A fake, a faux-pas, and afloat

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There's bit a few ripples of controversy this week over some aspects of the spectacular Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing. It turns out that the fireworks sequence we watched on TV was computer-generated, and that the pretty girl singing was actually miming.

I have to admit to being quite surprised by the reaction. I thought that, even to the untrained eye, it seemed quite obvious that nine-year-old Lin Miaoke wasn't actually singing. There were two tell-tale signs: the audio quality was far too good to be "live" in the stadium, and her lips weren't moving in time to the words. Similarly, the "fireworks" sequence would have been impossible to film – helicopter pilots tend to avoid flying over rocket and missile launches. Both were very good fakes, but they were always going to be rumbled.

▫ Another news story that caught my eye this week: the tale of how a giant inflatable artwork broke loose from its moorings at a museum in Switzerland. It went on to tear down power cables, break a window, and then land in the grounds of a children's home. It's made all the more interesting by the fact that the piece was called "Complex S**t", and was shaped like a dog turd.

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