An exclusive view of Future Commonwealth Games
1. New EventsSuggestions have been made for new events, such as Darts, Snooker and Foot-in-Mouth. Others include:
Useful sports. Such as
See SkillOlympics Back to top 2. Improved Medal Tables
1. The Table of Gold
The Improved Olympic Medals Table
NATIONAL OLYMPICSCONTESTS BETWEEN GOVERNMENTSThe Goldest Medal for the Honour of NationsGoldest Medals for the Honour of Nations could be awarded at the finale of the Olympic Games.
At issue is the prospect that if every nation gives coverage almost entirely to the exploits of their own nationals - then what price our Australian glory that only Australians know about? Is Sports Glory simply to distract us from our failures to perform and achieve as a nation in other areas of life? The 39 Goldest MedalsGoldest Medals for the Honour of NationsContests for GovernmentsGold Medals are awarded for: (here in alfabetical order)
Goldest Medal total assessments can relate to GNP. The greater the disparity between Goldest Medal and GNP, the greater the shame for the nation. Back to top 3. ECOLYMPICSEcOlympics could be a TV Reality Show. Well, it could be. It is about Living with Least Waste, and Having a Good Time. One without the other is a miserable state of affairs.
What a lot of Ideas for Medals for participating Nations! Back to top Games
Medals for the Media
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Events for SkillOlympics:The problem. Modern Olympic sports have limitations that make them in one way obsolete. They focus on the skills of the warrior and hunter - the running and leaping and throwing and hitting, the records for going fast and high and far and hard, and for teams like hunting bands. |
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Panels of judges rate subjective features like grace, and quality of product, and a common final judgement is blazoned at the touch of a computer key. |
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- SkillOlympics are less injurious.
- Years spent training for SkillOlympics are not wasted even for the losers, while even for the victors. SportsOlympics competitors, losers and winners, can devote their youth to going up and down or to and fro or round and round (e.g. 35,000 kilometres by paddle since Barcelona regarded as 'wasted' by a kayak competitor who 'only got bronze).
- Everyone can have a chance to compete in a SkillOlympics, because such a wider variety of talent can be encouraged, not just physical abilities that are limited to the few who are constitutionally outstanding.
- Non-sexist. In many skills in SkillOlympics men and women can compete together without discrimination. In SportsOlympics, men and women have to compete separately in almost all events, because record-making women cannot reach the standard of the record-breaking men. This is because in early societies men evolved as the hunter warriors, valuing great physical strength and speed for sudden intense exertion, but women as gardener-gatherers needed endurance and patience for constant toil. So for young girls and women, outdoor games and sports have been intrinsically enjoyable non-competitive pastimes, whereas they have been tests of manhood for primitive male egos.
- No doping and other such scandals that bedevil Sports Olympics. They would hardly help in a SkillOlympics. Nobody need risk their future health by drugging up - which is likely only to slug up their skills.
- SkillOlympics need not be limited to international competition in the same event. Each country can bring entrants for its own cultural special skill - such as carving in wood or stone, graffiti, boomerangs, basket-making, cuisine, origami, elaborate hair-dressing, embroidered jackets, inventing novelties, calligraphy, yodeling, singing lullabies, telling stories.
- SkillOlympics can further attract tourists by encouraging picturesque local skills and culture - which will benefit the host town for a generation.
- Any little place can start up its SkillOlympics. It does not need vast and varied stadia, as long as there can be a TV audience somewhere in the world whenever the events are staged.
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4. Ecolympics
EcOlympics could be a TV Reality Show. Well, it could be. It is about Living with Least Waste, and Having a Good Time. One without the other is not good. We have SportsOlympics, and there could be SkillOlympics - and there could be EcOlympics.
SportOlympics is to see who are the champions who can go fastest, highest, longest - and other physical measures of speed and strength.
SkillOlympics is to see who are the champions in a wide range of useful skills. People watching them can pick up those skills too.
EcoLympics is to see who are the champions at living with least waste while having a Good Time.
