The annual picnic on Saturday in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx was pretty nice – lovely weather, delicious kalbi, and Olympic trivia.
Michael Phelps is even more The Man, with eight… His place in Olympic history is pretty fixed. The next question is what will he do in the future?
Plus, what will this means for NBC? They’ve done quite well with the ratings with Phelps. They’ve regained an identity as a network (heavily promoting their fall lineup and their whole “chime in” slogan to remind you of the NBC “sound”). Without Phelps, what will we watch with the rest of the Olympics? Well, I’ve been sucked into watching the engrossing stuff, so it’s not like we can avoid it for the rest of the week.
NY Times’ Edward Wong on the complicated feelings of being an ethnic Chinese (but American) in the middle of the Chinese Olympics.
Newsweek.com’s Melinda Liu asks various people on their ideas of the Olympics’ implications on China; so, Prof. Daniel A. Bell discusses how China may be returning to the values of Confucius – family values and charity, etc. Quite a thing to think about.
Melinda Liu also summarizes on the various “oops” of the Olympics so far (the CGI fireworks of the Opening Ceremonies; the switched little girl singing; the Spanish teams’ shenanigans; the list goes on; I doubt there’s ever a perfect Olympics).
What happened to US Boxing was bizarre.
Softball’s existence for Olympics is coming to a near close, along with baseball.
NY Times’ Nicholas D. Kristof attempts to apply for a permit to have a protest in Beijing; bureaucracy pretty much discourages him from doing it. Oh well. He tried.
Non-Olympic stuff:
John McCain has identified Teddy Roosevelt as his model of great President; but how much of TR is really in McCain? TR, after all, was progressive, and wouldn’t exactly be the idol of the conservative wing of the Republican party.
I wonder if this idea of massive solar energy plants could work effectively. But, they do have a lot of sun in CA, so why not try? (besides the amount of money involved, of course).
Plus, some cities are thinking of resorting back to using trolleys, considering the cost of gas. Well, it’s kind of nice that mass transit’s getting more evaluation, even if it’s more because of the “gas is expensive” reasoning.