I don't know whether it would have influenced the decision at all -- my ill-informed impression is that many of those decision makers don't travel in such a "plebian" manner. But I've been wondering. Given what I've heard, if I were a non-U.S. representative casting my vote, I'd take it into consideration.

Overall, but again without having paid particular attention, the Rio decision makes sense to me. South America has not seen much of the Games. Brazil is an up and coming power. Much of the world is weary of the excesses of U.S. hegemony (the excesses, as opposed to the entire role of the U.S.), even if it did in general take some heart in Obama's election.

Perhaps, also, this is a leading indicator of a decline in the need to kiss the U.S.'s posterior.

The heads of the Chicago bid deferred to Obama, who they were fortunate to have in the room. The president's response, IIRC was "I know there's been a problem with this with previous administrations. I will make sure it's not an issue this time around. We see the games as an opportunity to return to being a friend to the world."

So it very much was on the minds of the IOC. Good catch.

It is a hassle to visit China, as well, but that did not affect their Olympic bid.

(Personal story: I transited Shanghai a few weeks ago. If I didn't need a visa to visit the city, I would have added a stopover or picked a longer connection so that I could go into town. But since this would have involved money and paperwork, I decided to skip it.

I did get to see the Great Firewall in action, though, which was kind of neat. I felt like I was Sticking It To The Man when I had to ssh to my server at home and use w3m to read blogs.)

Because of decent negotiating on the British part, most Britons still apply for the visa-waving program (mostly because the British government said if the UK loses its Visa-waving program to the US, the US will lose its to the UK). This happened only a couple of years after the whole mandatory machine readable passport thing (which the British government again said that US citizens have to do it too).

Ironically the US was trying to ban British Pakistani's from entering the US, however the US never even attempted to prevent the entry of the IRA when they were purchasing weaponry from the US for terrorist purposes. I suppose the US's whole anti-terrorist stance is hugely different when they terrorists are helping your economy, not trying to destroy it.

We have plenty of natural-born citizens that like killing people (Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, etc.), and the 9/11 hijackers all had valid visas. INS (DHS now) is not in a position to prevent terrorism.

Now, why anyone would want to come to the US illegally, with our lack of health care, crumbling school system, horrendous prisons, and so on, is beyond me. Someone should tell the illegal immigrants that there are many better places to immigrate to.

However, I understand what you mean about illegal immigration. Although I completely understand why people work illegally when they do go to a different country. I'm immigrating legally to Canada and it's been almost 6 months without a single response, but I can't work for risk of voiding the application process. I'll be lucky if I hear anything before the new year.

However 1 year of unemployment is a better option than the potential 5 years my wife could face trying to work legally in the UK. Plus, you know, Canada actually has vegetation in the places they call 'cities', which by far beats the UK's desolate wastelands (personally I don't count many British people on the streets as alive, at least from the city I came from, I think 90% would probably pass a test for P-Zombieism).

I doubt this. One crackpot unelected official does not "the US was planning" make. If we kill our visa-waiver program, everyone else in the world will remove the US from theirs. That is simply not going to happen.

Also, if you feel that the US is discriminating against you because of your ethnicity, you have full access to the courts. The Constitution protects all "people", not just citizens.

It is actually a suprisingly fast system (all the admin when entering or getting a VISA is very efficient).

The US, on the other hand, is remarkably difficult to get permission to enter if you're not American. Getting appropriate visas takes some time and a lot of paperwork/documentation, and when you physically land at the airport you're photographed, fingerprinted, and questioned. While I bet the organizers would have found some way to simplify the process a bit, you can bet that they wouldn't have the ability to do a wholesale re-write of immigration laws like the Chinese did (or like the Russians do whenever they host major international events).

As for the IOC members not seeing it, don't forget that many of them come from smaller foreign countries that US immigration is traditionally very skeptical of. They may have had their visa applications completed and expedited by the Chicago organizers, but they still would have been in the same lines as everyone else upon landing, and would have read the same instructions that talk about the various forms you need.

I always enjoy visiting other countries because the immigration folks are so pleasant (except Japan). It catches me off guard every time. The immigration inspector in Oslo actually smiled and welcomed me to their country! Amazing!

When I come back to the US, it is always a lecture about something. "Your handwriting isn't good enough," was my favorite.

(I have always wondered what would happen if I refuse to answer the questions. Will I be deported ... to the US?)

So I asked a friend of mine who's a customs officer.

He said that if you're a citizen, they pretty much have to let you into the country - but they don't have to make it easy. You can still be flagged for a hand-search of your baggage, interview/interrogation, and detention/seizure in the lead-up to either of the first two (even if you're a citizen, you still need to follow customs law). You can also be detained if they think the passport is fraudulent, but it's unlikely you'd be deported.

