Tokyo Olympics Results

 The games feature 339 events in 33 different sports in 50 disciplines. That’s quite a lot to keep track of, so just to keep you informed here’s a direct link to the Official Tokyo Olympics Results Page.

 NEWS, SCHEDULES, AND RESULTS

NBC COVERAGE OF THE TOKYO OLYMPIC GAMES.

The Fine Print: Image courtesy of and copyright by Getty Images. This image has not been altered in anyway. Text copyright 2021 Donald Pierce and Southchester Group LLC, all rights reserved. Site produced by Media Bunker and Perception Engineering. All rights reserved. All other rights belong to their respective parties. 

Tokyo Olympics Results 26 July 2021

 The games feature 339 events in 33 different sports in 50 disciplines. That’s quite a lot to keep track of, so just to keep you informed here’s a direct link to the Official Tokyo Olympics Results Page.

 NEWS, SCHEDULES, AND RESULTS

WHERE TO WATCH THE 2021 OLYMPICS:

NBC COVERAGE OF THE TOKYO OLYMPIC GAMES.

The Fine Print: Image courtesy of and copyright by Getty Images. This image has not been altered in anyway. Text copyright 2021 Donald Pierce and Southchester Group LLC, all rights reserved. Site produced by Media Bunker and Perception Engineering. All rights reserved. All other rights belong to their respective parties. 

Tokyo Olympics Event Schedule

The games are here. The opening ceremonies have opened (congrats to Naomi Osaka for being selected to light the fire. NBC has 7000 hours of coverage planned, and as you might suspect, not all of it will be on a single channel. Finding the events you may want to focus on could be challenging, so the Media Bunker crew has rounded up some scheduling resources for you. First off, a  New York Times overview of events:

The New York Times Event Review

Tokyo Olympics Home Page

Olympic Schedule & Results

Full Olympic Schedule from NBC

Live Scores, Schedule, and Updates from The Guardian 

Olympic Coverage on Peacock Streaming Network

Deadline’s Guide to Watching the Tokyo Olympics

BBC Olympic Schedule, Updates

Tokyo Updates on Olympic Games

Olympics Photos

NPR Photographic Coverage of Olympics

The Fine Print: Photo courtesy of our friends at GettyImages.com, who have the photographic history of the 20th and 21st century on file. This photo has not been altered in anyway. We thank them for sharing. Text Copyright (c)2021 Donald Pierce and Southchester Group LLC,  all rights reserved. DonaldPierce.com is produced by the team at the Media Bunker and Perception Engineering. Opinions expressed are those of the writers. DonaldPierce.com has a wide bandwidth that allows for the coverage of everything from politics to sports car racing and is designed as an experiment in digital communications. From time-to-time we cover live events as they happen. For daily world news coverage please check out nightshiftnews.com, our sister site, which has links to every major English language newspaper in the world. Thanks for reading. Come back soon (and stay safe). 

 

The Sports of the Tokyo Olympics

The Summer Olympics are just a few hours away and despite COVID-19, economic battles, international screw ups, positive tests, and a lack of spectators, fans, and support staff at the Games, the Games are going on. They start with the obligatory major-league Opening Ceremonies (the director of the opening ceremonies was fired today for an inappropriate joke he made in the 1990s), which will be presented to a mostly-empty stadium, although there will be representation from the various Olympic organizations, participating countries,  and sports groups from around the world. The games will feature 339 events in 33 different sports in 50 disciplines. That’s quite a lot to keep track of, so just to keep you informed on what’s on tap, here’s a list of all 33 of the sports included in this edition of the Olympics.

3×3 Basketball

Archery

Artistic Gymnastics

Artistic Swimming

Athletics (track and field)

Baseball/Softball

Badminton

Basketball

Beach Volleyball

BMX Freestyle

BMX Racing

Boxing

Canoe/Kayak Flat Water

Canoe/Kayak Slalom

Diving

Equestrian

Fencing

Football

Golf

Handball

Hockey (Field)

Judo

Karate

Marathon Swimming

Modern Pentathalon

Mountain Bike

Rhythmic Gymnastics 

Road Cycling

Rowing

Rugby

Sailing

Shooting

Skateboarding

Sport Climbing

Shooting

Surfing

Swimming

Table Tennis

Tae Kwon Do

Tennis 

Track Cycling

Trampoline

TriAthlon

Volleyball

Water Polo

Weight Lifting

Wrestling

So…Someting for everyone but, unfortunely, not only will everyone not be there due to COVID, no one will be there. No spectators, not even family. That is a world-class bummer that you wouldn’t wish on a world-class athletic event. This year if you want to see the Olympics, binge on them, via NBC (in the US). 

