"THIS IS SPAAAAAARTA!"

They ought to give Jason Lezak two gold medals, a sword and shield for that effort! What a hero! From Associated Press: "... When his veteran teammate touched the wall, Phelps let out a scream of triumph, punching his arms in the air as teammates Garrett Weber-Gale and Cullen Jones joined him in the celebrations.

"Unbelievable! Jason finished that race way better than we could have even asked for," Phelps said. "For that last 50, I was thinking 'this is going to be one close race'.

"The last 10 to 15 metres were incredible. I lost my voice, and I was definitely pretty emotional after that."

Trailing at the final turn, Lezak relentlessy pursued Bernard, but it wasn't until the final 10 meters that the American was able to pull level and, finally, edge ahead as he touched with an astonishing split of 46.06sec. ..." [Splits at Swimming World]

Why these Olympics have been so good for China, the Athletes, and the Olympic ideal!

The Olympic ideal has just received an investment equal to a defense budget of the third largest country on earth thus giving it's mission statement sublime credibility.

Estimates are that China has spent 40-billion-dollars on these Olympics. Now contrast that to the Chinese defense budget which is estimated at 44.7-billion-dollars. (The United States spent 481-billion-dollars on our defense budget.)

Obviously the Chinese felt that the 2008 Beijing Olympics are so important to their nation's image and morale that it was equal in importance to their ability to defend themselves.

Imagine if the United States spent 1/3-of-a-trillion dollars on a summer Olympics? The figure is so large that it is absurd and incomprehensible. Athens and London have and will spend perhaps 10% of what the Chinese paid. Obviously China wants to demonstrate they have arrived on the world stage and want to be considered credible, reliable and innovative. I suspect my feelings are shared by many now. The Chinese are also humble about it by outsourcing this endeavor to western firms.

The experience these 2008 athletes will have will be perhaps never be surpassed. For instance, If Michael Phelps blasts 8-golds, these Olympics will be the IOC's finest 16 days in the history of the movement. i.e. The great achievement of any Olympic athlete, the most medals garnered by an Olympian and the biggest, "swankiest," Olympics ever.

As for human rights, pollution and political rights: I know nothing about political science but perhaps these are the growing pains that a totalitarian society goes through as it makes its transitional to a democracy?

I am not happy about their environmental and human rights havoc but I am not happy about the United States environmental and human rights havoc as of late either.

Edited to fix grammar and add the last sentence: [8/18/09]

USA defense budge reference: US Dept. of Defense [Link]
China defense budget reference: Info-Wars: [Link]

'Coca-Cola' creates Beijing Olympic Stadium or "Bird Nest" commercial!

Homage to the Beijing Olympic stadium. Originally found at Not.cot who found it at Shape and Color.

No stage persona here: This is probably the real Gold Medal Mel!

Gold Medal Mel is in Beijing and in this YouTube you can hear a tinge of anxiety in his voice as he foreshadows that he may be covering topics more serious than usual.

I say this because he mentions that he is spending time with corporate types within the USOC as well as USA Swimming staff. When you start speaking to people at that level, your words have to be measured and your facts have to be solid. I find it refreshing.

Five ways technology is changing the next Olympics

My favorite tech changing 'gizmo' for the Olympics is the camera that can take 2,000 photos per second. Talk about a photo finish! That 1 second of static motion, if converted to live action footage, would be about 65 seconds of viewing time.

However, this one really stood out. From the Io9 blog : "... China has claimed that they will "attack" and shut down websites that broadcast Olympic events illegally. No one is sure if this means they intend to attack other countries' websites or private sites hosted internationally. If they do, it could be the first case of open international cyber warfare. [Link]

Reductio ad absurdum or imagine this: Floswimming is interviewing Eddie Reese by the side of the pool but accidentally the camera catches a tiny splash of water from a Jamaican swimmer's flipturn while she is warming down in the secondary pool.

Suddenly, the weight of the Chinese military, with NBC and USA Swimming's blessing, let slip the dogs of war and Chinese networking experts attack Floswimming from the other side of the Planet for weeks on end. They use a classic "Denial of Service" (DOS) attack and it brings Floswimming's servers down to their knees. There was no cease and desist or nasty letter from USA Swimming, there was no due process either, just cyber-warfare at the behest of a corporation.

What would Dick Cheney do if that happened?

As silly as that sounds, and it is a silly scenario, but why is it that a corporation's content can suddenly be protected by ordering a military attack without due process or even a cease and desist letter?

Hmm, Perhaps because it's China?

Dogs are off the menu at hotels and restaurants for the Beijing Olympics!

