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Rio Has Given Up On Clean Water For Olympics (go.com)
iONiUM writes: When bidding to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, Rio de Jaineiro promised the International Olympics Committee that it would eliminate 80 percent of the sewage found in the city's notoriously filthy water, and would fully regenerate the lagoon in which rowing and kayaking events will be held. Now a few months from the start of the games, Rio has given up on keeping those promises. According to an article from Deadspin, "The U.S. will send 48 rowers to Rio, and they will be as forewarned and forearmed as the federation can make them, starting with squeeze bottles of hand sanitizer that will be distributed on the flight to Brazil. Hannafin says the athletes have been asked to get hepatitis A vaccinations and polio boosters and take the oral typhoid vaccine. Their oar handles will be bleached and their boats washed inside and out after each training session or competition. Gear will be laundered at a high enough temperature to kill microbes."
Kayaking in shit. Brazil. The land of the poor and stupid.
Not in those conditions, it sounds like there are going to be a lot of athletes that end up getting diseases from the water by just being in it. Imagine if one cuts or scrapes themself?
I remember listening to an interview on Mike & Mike (ESPN radio) where they talked to some official try to explain away all of the problems with the Rio water supply and how athletes got sick in a rowing event in the water. The Rio water was fine, she explained and any problems would be rectified. Her doublespeak was so thick that only a complete moron couldn't hear that she was a grade "A" liar.
The reality is the water is so dirty that you might as well swim in raw sewage. Does the Olympic Committee care? Nope. They got their bribes and they are happy.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
It's because they'll give you ****ing Hepatitus! If I knew water rights and environmentalists, I would pass this along to make a big issue for the whole Olympics. Disgusting.
This might be the Olympic Year for countries, big and small, to make a statement to the IOC and the world. It's not just an issue for Rio, but other countries as well. And while it would suck for Olympic Athletes to skip this year, it would draw attention to an issue that even the US faces at home because of greed. Asking for clean drinking water isn't some special request that only the privileged should get, we need to consider it a human right.
The Olympics will only be there for a year, the change that the Olympics can have might have a chance to linger way, way longer. So, just how much is a Gold Medal worth compared to generations of clean drinking water?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Shit Lagoon Rowing Competition! Who will get the gold!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The Index of Economic Freedom says:
"Brazil's limited experiment with market-oriented reforms has been uneven and even derailed in some areas. The state's presence in such sectors as energy, financial services, and electricity remains extensive. The legacy of decades of central planning, state meddling in economic activity continues even where it has demonstrably failed, and the weak rule of law further undermines economic progress."
"Graft remains endemic, and Brazilians disapprove of President Dilma Rousseff's policies on corruption and crime. In 2014, a former director of state-owned Petrobas accused more than 40 politicians, including one minister and three governors, in a massive kickback investigation. Brazilâ(TM)s judiciary is inefficient and subject to political and economic influence. The court system is overburdened, and contract disputes can be lengthy and complex."
Anyone surprised by this has never been to Rio.
yaelk/Whipslash, I'm trying really hard not to complain here (because I know you've already gotten an earful), but I have to ask: what's the tech news angle on this? Why is this news for nerds?
I agree it's interesting, but this isn't the kind of story I come to Slashdot for. Slashdot is all about the comments, and no one here is going to be able to say anything insightful about the situation. It's going to be a bunch of garbage posts from random commenters railing against Brazil or the IOC, with no technical insight to speak of. So I really don't get why this is Slashdot worthy.
The world's shining beacon of corruption. IOC must be smart enough not to run their money through US banks or else they'd be going to jail like the FIFA people.
Why can't we have the Olympics or the World Cup in a city that doesn't have to spend years and years building up its infrastructure? It doesn't do much for the economies of these countries, and the stadiums fall into disuse after the games anyway.
Why, for the love of God, would anyone want to hold the Olympics in a third world dung hole?
Decent sanitation is a rudimentary characteristic of modern civilization. What is wrong with those people? The IOC are fools.
Indeed! If only i had mod points...
Why do third-world shitholes even bid for the Olympics then? All they are doing is highlighting what an embarassment their country is. It's crazy. Any why would a healthy, fit, above average jock want to risk his or her health or even life, by going to this shithole?
