Olympics and a National Lack of Character

Marion Jones on steroids...

The Olympics has come to an end.  Its interesting to compare it to the world "at large" as well as to think about what it means to us here in the US.

Over the last few weeks I read about how there was a team of 500 or so people in London to work on various drug tests for the events.

Five hundred.

The job: take urine and other samples from the athletes and check for "banned substances."

In the higher-end, sponsor-driven activities like track that means checking for steroids, EPO, and other performance enhancers.

According to the WSJ Belarussian shot putter Nadzeya Ostapchuk was the first athlete stripped of a medal at the London games.

However, the Olympic committee still spends a lot of time going back over previous situations, like the 2004 games and cycling medalist Tyler Hamilton.  Hamilton was stripped of his medal for doping.

Hamilton was a teammate of Lance Armstrong on various US teams.

There was also Marion Jones who was stripped of numerous medals in 2007 after her doping became apparent in the BALCO scandal.

(Note that Jones wants everyone to believe that this was all a mistake, but follow the image link above and you will see that Jones was associated for many years with numerous folks involved in doping: boyfriends, the father of her child, and so on.)

Part of this is that a key element of the various "cheating" strategies involves developing doping agents and techniques that circumvent all known tests.  The IOC has an eight year window to strip athletes of medals after a competition.

This window seems to be barely enough time for the IOC to figure out what was being done and come up with tests to find it.  Biological samples are kept for long periods of times after IOC and other events, e.g., Tour de France, so that new tests can be applied to old samples.

What's interesting is how pervasive this is. 

Take Lance Armstrong.

Numerous teammates are found to be doping (and not just using performance enhancing drugs but also simple blood transfusions): Hamilton, Landis, and others.

Next, about a month ago ABC news reported "According to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Dr. Luis Garcia del Moral, a cycling team doctor; Dr. Michele Ferrari, a cycling team consulting doctor; and Jose "Pepe" Martí Martí, a cycling team trainer, have all received lifetime bans..."

Three folks involved in Armstrong's cycling team banned for life.

But there's another aspect to this I find interesting.

The now we find the failing USPS spent some $31 million USD to underwrite the US Postal Cycling team in Armstrong's heyday: 2001 through 2004.

Eight years later the USPS is has now missed some $5 billion USD in pension payments for August and plans on missing another $6 billion USD in pension payments this September (see this).

So what was the USPS thinking with regard to Armstrong?

Here we are some eight years later and Armstrong is now in the "end game" of dodging USADA doping investigations and the USPS is dodging bankruptcy (early on the now banned Luis Garcia del Moral denied Armstrong was doping).

Within a few years the USPS, if no intervention occurs, will be losing some $20 billion per year.

How is this "good sportsmanship?"  Many of your team mates as well as many of your "medical team" admit to doping and you stonewall investigations?

You "invest" in Mr. Armstrong instead of, for example, reducing debt or obligations, and find yourself defaulting years later.  Is this good judgement?

Sadly government and industry have combined in this catastrophic failure of leadership.

Little wonder the USPS is going down the tubes rapidly.  (And this is not something I am glad to see - I know various retirees who will be punished for the USPS's incompetence.)

But like Penn State and Joe Paterno - is it fair that the retirees will suffer if the USPS defaults?

No.  But they signed up for the program of their own free will.

Just as the USPS signed up with Mr. Armstrong.

When winning becomes the most important thing then character and ethics go out the windows.

We see it with the USPS cycling team.

We see it with Penn State.

Little wonder the US is on the ropes financially and in terms of character...

We've become the Soviet Union.

Wild versus Domesticated: Humans and Dogs

There are some interesting aspects to the future of city living which I wonder whether people will accept.

I found this article about how Micrsoft and NYC are developing an advanced surveillance system "for the police by the police."  Thousands of video cameras on street corners, license plate scanners, radiation detectors.

