Basso Out

Ivan Basso, champion of the 2006 Giro D'Italia and current Discovery Channel rider has been benched pending further investigation into alleged blood doping from the Operacion Puerto scandal. Apparently they have now decided to take all the frozen blood and test it against the DNA of suspected cyclists. Based on what I've read, Jan Ullrich has already been found guilty.

What pisses me off about Operacion Puerto is that only the names of pro cyclists have been released, even though other Olympic level athletes are involved. Why choose only now to test the DNA? This whole thing stinks worse than used chamois cream (she said ineloquently, her voice dripping with sardonic disdain).

MIT Dean Canned

MIT's Dean Marilee Jones got fired. She applied for low level position using academic credentials she didn't have, 28 years ago for a job that didn't require them, mostly likely to have a small upper hand on the other applicants. This kind of deception is innocuous, and the 'anonymous' tipster was probably a disgruntled applicant who knew something they shouldn't have, and felt scorned after not being admitted.

This is fucking retarded. It isn't as if precedent doesn't exist for this in Corporate America. Performance should trump this, especially 28 excellent years of it. She made MIT a harder, but cooler place to get into. We should be sorry to see her go.

An Iraqi Werewolf in London

Iraqi 'insurgents' (are we still calling them that?) are apparently planning to kidnap Prince Harry [1]. Is anyone really terribly surprised by this? The United States has made the current war foreign policy very clear: kidnapping us will do you no good. However, the same cannot be said of British parliament, whose support for the war is significantly wavering, especially with the declared retirement of Tony Blair at the end of term in September. This entire war was screwed from the beginning by bad decisions based on myopic thinking. First we invaded without enough troops, then we fired the Iraqi army and sent armed and well trained men resentfully off into the night, only to think to ourselves later "Oh my how these insurgents are armed and well trained." Certainly Syria and Iran have had a fair hand in increasing the violence, and the seemingly irrational detainment of the British sailors, only to release them shortly after seemed suspiciously altruistic for Ahmadinejad, a leader described as "actually dimmer than President Bush."

It's clearly open season on Brits, a policy that will actually get the insurgents somewhere. We invaded with hopeless idealism, thinking we would find statesmen the likes of George Washington or John Adams. Instead we found average men beset with avarice, determined each to slice off a piece of the oil revenue cake. Iraqis voted in recorded numbers? They voted for their ethnicity, Shiites for Shiites, Sunnis for Sunnis. The minority felt left out and oppressed by the majority, and here we are, and giant cesspool of greed and shady political underbellies. Humanity at its finest.

Nigeria: Does 'disenfranchised' cover this?

The fact that the supposed President Elect of Nigeria, Umaru Yar’Adua, won by an impossibly wide margin suggests that his party and supporters were at least in part responsible for the violence leading up to and during the polls. No one but Yar'Adua and his cohorts seem willing to accept the elections as valid. However, we have seen thus hundreds of times over. It is doubtful that their will be a new election, it is cruel to ask of people who already risked their lives to cast apparently invalid ballots. The people of Nigeria have not spoken, twas ever thus.

NYT article
Economist article (april 19th)
CNN (very PC) article

Tour of Georgia ends as expected

Levi Leipheimer takes 12th overall in ToG, but his swift summit of Brasstown Bald implies that he is at or near Tour form.







Tyler Hamilton ended in 59th. I've commented enough on this guy.

David Zabriskie ended 16th, not sure what that implies. I doubt he went in intending to place much better than that.

Janez Brajkovic's 1st place showing might encourage DC to make him race leader for the Vuelta.

Notes on World Energy

The elections in Nigeria matter to you. Nigeria is the United States' fourth largest supplier of crude oil, and within the next 8 years over 25% of all our oil imports will come from Nigeria. The less stable their government is, the more their oil is going to cost. That polling HQ's are being blown up this weekend while the country attempts to conduct free elections if disheartening at best (see: Fucking Scary)

Gazprom is biggest natural gas company in the world, and most Americans have never heard of it. Essentially owned and operated by the Russian government, it allows the Kremlin to exert an astounding amount of political and economic control over the European Union.

