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.

i guess duh! journal also covers galactically stupid behavior by purported first world, sophisticated nations:

i’ll let the news and other reports speak for themselves:

from abcnews: A pre-Olympics “slant-eye” pose by the Spanish men’s basketball team could leave the gold medal contenders with a black eye as they compete in Beijing.

An advertisement for the Spanish Basketball Federation that appeared in the Spanish daily sports newspaper Marca featured Spain’s 15 national team members in uniform pulling back the skin on their eyelids, with smiles on their faces. The team photo was taken at a center court bearing a dragon logo.

It’s a racially pejorative pose not often associated with goodwill in the United States and many other countries, where a similar gesture is more likely to be seen on a school playground than coming from Olympic statesman.

“It’s something that I haven’t seen since I was a kid,” said Sarah Smith, a spokesman for the Organization of Chinese Americans in Washington, D.C. “I can’t speak for what is considered funny in Spain. I don’t know if it has the same impact that it would here. It’s clearly racist, and not even in a jovial way.”

from deadspin.com: “The above photo was actually included in a Spanish newspaper according to The Guardian: “Spain’s Basketball Federation has published a good luck advert for their men’s team, the world champions, in which they stand pulling at the sides of their eyes in a slit-eyed gesture.” this ad ran in Spain and not a single person had an issue with it.”

“Spanish news site, Soitu’s article suggests that the international media are making too big of a deal of the “slit-eye” photo. Their article commences: “What began as a simple graceful photo to wish luck to the Spanish basketball team in the Olympic Games has finished with accusations of racism and discrimination in the foreign press.”

Yes, of course, a simple, graceful photo.

The fact that this photo exists isn’t a huge surprise. Basketball players aren’t renowned for their worldly perspective. What’s unique about this photograph is that it ran in two of Spain’s biggest newspapers. As an advertisement for a courier service, no less. And not one single person in Spain thought it was the least bit offensive. Only when other countries saw the photograph did it become an issue. Put it this way, what would have happened in America if the U.S. Basketball team posed for these photos on behalf of Fed Ex?”

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wow. i’m already agnostic towards the olympic spirit because of sarajevo. now i don’t want to believe. what next? the spectacle of the olympic games were actually doctored images?………

when people come into the city, we are always surprised by where they want to visit or go eat. they are equally surprised that we do not frequent those places or want to go eat there. no. i do not want to eat at ruby tuesdays , bennigans or tgifridays in times square. then they ask where we go……so here are the places we like…not the best or the cheapest or whatever category….just where we go and go on a regular basis…

sometimes they ask us where we can get some nyc pizza. having only tasted dominos or papa johns, maybe pizza hut, they want to see what the big deal is. a lot of italians will tell you that the secret to nyc pizza is….the water? especially in brooklyn, they swear that water does something to the dough. most outsiders don’t know that nyc and ny state has one of the finest tap water systems in the world. in md, there was an italian store that shipped slices of pizza from nyc and sold them out of their freezer. the owner also said that the unique flavor was because of the h2o.

we go to the local koronet, right by columbia university. we can walk over from where we live….its famous for its two handed slices. that is not an optical illusion. that slice is the length of my waist.

if you don’t believe me, check out jeremy using two hands on that one slice behind the snapple. and dok ok posing with his monstrous olive and anchovy cheezy, doughy goodness. speaking of waists, this is how generations of columbia alumni have fattened up over the years.

i will concede that they are better pizzas…every pizza place in nyc does things differently with their own secret recipes handed down from the motherland or maybe just their mothers. and i think the best pizzas are out in brooklyn…..but that’s too far for us to go for a slice. if you come visit, we’ll walk a few blocks over for a pretty satisfying nyc pizza experience.

john edwards just admitted having an affair with rielle hunter. and this is the picture cnn used to depict them. side by side.

who looks like the triumphant good guy? and who looks like the wicked witch of family destruction? that must be one of the best pictures ever of john edwards. and i hope that this is one of the worst pictures of rielle hunter.

wow.

At duh! journal, we report news and ask if its really “news” to anyone?!

Really? China abuses human rights? Duh!!!!!

from the makers of corporal punishment that doubles as capital punishment…..

from the makers of the one child policy in a culture where boys are gods……

from the makers of chinese/tibetian relations…..

from the makers of elementary schools that impode on kids during earthquakes…..

from the makers of chinese church culture……..

this….is cnn: (also getting a mention is north korea!)

WASHINGTON (AP) — China, host of the summer Olympics, is an authoritarian nation that denies its people basic human rights and freedoms, harasses journalists and foreign aid workers and tortures prisoners, the United States charged Tuesday.

Workers install acoustic boards at the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Fast Railway, a key project associated with the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

China is still among the world’s human rights abusers despite rapid economic growth that has transformed large parts of Chinese society, the State Department said in an annual accounting of human rights practices around the world.

Torture in China includes the use of electric shocks, beatings, shackles, and other forms of abuse, according to the report. It includes an account of a prisoner strapped to a “tiger bench,” as device that forces the legs to bend sometimes until they break.

The report details the lengths some Chinese officials have taken to enforce China’s well-known “one child” policy, and says forced relocations went up last year. The report notes claims that people were forced from their homes to make way for Olympic projects in Beijing.

