Truth be told we barely glanced at the Sunday Times this weekend mostly because we finally and totally got sucked into the Olympic Games. However, we did make note of this excellent Week in Review piece by Times head honcho Bill Keller.

The Chinese have made their Olympics an exultant display of athletic prowess and global prestige without having to temper their impulse to suppress and control. From the dazzling locksteps of that opening ceremony, to the kowtowing international V.I.P.'s, to the carefully policed absence of protest, this was an Olympics largely free of democratic mess.

Keller knows whereof he speaks having covered the last years of the Soviet Union for the Times. However, had we read a little further we might have noticed, as the Observer did, that Keller also had a piece in the Book Review section on Nelson Mandela. We like to refer to it as the David Remnick syndrome. Later on that same day the NYO caught Keller on the telly talking about the inevitable transition from print to web: "I'm the house optimist on this question. I don't think everybody will make that transition successfully, but I think The Times will. But, you know, I could not draw you a day-by-day road map to that destination."