I declare, these games

The wait is nearly over for the London 2012 Olympics. Opening ceremony kicks it off tonight.

(Well, actually, they’ve already started some of the footie events in Wales. Don’t know how that works—could they not fit two weeks of sporting events into two weeks?)

There’s a lot of speculation as to how the Brits are going to top the spectacle the Chinese put on four years ago. Ceremony director Danny Boyle’s kept a tight lid on it, but everyone’s promising it’ll be, you know, spectacular.

Okay, Britain’s ambassador to the US, Sir Peter Westmacott, is dampening the rumors just a tad. In an interview with Morning Edition’s Renée Montagne, Westmacott urged us not to expect bigger amazingness than Beijing. But different amazingness.

Boyle has promised a festival-of-Britain kind of experience, to include barnyard animals. This has upset animal protection people, and you do have to wonder what the sheep and pigs are going to make of the lights, the deafening noise and James Bond parachuting into the stadium.

I was thinking—perhaps he could swap out the critters for a Saint Trinian’s revue. Or maybe a phalanx of Morris dancers.

Well, maybe not.

One thing I’ve found interesting in the past couple of days was the, er, lively debate going on about whether the games will pay off. You know, economically. They’re costing in the vicinity of $14B and of course the organizers and HM Government are insisting that money will be flowing through the Olympics like spring melt run-off water through sluicegates.

But apparently they’re not quite convinced of this themselves. According to a story via Marketplace Freakonomics, the LOCOG sent out a letter to various academic economists, asking if there was anyone—anyone at all—who could please come up with a gravitas-laden study that would prove definitively that money will be flowing through the Olympics like spring melt run-off water through sluicegates.

Sadly, that same Freakonomics segment quotes an economist from the University of Chicago who’s done a study indicating that there’s no significant difference between an Olympics-hosting city and one nearby in terms of tourism, construction, tax revenues, etc.

On a side note, as though the Brits haven't already had enough tsuris about this, this week Mitt Romney was over there in an attempt to look presidential (and white) and at the same time hobnob with his Anglo-Saxon frères in a way that the current President can't (according to someone in Romney's campaign team). And brother Mitt just couldn't refrain from slagging off the way the LOCOG has been running the Games. Not the way he did, don't you know. Problems; they have problems. He didn't, back in the two years he headed the Salt Lake City games. Not a one.

I don't know about looking presidential, but I bet his mama didn't raise him to show up at a dinner party and diss his host's choices in table settings. It's one thing for Londoners to whinge about the event; it's another for a jumped-up politico to swan in and carp. As Prime Minister David Cameron rightly pointed out, intimating that Romney's experience with a much smaller setup in the west end of nowhere doesn't qualify him to pronounce.

(Although I found it interesting that one of Romney's criticisms was regarding the G4S security fiasco. You'd have thought that he'd have been a violent supporter of the concept of outsourcing and privatizing any public sector function, like security; and would therefore have kept his cavernous mouth shut when it turned out that the private sector screwed up royally and the government had to step in to save the day. But you'd be wrong.)

Well—regardless, I’m looking forward to the games, and definitely going to be on the lookout for the farm animals, because nothing says athletic endeavour like sheep, pigs and BSE cows.

Olympic class

We’re rounding the corner and heading into the multi-ringed circus that calls itself the London 2012 Olympic Games. And as I’ve noted before, we don’t have to wait until tomorrow’s opening ceremony to find drama, danger and just plain dopiness.

First—update on the threatened strike by (amongst others) border control/immigration workers set for today (day before opening ceremony): it’s been called off. Both the union and HM Government are declaring victory, and frankly it’s hard to tell who blinked first. A union spokesman said that the government is adding 1300 new jobs they’ve been wanting; but a ministry spokesman said that the advertised jobs weren’t new but planned replacements.

Whatever—everyone’s assuring us that getting into the country will be a doddle. Which, it must be said, it has been for suspected terrorists in the past couple of weeks. Border officials on passport desks have allegedly let three (or more, depending on your source) persons on the Home Office’s watch list enter Britain at London Heathrow alone.

So, it’s probably a good thing that the LOCOG have called up an additional 1200 troops to supplement the 3500 already in place to work security at the games, after the company contracted to supply a security force of 12,000 screwed the pooch. There are now more squaddies deployed on active duty in the UK than in Afghanistan. Might be a tougher assignment.

But there are some things that the British Army just can’t make right.

For one, this whole thing of corporate sponsorship has entered the realm of, of—well, somewhere that both George Orwell and Salvador Dalì would really have appreciated.

If you think the Olympics are solely about athletic achievement and the brotherhood of man, you should stop reading right now. No one (outside, oh, say, the People’s Republic of China) can afford to put on a consumer experience that tops that of the previous Olympiad without getting it subsidized by business interests, which in turn are taking massive “marketing expense” deductions on their tax returns. Sports facilities, participant dorms, transportation infrastructure, opening ceremonies with sky-diving hippos and ballet-dancing crocodiles, cleaning the toilets—all this costs more money than running the NHS. Or the state of California.