Now I no longer travel much in cities for a variety of reasons.  I am used to living in the "country" where things are very much different.  There are no people within a quarter mile save for one neighbor who we share a driveway with.

There are no security cameras, no license plate scanners, nothing like that.

The question is this: are we in any more 'danger' than the folks in town?

I think that many city dwellers would think yes.  After all there are no police standing by, no cameras, nothing like that.  Crazies could show up at any time and do us in, right?

But really, in order to put us into danger someone would first have to find us.  Rural Pennsylvania is a big place and the population density is very sparse outside cities (which are also small for the most part).  The average US population density from the above map is 32.22 people per square kilometer.  Where we live its more like two.

So for some form of wacko to come visit us he or she would first have find us.  Traveling through heavy woods and brush for a kilometer is a lot of work - you have to traverse streams, creeks, steep embankments, sharp brambles and so on.  So its unlikely anyone just "happening by" will drop in.

In a city its far different.  Most places its maybe twenty or thirty steps (yards or meters) to the next house.

Want to rob someone?  House looks busy?  Walk thirty more seconds to an empty house.

In town you can have neighborhood watch systems - people living around you watching out for you and you for them.  While that's nice to a point it also strips away your privacy.  Nosy Nelly looking in over your back fence all the time to make sure you're "safe."

On the other hand here there's a new mall about two miles away.  Recently a bear walked into the Sears store.

"Lions and tigers and bears! Oh My"

We have lots of bears here.  We see tracks and evidence frequently.

I suppose they might be dangerous if cornered or provoked.  But in general I'd rather face a bear than a human intent on harming me.

Oh, did I mention that same said bears are also roaming around my desolate area - I guess any would be robbers will find out how friendly they are...

I don't know why people are attracted to cities.

We used to live in NYC many years ago.  There's a lot of activity and bustle certainly - and places to go.  But its dirty.  The air is foul.  It smells like garbage and vehicle exhaust.

Yet people like it...

Its almost like people in large groups become like "pets."  They trade their innate "wildness" for "captivity" at the hands of the state (or city).

Like pets they get safety and company. 

But at a significant price beyond simple freedom: intelligence.

It turns out that domesticated animals may lose a significant portion of their intelligence when they become domesticated.

After all, they no longer worry about thinks like their own security.  Food is readily available down at the corner market.  Helpful police are cruising by frequently.

But does not having to worry about these things make your mind less active - something that, for example, is a necessary component to longer, healthier living?

I have written a lot here about the demise of intelligence in our schools.

Little wonder when you think about the fact today's kiddies come from a more domesticated environment than we did (I grew up with maybe several dozen people per square mile).  No need to worry about anything - its all taken care of.

Like my dog Mugs. 

He wants for nothing but is he as smart as the fox outside who has to hunt his every meal?

Human society is dividing itself into the "domesticated" and the "wild" I think.

Every more bloated cities are stuffed with "domesticated" human masses who, if anything like other mammals, will decrease in intelligence over generations.

Bloated cities that govern out country and control our futures...

Today us "wild" human's are a dying breed I think.  In the two generations since I was a kid our urban populations have grown significantly and, from what I see, our over all "intelligence" has started to diminish.  Just like Rome.

Don't get me wrong.

Mugs is a great pet.  He's always happy to see me.  He sits in my lap at night when we watch TV.  I pet him.  He comes when he's called.  I experiment on his health as I have written here.

But I was born a "wild" human.  Not as "wild" as those in generations before but certainly more "wild" than what I can see today.

For Mugs this is the genetic "end of the line." 

He's been clipped and so he won't be passing on this genes for "domestication."

Outside the wild fox, bear and coyote will be though, like me.

Modern society is in the process of "clipping" the town dwellers for the good of "everyone."

Its not complete or mandatory yet - but that's coming...

In the mean time Mugs will continue to enjoy his good life.

Defeating Sinus Problems

A few weeks ago I wrote "Oil of Oregano."

