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How Russia Transformed a Subtropical Beach Resort To Host the Winter Olympics
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Duncan Geere reports at The Verge that Russian resort as Sochi, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, is humid and subtropical with temperatures averaging about 52 degrees Fahrenheit (12 C) in the winter, and 75 degrees (24 C) in the summer. "There is almost no snow here — at the moment it's raining," says Olga Mironova, a local resident. It's estimated that the cost of staging the Olympics in Sochi has been greater than the previous three Winter Games combined — ballooning to a whopping $51 billion including the cost of implementing an extensive system of safeguards to ensure there'll be sufficient snow in Sochi for the games including the cost of implementing one of the largest snowmaking systems in Europe. The system includes two huge water reservoirs that feed 400 snow cannons installed along the slopes that can generate snow in temperatures of up to 60 degrees fahrenheit (16 C). If that snow isn't enough, then the authorities will fall back on 710,000 cubic meters of snow collected during the winters of previous years leading up to the games. To keep it from melting in the region's hot summers, 10 separate stockpiles have been kept packed tight under insulating covers high up in the mountains, safe from the sun's rays. Down in Sochi itself the other half of the games will be held in five indoor arenas that will host figure skating, speed skating, hockey, and curling, and an additional outdoor area will host the opening and closing ceremonies. In each of these indoor arenas, underfloor cooling systems are installed so that the ice stays frozen above it using propylene glycol, which doesn't freeze until temperatures reach 8.6 F (-13 C). Climatologists predict that even under a best-case scenario, almost half the venues that have hosted the Winter Olympics over the last century would be unable to do so by 2080 without resorting to extensive and expensive artificial snowmaking techniques.""
The interesting thing about this is that when using Beta, the default view is to show everything. So, if you are using Beta, these trollish anti-beta things are perfectly visible, while if you are on Classic they just get filtered out with the rest of the trolls. So, if you really like Classic and hate Beta, the best thing you can do is try to post an anti-beta, pro-classic threat to leave the site as first post instead of Frosty Piss or whatever. That way, if any advertisers to who Dice is trying to market its new shiny actually check out the site, they will see the user dissatisfaction with the design immediately. Then, in subsequent threads we can go on having our usual geeky conversations in Classic.
Temperatures are usually reported in degrees Celsius.
Not in the USA (the country that hosts this website), they aren't. If you don't like that, I'm sure there are lots of other websites in the world hosted in Europe or Canada for you to visit. That's how you "fix" this problem.
For length, at least, our system is more natural. You can easily divide a foot, for example, into thirds, halves, quarters. Not so much with base 10.
Temperature, mass, etc came about in the same way.
Nature isn't base 10, other than the number of fingers and toes we have.