You gotta see the video of Shelly-Ann Fraser’s interview after winning the 100-meter dash. Braces + big smile + Jamaican accent = very cute.

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NBC is almost getting it right. Almost. You can watch videos of Olympics online, but only if you install some Microsoft product. You also have to sit through ads before any video you watch, and occasionally as interruptions of longer videos, but I can understand all that. What they’re finally doing successfully is they’re making it easier to see any and every sport you wish to see. The mainstream media has been very slow to catch on to effective use of the internet for events like the Olympics. The Tour de France has always flirted with online re-broadcasts, but they’ve never really done enough. I’m sure there’s some sort of economic reason — French TV probably negotiates with various networks around the world (like the sub-par Versus network which airs the Tour in the US), and they most likely don’t want their potential viewers stolen by the web.

But it makes a lot of sense to offer archives of sports since they have such a limited broadcast life. People don’t want to see re-runs of most competitions. You’re not going to watch the quarterfinals of last year’s March Madness multiple times, are you? But you might want to see re-broadcasts soon after the original one. In fact, the networks don’t have much to lose by posting videos on the internet 30-60 minutes after the original, do they? The initial TV broadcast is still optimal (since sports watchers need to know the results live, it seems), but a quickly-available internet archive of those events would be cheap and would only bring in more revenue if you do what NBC has been doing with the advertising.

This is really the first Olympics where I’ve been able to watch most of the sports I’d like to see. Swimming and gymnastics are fine, but if all that drama gets to be too overdone (what network hasn’t milked the Olympics for all the sap it can?), I can opt for rowing or equestrian or sabre. Or I can re-watch the men’s 4×100 meter relay (best finish ever).
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It’s a favorite past time of many Americans and, indeed, the world at large, to make fun of how dumb the citizens of this nation are. On any number of late night talk shows, you can see in interviews on the streets how many people don’t know who Hillary Clinton is or can’t tell you how many states are in the United States. Jay Leno does it with his “Jaywalking”segment, and you can bet there are plenty of these sorts of displays of Amercian stupidity abroad, like Australia’s “Chaser Non-stop News Network” (CNNNN), which came to American cities a few years back and seemed to edit out anyone with a high school education or higher. Of course, stupid people are funny; I’m not saying we shouldn’t laugh (“The children are right to laugh at you, Ralph.”). But are people really that dumb?

I admit to writing off the general public as pretty idiotic, citing evidence in the success of Reality TV and the fact that Dubya is our president, just to name a few things. And of course, the internet only furthers my theory. Specifically, those facets of the internet which contain lots of comments. Take one look at a popular YouTube video and you’ll see some top-rate idgets. A typical exchange involves calling someone gay; scolding that person with impassioned, misspelled words; critiquing previous posters’ spelling; some unsolicited preaching about the evils of the Chinese government; a follow-up berating how little Americans know about China and how they should STFU; and finally a mass write-off of all previous commenters as complete and total dumb-asses or maybe fags. All this might be in response to a video of Pokemon.

This cycle of stupidity is so ubiquitous that it provoked a series of skits by collegehumor.com about how ridiculous such a dialogue would be in real life: one, two, three.

What do real life debates have that the internet doesn’t? Moderation.

Two definitions of moderation apply, actually — the first being the avoidance of extremes and the second being an additional party that guides the contributions of those engaged in the debates.

In an organized debate, for instance, a moderator keeps the discussion focused and civil, makes sure that all parties involved have equal opportunity to voice their opinions, decides on and filters questions for the debaters, and can often see with clarity the stalemates that arise in a debate and decide when it’s best to move on to the next topic.
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When I teach my Science Fiction course to high schoolers, inevitably the question arises whether technology is harmful or beneficial. It’s an overly simplistic question meant to spur debate, but I’ve noticed in the past five or six years that fewer and fewer kids find technology disturbing. And so, I tend to lean that way in discussion, citing things like pollution, global warming, genetically modified foods, sounding the alarms about how we’re all headed toward a metaphorical Matrix. And if none of that works, I start talking about the joys of being in the wilderness and the fact that contact with dirt makes people happier.

Where the discussion really gets interesting, however, is when we delve into virtual reality territory. There are those who claim that living in the Matrix wouldn’t be so bad — like Cypher in the movie — except their argument isn’t that “ignorance is bliss”; their argument is that virtual worlds can be more fun than the real world.

I’ve seen what these kids are talking about. When I was in middle school, I had a Sega console. Not the Sega Genesis. The original Sega. And there were a few games called role-playing games, which usually involved dungeons and towers and grassy meadows that you rode your horse through. One such game was called Ys; another was Golvellius; and there was a third one called Phantasy Star which had really cool dungeons on multiple planets, no horses. Actually, according to wikipedia, Phantasy Star was the first “story-drive” RPG released in the United States, but whatever. The point is that these were all role-playing games and as such, required the player of the game to become the main character of the story unfolding over the course of the gameplay.

Don’t all games do that? Well, yes, to a certain extent many of them do. But from what I can tell, RPGs differ in how much they suck you in. An RPG is a time vacuum. And when you finally force yourself to turn it off at 2:00 in the morning, you don’t necessarily feel a sense of satisfaction. Maybe here’s where I should stop talking in second person. I don’t necessarily feel a sense of satisfaction. In fact, I’d often feel quite the opposite — a sense of having been duped, of having spent a lot of time and having very little to show for it.
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