To End 2012 Merrily with Pigeons

Two Images in the New Yorker

This is the layout of last week's pages 38-39 of the New Yorker. The article is about sports, marketing, stardom and money. The New Yorker's illustration for the article is a photograph of a Banksy street art piece; it reveals the writing's main thesis. In an uncanny echo, page 39 presents a wonderful Gillette ad which, with similar cues (fence, black man, physical activity involving height, etc) let's you know what's up: just buy deodorant.

Purposefully or not, I think this is great.

Beyond Nationalism: Honorable Medals and Infographic Olympiads

In the earliest modern Olympics humans excelling in the arts also received gold, silver and bronze medals.

When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894 with the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin's hopes that men should be educated both physically and intellectually (competing in sports not wars), the arts were part of the games too. Five artistic competitions were introduced and architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture oeuvres inspired by sports would combat for gold. After 1954 this event fizzled, replaced by the slightly less competitive cultural olympiads.

The 8-Bit Games!

Anyways, I agree with Coubertin: I like critical minds more than I like nationalism, so it's nice to see all the creations that have emerged from thinking about sportive prouesses not just as physical competitions but as signs of global realities that should be challenged. For instance Gustavo Sousa has come up with these simple infographics using the Olympic flag's five rings to illustrate data from each of the five continents - from Coca Cola sales, to total populations and CO2 emissions per capita. And the Guardian reported on a team from Imperial College and the Royal Statistical Society determining in real-time the actual amounts of medals won for each country in relationship to GDP or population... so for instance while China may have officially won 24 medals, in relation to its GDP it has a petty 0,95, and while Columbia has 2, according to the study it has won an honorable 4,59.

And all the rest...

While Rousseau, Descartes and Sartre were striking....

I can't imagine the rioting of this game being any less than 20 times more constructive and interesting than Toronto's G20 debacle.