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Brittany and I have really enjoyed watching the Olympics the past 12 days. We both agreed that this is the first Olympics we've enthusiastically watched and followed. Maybe it's because of the age that we are at. I don't think we are the only people that are paying attention to these Olympics for the first time. According to "Business Week" magazine there was a 16% leap in viewers compared to the Athens Olympics four years ago. Another surprising statistic from these games is the price that General Electric paid for the rights to televise it: $894 million. Don't feel too bad though, since they are projected to bring in an estimated $1 billion in revenue from the games.

I read a very interesting article today from "ESPN Magazine" about all of the fake things that China has done in these games. You can go here to read it yourself. Not necessarily the athletes, just the Olympics overall.
Rick Reilly, the articles author, tells of a beautiful building in downtown Beijing. Once you get close to it you realize that it is just a picture of a building, printed on canvas and stretched over the entire building. Underneath the building is being constructed.

Here are other examples of the fraud which you've probably heard about.

The little girl who lip sang in the opening ceremony. The actual girl was too "ugly" to be in the ceremony.
The giant footprint fireworks that marched toward the stadium during the ceremony were computer graphics.
Having a child represent each of the 56 ethnic groups in China during the opening ceremony. In actuality they were almost all from the Han race.
Changing the age of 3 female Chinese gymnasts...in previous documents and reports had them at 13 and 14.

Who knows how many other things were also faked.

As a side note, is anyone else fed up with the million Exxon Mobil commercials during the games? I think they are just trying to change everyone's image of the oil companies. All of the goodwill advertising in the world isn't going to cover us the fact that they made $1,485.55 of profit every second in the 2nd quarter of 2008.

I hope everyone enjoys the last 4 days of the Olympics because they won't be around again for four years, and I'll be 25.

Enjoy this video from my favorite band in the whole world.