California Leads the Way in Energy Utility Exodus

California's senate just passed the carbon emissions cap bill, and if the House follows through, which it will probably do, the state of California will see another energy crisis like we did with the market-based energy trading scheme which booted Gray Davis out of power. Reducing man-made greenhouse gas emissions is a good thing, but any plan which makes it expensive for energy utilities to operate will succeed, by forcing the utilities to move or scale back their operations, not by innovation. Also troubling is the carbon trading mechanism which would be installed. Carbon emissions trading has already hurt New Zealand's economy, a signatory on the Kyoto Protocol, and studies on Australia's plan to install carbon emissions trading between their states show the economic cost being borne by the consumers instead of the utilities. It is already difficult for the energy industry to operate here because of heavy regulation, and the current structure of the emissions cap bill will further retard their operations, to the detriment of California residents.

The Need For More Inconvenient Scientists

We definitely need more columns like this one, in today's Boston Globe. Not only does columnist Alex Beam expose the media agenda on Global Warming, he presents us with one of that agenda's targets, meteorologist Richard Lindzen, of MIT. First, the agenda quote:

More curious are our own taboos on the subject of global warming. I sat in a roomful of journalists 10 years ago while Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider lectured us on a big problem in our profession: soliciting opposing points of view. In the debate over climate change, Schneider said, there simply was no legitimate opposing view to the scientific consensus that man - made carbon emissions drive global warming. To suggest or report otherwise, he said, was irresponsible.

Indeed. I attended a week's worth of lectures on global warming at the Chautauqua Institution last month. Al Gore delivered the kickoff lecture, and, 10 years later, he reiterated Schneider's directive. There is no science on the other side, Gore inveighed, more than once. Again, the same message: If you hear tales of doubt, ignore them. They are simply untrue.

To make sure the science on the other side of the man-made carbon driven warming debate is not legitimate, it must be made known that these "scientists" are in the backpockets of the energy industry or their lobbyists, which is the currently the case for Dr. Lindzen, as a named party in a lawsuit in California over vehicle emissions standards. If the "criminilization" of these anthropogenic warming skeptics is to be believed, how about we also get disclosure on who funds the research for the "legitimate" climate scientists? This already occurs for the pharmaceutical industry, why not for the global warming "industry?"

Via Instapundit.

Europe Finally Crashes the Lunar Party

Later tonight On September 3rd, the Europeans will make contact with the Moon. SMART-1, a lunar probe, has been gathering data on the Moon's surface for three years, and also testing an ion propulsion engine designed for interplanetary travel. The ESA called the mission successful, but the cool thing is going to be the crash. The landing spot is going to be in darkness and will be visible from the Americas at the moment of impact. If the debris cloud is more than 12 miles high, amateur astronomers will be able to see a bright spot as the cloud clears the horizon. I may just have to dust off the old reflector for that. If you want to see more on the impact, go here.

Update: The date of impact was corrected according to the ESA information. The AP report did not include the date, which led me to assume the impact was on August 30th.

Vuelta a España Rant

Those of you who know me, you already know I'm pretty obsessed with television coverage of the Grand Tours in cycling. I tolerated the weekend updates of the Giro d'Italia, but at least I saw some thigh-burning pedaling. I was a total wreck with the Tour de France coverage, sometimes watching a stage up to three times: couch heaven! But now we get to the last Grand Tour of the season, and what coverage do we have in America? ¡Nada! ¡Es la ultima maldición! My satellite service says that there are two Spanish language stations that have some weekly coverage, but are they included in my package? Noooo! Ten dollars a month extra for each station to add, when I only need it for one hour a day for three weeks. Grr.

At least I can follow the race online, but it's just not the same. Thor Hushovd still leads, big sprinting Norwegian. Wait until the hot mountain stages. Come on Team Discovery Channel, give me some hope!

Global Warmenizers Scratch Heads, Leave Bald Spot

The climate scientists have a busy Fall ahead of them as they rewrite their models to account for dropping ocean temperatures, but now they have to account for the Farmer's Almanac. The 190 year old publication has correctly predicted climate trends without regard to supposedly changing atmospheric gas ratios "two years in advance using a secret formula based on sunspots, the position of the planets and the tidal action of the moon." The Almanac is predicting a colder than average winter for the entire eastern seaboard. I don't believe Pluto's demotion will affect the prediction.

Now, on to the media bias portion of the entry: no mention whatsoever how this prediction does not support Global Warming. This summer, there were articles on how the heat wave is another piece of evidence for anthropogenic global warming, even causing Pat Robertson to convert. Will we see any mention of Global Warming in the predictable editorials complaining about the cost of heating oil as the winter months approach? I'll go on record right now, predicting: No.

 

Update: Welcome all from Tim Blair! Thank you Tim, for the link.

Good News: Fox News Journalists Released

I don't normally comment on breaking news, but I just had to share my joy that Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig were released from capitivity this morning. The release came just hours after new video of the men were shown in arab garb, reading from the Koran, saying they had converted to Islam, and being forced to make anti-western statements. I can't help but think that this tactic of conversion was the only way for the kidnappers to save face and release the journalists, since they could not bring harm to another muslim. Whatever the case, the Palestinian militias did help in negotiating the release, because they knew that if any harm came to the reporters, their media operations would be seriously hampered. Thank God, Centanni and Wiig have been released relatively unharmed and that they are now safe.

Is the Planet Warming or Not?

One thing that has always bothered me about the Global Warming crowd is their reliance on their climate change models. The theories are sound, don't get me wrong about that, but proving those theories using the models has always been lacking. And then to use the results of those lacking models to the detriment of international economies without actual consensus on the data is just not wise.

For example, the driving force of atmospheric carbon dioxide to warm the average atmospheric temperature is logarithmic. If the increase in volume of carbon dioxide is exponential, then the temperature change is linear, which since 1975, most climate models tend to demonstrate. If the volume increase in carbon dioxide is only linear, then the driving force tapers off so that in 30 to 60 years, it does not matter how much carbon dioxide is being injected into the atmosphere. The rabid global warming preventers are not content with proving a human component in increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they must show an exponential increase to justify their lobbying of changing economic policies.

But this week, new data were thrown into the climate science community that have the researchers scratching their heads. The true believers don't know what to make of it, since no model predicted that oceanic temperatures would decrease, with logarithmic or linear carbon dioxide increase. The ocean acts a huge heat sink and is viewed as the source of confirmation for atmospheric temperature increase, but it takes 30 to 60 years after the atmospheric trend to show in the ocean temperatures. The climate change believers' first instinct is to call this heat loss noise in the overall trend, which it very well could be. Straight lines don't exist in nature.

The skeptics of human-driven climate change call the new data what they are, new data and call for more research. As a skeptic myself, I have always thought that it was arrogance to believe that humans could cause this much atmospheric change with how little carbon dioxide we actually contribute to the carbon dioxide necessary for most climate models to drive global warming. We don't know enough yet about climate science and we should not trust those who say they do and have closed discussion on more research.

A Clone Apart - Episode 1 - Part 3

A little late, but technically released on Friday, Part 3 is here.  In this very special episode, Danson gets advice from his older brother on how to steal ammo from science officers.  He also misses having that dancing trash can around. Remember: must run faster!

 

A random quote from somewhere near the end of the first episode:
"Did he just crap out a milk carton?"

 

Brushing Up on Smack Talk

I'm still waiting for the next installment of A Clone Apart, so while we're all waiting, please watch this instructional video on Smack Talk.  I'm sure the quality of your Halo sessions will increase exponentially as you perfect the art of "Corpsehumping."  Fantastic!

 

"Drink your Ovaltine™, bitch!"

 

New Gear!

I love new gear! Another 100 miles, another bike jersey.

 

From the 2006 Cool Breeze Century in Ventura.

 

Tea! Feh!

A story about tea, from the Brits of course, extols its health benefits and rehydrative properties, but, so what? All it's supposed benefits come the health catch-all du jour: antioxidants. And it rehydrates because, get this, it's made of mostly water! Wow! Just more debunking of caffeine as a diuretic in the small amounts that exist in a cup of coffee or tea. But here's the quote that made me almost spit out my liver cirrhosis preventing, diabetes kicking, rich loam-colored sip of coffee: "'Also, a cup of tea contains fluoride, which is good for the teeth,' she [Dr. Carrie Ruxton] added." Brits need to drink more tea because it has fluoride? We already know that the British water system does not add fluoride like we do here in America. Some say it's a stereotype, but others say it's a generalization that the Brits have bad teeth. I'm just glad I do my coffee swilling here in America, well, at least California.

