HHHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Sochifail and what happened in the opening ceremony.

[Adam]

So, if you haven't heard yet (and you likely haven't unless you're following elsewhere, because NBC has made the United States the only country on the planet not providing live coverage of the Olympic opening ceremony), there has already been at least one rather glaring and embarrassing glitch at the opening ceremony: five snowflakes were supposed to "open up" to become the Olympic rings. Turns out it didn't quite work as planned:






This, of course, has resulted in some amusing remarks:

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And it was no time at all before someone fired up the Photoshop software:

[phillygirl]

While it's a slightly amusing technical blunder, I'm a little perplexed at the seeming desire to see the Olympics fail in some sort of way. It's just odd to me. Is it because it's Russia?

[Norm dePlume]

Hey, four out of five worked, right? 80% is good for a B, isn't it? Or a C+, maybe?

[Billy Jingo]

While it's a slightly amusing technical blunder, I'm a little perplexed at the seeming desire to see the Olympics fail in some sort of way. It's just odd to me. Is it because it's Russia?

Same thing happened in London 2012, didn't it? Until the Brits got tetchy, anyway.

Although I definitely remember some schadenfreude (from Americans!) when Chicago lost their bid because the president got involved so you may be right and it is just douchebaggery.

[Norm dePlume]

Score one for Romney.

http://www.hoberman.com/portfolio/hobermanarch.php?myNum=12&mytext=Hoberman+Arch&myrollovertext=%3Cu%3EHoberman+Arch%3C%2Fu%3E&category=&projectname=Hoberman+Arch

[Adam]

While it's a slightly amusing technical blunder, I'm a little perplexed at the seeming desire to see the Olympics fail in some sort of way. It's just odd to me. Is it because it's Russia?

I don't see anyone who desires some failure at Sochi. Personally (and this is what I see with others, as well), I'm just in wonderment at how much they have managed to completely and thoroughly screw up. It's a perfect storm of corruption and graft: the Russian government and the IOC.

Out of a budget of twelve billion dollars they have now spent more than fifty billion dollars to build Olympic arenas, hotels, railroads, roadways, etc. That's not even counting the costs of 35,000 security personnel, costs of housing the operators, etc. By comparison, Salt Lake City had an overall operating budget of $1.2B, and on net the city came out $100M ahead, even after the unforeseen added costs of security in the wake of 9/11. Vancouver had a budget of C$1.7B and broke even at the end of the day. In both cases, there were nothing remotely like the problems already seen at Sochi: hotels were built, water was safe to drink as well as bathe in, doorknobs didn't come off in people's hands, heat worked. For the staggering amount of money spent and the fact that they had plenty of time to get this right, the apparent complete lack of coherent planning is really amazing. They could literally have built an entirely new city from scratch. with the most modern of infrastructure, and had it all working perfectly, with time and money to spare, if there had been even a hint of decent planning. Instead, alllllllll that money has just vanished like a fart in the wind to utterly unbelievable amounts of graft and corruption.

And this was supposed to be the event that put Russia "on the map," that would prove that Russia is not the third-world backwater that most consider it to be.



EAT: Just one example of many:

A new road and railway stretches about 25 miles from Sochi's coast to Krasnaya Polyana, a ski resort in a valley in the Caucasus. The total price tag: $9.4 billion, or as The Wall Street Journal put it, $200 million per kilometer. That's reportedly more expensive than the entire budget of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

"They may as well have paved it in platinum or caviar," Boris Nemtsov, an opposition politician, said. He estimates that two-thirds of the $51 billion Russia spent on the Olympics was lost to corruption.

Typical road construction costs for an interstate-style road in undeveloped areas runs about $3M/mile (not kilometer, which is 5/8 of a mile) on the high end, when it's difficult terrain and such. On easier terrain, the typical cost is closer to about $1.2M/mile. So this road, which should have cost about $75M on the outside, instead cost about one hundred and twenty-five times as much as it should have.

[phillygirl]

Yeah, the corruption is what is really killing it, I think. But it's Russia. Corruption is their chief export.

[phillygirl]

The Olympic Rings Looked Perfectly Fine On Russian TV, Thank You Very Much





You may have heard that there was a massive malfunction during the Olympic Opening Ceremony today: one of the five Olympic rings failed to expand, making the Olympic logo look like four rings and an asterisk…

But if you were watching the event on television in Russia, you saw the ring explosion as it was intended, thanks to some handy doctoring by Rossiya 1, the Russian state TV station. Producers cut away to recorded rehearsal footage where the fifth ring functioned, to “preserve the images and the Olympic tradition”:


Link

[Adam]

New Olympic event: the two-meter jailbreak.

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