I don't think USA Olympic athletes are covered by health insurance, because 'Murica. If they even have Obamacare, they are probably lucky. If you get a serious illness that could take years to eradicate, our athletes might be begging on the streets to make their doctor payments. And nobody is putting a sickly bronze-winner on the box of Wheaties.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
So Rio says they want to host the Olympics and says everything's fine and everyone just takes their word for it without one single water of pollution or air test? The same with China. Is the IOC that stupid or is this just a corrupt best bribe wins scenario?
Your legs don't work? I'd spend a year walking if I had to leave such a shit hole.
It's probably just a Babyruth.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Clean water. The environment. Mother Earth. One would think you leftist pagans would be up in arms.
There are about 6.4 million people living in Rio. They know what they can and cannot do safely. Copy that and you are done. Hint: Washing your hands before eating and not drinking unboiled tap-water pretty much covers it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The U.S. will send 48 rowers to Rio, and they will be as forewarned and forearmed as the federation can make them, starting with squeeze bottles of hand sanitizer that will be distributed on the flight to Brazil.
Hand sanitizer will do absolutely nothing to keep athletes from being infected with pathogens from the water. If they cannot deal with the problem then they need to change the venue. If that is not in Brazil then so be it.
Hannafin says the athletes have been asked to get hepatitis A vaccinations and polio boosters and take the oral typhoid vaccine. Their oar handles will be bleached and their boats washed inside and out after each training session or competition. Gear will be laundered at a high enough temperature to kill microbes."
All fine but if the water is filled with fecal matter or other pathogens there are countless other ways they can get sick, many of which can affect their athletic performance. Hard to win a gold medal when you are puking your guts out from exposure to pathogens.
We should be bring the entire earth to a 3rd world country to participate in something healthy, only to subject them to the filthiest most polluted shit around?
We might as well hold the Olympics in the Liberian capital of Monrovia
Silly leftists, confusing classism with racism yet again! Jobs get offshored for one reason and one reason alone: to maximize profits! If profits are maximized by adversely effecting the health of citizens in another country, it doesn't matter what color they are, had profits!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Hot hookers and cheap coke. Rio qualifies.
They live in crap and want fairness so everyone must also...
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
The got the Olympics. I'd say they outsmarted everyone.
Apparently you've never heard of the winner's curse. It's not hard to argue that "winning" the right to host the Olympics is something of a Pyrrhic victory. It's really expensive to host the games and relatively few games are profitable for the host country.
At least in Chicago, you'll get great food and clean water..
The parts that George Takai (aka Sulu) didn't read...
The origin of the pesticide theory was, surprise surprise, a small physicians’ group that campaigns against pesticides. The group hasn’t done any epidemiology to demonstrate that people exposed to the pesticide are more likely to have babies with microcephaly; it has simply laid out an argument. The mainstream groups, looking at this problem holistically, have said there’s much better evidence that mosquitoes are hurting people than the evidence (and there’s no evidence, really) that the stuff killing mosquitoes is hurting people.
... and...
All of this information is readily available to any genuine scientist looking dispassionately at the potential causes of the Zika virus outbreak or the rise in malformations in Brazil. Also readily available is the knowledge that the use of pyriproxifen is driven by WHO recommendations and not the marketing activity of any multinational or other corporation.
The potential human health consequences of discouraging the use of pyriproxyfen in drinking water storage and other mosquito-reduction programs is catastrophic with potential deaths and serious disease from otherwise avoidable malaria, dengue and other mosquito-borne diseases numbered in at least the hundreds of thousands. If these reports and suggestions are motivated by anything other than ignorance and poor scholarship they are deserving of the most strident condemnation.
Journalists covering this story would do well to research the background of those making and reporting the claims as the underlying story and potential public health consequences may be far more newsworthy than the current headlines.
... and ...
* Neither Monsanto nor our products have any connection to the Zika virus or microcephaly.
* Monsanto does not manufacture or sell Pyriproxyfen.
* Monsanto does not own Sumitomo Chemical Company. However, Sumitomo Chemical Company is one of our business partners in the area of crop protection.
* Glyphosate is not connected in any way to the Zika virus or microcephaly.
* GMOs have no role in the Zika virus or microcephaly.
Be grateful there is no smell-a-vision! Imagine the coverage if there was.
And don't forget leptospirosis as well. GF got it, was misdiagnosed repeatedly and almost died of it.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
On a different front:
According to online stats, maybe up to 10,000 athletes attend the Olympic Games. I wonder how many will be held up at gun point and robbed if any are silly enough to venture outside their sanitized zones of the city?