I had tried it to clear a stubborn sinus problem flushing wouldn't clear and it worked out quite well.

Recently the little grand kiddies, who work at a bio-weapons incubator site called "Day Care," brought me a nice new summer cold.

Now for me the standard "cold" life cycle (without direct treatment) usually works like this:

- A day or two of sinus "drip" in the back of my throat foretelling the future misery.

- Followed by waking up with a "scratchy throat" that lasts for a morning or so.

- The "scratchy throat" is usually followed by some "sniffles."

- After a day or so the sniffles turn into sneezing and a runny nose.  Usually this is accompanied by for me by all forms of sinus misery: plugged sinus, difficulty breathing with my nose, the feeling of being clogged, eustation tube problem, ears not popping, and so on.

- Usually two to four days into the main "cold" the misery tries to migrate down into my upper chest as a cough.

- The sinus/nose problems start to clear (but never finish) at this point but I am left with a painful cough for a couple of days.

- Everything clears but the sinuses which remain plugged for up to several months (or until the next cold).

I take 2g of vitamin C per day and I use sinus flushing as soon as I feel the "drip" state begin.

Doing this reduces (but not eliminates) most of the major problems and eliminates most of the lingering sinus issues.

Much of my history with this is described in "Sinus Flushing with Beerzoids" (follow the label "Sinus Bioweapons" at the bottom for follow-on posts).

Sinus flushing is a tremendous tool for eliminating most of the problems.

However, in my case at least, I think I have a deformed sinus cavity (it runs in the family) so clearing everything this way never quite works 100%.  The problems are reduced to manageable levels but never eliminated.

So this cold I added a new strategy to the "flushing" model (I flush 2-3 times per day - for sure right before bed time).

Twice a day I take 2 50mg Oil of Oregano tablets - two at lunch, two in the evening starting at the onset of the scratchy throat phase.

I also added an additional 2g of vitamin C in the evening for the first few days after the "scratchy throat" developed.

What I noticed is that after a day and half the cold seemed to "break" - that is instead of having a runny nose and misery that goes on it started to "heal up" after only 36 hours or so.

I also noticed that with the vitamin C it created period of virtually "no symptoms" during the day.

This was accompanied by very productive (all the infected material came right out) sessions of blowing my nose.  Usually with a cold I can blow my nose over and over but it always feels like something is "stuck" and not clearing.  With the addition of the Oil of Oregano each blow is very productive and seems to clear a lot from my sinuses.

In addition the coughing life cycle was dramatically weakened (given it was already weakened by the flushing).

While not fully cleared at this point today I am excited that the addition of Oil of Oregano really puts a significant "dent" in what the cold does.

Oil of Oregano is not expensive and seems so far to be very effective addition to sinus flushing.

College Debt = Grandma Eating Dog Food

Dog Food - What Grandma Will Have to Eat...

One of the big trillion dollar boondoggles our country is laboring under is the college debt problem.

I have written about this before: You purchase an education with debt that yields a degree which cannot sustain the debt the education cost.

Not only that but, as the quality of the education suffers, and the economy suffers, the debt becomes a serious problem.  Recent changes to federal law have removed the option of eliminating college debt through bankruptcy.

Yet the message of "Education!" is still pounded into the heads of children and parents.

Everyone feels that unless they have a nice degree from some college they are failure.

So what's a kid to do if they can't sign for their own college loan?

Get grandma to do it...

The only problem is that now, as the "education debt crisis" expands its drawing in a new set of victims: the elderly on social security.

So grandma, who felt bad for little Jr. not getting into college, signed for little Jr.'s college loans.

(Little Jr. might be grandma herself, grandpa, grandma's adult child, grandma's actual grand child, etc. - the majority I am describing are actual offspring of some sort...)

Only problem is that little Jr. either didn't finish or got a degree which was useless for generating the income to pay back the debt.  (Of course there are other variants including the elderly themselves simply not repaying their own debt.)

