I’m freelancing my way through these Olympics, and it’s a tough gig. Well, I knew it was, but it’s personal, now. The work to find clients, sell them on something they may not really want, may not be able to afford (especially now), then do the crash course on the topic/person so you can be […]

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This is all about me, and all about journalism. So it’s not entirely world-wide, no. But I am seriously impressed by the system Beijing organizers have come up with for handling security for credentialed journalists. What had become a tiresome and time-consuming hassle, since Munich and, especially, since 9/11 … has been streamlined quite cleverly […]

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The swimmers finally came through, racking up seven of a possible eight medals in four finals this morning, and for a moment the Yanks are back ahead in the medals chase. Someone wanted to know, in our previous “China Will Bury Us” post, how we could characterize the U.S. performance here as spotty. Well, consider […]

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That’s right. This is not an Olympics post. The Los Angeles Galaxy fired Alexi Lalas and accepted coach Ruud Gullit’s resignation in a major shakeup of the struggling Major League Soccer team today. Can’t say the moves were without merit; the Galaxy hasn’t won in seven matches, and that’s with David Beckham and Landon Donovan […]

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It was Nikita Khruschev, former premier of the Soviet Union, who is credited with saying, “We will bury you!” to a group of Western ambassadors, in 1956. The idea being that the Soviet system — communism, in general — would out-perform the Western democracies and, eventually, “win” them over to socialism. Well, that burial didn’t […]

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China apparently is the spitting capital of the world. The expectoration citadel. Or was, anyway. If a guy (especially) had something in his throat he didn’t want to swallow … he just let it fly. It was a topic widely discussed by tourists in China. “Hey, those dudes spit more than baseball players!” When the […]

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Maybe it’s a function of the economy. Perhaps it’s about the availability, via the Web, of competition from seemingly any moment at any venue at the Beijing Olympics. Maybe it’s about family dynamics, or the ages of the competitors and their children, siblings or friends. But I have done stories on consecutive days on adult […]

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