I guess duh! journal also covers galactically stupid behavior by purported first world, sophisticated nations(see yesterday 8/12/8 )…and dumb deception by countries who want to be known as a first world, sophisticated nation.

in the early 90’s when the little league world series was captured by the taiwanese, they came to nyc to visit my mom’s chinese school. i told my mom that these kids don’t look like they’re in junior high….they look like they’re ready for college. my mom said that i was being ridiculous. i insisted that middle school kids don’t have mustaches and 5 o’clock shadows. later on, it was confirmed by investigators that some of the “little leaguers” were not so little.

the moral of the story is that when you get caught lying in sports at the international level, you look stupid.

this is called foreshadowing, kids.

here’s a trio of disturbing smoke and mirrors stories:

from abcnews: So the Chinese women have their first-ever Olympic team gold medal. Good for them. But their prize will always be viewed under a cloud of suspicion — prior to these Games, several publications, most notably The New York Times, found evidence that at least two of the Chinese gymnasts were only 14, two years younger than the Olympic minimum — and to some extent the image of gymnastics has suffered a black eye. The Olympics is, above all else, based on the principles of fair competition, and the promotion of healthy bodies through sport. There is something mildly discomfiting about the sight of such tiny youngsters weighed down by the hopes of a nation, even after the gold medals are hanging around their feathery necks.

from cnn: Martha Karolyi, the national team coordinator of the second-placed United States team, noticed something. It was another hint that at least one of the Chinese gymnasts may be underage and breaking the rules at these Olympics.

“One of the girls has a missing tooth,” Karolyi said, suggesting that the gymnast had lost her baby tooth and an adult tooth had yet to replace it.

“I have no proof, so I can’t make an affirmation,” she said of the alleged age falsification on the Chinese team. “But it possibly could be true. That doesn’t give an even playing field.”

from NYT: Pigtailed and smiling, Lin Miaoke, age 9, stood in a red dress and white shoes during Friday’s Olympic opening ceremonies and performed “Ode to the Motherland” in what would become one of the evening’s most indelible images: a lone child, fireworks blazing overhead, singing a patriotic ballad before an estimated one billion viewers.

Except that her proud father, Lin Hui, noticed “that the voice was a little different from hers.” On Tuesday, Mr. Lin said in a telephone interview that he had assumed “the difference might be caused by the acoustics.”

Acoustics had nothing to do with it. Under pressure from the highest levels of the ruling Communist Party to find the perfect face and voice, the ceremonies’ production team concluded that the best solution was to use two girls instead of one.

Miaoke, a third grader, was judged cute and appealing but “not suitable” as a singer. Another girl, Yang Peiyi, 7, was judged the best singer but not as cute.

“Everyone should understand this in this way,” Mr. Chen said. “This is in the national interest. It is the image of our national music, national culture, especially during the entrance of our national flag. This is an extremely important, extremely serious matter.”

By Tuesday, the Chinese news media had already pounced on the story, instigating a national conversation that government censors were trying to mute by stripping away many, but not all, of the public comments posted online.

Many remaining comments expressed outrage over the cold calculation used to appraise the girls.

“Please save the last bit of trueness in our children,” wrote one person, who used the online name Weirderhua. “They think Yang Peiyi’s smile is not cute enough? What we need is truth, not some fake loveliness! I hope the kids will not be hurt. This is not their fault.”

Beijing enhanced Olympics show

with faked fireworks

BEIJING, China (AP) — Not all was what it seemed during the spectacular opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Beijing organizers confirmed Tuesday that some of the fireworks display featured prerecorded footage.

Fireworks that burst into the shape of 29 gigantic footprints were shown trudging above the Beijing skyline to the National Stadium near the start of the ceremony.

Though the footprint-shaped fireworks were real, some of the footage shown to television viewers around the world and on giant screens inside the “Bird’s Nest” stadium featured a computer-generated three-dimensional image.

“It was confirmed that previously recorded footage was provided to the broadcasters for convenience and theatrical effects — as in many other big events,” Beijing organizing committee spokesman Wang Wei said. “On the day of the ceremony there were actual footprints of fireworks from the south to the north of the city.

“However, because of the poor visibility of the night, some previously recorded footage may have been used.”

The computerized images were produced by Crystal Digital Technology Co. of Beijing.

“We did our best to create a rendering that would look like the shot was taken live,” company spokesman Lei Ming told the Beijing Times. “Most people could not tell the difference.”

NBC said broadcasters Bob Costas and Matt Lauer told viewers the display was cinematic.

“This is actually almost animation,” Lauer said on the air.

The ceremony won rave reviews around the world and was watched by more than 1 billion people.

In the United States on NBC, the ceremony averaged 34.2 million U.S. viewers, making it the biggest American television event since the Super Bowl.

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looks like matt lauer was wrong: it wasn’t almost animation…. it was animation! i’m sure the show would have looked great “regular” or live. nobody in the stadium seemed to complain.

i was trying to figure out why this triggered my duh! alarms. who’s stupid or looks stupid in this story? while the chinese were dumb to think they could pull these things off without anyone knowing, i think unfortunately, its the olympic audience that winds up feeling stupid. here they are enjoying what they thought was spectacular and real sights…a show for the ages…..tremendous athletic competition….but they are actually watching cartoons! imagine thinking star wars was real until someone schooled you about special effects.

mary katherine gallagher thinks our feelings about the beijing olympics can best be expressed in this page from superman by geoff johns and gary frank:

this is a black mark on the olympics…is deception part of the olympic spirit? maybe in china. they sound like they’re ok with it! or maybe they got the real olympic spirit right…the spirit of self promotion.

when you’re trying to make an impression on the world, why would you risk this? don’t they know how fast stories like this spread? its like they don’t have the internet there. at least, not the whole internet. it smacks of arrogance.

if i was agnostic about the olympics before, when i think of the olympics now, i think of arcade fire’s rebellion: “everytime i close my eyes, lies, lies….” the realest thing during these olympics is russia crushing georgia.