I was curious whether there were any new sports debuting at the olympics this Summer besides BMX, so I looked it up on wikipedia and found this:

"The BOCOG also plans to carry the flame to the top of Mount Everest.[33] In June 2007, construction began on a 108 km (67 mi) long "highway" scaling the Tibetan side of the mountain. The $19.7 million blacktop project will span from Tingri County of Xigazê Prefecture to the Everest Base Camp. Environmental concerns about the effects of the road on the fragile Himalayan region have been expressed by the media, but denied by the Chinese government."

wtf?! China scares the hell outta me. I keep thinking about footage of the towns and cities (ie. big enough to have highrise apartment buildings) along the Yangtze that I saw in one of the Michael Palin doc's... totally unreal. They looked like something out of a Hollywood post-apocalyptic movie.