Usain Bolt Tells The Secret Of How To Run One Hundred Meters in 9.79 Seconds...

Usain Bolt is the world's fastest runner.
On August 23 at the Birds Nest Stadium in Beijing the twenty nine year old Jamaican won the men's 100m final of the World Athletics Championship in a time of 9.79 seconds.
It wasn't as fast as his seriously fast 9.69 second win in 2008 but hey, it's still really quite speedy.
Having a drink with him after the race I asked him the secret to running so fast.
Lowering his voice he leaned forward in an almost conspiratorial manner, looked me in the eye and said Keith, you have to move your feet very very quickly.
Wow! Such a simple concept.
A secret of the universe was now revealed.
All I could do was nod slowly,...

Tankman. The Hero Of China's Tianamen Square, June 5, 1989

The world is always in need of heroes
and on June 5 1989, it got one.
His name is reputed to be Wang Weilin but the world knew him simply as Tankman.
We can only guess what happened after the event to this remarkable young student.
A hunger strike by three thousand students in Beijing grew to more than a million as the injustices imposed on the Chinese nation became just too much to bear.
And when this young man, captured by AP photographer Jeff Widener refused to move, standing with his meager bags before a line of tanks, a hero was born.
Then too, a second hero emerged as the tank driver refused to crush the man.
What happened to him we may well wonder too.
And the world doesn't give up hope that a mainstream politician will be hailed a hero for standing up for his people's hopes and aspirations. One day.
Unfortunately this dream of reform ended and blood filled Tianamen Square, but not before a billion Chinese had been shown there was hope.
That was twenty five years ago today.
Has anything really changed...

Beijing Artist Liang Kegang Sells A Small Jar Of Mountain Fresh Air For $860 But There Are Other Choices For The Polluted City's Population...

The smog and pollution problems that beset many major world cities and Beijing in particular aren't going to go away anytime soon.
Beijing artist Liang Kegang, traveling in southern France and wanting to make a statement about the problem, brought home a small jar filled with mountain fresh air from the Provence area.
He made his statement to a worldwide audience by selling the jar of air for 5,250 Yuan or $860.
And for those at home who don't have the option of travel and wish to breathe, there's a novel solution. And why not. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to want and expect to breathe fresh unpolluted air.
Many cities like Zhengzhou in China's Henan Province have created Fresh Air Stations where people can go and breathe fresh air that comes from the Laojunshan Mountain National Park.
Imagine a city importing clean air in bags for people to breathe for god's sake!
Another option is to continue breathing smog.
Which is what most of the city's population and visitors breathe.
And that says the World Health Organisation is the world's biggest health risk that kills more than seven million people a year.
Are individual fresh air bags really the future...

The Bao House. A Tiny Lightweight Mobile Living Space. Made In China...

The Bao House is a pedal-powered lightweight living space, made from sprayed polyurethane foam (SPF).
Dot Architects were asked to design a mobile living space that was human powered for the  
Get It Louder 2012 Exhibition of Art
at Sanlitun Village in China's Beijing.
Two metres square, and looking like a giant quilted cube, the Bao House is more of a transformation of a commonly used material rather than an experiment in mobile living.
And that's just as well.
While the material is water resistant and offers wonderful thermal insulation, SPF is made of petrochemical materials, is expensive, is non renewable, non recyclable and is highly toxic.
The front slides open to create a doorway and the roof is made from transparent polycarbonate to allow light in.
The padded cell has a mattress on the floor and can sleep three.
It certainly doesn't tempt me...

China Bathes In The World's Most Over-Crowded Swimming Pools...

In the heat of summer, many people in China take to the swimming pools to cool off.
There's certainly no room to swim in these seething masses of humanity and they're lucky if they're able to stand up without drowning while the mayhem continues around them.
There's one pool in the Yao Stink district of China that somehow accomodates 230,000 people at the one time!
These people don't realise or perhaps don't care they're being covered in almost 100% coli bacteria.
Toxicologists have noted that urine and fecal matter makes up nearly 90% of the lethal mix.
In 2008, one man died, surprisingly only one, and over three thousand people were poisoned when they swallowed the water which contained body waste from 47,000 bathers in Beijing's gigantic Mao Mao Pool.
If you're not totally nauseated, you might wish to read even more here.
I'm off for a shower and a walk in the fresh air...

The Straddling Bus...

China's 3D Fast 1200 Passenger Bus was unveiled recently.
It straddles the road so cars drive under and through it.
This amazing bus can pick up or disembark passengers without disrupting traffic flow.
Construction of a 186k route begins in Beijing later this year.
You can catch the bus at www.treehugger.com
No more crawling at a Snails pace, this travels as fast as a speeding Pullet and even faster than a Flying Tortoise...