Oh google

Here's my knee-jerk reaction to Google's Double Click controversy:

Is Microsoft actually accusing Google of potential regulatory violations? Microsoft?!

I can't wait for them to start throwing the word monopoly around. Here are some words from the guy Google out bid:

“It raises some issues for us. It raises issues as to whether we are happy to let Google have our clients’ data and our own data which Google could use for its own purposes,”

It's own purposes? As in what exactly? What purpose would this gentleman have used the double click information? Are we now blaming Google for having too intuitive and thus popular a search engine? Are we on the verge of asking the FCC to take control of Google for national security purposes? So now perhaps Google is in a position to provide possibly the most effective advertising on the web, by virtue of knowing what an ip is searching for. So instead of crappy ads to refinance my non-existent mortgages, I'll get The North Face and REI ads for products I actually want?

I can see why these other advertisers are pissed. Google might eventually be the only game in town worth going to for advertisers. Which doesn't make them a monopoly, anymore than Subway has the monopoly on healthy fast food. A reasonable choice exists, which couldn't really be said for Microsoft in 1997 when they made a business deal with Apple and the only other OS option was Linux, fledgling and of use to no one except programmers. I search Google for free, I have final say on what I choose to purchase. Now, Google might be in violation of trademarks, I don't know, I'm neither a lawyer nor an employee at the FTC, but I don't see much in the way of FTC or FCC regulatory action anytime soon.

Irawny

Team Predictor-Lotto's name cracks me up. Predictor is a pregnancy test now sponsoring the team, and cyclists are notorious for suffering from erectile dysfunction and impotency.

I'll just chuckle over here.

Hamilton

Although Tyler Hamilton is currently in about 40th in the GC for the Tour of Georgia and not, as one cycling critic put it, showing his "gold medal form", I'm secretly holding out hope that this is his strategy. To make his competitors complacent, thinking that although Tyler is back, he just isn't the GC threat he once was. Then, when he escapes on the first climb of the Giro, they won't know what hit them.

It's more likely that this is his last year of racing, his last stand in the sport, after years of being a favorite, after committing the bravest act in the history of cycling, finishing a climb despite severe injury, grinding 12 of his teeth literally down to the nerve to accomplish the feat. Only to be later ousted as a doper, and branded a liar.

The above paragraphs seem a lot like Hamilton's career. The first the dream, what might have been, the boy who would be the next Lance. The second what is, the convicted doper returned from exile for a final climb before he fades into obscurity.

I prefer the first version.

Leary and the Library

I once got into an argument about parallel universes with a coworker in Portland, OR. Being an aspiring scientist, I have no use for spirituality when attempting to discover the reasons behind phenomena in the universe. My refrigerator, for example, become cold when plugged in because the freon coils and the compressor in the back are not broken. It is not a 'miracle'. I often say to those skeptics with little scientific knowledge "Just because you don't know why the sky is blue, does not mean no one knows."

I believe that everything makes sense, it just depends on your perspective. So when I attempted to explain to my co-worker that his theory on parallel universes made little scientific sense, he replied "What about Timothy Leary?"

Now, neurology is one of my favorite subjects. Not behavioral neurology, which is heavily related to psychology, but pure neurology, the study of the brain as an organism, and the effects of trauma and disease on the human nervous system. I am by no means an expert, though I hope some day to become one. I think that I know, or rather that I understand, how the brain essentially works, and that when some one, like say Timothy Leary, ingests large amounts of a drug like lysergic acid (LSD), which is chemically designed to interrupt and alter the organic function of the brain , their experiences while 'on a trip' are also organic, not spiritual. So when someone replies with indignation to me that the experience of a parallel universe can be compared to Timothy Leary, a psychologist enamored with LSD his entire life, my skepticism knows few bounds.

I watched the Linklater film Waking Life last night, and though I've seen it several times, this is the first viewing in which I really noticed when one of the characters mentions Timothy Leary in passing. I'm almost tempted to run to the library and check out a few of his books simply to fortify myself for the next time someone decides to employ Leary and quasi-science to support their hair-brained theories.