And now grandma is on the hook - possibly for big bucks.

According to Smart Money in 2000 only six (yes '6') elderly folks had their Social Security garnished for repaying eduction debt.  In 2011 the number of cases as around 60,000.

So out of grandmas $1,235 USD monthly Social Security check comes $190 USD for the US Treasury education loan program.

Ouch!

But wait, there's more...

The social security system, already on its way to bankruptcy, is now funding the trillion dollar education debt.

Kind of like a government Ponzi scheme where one bankrupt government agency pumps non-existent money from one empty slush fund to another.

Basically the government writing checks to itself to payback debt...  The government model to get money to repay educational debt from the consumers who purchased in the first place fails, we take money from another program itself already going bankrupt.

WTF?

How can our leaders do this to us?

Not everyone, as I have written in other others, needs a college education.  For example, "Everyone Needs a Plumber" and "21, $55K a Year and No Debt."

So why pretend they do?

(So "big education" get keep paying tenured idiots to pervert children's thinking I guess...)

Most significant success comes for a business and not a job anyway: realizing that only you are limiting your options for success.  Working for a "boss" offers you nothing beyond what the boss lets you shoot for.

So now the country is faced with a shortage of folks who can do what's needed in the blue collar department, a trillion dollars in debt, and now old retired folks being thrown to the wolves to pay for it all.

Now obviously grandma "signed" for the education with her own hand but did she get what she paid for?

It doesn't matter because today a college has no responsibility for your success - no matter how much you paid.

I am not saying it should but consumers should be more careful and examine what they think they are purchasing.

For example, demanding to see how successful the grads are in repaying student loans...

I'd like to see those statistics.

I'd like to see little Jr., mom and dad at the college financial office pouring over the stats on how many grads didn't repay their loans.

I'd like to be a fly on the wall listening to that conversation.

Might save grandma from having to eat dog food....

M.D. = Not Knowing Type 1 Diabetes...

A while back I wrote "M.D. = No Knowledge of Nutrition."

I guess that there's something else missing as well - knowledge of Type 1 diabetes.

Today everyone knows about Type 2 diabetes - you can't avoid it.  On TV, the internet, radio, virtually everywhere are dufus actors wearing doctor or nurse outfits claiming you need "diet and exercise" along with whatever they are selling to "aid" with your Type 2 problems.

List of symptoms abound but usually the smiling heads indicate that you might have it if you are "overweight."

Many people are confused about the differences between Type 1 and Type 2.  I wrote about the differences in "Type 2 is not diabetes..." a few years ago.

Apparently doctors today are also confused.  (See this WSJ article as an example.)

Read about how they assign "diet and exercise" to folks with Type 1.  About how they "don't notice" the obvious symptoms.  And on and on...

Why is this?

I think its a product of our silly educational system that favors regurgitating know "right" answers to leaked questions over learning to find the facts on your own.

The "regurgitation" method is common for various forms of social engineering: how else would you know that "big corporatons are bad" at 18 years old.

But the path to hell is always paved with "good intentions" and this model is slipping into other forms of education - in this case medical.

As a kid you always knew of somebody who was a diabetic back in the 1960's.  It wasn't at all common but the specter of having to use needles everyday to inject yourself with insulin was enough to get anyone's attention.

Maybe it was someone's kid sister or brother, or an uncle - but you heard about it.

And you knew the most common symptom as well (known since the times of ancient greeks): pee that attracted bees.  Urine of diabetics has a lot of sugar in it and hence if you went outside to do your business and the bees flocked about the result you knew you were in trouble.

But "Type 2" has usurped "Type 1's" hold on everyone's imagination.

This is, of course, because of TV ads.  Who doesn't think they might have diabetes these days?

Are you overweight?

Do you not "feel good" all the time...?

Blah blah blah list of symptoms everyone has blah blah blah...

All this to get you into the doctor so he can sell your insurance company a "treatment."

