Wow, jaw just dropped. Sad , shocked and just a teensy bit , uh... intrigued? curious?
Any comments from the swimmer? I mean the man that found the current for her swim (s) ,gone forever.
I am very grateful for the work that has been done by members of this forum to bring to light the dubious nature of the DN Affair. Without the insight, experience, and incredulity of the MSF I would have swallowed the main stream media version of the 'success', as that is the only place I would have heard about it. I have been using the knowledge I have gleaned from these posts to try to spread the word to people who ask my me thoughts about "that woman who swam from Cuba to Florida", which happens often when co-workers who know I swim have a conversation related to my interests.
That last picture posted by @Niek pushed me over the edge of suspended judgement to plain disbelief.
I didn't have to wait too long to fill the void of motivation of ridiculous magnitude though. I'm greatly looking forward to Jamie Patrick's swim in August. http://www.thegreatlakeswim.com/#!the-swim/c1ktj
Thanks @david_barra.
I've now added a post-script to this post as I suspect I have misunderstood what's happening in the image...although the discussion of it still stands, I think.
Thanks @david_barra.
I've now added a post-script to this post as I suspect I have misunderstood what's happening in the image...although the discussion of it still stands, I think.
Another great blog post.
(and I only had to use the dictionary once)
Agreed. A fascinating read @KarenT . But you sent me to the dictionary twice. Going to try to sprinkle palaver and solipsistic into casual conversation tomorrow just to see people's reaction.
Three random thoughts:
1) Regarding the picture, Ms. Nyad has so little cred in this community that we always assume the worst. Interestingly, although it says lots about her, it also says something about us - although I'm not sure what, exactly.
2) During the original donnybrook over this, I did notice that @KarenT was mostly absent. Now we know that she is using us a lab rats for her next paper (see her blog post). She is getting wealthly - she has TWO chairs in her office and they have promised her a key to the ladies room next - off our fighting to the death. Cruel.
3) In the picture, those are NOT rescue divers. They are really two lamprey disguised as divers and they aren't helping, they are actually trying to kill her. Even more reason we should vote for her as cheat... err... adventurer of the year. However, I have to cast my vote for Brian Norris:
-LBJ
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” - Oscar Wilde
"My managers, 15 Minutes Inc, along with our stupendous sponsor, Procter & Gamble (specifically their brands that have earned a long-standing reputation in the work of disaster relief….Duracell, TIDE, and Secret) "
You get a Secret. And you get a Secret. Everyone gets a Secret.
OK, just saw some dumb-a$$ commercial for Bing that showed DN and thanked her for "being brave and persevering" and included her in the same group as women serving in combat.
AAHHHH!!!!
I will not use Bing now.
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
Though it may not appear so at first glance, this article by Braden Keith at SwimSwam is kind of incredible... definitely unexpected, and ultimately vindicating of this Forum and this thread:
Diana Nyad's swim, whether legitimate or not, was the biggest newsmaker in swimming of 2013.
This particular... award is not one that specifies ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Much in the mold of Time Magazine, we instead look at who was the biggest news-maker in swimming over the course of 2013, be it for something good or something bad.
The evidence and arguments on both sides are rather convincing, and whenever money’s in play, the motive exists.
It created questions over whether or not a personal profit was to be gained, and if that was enough to cause Nyad to fudge the rules. It created rifts in swimming. It created unity in swimming.
OK, just saw some dumb-a$$ commercial for Bing that showed DN and thanked her for "being brave and persevering" and included her in the same group as women serving in combat.
AAHHHH!!!!
I will not use Bing now.
Why the hell would anyone use Bing in the first place?
Have you read @heart's blog yet? It is great. She is a law professor at University of California-Hastings, and like @KarenT is bringing a valuable scholarly perspective to the sport of marathon swimming.
She has recently written a couple of interesting posts on the DN affair:
Thanks for the hat tip, @evmo. I'm hard at work on the paper and hope to be done in a few days. It's turning out to be really interesting. I'll be happy to share the draft here and on the blog when it's finished.
