re: #6 austin_blue

Yeah, but Almaty has two hotels, only one of which has running water.

;-)

After Oslo and Stockholm bailed, it was either a Communist rock or a Communist dump.

The rock won. I’ll go ahead and predict a shitstorm of problems with logistics. The skiing venues are *way* the fuck away from Beijing, and like you say, snow is sketchy. Oh, and there is that whole global warming thing, which the Chinese are happily contributing to by burning every lump of coal they happen to find, adding to the problem.

This should be a huge scandal going forward. The Olympics are being held in authoritarian regimes (Russia, China), places with horrible human life indices and water that’ll get athletes sick (Brazil) and every first-world country runs away like their ass is on fire at the mere prospect of the Games being held in their country.

Oh, can anybody tell me what the second-world is? And I don’t even want to imagine what’s going on in the fourth-world. Yeesh!