"Diabetes" means "elevated blood sugar."

But that's like saying "my car won't run right" - it must be a fuse.

So today's doctors are like lazy mechanics - oh, your car won't run right - let's just put in a new fuse.

Yet you continue to have problems.

And, rather than open the hood, you just keep repeating the "standard treatment" - in some cases according to the WSJ article - for years.

Usually until the patient figures out that he or she is being screwed by the doctor and delves into the problems on their own.

So today we have signs, TV ads, internet ads, radio all blaring: "Car won't run right - change the fuse!"

Billboard on subways and bus stops - "Check your fuse!!!"

So people and doctors forget to think about what's wrong and just change the fuse.

And they repeat it until its too late because the treatment for Type 1 diabetes is not the same as the treatment for Type 2.

(I think the names are bogus - diabetes needs to be used for Type 1 only - Type 2 is a different animal.)

As a society we need to rethink our model of "free speech" in this regard because "free speech" includes responsibility.  Like not shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

Isn't it the same thing to should "Type 2" every time someone show up overweight?

Isn't that just as irresponsible?

Yet we promote this kind of think from grade school on...

So as people sit around languishing from diseases that the doctor is to lazy to take the time to diagnose at least we can all feel good about ourselves because, if this is depressing, someone will prescribe antidepressants as well.

So what does this leave?

It leave us to make our own best guesses about our healthcare.

Clearly doctors are getting it wrong - but then how much time do they really take?  After all there's all the Medicare/Medicaid/Insurance/Government paper work to fill out for a simple visit.

And what's more important?

Getting paid and feeding your family or simply doing what's probably the right thing based on TV ads?

People need to realize that they had best educate themselves about health so that they can prevent this sort of nonsense.

And this is not easy - its scary - there are lots of diseases - and most of the symptoms overlap. Don't believe it, try Googling "fatigue insomnia" - you see "sleep apenia," "adrenal fatigue," "depression," "stress," and "fibromyalgia" all on the top of screen.

All very different problems - all with their own "specialist" to diagnose them.

All with vague additional symptoms that make them indistinguishable.

Modern medicine in the US - the best in the world...

I met a guy from Syria - you know the place in the middle east where there is a civil war but no one does or says anything about it?

He showed my how they diagnose things quickly and efficiently.

They have to because some simple blood tests might cost a months wages....

But we don't do that here any more.

Which healthcare system is more primitive I wonder????

The Slippery Olympic Slope to "Fairness"

Oscar Pistorius

Last week I wrote  "US Olympics, Full Circle with the GDR."

But there is an additional controversy that is also troubling: Oscar Pistorious and his artificial lower legs.  Pistorious as a baby had both his lower legs amputated.  Today he competes in the Olympics with J-shaped carbon fiber "ankles."

Now its not the issue that Pistorious chooses to compete that's what's troubling and certainly nothing about him personally.

The problem as I see it is that Pistorious used a lawyer to challenge the International Association of Athletics Foundations (IAAF) ruling that banned him from competing in events like the Olympics.  Initially the IAAF banned him because of a study they did showing Pistorious used 25% less energy than a runner with naturally formed legs.

Pistorious and his lawyer challenged this and won.

Accomplishing it by creating a new study that showed Pistorious "physiologically similar but mechanically dissimilar" to someone with natural legs.

So the idea here is that Pistorious and his artificial legs are somehow equal to natural legs.  This implies that the legs offer him no advantage over any other athlete.

The problem here that I see is three fold:

A) Pistorious is using legal leverage to deem himself "equivalent" to other athletes even though in actuality his legs are mechanically different.

B) The current "legs" he uses could easily be modified to offer him a mechanical advantage in the future, i.e., even if the current study is true who is to say some upgrade will not give him an advantage.

C) His actions open the door for any athlete to claim "legal equivalence" principle.

