The Olympics may be just into its stride but, already, several lessons for future Games are clear. The first is to reduce the role of the opening ceremony, stop using presidential attendance as proof of political correctness and focus on the athletes. It's said London will have a hard time equalling the Beijing opening show. Let's hope it does not try to reproduce this monument to showy nationalism but focuses on the internationalism of individual competition.
Great spectacle that it was, Beijing's opener was a mix of hi-tech wizardry and Pyongyang's visually stunning mass games - particularly those in 2005, the Korean Communist Party's 50th anniversary. Anyone who has seen the latter in the flesh not only knows how much was borrowed from the North Koreans but what sort of triumph of the state over the individual it represents.
The Olympics is supposed to be about individual prowess, the search for perfection regardless of nationality. But mass-rally triumphalism prevailed, impressing the local population and some foreigners but leaving many others - particularly those with civilisations as ancient and distinguished as China - disconcerted.
For many, it is a relief to see that Russia and Germany now win far fewer medals than in the bad old days of their communist regimes, which would use almost any methods to prove the superiority of their state-controlled systems. And well done India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan, Brazil and Mexico, which, combined, have roughly double China's population, for winning - it can be confidently predicted - only a handful of medals between them.
But if communists have abused the Games, so too have capitalists. The focus of Jacques Rogge and his unaccountable colleagues who run the International Olympic Committee has been one thing only - money. Pity China that the Games are being held in August rather than in late September when the climate would have been far more suitable.
The US network NBC and a few major sponsors in effect control the IOC. Likewise, the timing of many events has been geared to the demands of US audiences, to the great inconvenience of many athletes and the vast majority of the world.