I read Saletan this morning and I almost did a Raisin Bran spit-take all over my laptop. (Hmmm...that sounds vaguely dirty.) His argument comes down to saying he can more accurately judge the difference of 1/100 of a second sitting on his sofa at home than the electronic equipment designed for that measurement in the pool itself.

He probably doesn't believe we landed on the moon either.

And in any case, if the rule (de facto) says that the winner is the first one to apply enough pressure to the pad, Phelps is still the winner.

Saletan counts as mainstream media now? I thought he was pretty firmly web-ghetto. Slate certainly is.

Yah, anyone vaguely familiar with the refractive properties of water should be immediately skeptical of a visual inspection of the finish. Add to that the limitations of vide: 30 frames per second for a 1/100th of a second finish... thats .03 f/s seconds resolution vs .01 seconds of dispute,making it impossible to detect the winner. Unless you're watching high def ;)

And FabioC is correct, the object of the event is to trigger the touchpad. Otherwise following Saletens argument to its absurdist conclusion you get down to a molecular level and quantum uncertainty, there is no way to determine even in principle which wavefronts collided first. All we can tell is which device triggered first, which for any sane human being is close enough to certain to get them through the day. The other way lies madness.

Following Salatens' argument to its natural conclusion, Hillary Clinton won the primaries.

Mark B, according to at least one account I read, these images are made with special equipment at 3000 fps.

"...Hillary Clinton won the primaries."

And Gore won in 2000.

And Kerry won in 2004, after Ohio votes were stolen.

And Saddam had no WMDs, despite using them years before.

Lastly, didn't Dara Torres also lose her race by 0.01 seconds? Why isn't this 'journalist' making the same argument when it is an American losing by 0.01 seconds?

since when is fabrication argument? this is simply a classic case of trolling, of course the MSM shouldn't troll, but it has been my experience that they have perfected the art.

Go over and look at the Fray - the commenters are being kind of - frank - with him...

A.L.

Ughh, i stumbled on a Truther thread over there. I'm gonna be angry and nausious all night. Faith in humanity, dwindling...

For the record, and my own mental state- the fact that jet fuel burns (a fuel air mixtures explodes technically) in jet engines without melting them does not imply that burning jet fuel cant collapse a skyscraper. Good lord how can people spend so much energy searching for idiotic conspiracy minutia and so little on the simple mechanics of what they are arguing.

Yah, anyone vaguely familiar with the refractive properties of water should be immediately skeptical of a visual inspection of the finish. Add to that the limitations of vide: 30 frames per second for a 1/100th of a second finish... thats .03 f/s seconds resolution vs .01 seconds of dispute,making it impossible to detect the winner.

Refraction is not an issue if the camera's are underwater. And, I sorta assumed that they used high speed cameras. Maybe that's a bad assumption?