I'm sure there'll be some interesting heaadlines out of this Olympics, for sure...
Commercial pumps are available that can circulate a million litres of water a hour through industrial filters and are relatively inexpensive at a few thousand pounds. They are also small and portable enough to fit dozen or more in single commercial Intermodal shipping container.
So what is the real problem here?
Gives a whole new meaning to Olympic fever :P
> They'd rather see some brown person die from cancer than an American.
I didn't realize American was a race.
Should of been Chicago! we have good water and Less crime.
Also good food and beer!!!
What a mess - Beijing Summer and Sochi Winter Olympics despite all the human rights problems with China and Russia. Preparations for Athens were a joke.
And now all these problems surrounding Brazil. I don't want to "ban" countries from bidding, but the IOC (FIFA, etc) really need to get their acts together in only awarding major sporting events to countries that have proven how they will host, not just fantasies.
I moved to Rio 6 months ago from New Jersey. (Yeah, I know, NJ is the land where every puddle has its own rainbow.) I know 4 other people who moved here from the US within the last 2 years. Not one of us has gotten sick. Okay, I'll stop with the anecdotal evidence now. How about, this place is CLEANER than New York City. How many folks swim in the Hudson or the East River? I see fruit dropped from trees, yet there's WAY fewer bugs, and I've yet to see a single rat. The water doesn't smell; people here swim in it all the time, yet the hospitals aren't overflowing with sick folks. It's true, all the locals drink filtered water, but that's NOT connected to the lake. It's called Lagoa BTW, for lagoon in portuguese. The tap water is tainted because poor people break into the water mains feeding the city to get free water, and they don't exactly make good plumbers. Try applying statistics and I'll bet that more athletes will be compromised by the vaccines and the toxic chemicals in the hand "sanitizers" than would get sick from the water in the lagoon. If they are so afraid, then take some antibiotics while here, a few yogurts (or kefir) when done, and call it good. But all that "Oh God it's a shithole!" is far from the truth - you're just regurgitating what you read in the sensationalist media. Stop playing telephone and ask someone who's been there - Rio is Fine; far cleaner than many other cities I've seen.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
This happens every time. The IOC is bribed and promised all sorts of things (Chine: Suuuure, we'll let the media roam freely and report whatever they like. Promise!). Then, when it is too late to change venues, the host country reneges on all those promises, knowing that it is too late for the IOC to move the venue. If the IOC had any brains, they would require certain minimum standards be in place BEFORE they even look at a hosting proposal. But then, who would pay for their kids' private tuition?
The Tijuana river would be the same.
Rio has had 6 years to get its act in order, which it has failed to do. For the sake of athlete health, reducing the spread of Zika, and for showing that a country has to follow through on the ludicrous demands of the IOC, the 2016 Olympics should be cancelled.
Brazil must have done some serious bribery to get selected for the Olympics. Hope they can handle all the lawsuits that they get from athletes who become sick and disabled because of all this shit.....
Fuckin' fuckwad fuckers....
So the city spent all this huge amount of money for the Olympics but water....naah.
Cronies must be enriched. Even if people are going to suffer from pollution.
"Hey, is this where the water polo events are being held?"
"No, no, read sign, estupido! It say 'water polio'!"
Why can't we have the Olympics or the World Cup in a city that doesn't have to spend years and years building up its infrastructure? It doesn't do much for the economies of these countries, and the stadiums fall into disuse after the games anyway.
Although most games occur in "rich" countries that can afford it, the IOC often feels the need for "affirmative action" to let "poor-er" nations into the rotation (it's basically a popularity vote among IOC members to select from supposedly pre-vetted candidates that pony up the $150K fee). Rio is getting about USD$1.5B to "help" them host the games.
Also, in general, it's much easier to shake down money from construction companies to bribe IOC members, if your country is swimming in corruption already. If a country already has most of the venues it needs, the construction companies have no reason to play ball and support an Olympic games bid.
There's a lot of money in construction, for instance, Construtora Norberto Odebrecht, OAS, Andrade Gutierrez, Queiroz Galvao, and Carioca Christiani Nielsen Engenharia... The CEO of Odebrecht (the largest construction contractor for the Rio games) has already been arrested for unrelated bribery and money laundering charges and the speaker of the lower house is under investigation for accepting a 1.9M (Brazilian Real) bribe from OAS to push through tax break legislation for construction companies working in Rio...