1,000-years-ago China was technologically ahead of the rest of the planet by about 400 years or so. They sailed a "clipper-like" ship into the Mediterranean one day and it was like Martians had landed. Imagine brightly colored, silk sails, on a multi-mast ship with a massive rudder never ever seen before.

They had fireworks, paper, ornate fabrics that the Europeans had never seen before and they were blown away. Ultimately the Chinese were underwhelmed with Europe and decided to close up shop and screw trading with the Europeans who had everything to gain and nothing to give.

Now zoom up 1000 years later to RIGHT NOW! and China is seemingly between 50-150 years behind western Europe depending on which Chinese province or city you are in. In some places it's America circa 1960 with grand steel mills, enormous cranes, and industrial fortresses spewing out smog and pollution that hurt both your eyes and nose as you contribute to it all while driving down the street in a Chinese Buick La Crosse. (Buick still exists there.)

In other places it's London circa 1880 and the public is burning coal for heating and cooking and they are also drinking the same water from the same river that they "deficate" in. I suspect the majority of pollution is coming from coal burning rather than industrial smoke stacks.

Are these guys ready for "prime-time?"

U.S. Olympic Officials Call Beijing Pollution Levels 'Awful' [Link]

Chinese people eat dogs but next month they are off the menu: [Link]

The picture to the right came from ABC News.com. I copied the photo and adjusted the levels in Photoshop since the photo they have up is not displaying the correct color information. Their photo looks like pee-soup. This photo is more accurate and it is still bad.

Beijing Olympics: Food and water will be diverted - May push China into a prolonged recession!

A fellow swim blogger sent me this and though swimming isn't discussed in this article what is discussed is the unimaginable lengths China is going through to make the Olympics a successful event. The extent to which they are going is summarily irrational and boggles the mind.

From the article: "... A forced shutdown of Beijing's factories and power plants during the games will throw China into an economic downturn.

Diversion of safe food to the Olympic Village will cause food riots elsewhere in China.

The transfer of 80 billion gallons of water -- equal to the annual water consumption of Tucson, Ariz., a city of 535,000 -- from Shaanxi and other provinces in northwestern China will shut down factories and agriculture in the region. ..." [Link]

Now, the media is full of horror and hyperbole but what made these predictions plausible to me is that China claims to spend $30-billion on defense; (the Pentagon thinks it is more like $97-billion or more), but please realize the USA spends $515-billion on our defense budget. [BBC reference: Link]

With that in mind, Beijing is spending $39-billion on these Beijing games. That is between there entire defense budget or one-third of their defense budget depending on who you believe. Imagine if the United States spent $200-billion on an Olympic Games? That comparable scale of spending would have to have a ripple effect within any economy. With Tibet going off, The Sudan, and Dafur as a political hot potato for China, these Olympics games could be China's "Rubicon." (The Rubicon was a river that Julius Ceasar crossed to reenter Rome. His crossing the Rubicon was the apex of his career. After that it was all down hill.)

If China is embarrassed by their pollution, poverty and human rights abuses, the games may be considered a success but China and it's communism may be considered a "flop" by the rest of the world.

The photo above is the lighting of the 2004 Olympic Flame. It was found here at the Beijing Olympic site: [Link]

Olympics Preparation: Beijing death camp for cats

China has gone from a feudal state to a partially regulated industrial age in the span of 37 years. That is an epic accomplishment but cities exist there that are choked with sulfurous smog, coal smoke, overcrowding, bad water, and poor sewage.

It's some regions it is a version of 182o's London when people were drinking from the same river they were defecating in or simply just defecated into a pit below the floorboards. If you could go back in time and walk down a London Street circa 1820, you would probably vomit or literally be infected by a virus or bacteria by the day's end. Unfortunately, the same reality applies to China.

Currently Chinese cats are suffering some hideous disease that disfigures them and makes them rather displeasing to the eye. Hence, cats are being culled in Beijing in time for the Olympics.

From the Daily Mail article: "...Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.

Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around.

Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city...." Warning, graphic photo a sick cat within the article: [Link]

Prince Charles: Yay! British Olympic Chiefs: Nay!

The first two paragraphs of this , Daily Mail piece astonished me: "... British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China's appalling human rights record – or face being banned from travelling to Beijing.

The move – which raises the spectre of the order given to the England football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938 – immediately provoked a storm of protest. ..."

My take: Is the Chinese government’s hold on power so anemic or tenuous that public criticism by individual athletes could perhaps inspire the population to reevaluate its current form of government?

So, where does Prince Charles fit in? He is simply going to use his free speech and not support or attend the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.