So let's take this to its logical conclusion:

As a power lifter I can claim that my body works below some "average" weight lifting ability.  Can I not use the same reasoning to claim I should be able to use steroids to make the contest more fair, i.e., to bring myself up to the "standard" of other athletes?

Clearly Pistorious was disadvantaged by his body structure at birth - no fault of his own.

No different than myself, for example, with a body not suited to weight lifting.

Couldn't I make the same claim relative to weight lifting and using steroids as Pistorious did with his J-legs?

In the 1970's the horse Secretariat won the triple crown.  Later it was discovered that his heart was significantly larger than that of other horses giving him a significant advantage.

Was that fair?

Secretariat's nemesis was Sham - a horse with a significantly smaller heart - who dogged him at each of the triple crown races after beating him in other races.

Could Sham's owner cry foul given Secretariat had an unfair advantage?

Could he take Secretariat to the various associations governing horse racing to get compensation?

I think this is all a very slippery slope.

Ultimately any kind of race or competition has to be "unfair" in order for their to be a winner and loser.

But in the end I cannot see how this development at the Olympics will take us anywhere but to legal cries of "unfair advantage" and corresponding compensation - whether its J-legs or drugs for enhancement.

Will someone have their legs amputated in order to compete?

Today's world is full of "fairness" and "force equality."

And that will only take us further down the slope...

Professional and amateur sports alike will suffer as this kind of thinking grows legal legs.

iTunes Sales Fun!

Viewing your iTunes sales...

 The road to iTunes App vendor is hell.

Its taken quite a bit of time to set everything up: establish Synthodeon's credentials with Apple, get bank accounts, get apps ready for sale, get them approved, get them into the store.

Over all on the Apple side, while its been a slog, its worked pretty well - no complaints.

So there's a significant lag between the time you set up your vendor status and get the first app published.  You have bank information to confirm, it takes some time to figure out how to use iTunes connect which is the web interface, and so on.

Apple apparently pays quarterly so once you get everything hooked up you have to wait for your first payment up to several months - provided, of course, you sell anything.

Well, we've been successful and sold things.

But now there's only one small problem.

All this took so long that the bank "closed" the account in the interim due to inactivity.

Not inactivity on my part - I have been working my ass off to get this all together and set up.

But financial inactivity - again not even on my or Apple's part: Since a month before the account was closed there's been plenty of sales activity.  It just hasn't translated into bank account activity.

So the other day I go to log onto my account at the bank and its not working.

So I call the 800 number...

"Sorry sir, the account is closed."

Huh?

WTF?

I guess the bank doesn't understand how big companies work.

Now I will be in hell.

Where did the payment go?

Did it get rejected on the Apple end?

Did it go through only to land in some bank limbo?

How many frustrating days of iTunes support emails and bank emails will it take to resolve the issues?

Of course, with today's tight corporate web and internet security no one can talk to anyone else, let alone email or anything, so everything will require me to fiddle with it: back and forth, back and forth...

I imagine that this particular business has very few businesses like the ones I am involved with: high tech and big companies, e.g., Apple.

Over the years I've worked with many, many very large companies and its always the same - some companies, large, nameless printing companies in Milwaukee, for example, were the same way.  Weeks of applying to be a vendor - doing more work than you were going to actually get paid for just so you could get the work and paid.

The good news is there at least were sales.

More than I expected.

But there's always a price for success....  (and no, no one showed up from the government to "help" me.)

So instead of working on the new app I am slogging through bank hell with the old one...

Edit Sat Aug 4, 2012:  If a payment is rejected you get a notification on iTunes Connect.  Well, the bank got the payment (finally someone there checked) and is "in the process of rejecting it."  My contact at the bank will try and stop that in the morning on Monday.

Edit Mon Aug 6, 2012: Too late.  The bank rejected the payment for no reason.  What supposedly happens now is that the payment is returned to Apple.  I will get notified.  At that point, since I know the bank info is correct I will have to figure out how to have it resubmitted.