Here’s what you need to know and where to look, brought to you courtesy of our friends at NBC.

WHERE TO WATCH THE 2021 OLYMPICS:

NBC COVERAGE OF THE TOKYO OLYMPIC GAMES.

That’s the pre-game warmups. More to come–Keep it tuned right here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Fine Print: Photo courtesy of our friends at GettyImages.com, who have the photographic history of the 20th and 21st century on file. This photo has not been altered in anyway. We thank them for sharing. Text Copyright (c)2021 Donald Pierce and Southchester Group LLC,  all rights reserved. DonaldPierce.com is produced by the team at the Media Bunker and Perception Engineering. Opinions expressed are those of the writers. DonaldPierce.com has a wide bandwidth that allows for the coverage of everything from politics to sports car racing and is designed as an experiment in digital communications. From time-to-time we cover live events as they happen. For daily world news coverage please check out nightshiftnews.com, our sister site, which has links to every major English language newspaper in the world. Thanks for reading. Come back soon (and stay safe). 

THE SPELL IS BROKEN: NEW ORLEANS CANCELS VOODOO FEST 2021. BACK IN 2022…

 

 You’re going to have wait until next year to cast some new spells, learn the latest techniques for turning enemies into newts or pick up those custom voodoo dolls you ordered.

New Orleans has announced that their annual Voodoo Fest will take a time out in 2021 and return in 2022. The gathering, held over the Halloween weekend (what a great time to have it) features music, food, and, of course, more voodoo and spells than you shake a wand at. Here’s the official announcement. 

It’s a great excuse to visit New Orleans, and having the fest in fall fits in perfectly with the weather of the Crescent City, which tends to the muggy in late spring and summer. You never really need an excuse to visit New Orleans, but the Voodoo Fest is a great reason to visit it on schedule: who doesn’t like the things that make New Orleans terrific: food and music. And who wants to miss out on the chance to walk around town dressed in skeleton and witch doctor costumes….not that such behavior is ever frowned upon in America’s most colorful city. 

Fine Print: Photo courtesy of our friends at GettyImages.com, who have the photographic history of the 20th and 21st century on file. This photo has not been altered in anyway. We thank them for sharing. Text Copyright (c)2021 Donald Pierce and Southchester Group LLC,  all rights reserved. DonaldPierce.com is produced by the team at the Media Bunker and Perception Engineering. Opinions expressed are those of the writers. DonaldPierce.com has a wide bandwidth that allows for the coverage of everything from politics to sports car racing and is designed as an experiment in digital communications. From time-to-time we cover live events as they happen. For daily world news coverage please check out nightshiftnews.com, our sister site, which has links to every major English language newspaper in the world. Thanks for reading. Come back soon (and stay safe). 

 

Fine Print: Video “Epilogue” courtesy of Daft Punk and shared via YouTube. We thank them for making it available. The video has not been altered in an way.  All rights belond to the rights holders. Text Copyright (c)2021 Donald Pierce and Southchester Group LLC,  all rights reserved. DonaldPierce.com is produced by the team at the Media Bunker and Perception Engineering. Opinions expressed are those of the writers. DonaldPierce.com has a wide bandwidth that allows for the coverage of everything from politics to sports car racing and is designed as an experiment in digital communications. From time-to-time we cover live events as they happen. For daily world news coverage please check out nightshiftnews.com, our sister site, which has links to every major English language newspaper in the world. Thanks for reading. Come back soon (and stay safe). 

DAFT PUNK WALKS OFF INTO THE SUNSET

 

 

It was, of course, going to end sooner or later. The French electro/techno/pop group Daft Punk has decided to break up after 23 years and six Grammy’s and a history of changing one segment of the music world. They were fearless, innovative, more interested in the music than the fame and money (what a nice change), and confident enough to work with the very best musicians of our time. You might want to go deep background on the duo-infamous for wearing helmets to keep their visual personal identities confidential–by reading Joe Coscarelli’s piece on them in the New York Times. 

