Morning Brew: June 18, 2008

As West Van buys the Olympic bullet, I'm reminded that right from my first cab ride leaving the sleek, smoker-friendly (woo!) Athens airport, it was clear that the Greeks hold a lot of resentment towards the 2004 Olympic Games. The event did some major damage to the Greek economy, not to mention the forced resettlement of the Roma community.

The Athens games once again reveal that events of such magnitude are almost always accompanied by human rights violations such as the forced eviction of whole communities in host cities.

Let's not forget that the Downtown Eastside has Canada's largest urban First Nations population... A better piece, Olympics and the City shows what we can learn from Athens. While it has a focus on London's 2012 bid, it covers all the basics on why the Olympics are always escapist fun for everyone but the host. But dude, aren't our airports sweet?

Apparently, 96% of 18-24 year olds download copyrighted material, and the average teenager has 800 'illegal' songs on their iPod. According to those stats, under the new law almost every undergrad at UBC will owe the government about $400,000 (student loans not looking so bad now, eh?). I say we make that fine apply only to Dave Matthews Band, Sublime, and j-Pop tracks... that'll save the 5% of 'em who don't actually deserve it.

Greenpeace wants Canadian Supermarkets to axe upwards of 30% of the fish they're selling. Pescatarians are totally weaker than Vegans.

Is Vancouver's status as gay-marriage-tourism-capital of North America under threat?

If, like everyone else, you think the 2010 mascots are just a tad ridiculous, just be grateful they're not the 5 mascots of the apocalypse.

Severed foot #5 washes up on BC shores. I knew there was a reason I stopped going to Hollywood films, but I guess I've already seen too many, as both the girlfriend and I instantly thought about that string of missing men I wrote about on Monday. We need to get Morgan Freeman on this, stat.

The Aesthetic Poetic recently profiled Douglas Haddow, one of Vancouver's most interesting writers. Haddow's blog The Publics is a consistently engaging oasis (along with AP) in Vancouver's online desert of 'social media' obsession. His latest review of an unnamed Korean restaurant reminds me of the great but enigmatic experience I had at Nor Boo, minus the binge drinking and ethnic rivalry.

An in-depth history of the Orpheum.

The Associated Press, that big bumbling giant of American news, wants bloggers like myself to start paying for each word they quote from an AP story. Feeling a little threatened by the internet, are we? The idiosyncratic Ed Champion offers a nice response.

Canada is getting reamed by the UN for not meeting Kyoto Protocol. Over at the Tyee there's an article on BC's "smokescreen behind which massive rape of our environment is not only permitted but encouraged."

Worried about salmonella in your tomatoes? How about salmonella in your weed?

Savor it; this is probably the only time you'll read the phrase 'Scrotum Burns' in a Vancouver Sun headline.

photo of the "salmon stream" at the Vancouver International Airport by Diane Duane