Of course it has been a factor.

As a non-US citizen I have experienced the frustration of long border controls in US and Canada
too many times, and from now on I will try my best to minimize them.

The Olympics is a celebration of peace and freedom. Please oh please no more overpoliced olympics!

So not really a short answer :)

Rio was the best for 3 reasons:

a) Infrastructure and preparation. Recall that they have two main events to organize within 2 years.
If the World cup is successful, no doubt they will organize an equally successful Olympics.
Even if it fails, they will have enough time to fix all the problems, which they will
have learned first hand, thus it is more likely they will absorb the lessons of failure.

b) Not a main target for terrorists etc. Face it, the US is a prime target and policing
events on the mainland is a nightmare. Also some countries are less likely
to be attacked simply because they have not pissed off as many people
as the US. So was Greece in 2004, and so will be Brazil in 2016.

c) Latin America. The Olympics should go there at some point ... and where
better than the magical city of Rio, in one of the most vibrant economies in the world?

hate to reply to my posts, but this is funny:

"What is the RIPPER?

RIPPER is an acronym for the Robotic Interplanetary Prospector Excavator and Retriever. It is an automated two-stage spacecraft and Earth Reentry Capsule (ERC) designed to land on and return samples from the smaller extraterrestrial bodies in the Solar System. This includes the moons, the asteroids, and the comets."

"Ripper"... how appropriate ...

They are selling lunar samples from their missions to moon starting 2012 ...

http://www.interorbital.com/Lunar%20Sample%20Return_1.htm

"How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? "

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html?_r=1&em=&pagewanted=all

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

bigger yes. Taking into account that the US has ~300 million vs EU's ~450 million population, richer not.

"2) celebrate gay culture and heritage."

_Sir_ Elton John ... 'nough said.

Good point. A colleague of John Doyle also agrees with you:

What would Darwin Think about Clean-Slate Architectures? ACM Computer Communications Review (CCR), Editorial Zone, January 2008.

http://www.sigcomm.org/ccr/drupal/files/p29-v38n1g-dovrolis.pdf

From the abstract:

"As significant resources are directed towards clean-slate networking
research, it is imperative to understand how cleanslate
architectural research compares to the diametrically
opposite paradigm of evolutionary research. This paper approaches
the âoeevolution versus clean-slateâ debate through
a biological metaphor. We argue that evolutionary research
can lead to less costly (more competitive) and more robust
designs than clean-slate architectural research. We also argue
that the Internet architecture is not ossified, as recently
claimed, but that its core protocols play the role of âoeevolutionary
kernelsâ, meaning that they are conserved so that
complexity and diversity can emerge at the lower and higher
layers. We then discuss the factors that determine the deployment
of new architectures or protocols, and argue, based
on the notion of âoeauto-catalytic setsâ, that successful innovations
are those that become synergistic components in
closed loops of existing modules. The paper closes emphasizing
the role of evolutionary Internet research."

Nope, he still does ... :

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3382491587979249836

Brian Shuster, Johnson Leong, Matthew Price, Brian Lam, Desmond Ford Johnson.

So that their names show up in this /. post every time somebody googles them ...

hate to break this little bubble of yours ... but couldn't resist the temptation:

http://uniorb.com/RCHECK/drone.htm

Red Bull is not a drug. I used to suck d*** for coke. Now that's an addiction. You ever suck some d*** for Red Bull?

someone please mod down this ignorant bigoted tool.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php

Congrats on a fast but subtle Godwining

ghaH Dun yIn !!!