Monday, August 04, 2008

Beijing: C'mon in, the smog's fine!


Less than a week before the gigantic opening of the massively massive Beijing Summer Olympics, guaranteed to be massively gigantic in every manner possible, and the smog is so thick that you can't see the Olympic Stadium from right outside.

The Chinese say, of course, the smog will blow over and everything will be sparkly good. And massive.

The BBC has been testing air quality in Beijing for the past few weeks, and have found the particulate pollution to be more than 4 times the World Health Organization's guidelines for such things.

I really hope the bad stuff - like smog, terrorists, or brutal repression by the government - doesn't become the story of the Games. I have a baaad feeling one of the first two, at least, will make it's presence felt in some headline-grabbing way before we're done.

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