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A Colin Newell Post
VANCOUVER, Canada – Police and workers from the 2010 Olympic committee dragged a protester off the stage and other officers tackled a woman with a bandana over her face as Olympics officials staged a ceremony to mark three years until the Games begin in Vancouver. -link-

There was heavy security at the downtown event with dozens of officers in yellow jackets, including some on horseback and in riot gear, but one protester managed to leap onto the stage and push the master of ceremonies out of the way.

The protester shouted obscenities into the microphone before being dragged off by 2010 workers and police officers.

Police said protesters hurled eggs, paint-filled balloons and papier mache balls filled with rocks.

"I’m dismayed by the fact that these people want to cross the line and start throwing things at police officers. That’s the part that’s upsetting to everybody here," said Const. Howard Chow, a spokesman for the department.

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Games held the ceremony Monday to unveil a huge digital clock on the grounds of the downtown art gallery to count down the months, days, hours, minutes and seconds left before the opening ceremonies at 6 p.m. on Feb. 12, 2010.

Hundreds of people and 2010 volunteers and workers crowded into the square to watch the ceremonies, but in a corner of the site, activists unveiled their own so-called doomsday clock.

The cardboard creation marks significant events in the decline of government support for social housing and concludes that by 2010, 6,000 people will be homeless in the city.

One protestor stated: "we have no right to have the Olympic Games here. It’s just utterly dishonourable."

Protesters milled through the crowd carrying signs saying "Stop the Clock" and "Housing Before Games."
Personal note: For me this hearkens back to 1986 when Vancouver hosted one of the best World Expo’s ever. The only downside was – thousands of downtown Eastside residents were driven from their low-rent digs as precious hosting real-estate was quickly converted to lodging and B&B for the 1986 events.

The other thing that struck me(courtesy CBC radio), in the 12 minute commute to campus today, were the odd-sounding references to 2010 workers and how they saved the day at the protest.

2010 workers… from the future no doubt… in a time machine we invented.
Only in Canada you say?
Pity.

From a land where the glaciers are in faster retreat than my hairline – I am Colin Newell

This duiker has almost caught up completely:

Unlike me…

Courtesy our good buddy Steve.

Condolences to those few directly affected by Anna Nicole Smith’s sudden demise.

Still, while CNN and FOX go into 24/7 wall-to-wall dead Playmate mode, here are a few other things they could be talking about today:

So you can see why Anna Nicole’s death is getting all the coverage. Slow news day.

Incidentally, you’re looking at a montage of the front pages of CBS News, ABC News, MSNBC, CNN, and FOX News, at 7 pm est. Every single goddam network.

To review: news shows are, yes, shows. They do not make money by providing us useful information. They make money by providing us… to the advertisers.

And according to the Google News "Most Popular" section, we care a great deal about dead Playmates, stalker astronauts in diapers, Ryan O’ Neal getting arrested, and Britney Spears not being a lesbian.

So that’s what we get.

When we can’t find Iran on a map but we’re willing to kill Iranians — and then we wonder why the world doesn’t exactly run the way we figured — it’s not CNN’s fault.

It’s ours.

One last thought (I hope) about the Boston "bomb hoax" — amazingly, that completely incorrect phrase is still being used in some major media headlines, despite the well-established fact that nothing of the kind ever happened.

The phrase occurs in this case not because it’s related to reality, but simply because authority figures used it. And now it continues on, lingering, refusing to die despite its uselessness in describing the event.

Consider: this is what happens when local officials briefly utter complete nonsense about a single, simple and local issue that is immediately debunked. The horseshit still takes weeks to filter out.

Now consider the case when powerful national officials repeatedly utter half-truths about multiple, complex, faraway concerns that are later debunked. Are there enough filters in the world to clean out that crap? Possibly not.

And then, years later, the reality-based community wonders why millions of Americans still don’t understand either basic stuff like Iraq’s lack of connection to 9-11.  We wonder how Bush can get away with blurring Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda in the recent State of the Union address.  But maybe it’s no wonder at all.

The Mooninite incident is kinda scary to think about. But not because of any blinking lights in Boston.

When I was a kid, I used to look forward to baseball Opening Day every April as if it were the beginning of life itself.

Now it’s the Super 14 rugby season.

Hard to explain, but here’s one of my favorite plays ever, a dramatic and somewhat lunatic attack (beginning with a near-impossible and even foolish pass — which worked!) from a match between the Blues and Crusaders a few years ago.  This beautiful invention came as time was running out, and it was both triggered and finished by my favorite player, a madman named Carlos Spencer, who even has the presence of mind to run out the clock before downing the ball.

A friend of mine called from Boston this morning. Says there’s a giant Mooninite billboard not far from where the first device was found. And nobody put it together. Yeesh.

And what’s the deal with the media still calling this a "bomb hoax?"  It was nothing of the kind.  Ever.  According to Google News, over 1300 news stories come up currently apply that phrase to this event.  But the guys clearly had no intention of anyone thinking these were bombs, and they certainly never made any such claim.  So how do the words "bomb hoax" remotely apply to their actions?  Those things were up for weeks before the cops in Boston freaked out.  The only "bomb hoax" here is on the part of panicky public officials who scared the bejeebus out of thousands of people with their own pronouncements, which they’re still repeating, as if they’ll magically come true:

These things had been up for three weeks in cities all over the country, and nobody freaked out. Except the officials in Boston.  And yet the AG claims there was "clear intent" to scare people?  Bullshit.  That’s who’s pretending there’s any bomb story here.  There’s your bomb hoax right there.  Compare and contrast to the rest of the country:

But the bigshots of Boston now have to pretend it’s someone else’s fault — the alternative would be a public admission of their own panicky incompetence, and we sure as hell know that’s not coming.  So instead, they’re now gonna waste even more of the public’s time and resources by angrily trying to cover their own asses.

How about trying a mirror?

Don’t let the terrorists win!  Vote Ignignokt/Err in ’08!

Sigh. Too many grown-ups not watching enough cartoons.

In an echo of the kind of paranoia that thought rock music was a communist plot, and which led some people to duct-tape their entire houses against an exaggerated anthrax threat… today, Boston called out the bomb squad to handle the Mooninite invasion.

Which consisted of — prepare to be very, very frightened now — small blinking lights in shape of cartoon characters. AAAAIIIEEEEE!

Jeebus. I mean, I’m as big a coward as there is on the planet, but there’s a bigass billboard of a Mooninite giving people the finger, right down the street from where I’m sitting, over on Pico Boulevard in Venice. And somehow nobody calls Homeland Security.

Is Al-Qaeda really going to attack by decorating its bombs with blinking lights, specifically calling attention to the bomb?

Wow. America really has to start watching Adult Swim. Anybody who doesn’t already faithfully watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force frankly deserves to panic blindly.

UPDATE: While we’re at it, here’s the trailer for the upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, plus a clip, because I like you and want you to be happy.

I am counting the days.

Scientists warn that we’ve got about ten years left to reverse greenhouse gas emissions, or the damage will begin feeding on itself in an irreversible cascade of doom.

Who knew Waterworld would turn out to have been a visionary film? I call first dibs on the Exxon Valdez.

Colin’s blog has his thoughts on the new microwave crowd control zappity-zap machine from the Pentagon.