keep new

It took me awhile to discover the ‘Keep New’ button in Bloglines and it has been my bane ever since. Anything remotely interesting gets kept new as if I’m ever going to have time to go back to it. Today, I actually did manage to make some keep news old. Two of those were from All About Cities:

Toronto on the rise?

I love Toronto – I haven’t been there in years, but there were a few years when I was a kid when we went a number of times. It was diverse, pedestrian-friendly with good public transportation, cosmopolitan, and a hell of a lot of fun, and it looks like all of those factors have only increased. Can’t wait to go back with a bike.

Olympics and obsolete notions

Wendy notes that Seattle and Vancouver tried to launch a joint bid to host the 2008 Summer Games but were rebuffed by the IOC because “only one country can bid.” To their credit, they’ve tried again, this time setting their sights on 2028 - I think it would be great to see extra-national metropolitan centers hosting. Her speculation that athletes could even identify with their “mega metro-regions” in the future the way they do with their countries now got the gears turning as well.

Another direction I think worth investigating that she doesn’t mention is taking the Summer Olympics out of global rotation and hosting them permanently in Greece. Countries could still vie to host, they would just have to move their costumes and trinkets to Greece to do so. A permanent facility could drastically improve security measures, improve the Greek economy, simplify travel, and save money that is often shelled out without returning the long-term benefits hoped for.