How the EcOlympics run
• The call goes out that this Reality Show will select finalists in say, 9 months. Anyone can enter. Entrants them send in their estimated scores on 20 measures of Living with Least Waste and two pages explaining how they do this and still have a Good Time, plus pictures if they like. Twenty finalists are selected as having both high scores and representing as wide a range of life-styles as possible, in ages, household composition, culture, size of income, and where they live.• Each finalist is videotaped on a day they choose, to show them achieving Least Waste. This is edited down to 25 minutes for TV. Each finalist can choose the ten measures of Least Waste they would like to be scored on in the final show.
• The series is shown over eleven weeks, with a studio audience, and if possible, entrants live on stage to answer questions after their segment is shown on screen.
• Half the studio audience rates the entrants' segment of Reality TV on their 10 chosen measures of Least Waste, with ratings out of a possible top score of ten, and the other half rates them on an index of Having a Good Time. Each entrant's summed Least Waste measures is then multiplied by their Good Time score, to get a final score. So someone who scored a total of 100 on the Least Waste measure but only 5 on the Good Time score would have a final score of 500. Someone who scored 50 on the Least Waste measure but 10 on the Good Time score would also have a final score of 500. So it is important that the winner's way of living Least Waste is shown to be good fun, not a way that inflicts misery and incites rebellion.
TWENTY MEASURES OF 'LEAST WASTE'
1. How much rubbish goes out to landfill each week2. How much food gets thrown out/composted without being eaten.
3. How much water your household averages each day (taken from water bills, then divided by number in the household with garden regarded as an extra member) Four sub-measures, from the four quarterly bills at different seasons, are divided by four to get the total household measure.
4. How much electricity your household averages each day. Score reached by the same way, but take account whether the household also has gas.
5. Do you compost household and garden waste that can be composed?
6. Do you get healthy exercise in housework or garden?
7. Do you recycle bottles, plastic and papers?
8. Do you re-use plastic bags until they are tatty (when they can then be used for the rubbish) rather than always getting new ones?
9. Do you re-use grey water from bathroom and laundry?
10. When you have finished with clothes, do they go anywhere for re-use or recycling, rather than in the bin?
11. Do you mend clothes and other things when they can be mended, rather than throwing them out?
12. Do you use disposables only when they are really needed (eg disposable nappies only used when travelling or similar situations when they are a godsend)
13. Do you use a car only when you cannot reasonably go any other way, or when you have to carry heavy things?
14. Do you have special 'non-waste' practices of your own that you can suggest to others too?
15. Do you re-use one-sided scrap paper and other paper when possible?
16. Does your family/household swop around children's clothes or pass on clothes to other members of the family, and enjoy remembering who wore them first?
17. When buying, do you check whether goods are mendable or durable?
18. Do you have recipes to use left-overs, so they are usually not wasted?
19. Do you pass on things you no longer want or need, but that are still useable- to other people or op-shops - rather than putting them in the bin or out to the hard-rubbish collection.
20. Do you have an energy-saving home as far as possible? (eg with any solar-heating, passive energy design, etc.)
HAVE A GOOD TIME
5 . Making the
Commonwealth Games into a
Cultural Bonanza
STATE LIBRARY AND
COMMONWEALTH GAMES OZOLYMPICS
(trying to get a name for a web-site that would be trapped by every search engine)
The Commonwealth Games as a Cultural Bonanza
STARTING NOW!!
AIMS:
- Revive and advance your city as the Great MIND CENTRE
- Letting the world know about the your State Library!
- Letting your city know about your State Library as Better-than-Disney-Mind-Land
- Having a lot of fun and not being stuffy - to reach a wider audience and rescue them from depression and boredom and other social ills - preventing social ills by much better alternatives - better forms of Ecstasy and Gambling and Escape and Dreaming and . . .
- Getting a bit of Commonwealth Games Funds for preparing for SkilOlympics.
HOW:
- Making the most to carry the State Library messages on other Websites, radio, TV, email lists, links, talkback radio, indymedia, etc etc
- Lotsa comedy programs with fun and satire, extended beyond the imediat audiences
- Enlisting young people to realise their potential and possibilities above their ears
- Enlisting artists, singers, graffitists etc to always include something about State Library and OzOlympics in everything they do - get kids writing songs and poems for Education Age or Education Sun or their own Open Days or whatever. The Education Foundation etc can be induced to put in a line here and there.
