The Olympics

[rffrydr]

The Summer Olympics in Beijing are scheduled to open on 8/8/08 at 8:08:08 p.m
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

So far so good...bad:

URL link
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

"Post-Olympic stress disorder"

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12209848
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/chicago/filmmore/pt_3.html

Narrator: The world looked at Chicago with fear and wonder - and saw the future.

Narrator: The fair was a smashing success. New York's Harper's Weekly called it "the greatest event in the history of the country since the Civil War." It drew 27 million people, 14 million from abroad, the greatest tourist attraction in American history. On October 28, two days before the fair closed, Carter Harrison welcomed America's mayors to The White City. "When the fire swept over our city and laid it in ashes," he boasted, "the world said: 'Chicago and its boasting is now gone forever,' but Chicago said, 'We will rebuild the city better than ever,' and Chicago has done it." "Two years ago this thousand acres covered by these palaces...was the home of the muskrat. Look at it now! " He invited the mayors to "come out of this White City...into our black city. Then he went home. To be summoned to his door a few hours later. Summoned by a half-mad illiterate rejected for work at City Hall.Harrison's funeral was the most impressive in the young city's history. Two hundred thousand mourners paid their respects in City Hall. The procession to Graceland Cemetery was led by Chicago's titans of industry. Next came the aldermen and then Harrison's supporters - Irish, German, Polish, Bohemian, Italian, Greek, policemen, union leaders and socialists.

Miller: It's an imaging thing. The fair is an imaging thing. Chicago hated this image of the black city, the city of smoke, soot, dirt, pollution, and gambling houses, and whatever. So the idea is, you bring them into the first class hotels. And Olmsted set this up beautifully. They would take excursion boats from downtown and sweep across the magnificent skyline and land at the fair, and take a moveable sidewalk and go into the Court of Honor, and here's the new Chicago. It provided just the things that- to settle, I think, the nerve a little bit after Haymarket.

Narrator: This utopian world was reflected by the fair's official photography. All is orderly; the weather, perfect; people, lifeless.

Harris: They presented pictures of these European-like boulevards, canals with gondolas and gondoliers, escorting elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen. It was presented as an upper middle class festival. Safe, clean, lots of music, lots of art.

Narrator: It was a utopian vision. A city with broad streets shaded by trees and lined with fine buildings. Statues glistened and fountains flashed in the late afternoon sun. Public buildings were of unparalleled grandeur. Everyone had work. There were no strikes. No anarchy. And - no freedom. Workers were regimented like an army. Boston novelist Edward Bellamy published Looking Backward in 1887, a year after Haymarket. His utopian city was an uncanny foreshadowing of the fantasy city Chicago would create for its World's Fair six years later.

Duis: The fair is America's window into the future. Fairs generally function as this. It is a place where people put out outlandish ideas which can in a sense be trial balloons as to whether or not they're going to work in society as a whole. One of the most important for the Colombian Exposition was the many uses of electricity. You have an all-electric kitchen, you have electric lighting, electric elevators, electricity doing almost every kind of job in the factory or in the home. That's a very advanced idea for a lot of people.

Narrator: The next July a reporter looked up the tracks and witnessed another dark moment for the Black City. A strike at Pullman had led to a national railway strike. When this sidelined trains carrying the US mail, President Cleveland dispatched federal troops. Thirty-four people died in Chicago's bloodiest labor uprising. A Presidential commission was critical of George Pullman. In the terrible depression of 1893 he had slashed wages but not rents. Some paychecks were as little as 12 cents. He guaranteed his stockholders an 8% return.

Brown: Even the U.S. commissioners, suggested that he wasn't really playing by the rules of open capitalism, which claimed that the reason that investors were supposed to get a profit is because they took a risk

Narrator: Renowned the world over as a symbol of social responsibility, the town of Pullman was considered by the Illinois Supreme Court an agent of social control. The court forced the company to divest it, and Pullman was absorbed by Chicago. An elusive utopia became an ordinary industrial town. Within a generation, The Florence Hotel, named after Pullman's beloved daughter, was a xxx house. George Pullman's Corinthian column in Graceland Cemetery is remarkable for its beauty - and its weight. When he died brokenhearted in 1897, his casket was enshrouded in tons of reinforced cement to prevent desecration by labor activists. George Pullman had tried to speak to Chicago's labor problem, the big issue of the age, through social engineering - and failed.

