posted
The US men took a bronze in Torino, but Curling hasn't been an Olympic event all that long.
They actually came into the round robin this year expecting to get on the podium, but it certainly doesn't look that way from how they are playing.
I think the early matches are coming as something of a surprise. The US have been on the rise in curling for the last decade.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Although funny, I do feel guilty about the language bits. How crappy would our (North American) translations into Russian be?
Why on Earth would they be bad? It costs not much at all to hire a Russian copywriter to review texts before printing. This is my job (among other things), and I save companies from embarrassing themselves on a weekly basis. It doesn't cost much.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
That seems all pretty straightforward to me, Lyrhawn.
I'll be blunt: much of your criticism reads to me as 'hey, who is America to...' sort of thing, Mucus. Admittedly my own biases play into that, but I really do question whether or not yours do as well. Hosting an Olympics is rather an enormous international prestige, and to simply assume that assigning it is a decision uncoupled from any other concerns seems strange to me.
That said, it's not as though the IOC has been a bastion of human rights and ethics consciousntiousness either.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Yes. The IOC lets the olympics feature terrified hostages who are performing under duress knowing that if they do not perform well, they and their families may be sent to work camps that will kill them (or they might just be killed outright) so my opinion of them as an institution is already in a position that can't be bumped up or down too much by the Sochi stuff.
(but it was bumped down a bit)
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I was just saying this to a friend. The IOC has to be terrified of what they are seeing.
I know the IOC wants to expand to new second world countries, but it goes to show that the modern Olympics aren't something that anyone can just throw together.
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posted
Well they aren't first world, but it seems a little extreme to put them in the same category as Swaziland.
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posted
protip: first/second/third world is a uselessly outdated metric that was of limited use to begin with and doesn't describe countries very well anyway
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by theamazeeaz: Second World refers to the Eastern Bloc.
I've never heard that as a specific, automatic, hard reference.
And even if it was, isn't that outdated? Half the Eastern Bloc is in the EU now with dramatically increased standards of living.
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