Thank goodness Michael Phelps won his eight gold medals. It would have been a shame to waste all that good hype. This is from the normally un-gushy Christian Science Monitor, under the headline "The Phelps Olympics: An epic fit for ancient Greece":
Almost without question, he is now “the greatest swimmer in history,” says David Wallechinsky, author of “The Complete Book of the Olympics.”
He is the winningest Gold Medalist in the history of the modern Olympics. Trying to jump from that defensible fact to other superlatives is something we ought to be careful attaching "almost without question" to. At lest Wallechinsky doesn't say Phelps is the best Olympic athlete ever, which I've heard a lot in the last two days. Later there is this:
Simply by the numbers, his eight gold medals is something that could only be accomplished in swimming or gymnastics, making the debate over whether he is the greatest Olympian problematic.
The reason is that no other sports offer an athlete
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Ludlow's Law strikes once again. "The larger the type size, the less likely that a typo or a grammatical error will be caught."
Unless, of course, the word "countown" exists. I'd be only slightly fazed if it did, and completely unphased.
The Ludlow was a machine for casting headlines in hot lead, but the law still seems to work, even though Ludlows are few and far between, these days.
The Dayton newspapers are published on Ludlow street. (Well, the Dayton Daily News is; the Journal-Herald died recently.) I don't know if that's a coincidence or not. Perhaps that's where the Ludlow originated; I once tried to find out who invented the Ludlow, and where, but came up empty-handed.
Phixed it.