Is it really a surprise that much of the Olympic spectacle is fake?
The stunning, widely used footage of firework “footprints” leading to the Olympic stadium during the opening ceremony was, it transpires, computer-generated. We now know why a film director was asked to run the event.
Lin Miaoke, the little girl who apparently sang the Chinese anthem, was in fact lip-synching to the voice of another little girl. A meeting involving a politburo member decided that although Yang Peiyi was the best singer, she was not pretty enough to take part in the ceremony. She should be heard, but not seen.
Then again, cheering crowds are being bused into stadia by the government, armed with noise-makers and decked in colourful attire to improve the leaden atmosphere inside. In some cases the visitors are taking the places of real fans, who have found themselves unable to buy tickets.
Or that at least half of the Chinese woman’s gymnastics team aren’t actually 16 years old:
According to reporting from U.S. news organizations, half of China’s six-member women’s gymnastics team that won the gold medal today was not old enough to be competing in the event. The rules say competitors have to turn 16 in the Olympic year to be eligible for the Games, meaning they have to have been born in 1992 or earlier.
This is where China’s math and the rest of the world’s math diverge. Yang Yilin, a medal contender in the all-around, was born Aug. 26, 1993, according to the official 2004, 2005 and 2006 national registration lists previously posted on the General Administration of Sport of China website, the Associated Press has reported. That means Yang is still 14, with her 15th birthday approaching.
But, interestingly enough, on the 2007 registration list, her birthday became Aug. 26, 1992.
How about He Kexin, a medal favorite on uneven bars? In articles and registration lists from 2005, 2006 and 2007, found by The New York Times and the Associated Press, she was born Jan. 1, 1994. Oh-oh.
But her Chinese passport says she was born Jan. 1, 1992. (Doesn’t this happen with aging Hollywood actresses, only in reverse?)
And Jiang Yuyuan, another pillar of China’s team? A list of competitors at a 2007 provincial competition listed an Oct. 1, 1993, birth date.
When the perceived stakes are high, those with complete power will break every rule for their own benefit.
One of the many things that is extremely annoying about the D&D site is the lack of an option to remember my login. The first time I try to access restricted content after restarting my browser, I get warnings that I need to login. This is D&DI not my bank account — there is no reason not to allow sessions to persist longer. Please get a clue and implement.
Lawless Metro bus drivers have been a constant problem in the University District. The most persistent example is at the intersection of 45th and 15th Ave NE — buses turning left to travel west on 45th regularly (many times a day) run a red turn-arrow light and block the intersection so that pedestrians and cars cannot pass. I and others have reported this issue regularly but no one at Metro cares. Today, I almost saw a couple people get killed by another lawless bus driver.
In the heart of the University District, University Way (”The Ave”) does not allow passing. It is fairly common for cars to try to pass a bus that is embarking/disembarking passengers — I always am extremely careful when exiting a bus and then passing in front of the bus to use a crosswalk. Today I saw a Metro bus try to pass an articulated bus that was embarking a passenger with limited mobility. The offending bus was a #30 — I wasn’t able to get a good look at the bus but the bus number was something like 3036 — but it was whichever one was at 45th and the Ave at 12:27PM today. As the #30 bus was accelerating by the parked bus, the driver of the parked bus had the presence of mind to lay on his horn to indicate to the rogue driver that he was about to run down some pedestrians in the intersection. The #30 stopped in time so that I (and all other King County tax payers) won’t have to pay for the wrongful death settlement.
Bus drivers have to put up with a lot of crap that they shouldn’t have to — particularly from passengers, but NOTHING justifies this kind of reckless behavior. This driver deserves to be fired immediately.
If there was ever an entirely irrational and hypocritical organization, PETA would be it. More PETA insanity:
PETA recently celebrated World Vegetarian Week in Memphis by shrink-wrapping its interns like a couple of flank steaks, despite 80+ degree weather.
When officers inquired about the well-being of intern Shawn Herbold (bottom) and volunteer Thomas Olsen, a sweat-soaked Herbold replied that she was in pain and feeling nauseated from the heat after being wrapped in cellophane for 30 minutes, and also asked how much longer she needed to stay there. Byrne let her know it wouldn’t be much longer and left her under the hot afternoon sun for 30 minutes more while debating with the officers.
Gotta hate the pet murdering PETA.
So today at work, on the Techsupport list there was a long drawn out discussion about Calendars and MS Exchange (largely complaints about cost). Near the end of the thread, the MSCA team’s comparison of the features available to the various clients was included. I haven’t done any confirmation of their findings (largely because I have no access to do so and they are theoretically the local experts), but one of the identified differences with the (non IE) Web Client that jumped out at me as noteworthy:
No weekly or monthly calendar view
WHAT!?!?! How do you have a web-calendar product that can’t produce weekly or monthly views of your calendar? There are hundreds of free web calendaring projects and ALL of them have weekly and monthly views.
The entire Outlook Web Access team should hang their heads in shame for being unable to provide the most basic of features that twelve year olds with no development experience are capable of producing.
Currently, we use Oracle Calendar which is a mediocre product, but it does have Windows, Mac, and Linux clients in addition to a web client — and that web client (which pretty much blows) seems to be vastly superior to OWA. Originally, I didn’t care too much that I was going to be forced to use Exchange for calendaring because Oracle Calendar was not too useful, but facing a massive downgrade in functionality I’m none to happy.
