You can condemn anything you like except La Femme Nikita. Well, you can condemn Michael. But not Nikita, Edward Woodward or Coldplay tracks.

Truth be told I don’t like any medal count by nation; aren’t the Olympics supposed to be about singular human athletic achievement? By that measurement Michael Phelps is absolute number one and at this point he matches Australia in gold medal achievement. Maybe that should make 7′s adjusted list, an asterix or footnote would help their simplistic exercise.

Just to prick the early morning in studio Green and Gold flag waving jingoistic bubble for a moment, are we ever number one on any adjusted list?

In a recent post More Intelligent Life asked the medal count question and showed us at number two in Athens, second to the Bahamas. And then there is this site whose approach to the tally currently throws up Jamaica as the top dog. Pass the dutchy!

What about medals based on the money spent on sport science, or GDP, or the number of beaches added to grains of sand multiplied by days of sunlight? Or the number of former gold medal winners who failed to take gold this time around? On the latter metric I think we really are number one.

We’ve been discussing the astonishingly sexualised uniforms for female athletes over at Hoyden About Town, as have many other blogs. As Lauredhel said:

No. It’s not about faster, higher, stronger. Women in sports are promoted as sexualised bodies for ogling; men are promoted as performers.

This is also something I’ve posted about before, showing how track uniforms were virtually identical for men and women in the 80s compared to the enormous disparities now.

It’s also interesting to note that in one of the very few summer sports where streamlining actually is crucial to performance, the mens and women’s swimming costumes are almost the same (much to the distress of this eejit in The Times bemoaning how female swimmers’ breasts are compressed by these costumes so that they don’t give him the titillation to which he feels entitled). His ridiculous column is a fine example of the major display of sexism at the Olympics – the media commentators who are so focussed on how the female competitors look that they don’t actually pay proper attention to the competition and the phenomenal performances. Indeed, as far as women’s competitions go, unless the athletes show skin or wear a form-fitting uniform they receive hardly any TV coverage at all.

At least the Indians successfully argued that the beach volleyball regulation bikinis (or even the notoriously sand-trapping alternate regulation one-piece) were culturally inappropriate and their women’s beach volleyball team are competing in generous shorts and T-shirts. But for other competitors where the old men with authority in their home country don’t object to their bodies being on display, refusing to wear the regulation bikini means being dropped from the squad. This is not just an issue for elite athletes – more and more local and school competitions are requiring participants to wear uniforms similar to those worn by the elite competitors, much to some women’s dismay. A Senate Enquiry in 2006 found that sexualised uniforms were turning girls off sport at younger and younger ages, a phenomenon which will have major effects on women’s health and physical confidence.

Anyway, have a few more pictures of fiercely competitive women:

Gold medallist Yang Xiuli of China bites her medal during the medal ceremony of the women’s -78 kg judo event at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, August 14, 2008. (REUTERS/Kim Kyung-hoon)

Johana Gomez of Venezuela pitches against Taiwan during their softball game at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 14, 2008. (REUTERS/Danny Moloshok)

A drop of blood falls from the forehead of Ange Mercie Jean Baptiste of Haiti during her women’s -57kg preliminary judo match with Yurisleydis Lupetey of Cuba at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, August 11, 2008. (REUTERS/Dylan Martinez)

But I imagine that consulting ratings figures would demonstrate that a lot of people do watch a lot of the Olympics, and that criticism of Yahoo!7′s online coverage probably implies that some people want to watch some from the office. In that vein, it was interesting to see an article in the Fin last week about various large organisations more or less agreeing with Bob Hawke and his comments on the Americas Cup – that “anyone who sacks an employee for checking results on the intertubes or for taking a sickie after staying up late during the Olympics is a mug”. Managers of various companies were quoted saying they didn’t have a problem with employees looking at online coverage provided they managed their own workload. That raises the broader question of policing internet access at work. My view on that is that if someone spends all day looking at websites, there’s probably either a problem with workflow or they’re not a terribly motivated employee after all. My feeling is that most employees exercise a fair degree of self-discipline in achieving work goals, and that’s backed up by a lot of studies of working from home. One anecdote I have is of the Queensland Public Service in 2000, when I was doing a consultancy in house for a few weeks. One day I was in the office was the American presidential election – and I suppose because a lot of public servants are political junkies, a whole open office was full of people hitting refresh on CNN. Most of these people were doing project or research work, and not required to do customer service as such, and I didn’t hear that any deadlines had been missed – folks were just making up the time later, or building that desire to obsess over election results into their work planning.

