Country by country medal counts in the Olympics don't matter.

What? Hell yes, they do!

I can't dream of an American sports fan who wouldn't at least prefer the U.S. get more medals than the Chinese. The two countries were the runaway 1-2 in medal total.

In case you didn't know, the U.S. won the medal total with 108: 36 gold, 38 silver, 36 bronze. China was second in total medals, but led in golds with 51, followed by 21 silvers and 28 golds.

So let's settle this. It's simple, as far as I'm concerned. We'll use a weighted system: 3 points for gold, 2 for silver, 1 for bronze. By that measure, the results are:

U.S.A., 220

China, 223

Uh, check that — let's go back to the original medal count totals.

This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2008.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...