The Beijing Olympics are over and what have we learned?

- Well, for one thing, we've learned that "live" doesn't always mean "live."

- We've learned that things are more live on the East Coast than they are on the West Coast.

- We've learned that we can land a man on the moon, but we can't take the word "LIVE" off a TV screen on the West Coast once it's appeared on a TV screen on the East Coast.

- We learned that NBC was serious when it said there was no way it would put on Michael Phelps' attempt to win his eighth gold medal live to all time zones. But we also learned that it wasn't serious when it said it said it would tape-delay the men's basketball gold-medal game and instead showed it live at 11:30 p.m. PDT, which was — gasp! — in the middle of the night on the East Coast.

- However, despite all our moaning and complaining about time warps on the West Coast, we learned that NBC now does the Olympics better than any American network ever has. When ABC lost the Olympics after the 1988 Calgary Winter Games, I was certain that no one would ever broadcast them as well.

For a while I was right. NBC struggled through Seoul in 1988 and the ludicrous Barcelona Olympics Triplecast in 1992. CBS did well with the Winter Games in Albertville in 1992, but had a disaster in Nagano in 1994.

But gradually starting with Atlanta in 1996, NBC started getting it right. Particularly since the Sydney Summer Games in 2000 and the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002, the network has mostly found the right recipe of live and taped, broadcast and cable, and now live Internet as well.

NBC's contract ends after the 2012 London Games and quite frankly, it's difficult to imagine anyone else doing the Olympics.

What else did we learn?

- We learned that even big old greedy NBA players can get pretty soft-hearted about their country. Sure, I mean the U.S. "Redeem Team," but also Yao Ming of China, Dirk Nowitzki of Germany, Pau Gasol of Spain and Manu Ginobili of Argentina.

- Ventura County athletes won a total of six medals — two gold, two silver and two bronze. If we'd been a country, we would have been tied for 30th overall with the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Georgia, North Korea, Argentina, Switzerland, Uzbekistan and Armenia. And better than such countries as Mexico, India, Finland and Greece.

- It may have been better in the long run for the United States to lose in the softball final to Japan. Dominating the last Olympics, after dominating all the others its been in, probably wouldn't have helped bring the sport back in 2016.

- Baseball, however, could take longer to get back in, if at all. The IOC wants major leaguers to participate, but at the same time, is repulsed by the trouble they've had with steroids. Major League Baseball, meanwhile, has very little interest in putting its season on hold for the Olympics.

- We learned you don't necessarily have to be in Beijing — or even in China — to be an Olympic announcer. Many of the commentators we heard broadcasting particular sports at the Olympics weren't actually at the site. Some of them were at the International Broadcast Center in Beijing. Some of them weren't even on the same continent; they were calling them from watching the feed back at NBC's headquarters in New York.

At least NBC was up front about that, having the New York talent occasionally inform viewers where the commentary was originating from.

- Perhaps the biggest thing we learned is that the Olympic Games are just that: games. They are not meant to be political, no matter how much political people try to make them so.

In Beijing, people tried to make the Olympics about human rights. The Olympics already were about human rights.

People tried to say a repressive government shouldn't have been given the Olympics. But having the Olympics meant the government had to become at least a little less repressive.

The world was given its most complete look inside China. And China had its most complete look at the rest of the world. Each knows a little better now what it will take to live with the other.

Any city that has ever hosted the Olympics is never the same afterward. During those 16 days, life becomes nearly utopian. Once they're over, a city wants to hold onto the glow for as long as it can.

The same will be true of Beijing, perhaps more so than any other host city. Even just the thousands of Olympic volunteers will want to keep that feeling alive, to keep the torch burning. That kind of thing can't help but be carried on to others.

I think it's quite possible that one day, in perhaps two or three decades, we will see China as a much better place than we do today. And if that's true, these past 16 days could be recalled as the starting point, the time when things began to turn around.

That would be one of the best Olympic dreams ever.

— Jim Carlisle is a staff writer for The Star. E-mail address: jcarlisle@VenturaCountyStar.com.