Islam is a race too.
If you really want to make a statement:
Outfit all your rowing teams in Biohazard Suits. They probably won't win, but they'll make the point :D
( as a bonus, they won't come home with all sorts of fun pathogens to make life hell )
Rio does not meet the requirements so cancel the thing. At some point the olympic committee has to show it has power and will not put up with incomplete projects. This will send a message to all future bidders that they had better make sure they can deliver.
Or is the Olympics "too big to fail" and the money is more important than the health of the athletes?
Try applying statistics and I'll bet that more athletes will be compromised by the vaccines and the toxic chemicals in the hand "sanitizers" than would get sick from the water in the lagoon.
You were potentially making sense right up until you suggested they'd be compromised by "vaccines" in the hand sanitizes... Anti-vaxxer's on /.? What has this place come to.
Some of the athletes preparing by having vaccinations will suffer temporarily reduced performance as a result of those vaccines, whether during their practice before the games or during the actual games. Holding the games in places with toxic air or disease-laden water needs to stop. Promises of "sure, we'll clean up in time for the games" just don't cut it.
Okay, this is the biggest embarrassment the IOC has had yet, and the oympics haven't even started. Is it worth it for the rowers to put themselves through this. And the performance of the athletes..I doubt we'll be seeing any world records. Unless it's for racing in toxic conditions. The Olympics needs to come back to it's roots and remove the IOC as it exists today. And the rowers should refuse to compete. There are lives outside of the Olympics for professional athletes, and for the amateurs who wanted to start out in the olymtics...they have lives...period. Either way, the Olympics are not worth these health risks. The athletes might consider going on strike this year so their health and safety are properly protected which the IOC and Rio has blatantly failed to do.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Come to Rio. Now with 75% less shit in the river!
Ok, so a recount:
Zika, so better not take any pregnant or pregnantable athletes.
Chinkungua.
Dengue
Foul water with untold germs possibly including flesh-eating staph.
Crime bosses
Unfinished venues
Political turmoil.
Should be a fun Games indeed. Can't wait for the body count.
Flint Michigan comes to mind. Nothing can live in their water. I'm sure Michigan's head honcho would love it.
Government must funnel more money to cronies.
Cronies build the stadium, they run the concessions, install infrastructure, and pave parking lots, etc.
down with rowers and kayakers; remember about windsurfers and surfers - they have to swim in this manure
What is wrong here, Just say no not good enough ?
Boycott the place, game over...next....
Gear will be laundered at a high enough temperature to kill microbes.
Does nobody know the definition of "cleaned" "sanitized" and "sterilized" anymore? Gear will be sanitized. It's not that hard when there's already a word dedicated to that meaning.
Learn to love Alaska
Don't forget Zika. Now your athletes win the chance to churn out mutated pinhead babies for their host countries. Funsies! Pinheads for everyone!
Great idea. Truly. And, for 30 seconds, I thought it was. But then, I thought, who picks those two venues? The kick back of all kick backs ensues. As nice an idea it is, it'll never happen.
> The U.S. will send 48 rowers to Rio, and they will be as forewarned and forearmed as the federation can make them
Oh, just give them some trainig sessions in the canals of Venice, Italy. Moe or less, the city's public sanitation depends on the daily ebb-and-tide cycle to wash filth out of the shallow lagoon, into the "vast and empty" waters of the Adriatic (which is the second smallest sea on Earth...) If there is the wrong kind of wind, tidal water gets trapped in the lagoon and the decaying aquatic city swims in its own filth, including corpses of drowned rats. That's an extremely romantic memory.
That's back to front.
It's the IOC who should be laundered, and at a very high temperature. The more ethical microbes deserve protection.
Here's the surprise.... Olympics not being held in Brazil. Being moved to North Korea. IOC was told the whole country is like one big Disney World! Should be great!!
"SJW" functions similarly to "liberal" and other pejoratives. It indicates a tribal allegiance on the part of the speaker: a sort of shibboleth. It means, "someone I don't identify with and have ascribed various bad qualities to."