Some organisations are now not requiring employees to account for hours at all, but rather for results. There’s an obvious danger of workload creep here, but I think generally self-management and maximum autonomy at work should be encouraged. Any boss who thinks that all their employees require constant surveillance and close supervision is probably a mug themselves, or they’ve hired the wrong employees and sent the wrong messages (which leads us to the same conclusion).

Elsewhere: Self-described “sports refusenik” Helen posts on the Olympics.

The Right to Know Coalition – an organisation of Australian media companies – vigorously opposes any new legal protections for privacy.

In an op/ed pushing this barrow in The Australian, UQ’s Garrick Professor of Law James Allan makes the case against, predictably roping in the general conservative suspicion of any measure that might resemble a bill of rights. He concentrates on a recent UK case which turned on a right to privacy, brought by motor racing boss Max Mosley. Mosley’s adventures with sex workers and domination scenarios in a basement were reported by a British tabloid, and the story had all sorts of salacious elements – including the fact that Mosley’s famous father Sir Oswald was a home-grown British Fascist. But the court found that there was no public interest in revealing all this, and indeed it’s hard really to see what that public interest might be. The suggestion from the media crew is that “ordinary people” don’t have to worry about such intrusions into their private lives. But is that so?

One of the arguments often put is that celebs are fair game because they leverage that celebrity and thus their livelihoods off salacious detail and rumours about their private lives. That may be true – in some instances. But then, is the head of a motor racing federation a celebrity? And what happens where – as in the case of the supermarket mags – a lot of the “celebrity gossip” is just made up?

Let’s take a borderline case – Australian swimmer Stephanie Rice, who’s just won an Olympic gold medal. There’s been lots of reporting about Rice’s relationship with fellow Olympic team member Eamon Sullivan. In fact one of the pre-Olympic press conferences had much of the focus on this, rather than the swimming team’s prospects. The justification here – insofar as there is one – is that elite athletes can’t concentrate on their performances if they’re distracted – and apparently a relationship concentrates a distraction. But what’s the bigger distraction? On one hand – there’s a marketing imperative – which the media feeds – whereby athletes have to display celeb like personas in order to bank money from sponsorships and so forth. Performance isn’t enough. But we don’t know – on the other hand – whether Rice herself welcomes discussion of her romantic status. Even accepting this logic, couldn’t the press focus on it be a distraction?

Could it also be the case that the media focus on Rice has a lot to do with “sex sells” and her attractiveness and that’s why she received much more attention in the lead up to the Games than some of her colleagues? Hence the focus on her private life? After all, that’s a very common pattern with female sport.

But there’s a clearer case in the publication of photos Rice had posted on her Facebook page. They were quite unremarkable – a 20 year old playing dress ups at a party. But they led to a media storm, and to censure of Rice by the swimming and Olympic authorities. Say what you will about Facebook’s confusing and ambivalent attitude towards privacy settings, it’s pretty clear that Rice’s right to a private life was being denied here. And it doesn’t take too much thought to recall other examples of information originally published on MySpace or Facebook suddenly being wrenched out of its context and into the public arena – when someone dies, when someone decides to run a beat up story about the oddities of Young Liberals, or in lots of other instances when people suddenly become objects of press induced notoriety.

Then there’s the trash tv tabloid “current affairs” programs.

The media who wear one hat as “defenders of the public interest” actually trade on invasion of privacy – literally – when wearing another hat. If you want an example of the everyday (ir)responsibility of the press – on the topic of the Olympics and the objectification of female competitors’ bodies, consider this Fairfax story discussed by Lauredhel at Hoyden.

Or let’s take pollies and their private lives. Is there really a public interest in who NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher is dating?

So, does “public interest” equate to a prurient interest? Is it sufficient justification to say celeb trash and gossipy or salacious exposures of individuals’ lives sells papers or garners hits? Or is it possible for a reasonable jurisprudence to draw the sorts of lines that Allan apparently thinks can’t be drawn? And is the combination of media reporting and advocacy on this exemplary of what’s wrong with the elision of the (commercial) interests of the press with the public interest?

Bernard Keane in Crikey notes that politicians won’t be happy about the ALRC’s other recommendations to bring political parties within the ambit of privacy legislation. It could well be that a combination of this factor and media self-interest will kill off the proposed amendments. Something similar may well end up taking effect anyway – in a roundabout sort of way through the normal processes of common law jurisprudence. Then we’ll have lots of stories about “unelected judges” to chew on as part of our daily media diet. But make sure you’ve got your privacy settings right on Facebook.

