Reputation... and Image and Sportsmanship?

So, Olympics Games is well on its way. Athletes are breaking records like mindless rules, they are just proving mankind is getting stronger, faster and better, at least physically. However, of all the things that happened, one thing came to my mind - how important reputation and image of a person/country is.

First, a day after the opening ceremony, it was revealed that some of the fireworks TV audience saw were actually faked. It was added using computer graphics. For me, that was acceptable, as fireworks, not being at the location, be it CGI or real, was not that big a deal. Then, a couple of days after the opening ceremony, it was revealed that the child singer at the greatest opening event yet in recent history was actually miming. That was still not the shocker. The knockout punch was the reason the girl that sang with such beautiful voice was removed from the front. She wasn't cute enough. What makes it worse was, some of the comments were along the line that, it was a shameful act, now, foreigners will think that we can't find a young singer with a perfect look and a perfect voice.

Now, for me, that's wrong. Very wrong. It was a shameful act because it was the wrong thing to do. In my opinion, that's a very wrong message for the organizer/country to be sending to the world. The very same logic that size-zero models are portraying that being anorexic was the way to go. A child singer shouldn't be judged by her look. Scrap that. A singer, be it young or old, shouldn't be judged by his/her look. They are singer, not looker.

To be continued...

Continuing...
Where was I?

Then, there's the whole Chinese gymnasts age issue. No doubt that these gymnasts are great. However, did they meet the minimum age requirement? I don't know for sure. But, some of them really don't look 16. And, I'm not comparing a 16-year-old Asian to a 16-year-old American. I think I have yet to experiencing so much changes that I can't tell a 16-year-old Asian from a 16-year-old Asian. And, even though there's passport as proof of their age, I still have my reservation. Why? Again, I don't have something against China, but, just that their reputation in something still lingers. That's why, reputation is very important. Once you lose it, good luck gaining it back.

Really. As I was watching the closing ceremony, when the fireworks were all magnificent. I can't help but wonder: Any CGI this time around? What's not "real"? Call me skeptical, but, I was just being myself. Once 'bitten'.

And sportsmanship? While watching all the games, I can't help but wonder, how do one differentiate professionalism and sportsmanship? On one hand, looking at all the professional athletes, some of them 'cheat' - well, at least didn't admit the wrong call from the umpire when the decision was for their favor. It's understandable that in a competitive game, one would just keep quiet and let the umpire's decision stand. But, is this what Olympics games promote? Sportsmanship? Professionalism? I can't help but wonder.

These past 2 weeks had been great. I enjoyed watching all the different games, and witnessing all the records being shattered, and all. Even though I did sacrificed some sleep and study time. Kudos to China for being topping the medal tally (if you are like the rest of the world, that look at the number of Gold medals won). Kudos to USA for winning the most number of medals (that's how the US count). I do hope that all these strong contingents will try to put in more effort in their not-so-strong events, or else, the Olympic Games will be killed, by different countries dominating different sports.

London 2012... I'll definitely try to make my way there! Tremayne, if you are reading this, you better stay in London til at least Summer of 2012. :)

Chicago? Tokyo? Madrid? Rio de Janeiro? for Summer Olympic 2016? Who knows? Will be wonderful if it's in Chicago. But that's 8 years down the road.

Annoying ads...

You got to read this. It's more hilarious for those who are fortunate to have seen these commercials.

http://www.slate.com/id/2197146

Worst of the worst gotta be the ICan Health insurance.

Game on...

Well, what's bigger than the Olympic Games? Nothing. However, the start of the Olympic Games Beijing 2008, at least to the TV audience of the United States was a bummer because, in order to maximize their TV ads money, NBC decided to delay the telecast of the Olympic opening ceremony by 12 hours in order to show it during primetime. So, it's all about the money. What's next? Breaking news only available during primetime?

The opening ceremony was the greatest ever. No doubt about it. However, I found it to be a little overkill. In my opinion, it was too much, too condensed. It was a great effort to showcase everything, from Chinese culture, to Chinese history and more in a short 3-4 hours. The ceremony did show the world one thing, number counts. The sheer number of performers was mind-boggling.

