Friday, August 26, 2005

Sorry for being so quiet

Most of you will probably be happy that I haven't had much to say lately. For once I have had no inspiration to write and nothing to say. It has been work just coming up with the few comments I have made this month. I'm just staying close to home (mentally speaking) and minding my own beeswax.

I'm sure I'll be back to my normal idiot self in no time. My last post is probably a good sign for that.

Thanks for your patience and support.

PEte

The Beavis and Butthead analysis of the doping acusations against Lance Armstrong.

Greetings humans.

I imagine that we've all had a chance to read the stuff in Velo News about Lance Armstrong's B samples of pee from 1999 testing positive for EPO.

Rather than make any kind of intelligent or sensical commentary on the evidence or arguments at hand, I'd like to take an alternative tact.

"Heh heh eh eh Heh eh. That guy's name is 'Dick Pound'. Heheh heh heh heh."

I think that's all I'm going to say on this topic.

Pete

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

My Drug Testing Rant....

This month HBO is airing a quite good story on Tyler Hamilton and the problems he's been facing since testing positive for having another person's blood in his system during last year's Vuelta a Espagna. I was pleasantly suprised at how balanced the coverage was and how well they discussed a few of the issues surrounding Tyler.

Also in the news this week are stories about how Ryan Franklin of the Seattle Mariners and Rafael Palmeiro of the Baltimore Orioles tested positve for banned steroids.

I think it is an interesting statement about how Americans view their sports heros who are caught cheating in relation to the way the rest of the world seems to deal with similar issues.

It was found that less than 2% of Tyler Hamilton's blood tested as though it was from a blood transfusion from another person. Most of the doctors and officials agree that there is no performance advantage to that, and yet he received a 2 year ban for this infraction. That effectively ends his career.

Franklin and Palmeiro each are going to receive a 10 day suspension.

Is it me or is there something weird about that? Rafael Palmeiro went before congress and testified that he has never taken illegal performance enhancing drugs. A few months later he tests positive and all he gets is a 10 day suspension?

I heard recently about problems with mandatory drug sentencing, where people were getting sent to jail for really long sentences for quite minor infractions because of extenuating circumstances and mandatory sentencing.

What does that say about our country? What does that tell our kids about the importance of playing fair and not using performance enhancing drugs?

If you're poor and get busted for drugs, you're going away for a very long time. If you're rich and famous and get busted for drugs and lie to congress about it, you get a 10 day vacation. Nice message!!!

Sorry to rant.

Thanks for reading.

Pete