Winter Olympics
 

Anybody here in Vancouver? Curious how things are there with the games right around the corner? How's has it impacted you?

See : As Olympics near, people in Vancouver are dreading Games - Dave Zirin - SI.com

As an economic refugee from the Gamed Area, I've kept up with all the news, and it is very grim. Whole business neighborhoods are being shut down, as are human rights. The thousands of people evicted to make room in the worlds' most expensive city are being harrassed into invisibility, and the Police will confiscate any Anti-Olympic signs displayed even through windows. Environmentalists remain appalled at the destruction from widening the sea-to-sky highway to Whistler, among other outrages to once-beautiful BC.
While the Olympics have tradititionaly been a magnet for political protests, these are also facing massive demonstrations against the conduct of the games and the business community itself. There's no reason for amateur sport not to be conducted on existing facilities at many locations, with a central awards ceremony to follow.
Canada is not expected to follow tradition and suspend hostilities in Afghanistan for the duration - for extra suspense, it has turned over the Vancouver Airport to the same security team whose cameras somehow missed the London Subway bombing of 7/7/05.

I'm glad that Zakopane, Poland, has almost no chance of hosting winter olympics, though they are trying.

I'm not a fan of Olympics, at least not in today's commercialized form. It's no longer about sports, it's about sponsoring and advertising on one side, and killing yourself and/or others just to break a record by thousandths of a second on the other. Thankfully, we've got good movie channels in our satTV.

Back to Vancouver: I hear the temperatures are way above freezing, so lots of resources are being wasted on artificial snow, etc.

They have a "base" of big rectangular hay bales, and are bringing in snow at, I hear, $100,000 per truckload to replenish the stockpile. Let's hope they didn't take out too many trees for a waterlogged site. Here at the north edge of agriculture, we are having a very mild winter, unlike the southern U.S.

Thanks for the link. This is pretty telling.

i don;t watch..

For the next few weeks Vancouver will be the doping capital of the world.
I found this this morning:
Russia sent clear doping message

Funny part is, they don't even have any snow.
Lack of snow, warm weather is hot topic in Vancouver - USATODAY.com

I'll wait until the madness is over to go back to Vancouver. Its just across the border.