We’ll be seeing plenty of China on our TV screens in the next little while, as long they don’t give us too many long shots. No matter how spectacular the Olympic opening ceremony, if we can see it, I think the abiding image from the Games for me will be the astonishing soup of pollution. I can’t wrap my mind around the kind of hubris and single-minded neglect that could produce such a mess. Rick Birch talking on local radio said the Chinese Government had assured everyone a couple of years ago that the weather would be fine for the opening ceremony, the weather apparently being subject to government will. Hence no need for a plan B in case it rains. Rick says you always have a plan B in case it rains, but not this time.

Similarly, we are assured that the atmosphere would be OK. China has gone to enormous lengths to showcase these games. I understand they have temporarily diverted water about 150k to make sure the city has enough to the deprivation of other parts of the country. But the air pollution has not conformed with government requirements. Hence the Australian team cancelled its traditional outdoor barbecue, apparently because the air might affect the meat!

The Australian Financial Review last Friday in their Review section republished Jacques Leslie’s cover story in the February edition of Mother Jones entitled The Last Empire: China’s Pollution Problem Goes Global. It’s over 9000 words, but it’s well worth a look.

Leslie tells of Mao’s assault on the environment when he launched the “backyard furnace” campaign. Some 90 million peasants set up mini steel smelters stripping 10% of China’s trees within a few months to fire them in order to produce unusable steel. Mao also launched the “Kill the Four Pests Campaign” resulting in the mass killing of sparrows followed by a great locust plague. The consequent harvest failure and famine saw between 30 and 50 million Chinese die, according to Leslie.

Yet the Mao era’s ecological devastation pales next to that of China’s current industrialization. A fourth of the country is now desert. More than three-fourths of its forests have disappeared. Acid rain falls on a third of China’s landmass, tainting soil, water, and food. Excessive use of groundwater has caused land to sink in at least 96 Chinese cities, producing an estimated $12.9 billion in economic losses in Shanghai alone. Each year, uncontrollable underground fires, sometimes triggered by lightning and mining accidents, consume 200 million tons of coal, contributing massively to global warming. A miasma of lead, mercury, sulfur dioxide, and other elements of coal-burning and car exhaust hovers over most Chinese cities; of the world’s 20 most polluted cities, 16 are Chinese.

The government estimates that 400,000 people die prematurely from respiratory illnesses each year, and health care costs for premature death and disability related to air pollution is estimated at up to 4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Four-fifths of the length of China’s rivers are too polluted for fish. Half the population—600 or 700 million people—drinks water contaminated with animal and human waste. Into Asia’s longest river, the Yangtze, the nation annually dumps a billion tons of untreated sewage; some scientists fear the river will die within a few years. Drained by cities and factories all over northern China, the Yellow River, whose cataclysmic floods earned it a reputation as the world’s most dangerous natural feature, now flows to its mouth feebly, if at all. China generates a third of the world’s garbage, most of which goes untreated. Meanwhile, roughly 70 percent of the world’s discarded computers and electronic equipment ends up in China, where it is scavenged for usable parts and then abandoned, polluting soil and groundwater with toxic metals.

Robert Merkel told us last year of an environmental disaster that killed 750,000 Chinese. The Chinese government persuaded the World Bank to suppress the story because it could cause social unrest. It seems their fears were justified. Leslie tells us:

Though government-run and heavily censored, the English-language China Daily has reported that pollution problems caused 50,000 disputes and protests throughout China in 2005. (See “The People’s Revolution”.)

If the impact of this environmental destruction was contained within their borders it would be bad enough. But it’s not.

Enthusiasm for traditional Chinese medicine, including its alleged aphrodisiacs, is causing huge declines in populations of hundreds of animals hunted for their organs—including tigers, pangolins, musk deer, sea horses, and sea dragons. Seeking oil, timber, gold, copper, cobalt, uranium, and other natural resources, China is building massive roads, bridges, and dams throughout Africa, often disregarding international environmental and social standards.

Chinese consumption of timber goes far beyond the 45 billion disposable chopsticks produced each year.

At one end are the consumers in the United States, Europe, Japan, and China itself, who are mostly oblivious to the social and environmental destruction left by the Chinese-made furniture, plywood, moldings, and flooring they buy.