The duo, notoriously private, perhaps realized that they were at the end of their musical road. All music is on a timeline, and what was ground breaking ten years ago may just seem to be a vision/sound that no longer syncs with the times a decade later. Whatever the reason, the reality is that they had a huge impact on music and music performance, and wrote, produced, and performed songs that were so often the perfect soundtrack for our times. There is no more music in their archives to be released (as far as we know), so they left it all on the field. Would we like to have more from Daft Punk? You bet. But we must also realize that artists create at their  own pace and they also have the right to stop when they feel it’s time. For Daft Punk, it was time. Thanks for the melodies. 

Fine Print: Video “Epilogue” courtesy of Daft Punk and shared via YouTube. We thank them for making it available. The video has not been altered in an way.  All rights belond to the rights holders. Text Copyright (c)2021 Donald Pierce and Southchester Group LLC,  all rights reserved. DonaldPierce.com is produced by the team at the Media Bunker and Perception Engineering. Opinions expressed are those of the writers. DonaldPierce.com has a wide bandwidth that allows for the coverage of everything from politics to sports car racing and is designed as an experiment in digital communications. From time-to-time we cover live events as they happen. For daily world news coverage please check out nightshiftnews.com, our sister site, which has links to every major English language newspaper in the world. Thanks for reading. Come back soon (and stay safe). 

Powerless

rTexas is frozen. The “energy state”, home to the nation’s largest oil and gas reserves and the center of America’s energy business, is suffering through a massive power outage that spans the entire Lone Star State. It is more than embarrassing–people are dying, businesses cannot open, restaurants cannot serve, gasoline supplies are running low, and water supplies are shut off, frozen, or empty. Across the state, frozen pipes and frozen citizens are the new icons of America’s self-appointed new destination for modern 21st century businesses run by people like Elon Musk (Tesla) and Larry Ellison(Oracle). Apple already has an outpost in Austin as does Facebook. But none of it will work without electricity. A lot of things went wrong in Texas for this event to happen and cause so much damage, but we’ll leave the analysis of that for another time. To see the real impact, the Media Bunker staff gathered up a stream of messages coming out from the Ring/Neighborhood network that show the real situations faced by citizens in just one section of Houston (for those keeping score, that would be the Southwest section of town, close to the “energy corridor” commercial development. Nothing has been edited up (to make things more dramatic) or down (to make things less severe). Screen captures were pulled off an iPhone. It’s a glimpse of the world without power and it’s pretty sobering. 

Fine Print: Photo courtesy of our friends at GettyImages.com, who have the photographic history of the 20th and 21st century on file. This photo has not been altered in anyway. We thank them for sharing. Text Copyright (c)2021 Donald Pierce and Southchester Group LLC,  all rights reserved. DonaldPierce.com is produced by the team at the Media Bunker and Perception Engineering. Opinions expressed are those of the writers. DonaldPierce.com has a wide bandwidth that allows for the coverage of everything from politics to sports car racing and is designed as an experiment in digital communications. From time-to-time we cover live events as they happen. For daily world news coverage please check out nightshiftnews.com, our sister site, which has links to every major English language newspaper in the world. Thanks for reading. Come back soon (and stay safe). 

The Super Game

This is a repost of an article that originally ran in 2017. It’s still relevant and worthy of your time.