- The Temple of Learning! Tbe a Delphic service or something in the forecourt, with a tripod, and oracle sitting on it, and people wearing laurel chaplets and people who have grown long white beards for the occasion, and a few totems, runic stones, Rosetti stones, hieroglyphics etc spaced along the pillars. The City Fathers have vellum scrolls made of vinyl, and processions of gymnasts in little pleated tunics or swirling draperies,balancing books on their heads.
- All Melbourne icons except the Shrine are involved.
- The three silly metal gents in Swanston St could have books attached to them, Bourke & Wills can have an added message that they didnt access the State Library to save themselves
- Facades at Federation Square are used for children to write in each fractured shape the name of a book they had read or author that they knew.
- An extra clock outside Flinders Street Station has the Message Time is Running Out and another one on the Flinders Street side that has a hand pointing to how long until the State Library SkilOlympics at the Commonwealth Games.
- A plaque that can be seen outside the glass walls of the foyer, with names/fotos of Famous People who Needed Th e State Library.
SOME LIBROSKILOLYMPICCOMPETITIONS look good televised:
- A competition between students set to find things out from books and from the Web - who gets the bestest info, as well as soonest. Differences between speed and quality
- Speed in locating weird books (or set books) on the search computers
- Finding something nobody else knows about in the State Library
- The Golden List is put up, and everyone can email in their favorit fiction and nonfiction books to this long long list which is eventually compiled and put up.
- Repainting old street banners - each school or school gang can repaint one banner with something illustrating Melbourne, Victoria or Australia that can be found in the library - or Melbourne - but NOT in tourist shops yet.
- All Games processions include State Library and OzOlympics linked dress-ups with BookWorms, Scholars, Antiquities, and a truck-full of Genuine Australian Writers. (May Day this year could also include a State Library procession all done up, not straggling.)
- Silly slogans will appear anywhere, eg backs of cars, eg 'If you cant read this, go to . .'
- Someone with pots of money, such as a CEO given a Golden Handshake, will donate so that all sports medal winners at the games can choose a book about something in Australia from A bookseller's Exhibition Catalog and there is TV publicity about what each winner chooses, to fill in spaces instead of all that sloppy interviewing about nothing. The book has a suitable plaque, which can include the CEO's name, but also other Stuff. Sports medallists who do not speak English can select a book of pictures, or - as is often possible nowadays - in their own language.
- Ideas about what can be on the Commonwealth Games OzOlympics to create a precedent for future games - (which will always remember Melbourne as Starting the idea) - plenty are available, and many more can be linked to State and local libraries, including reverts to the original Greek Olympics which included awards for oratory and recitation, plays, songs etc.
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6 The WishOlympics
Bedtime story for Politicians to Read to Children
Once upon a time there were three fairies - a small fairy who lived in a microscope, a middle-sized fairy who lived in a many-coloured glass bottle, and a very large fairy who lived in a sunset cloud. They liked giving people wishes, to see what they would do with them.One day, they had had very bad luck with their wish-giving. One man had wished for a sausage while he thought about what he wanted, but then wished to send it back because it was a frankfurt and then used his last wish to get a salami sausage instead. So that was his three wishes gone, just to get one salami sausage. A little girl spent all her wishes on fizzy and lollies, and her father had spent all his wishes on doctors and dentists to make her better.
Then Tinia, the micro-fairy, had an idea. "I am bored with giving wishes that people spend on gold and jewels and pretty hair and sausages. Let's ask several people to make their wish at once. Then we will give the wish to the person who makes the best wish. "
Media, the bottled fairy, thought this was a good idea too. She soon had the idea all worked out. "We could have a Wishiad, or WishOlympics," she said. "We will be the judges in a panel, like they do in skating contests on television. We three magic folk will each have a set of cards with numbers going from one to ten. After each Human makes a wish we will hold up our cards with the number of points for each wish. We will give points out of ten. Then the wisher with the highest total of points will get their wish granted."
Tellastar, the space fairy, sent the news around the world. Of course, hundreds of people wanted to be in the WishOlympics, and thousands wanted to watch the show. The three Fairies put up a great mist-woven tent on the edge of the great grey desert by the sea. Soon there were long queues to the door.
