so...early...

It's 6:45 am and I have been sitting in Columbus Airport since about 6. No, I'm not going on any special trip. I'm just going home and this has become my routine every week. It still amazes me how many people are at the airport at this time. I was always under the impression that super early flights were only for those taking awesome vacations or old people who just like being up early. Apparently I'm wrong. Or am I becoming an old person? hmm.....

So since I have all this time to myself these days, it leaves me a lot of time to read the news and learn new things (like the fact that there's a big word that means "big word." It is "sesquipedalian."), so I felt the need to share something interesting that I learned today.

I receive the American Lawyer Daily e-mail every morning and today I learned that there is in fact an ad hoc panel created for every Olympic Games, composed of international arbitrators from 12 different countries. Anytime a legal conflict arises during the Olympic games, a tribunal of these 12 arbitrators is chosen specifically to resolve the conflict (with anyone from the country in question being omitted from the tribunal for the purpose of being impartial). Who knew?!?! I thought that was really interesting. It's good to know somebody's working behind the scenes to keep order between all the countries. Now, the cool thing about it is that the tribunal's decision is binding on all parties involved in the conflict (and yes, the countries all agreed to let this panel's decision be binding). So, this made me think...why is it that we can trust this panel as authority when it comes to the Olympic Games, but in real life countries can't agree on hardly anything? Perhaps we could learn something from the way the Olympic Games are run. I think the world would get along a lot better if we did.