Bottom line is that if you're an asshole to the customs officer, they can flag you to have your bag hand-searched, have a few fines issued against you (customs law is so complex that almost everyone violates some small portion of it), and place a note in your file that will make this always happen.

Remember HN readers you can't enter the US under visa waiver in your own Learjet, but we all knew that didn't we?

The Games are supposed to be a symbol of international spirit. How could America even hope to win them? You can't claim to be "exceptional" and above the rest of the community, then ask that same community for support.

America was tolerated before, because it had money. Now it has less money, and the cracks are beginning to show.

It would have been a win by hosting and providing an exemplary experience for everyone. Same reason China jumped through so many hoops in 2008 to make the Olympics go so well. They wanted to try and put on a new face to the international community and make it seem like China wasn't as big of a mess as people had thought.

Or maybe to put on a new face and show that what happened in 2000-2008 is not what happens now.

Also, the idea/theory of "American exceptionalism" was coined by Alexis de Tocqueville (A Frenchman, not American), mostly commenting on the US's stance on immigration ~50 year after the nation was formed. Later on, its turned into a term that was exploited by politicians to try and promote American nationalism after WW2. Which is basically what it refers to now. And its hardly like no other nation has ever had nationalist tendencies that were exploited in some way by political leaders.

America was tolerated before, because it had money. Now it has less money, and the cracks are beginning to show.

Not to mention being one of the few countries with an embassy in every country in the world[1], the ability to gather information or intelligence on pretty much every country in the world (even if analysts couldn't analyze it properly), oh, and still the most powerful country militarily even with the problems going on in Afghanistan.

Oh, and the United States is still the single richest country in the world. Even larger than the EU, according to the World Bank (which, admittedly doesn't count all countries in the EU, but rather a "Eurozone"). Though, the IMF and CIA World Factbook place the EU above the US. But, the EU is a sovereign group of countries with a shared economic policy. So it could be argued that the EU shouldn't count in global GDP rankings. The US's GDP is ~3x larger than its closest competitor, Japan.[2]

[1] http://www.usembassy.gov/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin... for a nice chart of all the values next to each other. It links back to the World Bank/IMF/CIA Factbook though.

//edit: All that being said, I'm personally happy that Rio de Janeiro and not Chicago is hosting the Olympics. They're definitely an emerging country to keep an eye on in the future. Its a nice nod to them, and South America in general. Plus, the country looks beautiful and it would be incredible to visit, if I manage to do so.

I'd say that started roughly 5 years ago. Say, right around early November, 2004.

I understand that Slate's readership isn't HN's readership, and that just the facts aren't enough, that there needs to be some kind of emotional story to hold the reader's attention.

But is jocks vs nerds really it? Is that the most interesting thing? Wouldn't a more generic dreamers vs. hard nosed realists be something a wider audience can identify with?

Perhaps you're also looking for strong passion, not just the widest general interest? But even in that case, the jocks vs nerds cliche? Nerds hate any kind of sports related activity so much they won't even allow their home city to host the Olympics?

It just feels tired and forced. But the economic analysis was great.

I understand the dislike for "jocks vs. nerds" theater, however:

a) It's more immediate than dreamers vs. realists. Everyone can relate to jocks vs. nerds , even if it ticks them off (as in your case). Doesn't PG have several essays breaking down the jocks vs. nerds divide?

b) That's my read on the situation, having hosted dozens and dozens of debates about the Olympics over on my site, WindyCitizen.com. The whole jocks v. nerds angle actually originated in a thread over there. A few local bloggers picked up on it, which got me thinking about it as a great way to explain why both sides could say so much and yet hear so little.

c) It's funny. If you don't find it funny, that's perfectly fine. I and the editors there were busting up about it when I pitched it to them. Extending the metaphor out to include Obama was too perfect. Learning the head of the bid committee is part owner of the Chicago Bears made my day.

Thank you for reading the piece. I respect and understand it wasn't your cup of tea and thank you for telling me so on here.

I agree. I don't like those terms because well, they are labels. And in the article jocks and nerds were essentially, for lack of better terms, dumb and smart people.

I thought it ended a little abruptly, though.

But again, nice article.

  1. IDE Finger Gymnastics
  2. 100 Lines-Of-Code Dash
  3. Individual Text Editor Medley
  4. Regular Expression Datelifting
  5. Greco-Roman Webpage Translation
  6. Modern Compiling
  7. Databaseball
  8. Hackstroke
  9. Printer Throw
 10. Debugging Marathon

But the comic in the right hand column of that Slate Article is awesome. That is SO Chicago.

(I realize a significant fraction of people here may have that, but for a bland corporate job?)

Fortunately, the guards were decent fellows, once you got to know them (and working a lot of evenings and weekends, I got to know them). Neither angry nor armed with fully automatic weapons. But then this was the genteel suburbs; might have been different if we were downtown. ;-)

I expect it's one of those creative accounting things where you can come up with pretty much any number you like.