Creating the Modern Olympic Games from past history

Olympic Official logo

According to legend, the ancient Olympic Games were founded by Heracles (the Roman Hercules), a son of Zeus. Yet the first Olympic Games for which we still have written records were held in 776 BCE (though it is generally believed that the Games had been going on for many years already). At this Olympic Games, a naked runner, Coroebus (a cook from Elis), won the sole event at the Olympics, the stade – a run of approximately 192 meters (210 yards). This made Coroebus the very first Olympic champion in history.

The ancient Olympic Games grew and continued to be played every four years for nearly 1200 years. In 393 CE, the Roman emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, abolished the Games because of their pagan influences.

Pierre de Coubertin Proposes New Olympic Games

Approximately 1500 years later, a young Frenchmen named Pierre de Coubertin began their revival. Coubertin is now known as le Rénovateur. Coubertin was a French aristocrat born on January 1, 1863. He was only seven years old when France was overrun by the Germans during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Some believe that Coubertin attributed the defeat of France not to its military skills but rather to the French soldiers’ lack of vigor.* After examining the education of the German, British, and American children, Coubertin decided that it was exercise, more specifically sports, that made a well-rounded and vigorous person.

Coubertin’s attempt to get France interested in sports was not met with enthusiasm. Still, Coubertin persisted. In 1890, he organized and founded a sports organization, Union des Sociétés Francaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA). Two years later, Coubertin first pitched his idea to revive the Olympic Games. At a meeting of the Union des Sports Athlétiques in Paris on November 25, 1892, Coubertin stated,

“Let us export our oarsmen, our runners, our fencers into other lands. That is the true Free Trade of the future; and the day it is introduced into Europe the cause of Peace will have received a new and strong ally. It inspires me to touch upon another step I now propose and in it I shall ask that the help you have given me hitherto you will extend again, so that together we may attempt to realise [sic], upon a basis suitable to the conditions of our modern life, the splendid and beneficent task of reviving the Olympic Games.”

His speech did not inspire action…..

The Modern Olympic Games Are Founded

Though Coubertin was not the first to propose the revival of the Olympic Games, he was certainly the most well-connected and persistent of those to do so. Two years later, Coubertin organized a meeting with 79 delegates who represented nine countries. He gathered these delegates in an auditorium that was decorated by neoclassical murals and similar additional points of ambiance. At this meeting, Coubertin eloquently spoke of the revival of the Olympic Games. This time, Coubertin aroused interest.

The delegates at the conference voted unanimously for the Olympic Games. The delegates also decided to have Coubertin construct an international committee to organize the Games. This committee became the International Olympic Committee (IOC; Comité Internationale Olympique) and Demetrious Vikelas from Greece was selected to be its first president. Athens was chosen as the location for the revival of the Olympic Games and the planning was begun.

London 2012 Olympics

The 2012 Summer Olympic Games, officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad, also known informally as London 2012, began in London, United Kingdom, on 27 July and will continue until 12 August 2012. The first event, the group stages in women’s football, began two days earlier on 25 July. Around 10,500 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) are expected to participate.

Following a bid headed by former Olympic champion Lord Coe and the then Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, London was selected as the host city on 6 July 2005 during the 117th IOC Session in Singapore, defeating bids from Moscow, New York City, Madrid and Paris. London is the first city to officially host the modern Olympic Games three times, having previously done so in 1908 and in 1948.

Construction in preparation for the Games involved considerable redevelopment, particularly themed towards sustainability. The main focus of this is a new 200-hectare Olympic Park, constructed on a former industrial site at Stratford in the east of London. The Games also make use of venues which were already in place before the bid.

Opening ceremony

The opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics was held on 27 July 2012 and was called “Isles of Wonder”. Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle was the artistic director for the opening ceremony and the music directors were Rick Smith and Karl Hyde of the electronic music duo Underworld.

The Games were officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II, who was accompanied by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. It was the second Games opened personally by the Queen; she opened the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Philip opened the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne on her behalf. The Games held in Australia and Canada in 1988, 2000 and 2010 were opened by their countries’ respective Governors General.

A comedic short film starring Daniel Craig as secret agent James Bond and Queen Elizabeth II as herself was screened during the television coverage of the ceremony. Sir Paul McCartney performed the song “Hey Jude” at the end of the ceremony. As per reports, the gala opening ceremony was watched by 27 million UK viewers. 

