What Caught My Eye Today - Olympics, PACs and Canada

Olympics - For those of you living under a rock or otherwise preoccupied, the 2012 Summer Olympics kick off this Wednesday, with some preliminary soccer matches in advance of the official opening ceremonies this Friday.  So, on one hand you'll see a lot more postings on this topic than usual, but on the other, I promise that most of my stuff probably won't make the scant 3500 hours of coverage, our friends at NBC will be offering (more on that in a moment). To wit, I give you this first little gem on the ultimate underdog nation. Bangladesh is home to more than 152 million people, making it the eighth most populated country in the world, yet its Olympic futility is so bad it makes one wonder if a statistical mistake has been made. Bangladesh has never won a single medal at the Olympic Games and is unlikely to do anything to change that tortured record over the next few weeks. Of the International Olympic Committee's 204 members, 80 have never medaled. Many of the nations are tiny by comparison, although Myanmar (the world's 25th most populated country) and Nepal (45th) are also on the medal-free list. Meanwhile, Tonga (195th in population) has an Olympic silver, Barbados (181st) a bronze and Iceland (178th) two of each. The Bahamas, ranked 177th, has excelled with 10 total medals, four of them gold. Perhaps most extraordinary about Bangladesh is not its dearth of medals, but that it has never had an athlete qualify for an Olympics based on performance in competition. Every one of the country's representatives, stretching back to 1984, has been courtesy of the IOC's wildcard system, devised to assist competitors from nations low on the international sports pecking order. That is the case again for London, where a four-strong Bangladesh team featuring an archer, a gymnast, a shooter and a swimmer will march in the Opening Ceremony, all of them thanks to the wildcard allotment. Kind of makes you hope that one of these wildcards can somehow manage to make it beyond the first round. Not likely, but one can always hope. So 3500 hours, huh? I did some checking and if you take 17 days of competition multiplied by 24 hours, that gives you 408 hours or roughly 12% of the 3500 hours of boob tube coverage that NBC is offering. That's a lot of coverage...which is my way of transitioning to this next item.

Television - Binge viewing is transforming the way people watch television and changing the economics of the industry. The passive couch potato of the broadcast era turned into the channel surfer, flipping through hundreds of cable channels. Now, technologies such as on-demand video and digital video recorders are giving rise to the binge viewer, who devours shows in quick succession, episode after episode, season after season. Ain't technology grand? And how about that advanced civilization we are all so proud to be part of. We've evolved from mere couch potatoes to hardcore bingers. Way to go, team. Brain chemistry plays a role in bingeing. Viewers identify with characters on screen and subconsciously begin to mimic their emotions—be it sadness or triumph or anxiety, and each emotional state triggers different brain chemicals, which linger. The urge to sustain that inner experience leads you to press "play" on the next episode, and the one after that, the equivalent of the book you can't put down. Longer, uninterrupted viewing sessions can lead to a deeper virtual-reality experience of the narrative. It can seem more real, from a neurological point of view. I'm going to go off the reservation, just this once and suggest a couple of remedies for those of us suffering from binge viewing. Option 1, read a book; option 2, go outside and get some fresh air; option 3, get a life, you degenerate blight on humanity!

Political Action Committees (PACs) - 0.000063 percent of the United States' population, 196 super wealthy people, have given more than 80 percent of the Super PAC money spent in the current U.S. presidential election. Freedom of speech or buying an election? I guess it is all a matter of perspective.

Olympics - For the first time in history, the U.S. Olympic team will have more female athletes competing than males in this summer's Games in London. The 530 member team consists of 261 males and 269 women. First time for everything, right?

Canada - The average Canadian is now richer than the average American. The net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, while the average American household had a net worth of $319,970. I never liked those Canadians; they talk funny.