Planet Pluto is Dead, Long Live the Dwarf

As I had hoped, the IAU took the proposal vote seriously to resolve Pluto's squatter status among the planets in our Solar System. As I had wished earlier (and even quoted), Pluto is no longer a planet and has been demoted to "dwarf planet." Of course, the IAU has to muck things up a little: a dwarf planet is defined as any non-planetary body that "has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and is not a satellite." This is vague, and already Pluto defenders are drawing up a new proposal to keep Pluto as a planet. That's why I still like my mass-ratio idea of less than 0.25. If the body has another body smaller than a quarter of its mass, it is designated as the dominant body and the smaller bodies are the satellites. It's arbitrary, but so is the set of conditions in the proposal.

One complaint against the proposal has no weight: that only five percent of IAU members voted on the proposal. I wish that even fewer had, that only the planetary scientists were eligible for the vote. I worked for a cosmologist, and my knowledge of the solar system extends only to the undergraduate level classes I took as requirements for my degree. The extent of our knowledge of the planets was whether one was going to get in the way of our measurements. Cosmologists shouldn't be voting on stuff they've never written a paper on.

Just as long as Pluto is not considered a planet like the other eight, and that future small rocks or iceballs have no chance of being called a "planet," that's good enough for me.

Gorgeous George Robbed at Eneco

Let's take a hypothetical situation: say you're the overall leader during a multiple stage bike race, you lead by three seconds on the last day, and then the number 2 guy cuts you off in the last 100 meters causing you to crash, so that you lose by 1 second after the time bonuses are awarded. Now, let's say your name is George Hincapie, and it really happened. At least George wasn't seriously hurt and could cross the finish line with the rest of the peloton, still, no foul. Stefan Schumacher says it wasn't on purpose, but Discover filed a protest anyway. Discovery is still waiting on their protest at Paris-Roubaix, when George was hurt earlier this year, because his teammates were the eventual number 2 and 3 finishers, but were disqualified because they rode under a rail crossing.

New Chinese Crackdown on Human Rights

Sounds ominous, right? But, the Chinese are putting a stop to what every red-blooded, rural farmer should have at their funerals: strippers. The custom has been to attract more mourners by employing strippers to entice villagers to attend the funerals. The idea being that the more attendees, the more honored the dead will be. Now, funeral plans have to be submitted at least 12 hours in advance and a hotline has been created to report "funeral misdeeds." More hay can be made out of this, what with the process of clearing the funeral with the government, which is an erosion of human freedom, but I'm more concerned about the small businesspersons whose livelihoods are being jeopardized. Yes, I'm sympathetic to the strippers, especially the hardworking ones working in rural villages. Talk about a tough time getting gigs, now they're being stepped on by the man, the Chinese Man. Damn commies.

Energy Conservation - Red vs. Blue Style

Do gasoline prices have you down? Would you like some tips on how to make your gallon go farther? The Red vs. Blue crew recorded their own Public Service Announcement and offers their special brand of helpful advice. Remember two things: these guys are professionals, so don't try this at home; and Caboose is King!

 

"My tummy feels a little weird."

 

If You're Going to Drink Coffee, Don't Cut Back

So far this year, we've had stories on coffee drinking as a health benefit: cutting the risk of liver failure and cutting the risk of adult onset diabetes. Now we hear that if you drink coffee, go whole hog. The headline is misleading, but if you are a light to medium coffee drinker, you have slightly increased risk of heart attack once you are past middle age. Why do the heavy drinkers not have to worry? The researchers "suspect that heavy consumers develop a complete tolerance to the short-term cardiovascular effects of caffeine, whereas light to moderate drinkers remain susceptible." So, drink four or more cups of coffee a day, or you may have a premature date with a cardiovascular surgeon.

I Love Gravitational Lensing

Perhaps love is too strong a word, how about respect, admire, like it-like it, we're just good friends? Naw, screw it! I LOVE Gravitational Lensing. Ever since I was introduced to the concept in my astro days, and then was a paid seeker of any such events, I have loved the idea of using gravitational lensing as a research tool. I was paid to find gravitational lensing events for a cosmology group at Berkeley so we could find the "furthest" galaxy, because lensing magnified the light, actually letting us see objects that would normally be dim. My advisor had held the record, but was beaten by another observer, and was competitively searching for the next record. Lensing was also used to figure out how much dark matter was screwing around with galaxy clusters, which was also very cool. But this idea, to use lensing to detect the dark matter itself, is genius!

 

Image courtesy of NASA / CXC / CfA / STScI / Magellan / Univ. of Ariz. / ESO

 

In the false color composite image above, the blue gas in the collision of two galaxy clusters is the dark matter. The magenta colored gas is the actual visible gas. The color scale corresponds to the gradient of the gravitational field calculated from the lensing of the background galaxies. Awesome! This is the first experiment to verify the hypothesis that dark matter does not interact directly with regular matter, otherwise the dark matter gas would have behaved the same as the visible gas. Perhaps dark matter is more WIMPy (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) than MACHO (MAssive Compact Halo Objects). Read the whole article.

Even Tom and Jerry Can't Smoke

Usually when political correctness and historical revisionism collide, it's a case of some group ignoring or redacting some comments out of their beloved leader's newly discovered manuscripts or letters to contemporaries. You must have ideological purity, even if the founder of your movement did not. But, how do feel about cartoons? A British cable company has decided to bow to public pressure to edit scenes of smoking out of Tom and Jerry cartoons. Okay, never mind that the public pressure amounted to one letter sent to the company, this is Great Britain! People smoke like chimneys over there. When I studied at Oxford for a semester abroad, I spent a lot of time in cafes and bars, and I can tell you, my eyes did not become bloodshot by too much drinking. And this corporate entity is concerned "that smoking on television may normalize smoking," because the cartoon's primary viewership is school-age children. How about the normalized smoking that occurs when the poor tykes see their parents lighting up? Oh, the hypocrisy! What about normalizing ax-wielding, bomb-throwing, bat-swinging, and shotgun-shooting? And all those could occur in just one episode of Tom and Jerry, meanwhile the viewer who sent the letter is concerned about rolling a cigarette and cigar smoking. It's good to know the brits have their priorities straight.

Red vs. Blue - The Next Installment

To tell you the truth, I've been growing a little antsy because I had not seen a new episode of my favorite faceless helmets from Halo. But those Rooster Teeth guys finally got back to work, and other people began stealing their videos and posting them on YouTube, again. So now, I can breathe a sigh a relief, take in the good voice acting, and watch those helmets nod. Ah, helmety goodness:

 

"Kill anyone else, and I might have to start paying you commission."

 

"Also, I Seem to Have No Pulse."

This is so true, on so many levels, I can only marvel.

Catgut Crazy!

A recent study has shown that microbial parasites in cats have made us more neurotic and schizophrenic, but I love seeing anecdotal evidence in action. According to this story published yesterday, a man called the fire department to rescue his cat stuck in a tree, but ended up shooting at them with a handgun when they refused. You see, the cat owner lied to Emergency Response by saying there was a tree fire, because he "knew they would only respond to a fire call." Yeah, that's a bit neurotic, but the schizophrenic part happened when the fire response started packing up, telling the man to call Animal Control or just wait until kitty got hungry. The man went back into his house, retrieved a handgun, and began firing at the firemen. That's a little less of a restrained response the firemen were expecting, especially since they were probably pissed already at being dispatched for a false alarm. Now the man is being held for assault with a deadly weapon and there was no word on the kitty's condition or whereabouts.

Life on Planet Crazy

The IAU is getting a lot more press than they probably wanted, as they vote on the proposal to redefine planet status. I wrote about this earlier, but now other people are beginning to see the consequences of using the external barycenter condition for defining a satellite. Because the Moon is slowly receding from Earth, in a few billion years, it will be redefined as a planet. I had kept the barycenter condition as one of my criteria for satellite status, but I'm changing my mind. Toss it out, but keep the mass ratio at less than 0.25. Right now, Charon is classified as a moon, under the new proposal would be called a planet, but under my criterion, it would still be a moon because its mass ratio with Pluto is o.12 (the Earth-Moon mass ratio is about 0.08).