Closing ceremony

The closing ceremony of the London 2012 Summer Olympics is scheduled to begin on 12 August 2012. The ceremony is planned to include a handover of the Olympic flag by Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, to Eduardo Paes, Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, the host city of 2016 Summer Olympics. The Spice Girls are rumoured to be reuniting for the first time since 2008 to perform in the closing ceremony.

 

Copyright 2012 by london2012.com, history1900s.about.com & YouTube

Twitter on new plan to retrieve old tweets but not ‘timeline’ project

Twitter

Twitter is working on a tool that would let users export every tweet they’ve ever made on the site, the company’s chief executive, Dick Costolo, told The New York Times.

But why would someone want all their tweets –possibly going all the way back to 2006, when Twitter was first launched?

Facebook already lets you download a “personal archive” that includes a list of every message you’ve ever sent to someone, a list of every friend you have on the network, copies of any photos or videos you have ever uploaded to the site, and much more. I recently fetched mine and was surprised at the amount of data I’ve shared –packaged up by Facebook into 46MB worth of files and folders — and I consider myself a light user.

Now imagine data from Twitter’s 140 million users who are firing off 140-character tweets throughout the day, every day, whether about their own personal trivia, or their thoughts on current news as it unfolds.

In fact, Twitter has evolved into an important real-time news feed and communication tool.

So the idea of a person being able to see perhaps tens of thousands of his thoughts over time, all in one place, is pretty compelling. For some people it would work out to be like a virtual diary and news chronicle all in one.

Currently Twitter only gives users access to a certain number of their tweets and Costolo did not say when the company would release the personal export tool it is working on. In the meantime, if retrieving old posts is important to you, try SocialSafe.net, which backs up social networks, or CloudMagic, which is a lightning-fast way to search for things across Exchange, Twitter, Gmail, Google Apps, Chat, Docs, Calendar and Contacts.

Another thing to note is the tool Twitter is developing will only be for user’s own tweets, not for digging through Twitter’s entire trove of posts.

“It’s two different search problems,” Costolo told the Times. “It’s a different way of architecting search, going through all tweets of all time. You can’t just put three engineers on it.”

Copyright 2012 by The New York Times & PC World

My Instacanvas Art Gallery

Instacanvas is a new service that helps Instagram users make money by selling their photographs as canvas wall art. Users can display their images through the “online gallery space” on the site, and sell their images to buyers as canvas prints without having to do any extra work. Instacanvas acts as the middle man, doing all the printing and shipping, and takes a 20 percent commission from sales. The prints start at $40 for a 12×12-inch canvas and go up to $80 for a 20×20-inch one. Photographers are paid via PayPal once they earn more than $100 in sales. Instagram users have bought into the idea: the service amassed over 4,000 users in the first 72 of beta testing.

Check out suffian_yans’s #Instacanvas gallery, where you can buy their Instagram artwork. My Instacanvas is available.

Designers are meant to be loved not to be understood

bee on flowers

Boat on lake raining art

Boat on yellow scenery art

bw spooky tree art

Golden scenery

Green sky up tree

Guitar samantha art

Island holiday painting art

KL Tower on red sky

KLCC night

KL Convention Centre at night

Kuala Lumpur on peaches sky

Ladybug art

Magenta tree scenery

Pink lake view

Red tree art

Sea scenery on oil painting

shells

Silhouette peaches sky

Stone on red hell sky

Sunrise on hills

Sunrise

Tree on green sky

Vespa sprint retro art

Waterfalls on oil painting

Green sky sunset

“Thank you for seen my arts gallery. Design is where science & art break even. So did to life.. Life is a blank canvas & you need to throw all the paint on it as you can. Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” 🙂

Copyright 2012 by Instacanvas & Suffian Yans

Unite against RACISM..!!

Racism is behavior or beliefs motivated by racial stereotypes, it generally includes practices of racial discrimination, and ideologies of racial supremacy andhierarchy. Some sources emphasize that racism involves the belief that different racial groups are characterized by intrinsic characteristics or abilities and that some such groups are therefore naturally superior to others or follow practices that discriminate against members of particular racial groups for example by perpetuating unequal access to resources between groups.

