Owned by China Central Television, the looping building has space for 10,000 workers, and will be one of the tallest buildings in Beijing, already known as a skyscraper-friendly town. I love all the strange criss-crossing lines and the one area where you can see that the building isn't entirely finished. It seems to have been built from the top down — at least, when it comes to installing the final windows. Photos by Greg Baker via AP.

• Supercomputers and weather control - The Beijing Meteorological Bureau purchased one of the ten most powerful supercomputers in the world from IBM to help predict weather and pollution levels for all events in and around Beijing. The Chinese are also adept at controlling the weather. The Beijing Weather Modification Office (seriously) fires cloud seeding material into oncoming rain clouds with anti-aircraft guns, draining the precipitation before it can cause problems.
• Cyber warfare - China has claimed that they will "attack" and shut down websites that broadcast Olympic events illegally. No one is sure if this means they intend to attack other countries' websites or private sites hosted internationally. If they do, it could be the first case of open international cyber warfare.
• On demand coverage - NBC will be broadcasting Olympic events both live and tape delayed on several of the television networks they own, and will also provide on-demand video streams of events on the web. In total, they will present more than 3,600 hours of Olympic coverage. That's more Olympic programming in 2008 than the sum of all the hours of Olympic TV coverage ever. Dude.
• Anti-terrorism efforts - Security has been tight at the Olympics since the 1970s, but even more so since 9/11. In addition to metal detectors, bag searches, long lists of prohibited items (no crossbows!), facial recognition software, bomb sniffing dogs and whatever else the Chinese can come up with, they'll be using special equipment that lets officials detect and identify radioactive isotopes. So strontium crossbows are right out.
• Timing - Most Olympic races are timed to the thousandth of a second. In track events, the timer is set off by the starter's gun and stopped by a laser at the finish. A high-speed camera at the line takes 2,000 images per second to help determine the winner if the race is close. Swimming events, held in the Water Cube (pictured), are timed by contact plates that determine when a swimmer leaves her mark and when she touches the wall to end the race. Image by: IOC.

Sources:
China threatens Olympic Cyber Attacks. [Defense Tech]
IBM To Work Beijing Olympics Weather Magic. [ChinaTechNews]
Universal Detection Technology Secures Beijing Olympic Contract. [TMCnet]
China Leads Weather Control Race. [Wired]
How Olympic Timing Works. [HowStuffWorks]
Digital technology to play major role in Olympics. [LA Times]

She said:

For cold clouds below zero degrees, we use a coolant made from liquid nitrogen to increase the number of droplets while decreasing their mean size. As a result, the smaller droplets are less likely to fall and precipitation can be reduced. For clouds above zero degrees we use the seeding agent silver iodide to accelerate the droplets' collision and coalescence, producing a downdraft which suppresses the formation of clouds.

China 'will stop the rain' [News.com via Slashdot]

Here you can see people posing in front of the Nest last week. And here's a closeup of the crisscrossed steel girders that form the exoskeleton of the Nest. The Water Cube is actually made of high-tech materials that emulate bubbles to keep the heat inside the building.

Top image courtesy of AP; middle image by Feng Li/Getty; bottom image by Elizabeth Dalziel/AP.