Most of the people were wishing they were higher up in the queue and nearer to the door to get in. What was their surprise to find suddenly that they were all back at home. The fairies had disqualified them at once, as not being good enough wishers. Too Washed out even for Watching Wishing.
Many of the other people were wishing they could think of a good enough wish to be winning wishers. The fairies did not think much of that wish, either, and soon they were back home too. Too Wishy-washy to be Winning Wishers.
Some fellers were grumbling already, because they wanted the wishes, but they did not like fairies. " It is not cool to think of getting wishes granted by fairies that live in dew-drops and bottles and goldy-pink clouds! Well, wishers can't be choosers, we suppose. But we wish the the fairies were respectable monsters, or vampires, so we would not feel so silly. "
The three fairies thought that was the silliest wish of the lot.
"Humans are always criticising other people for things they cannot help being. It's what we do that matters, not what we look like. Just because we have rainbow wings and golden hair and skin like rose-petals is no reason to say we ought to look like old boots with legs on their soles."
The fairies sent the fellers straight back home, with red stripes on their necks, and footprints on the back of their T-shirts. When people saw them, they cried, "You've been bitten by a vampire!" "You've been trodden on by a monster!" The fellers did not know what to think - or what to wish either. But of course, it did not matter what they wished.
After that, there were not so many people in the queue. There were only about five thousand. They all fitted into the seats for the audience inside the tent. The seats ran around a big circus ring, where friendly animals like coyotes and possums were making music to keep them amused. The fairies had a big box near the front.
"I hope the animals get well paid for all this music they are doing for us," thought Miss Sprim. Instantly, there she was, standing in the middle of the ring, on a small circle labelled First-Wisher. The fairies were holding up their number cards - 7, 8, and 9. Miss Sprim had scored 24 for her Wish, without even realising she had made it. Her number went up on a giant scoreboard near the roof.
"I hope I can do better than that," thought Mr Muckletoes. Instantly, out he stood, on circle number Two. The number cards went up - 0, 0, 0.
He wished he could disappear back into the audience, but no luck, he had to wait until all four people in his heat had made their wish.
"I wish my turn would come quickly," thought Shaun Wayne Jason. Suddenly found himself standing on circle number Three. His score went up, 0,0,0, no better than Mr Muckletoes.
"I hope Miss Sprim wins - she looks as if she needs something to cheer up her poor pale face," thought Norm MacPopolos. Instantly out there he was, standing on circle number Four, and his score was 10,10,10.
And his wish was granted! Miss Sprim won her wish.
And Norm MacPopolos won his wish too.
The afternoon went wonderfully. The winners included Bobby, who wished the great grey desert could blossom again - and it did.
Coriander wishes there were no more wars - and there never were.
Jimsha wished nobody would ever be poor again - and nobody ever was.
Timiliki wished the doctors would find out how to cure everyone who was sick, but Mr Smith won with a better wish than that - that people would not get sick anyway.
Even a little tortoise won one of the contests. Everyone cheered him, but he was so shy he crawled slowly away under one of the stands, starting very very slowly to wish the wish he had won with - but he was so slow he never finished it - and nobody now remembers what it was.
The fairies were getting very tired and bored. Some of those big wishes were very hard indeed, even for fairies. When it was nearly time to stop, one of the last contestants was Sally, and she wished there would be another WishOlympics soon. But suddenly, there on circle two was the tiniest fairy, and she was wishing there would not be another WishOlympics for quite a while, as she was so tired.
This made a problem for the other two fairies. How could they judge this one? Suddenly Media had an idea. And there she was, standing on circle number three.
And her wish was that everyone would be able to judge their wishes well enough themselves before they made them. And then the fairies would not have such a hard time trying to judge them, because only very good wishes would be made.
Suddenly there was a great rush of bat's wings. And there, swooping down like a pterodactyl on circle number four, was the Fairy Horrabil. And she made a terrabil wish, fixing everyone with her magic spells. "I wish that I will be the judge of all the WishOlympics from now on!" Heh, heh, I will only grant the really bad wishes! she thought to herself.
