NBC loves panning its cameras to the Olympic athletes' families as they watch their loved ones compete. At the Vancouver Games, Apolo Anton Ohno's father, Yuki, has been shown numerous times, cheering on his son. However, Ohno's mother has been notably absent.

This hasn't gone unnoticed by viewers. Web searches on "apolo anton ohno mom" and "apolo ohno mother" have both surged into breakout status this past week. Also buzzing in the Yahoo! Search box: "Who is apolo anton ohno's mom?"

According to The New York Times, Ohno's father won custody of his son when Apolo was just an infant. A recent article from the AP explains that Yuki raised Apolo alone, "after the boy's mother" – Jerrie Lee – "left early on." A 1998 item from The Seattle Times said, "Except for a few photographs, Apolo has never seen his mother." A 2002 article from Sports Illustrated reported that Ohno had "no interest in learning more about her."

While Ohno has no contact with his mother, the bond he shares with his

There’s no doubt that Vancouver is the “it” spot of the moment.

Lines continue to be hours long for a zip line across a downtown public square and for the official Olympic merchandise store. The parties are so raucous that cops have asked liquor stores to close early to ward off drunken marauders wreaking havoc on the city.

And on its image. Athletes and the IOC have raved about the energy in Vancouver during the Games.

The challenge for officials now is to translate that into people wanting to come here once the Games are over. It’s easy to lure people to come to the biggest party in the world – but how do you keep them coming back?

The federal government has spent millions through the Canadian Tourism Commission to try and make this happen. So, too, have the province of British Columbia and the city of Vancouver, through their various tourist agency partners.

One way they’ve tried to do this is to persuade hotels and restaurants not to hike prices too much during the Games. The

If NFL players were in the Olympics, what sport should they play? (Shutdown Corner)

And while we're on the subject, what NFL players could learn from the U.S. hockey team. (Pro Football Talk)

Take a look at Olympic venues, past and present, from space. (Wired)

Ten things you may not know about the 1980 Miracle on Ice. (Joe Posnanski)

Five commercials we're sick of seeing in the Olympics. I'd add the Vancouver tourism ad, but I'll never tire of listening to Morgan Freeman tell me Olympic tales. (Best Week Ever)

What is the best Olympian name? Perhaps Germany's Tobias Angerer should win that prize. (Black Heart Gold Pants)

The history of Winter Olympics demonstration sports. (Erecting Scarecrows)

Frozen Medal Stand is Fourth-Place Medal's collection of links, pictures and other Olympic-alia. Have some Olympic-alia to share? Send it here.

It's a relaxed second Monday at the Winter Olympics, with no Alpine skiing for the first time in five days and just three medal events throughout the day (and only one live in primet ime). Here's what to watch for:

1. Ice dancing concludes! Depending on how you interpreted that exclamation point, you're either very excited about Monday night's ice dancing free skate or very excited that after the ice dancing free skate you won't have to watch an ice dancing free skate for four years. You know the IOC is out of touch when it gives us three nights of ice dancing and one night of Shaun White. At least three of the top four teams are Americans and Canadians, which provides some rooting interest for the proceedings. Tanith Belbin and her partner skate second-to-last. (No, I'm not looking up his name.)

2. Team ski jumping. While it's vaguely disappointing that the teams don't all ski down the hill together en masse for a group jump, this event is still a pretty entertaining one. Look out

Twitter can be a valuable news source. For instance, I just found out that Team USA snowboarders Louie Vito, Greg Bretz, and Elena Hight went to Monday's United States women's hockey game. However, Twitter can also be confusing, even in the hands of these very same snowboarders.

Let's take a look at one of Greg Bretz's recent Tweets and try to figure out just what he's saying.

This is nearly unintelligible when put together, but if we break it apart, we can unlock its mysteries. The first key is deciding where to separate the clauses. Let's give it a shot.

"Had such a sick day...": Contrary to popular belief, this doesn't mean Bretz called in ill to work. It actually means "awesome." Greg Bretz had an awesome day.

"...cat boarding...": This isn't a form of feline torture. It's snowboarding behind a snowmobile, obviously.

"...love pow...": "Pow" is short for powder, which is the fluffiest snow, which is clearly the best when behind a snowmobile.

...and now its chill time...":

NBC's Olympic coverage is so often the brunt of legitimate complaints – not airing events live, tape-delaying coverage for the West Coast, irresponsible product placements, too many puff pieces – that it's easy to ignore the many positive aspects of the network's Winter Games coverage.

In all honesty, aside from the lack of live coverage of marquee daytime events, the peacock network does an excellent job with its telecasts. (That may be like saying "Aside from the landing, the Hindenburg had a great flight," but we're in a good mood today.) Here are our four favorites:

1. Bob Costas and Al Michaels. You know you have a pretty good hosting team when Michaels, the legendary voice of primetime NFL football (first on Mondays and now on Sunday) and the Miracle on Ice, is the daytime guy. Costas may rub some the wrong way, and he blurs the line between coverage and commentary when he goes out of his way to rip Bode Miller, but he deftly handles the studio broadcast, is a fantastic

Ever wonder how they get those precise times in every Olympic event without catastrophic international protests? "Computers" is the easy answer. But in reality, it's a lot more complicated than that.

Catching up with Omega Timing, the official timekeeper of the Olympics, Beyond Binary's Ina Fried has the details of the myriad improvements made from year to year. The updates are amazing, but even better is the way times used to be figured for the Games.

Less than a century ago, the timing of downhill skiing required someone at the top and bottom of the run, each with a stopwatch synchronized to the time of day.

Every few skiers, the timer at the top would send down a piece of paper with the start times of the last few skiers and then some math would ensue, eventually resulting in the time of the run being calculated.

That seems somewhat less than reliable. Obviously changes were made, and this year's Olympics will be the most high-tech yet.

Not only is everything electronic, of

Take it from Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon: You don't have to be first. The famed astronaut, whom a generation mostly associates with saying, "Second comes right after first!" during a guest spot in "The Simpsons" episode "Deep Space Homer," lifted Canada at a corporate function Sunday in Vancouver.

"The media makes an awful big thing about how many gold medals do you win, who’s first," Aldrin said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"That’s not the point."

The point for Olympic athletes should be about improving with each competition — and then motivating their teammates to reach new limits. ...

"Each mission has a part to play in adding to the capability of being able to land on the moon. Once you’ve demonstrated you can land on the moon, then you can begin to do more things having achieved that."

Strained analogies aside — comparing the Apollo 11 mission with a cross-country skier trying to move from top 10 to the top five, really? — Aldrin makes a good