Narrator: The winter after the fair closed, arsonists burned the remains of a decaying White City. It seemed to symbolize the illusion of the urban ideal.
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

The Republican forcefed, and Democratic embraced, "Constructive Engagement" can now be put to rest. Of the two grudgingly designated protest zones no permits were issued. Looks like we all need a trip to the re-education camps:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/sports/olympics/21protest.html?_r=1&scp=30&sq=where%20olympics&st=cse&oref=slogin

"Black cat, white cat...so long at it catches mice." EEM investors across the world, too young to know a world preglobalization, are beginning to come to terms with the idea of ecomomic consequences of politics. --As much so right here in the US of A.
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

The most viewed TV event OF ALL TIME:

http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/olympics-the-most-viewed-tv-event-ever/?scp=12&sq=where%20olympics&st=cse

But does that mean it was the most popular? --as in most things "per-capita" in China...and its diaspora.

3/4 million per minute and GE barely gets a blip.
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

The GK take:

[HenryTo]

BCA on the possiblity of a Chinese economic slowdown post-Olympics:

http://www.bankcreditanalyst.com/public/story.asp?pre=PRE-20080819.GIF

[HenryTo]

Definitely not "under utilized" this time around. Only video out there that is accessible for Americans:

http://www.dailymotion.com/search/usain%2Bbolt/video/x6hurd_usain-bolt-1930-record-du-monde-pas_sport

[rffrydr]

Too much "stability" for business around the Games?

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11920899

"Pause to Refresh" is the mindset. After waiting through the 50% market breakdown, RE breakdown, export breakdown..."The China Story" breakdown will come very very late and will leave many many questions -- "foresight" first among them.
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[rffrydr]

...A paradigm shift no doubt. What a perverse twist this closet ridicule that he didn' t give it "his all." He broke every standard...but celebrated IN THE ACT of doing it. Very UNprotestant.

Featured Olympics commerical: "You saw a broken down steel plant. We saw an underutilized resource."
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[HenryTo]

The Usain Bolt 100-meter dash in English. This one is for those in the US - as NBCOlympics.com still don't have a video of this and as youtube has been removing the 100-meter dash clip from their site as fast as they can (note that the Olympic videos on BBC are blocked for those in the US unless you log in via a proxy server):

http://www.dailymotion.com/search/usain%2Bbolt/video/x6ggpg_usain-bolt-world-record_sport

[diesel]

Wired article on how biotech could change the 2012 olympics.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/news/2008/08/olympic_doping?currentPage=1

[HenryTo]

Continuing controversy over the new Speedo swimming suit:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=12636

[rffrydr]

the politcs (and techoology) of watching--watching "around" the Olympics:

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/olympicblog/
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[HenryTo]

Hi Chestnut,

I know I shouldn't have pushed the issue further!

The ongoing dialogue, in my view, is encouraging. Obviously, I am no expert on Chinese politics but the ongoing dialogue and "paranoia" about the inevitability of a civil war in China makes it less likely to happen - to the extent that it encourages the current regime to deal with the social problems.

My questions for these scholars are:

1) Who are the significant threats to the Party's authority? The Party has control of the military. The "urban elites" like the way things are as long as the economy is growing at 8%+. There is a great deal of discontent in rural areas but it is dispersed. How do farmers effectively organize against the regime?

2) Is Chinese authoritarianism static or dynamic? i.e. Is there hope for future reforms or is there no hope? If it is the latter, then the chances of civil war are definitely high.

3) From a social standpoint, is the government doing enough to ensure more social safety nets, investments in education, and investments in the healthcare system? And more importantly, to decrease the amount of corruption within the country?

I will be watching the next transition of the Presidency with great interest in 2012.

Best regards,

Henry