what i learned today

Well that went smoothly - no significant environmental problems, no catastrophic protests, and no terrorist attacks, as many had predicted. However, there were some hiccups at the Beijing Olympics. I kept a running count of them:

1. Opening Ceremony: fireworks were digitally enhanced.
2. Opening Ceremony: Child singer was lip syncing because the real singer was not “very cute”
3. Opening Ceremony: Games organizers launched 1,110 cloud-seeding missiles shot from 21 areas surrounding Beijing before the opening ceremony. The missiles contained silver iodide which caused rain in those areas rather than over the Bird’s Nest.
4. Underage Gymnasts: He Kexin, Yang Yilin, Jiang Yuyuan are all disputably underage. The IOC instructed the FIG to look into the gymnasts ages, but I haven’t heard much since.
5. Media Coverage: China roughs up media coverage of protests.
6. The Dedication of the Synchronized swimmers – While watching synchronized swimming, the announcers described team China’s training:  the athletes are removed from their homes at age 12 and are sent to live at the training facility. Their lives revolve around the sport, and they receive education at the facility. The announcer described the story of one athlete who asked for the weekend off. Her coach asked her why she needed the weekend off: Because she hadn’t seen her family in 12 years. “That’s true dedication to her sport, to go that long without seeing her family” gushed the announcer. Dedication?!
7. American Death: The first happened during the first day of the Olympics. The father-in-law of the Men’s Indoor Volleyball Coach was stabbed at noon at the Drum Tower, a popular tourist site.
8. Another American Death: The other death actually happened prior to the Olympics, on August 4 but was mysteriously covered up. A woman, an Olympic volunteer from Chicago, fell down manhole on the sidewalk and died. Who removed the manhole? Over 24,000 manholes were stolen from the streets of Beijing and sold to scrap metal dealers trying to meet increased demand during the Olympic building boom. During the Olympics, another volunteer posted the details of the woman’s death in a blog. That post was replaced within a few hours with a benign description. Authorities claimed she had fallen from a train or fallen through the roof of a building.
9. Mr. Tang: A journalist ran a story last week about land disputes going on in Beijing. She immediately received menacing phone calls from a man refusing to identify himself other than Tang (“you haven’t met me, but you know what I do”) who demanded to know where the journalist lives and who were the people profiled in the story.
10. One World One Dream: I’d say this photo depicts the situation best.
11. More Gold Medals than the US?!

That’s 3,276 hours spent primping and preening for a night out - enough time for an astronaut to fly to the moon and back 22 times. This is per a recent poll of 1,000 women between the ages of 18 and 60, conducted by Skinbliss, a women’s beauty brand.

“Michael Phelps is leaving Beijing as a global sports icon. He’s now with the likes of the Michael Jordans, Tiger Woods and Roger Federers and he’s earned every bit to be in that elite company,” says the head of global sponsorship at Visa, one of Michael Phelps’ sponsors.

The brands seem to agree and are clamoring for a piece of Phelps, Inc. He’s endorsed by Speedo, AT&T Wireless, Powerbar, Omega Watches, Pure Sport, and Kellogg’s. Phelps will soon adorn the boxes of not only Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, but Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes as well.  His $3 to 5 million per year in company endorsements will be multiplied by ten, strategists project.

But Michael Phelps isn’t the only Phelps with value. Mrs. P, who has received more prime-time coverage than most Olympic athletes in Beijing, has a sponsor list of her own. After taking “the hearts of America in terms of parenting and mom of the year,” per Phelps’ agent, and being named “Mom of the Games” per People, she is doing some work with Johnson’s Baby (of J&J), the ADHD Foundation, and Chico’s, the ladies clothing store.  Yep, Mrs. P appears to be a fashion icon - after she was seen clad head-to-toe in Chico’s at the Olympics, the company’s “phone lines have been ringing off the hook. Women everywhere want to know how to get Debbie’s look,” says Chico’s Brand President. Though I simply don’t believe that can be true, this potential boost in Chico’s branding could be huge for the company, considering its stock price has seen a 75% decline in the past year. Check out the Debbie Phelps Collection, it could be your lucky charm too!

It may soon be time to say goodbye to the gray whale, the gray wolf, the wild yak, and the iconic bald eagle (and 1234 others), and the laws that protect them. That’s because in his 11^th hour, Bush is trying to overhaul the Endangered Species Act.

The ESA was created in 1973 when Nixon decided current conservation acts were inadequate and called upon Congress to pass more comprehensive legislation to protect endangered species. The purpose of the ESA was to protect species and “the ecosystems upon which they depend.” There are currently 1238 endangered animals and 747 endangered plants on the list, which is updated daily.

Under the ESA, any project that may disrupt the ecosystem and impact an endangered species must be approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. For example, if the Department of Transportation wanted to build a bridge somewhere that could damage the ecosystem of the Florida Scrub Jay, the plan must undergo an independent review by scientists at the FWS or the NMFS. Between 1998 and 2002, the Fish and Wildlife Service conducted 300,000 consultations. And the National Marine Fisheries Service conducts about 1,300 reviews each year.

