to be, appropriately enough, “Le cygne” from Saint-Saëns’ Le carnaval des animaux!

While my heart wishes that Conan would have just taken the later time slot, I cannot blame him for standing up for his convictions.  The blame for all of this lies with the staggeringly incompetent NBC executives and Jay Leno.  I remember the Leno/Letterman feud back in the early-1990s, and while I certainly preferred Letterman to Leno even then, I felt that Leno did have a valid claim to take over for Johnny Carson.  And, while I recognize that Leno must have been bitter that NBC asked him to step aside in 2004, even as he was the top-rated late night show, that cannot excuse his conduct now.  As David Letterman explained, when the network does you wrong, walk.  If Jay resented losing the Tonight Show, he should have gone somewhere else.  And, when their ten o’clock experiment failed and NBC told him he was canceled, he should have said, “Thanks, guys, but that’s enough.  I’m out of here”.  But no.  He must really, really have been desperate to get back what he once had.  Nothing else can explain why he would have been willing to either a) force all the other late night programs back a half hour, or b) put Conan in the untenable situation of having to decide to go along with it or leave.

Once it was clear that Conan’s days were numbered, the shows became more poignant and even more hilarious.  The audiences were in a frenzy, and Conan was on fire.  It made it that much more heart-breaking when, last Friday, they played a montage of clips from the run of the show, including the fantastic bit that opened his first episode as host, when he ran from New York City to Hollywood.  It ended with the message “To Be Continued…”, but who knows what will happen.  Neil Young playing “Long May You Run”, Tom Hanks, and “Freebird” with an all-star band, ended the show on an epic high.

My greatest hope is that Conan took the forty million dollars, handed it out to his staff including Andy and Max, and told everyone, “Take this money, have an eight month vacation, and meet me in September.   We’re starting a new show”.  But, even if he gets an offer from Fox, I don’t know if Andy and Max will join him.  No matter the time slot, and no matter that Fox is the highest rated network, a new show will never be the Tonight Show.  If he doesn’t get an offer from Fox he’s sunk.  Cable would be an insult.

I was looking forward to spending the next decade watching The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.  But last Friday, that dream died.

Apparently, though, nobody is ever happy about anything anymore, because complaints about Keflezighi’s victory are apparently being made by some in the running world.  “He’s not really American, so don’t think that this means Americans are suddenly better than  Africans when it comes to marathons”, goes the absurd argument.  Here’s the thing:  What makes America America is that people in this country come from everywhere, and have since the very beginning.  Keflezighi was born in Eritrea, but has lived in the USA since he was a child.  He is an American citizen, not by accident of birth, but because he wanted to be.  I am proud that an American won the New York City Marathon.