Annals of IP: The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event in America. It is the most lucrative, the most widely covered, the most highly coveted event in which to be a sponsor (so popular for advertising that many people watch the game..only for the commercials), with a thirty-second spot going for US$5.0 million (source; Bleacher Report). For that amount an advertiser has the chance to reach 114 million people with their message (no pressure, don’t blow it, just like the game).
But there’s another thing going on at the Super Bowl: it is also the most tightly controlled Trademark of the season.
A funny thing happens every year at Super Bowl time. Advertisers who want to jump on the Super Bowl bandwagon by associating themselves with the event without paying the necessary and required licensing fees are  kicked to the curb, because the NFL takes it Super Bowl rights very seriously.
Understand, first, that there are two elements of IP at play here. One is copyright: the NFL owns the right to the game and rebroadcasts, presentations, etc. It’s OK to see it with friends, fine to watch it in a sports bar (that’s getting the signal legally, of course). Not fine to show it on a big screen and charge admission (that right is reserved to the league).  The NFL understands that the Super Bowl is part sports event and increasingly a major social event and they have evolved and relaxed their copyright rules to enable people to enjoy the game but not abuse the IP rights of the league and its owners.
The other element in the Super Bowl IP package is trademark rights and permissions of the name itself. The name is trademarked and that’s why local (or national or international advertisers) can’t have “Super Bowl” specials or “Super Bowl” promotions–unless they’ve paid for those rights, like the sponsors of the Super Bowl do. That’s why you hear the game referred to as “the big game” or  “the championship” or some other glancing reference. To understand precisely how this all works, here’s a ClickPak of articles on the IP issues surrounding America’s biggest football game.
The Superbowl trademark (Source: commonlawblog.com) 
Is The Superbowl proctected by Copyright or Trademark Law (Source: BroadcastLawBlog.Com)
Superbowl Trademark Rules You Should Know (Source: BeKnownforsomething.com) 
 
The Fine Print: Special thanks to the organizations (and the people inside them) who posted the articles referenced above about the IP of the Super Bowl. And thank you very much for sharing. One other point: if you deal in IP or media, it would be a good idea to put these sites into your bookmarks folder.  Enjoy…the big game. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Oath:Don’t Take It If You Won’t Live Up To It

On January 20th, 2021, Joe Biden will take the Oath of Office as the President of the United States. He does so in conflicted and confused times, with the current resident of the White House just impeached a few days ago; that president (intentionally not capitalized) has said he won’t attend the inauguration, but, really, who cares. He’s a bust…the biggest loser in American presidential history…and he knows it. 

But Biden, and those who had the actual character and ability to be president before him, takes the Presidential Oath of Office seriously. It’s not long, it’s not labyrinthine or complicated. He will, to the best of his ability, live up to it. He will not try to stage a coup or hold a Bible upside down for a photo opp. 

Here’s the official Oath of Office required of the President of the United States:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The Oath comes from a time when a person’s word meant something, when honesty was a great character trait, not a business disadvantage, when preening for the camera was considered un-masculine and when lying was reprehensible.

Let’s hope we get it right going forward, and bring back some of the great character traits that made America the leader of the free world.

We can start with someone who understands the Oath and will live up to it and forget the one who did not and would not. 

The Revolution Will Be Televised

 

America was shocked by the events of 6 January 2021 when an angry, combative and armed mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building in an attempt to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s election as the next President of the United States. The coverage of this unprecedented event has dominated the airwaves, internet news and network television news shows and channels for the last week.

 

The net result of the Capitol attack was 5 people killed, hundreds either under arrest or about to be under arrest, and an impeachment charge against Donald J. Trump for inciting the riot after speaking to the crowd that gathered in front of the White House. Despite the very real threat to those in Congress (and the guards), the so-called “attempted coup” was suppressed, Biden’s election was certified, and now the investigations about precisely what happened, who was involved, and how it came to be, are in process.

What you may not know is that people in the mob that over-ran the Capitol police were filming/taping the event and in many cases live-streaming it to other like-minded and curious followers. Be fully informed on this key aspect of that very dark event by reading this terrific piece from The Columbia Journalism Review . 

You will be surprised (or maybe not)by the sophistication and monetization involved. We live in, perhaps, over-connected times.  Just remember this: if you do something in a public space of any kind, the odds are that someone is recording it.

Fine Print: Photo courtesy of our friends at GettyImages.com, who have the photographic history of the 20th and 21st century on file. This photo has not been altered in anyway. We thank them for sharing. Text Copyright (c)2021 Donald Pierce and Southchester Group LLC,  all rights reserved. DonaldPierce.com is produced by the team at the Media Bunker and Perception Engineering. Opinions expressed are those of the writers. DonaldPierce.com has a wide bandwidth that allows for the coverage of everything from politics to sports car racing and is designed as an experiment in digital communications. From time-to-time we cover live events as they happen. For daily world news coverage please check out nightshiftnews.com, our sister site, which has links to every major English language newspaper in the world. Thanks for reading. Come back soon (and stay safe).