Nobody had expected the Bad Fairy to come with her magic spells. They had no counter-spells ready. The strong spell worked on everybody in the tent, and up on the screen came the scores, slowly, sadly, sent up by her magic spells. 10. 10.10. The Fairy Horrabil was going to win, and her wishes would be worse and worse.
She was going to judge all the Wisholympics from now on! And she was so Horrabil that she would only grant the really bad wishes! Like turning jelly-lollies into slugs, and turning flowers into broccoli, and making everybody in the world get hay fever.
Everyone else in the tent started wishing like mad, to try to stop her being able to make wishes and grant wishes - but none of them worked.
The tent collapsed - the first bad wish was working.
The tent was wobbling up and down as people tried to crawl out from under and go home. What a sad end to a happy day! The fairies fled.
The witch sat there, happily, holding on to the tent pole, which she was about to turn into a monster broomstick.
Suddenly she began to feel a bit funny. What was happening?
She began to feel really funny. She was beginning to smile! What was wrong? or what was right? She began to laugh.
The little tortoise who had hidden under the stand, too slow to make his own wish, was suddenly jolted into making a really great marvellous wonderful wish - even better than the wish he had won with.
The little tortoise wished what? He had wished that "The the Fairy Horrabil would turn herself into the Fairy Honorabil instead" .
And there was the new Fairy Honorabil, sitting there, happily, holding on to the tent-pole, which she was about to turn into an even better tent that expanded from the pole like an umbrella from its stick, in a thousand colours with a thousand lights dancing on them like stars.
The Fairy Honarabil loved holding WishOlympics, so the other fairies never need get tired - and all the wishes that were won were well worth wishing.
Now you make your wish, and you too may be given a number, to say how good your wish is. If you are lucky, your wish may come true, one day.
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7 Ethics of Olympics
Reflections in a stream of consciousness (That is to say, a very rough draft)
1. Olympics and Shipwrecks
A Greek ship hit the front page. It shipwrecked on a rock while the crew was watching soccer. Australia has been watching Australia winning Gold Medals at the Olympics, while drifting further to the rocks. Other Gold Medals are lost overboard..
While the Olympics played, the Australian dollar goes dramaticly low. This means that our country, its land and its businesses are cheaper than ever to be bought by overseas interests. The government has no way of stopping the sales and take-overs. Another major icon, Penfolds, risks being sold overseas. Over 90% of the corporat component of our food processing sector is now in foreign hands. Even FOOD !As our manufactures are shut down, and we have to import what we cannot make, imports cost us more because of our low dollar.
Our foreign debt goes higher than ever.
The big corporats of the World Trade Organisation continue their campaigns to open all countries to their economic domination by 'free' trade.
The share price of Telstra goes down so that big buyers will be able to make a bonanza from the second sale, as our great public asset is sold far below its value.
Does all this matter? Yes. A country dominated from overseas and heavily in debt must inevitably submit to overseas demands, as happens to the 'undevelopd' countries. The demand on Australia will be to become the toxic waste dump of the world. And we will not be able to stop it.
The enormous Olympic flame burning on in the dark was a fine and splendid spectacle - but it was a pity that it was so literally a symbol and an exampl of how we are wasting our resources.
2. Sacrifices to the wrong god
The President of the Olympics left his dying wife to attend to Olympic duties which others could have taken over. She died alone, and then he returnd from the funeral to continue to be in the Olympic spotlight. Was this a noble sacrifice of personal duties for greater ones? Or did it symbolise the sacrifice of other people?
"I have had three operations in the last five months. But the sacrifices have been worth it." The sportswoman got a Gold Medal - but the abdominal injuries may be permanent. And many other stars made similar remarks about their injuries. There could be a list of Olympic injuries and operations. We cannot make a list of the drugs.
Insted of being predominantly the fresh young faces we have been used to seeing in Olympic events, what a high proportion of older athletes with ravaged anxious faces. Yet they were still only in their late twenties or thirties. - I will not forget the face of the Chinese diver who must have made a milion dives. He lookd tragic.
3. 'Pleasing by a fine excess'
'Nothing too much' Ancient Greek advice
The best things carried to Excess are wrong: Charles Churchill
Wasteful and ridiculous excess: Shakespeare
It is a reproach to religion and government to suffer so much poverty and excess William Penn 1693.