The definition of racism is controversial both because there is little scholarly agreement about what the word “race” means, and because there is also little agreement about what does and doesn’t constitute discrimination. Some definitions would have it that any assumption that a person’s behavior would be influenced by their racial categorization is racist, regardless of how seemingly benign such assumptions might be. Other definitions would only include conscious malignant forms of discrimination.Among the questions about how to define racism are the question of whether to include forms of discrimination that are unintentional, such as making assumptions about preferences or abilities of others based on racial stereotypes, whether to include institutionalized forms of discrimination such as the circulation of racial stereotypes through the media and whether to include the socio-political dynamics of social stratification that sometimes have a racial component.

“Racism” and “racial discrimination” are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural basis, independent of whether these differences are described as racial. According to the United Nations conventions, there is no distinction between the terms racial discrimination and ethnicity discrimination.

In politics, racism is commonly located on the far right due to the far right’s common association with nativism, racism, and xenophobia.In history, racism has been a major part of the political and ideological underpinning of genocides such as the holocaust, but also in colonial contexts such as the rubber booms in South America and the Congo, and in the European conquest of the Americas and colonization of Africa, Asia and Australia. It was also a driving force behind the transatlantic slave trade, and behind states based on racial segregation such as the USA in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and South Africa under apartheid.Practices and ideologies of racism are universally condemned by the United Nationsin the Declaration of Human Rights.

LEGAL

The UN does not define “racism”; however, it does define “racial discrimination”: According to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,

the term “racial discrimination” shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

This definition does not make any difference between discrimination based on ethnicity and race, in part because the distinction between the two remains debatable among anthropologists. Similarly, in British law the phrase racial group means “any group of people who are defined by reference to their race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origin”.

LATEST ISSUE : John Terry Racism Trial

Terry, 31, is accused of calling Ferdinand a “f—— black c—” during a Premier League match on October 23 last year. He says he was sarcastically repeating the words that QPR centre-half Ferdinand mistakenly thought he had used. Terry is accused of a racially aggravated public order offence, which he denies.

Today he told Westminster Magistrates Court that as the pair traded insults, he heard Ferdinand say: “calling me a black c—“. Terry said today he was “very angry and upset” when he thought Anton Ferdinand had accused him of racism. On Friday, 13th July 2012, football is on trial claims players’ chief after Chelsea’s Terry is cleared of racism charge.

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

UNESCO marks March 21 as the yearly International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in memory of the events that occurred on March 21, 1960 in Sharpeville, South Africa, where police killed student demonstrators peacefully protesting against the apartheid regime.

Carol Camper, “To White Feminists” Canadian Woman Studies, 1994

“Your racism is showing when you insist upon defining our reality. You do not live inside our skin, so do not tell us how we should perceive this world. We exist and so does our reality.”

“Your racism is showing when our anger makes you panic. Even when we are not angry at you or your racism, but some simple, ordinary thing. When our expressed anger translates to you as a threat of violence, this is your unacknowledged fear of retribution or exposure and it is revealing your guilt.”

CONCLUSION The point isn’t that we should make a choice between talking about racism. Our beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism. In general, it promotes an egalitarian society in which people are not discriminated against in race. Racism is never going to stop, but we can reduce it by influencing others to stop. You don’t have to accept any form of racist hassle. Everyone, no matter what their nationality or race, has a right to live happily and free from discrimination.

If the problem is in your school, you should approach a member of staff that deals with this type of incident or if you are not sure who to go to – talk to a member of staff who you can trust and tell him/her about what has been going on. You should also tell family and friends about this so that you can also get their help and support. Other parts of your life will suffer if you keep silent. Speak up now before the problem takes over.

Be prepared to speak out and tell people just how it’s affecting your life and your well-being. If you are going to alert someone to the fact that you’re being threatened, abused or bullied, then do it properly.

Copyright 2012 by Wikipedia, YouTube & Telegraph.co.uk

British music shows world.. “How good they we’re…”

Kasabian took the British press by storm in the early 2000s by mixing traces of the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and Primal Scream with Oasis-sized confidence and DJ Shadow-influenced electronics. Named after Linda Kasabian, Charles Manson’s getaway driver turned state witness, the Leicester-based group also stole a page from the Band by moving into a remote farmhouse to brew its music. Communal life and a slew of shared influences produced an electronic, rock-oriented sound that harked back to the Madchester days of baggy pants and druggy dancing. Kasabian expanded that sound on later albums, but the band’s foundation remained rooted in swaggering, fragmented dance textures and boisterous rock & roll.

With his acerbic approach to interviews, swaggering lead singer Tom Meighan quickly became a darling of the press during the band’s infancy, and Kasabian’s revolutionary logos and sleeve art only added to the excitement. Fold-out poster sleeves, 10″ versions, and hand-stenciled covers accompanied singles like “Club Foot,” “L.S.F,” and “Processed Beats.” The hype paid off as Kasabian’s self-titled debut cracked the Top Five in October 2004, just one month after its U.K. release. Four singles landed in the Top 20 within six months, establishing the bandmates as rock & roll royalty in the process.

Founding guitarist Chris Karloff left the lineup two years later, citing creative differences with the remaining members. Kasabian’s second album, Empire, had already been recorded, and guitarist Jay Mehler was brought aboard to replace Karloff during live performances. (Mehler eventually became an official member in 2008.) Empire was ultimately released in August 2006 and debuted atop the U.K. charts, with the title track soon becoming the band’s third Top Ten hit. The band took home an NME Award in 2007 and began work on another album later that year. Dan the Automator was brought in to share production duties with Serge Pizzorno, and the resulting U.K. chart-topper West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum appeared in 2009. Automator would return for the 2011 album Velociraptor! .

Oasis were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1991. Originally known as The Rain, the group was formed by Liam Gallagher (vocals and tambourine), Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs (guitar), Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan (bass guitar) and Tony McCarroll (drums, percussion), who were soon joined by Liam’s older brother Noel Gallagher (lead guitar and vocals). They have had eight UK number-one singles and eight UK number-one albums, and won fifteen NME Awards, nine Q Awards, four MTV Europe Music Awards and six Brit Awards, including one in 2007 for outstanding contribution to music and one for the best album of the last 30 years as voted by the BBC Radio 2 listeners; they have been nominated for three Grammy Awards. As of 2009, the band have sold an estimated 70 million records worldwide. The band were listed in the Guinness Book of World Records in 2010 for “Longest Top 10 UK Chart Run by a Group” after an unprecedented run of 22 top 10 hits in the UK. The band also holds the Guinness World Record for being the most successful act in the UK between the years 1995 and 2005, spending 765 weeks in the Top 75 singles and albums charts.

Travis are a Scottish alternative rock band from Glasgow, comprising Fran Healy (lead vocalist, rhythm guitar), Dougie Payne (bass guitar, backing vocals),Andy Dunlop (lead guitar, banjo, backing vocals) and Neil Primrose (drums, percussion). They named themselves after the Harry Dean Stanton character Travis Henderson from the film Paris, Texas.

the beatles

Old history…. The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960 and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. The group’s best-known lineup consisted of John Lennon (rhythm guitar, vocals), Paul McCartney (bass guitar, vocals), George Harrison (lead guitar, vocals) and Ringo Starr (drums, vocals). Rooted in skiffle and 1950s rock and roll, the group later worked in many genres ranging from pop ballads topsychedelic rock, often incorporating classical and other elements in innovative ways. Their enormous popularity first emerged as “Beatlemania”; as their songwriting grew in sophistication, by the late 1960s they came to be perceived by many fans and cultural observers as an embodiment of the ideals shared by theera’s sociocultural revolutions.

Different trends

Over the last thirty or so years British pop music has led the world in its range and quality, starting several new trends. Britain, along with the US, was the main contributor in the development of rock and roll, and Britain has provided some of the most famous bands, including The Beatles and many others.

Britain was at the forefront of punk music (see below) in the 1970s with bands such as the Sex Pistols and The Clash, and the subsequent rebirth of heavy metal with bands such as Motorhead and Iron Maiden.

Britpop This was the general name given in the 1990s to a new wave of successful British bands who made a big impact in the United States and Europe, as well as in England. The most successful have been Radiohead, Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Massive Attack & The Spice Girls.

Copyright 2012 by Wikipedia & YouTube

sunshine landscapes : eye searing brilliance!

How wonderful Earth was…. & it’s around us..! 🙂

eyesOfOdysseus

dear odyssians,

no need to adjust your monitors. you might want to put some shades on though…. these beautiful, sunshine filled landscapes are so bright in their brilliance they could sear the flesh from your very eyeballs.

enjoy!

 

the intense heat wave + no rain that has enveloped most of the U.S. this past week prompted odie and i to surf the matrix for sunfilled landscape pics to share. but not just any type of photos of the sun would do.  we were specifically searching for  intense, powerful, and atomically bright depictions of the sun. did you feel the heat radiating from these shots?  point being,  im wearing shades now and crafting a miniature pair for odie as i type. so i think we reached our goal!

stay cool. stay hydrated.

and from all of us at camp odie we wish you a very happy fourth of july!!

love odie…

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GRAFF

The Passion on Arts Graffiti..

hollyivey

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How unique person on Earth named “Tim Burton”..

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

Tim Burton plays producer on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Reviews This film is a case of a title that is better than the movie. The idea behind it sounds great; that one of America’s most beloved Presidents was also secretly a Vampire Hunter, but the execution doesn’t live up to the premise. I’ve recently read books about the American Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination so probably know more than the average Brit about the President and this period of America’s history and there were nice details, incidents and characters taken from the period and Lincoln’s life that were included to give a bit of authenticity to the story. The truth, with the added inclusion of vampires could have created a really good film.

The film’s design is meant to be a sort of Gothic horror but it relies far too heavily on special effects and hardly anything in the film feels tangible. You get the feeling that about 80% of the film is shot on green screen which is a shame because there must be plenty of locations that could have been used. Another design problem is that it was obviously meant as a 3D film but I saw it in 2D because 3D is terrible. As a result things are constantly heading out of the screen at you which in 2D look pointless and this is a film which will probably find success on DVD, a mostly 2D format so why the film was designed in 3D I don’t know. ‘Atmospheric fluff’ is a constant feature of the cinematography and this just gets in the way. Obviously in 3D it’s meant to give the sense of depth (which according to various reviews it doesn’t) but in 2D it was once again pointless and distracting. For some reason the 30 year old Benjamin Walker looks like an alien or like Benedict Cumberbatch after he’s been hit by a spade to the face when he is playing the younger Lincoln but as the older Lincoln he at least appears human. Some of the effects look decent although aren’t on a par with the likes of Prometheus etc. The vampires for instance although obviously CGI’d, look quite good but the scene on the train looks awful and cheap. The main problem with the film’s design is the constant slow motion shots. Although the film is 105 minutes long, if it was played at full speed throughout it would probably be closer to 70.

Synopsis At the age of 9, Abraham Lincoln witnesses his mother being killed by a vampire, Jack Barts. Some 10 years later, he unsuccessfully tries to eliminate Barts but in the process makes the acquaintance of Henry Sturgess who teaches him how to fight and what is required to kill a vampire. The quid pro quo is that Abe will kill only those vampires that Henry directs him to. Abe relocates to Springfield where he gets a job as a store clerk while he studies the law and kills vampires by night. He also meets and eventually marries the pretty Mary Todd. Many years later as President of the United States, he comes to realize that vampires are fighting with the Confederate forces. As a result he mounts his own campaign to defeat them.

 

Tim Burton

Tim Burton has an “astounding imagination”. 

The eccentric director is serving as a producer on Timur Bekmambetov’s ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ and Benjamin Walker, who plays the titular character, revealed both Tim and Timur’s “unique styles” made working on the movie very special.
Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov really bring their unique styles and feel to ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’. “They’re both highly intelligent, funny, macabre, visual geniuses. What’s fun is putting trust in that and realising what they’re going for is gonna be something you couldn’t possibly imagine. It takes trust and a lot of work and dedication. “The more specific something is, the more fun it is for an actor. Both of their imaginations are astounding!”

Benjamin Walker also revealed he appreciated the pair’s “macabre humour” during filming. He explained: “They bring a sense of the visuals that are rarely seen in film today, and also this unique macabre humour that is charming and exciting. “Timur always wants to do what has not been done. He wants to create an image that hasn’t been seen. He wants to kill someone in a way they’ve never been killed – and that’s very exciting, because then you’re not just hitting people with an axe, you’re doing something very specific.”

From my point of view on this movie, overall this is a extraordinary of a film. The idea is interesting and it could have been great on scenes. But the execution is extremely poor, from the fake looking blood to serious tone. I’ll prefer to vote 3 stars instead of 5 stars.. Good movie to enjoyed your weekend & a day.. 🙂

 

Copyright 2012 by The Inquisitr & YouTube