I don’t have to use the product (yet) but its inferior vacation messaging is extremely annoying. Today I send a planned outage notice to our internal notice maillist and received two vacation emails from Exchange users that are out of the office — ARGH. Vacation mailers should not notify the sender when the on vacation person is not in the list of recipients. The University of Washington’s Email Delivery Manager (EDM) has had this feature for YEARS. In addition, EDM adds a unique header that signifies that the vacation notice was sent by the vacation program. And one more thing: Why the hell are the vacation notices sent as base64 encoded text/plain and text/html! How about saving everyone the trouble and just send the text without the encoding? Stupid bloated annoying crap. These are small trivial issues that should be able to be resolved with about 2 hours of development time — including unit tests and documentation.
I’ve watched the first two episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and while I have enjoyed parts of the show I just can’t justify watching it. I have two serious issues with the show:
Warning there are some spoilers for the first two episodes.
Time Travel: while the original “Terminator” started with time travel it was treated as a near unique event (only done twice — the Terminator and Kyle Reece). But in the series, there are six time travel incidents: Good Terminator, Bad Terminator, the scientist, the bank jump, the freedom fighters, and Bad Terminator 2. This strikes me as the worst kind of Rick Berman plot that culminated in the “Temporal Cold War” that was the initial plot of “Star Trek: Enterprise”. This is just a sign of desperate writers that don’t have a good plot and have to rely on attracting a sci-fi audience with gimics.
Inconsistency: The show doesn’t even follow the time travel rules faithfully — even at the same time the rules are quoted. Specifically, nothing artificial can travel through time (unless wrapped in organic mater). At the Bank Jump, just as the protagonists are about to make their time travel, Sarah fires plasma weapon (?) at Bad Terminator destroying its skin and blowing of its head. At first I nodded in approval thinking that this was how SkyNet gets its start — with the technology from this destroyed Bad Terminator — but no. The damaged bad Terminator is transported to the future with the protagonists — when it should have been eliminated just like the plasma weapon and the protagonists clothes.
I cannot forgive these failures because allowing them to continue just drags down the quality of future shows. Instapundit seems to enjoy the show — and I agree about Summer Glau’s acting skill and spookiness, but it isn’t enough for me.
If you have any positive associations with Ron Paul (or if you despise him and want greater justification) you should read The New Republics article on him: Angry White Man:
Martin Luther King Jr. earned special ire from Paul’s newsletters, which attacked the civil rights leader frequently, often to justify opposition to the federal holiday named after him. (”What an infamy Ronald Reagan approved it!” one newsletter complained in 1990. “We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.”) In the early 1990s, a newsletter attacked the “X-Rated Martin Luther King” as a “world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours,” “seduced underage girls and boys,” and “made a pass at” fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. One newsletter ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that “Welfaria,” “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” “Dirtburg,” and “Lazyopolis” were better alternatives. The same year, King was described as “a comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration.”
While bashing King, the newsletters had kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. In a passage titled “The Duke’s Victory,” a newsletter celebrated Duke’s 44 percent showing in the 1990 Louisiana Senate primary. “Duke lost the election,” it said, “but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment.” In 1991, a newsletter asked, “Is David Duke’s new prominence, despite his losing the gubernatorial election, good for anti-big government forces?” The conclusion was that “our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom.” Duke is now returning the favor, telling me that, while he will not formally endorse any candidate, he has made information about Ron Paul available on his website.
And there is more … much more.
While there is no evidence that Paul wrote these words they were published in newsletters that bore his name for more than a decade. So he either supports (or at least tolerates) these views, or he is so horrifically negligent that he shouldn’t be trusted with any responsibility (so a back bencher in the House of Representatives might be a great location for him). I will NEVER vote for Paul.
I really can’t agree more with the Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen on the ridiculousness of the Democrat’s caucus in Iowa:
In “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” King Arthur and his knights come across Camelot, and at least initially, couldn’t be more pleased. After thinking it over, and considering exactly what goes on inside Camelot, Arthur concludes, “On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.”
I’ve come to think of the Iowa caucuses in the same light. Before the nominating process begins in earnest, Iowa has a certain Midwestern charm, filled with voters who appreciate their role in picking the next president. Like Camelot, it’s something to look forward to. But as we finally come upon Jan. 3, and get a look at what’s involved, it’s pretty obvious that the Iowa caucuses are much too silly….
Voting by absentee ballot is prohibited. There are no secret ballots, a bedrock democratic principle. The notion of “one-person, one-vote” does not really apply (the NYT noted that votes are weighted according to a precinct’s past level of participation)…
And just to add insult to injury, no one is allowed to know exactly how many Iowans actually voted for the different candidates — the Iowa Democratic Party gets the numbers, but keeps them private. (The results that designate the “winner” only reflect the share of state delegates each candidate has won.) As Greenfield noted, it means “a candidate who turned out more total supporters than anyone else, across the state, could wind up in second or third place — and no one will know.”
This process should not be tolerated. The Democrat’s caucus in Iowa violates every principle of modern democratic elections the DNC should decertify the process and everyone should ignore Iowa’s Democratic caucus until they institute reforms as the Republicans have.
Washington Policy Center has a list of the “The ten things you should know about “roads and transit”. While they are all good I like the bonus point at the end:
Bonus: It would be cheaper to pay Sound Transit’s new riders $100,000 each to not drive. The impact on traffic congestion would be the same and taxpayers would save more than $8 billion dollars.
I know this may be hard for the Sound Transit board to understand, but we don’t want our money taken from us to create a massive Corporate/Union welfare program that will ingratiate those businesses/unions to our local politicians.