The Olympics are great as a brief excess. Everybody can turn away from the locusts and the saltpans and cheer everything in sight that is ephemeral, trivial, dramatic, schmalz and full of laughs and tears, all within the bounds of an arena. The Olympics are about excess - but they are also ruind by excess. The ethics of Olympics are to contain that excess. The excesses are when 'the Olympic spirit' is in fact, killed. The hype, the 'all-time greats'.
Here are the beautiful, the young, the bodies that are strong and fast and lithe and brave. The Olympic flame was carried round the world - what joy and enthusiasm and frendship went with it.
A good binge is a brief excess. Dionysius has his fling. But if Dionysius keeps on flinging, the noise and hassl become discordant, and there will be vomiting.
There are Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. There are also Black Pits and Rotten Pits and Crazed Pits. See what may wallow in the Pits, as if Dante had put them there.
- Calculations of Nice Big Earners
- Sweeteners that are bribes
- The slave-trade of the Gladiators, whose lives can be slavery from their early childhood
- Forcing women to be too much like men, without breasts, often without periods, in trying to do what men do better, instead of trying to do what they can do as well or better - and the men competing on these too. If women and men cannot be in the same event, what does that say about the true equality of the sexes.
- If there are no events in which women do better than men, what does that say about the nature of the Olympics and what it misses out on? The world is not whole without the skills and grace and compassion of the feminin, the yang with the yin - and in applauding only the masculin, it becomes grosser and more aggressiv, because men are not whole human beings without skills and grace and compassion from the feminin in their own natures.
- The diversion of money, effort and the best of our youth away from the serious needs of our countries. Australia and Romania starred because of the enormous amounts of their limited wealth that they devoted to sport - far out of proportion. As if they imagin winning a Gold Medal is all that matters.
- The biggest win the most.
- Winning and losing - the credit needed for all.
- The chauvinism
- The greatest glory for the moment of time, due to the accident that other competitors were not as great
4. The unequals
In order to get the umpth of human skills, we have the umpth of tecnology added to them. So its not really just the human skills.
Only rich or distorted-perspectiv countries can pay for the training conditions for so many events today. The black man wins where the cost is least - such as running - but even there the training costs are becoming very great on human flesh and money.
But Olympics archery is not with a simple bow and arrow, nor is shooting just with a gun - the equipment is high tecnology. High tecnology also are the fancy suits, the fancy shoes - the fancy drugs. The ancient Greek Olympic athletes competed quite naked.
Gold, silver, bronze - traditionally there are ethical subtexts about all these greedy, meretricious and hard metals. It is interesting that in the histories of Herodotus, that early Greek historian, he always took care to note when one of the players in his history had also been a winner of an Olympic prize. Laurel wreath, do you wither, after hundreds of years?
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8. The Language of SportsOlympics
There was so much emotional language used in reporting the Atlanta Olympics, that it was amazing that journalists could keep it up so long . In a four-page newspaper feature reporting a days' Atlanta Olympics. Over 70% of the emotional language was negative. Only 29% was positive, with a ratio of 260:106. Much of the negative language was incompatible with Olympic ideals - such as:
aggressive, agony, angry, bitchiest, blaming, cried and cried, despair, devastation, disaster, feral, grief, heart of a national broke, heartbreaking, haven't done their best, inconsolable, intolerable, loathe, rabid gorilla, merciless, shoot the lights out, sobbing away, strangled, tears, tribulations, whip, grim, harshly, bit of mongrel, vicious kick, raging, strike you down, aggressive pressure, ruthless
Some reporters put far too much emphasis on ruthlessness, aggression and no mercy, and even made criticisms if 'harmony had replaced success as team motto' or that 'there were no biting words' after a defeat.
If reporters felt bound to be emotional, they could at least seek some sort of balance, and let their outlook on life include more of:
ecstatic, adorable, beaming, sweet, carefree, grinning, cheeky, bounced, joyful, delight, smiles, cheered, graceful, generous, shone, honest, marvellous, happy, generous, gentle, polite, perfectly, compassionately, team harmony, enthusiastic
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