One thing I'm finding out reading marathon swimming historiographies and memoirs is that, during the "golden age" of marathoning competitions, between the '60s and '70s, there seemed to be a strong prevalent notion of the rules, accompanied by a "no big deal" attitude toward them. Penny Dean, when retelling her Golden Gate swim in 1965, says matter-of-factly that she was cold, touched the boat, and was promptly DQ'd. Her discussion of the rules in her manual is mostly in the competition context (where they arguably matter more) and she basically concludes as follows: (1) There are rules about not kicking and hitting other swimmers. (2) They are not enforced and people do whatever they want. (3) Since there's no enforcement, you have to learn how to deal with it. (4) Let me teach you some retaliation techniques.
That pretty much sums up any discussion of integrity and rule compliance in the sport in her manual.
Now parsing through Lynne Cox's manual and Conrad Wennerberg's historiography. The latter, interestingly, includes some incredible photographic footage of mythological Middle Eastern distance swimmers from the 40s and 50s (in Egypt and Syria, these marathon swimmers are national heroes, per the book Zeitoun), showing them supported by family and friends with their feet still in the water. Apparently, there was strong conformism to the spirit and ethic of the sport, and people didn't sweat the small stuff.
While this thread may have little relevance to swimming, your post is from leftfield (sorry I don’t have a futball analogy)
This is certainly an example of DN not pandering to the Oprah audience but as the author notes equating atheism and spirituality does indeed seem wishy-washy to some.
@SuirThing Rubbish. I've seen the bottom of a boat in the Channel. While it wasn't sinking, it wasn't the angle from which one would want to see their pilot boat. Not then, nor any other time in my life, nor in any other foxhole, has it ever even occurred to me to ask the question @SuirThing postulates.
Per what @david_barra asks, as an open water swimmer & atheist, I feel lucky to be able to experience the almost ineffable wonder of the universe and the connection we all feel in the sea, regardless of our credo or lack thereof.
just a few questions off the top of my head. i'm not expecting they will be answered.
Diana, would you agree that you had tremendous financial incentives for your Cuba-Florida swim to succeed?
Diana, you keep claiming that your swim is a "world record." Which record are you claiming, specifically? And which specific organization recognizes this record?
Diana, do you agree that qualified and independent observers are essential to authenticating any marathon swim claim? With the tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of dollars your Cuba-Florida swim attempt must have cost, how did you not manage to find qualified observers?
Diana, do you endorse the threats of physical violence by some of your supporters against the people who questioned the integrity of your swim?
Diana, why did you wait more than 30 years to apologize to Walter Poenisch? The timing indicates you only began to "care" when the PR started to get bad for you.
<<<in the circles where it matters, and of course the 44 people on my team who witnessed and were part of this history, know the truth.>>>
What "circles" are those, Diana? What do you make of the fact that the vast majority of your peers in the marathon swimming community do not trust you?
<<<Our navigator, John Bartlett, took them through mile by mile all the winds, all the currents, every inch of that swim from the Cuba shore to the Florida Shore.>>>
Diana, on the conference call John Bartlett promised to release the current (water flow) readings he had been taking during your swim. Why did he never release these data, as promised?
The reason why my swim is called, "The First Person to Swim from Cuba to Florida without a Shark Cage" isn't really to make the point that our team was willing to take the risk of being attacked by a shark out there, though that risk was certainly in play. The reason we qualified this swim as without a shark cage is because we had no assistance in moving forward faster than my own ability. I just didn't want an asterisk next to my name on this record and a shark cage would have required that asterisk.
hahahahaha
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
Another DN obfuscation that continues to perplex me is:
I heard her claim several times, with vim and vigor, on national news circuit shows that
"all the complete evidence (captains logs, observers logs) have been submitted to the appropriate bodies..."
Has anyone seen anything more than the initial, incomplete observer logs?