I have a vague sympathy for people who rail against perceived liberal social trends. I believe that it's about as effective as arguing with an advancing glacier, but it's not irrational to fear change. However, I can think of no surer sign that someone has discarded reason than the use of pejoratives against one's political enemies. You are no longer arguing against a man or against a rational position, you're arguing against a figment of your imagination. Denying your opponents their measure of common humanity also deeply undermines any moral argument at hand.
In short, pejoratives such as "SJW", "liberal", "hipster", and "millennial" mean: the writer's opinions are not worth the time taken to read them.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Look. I went to Brazil on business with several colleagues in 2014, and it seemed like hep A, polio, and typhoid were standard procedure for Brazil at the travel immunization clinic. I don't think that part has anything to do with the water; it's just Brazil.
The U.S. will send 48 rowers to Rio.
They will be as forewarned.
Forewarned is forearmed.
Four arms is an odd number of arms for a rower to have.
The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
Therefore... the US rowing team has an infinite number of arms.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
And just to add to all other afflictions plaguing theses Olympics, a reminder that Brazilian beaches have above average (natural) radioactivity (ScienceDirect.com). I think the only thing missing is the announcement of a imminent meteor shower on Rio.
@cyberrecce
Rio suffers from insufficient city management. Improvements that should have been done 50 years ago haven't been done. People in the U.S. often don't like dealing with details. Brazilians, in general, are even more intense about not liking details. So things don't get done.
To get a more balanced view, consider the U.S. metropolitan area centered on Portland, Oregon:
Intel has been emitting fluoride for years without state knowledge, permit. Quote: "When Intel applied for D1X approval, the company considered its fluoride emissions insignificant and did not include those. It was only when the company applied for the new DEQ permit required by greenhouse gas regulations that it requested a 6.4-tons-per-year fluoride emission limit. " 6.4-tons-per-year!!!
Oregon warns home gardeners, Portland leaders lash out at state pollution response. Quote: "Regulators have known for years that Portland has high levels of the heavy metal cadmium in the air, but didn't know until 2015 what the likely sources were." Another quote: "The department's own air monitoring found arsenic levels were 159 times higher than the state's safety goal in Southeast Portland and cadmium levels were 49 times higher."
Portland pollution: How does it affect you? Quote: "Tests detected cadmium and arsenic near Bullseye Glass in Southeast Portland and Uroboros Glass in North Portland. Superheating the metals, which are used to add color to glass, can send small particles up smokestacks and into surrounding air." The next paragraph: "The state also found that another carcinogen, hexavalent chromium, was used by the two plants."
Portland, Oregon is no longer a livable city in other ways. There are now traffic jams most of the day. Yet Portland city management is allowing the construction of large buildings with no parking! One story: New Portland apartment buildings with no parking have neighbors worried about congested streets.
The stories about Portland help give a more balanced view of the poor city management in Rio.
I have lived in Brazil a total of about 3 years. When the 2008 financial crash occurred in the U.S., Brazilian newspaper writers were assigned to write stories about how the crash affected Brazil. The writers seemed to put a lot of effort into finding stories about bad effects, but they never seemed to find anything particularly bad. Why? Brazil has better banking laws and the laws were followed.
The U.S. financial system continues to be corrupt. For example, see this story about Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine.
If there are rodents, there is lepto -- good rule of thumb. We vaccinate dogs and cattle against it, tho the vaccine is short-lived and not entirely reliable (still much better than nothing).
Well, we used to vaccinate dogs... Most vets no longer do, because OMG-vaccine-reactions (which haven't actually been since since the 1960s) with the result of lepto epidemics in pets in some parts of California like nothing we've seen since before the vaccine went into common use.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Summer Olympics should only be in Athens, and pick a cold city to have the Winter Olympics in and never change it.
My other sig is extremely clever...
What if there's a new world record set, will there be the dreaded asterisk next to the time? At the bottom it'll say Time was in a shit pond. This tended to make them paddle to near exhaustion?
It'll be great for the tv night comics.
Compete in any watersport. Wait one month. See if you get:
Cholera
Diptheria
Hepatitis
Typhoid Fever
Zika
If you do not, you win a Gold Medal!!
https://youtu.be/6qoqE6WmNz4?t...
You can't even brag, "Now with 80% less sewage".
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
If lepto is caused by bacteria, pray tell WTF lack of vaccination has to do with its outbreaks?
The vaccine is a bacterin. It's effective for 6-12 months.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?