Which reminds me, I have yet to check anything out from the Boston library since I moved here. It's been almost two weeks. This is unacceptable, and shall be rectified post haste.

Also, I had an job interview today, the best part of which was meeting a new potential friend named Asia, who just moved to Boston from NYC. The place seemed sketchy, and if they're only looking to fill one position, I hope Asia gets it. I'm content to work at coffee shop or something.

And so it goes.

No One

No one should know or care to know the name of the shooter. For the next 32 days, every major newspaper in the country should have the full page spreads on the lives of each victim. At the local coffee shop or on the train there should be avid discussion of these people, and the lives they lost. When asked the name of their killer, people should be mostly unable to recall.

NBC should never have shown the video on network TV. No one should have wanted to watch it. Matt Lauer said it was shown in an effort to "understand" the killer. This is a tragedy he created, he killed these people, and thus is my mind there is nothing from him worth "understanding".

CNN has created this paltry attempt at 'remembering' the victims. I applaud their efforts, but they should do more. Everyone should.

Hell, every single time someone is killed in this country their life, not just their murder, should be FRONTPAGE news. Then perhaps, when so many murders go unsolved (usually when the victim has the wrong skin color or the wrong income bracket) we will all be moved to Give A Damn, and not let their slaughters be reduced to entertainment value for prime-time tv.

On Doping

The dopers, and the alleged dopers. What can I say? They fascinate me. I'm far more interested in keeping up with the continued careers of David Millar, Ivan Basso and Tyler Hamilton than George Hincapie or Damiano Cunego.

Hamilton is back. This year he rides for a lower ranked team with a wildcard to the Giro D'Italia. If he does well enough in the Giro, he may find himself inundated with offers from better teams for the Pro tour, and perhaps in 2008, he can show us all.

Contemplating Ivan Basso, let's assume for a moment that he did actually dope, which accounts for his excellent (more at: superhuman) result in last year's Giro. If he is now riding for DC dope free, he may not perform as he did last year, and thus he will be a domestique for Levi Leipheimer in the Tour de France, rather than a contender. However, I believe that Basso is an accomplished and talented cyclist in his own right, doped or not, and on a level playing field he will still perform well.

Not much to say about Millar. Still applauding his gutsy decision to actually admit to doping when suspended, and he's performed as expected since returning.

On doping. If you know for a fact that a drug or method enhances rider performance, and you know also for a fact that a rider is using said drug or method, if other riders are keeping up with ease, does it not follow that they are also probably doping?

Drug and blood doping tests are difficult in sports for the following reasons. Professional sports and anti-doping agents do not have the money or resources to develop tests on their own. They rely on advancements in medicine, applying new techniques to their respective sport. For example, a common substance used by cyclists to increase their red blood cell (rbc) counts is Erythropoietin (EPO), first developed for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. If an athlete injects this substance, his body's ability to carry oxygen to his muscles is increased, and therefore his endurance is also increased. Another way to increase rbc count is to inject, or transfuse blood that contains (almost) exclusively rbcs . If the athlete uses their own blood (they take out their blood, separate the rbcs, then re-inject it), then testing is made even more difficult. The tests used to check for illegal blood doping (as it's called) are all developed from methods used by doctors to test for, among other things, organ donor matches. The inherent problem with this is that wealthy, successful cyclists hire brilliant personal physicians, who are aware of testing methods in modern medicine before the anti-doping agencies are. Unless the World Anti-Doping Association actually became serious enough to literally put their money where their mouths are and pay for external, secret test developments themselves, the mentality of Guilty Until Proven Innocent will continue to be a pervading philosophy across the WDA board. Cyclists who are accused of doping despite clean tests are left to feel raw and betrayed by an agency that refuses to believe them in spite of all available scientific evidence to the contrary. Cycling is, after all, historically famous for harboring more dopers than almost any other sport.

I've personally decided that I do not care. I am not going to think less of a rider because he dopes. Especially if his colleagues have kept up with him in the peleton, but have just been lucky enough to avoid positive tests themselves.