As I recall, the one male observer posted something incomplete, and the other female observer posted "part 1 of 3" (and a written "summary" of her actual log, strangely) and nothing more.
To watch DN make that bold faced lie and not one of these high profile, so-called journalists do a simple fact check is one the most egregious acts of 'uninspiring' moral/ethical breakdowns I've witnessed in my life!
As a long time redditor like @evmo, I think the later responses to what he and I posted in that thread went far better than expected and were more widely read also. Normally an IAMA is only alive for about 6 hours or read for maybe 10 to 12. Any external analysis of the thread will now show our counter-balancing comments and questions, which was my only purpose when I got there. Thanks to @ColmBreathnach for the heads-up.
@DanSimonelli, you are of course correct, she has repeated those lies about providing proof everywhere and ad nauseum.
@West my favourite question which occurred before we got there, but had been downvoted out of sight because of the celebrity-cult of the reddit IAMA, was "But didn't you cheat?".
Think abut that. That's the result of this forum and everyone here. Random people have heard she's a cheat.
If the author has no mention of the controversy, it's not a good article or a complete picture. I swear that woman will do anything to stay in the press.
OK, finished page one. Took a while. What her last three Cuba-Florida swims that I've followed has done to me is that I feel I have to "fact check" every damn paragraph that these journalists are writing.
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
Comments
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
Any comments from the swimmer? I mean the man that found the current for her swim (s) ,gone forever.
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
That last picture posted by @Niek pushed me over the edge of suspended judgement to plain disbelief.
I didn't have to wait too long to fill the void of motivation of ridiculous magnitude though. I'm greatly looking forward to Jamie Patrick's swim in August. http://www.thegreatlakeswim.com/#!the-swim/c1ktj
Darn...that's one deathbed confession not published.
Another great blog post.
(and I only had to use the dictionary once)
...anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
I've now added a post-script to this post as I suspect I have misunderstood what's happening in the image...although the discussion of it still stands, I think.
I think so too
...anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
Agreed. A fascinating read @KarenT . But you sent me to the dictionary twice. Going to try to sprinkle palaver and solipsistic into casual conversation tomorrow just to see people's reaction.
1) Regarding the picture, Ms. Nyad has so little cred in this community that we always assume the worst. Interestingly, although it says lots about her, it also says something about us - although I'm not sure what, exactly.
2) During the original donnybrook over this, I did notice that @KarenT was mostly absent. Now we know that she is using us a lab rats for her next paper (see her blog post). She is getting wealthly - she has TWO chairs in her office and they have promised her a key to the ladies room next - off our fighting to the death. Cruel.
3) In the picture, those are NOT rescue divers. They are really two lamprey disguised as divers and they aren't helping, they are actually trying to kill her. Even more reason we should vote for her as cheat... err... adventurer of the year. However, I have to cast my vote for Brian Norris:
-LBJ
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” - Oscar Wilde
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/yacht-captain-caught-smuggling-621-pounds-of-cocai/nbJ7q/
"My managers, 15 Minutes Inc, along with our stupendous sponsor, Procter & Gamble (specifically their brands that have earned a long-standing reputation in the work of disaster relief….Duracell, TIDE, and Secret) "
You get a Secret. And you get a Secret. Everyone gets a Secret.
AAHHHH!!!!
I will not use Bing now.
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
http://swimswam.com/swimswam-2013-person-or-the-year/
Excerpts:
Why the hell would anyone use Bing in the first place?
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
She has recently written a couple of interesting posts on the DN affair:
http://humu-sapiens.blogspot.com/2013/11/wayward-swimmers-paper.html
http://humu-sapiens.blogspot.com/2014/01/diana-v-lance-what-motivates-conformity.html
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
One thing I'm finding out reading marathon swimming historiographies and memoirs is that, during the "golden age" of marathoning competitions, between the '60s and '70s, there seemed to be a strong prevalent notion of the rules, accompanied by a "no big deal" attitude toward them. Penny Dean, when retelling her Golden Gate swim in 1965, says matter-of-factly that she was cold, touched the boat, and was promptly DQ'd. Her discussion of the rules in her manual is mostly in the competition context (where they arguably matter more) and she basically concludes as follows: (1) There are rules about not kicking and hitting other swimmers. (2) They are not enforced and people do whatever they want. (3) Since there's no enforcement, you have to learn how to deal with it. (4) Let me teach you some retaliation techniques.