So every Olympic organizing committee shops out exclusive product sponsorship contracts to companies with seriously hefty pocketbooks (and really slick accountants). Given the choice between having McDonald’s or the taxpayer pay for erecting a new stadium, most people would hand off to the corporate clown.

But getting exclusive placement for a variety of products in front of the three billion worldwide viewers has resulted in some bizarre restrictions on what ticket holders can bring or wear, because God forbid the cameras panning the 60,000 raving fans in the stand should spot a couple of Asics logos when Adidas is an official sponsor.

In fact, there’s a whole list of items you can’t wear or bring to an Olympic venue, including:

·         Balls, rackets, Frisbees

·         Large flags and banners

·         Clothing with political statements or commercial signage

·         Oversized hats

·         Large golf-style umbrellas

·         Long-lens cameras and tripods

·         Excessive amounts of food

·         Noisemakers

·         Liquids greater than 100ml

A lot of this I get—personally I’d just haul off and shoot anyone showing up with a vuvuzela. And big hats and umbrellas would block the view of other fans and lead to brawls that could involve the army and a whole lot of stuff.

But how much food is “excessive”? And what constitutes “political statement”? If I showed up with a tee-shirt emblazoned with “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”—aside from someone having to get really up close and personal to read it, would I be escorted away?

Because they’re saying you won’t be let in if you are a fashion felon.

And what’s the extent of “commercial signage”? If you’re wearing a shirt with a Nike swoosh, would they strip it off you at the gate? Would they do that equally to men and women? Will they charge extra for the broadcast rights to film that? Will they have approved-sponsor logoed swag available for offending attendees to swap out? Or stock bags full of ratty old jackets from the jumble sale to layer over your Corona shirt?

What if it’s a shirt with a little polo pony logo? In pink? (Have they assigned an official sponsor color?)

This is really confusing, and not clarified at all by the pronouncements of Sebastian Coe, the official big cheese of the LOCOG. Coe, made a life peer for his work fronting the games (or maybe for having been a contender back in the day)—well, except that he doesn’t seem to do illegal substances, he reminds me some of Marion Barry. You just never know what he’s going to say next.

Coe is the one who announced authoritatively and publicly that if you show up at a venue wearing a shirt with a Pepsi logo on it, you’ll be chucked out. But, he added, if you’ve got Nikes on your feet you’ll “probably” be allowed in. (I am not making this stuff up.)

LOCOG immediately denounced this as a load of old cobbers. Well, okay, what they said was, “As an individual you are free to wear clothing of your choice.”

So—still not clear as to whether you’ll be let in (as long as you’re not there with 189 of your best buddies also wearing non-sponsor logos or colors, because that would be ambush marketing; or industrial-strength snottiness), denied entry, asked to remove your shirt, or have the offending logo painted over. Watch this space.

However, we can count on Coe (dubbed alternately “Lord Coe of Coca-Colashire” and “Lord of the Rings” by his not-fans) for more entertainment. At a press conference earlier this week, he was quite the hail-fellow-well-met, inviting international journalists to a right old piss-up. (I’m assuming that’s what the NPR reporter was being so coy about.)

Let me just say, from my own personal experience as a reporter for a daily newspaper, you don’t have to whisper “bar’s open” twice to a crowd of journalists.

And we have another day to go before it all officially starts. These are what I really call games.

Spam du jour

Well, the spammers are becoming a bit more sophisticated.

You may recall that a couple of months ago I received a “notice” purportedly from the US Postal Service, informing me that my “parcel” had been undelivered and was DOA in Des Moines. They wanted me to click on their link or be prepared to fork over $14.13 per day in storage storage fees.

Actually, what they said was “for each day of keeping of it”.

Well, a couple of weeks ago I received this:

This time they are using graphics, including the official USPS logo and a bar code. (and instead of threatening a daily storage fee, they want me to print the alleged label.) So it must be legit, no?

Well, no. There’s that awkward sentence with the non-US format of the date. And referring to the month of Juny. Not even our current USPS staff would send something out like that. I hope.

And again, there’s the use of the word “parcel”.

My Nigerian friends are at it again, bless their hearts.

Ride, Sally, Ride

I was shocked and saddened to learn of the death of pioneering astronaut Sally Ride. She succumbed to pancreatic cancer yesterday at the age of 61.

While I relish the knowledge that we don’t have to put the qualifier “female” in front of “astronaut” any more, it was Ride who broke that barrier and first had that title. She did it with unvarying grace, verve and professionalism.

She also made it look easy and like a boatload of fun.