Some people don't like my atmosphere condition, but it's only there to apply a mass threshold and to satisfy conditions that make planets out of the only orbiting bodies created during a certain time and distance range from the Sun. Any large rocky bodies found beyond Xena should be called asteroids, just like the minor planets are called now.

Eh, but what do I know? The astronomers are going to figure this out, and hopefully declassify Pluto as a planet, since we know its geology and orbiting history do not match any of the other 8 planets.

Update: As quoted in Cnet's Blogma. Thank you, thank you, it's just an honor to be nominated.

More Updates: Here's a cool little story on Mike Brown. More Berkeley connections too: he finished his Ph.D. the same year I graduated. Also, a strong believer in 8 planets, he wants to call Pluto, along with his discoveries "Kuiper Belt Objects." And, Xena has a small moon named "Gabrielle." God, I love geeks.

"Who designed this open cockpit?"

If it's Friday, that means it's time for the next installment of Illusive Entertainment's A Clone Apart. Danson, our hapless, untrained hero, gets to shoot his gun, ponder deep questions on War and Death, and learn how to drive a stick shift. Oh, did I mention he gets shot at?

A random quote from somewhere, halfway through the first episode:

"Sir, why is this trash can dancing?"

So Who's the Smartest Mammal Now?

For as long as I can remember, there has been a small, but vocal, group who have regarded dolphins as the smartest mammals on earth because of their huge brains. The dolphin has been the mascot of many groups who share at least one trait: disdain and mistrust of human progress. You see, we homo sapiens sapiens haven't evolved physically very much over the last hundred thousand years or so, but look at all the wondrous, spectacular, even scary things we have accomplished technologically. Our dominance over animals and the environment cannot be denied, and we even prove it gloriously and ignominiously. Simply put, we cheated Nature. Well, at least that's the view by many environmentalists and animal rights activists. Their one shining example that we are not the top, that we are not unique, that we are not so special, was the dolphin's big brain.

Oh sure, the peaceful, playful dolphin image took a few hits when it was determined that the males gang-raped females, drowned the young of other males, and even ate other dolphin species when exerting territorialism, but hey, they still got bigger brains than we do. Perhaps this latest study can put the myth of the clever dolphin and his big brain to rest. According to the published paper, a scientist says dolphins are dimwits.

Read the whole thing, because Paul Manger, the South African neuroethologist, gives a very entertaining interview while explaining his findings which were just published in Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. Basically, the dolphin and whale brain is large so it can handle the cold temperatures and pressures of the ocean. Here's the best summary in the article:

Brains, he says, are made of neurons and glia. The latter create the environment for the neurons to work properly and producing heat is one of glia's functions. "Dolphins have a superabundance of glia and very few neurons ... The dolphin's brain is not made for information processing it is designed to counter the thermal challenges of being a mammal in water," Manger said.

Manger goes on to say that the dolphins perform so well in marine parks because of food-conditioned responses, which is actually indicative of a predator mind. If you've ever seen a dolphin pod take out a shark, then Manger's arguments resonate. It looks like Douglas Adams got it right when he wrote in his books that the lab rats were smarter than the dolphins. So, if dolphin's aren't the smartest mammals with those big brains, I wonder which species that leaves...

Landis Responds to Phonak Disbanding

I didn't feel like commenting on Team Phonak dissolving at the end of this season when IShares pulled out as their main sponsor, because it's just a sad epilogue to the whole Landis Doping Scandal. It wasn't really a surprise. Phonak has been plagued with doping allegations and sanctions since its inception. The latest episode with Floyd Landis just broke their back, even with all the internal rules and protocols against doping they instituted after Tyler Hamilton was disgraced. In an open letter to the team, Floyd Landis expresses his pride at being involved with the team, but also repeated his resolve to prove that he won the Tour with the help of the entire team "fairly and cleanly."

Meanwhile, the Discovery Channel team announced its roster for the Vuelta a Espana, and it's going to built around American Tom Danielson. Danielson had been riding very well at the Giro d'Italia until fever and sinus infections caused him to abandon. Let's hope he rides better in the heat instead of the rain.

No New Planets!

Let me first say that I've been out of the Astrophysics field for a long time, so my opinion on the latest proposal by the IAU, to redefine planets so that there are now twelve instead of nine, should be taken with a grain of salt. Second, I hated solar system physics, and sarcastically called my planetologist friends "geologists who were bored with Earth." So, with those disclaimers out of the way, let me just say that this is a terrible idea. They want to make Ceres a planet? The largest asteroid in the asteroid belt will be called a planet under this proposal? I guess the astronomers really hate astrologers. I know I do, because they still haven't said anything about the effect of Pluto as it enters Sagittarius. Plus, as a triplet, I know that even the personality traits don't work. But enough of that, just look at the arbitrary definition of a planet under this proposal:

"A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet."

This is so vague that we could start naming any trans-Neptunian body a planet. Even the discoverer of the newest large body thinks it's a "lousy idea." Mike Brown, who discovered the body nicknamed Xena (astronomers are still geeks, I should know), said that if we followed the formulation, we would have 53 known planets. The proposal also allows Charon, Pluto's moon, to be called a planet, because by multiple body physics, the barycenter of the system lies outside of any of the bodies, meaning that both bodies orbit a point in space, classifying Charon and Pluto a double planet system. Also, the new proposal makes no mention of an atmosphere, which all current planets have. To be considered a planet, the body just has to be round and not orbiting another body.

The debate between the astronomers has also become political, because astronomers who have no background in planetary science can vote on the proposal, when we already have committees whose responsibilities include naming newly discovered bodies, thus determining what kind of body it is. Brown had this to say on topic: "They are likely vote [sic] 'yes' because they're not familiar with the issue and, mostly, because they're sick of the topic."

So, what would my definition of a planet be? The proposal's definition of a planet is a good start, but it needs to include a few more rules to determine planet status and satellite status. First, a body must have achieved nearly hydrostatic equilibrium through it's own gravitational forces. Second, it must be sufficiently large to support a gaseous atmosphere. Third, it must have a dense core. Fourth, it must not be a satellite, defined as a "smaller" body orbiting a "larger" body (the barycenter of the multiple body system must lie outside of any one body) and the mass ratios must be less than 0.25. Under these sets of conditions, we keep the currently defined planets and Charon stays classified as a moon. Although, if Charon is found later to have an atmosphere, it could rise to planet status as part of a double planet system with Pluto. And big rocks stay defined as big rocks!

Oh, one final note. Gibor Basri, the Cal astronomer who made the earlier proposal in 2003, has been crazy over this stuff as far back as I can remember. Even in the late 1990's, his colleagues would joke that every new comet we found, Basri would be first in line to call it a new planet before we did more observations on its orbit and any spectral readings to determine its chemical makeup.

Update: Look here for new thoughts on the latest news coming from the IAU conference.

Term Limits Don't Help

I've been against the idea of term limits in state legislatures ever since we put the question to a vote as an initiative here in California. Our proposition was a reaction to the very savvy political maneuvers of then Speaker of the House Willie Brown. The Republicans were going crazy trying to get the longest serving Speaker out of power legally, and when he outsmarted them again, an initiative was put on the ballot, and Willie Brown had to give up and become mayor of San Francisco. Now that the initiative system in California is totally beholden to special interest lobbying groups with enough money to spend on advertising, I've voted no on every initiative that's been on the ballot (except for the affirmative action and illegal immigration reforms when I was in college - I didn't yet know the initiatives would never hold up constitutionally and they should never have been put on the ballot to begin with). I voted no on term limits too, because with just three 2 year terms, our representatives are just getting good at their jobs before they leave forever. Also, because of their inexperience, they are too easily influenced by the lobbying and campaign groups who help them raise the money to get elected in the first place. Lobbyists in California are in more control of the legislative branch than the legislators themselves. It was an initiative that implemented that hare-brained free market energy trading scheme that got Governor Gray Davis, and us, in trouble to begin with. Why do you think we forced a recall on him with another initiative? I voted no on that too, but voted for Arnie in the special election. So, have term limits really helped us out? According to the AP, no. All these points I just wrote are right here:

"The difference under term limits is that these legislatures no longer have a small group of long-serving members whose leadership and expertise can guide a largely inexperienced legislature," the report said.

Since lawmakers are limited to as few as six years in office, jockeying for key leadership positions begins much earlier than in legislatures with unlimited tenures. Lack of experience can lead to increased influence by the executive branch, legislative staff and lobbyists, the report said.

"Term limits in states have done more to limit rather than enhance the effectiveness of the legislative branch," Karl Kurtz, director of state services at NCSL and a lead researcher in the study, said in a release. [Emphasis added]

In the 1990's, there was a lot of mistrust of our governments because of all the corruption scandals. There really was some linkage between all the ongoing investigations of the president at the time and the perception of corruption in the state governments, and also the feeling that something had to be done. Well, how is your confidence in your local rep these days? Is it really better? Do you feel as if they represent you, or do you feel as if they represent other groups, either with deep pockets or loud activists?

Main Stream Sports Columnists

I've written before that American sports columnists don't know anything about other sports except for Football, Basketball, and Baseball. They are so totally out of their depth when it comes to commenting on soccer, hockey, the Olympics, and any endurance sports. The big three sports in America have the laxest doping controls in the world, and consequently, the reporters who cover them have the least exposure to how important doping controls are in the worlds of weight lifting, track and field, triathlons, and pro cycling. As I've said before, not one main stream sports columnist has ever mentioned that it makes no sense to take synthetic testosterone for a one day recovery. I don't think they ever will, although there might be slight chance of this happening if they cover the legal proceedings with the USADA. That's why seeing this kind of stuff really annoys me. Now, Floyd Landis should have just kept his mouth shut instead of offering all kinds conjecture on the test results. All he can do is offer conjecture, because the test results are odd, and I predict that the final investigation will show an inconclusive decision on the doping question. Even taking synthetic testosterone would not have produced the strange results that came up in the A and B samples. But what made me laugh most bitterly in this Whine of the Week story was this bit of "reasoning:"

The lab used by the Tour de France to test urine and blood samples is licensed by the World Anti-Doping Agency and must adhere to rigid standards. The testers don’t even know whose samples they are working with — all they see are code numbers.

This is an outright lie, when it comes to this particular lab. Even Pat McQuaid, president of the UCI, has admitted that they broke their own rules on athlete notification because they did not want this lab to leak the results to the French paper L'Equipe. Here's a direct quote from Pat: "Also, we know that the French laboratory has a close connection with L'Equipe, and we did not want this news to come through the press, because we are sure they would have leaked it." So, please, regular sports columnists, do your own research before you come up with drivel. Most of us have such low expectations of your colleagues in the other departments, don't drive it down further with shoddy performance in the sports department.

Update: Dick Pound loses it. Why is this man still in charge? There is no way to look at his latest rant and believe that he supports the clean athletes. He thinks every athlete is dirty. I can see the spittle on his keyboard as he wrote this:

"Who knows, USADA may subscribe to a suggestion that both athletes (Landis & Gatlin), in separate sports, were ambushed by a roving squad of Nazi frogmen and injected against their will with the prohibited substances."

Or this:

"Take cycling in 2006. If 2006 were to be measured in the Chinese cycle, it would be the Year of the Excrement".

For a more measured response, read the whole roundup for Bobby Julich's reaction to the Floyd Landis situation.

Lance believes Landis

In some brief comments at his fundraiser yesterday, Lance Armstrong came out in support of Floyd Landis. In some direct quotes from Lance, whose opinion should have more weight than some paranoid neuropath, the seven time winner of the Tour de France offers some advice:

In this day and age, you’re not going to get a fair shake in the media. And the more you get out there and talk about it, I have to talk about it. The best is just to let the process play out and get out of the media. ... I would have encouraged him just to lay low. It’s obviously not a good situation for cycling. Everybody would admit that. Floyd would admit that. It’s certainly not a good situation for American cycling. But I am a fan and supporter of Floyd Landis. I believe in him.

I believe in him too. Too many things point away from intentional doping. One of the things that have come out is that Floyd's testosterone levels were on similar levels as the previous tests from the tour. It was the epitestosterone that was low which caused the positive hit on the T/E ratio test. In my scans on the literature, people are scratching their heads on how to explain an exogenous drop in epistestosterone. It's not just forgetting to take the epitestosterone to keep the T/E ratio artificially even, because there is a threshold of epistestosterone levels above which indicates using it as a masking agent. The problem is still the isotope test, which many people have always felt was circumspect because of its reliance on a statistical threshold, which any individual test could indicate semi-synthetic testosterone. Where it doesn't add up is the baseline T level matches this test, which points away from added synthetic T. All signs indicate inconclusive, not guilty, so Landis will probably be cleared on these technicalities.

Maurice Garin - First Disqualified Tour Winner

People wring their hands today that Floyd Landis would be the first Tour winner to be stripped of the yellow jersey, but there's a qualifier to that statement: first to be stripped for doping. We have to go back to 1904 to find the only winner, so far, to be disqualified for cheating. In Maurice Garin's case, riding trains from town to town. Here's a quote from the Cycling News piece which bears special light, because he was disqualified for "probably" cheating:

Garin was disqualified from the 1904 Tour, probably for catching a train when he should have been cycling. Why 'probably'? Because the French federation had grown alarmed at the uproar, enthusiasm and even anger that the Tour had created. This was the race, after all, in which riders were knocked off their bikes and even beaten up. Officials weren't going to do anything to make things worse and that included not publishing the findings of their inquiry. Just like what may happen to Floyd Landis in 2006, he was disqualified after the Tour was over.

Maybe the officials intended to say much later about what had happened but in time the filing cabinet full of papers disappeared. The original French federation vanished with the First World War and so, incidentally, did all the Tour's own records. They were placed in a van to be sent south to escape the invading Germans and were never seen again.

Tour de France history is very "rich" with stories like this. The article goes on to tell how the riders had different sports drinks than they do these days, usually carrying bottles of wine because they couldn't trust the water purity at the places they had to stop, and then getting drunk on the road to deal with the pain. They even had to steal bottles of alcohol from bars to restock. Oh, what rascals! Read the whole the thing.

A Clone Apart - Episode 1

It's been less than a week, but those Battlefront II guys just released the first episode for consumption. I must say, the lead guy sounds like one of the voice actors from Red vs Blue. Hmm, who would have thought there'd be a talent pool for faceless helmet voices? Enough babble, on with the helmety goodness:

 

"At least he doesn't have that ridiculous accent."

 

Update: Some corrections from a comment (someone from Pandemic Studios was online at the same time as the commenter, so I'm not going to connect any dots, but this guy might know a thing or two about what he's talking about). Illusive Entertainment used a modded version of Battlefront II to "shoot" their fanfilm. Also, the helmet filters make voices sound almost the same, so I'm assured that the voice talentpool of Red vs. Blue and A Clone Apart did not mix.

Update Again: After YouTube deleted all the Clone films, the series found itself a new home, complete with downloads. I've been able to replace the video, but these are the whole episodes, unconstrained by YouTube's 10 minute limit. I will embed the other 2 episodes in the old "part one" posts, but only provide links back to here from the broken YouTube installments. Danson Delta-40, I've missed you buddy!

Paul Sherwen Interview

Over at PezCycling News, they have a great interview with Paul Sherwen on the Floyd Landis situation and the doping scandals in general.  Paul has a good idea on reforming the doping culture in cycling, which he attributes to Jens Voigt:

A person for whom I have great respect is the riders representative, Jens Voigt (CSC) and his attitude is that there should be more and more tests. Not just to catch wrong-doers, but to establish patterns of what a rider’s normal values are. Along the lines of the French tests; so that if something is different or has been tampered-with then there are a whole series of reference points to compare with.

This makes so much sense, I doubt that it would ever be implemented.  The pro cyclists already have many strictures on their schedules to accomodate the random testing, so adding these baseline tests might not be that much more of an imposition.  What lends weight to the proposal is that it is the riders representative, the equivalent of a player's union rep, advocating the change.  Read the whole interview for Paul is as entertaining and wise as ever.

Thanks to Cyclocosm for the link.

Everything Causes Global Warming

Instead of Global Warming causing every disaster, now we have reports that environmental disasters cause Global Warming. Sounds reasonable, right? If we burn whole swathes of rain forests, we no longer have the biomass to scrub carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Did you know that Britain has "rain forests" and that they are being threatened by, wait for it, Grouse Hunting. According to an "ecology specialist" burning moorland vegetation to increase meadows of heather, which is the prime habitat for grouse, threatens the release of carbon dioxide from the peat bogs underneath due to decomposition and erosion. The specialist views the peat bogs as Britain's rain forest because of the tons of carbon storage. After we calm down from all the inflammatory language of burning down rain forests, we get one quote from the Moorland Association:

The Moorland Association, which was set up in 1987 to halt the loss of heather moorlands in Britain, has defended controlled burning by moorland keepers as necessary to get rid of over-mature heather.

"The fires are planned to move steadily with the wind, burning old growth while doing little more than scorching the ground below," it said, saying keepers were acutely aware of soil and weather conditions.

According to the ecologist's bio, he has no credentials in climate science, but he is active in conservation and preservation projects. Hmm... using global warmongering to scare people into leaving Gaia alone? Why, I've never seen that tactic before, how novel.

Landis Legal Matters

It's all up to the lawyers now, and that's even true for those that are not involved in the Landis doping scandal. The Belgian Team Director for Quick Step wants to sue Floyd Landis "for what he is now doing to cycling." Patrick Lefevere continues, showing his obvious disdain of Americans, "Why not? Why not take the American approach of dealing with things and apply it here?" And offers his personal reaction to Landis: "I feel like throwing up when I hear him." Well, the daggers are really out now.

Over at VeloNews, Robert Mionske lays out the legal rules the labs, the ADA's and the Cycling Unions are supposed to follow when a positive result shows up on the A sample, and how none of them were followed in Landis' case. There's so much good stuff there, you have to read the whole thing, but here are some choice bits dealing with the head of UCI and that french lab we love so much:

Under UCI Rules, "public disclosure shall be made by the Anti-Doping Commission or the National Federation" after the B Sample tests positive. [...] Okay, that's what's supposed to happen. Now here's what actually happened: The UCI announced that an unidentified rider tested positive in the A Sample, before the B Sample had been tested. [...] [T]he announcement [...] was made in clear violation of the requirement to announce after the B Sample had been tested. Additionally, the UCI announced that Landis' A Sample tested positive for an exogenous source, again before the required B Sample test. Although the UCI Rules permit public statements and identifications statements deemed "appropriate under the circumstances," the anonymous nature of the statements raises questions about why the statements were deemed "appropriate under the circumstances."

Here's another interesting thing: In commenting on the violation of the Public Disclosure Rules, UCI President Pat McQuaid observed that "We decided to make an announcement right away because we have been criticized in the past for not doing so-particularly in the case of an important rider." Well, besides implying that he was involved in the decision to violate the UCI Rules (remember, under the Rules it's the Anti-Doping Commission that is supposed to make the disclosure), that's interesting for another reason: "Past criticism" of the UCI for following its own Rules led to an official decision to violate the Rules, which in turn violated Landis' right to due process.

Furthermore, McQuaid offered a secondary rationale for violating the Rules: "Also, we know that the French laboratory has a close connection with L'Equipe, and we did not want this news to come through the press, because we are sure they would have leaked it." That comment raises another set of violations of the UCI Anti-Doping Rules. Under UCI Rules, samples are supposed to be anonymous-the laboratory is not supposed to know which sample belongs to which rider. If the lab in question had any information that would allow it to identify the samples, that would be a clear violation of UCI Rules, and would present Landis with a golden defense opportunity. Additionally, as McQuaid observed, the French lab has a history of leaking sample results to L'Equipe; these leaks are in violation of the UCI Anti-Doping Rules and the WADA Laboratory Code of Ethics. From the standpoint of due process, one would ask why the UCI violated its own rules, given the history of this lab, rather than requesting that WADA sanction the lab for past violations of the Anti-Doping Rules, as required under the WADA International Standard for Laboratories. [Emphasis Added]

With all the due process violations against Floyd, it is very easy to see the legal proceedings in the United States get dismissed, which I wrote about earlier here. I'm actually looking forward to the testimony in open court, because the corrupt practices of the UCI, the french labs, and WADA will be brought to light.

Just A Quick Thought on Cynthia McKinney

I've always felt that McKinney was an embarrassment to the Georgia delegation of House Representatives. From her kooky speeches on the House floor, her adherence to 9/11 conspiracies, her poor record of attendance for key votes, her use of Black Panther members for "security," and her reflex to play the race card in her assault on a Capitol Police Officer, she came across as someone not just undeserving of her seat, but grossly underqualified. With her defeat to a locally active politician, it looks like the "grownups" will be coming back to DC to represent her district. But I'm not the only one who viewed her antics with dismay, as we found out at the polls on Tuesday, and with the short interviews given that night:

Vanessa Milton voted for McKinney, and said the congresswoman had a relatively good track record before the Capitol Police incident. But the 48-year-old said she felt McKinney's personality had taken over.

"As an African-American, I am very committed to our people and being strong, but there comes a time when some people overdo it," Milton said. "I want her to be a strong black woman, but I don't want her to be a buffoon."

Natasha Brown, a 25-year-old law student, voted for Johnson.

"She's a pariah," she said of McKinney. "I'd do anything to vote her out."

One that had voted for her worried that she was a buffoon, while one that voted against her called a pariah. I agree with both of them.

Mac vs PC: Halo Style!

What do you get when you mix those Mac vs PC commercials with the chiefs from Halo? Just take a look! I love that the Mac gets it.

Fewer Hurricanes, Warming? Eh... Not So Much.

The National Hurricane Center has downgraded their prediction from earlier this year, expecting fewer hurricanes than last year, lowering their expected tropical storm count by 10 percent. Last week, hurricane researchers in Colorado released their findings that Atlantic Ocean waters were not as warm this year as previously predicted. The National Hurricane Center, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agencies released their new predictions based on:

[W]etter than predicted conditions over the Pacific Ocean, which forced slightly stronger upper-level winds over the Caribbean [...]. Those winds can rip apart storms and stop them from becoming hurricanes. Water temperatures in the Atlantic also are not as high as first expected, forecasters said. [Emphasis added]

Global Warming is supposed to warm the ocean temperatures more than the orthodox view of a 20-40 year temperature cycle driving storm creation. Again, we see the bias in the main stream media. Because the facts do not fit the agenda, confirmation bias does not allow Global Warming to be mentioned in this story. But if there had been any mention of temperature increase, you can be assured that Global Warmongering would have occurred.

Don't Hire Dr. Deborah Frisch

For those who don't follow the stories about the blogosphere itself, it is still very similar to the old bulletin boards on usenet, with flamewars erupting among the commenters on forum threads, comment sections on blog posts, and feuds simmering between bloggers. The attacks have grown in intensity and variability, from simply getting called names, to cyberstalking, to denial of service attacks. All of these elements came together over the span of a few days on the comment section of Jeff Goldstein's blog Protein Wisdom. A left-leaning troll began posting inflammatory comments to garner negative responses and, in her own admission, to get banned. However, Protein Wisdom has a pretty raunchy, at times, comment section and it is all but impossible to get banned. In fact, the crazier the comments, the more entertainment is had by the group of regular commenters. Unfortunately for the troll, who seems to have very poor communication and relational skills, she kept escalating her language until she threatened to sexually assault and kill the blogger's 2 year old son.

As most people are beginning to realize, there really is no anonymity or privacy online. The troll had to resign from her adjunct lecturer position and is now facing legal ramifications in the form of a restraining order. The troll has opportunistically tried to extort money from the blogger and is trying to parlay the notoriety into some kind of media role. In order to starve the attention and to make sure future employers of this Decision Science Ph.D. are fully aware of the damaged goods they are inviting into their workplaces, the Don't Hire Dr. Deborah Frisch blog was created to drive her page views down, so that she will stop getting the attention she desperately covets. Instead of going to the troll's blog to watch the trainwreck, go to the other blog to get the 5 o'clock news version of events.

Updates: As with any community, culture breaks out. For online communities, new vocabulary, inside jokes, nicknames, and personalities emerge. For a quick primer to get you started and posting funny comments over at DHD, take a look at the list below. The list is not yet complete: missing is the description of the debcon alert levels. Suggestions for the language and descriptions of the five levels, along with examples, are welcome. Any suggestions, corrections, and additions for anything else are also very welcome.

Updates II: The debcon alert levels have been added, but I need some help with examples. I will tweak the other entries when it feels like the "commenting period" has run its course.

Updates, More Updates: Added a few examples with translations of Frisch phrases. Added the entry for DHD Frisch nicknames: developing, please add in your favorites if you don't see it here.

And more updates: The DHD community has changed its name and its website to The Gerbil Nation at Teh Squeaky Wheel, or TSW, for short. The community, and its breadth of interests, has grown and wishes to continue its association beyond Frisch-related matters. However, as long as Ms. Frisch makes herself an issue, she is still a major topic of discussion at "teh wheel."

Teh Lexicon©

• teh crazy® (also teh cray zee®, debonics) - a combination of ebonics, misspelled words, and profanity which mark Frisch's posts and responses to those she disagrees with, which is always taken personally. Attributed to Ace of Ace of Spades who posted her comments, misspellings and all, to be held up to ridicule. teh is the mispelling of "the" and is used to reference anything Frisch related. Examples:
  • "i have a phuquing pee aitch dee, got noo rons?" trans. - I have a fucking Ph.D. Got neurons?
  • "deb ee don play dat, ephu lawbaw!" trans. - Debbie does not play that, F you, lawyer boy.
• teh cycle® - the weekly buildup and occurrence of teh crazy®. It has been suggested that Frisch begins drinking as the weekend starts, which leads to her more memorable posts, usually beginning Thursday night.
• teh WTF Vodka™ - Frisch's alleged drink of choice when she begins teh cycle®. The abbreviation stands for "What the Fuck?"
• teh whatt® - the physical material produced from "you-know-whatting." For Frisch, it was a reference to crying, which was immediately turned into something scatalogical in her own comment board. Now used as a reference to the physical aftermath of any teh crazy® post.
• vodka thirty - the approximate time teh crazy® begins, coinciding with Frisch's first incoherent rant of the weekend. Adapted from beer thirty or gin o'clock, the time of day socially accepted to begin drinking. Usage: "It's always vodka thirty somewhere!"
• sock puppeting - the use of several different, usually funny and relevant, names when leaving comments. Adapted from IP Addresses, also known as sockets, which can be traced to show that the different names are being used by the same computer. For the DHD community, several members have connected sock puppeting to the Muppet Show because of Frisch's posted pictures of stuffed animals. To choose your favorite muppet, visit this site to screen capture the muppet's image. JPG Directory is here.
• poetry slams - Frisch posts poetry regularly. Her poetry is usually straight posts of Robert Service, her adaptations to them, and rants with simple rhyme schemes with no attention to meter. The DHD community has taken this to heart by beating her at her own game, with brilliant adaptations to "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," "The Jabberwocky," and "Casey At The Plate." Song lyric adaptations are quite common and encouraged.
• Trademark and Registered Trademark symbols - the ® and ™ are used on the main three inside jokes of the DHD community. They can also be used as an extra qualifier for any word used after "teh". Use &#174 (®) for the registered trademark symbol and &#153 (™) for the unregistered trademark symbol.
• VBS'er - A DHD community member. Short for vacation bible school. Frisch lurks the DHD comment board and found a mention of a member sending kids to vacation bible school, or VBS. In a post, she called the DHD community "the lynch mob from the Vacation Bible School," which was then shortened to VBS'er in the comments. Also a reference to a BS'er, one who bullshits.
• Army of Gerbils - the DHD community, adapted from a comment from a defender of Ms. Frisch on her blog. With gerbil size keyboards tapping certain function keys, the army of gerbils is able to influence Frisch's behavior. A reference to Glenn Reynolds' book, An Army of Davids.
• Gerbil Nation - the name of the DHD community once it moved to Teh Squeaky Wheel, or TSW.
• Debmentia - 1. the addiction to any and all things related to teh crazy® 2. the description of Frisch's logic used in her political ramblings, very closely related to Bush Derangement Syndrome.
• Frischwreck - pun adapted from trainwreck, the set of circumstances surrounding Frisch's deteriorating personal and professional life.
• Teh-rapy - adapted from therapy in the usual DHD style, the act of commenting on DHD or posting comments that have been rejected by Frisch on her blog.
• Deborrhea - Frisch's rants using teh crazy®.
• Debosphere - the small subset of the blogosphere interested and related to the doings, writings, and commentary on Frisch.
• Tim's Conjecture - the mathematical description of the probability teh crazy® will begin is inversely proportional to Frisch's site's hit count (H), multiplied by the Frisch factor. The Frisch factor (currently) is defined to be the time (t) between teh crazy® outbursts multiplied by her egocentricity (e). Prob(teh crazy®)=t*e/H.
• Schadenfrisch - the act of feeling joy over Ms. Frisch's pathetic circumstances.
• Frischetious - Sounding sincere in the initial script of a comment to Ms. Frisch while actually setting up a veiled pun.
• Bar Frischvah (Bat Frischvah for women) - The celebration of the first visit by Ms. Frisch to one's blog, where she leaves a comment which includes her usual allegations of pedophilia and stories which can be classified as kiddie porn or gay porn.
• Frischening - from to frischen, the event of Ms. Frisch bestowing a new nickname on a member of the Gerbil Nation, based on some adaptation of his or her online handle.
• Jeff Goldstein's House - moniker for Ms. Frisch's 5 acre ranch in Eugene, Oregon. Alluding to the impending ownership of said property after all settlements and legal fees have been paid in the (as yet) pending legal proceedings.
• Homeland Security Deb Frisch Alert Levels - (also DebCon Levels as a reference to the NORAD Defcon levels 1 through 5)
  • Green - Sober: All is good. She's in a coma
  • Blue - Buzzed: She's awake, but suffering from vodka induced brain fog.
  • Yellow - Hammered: Random poo flinging. No clear target.
  • Orange - Batfrisch: Target identified, but reason not clear. Name calling and goofy spelling escalated.
  • Red - Yeeargh!: Absolutely batfrisch crayzee. Hide the children. Contact local law enforcement.
  (credit to illinoisrepublican)
• Debinitions - The meanings of words of words or phrases Ms. Frisch uses in her rants.
  1. pedophile - 1. Someone who sees the humor in having their likeness Photoshopped onto a box of children's cereal, which has been obscenely renamed, by a political opponent. 2. Someone who blogs from home, using "grown-up" words. 3. Any male with a young child I disagree with.
  2. humor - Count with out the O. See pedophile 1. Cuz it's a pun. Get it? *tap tap* is this thing on?
  3. stalking - 1. what I'm accused of doing, but didn't. 2. What others do to me by quoting me to my boss.
  4. lie - What other people say, using "facts" and "logic" to confuse the truth, which is whatever I say it is.
  5. Freedom of Speech - saying whatever it takes for me to get banned, so that I can claim victimhood for having my free speech rights violated. Oh, and my previous post doesn't exist. And you're stalking me for leaving it up. i never said it.
  6. ethics - What you violate when I don't like what you do.
  7. legality - whatever I think is fair for me.
  8. idiot - Everyone but me. I am the smartest person leaving comments.
  9. stupid - What I call everyone when they stump me with logic, reason or big words that I don't understand and can't pronounce. This is my catch-all term when I am outgunned in a battle of wits.
  10. google - A mythical website that I am constantly told to use, yet I can not find a link to it anywhere. I firmly believe that the little pissants tell me to use this while tinkling on my ankle to throw me off since I am way more smart than they are and they fear my big brain.
  11. Comedy - My rants that other people would laugh at if they weren't so stupid.
  12. popular culture - What?
  13. peeps - my masses
  14. actionable - Anything you say about me that I don't like is something I can sue about, even if what you say is true.
  15. let's agree to disagree - even though my position is completely ridiculous and yours is based on objective reality, but I don't want to admit that I'm wrong, so I'll just concede the point without admitting I'm wrong.
  16. real democracy - a form of government where comments in the blogosphere would be edited, and sick, murderous, on the way to nazi land comments would be deleted and the perpetrators reprimanded, of course, I would be the one to the do the editing and deleting.
  17. academentia - Any university whose members fail to recognize my genius and deny me tenure.
  18. creeps - any user who I think is a blog troll simply because they disagree with me.
  19. pissant - anyone who doesn't agree with me.
  20. repugnant - what someone is who won't shut up when I tell them to.
  21. cyberterrorist - Anyone who uses publicly available information from the Internet to hold me accountable for my actions.
  22. pretend - to act on facts grounded in reality that I want to ignore.
  23. compensation - Giving me money you made on your website when you quoted me, or else I'll write kiddie porn starring your children. That is not extortion! How dare you say that! That's actionable!
  24. positive ID - A nun telling me that my stalking victim doesn’t work at her church. Well! She can’t fool me! I R teh smrtest!
• List (partial) of DHD nicknames for Ms. Frisch - cray zee deb ee; Her Frischiness; DebGollum; Frischerbat; posterthing®; teh frisch; la Frisch; la Frischie; teh fizzle; teh cray zee lay dee; Nightmare on Deb Street; Little Debbie Snack Cake; Little Debbie Sticky Bun; CCFCCP (Coocoo-For-Cocoapuffs); DEB-bile; DEB-Vile; Ms. Debbie Football Fan;(developing)

Landis on Leno

At least Floyd can get a good line over Bill Maher:

At one point during the exchanges between Leno and Landis, Maher chimed in, “It seems like we’re having a giant debate about a sport no one gives a ... about. Does anyone ever watch people bicycle racing, except for the last 10 seconds?”

Landis spoke up, “He has a hard time getting guests here. Leave the guy alone.”

The crowd laughed and applauded.

Bill Maher interjecting that comment illustrates a good point about most of the sports media coverage of this whole scandal: nobody understands how tough endurance athletes are, what they have to go through, or even how they cheat. Not one national sports columnist has brought up the fact that a one time use of synthetic testosterone before a race would do an athlete no good. The sports pundits are just used to baseball and football where steroids is the dope of choice, but they display total ignorance when it comes to triathletes, long distance runners, and cyclists and how the technology and methods have gone way beyond "the cream" and "the clear." This is probably why there has been no consensus defense of Landis' innocence in American sports coverage. As for Landis, no new excuses, but he is now publicly grumbling about the integrity of the french testers: "And I’m beginning to wonder about this myself after the way the situation’s been handled, is that after the (sample) leaves my hands ... after I give them the sample, I don’t know where it goes." Floyd should ask Lance how he feels about that French lab and how well it handles anonymous urine and blood samples.

 

Updates: Patrick O'Grady over at Velonews, even though he tested positive, denies any allegation of ingesting French white wine. Maybe that's French whine.

Also, Pat McQuaid, the UCI chief, is planning a series of meetings to overhaul cycling and get the doping and drug culture out of it. Making the races and the schedules easier will not discourage doping. His idea of sanctioning the team directors too so that they have an incentive to keep their racers clean might be going in the right direction.

And Jens Voigt officially won the the Tour of Germany, after gaining time on Levi Leipheimer in the Stage 7 time trial. Levi really needs to work on those time trials. Honestly, losing 1:14 to the Boeing? Come on, ask Gerolsteiner for some extra time in a wind tunnel.

I've Heard of Trappist Ale, But...

Have you heard of Trappist wine? I have, because my brother is a brother at the Abbey of New Clairvaux. The monks there recently started their own vineyard and began bottling operations last year. Finally, they got their website set up. The Trappists are a Norman offshoot of the Cistercian interpretation of the rule of St. Benedict,. In keeping with that tradition and, serendipitously, similar climate of the original Abbey of Clairvaux in Ovila, Spain, all the grapes are of Spanish stock. I highly recommend the petite sirah. If you go to their info page, my brother is the one on the left. For the informal tour of the winery, go to my earlier post here. The abbey has some pretty rich history for only being 50 years old, but that's because of the structures found on Leland Stanford's old ranch. For more information on the Trappist Order, visit the Abbey's site, and pick up any book by Thomas Merton.

Australia's Mini-Kyoto Protocol Debate Cools

When John Howard, Australia's Prime Minister, decided not to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol, mass hysteria among the Greens and other enviro-centrics deploring the death sentence on Mother Earth erupted.  Unlike the United States, the Australians tried to cobble together their own carbon credit trading scheme among their states.  But with all ponzi schemes, the ones who buy in later, usually the poor, get hurt.  And this is exactly what the states developing the plan found out.  Here's the most cogent analysis in the piece:

John Howard said the state scheme was "doomed to fail" because it would suffer the same fate as the wildly fluctuating European system.

Carbon emission trading has always been a scheme to slow down economic growth by making energy production and manufacturing more expensive.  If any government wants to lower carbon dioxide emissions, the incentive has to be a carrot, not a stick.  If there were other alternative fuels that produced as much energy as cheaply as fossil-fuels, we would have switched.  Oh, wait a minute, there is, but we can't use it because we're scared of it: nuclear.  The Greens' culture is so rabidly against it because nuclear power is tied to the idea of the military industrial complex.  The energy debate will go nowhere until this alternative fuel is back on the table.

The added benefit of encouraging nuclear power is private research and development.  Look at the auto industry now, trying to fill a demand for fuel efficiency with hybrid engines.  Still using fossil-fuels though, because we are still using fossil-fuels.  The vast majority of power production in any industrial nation, with the exception of France, comes from burning oil and coal.  Hydro-electric power is in trouble because we can't build any more dams because we need to "preserve" the environment, and water grows more scarce because of unchecked housing development.  But if nuclear power were more readily available, private research would have more incentive for developing fusion cell technology, where its fuel would be sea water.  I think we have a lot of that, don't we?

The environmental movement suffers from being too philosophically tied to social welfare movements.  Socialists fail to take into account that most people are hardworking because they are motivated by acumulating more.  We are not totally motivated by some "greater good."  When most of the world is still motivated by hunger instead of world peace, even Christian Socialism cannot take root.  Idealism is good, but we still have to be grounded in reality.  Make something cheaper and better, and people will buy it.  Trying to scare people into doing something when that scary thing is non-tangible or even unproved, will not get you anywhere.

But, Uh, Global Warming... Heat Wave... Huh?

Just look at the obvious bias in this lede: "Folks who sweated through last month’s blistering heat wave may be surprised to know it was only the second hottest July on record for the United States."  The original two highest records were in 1936 and 1934.  The July of 2006 just slotted in between those two records.  Here's the rational explanation:

In July, 51 percent of the United States, mostly in the Plains states and Southeast, was in moderate-to-extreme drought. The most extensive drought occurred in July 1934 when 80 percent of the country was affected.

The drought of the mid-1930's in the United States was nick-named the Dust Bowl, hit Oklahoma particularly hard, started the Okie movement west, and was bleakly captured by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath.

It's taken as such a given that Global Warming is making every year noticeably hotter, but it just doesn't work that way.  Some months and some years will be warmer than others, but some will be cooler.  It just takes a much longer view and more data collection to find a trend.  But, in a story that would normally just be about a record almost being broken, the Global Warming religion has to be inserted.  Gaia's in trouble, see, see?  We have to do something!

Why Am I Not Surprised About Doughnuts

A company vehicle was reported stolen in Richland, Washington, and minutes later, the cops were all over it, even making sure its cargo was intact.  What was so special about this truck to warrant such fast-acting police work?  It was a doughnut truck.  Sure, make all the stereotypical comments you want, but the police say it was just easy to spot.  Right... I've got the coffee ready, you got any buttermilk old-fashions in there?

Floyd Launches His Media Attack

In an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today Show (click on the video link to the right), with his wife sitting beside him, Floyd reconfirmed his innocence, explained why it seemed that he and his lawyers came up with a new excuse every other day, and outlined his plan of attack on the positive results.  First, his plan of attack centers on the ratios involved in the T/E test.  According to WADA regulations, this test is only supposed to be a preliminary test to point toward banned substances.  Synthetic testosterone's presence (which is not even synthetic, it has to be collected from living organisms, such as plants) can account for a rise in the T/E ratio, but human growth hormone inhibits epitestosterone, which also makes the ratio higher.  As I've written here, the Swiss ADA published a study which calls into question the validity of the test because individual variation, even day to day, makes the test unusable with the arbitrary 4:1 ratio.  The second stage of Floyd's defense is on the carbon ratio isotope test.  I had speculated earlier that the weakness in the isotope test is that it is based on  the ratio of human 12C carbon on the testosterone molecule to its isotope of 13C carbon.  Testosterone collected from plants (semi-synthetic) has a statistically lower ratio of 13C to 12C, but again, individual body chemistries may differ.  In the abstract of the research paper I linked to earlier, they claim that metabolized semi-synthetic testosterone had only a "statistically similar" 13C/12C ratio.  When scientists say there is a statistical difference between samples, they mean it's so damn close to being the same, that they had to test different samples hundreds, if not thousands, of times to find a difference.  Any individual test of the endogenous testosterone could be exactly the same as the semi-synthetic.

The final stage of the legal attack will be going after the UCI and WADA for not following their rules and protocols for notification of the athlete.  It certainly appears as if this is easy to prove.  In defense of the media, there was intense scrutiny around the Tour winner, and any absence from the one-day races immediately following would bring questions.  The media just added the pieces together: Floyd cancels appearances, there's a leak that tour rider tested positive, who could it be?  The problem for the doping agency is that there should not have been that second part, the leak.  The athlete should have been notified first, brought it to the attention of his team, and get suspended during the investigation.  Here's where the ADA messed up: they get a hit on the T/E ratio, which is not a sanctionable offense, because that test is only to point to the presence of exogenous steroids.  That was leaked before they did the isotope test.  It's the isotope test that is actionable, because it confirms the illegal substance.  The media found out about the isotope test a couple of days after Floyd's press conference on Friday, July 28th, again, before Landis did.  Floyd should have been suspended after the A sample results showed synthetic testosterone.

I am so sick of the french testing labs, Dick Pound of WADA, and Greg Lemond who thinks everybody started doping after he quit.  Bitter old man.  That neuropathy must be starting to affect his brain.  One thing I hope that comes out of all of this, is that the lid over the doping in cycling gets ripped off and the junk science used in the doping controls gets exposed so that we can concentrate on good, clean riding.

These Aren't the Clones You're Looking For

Look, I have to explain, I do not spend hours on YouTube looking for funny dialog coming out of faceless helmets.  The searches just pop up right there on my screen as I look for something else.  My inner geek is not an outer geek!  Well, now that's out of the way, looky looky!  In the tradition of Red vs Blue, a new group of guys has begun "filming" their new project, using the Star Wars Battlefront II game engine.  Below is their trailer:

 

"Running - running - running - running!"

 

The studio is in the middle of sound editing, and claim they are only a week away from releasing the first episode.  Check back with me in a week, and we'll see what's what.

Latest on Landis: International Agencies Have 'Agenda'

Landis has just made his first public comments since his press conference July 28th, saying that he believes, according to the AP, that "there's a conspiracy against him by cycling's governing body and that he can't properly defend himself against charges he used performance enhancing drugs during his Tour de France win."  The UCI and WADA, during this whole affair, have not followed their regulations, where the results of the doping tests have been leaked to the press before Landis had been notified.  According to Floyd, he only saw the actual A sample results "a day and a half ago" and he found out about the B sample "from reading it in the media."  According to Landis:

I've been catching a lot of grief in the press: 'Floyd has a new excuse, a new reason for what happened.' This is a situation where I'm forced to defend myself in the media. It would never have happened if UCI and WADA had followed their own rules.  There's some kind of agenda there. I just don't know what it is.

Landis also defended his teammates, saying that there was "zero chance" that someone from Phonak gave him synthetic testosterone by chance or accident.

Finally, Floyd is addressing the problems of this whole story, that the lab, the UCI, and WADA have been breaking all of their rules regarding notification of the athlete.  There might be chance that Floyd's sanctions get tossed away on technicalities like with Tyler Hamilton's hermatocrit levels during the Olympics: no B sample testing, no doping.  Team Landis had known for over a year that he would need the hip replacement surgery, even Dave Zabriskie kept it a secret, so it seems they knew how to handle the media.  What I couldn't understand was why Floyd's inner circle could hold a press conference on his necrotic hip before the story was leaked to the press, but he couldn't get a handle on the test results.  Now we're beginning to understand why.  The rest of the world heard the story, and how it was spun, even before Landis did.  As I've written before, "if we can't trust the cyclists, or even the doping controls, these circumstances just make all of endurance sports pointless."

French Media Reaction and Regurgitation

The AP is reporting that the French media appears indifferent to Landis' doping scandal.  L'Equipe's editorial "steered clear of directly targeting Landis, saying only that 'cheating comes at a high price.'"  The AP seems confused as to why the French aren't turning the Tour's darkest moment into a circus.  The last time a tour winner was disqualified for cheating was in 1904 when the top 4 finishers were caught cutting corners.  No winners have ever been stripped for doping.  The answer for the "muted" response is that, at least in their eyes, Landis got caught.  The intense scrutiny on Lance Armstrong over the last seven years was because they were trying so hard to prove that he was doping.  Conspiracy theories, bullied silence, and threats of legal action on Armstrong's side were all woven together to hint, imply, and insinuate that Armstrong had to be doping to stay at the top for so long.  Now, they have a new winner, another American, and the assumption for doping is ever present.  But Landis was not as rich, careful, and cautious as Armstrong was, and did not even consider that he needed to maintain his guard.  So, Landis was caught, either because he was not careful enough in dosing his doping regimen, or because he was not careful enough in trusting the french lab to handle his tests properly and securely.  The game is over for l'Americain, time to turn their attention to someone else they can tear down.

More Helmety Goodness

After watching stormtroopers kick the bejabbers out of the residents of Tatooine, I wondered what their big boss was doing.  Unfortunately, I could only locate the whereabouts of Darth's long lost brother Chad Vader.  If you check out episode 2, you'll find out he fell off his bicycle into a volcano, which is why he as to wear that suit.

 

 

Watch all the episodes over on YouTube. Thanks to Clicked.  For earlier fun with helmets go here and here.

Germany Cycling Roundup

Geez, how about some good news?  Levi Leipheimer keeps rolling on at the Tour of Germany, putting in a major effort to defend his title from last year.  Jens "Boeing" Voigt still keeps his overall lead after 5 stages, but only by a few seconds.  Looks like Discovery Channel made a good decision on signing Levi for next year.

The Legal Has Landis

45 minutes after the B sample results came out, Phonak dismissed its captain for “violating the teams internal Code of Ethics.”  Way to show some loyalty there.  They stood by Tyler Hamilton even though he tested positive for blood doping at the Olympics, got out of it because the lab froze the blood, and then he tested positive again at the Vuelta.  Landis is still the de facto winner of the Tour de France because only the UCI can sanction the pro cyclist, and only after USA Cycling completes its investigation and requests the sanction.  The Tour directors consider runner-up Oscar Pereiro the winner, as does Oscar himself.

Landis' American lawyer, Howard Jacobs, outlined his plan to attack the science behind the carbon isotope test and also the leaking done by the UCI when the results of the A sample came to light.  Jacobs was also the lawyer for Tyler Hamilton and Tim Montgomery, who both unsuccessfully fought their doping sanctions.  Montgomery never tested positive for any doping, but was caught up in the BALCO scandal.

I'm not sure where they're going to go against the isotope test.  Synthetic testosterone, which is manufactured from a plant, has a statistically higher ratio of 13C to 12C carbon than in naturally occurring testosterone.  Team Landis has always claimed that the results of the testing are from Floyd's individual body chemistry.  Where the "wiggle" room may be found is that, although the 13C/12C ratio in the synthetic testosterone lies outside a standard deviation of the endogenous isotope ratio, the metabolized forms of the synthetics (i.e. found in urine samples) are only "statistically similar."  If there is an overlap in the deviations, then the so-called fool-proof method doesn't work.  My gut may be filled with coffee and jumping all over the place, but it's also saying this is what the Landis defense is going to claim.

The legal proceedings, according to Jacobs, will take between four and six months.  It's pretty convenient that Landis' schedule has no more racing in it except for the hip replacement.  He lost a lot of appearance money in the little races the week after the tour, and even if he clears his name, the hip replacement makes him an athlete a team will have to gamble on.