That pretty much sums up any discussion of integrity and rule compliance in the sport in her manual.
Now parsing through Lynne Cox's manual and Conrad Wennerberg's historiography. The latter, interestingly, includes some incredible photographic footage of mythological Middle Eastern distance swimmers from the 40s and 50s (in Egypt and Syria, these marathon swimmers are national heroes, per the book Zeitoun), showing them supported by family and friends with their feet still in the water. Apparently, there was strong conformism to the spirit and ethic of the sport, and people didn't sweat the small stuff.
More to come.
http://humu-sapiens.blogspot.com/2014/01/deviance-social-control-and-swimming.html
Now, to do the write-up. Happy to get comments/questions/insights.
Wonder and awe without the old bearded guy?
I’ll cast my vote for DN on this one.
...anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
This is certainly an example of DN not pandering to the Oprah audience but as the author notes equating atheism and spirituality does indeed seem wishy-washy to some.
...anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
"oh god in which I refuse to believe; why have you forsaken me?"
I tried to convince myself, but, orange flavour electrolyte, mixed with hot chocolate,
tastes nothing like Terry's Chocolate Orange ....
Per what @david_barra asks, as an open water swimmer & atheist, I feel lucky to be able to experience the almost ineffable wonder of the universe and the connection we all feel in the sea, regardless of our credo or lack thereof.
And I do so without once using the word mystical.
loneswimmer.com
no offence intended to atheists anywhere
I tried to convince myself, but, orange flavour electrolyte, mixed with hot chocolate,
tastes nothing like Terry's Chocolate Orange ....
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1waqka/i_am_the_world_record_swimmer_diana_nyad_ask_me/
Far too late when I saw it, but I've left a response here.
loneswimmer.com
But my favorite question asked of Diana was: "who are you?"
Anyone know who "normaversion" on that thread is?
Ya done good, kid.
hahahahaha
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
or
Seems she responds to questions when they begin with flattery.
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
I heard her claim several times, with vim and vigor, on national news circuit shows that
"all the complete evidence (captains logs, observers logs) have been submitted to the appropriate bodies..."
Has anyone seen anything more than the initial, incomplete observer logs?
As I recall, the one male observer posted something incomplete, and the other female observer posted "part 1 of 3" (and a written "summary" of her actual log, strangely) and nothing more.
To watch DN make that bold faced lie and not one of these high profile, so-called journalists do a simple fact check is one the most egregious acts of 'uninspiring' moral/ethical breakdowns I've witnessed in my life!
@DanSimonelli, you are of course correct, she has repeated those lies about providing proof everywhere and ad nauseum.
@West my favourite question which occurred before we got there, but had been downvoted out of sight because of the celebrity-cult of the reddit IAMA, was "But didn't you cheat?".
Think abut that. That's the result of this forum and everyone here. Random people have heard she's a cheat.
loneswimmer.com
"...compete at the Olympic level"??? She was a mediocre swimmer at best. Nowhere near what anyone would consider "Olympic level".
"BREAKING THE WAVES: In her sixties, a swimmer revives an old dream."
The author mentions no controversy/questions about the 2013 swim.
-Daniel
the writing of the lives of saints.
Nice 50 cent word.
Can't read the entire article as I don't subscribe to The New Yorker.
http://marathonswimmers.org/assets/nyad/Nyad_NewYorker.pdf
(8.2MB download)
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
I encourage any forum member who feels inspired to write a Letter to the Editor:
http://www.newyorker.com/contact/contactus
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams