Beijing fireworks were faked?

[bushmeister0]

Yahoo! Sports:

If you watched the Opening Ceremony on Friday night, chances are you said something like, 'no way that's possible' at least once. It turns out you were right.

London's Telegraph newspaper reports that some of the fireworks which appeared over Beijing during the television broadcast of the Olympic Opening Ceremony were actually computer generated. But -- hold on -- it's not necessarily as bad as you think.

The faked fireworks were actually set-off at the stadium, but because of potential dangers in filming the display live from a helicopter, viewers at home were shown a pre-recorded, computer-generated shot."

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Some-Opening-Ceremony-fireworks-were-faked?urn=oly,99745

Faked fireworks, faked reasons for going to war, it's all good.

I'm fairly certain W. missed the whole thing from under the table.



I wonder why Kissinger is so happy? Oh right, the new oil war!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2534033/Beijing-2008---Day-two.html

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

1. Goddamn dumbass.

x(

EDIT- replying to the last pic of Bush.

[RB TexLa]

21. The dumbass part is that he thought he had to turn it around.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. WTF is pickles reading off the back of the flag?

Made in China?

and what is up with the daughter's look?

those people are sick

[JackBeck]

13. The Botox settled in her neck. She's stuck. n/t

[Occulus]

14. DUzy. n/t

[chatnoir]

16. Dumb dumb question but why is she called pickles?

I've always wondered that and never figured it out. :D

[kirby]

23. I think it is just urban legand....

She is called no such thing.

[chatnoir]

59. I've only seen it on DU of course but... n/t

[kirby]

61. I have seen it elsewhere...

But like most urban legands/myths, it has a life of its own. There are many speculated reasons for its existence.

I have heard several:

1) Her face always looks like she just ate a sour pickle

2) In the old Dick Van Dyke show the black and white episodes with Mary Tyler Moore, Morey Amsterdam played a writer with a wife he called "Pickles." Pickles was rarely heard from and never seen, but still the constant butt of jokes.

3) She likes pickles

4) Slang for 'tickle the pickle'.

5) Her secret service codename

[JackBeck]

27. My understanding is that's Shrub's nickname for her.

Why he calls he that, like every other decision he makes, I have no idea why he made that choice.

[chatnoir]

58. I was wondering if it might be that

Wondered if maybe it slipped out in some interview or some old Crawford source mentioned it in some article on them.

[Buns_of_Fire]

44. It goes back to when she was never seen, never heard, and no one knew anything about her...

Like Buddy Sorrell/Morey Amsterdam's wife, "Pickles," on the old Dick Van Dyke show.

(I know. "Who's Morey Amsterdam"? "Who's Dick Van Dyke?" And to think I'm STILL not old enough to retire!)

[chatnoir]

57. That helps - thanks!

For years silently wondered "Why 'Pickles'?? Did * once stupidly mention in some interview that she loved to eat them or is that his nickname for her or sth?" :)

[JeanGrey]

64. She is hated and vilified because she's Bush's wife and it

was given to her to be more hateful. Are you new?

[chatnoir]

67. I've seen it on DU for years

Just never understood exactly why she was called that of all things. "Pickles"? It's too specific to be random, it seems. To me at least.

Not really new, been a member for years, just have a low post count.

[Cronus Protagonist]

32. She's thinking "Shouldn't the flag be rectangular??"

And she would be correct.

[Enrique]

62. looking for the isntructions

:shrug:

[HughMoran]

3. Daughter wondering why moran dad is holding the flag backwards

Someone slap that moron - I just can't take it any more.

[RB TexLa]

11. There is no backwards.

[HughMoran]

17. The idiot moron Bush can't comprehend how it looks to those he's holding it for

It's fucking backwards - I don't care about the snippy people like you - it's fucking backwards.

[cherokeeprogressive]

30. Whoa.

So you've never been on the south side of a flagpole when the wind was blowing west?

Did you complain about the flag being BACKWARDS then?

[HughMoran]

37. He is not the wind

He is a FUCKING MORON and I don't need to have DUers kissing Bush's ass defending him.

[cherokeeprogressive]

42. He's a fucking moron. On that we agree.

I don't kiss ANYONE'S ass, and I certainly don't defend bush the man.

[HughMoran]

66. He certainly isn't playing with a full deck

:D


I do understand the technicality of your post, but you'll notice that NONE of our athletes will hold the flag that way when cheering on their fellow athletes!! Why? Because they know better and can actually use their brains!

[RB TexLa]

50. He's a dumbass because he thought it had to be turned around.

[BrotherBuzz]

31. Hey, he practiced in front of a mirror for an hour so he'd be perfect.

:rofl:

[HughMoran]

38. "Can I get another can of that potted meat"

Uhhh-huhh.

[BrotherBuzz]

41. Reckon You Can Make Me Some Biscuits?

I like mustard on mine, Uhhh-huhh.

[HughMoran]

65. "Mmmmmmmm and I'd like another order of them french-fried potaters"

:D

[BrotherBuzz]

68. Ummm, I recken I'll have me some of the biguns

[HughMoran]

70. I liiike the way you taaalk boy, mmmmmm

[lunatica]

55. LOL! It's right side from his angle!

Yeah, I know it not backwards, but he is...

[Warpy]

4. Barbara, "Geez, Daddy, it goes the OTHER way!"

[Number23]

40. *Groan*

Geez, Daddy, it goes the OTHER way!

Two... count 'em... TWO ways to hold up a damn flag and he picks the wrong one, of course.....

[XOKCowboy]

5. Hey George! The Star go on the LEFT you idiot!

OMG look at the two fossils in the bottom of the picture! I'm thinking Ch'in dynasty. Anyone?

[Bozita]

9. The stars ARE on Bush's left. The photographer's on the wrong side of the picture.

The man is simply incapable of viewing anything from more than one angle..

[HughMoran]

18. "Compassionate conservative" idiot moron cannot COMPREHEND ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE THAN HIS OWN!!

He's an idiot fucking moron and he's destroyed our standing in the world - he's a total embarrassment.

[Mind_your_head]

22. THAT's a truth.

:thumbsup:

[AlCzervik]

6. It's nice how they installed a war criminals section.

[Hobarticus]

7. Only way this shot could be better is if he held it upside-down...

...as in, we're in distress!

[JohnnyRingo]

39. It's not hard to imagine:

...Now it's right.

[dkf]

8. What a moran!

How embarrassing.

[Lint Head]

10. Narcissistic elitist criminal pricks!

:dem:

[npk]

12. He's holding the flag upside down...

OMG

:rofl:

[Catch22Dem]

15. Upside down?

What flag are you looking at?

[HughMoran]

19. He tied the flag in a knot!!

OMG - WTF!~??~?~?/`!!

[npk]

20. The big flag in the picture

He's got the flag positioned the wrong way, the flag is backwards, like the reflection from a mirror.

[Catch22Dem]

48. Last I checked, backwards does not equal upside down

And if you want to get technical about it, the flag is facing the right way from his point of view. The millions of things this idiot has done wrong, and we're talking about how he's holding a 50 cent flag?

[RNdaSilva]

24. No problem on the fireworks...

only Bush.

Was about to ask if that was Henry Kissinger...until I saw the...

[begin_within]

25. I happen to think the faked fireworks thing was pretty important, for this reason:

NBC made no attempt to clarify the fact that we were watching pre-recorded, computer-generated footage. They attempted to pass it off as live footage. By this I mean the aerial fly-over showing the "footprints" fireworks leading to the stadium.

In my opinion, they failed to maintain standards of journalism by not identifying that footage as recorded and simulated. The announcers did say something like, "And now we see Zhang's vision..." I forget the exact words. But I was convinced that I was watching live footage of the fireworks leading up to the stadium.

And as some DUers know, I know a thing or two about fireworks. But that's beside the point. The point is that NBC passed off recorded and simulated footage as live. They did not indicate that it was simulated. This may seem like a tiny matter to most people, but where do you draw the line?
What if someday there is something faked and is passed off as real? Or has this already happened in "footage" from Iraq?

The point of this is not that CGI effects were used. The point is that NBC did not identify it as simulated. That's a failure to maintain a standard of journalism, and that could be very dangerous in a different situation.

[tammywammy]

29. NBC was showing what the Chinese were showing

The computer generated fireworks were done by the Chinese. I doubt NBC even knew they were computer generated.

And everyone should have know it wasn't live, considering the Olympics started at 8:08pm Beijing time, and they're 12 hours ahead of the eastern US coast. You can tell while watching they do put the "Live" in the corner when it's live and it's not there when it's prerecorded.

[begin_within]

35. By "live" I meant actual video footage, not animation or a simulation. Also,

I read on some other web site that the Chinese television clearly indicated to their viewers that the fly-over was simulated and not actual footage of what was happening at that moment. So viewers in China were clued-in, while viewers of NBC were led to believe an actual fly-over with a camera was happening at that moment. To me that's a pretty important distinction.

[Mind_your_head]

33. The 'new' UNACCEPTED standard of journalism that is trying to be

JAMMED DOWN OUR UNACCEPTING THROATS is that msm don't have to identify what is real/live or not.

Line drawn in sand. That's why newspapers/magazines/TEE VEE is being abandoned in droves. They all FAIL to TRUTHFULLY TRUTHFULLY INFORM.

And all of you lyin' rat bastards who have no conscience other than 'doing what it takes' to keep that hot/not-so-hot wife and all the kids you sired in your mcmansions.....you're in the same sorry mess as the rest of us who go a little tiny bit before you........we're all gonna go down.

Man the life-rafts! Everyman for himself! (oh wait, that's what got us here in the first place, isn't it?) :think:

[onenote]

46. Not so. At the start of the opening ceremonies, the announcers indicated

at one point that what appeared to be fireworks were actually a "cinematic creation" I'll try to find exactly at what point they did so.

[begin_within]

69. I wish they had told me that at the start of the Iraq war, the WMDs were an artisitic creation.

This was a major failure of journalism at NBC. Where are you going to draw the line between this and a simulated war being shown on TV?

[Romulox]

60. Didn't you notice Bob Costas' sycophantic paeans to the ruling party throughout the NBC coverage?

NBC is clearly a propaganda organ of the CCP for the purposes of these games.

[Iggo]

26. Damn, Kissinger looks ten years younger.

Things must be looking up!

[bushmeister0]

47. It's the blood of infants he's been drinking. It's great for the skin!

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

54. bushmeister......

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[lunatica]

56. The top half of his face is stretched

Because the bottom, half, which isn't showing has all the sagging skin pulling it down.

[Johonny]

28. I was there

and there was a ton of real fireworks during the opening ceremony and right after.

[RNdaSilva]

34. Fantastic!

How about a first hand account?

[Johonny]

43. sure

It was hot, I mean really hot inside the stadium. Particularly high up in the stadium. The stadium is amazing to look at. But you have to walk up a ton of stairs to get to your seats. The show itself was fantastic. But the marching of the athletes gets old fast. The gave you a little bag of cheering toys, but you can only cheer so long when it feels like 120 F. The end was great. From my seats you could not only seat the fireworks but feel the explosions. After the show they lite up the whole area with fireworks and had a huge show some distance away from the stadium.

[ConsAreLiars]

36. Do you and the other Yahoos actually believe GE/NBC forgot to bring their own cameras?

Yeah, it's really true, and the moon landing was faked and the earth is flat. And the invasion of Iraq was a Gandhian act of selflessness. Sad to say, the old aphorism that there's a sucker born every minute is no longer true. It seems there are far more than that.

[malaise]

45. I watched a program on CCTV

showing the entire planning of the opening ceremony. The article in the lead post is beyond utter stupidity.

[Skidmore]

49. He's mighty proud of himself.

Wonder what he's like during quiet time at the WH when they let him have the crayons and coloring book.

[B Calm]

51. ha ha ha ha, fucking flag is backwards!

[arcadian]

52. Nothing is real anymore, why should this be any different?

n/t

[Marrah_G]

53. God he is embarrassing.

[Occam Bandage]

63. I dunno, I wouldn't call that "faked." I mean, they did exist; NBC was just afraid to put

helicopters in the air near them. It would have been best if they had just had a few distance shots instead of a tracking flying shot; that would end the need for CGI.