I also like that she started out with a degree in English (albeit paired with one in physics). I like to think that her innate critical thinking abilities were honed in the liberal arts environment and that it helped to shape her fluid and truly engaging communication skills.

Ride flew two shuttle missions and then worked at Stanford and San Diego State University, teaching physics. She attracted students because of her career as an astronaut; she kept them because of her dedication and her ability to teach.

That she held out for 17 months against a vicious, predatory son-of-a-bitch like pancreatic cancer speaks to her courage and raw will.

She never stopped serving the goddess of motivating women to pursue careers in science and technology. Space and science were her deep and abiding passion, which you could tell immediately in even the smallest sound byte; she wanted other women to share the excitement of exploration.

Thirty years of girls and young women looked at Ride and thought, "Well, hmm. I bet I could do that, too..."

Ride expanded the boundaries of inner and outer space her entire career and I can’t help feeling that the world’s a wee bit smaller because she’s no longer with us.

In her honor, I’ll leave you with The Commitments singing “Mustang Sally”. If anyone was ever not going to slow that Mustang down, it was Sally Ride.

Aurora fatalis

I've been pondering the unfolding events at Aurora, Colo., since Friday morning.

But I just have no words.

Olympic fun & games

Hey—I told you that the Olympic Games in London would be entertaining even before they open, didn’t I? And so they are.

First, the actual opening ceremony is creating more drama than three rival high school cliques on a class trip. They’re being put on by filmmaker Danny Boyle, who’s been having run-ins with the official Olympics broadcasters, as well as falling victim to the realities of London public transport.

Boyle is probably looking back fondly on the storyline of his Trainspotting as being a cakewalk in comparison to his current gig. It’s so bad that LOCOG has actually admitted that there are “creative tensions”. When an official body concedes that there’s a slight problem, you know there are rivers of blood flowing.

For one thing, Boyle is fighting with organizers over camera positions for the company he’s hired to film the ceremony (in addition to the official games crews) as a narrative. I’m reminded here of the battles between Leni Riefenstahl and Josef Goebbels over the exact same thing back in 1936. She won and we got Olympia. Wonder what we’ll get out of this squabble?

Whatever it is, it’s going to be shorter than Boyle had planned: he’s had to cut 30 minutes from his extravaganza on account of otherwise no one’s sure people who’ve shelled out a week’s salary or more to attend will be able to get home afterward. That’s because London transport shuts down at 0230—a huge concession from the workforce, a screaming one hour after normal quitting time.

This doesn’t actually surprise me a lot, because British infrastructure workers and institutions aren’t really known for their flexibility. Example: I was on my way to a job interview in London on the Tube, when the train just halted at Edgware Road and stayed there. After some minutes (minutes, I tell you), someone came over the PA system to kindly inform us that the driver of this train had ended his shift and done what he always does, walked away; and the new driver hadn’t shown up yet, so we’d sit there (and every train behind us would sit wherever it was) until the next shift wandered in.

(And don't get me started on the tsuris it takes to open a bank account.)

Several million people coming to your country, paying many times over the odds for food, accommodation and other goods and services? Hey—they can just get stuffed. Sixty thousand revelers trying to get back to their hotels from the opening ceremony? If the job’s not done by quitting time, not your problem. Let 'em walk.

(They cut a whole three to four minutes from the schedule by axing a routine by stunt bikers. They’ll still get paid and get credit, but of course it’s not the same thing.)

But wait—there’s more. Again, as could have been predicted by anyone who’s ever spent more than 23 minutes in the country, those merry folks at HM immigration announced yesterday that they’re going on a 24-hour strike next Thursday, the day before the opening ceremony.

(Now, an interesting facet of this strike is that the PCS union is acting on a vote by their members: 57% of the only 20% of union members who actually returned their ballots voted for the walk-out. That would be basically 11% of their total membership. So 80% couldn't even be bothered. Not exactly what I'd call vox populi, but I guess the leaders feel they have to be seen to be taking action.)

Of course, if HM Government would like to avert the prospect of immigration queues at LHR stretching back to Philadelphia, they can accede to the union’s demands regarding pay, conditions and proposed job cuts.

Well, I’m sure we ain’t seen nothing yet. So stay tuned to the all-games-all-fun channel.

Recruiters 28

I was contacted last by a recruiter for a product manager position, but I’m not holding out much hope. Partly because I’m not a particular match for the position, but mostly because this recruiter is, well, I think her intellectual elevator doesn’t go all the way to the roof.

First of all, there’s her LinkedIn profile, where she describes herself as “Ambassodor” for a local chamber of commerce. And also as a member of a local “Conceiger Association.”

But in our conversation she was very surprised to hear that there’s an academic institution called the College of William & Mary, because she’d never heard of it. Perhaps she thought I was making it up to pad my résumé, like the last CEO of Yahoo.