So, over the last 3 days, a lot of my time was spent in front of the TV, at least, with the TV turned to the Olympic channels, even when I was not watching. Also, preseason NFL started last week. And, just today, the Community Shield of EPL was played. So, all the sports games are coming back as well.

By the end of the month, College Football will be back as well, and it'll be all eyes on how Rich Rodriguez will do as the expensive new head coach leads the Michigan Wolverines into unknown territory. Better don't let me down. :)

Also, my colleagues and I decided to give trivia a try, so, every Tuesday, 6 of us will be at a local bar, 'competing' against other teams in answering random questions. Last week was our first time joining the trivia, and we did rather well. We did better than we expected, finishing third to last in field of 10 teams. Hopefully, we will do better this week.

Another article...

I'm not being lazy, just to copy and paste a link here on the blog, and say that I update my blog. Well, maybe I'm kinda guilty for the lazy part, but, I'm not that lazy. If I were, I could have just don't update my blog. Period.

So, therefore, I'm not lazy.

So, now that we are aware of that. I'll talk about the article.

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/i-am-therefore-i-pollute/

Reading this article reminded me of a not-so-recent conversation, actually, email exchange with my cousin Tomas. It's about how people think that eating locally grown food is better for the environment, because you don't have to spend tons of fossil fuel to transport your food, leaving a huge carbon footprint behind you every time you take a bite. Imagine, instead of having your strawberries delivered and refrigerated for thousand of miles, you eat locally grown fruits, depends when you are, this could be papaya or apple. Fresher, cheaper (might not be true), healthier (locally grown normally means less herbicide, pesticide,... partially true), and smaller carbon footprint? Right? Sounds logical and reasonable.

This might hold true if it's strawberries and strawberries only and if we were before the modernization of modern farming. Don't get me wrong. I do believe that global warming, or more politically correct, climate change, is real. Too real. And, I do think that we are the culprit causing it, or at the very least, accelerating it. So, with all the judging of my character and believe done, we can continue. Modern farming is about efficiency and productivity. Everything, from sunlight, chemicals (all the pesti-herbi-.....cides), water, land use and etc are calculated and maximized to make production as cheap as possible, and to achieve that, as efficient as possible. So, for a lot of food, if you are just talking about carbon footprint, eating locally grown food might leave a bigger carbon footprint than indulging yourself with exotic food, grown in faraway land. How so? Bad planning, more manpower, water wastage, chemical wastage, inefficient land use... the list goes on. Surpising eh?

So, what prompted this conversation with my cousin? I was thinking about getting a new car, and we did talk about the upcoming VW Jetta TDI (Diesel). It boasts great fuel efficiency, close to 40mpg. So, what's the catch? Dirty? NOPE. With current technology, diesel fuel burns really well, and could achieve zero particle emission rating, or something like that. Bottomline is, it's clean. But, it does take more crude oil to obtain 1 gallon of diesel as compare to 1 gallon gasoline. Also, if I were to buy a new car, imagine the energy it takes to produce a new car. Wouldn't it be a better decision to buy a used car, so that the energy takes to produce a new car is saved? Well, that argument is kinda flawed, since, if I were to buy a used car, I would be deterring someone from buying that used car, and that might cause that same someone to buy a new car. So, by proximate cause, I am still the culprit that leaves a gigantic carbon footprint.

Seriously, I can't believe I wrote this post. In short, I'm concerned about what's going on in the world, but, as much as I will try to reduce wastage, I will not go out of my way to do something differently. Call me selfish, call me a hypocrit all you want. But, I'm sticking to my judgement.

I do turn off lights when I leave the room, and most of the other appliances, except my laptop. To put that in picture, my monthly electricity bill is $25. That's including a few days of AC, and all the cooking.

A great article about trolls...

An article I came across on New York Times. It's about trolls. At first, I thought these people just want attention and enjoy getting the backlash and responses. But, there's more to that, much more.

A rather long article but it's a really good one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?ex=1375329600&en=b5085d50ee5c65e5&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Edited to include this link: (as it was mentioned in the article, I thought it might be better to give you guys some background about it).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lori_Drew

This is about the incident that caught the attention of the nation, and to have people start questioning the effect of online social-networking sites have on people, especially teens as they have yet to learn and see the world. It's a sad story.