Morning Ed: Olympics {2016.08.22.M}

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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24 Responses

  1. Road Scholar says:

    Your first link goes to a pretty cool story about the closing ceremony but nothing about Snoop Dogg.Report

  2. notme says:

    Last week the DOJ announced it would no longer use private prisons. It now appears that their decision was based on faulty data, not that this revelation will probably change their course of action. It does serve as a example that liberals for all their claims of data driven decision making will fudge the numbers to support their preferred policy choices.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-19/the-justice-department-used-shaky-statistics-to-drop-private-prisonsReport

  3. notme says:

    Report: Clinton told FBI that Colin Powell gave her his imprimatur to use her to use personal email.

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/08/19/report-clinton-told-fbi-colin-powell-advised-her-use-personal-email/88986724/

    I wonder if there is anything else he told her to do as well? This is the perfect opportunity to pawn anything else onto him.Report

  4. Kolohe says:

    My instincts regarding what I think I know about economic development tell me that Bolt doing it the way he’s doing, and creating an economic ecosystem for advertising production, is better than a ‘Bolt Foundation’ sort of deal. (Which he’ll probably do anyway)

    (What Jamaica also needs is relatively incorruptible people to run the government, so he should definitely try to seek elective office, imo)Report

  5. Kazzy says:

    I thought the Mario thing was pretty cool. I’m excited to see what Tokyo pulls off for opening ceremonies.Report

  6. Saul Degraw says:

    From what I have heard, the Olympics are a good deal IF you are a city that needs to do infrastructure but doesn’t quite have the will to do it. This is not Rio.

    There needs to be a reason why politicians almost always go for the wrong kind of infrastructure like Seattle’s tunnel or Cumo building a silly shuttle to Laguardia. A press conference is a press conference. Is it really so hard to do one at an old bridge and say “This vital upgrades will reduce traffic and ensure safety….”Report

    • J_A in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I am fully aware that the Barcelona (my home town) Olympics are the most costly ever, in constant dollars. Having said that, what the Olympics did to the city, not only in infrastructure but also in changing the nature and spirit the city, is beyond description, 24 years later the positive results are still there.

      For instance, though being for centuries one of the most prominent Mediterranean ports, you could live your whole life there without seeing the sea. The Olympics developed miles of beaches, boulevards (so you could watch the boat racing), and whole new neighbourhoods open to the sea. Another, the Olympic Villa was developed with the idea that it would be transformed into permanent housing, and is now one of the most sought after addresses in the city.(*)

      The Olympics are a chance to do urban renewal on a go. You can do good urban renewal (Barcelona) or meh to bad. As gung-ho as I am about the London Olympics, I don’t think Londoners got a good urban value for their very expensive games.

      (*) and how cool is to lit the Olympic cauldron with a freaking flaming arrow. We are still waiting for someone to even try to top that (**)

      (**) I found the Rio mirrored cauldron super cool. Way to go to make something memorable at a reasonable cost (***)

      (***) to their merit, Rio Olympics came slighly below the median cost for Summer games (****)

      (****) nevertheless, we had a freaking flaming arrow. Eat crow, Rio.Report

      • LeeEsq in reply to J_A says:

        Barcelona 1992 and Tokyo 1964 are textbook examples of how to take real advantage of the Olympics for the good of the host city. Los Angeles 1984 is the only example of how to run a Summer Olympics for profit.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to J_A says:

        Barceolona seems to be the exception that proves the rule. Most Olympic infrastructure seems to go to waste or get torn down after the games.Report

        • Salt Lake City also seemed to be a beneficiary in the overall.Report

          • SLC ended up planning for reuse really well. They expanded roads and transit to places people were going even after the games. The athlete housing was sited and designed to be reused as University of Utah dormitories [1]. They had an existing large winter sports industry [2], and have worked hard to leverage the facilities that were built for the Games: two of the national sports authorities relocated to SLC, largely because of the facilities; and they’ve attracted world-class competitive events.

            [1] Scale matters, and the Summer Games are much harder, with 17,000 athletes, than the Winter Games with 3,500.

            [2] Skiing was already big business, and some of the new facilities can generate revenue. People can, for example, take part of a day out of their ski vacation and get a ride on a real bobsled. Finding equivalents to that are harder for the Summer Games, or Winter Games sites that don’t have a big winter sports base.Report

        • greginak in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          Sydney seems to do pretty well also.Report

  7. Oscar Gordon says:

    I love how the site with the pregnant runner article had to get in a dig at Planned Parenthood. PP has no preference regarding what a woman does regarding her pregnancy, only that she has a choice.Report