“The year 2007 saw increased efforts to control and censor the Internet, and the government tightened restrictions on freedom of speech and the domestic press,” the report says of China. “The government continued to monitor, harass, detain, arrest, and imprison journalists, Internet writers, and bloggers.”

The country-by-country report is compiled separately from U.S. diplomatic efforts, and presented to Congress. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was releasing it at the State Department.

North Korea is called an absolute dictatorship with repressive policies that control the most basic aspects of daily life. The report does not mention the intensive U.S. campaign for nuclear disarmament in North Korea, which included the first regular visits in decades by U.S. diplomats to the secretive regime in 2007.

“Pregnant female prisoners underwent forced abortions in some cases, and in other cases babies were killed upon birth in prisons,” the report noted in its section covering detention and imprisonment in the North.

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and the ny times reports:

Networks Fight Shorter Olympic Leash

For several years now NBC has meticulously planned all the details for its coverage of the many sports events at the Summer Olympics in China.

But with the Games only (a few days) away, many at the network are concerned about how they will be permitted to cover any unscheduled events, like political protests or government crackdowns — or whether the Chinese government will allow them to cover such things at all.

One of the most common hypothetical questions NBC officials have bandied about involves the opening ceremonies on Aug. 8.

Hundreds of athletes will parade into a stadium in front of world leaders, including President Bush, and a huge global television audience. If an athlete holds a protest sign or waves a Tibetan flag, how will the Chinese hosts react? Will the television networks show the scene? How will the Chinese handle the media for the rest of the Games?

The stakes are high for both the network, which paid $900 million for broadcast rights for the Olympics, and the reputation of NBC News. If it covers any controversies aggressively, it risks drawing the ire of the Chinese and interfering with coverage of sports events. But if it shies from coverage of any protests, NBC risks being criticized in the West for kowtowing to China — particularly since its corporate parent, General Electric, is aggressively expanding its investments in China.

One thing is for sure, vows Steve Capus, the president of NBC’s news division: “If there’s news, we’re going to cover it.”

At the meeting, on July 9, after months of uncertainty, Chinese officials said that all applications for live broadcasting would be approved throughout Beijing and the other cities where Olympic competitions were planned. Furthermore, the committee said that all broadcasters could tape reports from Tiananmen Square.

But the broadcasters say they will not believe it until they see it. One I.O.C. commissioner, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid further complicating the situation, said matter-of-factly that Chinese officials had “put a tourniquet” on the Olympics.

“Had the I.O.C., and those vested with the decision to award the host city contract, known seven years ago that there would be severe restrictions on people being able to enter China simply to watch the Olympics, or that live broadcasting from Tiananmen Square would essentially be banned, or that reporters would be corralled at the whim of local security, then I seriously doubt whether Beijing would have been awarded the Olympics,” the commissioner said.

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maybe the IOC needs to read duh! journal more often!!!!

my yankee buddy jackie got the green light from her husband, larry to buy anything she wanted from the all star game. but she had the same attitude that i did. why buy today when its all going on sale tomorrow? its like buying christmas candy on dec 25 when you can buy it dec 26. or buying easter candy the day after easter sunday. i can wait one more day. and i did. so i picked up this shirt for $10 at 50% off or more. there were ample supplies of multiple styles.

larry said we were being chinese. jackie said…no….we’re being smart.

to thank me for taking her to the all star game….while she was doing her own yankee all star scavenging, jackie picked this up for me:

jerseys are expensive. but the all star jerseys were half the price of most authetics and with 50% off i was tempted to get one myself but after getting to go to all star week events, i was satisfied with my t-shirt. but jackie wanted to upgrade me. she got a jeter all star jersey. we’ll wear them for the yankee stadium tour and hopefully the playoffs! however, the yankees have been in a downward slide lately……

but thanks, jackie!

when people come into the city, we are always surprised by where they want to visit or go eat. they are equally surprised that we do not frequent those places or want to go eat there. no. i do not want to eat at ruby tuesdays , bennigans or tgifridays in times square. then they ask where we go……so here are the places we like…not the best or the cheapest or whatever category….just where we go and go on a regular basis

and here’s a place out of towners never ask for…its a local’s place on 43rd between 9th and 10th. since most tourists stick to 5,6,7th ave….with more adventurous ones going to 8th….a lot of local joints wind up being on 9th and 10th and beyond….havens for those who live here. there are no train lines all the way out here so toursists wandering around here are most likely lost.

its the little pie company….mainly take out and pick up pies…magical, magical pies….my favorites are the sour cream apple pie, southern pecan pie and the three berry pie…hoping to one day to encounter the seasonal cheddar cheese apple pie. they have special pies that come out monthly or more like….randomly. 10th avenue is out of the way so its hard for me to check when these are actually on sale. i call on occasion and get the same lady telling me no. we don’t have that pie….again.

i forgot to take a picture of actual pies before we scarfed them down. i will go back and get some pics and post them sometime.

there is an eating area but it seats 8? this pie company is well…..little. you can order stuff on the website but its mucho expensive. its better to come visit us and let’s pick up the pie of the month and feast at home. i’ll make french pressed coffee.