The proposed overhaul would allow the Department of Transportation to determine if the project would disrupt the ecosystem. The goal of such measures is to end one of many environmental reviews that federal agencies and developers blame for delays and cost increases on many projects. Federal agencies and private developers say the process of reviewing each project has killed some worthwhile projects. So I guess they’d rather kill the species than the project.

Luckily, Obama opposes the act, stating “we should be looking for ways to improve it, not weaken it.” McCain so far has no comment. The proposal was laid out in the Federal Register, and allows a public comment period of 30 days. Mind you, that public comment period was shortened from 60 days to 30 because per an Interior Department spokeswoman, “It was determined that we needed to move forward in a timely fashion.”

Poor National Enquirer. Nobody believed you when, in October 2007, you cried “Edwards Cheating Scandal.” Wikipedia didn’t even heed your call.

While you were digging into the Edwards scandal - publishing stories about his affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter, his illegitimiate child, how he paid his aid Andrew Young (who is married with children) to go live with Hunter under the guise that he was the one having the affair, and following Edwards to the Beverly Hilton hotel where he met Hunter and the child – major newspapers were sweeping the story under the rug. They ignored your plebian cries due to your lack of credibility, and instead, published front pagers about an unproven alleged McCain-lobbyist affair.

But look at you now. You were right! John Edwards admitted to the affair, and papers everywhere are vindicating you.

Oh, how they should have known! You’re not the alien searching tabloids that I thought you were (it’s true, I searched far and wide for an Enquirer alien story to little avail). I must have had you confused with Weekly World News. You know, the mag you share the check-out stand with? Bat boy ring a bell? Nay, you just write about celebrities and politics. Usually about plastic surgery gone wrong, Brangelina’s escapades, secret affairs of the stars, or cellulite. Lots of cellulite. But when you get a story, you dig. Deep. You cracked the Jesse Jackson illegitimate child case, you uprooted the pic of Donna Rice sitting on Gary Hart’s lap, and you exposed the story of Limbaugh’s drug problem. And now this!

What a world it would be if the other publications heeded your cry! “Change” may not have been the buzzword of the summer. That’s because Hillary would have received the Democratic nomination. If others believed you and pressured Edwards to admit to his affair, Clinton would have received his votes and won Iowa. At least that’s the view of Howard Wolfson, former communication director for the Hillary campaign. Could it be true? I suppose we shall never know.

Have you noticed that every Olympic swim event is also a record smasher? It seems like every swimmer (and not just Phelps) is seconds ahead of the daunting green world record line, smashing it to smithereens. So how is all this record breaking possible?

• Tech Doping – The new Speedo LZR RACER suit, which was developed by scientists from NASA, “feels like a rocket coming off the wall,” said Phelps in a team interview. “The water just runs off the suit.” The suit has “ultrasonically welded” seams that mimics a shark skin, holds in the swimmer’s abdomen in the best position, allowing him to take in 5% more oxygen, and takes an athlete 30 minutes to get into. The suits are so powerful that US Swim Coach, Mark Schubert believed every swim record could be smashed at Beijing.
  
• Pool Depth – The pool in Beijing, known as the “Water Cube,” is 3 meters deep, instead of the previous depth of 2 meters. This allows swimmers to dive deeper and continue their push off “dolphin kicks” for a longer period of time. Olympic medalist and commentator Rowdy Gaines says, “It’s just deep enough to where the waves dissipate (and) the turbulence dissipates down to the bottom.”
• Pool Lanes – There are ten lanes in the Water Cube, instead of the usual eight, leaving the outside lanes open. This reduces turbulence and enables swimmers to go faster. “It’s by far the fastest pool in the world,” Gaines says.
• Practice – Sponsorship for swimming has increased, which allows athletes to avoid retirement for longer, and thus practice more. Mark Spitz, the Olympic swimmer with the most gold medals before Phelps, retired at 22 after the Munich games due to his inability to make a living as an amateur athlete. Back then, the Olympics only allowed amateur athletes to compete. Phelps, on the other hand, is now 23 has an estimated annual earnings of $5 million, and will be awarded an extra $1 million dollar bonus from Speedo if he reaches or beats Spitz’s record.
• Non-Tech Doping - Gary Hall Jr., previous Olympian 50-m freestyle champion, seems to think so. “Can suit technology distract from another issue?… I’m telling you this, I train with an international group of swimmers and all of them have stories and a few of them have had offers.” Hall likens today’s “blame it on the suit” situation to that of the ‘76 East German women’s Olympic swimming team. Though, he seems to be the only one  speaking out about this so perhaps he’s just bitter he didn’t qualify for Beijing.
• “Top Secret” Technology Math Tool - Professor Timothy Wei, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., helped develop top-secret, state-of-the-art equipment and mathematical techniques that USA Swimming coaches have been using to help to make swimmers go faster. He uses water flow diagnostic technologies to see how each swimmers’ motion affects the flow of water. Learn more from (or become more confused by) this video.