At the other end are the wood suppliers, almost all poor countries with weak or corrupt law enforcement and a flourishing trade in illegal lumber. Among China’s leading wood importers, Thailand and the Philippines have already been stripped of their natural forests; Indonesia and Burma are projected to lose theirs within a decade. Papua New Guinea’s will succumb within 16 years, and the vast forests of the Russian Far East will survive no more than two decades. Even so, Forest Trends, a Washington-based nonprofit, estimates that China’s wood imports will probably double over the next decade. Chinese manufacturers are already developing replacement sources in Africa, and South America’s forests are under threat for a different reason: China’s growing consumption of pork and chicken is fed by soybeans grown on newly cleared Amazonian land; by one estimate, 30 percent of the jungle could eventually be transformed into soybean fields.

In the middle is China, the world’s workshop, now both the planet’s leading wood importer and exporter, supplying more than 30 percent of the international furniture trade.

Yet Leslie tells us that China itself uses 90% of the wood products it makes. And it has hardly begun. The middle class, numbering something less than 100 million is projected to reach 700 million by 2020. China’s per capita consumption of paper is a mere eighth of that of the US.

It seems that China is the world’s leading importer of illegal logs. Half of the wood from Siberia is illegal and fires are set in the forests because damaged timber can then be cut. Up to 80% of Indonesian logging is thought to be illegal.

All of China’s rivers are in trouble and of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, 16 are Chinese.

The haze that blots out Beijing at any given time may not be from industrial pollution, it could be dust.

Dust storms that now debilitate Beijing appear in records from as long ago as the 1200s, but they occurred less than once a year on average then; today they come at least 20 times a year.

When agriculture was de-collectivised trees were cut down on the unstable western grazing lands to build fences. Now with endemic overgrazing the desert is advancing.

The dust does not stop at the border but sweeps over Korea, Taiwan and Japan to the USA. A thick haze has been known as far east as Denver. The dust itself has reached as far as the Canary Islands off Africa.

Industrial pollution too sweeps eastwards. A peer-reviewed study in 2004 found that 36% of the man-made mercury settling on the US came from Asia. In California the legal pollution limit is 12 micrograms per cubic metre of air. Now 4-6 micrograms is being supplied by Asia.

Already climate change is affecting China. The already arid north is drying out further. The glaciers are melting (Greenpeace reckons 80% could disappear by 2035), floods and deluges have increased in the south.

Leslie believes the problem is that China, rather than find its own path is seeking to copy the West. Cars, for example, are projected to increase from 33 million to 130 million by 2020. And they won’t be diverted from their path while we maintain the lifestyle we do. Leslie says that Chinese per capita income is still less than 10th of that of the US. To achieve parity would require several planets worth of resources.

When China joined the World Trade Organisation the show was run by the ‘Quad’ – the US, the EU, Japan and Canada. At the recent WTO meeting Australia displaced Canada in the so-called G7 caucus presumably because of its leadership of the Cairns Group. India, China and Brazil were added.

Once you could say that if you wanted to address a problem of real importance in the world you needed the US there. You might not get much done with them but you couldn’t leave them out. I think in the future China, India and Brazil will similarly need to be there when important matters have to be addressed, especially in relation to global warming and the environment generally. Russia was missing because it’s not a member of the WTO. Africa has no single country near the top of the pecking order.

And so we are moving towards a multi-polar world, but given the environmental track record of the major powers the prospects for concerted action on anything don’t look all that flash.

It is more than a little interesting to contemplate what could bring about the necessary attitudinal and value changes to seriously address climate change. Perhaps when they twig to the threat of sea level change it might concentrate the mind. Some of the great powers, especially China, seem quite vulnerable:

(Image from slide 46 from Hansen’s Iowa Coal testimony – large pdf)

Certainly preaching at them while we continue our own profligate consumption of resources won’t do the trick.

As well as the usual gaggle of swimmers, the magazine is pencilling in gold medals in the women’s triathalon for Emma Snowsill, shooters Warren Potent (I’m sure the headline writers are already preparing for that one) and Michael Diamond, a trio of sailing events, and the men’s pairs rowing.

I know I’ll be hanging on every tacking duel, as the smog-blurred images of 470-class dinghies cut their way through the algae-ridden sludge at the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Center, yelling at the screen. Of course, what I’ll be yelling is “get this crap off the television and show me the hockey tournament, you twits!” I may actually start throwing things at the screen after the second replay of Grant Hackett’s 1500 meter heat…

What are your predictions for these Olympics?