(h/t commentor Dead Existentialist)
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It’s an Age of Austerity “human scale” Olympics, according to the Washington Post:
LONDON — Remember the 2,008 exquisitely synchronized drummers at the opening of the Beijing Games? In London, look for a flock of sheep, three cows, two goats and 10 waddling ducks. Where there were choreographed Chinese philosophers reenacting the invention of the printing press, expect James Bond in a helicopter. And where dragons lurked in the Bird’s Nest stadium, watch out for a Voldemort-vs.-Mary Poppins smackdown inside the glistening new Olympic Park….
As a global audience prepares for nearly three weeks of competition set against the backdrop of one of the world’s most recognizable cities, it speaks to the wholly different mission of the London Games: to bring the ponderous, politicized and outsize Olympics back down to Earth.
“I think there is a bit of a responsibility on us to bring these Games down to size and return them to a game for athletes, to hand them on in such a condition that other countries elsewhere around the world who have not had the Games thus far feel like they can be comfortable bidding for them,” said Hugh Robertson, Britain’s minister for sports and the Olympics. “I don’t feel they should be exclusively the reserve of global superpowers.”…
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Besides ogling extremely fit people doing amazing things with their bodies, what’s on the agenda for the end of the work week?
(Any bets on some kind of hideously botched Romney tax-form “Friday document drop” in hopes that the Olympics will draw attention away?)
Early Morning Open Thread: Olympic FeverPost + Comments (79)