And then, in response to me mentioning that my research concentration at that brand new (or possibly mythical) college was the history of technology, she paused and then said, “Oh. Well. I guess technology wasn’t as…advanced as now.”

I don’t know whether she was implying that my degrees date from before the Industrial Revolution, or that “technology” sprang fully formed from the brow of Zeus in the past three years. Perhaps both.

At any rate, I was not impressed and I don’t see how a client could be, either.

Let the games begin

This whole Olympics thing—really very exciting. But I don’t know how anyone will have any energy left to pour into the athletic events, after all the massive flapdoodles taking place in advance of the opening ceremonies.

I’ve picked up on three such in just the past few days.

First there was this massive outcry in Britain when it was learned that the deal the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG, although I don’t know how they came up with that particular acronym; maybe they just ditched the P?) made with corporate sponsor McDonald's included a proviso forbidding any other food vendor in the main Olympic site from selling chips (AKA fries).

The one exception is if the chips are accompanied by fish and doused in vinegar. (Okay, I made up the last bit, but the fish part is for real.)

The Brits who’ve commented on various sites have heaped opprobrium on McDonald's without considering what the alternative might have been. I mean—once you’ve thrown away the idea of having any kind of nutritious offering at the venues, and you’ve made clear that what you want is megabucks from a corporate sponsor, that pretty much left the field open only to the Golden Arches.

And LOCOG made that quite clear by also having Coca Cola, Cadbury’s and Heineken as sponsors.

Flap number two came from our side of the pond, when various Congressmorons discovered only 17 minutes ago that the seriously ugly Team USA uniforms were manufactured in China. There was huffing and there was puffing in chambers; the likes of Pelosi and Boehner were shocked—shocked, I say—to learn that the Ralph Lauren designs were (like all of his line) not made in the USA.

Well, I find that just the teensiest bit disingenuous, since (particularly on the ‘Pub side) they have not the teensiest qualm about all those textile and garment jobs that went to China after even Mexico’s wage scale got to be too high for their corporate donors. (Really, the more serious crime is the fashion felony that these faux-preppie rags commit. Ralphie, Ralphie—that's the best you got?)

You also have to wonder how much Lauren felt he had to make off this gig that he didn’t consider biting the bullet and having the pieces for 600 athletes assembled in Alabama or Texas or another right-to-work stage. North Carolina probably still has all those factories pretty much available.

In the wake of the bad publicity Lauren has vowed that “next time” he’ll make them in the USA; because I guess he’s got a long-term contract. Longer than any of his employees, anyway.

The latest spectacle comes in the form of security for the games—which had been contracted out to a private firm, G4S—is, uh, well…in question. Seems G4S, which was to have provided 10,400 trained security staff, basically screwed the pooch and will now only be able to supply 7000. Maybe. But they’re not sure.

The Ministry of Defence [sic] has announced that they’ll throw in 3500 soldiers (or maybe more, depending on whether G4S can even cough up the 7000; to date they’ve only vetted 5500. They claim to have been operating on a “just-in-time” model…to save themselves some money) to take their place. Considering that the troops—while no doubt combat ready (since many of them are actually being pulled off the line, as well as off vacations)—won’t have been given a clue about logistics, policing, etc., this could be really, really interesting.

I mean—we have the opportunity to see the most uniformed military policing an Olympic Games since 1936. Although I bet the uniforms won’t be nearly as spiffy as back then.

What’s also interesting is the performance of Nick Buckles, G4S’s CEO, before Parliament. While admitting that his company’s performance has been “a humiliating shambles”, he insisted that they still deserve their £57M ($90M) “management fee”. That’s because, “We’ve managed the contract and we’ve had management on the ground for two years.”

So—although I think he was playing fast and loose with the concept of “management”, he basically thinks they should get paid for time on the clock, regardless of the results.

For sheer arrogance, though—wins the gold medal.

Do you Yahoo?

Very interesting news out of the Silicon Valley: Marissa Mayer starts her job as CEO of Yahoo! this morning. Mayer, 37, was previously a VP at Google, and has been a vocal proponent of girl geeks.

Mayer has her work cut out for her—Yahoo! has been lost for some time, & has been going through CEOs at a good clip; five in the past five years. First order of business will be to figure out what the company wants to be—portal, search engine, breath mint, floor wax—and then make it happen.

I’ve seen Mayer in action—she’s smart, articulate, energetic. It’ll be really interesting to see how these qualities translate to turning around a behemoth in serious trouble.

Linking to Mitt

As I've commented before, LinkedIn is a strange, strange place. But it does have its charms.

So far, I've found no fewer than three "profiles" for the presumptive GOP presidential candidate.

This one may be legit.

This one seems like some campaign worker created it.

This one is probably the most accurate. (But as of the weekend it had been removed. You're lucky I took a screen shot.)