Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Duh-Lympics.

Nobody in their right mind would dream of holding a Winter Olympics in Seattle, but, hey, Vancouver's in Canada, and we know Canada's all cold and stuff, eh?

My favorite part thus far has been the local TeeWee weather folk chirping "...and, wow! It's colder here then it is in Vancouver!" Well, no duh, Skippy; it usually is about this time of year.
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18 comments:

Anonymous said...

True, at the risk of stating the obvious, Vancouver is a sea level city with the prevailing winds from the sea.

The games are held up in the hills where it's usually a wee tad colder and snowier.

8:25 AM, February 17, 2010
John Peddie (Toronto) said...

Tam, if you can put up with their company and teach them to look up weather patterns on the Internet, I'll nominate you as Official Climate Advisor to the IOC.

Meanwhile, we gotta update our stereotyped image, internationally speaking.

Anybody know this spring's fashions in grass skirts?

9:09 AM, February 17, 2010
Tam said...

Al Roker, broadcasting from Vancouver this morning, talked about "Polar Bear tours, right here in Canada!" which is like standing in Seattle and saying "Cajun food and French architecture, right here in America!"

Forgive them; in their heads the US is like this little appendage of Manhattan, and Canada is its smallest state.

9:22 AM, February 17, 2010
Stuart the Viking said...

Aw cmon... don't you know? It's like global warming man! By the next Winter olympics we won't have ANYWHERE to have them cause like all the snow will be gone man. And we will be all bummered because the polar bears and penguines will all be like dead and stuff.

Sadly, I think I have a few friends who are dumb enough to believe this.

s

11:17 AM, February 17, 2010
Anonymous said...

LOL. Seems a lot of folks are blaming the Canukistanis.....

Save your blame for the fracking idjits that gave the games to Vancouver in the first place: The IOC. After all, Van is just the place that ponied up enough cash, hookers and blow to convince them to put the winter olympics in a city that doesn't get much snow.

12:17 PM, February 17, 2010
Kristophr said...

The snow is usually pretty thick up at Whistler this time of year ... but it's better in the Rockies further east.

Coastal ranges have thick snow, not powder.

1:32 PM, February 17, 2010
The Big Guy said...

Just wait until 2014...

Check out the climate data for Sochi side by side with Vancouver...

"Sochi is almost unique among larger Russian cities as having some aspects of a subtropical resort. Apart from the scenic Caucasus Mountains, pebbly and sand beaches, the city attracts vacation-goers with its subtropical vegetation, numerous parks, monuments, and extravagant Stalinist architecture. About two million people visit Greater Sochi each summer,[13] when the city is home to the annual film festival "Kinotavr" and a getaway for Russia's elite."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sochi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Vancouver

If you need me, I'll be out by the Olympic cauldron getting a suntan.

TBG

1:48 PM, February 17, 2010
Tam said...

"Seems a lot of folks are blaming the Canukistanis..."

Not me.

I survived Atlanta '96.

2:56 PM, February 17, 2010
Timmeehh said...

Well I just watched Lindsey Vonn win the women's downhill and the race course was in perfect condition.

It's only the goofy X-games events that are affected by the weather on Cypress Mtn.

The really important events like hockey and curling are indoors, so who cares how warm it is.

Damn, I have to go mow the lawn now.

4:07 PM, February 17, 2010
Tam said...

How did Sparta do in Ice Dancing, traditionally? ;)

7:43 PM, February 17, 2010
Anonymous said...

> Nobody in their right mind would dream
> of holding a Winter Olympics in Seattle,
> but, hey, Vancouver's in Canada,

Because Seattle has all those nasty guns?

To investigate the associations among handgun regulations, assault and other crimes, and homicide, we studied robberies, burglaries, assaults, and homicides in Seattle, Washington, and Vancouver, British Columbia, from 1980 through 1986. Although similar to Seattle in many ways, Vancouver has adopted a more restrictive approach to the regulation of handguns... We conclude that restricting access to handguns may reduce the rate of homicide in a community.

I'm sure the hockey-stick graph showing the causation of guns and homicide is in some computer at East Anglia's Gun Research Unit.

If the Olympics had been held in gun-saturated Seattle, the biathlon would look something like this.

8:38 PM, February 17, 2010
Kristophr said...

Another victim disarmament supporter regurgitates politically biased pseudo-science ... Yawn.

Might want to read this sometime if you want a more reasoned view.

An excerpt:

Predictably, the editors chose to publish Sloan's article with inferior but favorable data claiming erroneously that severe gun-control policies had reduced Canadian homicides. They rejected Centerwall's superior study showing that such policies had not lowered the rate of homicides in Canada: the Vancouver homicide rate increased 25 percent after implementation of a 1977 Canadian law.[4] Moreover, Sloan and associates glossed over the disparate ethnic compositions of Seattle and Vancouver. When the rates of homicides for whites are compared, in both of these cities, it turns out that the rate of homicide in Seattle is actually lower than in Vancouver. The important fact that blacks and Hispanics, who constitute higher proportions of the population in Seattle, have higher rates of homicides in that city was not mentioned.

Centerwall's paper on the comparative rates of homicides in the United States and Canada was finally published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, but his valuable research, unlike that of Sloan and his group, was not made widely available to the public.[5] In contradistinction to his valuable gun-research data, Centerwall's other research pointing to the effects of TV violence on homicide rates has been made widely available; his data exculpating gun availability from high homicide rates in this country remains a closely guarded secret.[6]

8:53 PM, February 17, 2010
Kristophr said...

Oh, and the comedy video you chose is rather telling.

You might want to look up the term "Projection".

Why is it that victim-disarmament supporters are so very violent? I suppose in there case, disarmament is a societal good. Perhaps they do need to be identified, committed to State guardianship, and stripped of the right to possess really dangerous things like rifles or voting ballots, lest the act out on their violent tendencies and cause someone harm.

9:02 PM, February 17, 2010
Flight-ER-Doc said...

Ah, yes: The Kellerman study. Comparing two different nations, with different laws; comparing vastly different demographic groups (very wealthy in the neighborhoods picked in Vancouver, the inner city in Seattle), and having somewhat...expanded...definitions of violence.

No doubt Mann, Jones and Hanson studied Kellerman for pointers.

9:08 PM, February 17, 2010
Tam said...

Kristopher,

This should have triggered your sarcasm detector:

"I'm sure the hockey-stick graph showing the causation of guns and homicide is in some computer at East Anglia's Gun Research Unit."

9:23 PM, February 17, 2010
Timmeehh said...

"How did Sparta do in Ice Dancing, traditionally? ;)"

Actually, quite well. It had something to do with hacking the legs off of their opponents, just below the knees.

Poor Thespians, however. It was their job to clean the ice. :P

12:46 AM, February 18, 2010
Drang said...

Kellerman. Yawn. Even Olympia's forgotten him/them.

Anyhoo. What till your local weather geeks find out it rains more and harder in Noo Yawk than in Seattle...

12:48 AM, February 18, 2010
Kristophr said...

Not sarcasm, but classic USENET style trolling.

Yea, the East Anglia hockey stick ref should have clued me. I just didn't expect to see an actual troll here, as opposed to some blathering lef'tard.

1:41 AM, February 18, 2010

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