Sorry "Reality Czar" - Trans Women Should Not Compete Against Born Women

When Press Secretary Psaki yesterday echoed the literal party line that "trans rights are human rights" I wouldn't argue a bit.  I would argue however that it's fundamentally unfair to biological women to have them compete against biological men, regardless of whatever medical treatments they've had done.  Men who are undergoing treatment, or have undergone it, certainly have a right to compete in athletics, but they need to compete against other men transitioning to being women and not biological women.

Look, this shouldn't be controversial.  People have been studying this forever and Atlantic magazine (of all places) did a summary of results in 2012.  There's a slight complication that both men and women are getting better and faster, but the fact remains that there is a performance difference in athletics between men and women that remains almost unchanged.  In comparisons since around 1950, the records for women are close to 90% of the men's records. 

The ratio of women's to men's records in this event, a 200 m sprint (foot race), has stayed at 0.90 + 0.2 almost continuously since 1955.  The same results hold for swimming events. 

The big name behind several of these studies is Israeli physicist Ira Hammerman. 

Hammerman spoke at the 2010 Wingate Congress of Exercise & Sports Sciences, and he found that this little-known ratio held across all sports.

Running. Swimming. Rowing. Kayaking. Short distance, long distance. Accomplished in teams or attempted alone.These are such diverse events, requiring different parts of the body and diverse types of talent. And yet they all share something: Their women's speed world records are all about 90 percent of their men's speed world records, in both short, middle and long distances.

Hammerman points out that as both men and women have gotten better and faster, women match the records men set decades earlier. The women's world record for racing the butterfly (swimming) in 2012 equaled Mark Spitz's 1967 record for men.

I've blogged many times about watching the Tour de France on TV every July, and still watch a few days out of the month (although since all of my favorite riders aged out of the Tour, I watch less).  The Tour has been running for over a hundred years and tons of records are available.   There has never been a woman competitive in the Tour.  There has been a women's Tour in some form or other since the early 1980s.  First called Le Tour de France Women; then Grande Boucle Féminine Internationale (Grande Boucle translates as Big Loop, a name the Tour has used), and other names.  Suffice it to say no woman has ever outperformed the men.  If women were capable of being competitive against the men, you can bet they'd be in big races. 

Don't expect to see this data anywhere.  All the "Reality Czar" will tell you is that you're being bigoted by thinking what this data says.  They'll declare that there's no difference between trans women and biological women, without giving you actual studies to review.  But why listen to me?  Why not listen to a young woman who's being hammered by these rules?  Or you could read an old post around here on the same topic with some differences in emphasis.

Standing Up To Facebook

I missed this story when it came out in the last week of May, but the corporation behind Crossfit, the extremely popular exercise and nutrition enterprise, withdrew their pages from Facebook after Facebook deplatformed another fitness-related site.  Hat Tip to Reason.com via the Ammo.com weekly newsletter.  According to an official statement published at the time:

Facebook deleted without warning or explanation the Banting7DayMealPlan user group. The group has 1.65 million users who post testimonials and other information regarding the efficacy of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet. While the site has subsequently been reinstated (also without warning or explanation), Facebook's action should give any serious person reason to pause, especially those of us engaged in activities contrary to prevailing opinion….

Facebook…serves as a de facto authority over the public square, arbitrating a worldwide exchange of information as well as overseeing the security of the individuals and communities who entrust their ideas, work, and private data to this platform. This mandates a certain responsibility and assurance of good faith, transparency, and due process.

CrossFit, Inc., as a voluntary user of and contributor to this marketplace, can and must remove itself from this particular manifestation of the public square when it becomes clear that such responsibilities are betrayed or reneged upon to the detriment of our community.

In a typical week, we hear of people being deplatformed by Facebook or Google several times.  What we don't hear about is corporations that are paying these companies for their advertising striking back by moving off the platform to other services.  If for no other reason than for the point in the famous Martin Niemöller quote:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Crossfit is clearly concerned that being a health and wellness corporation based on contrarian ideas that they might well face the same bans as the Banting7DayMealPlan user group.  They opened the statement quoted above essentially saying so with this "mission statement":

CrossFit is a contrarian physiological and nutrition prescription for improving fitness and health. It is contrarian because prevailing views of fitness, health, and nutrition are wrong and have unleashed a tsunami of chronic disease upon our friends, family, and communities. The voluntary CrossFit community of 15,000 affiliates and millions of individual adherents stands steadfastly and often alone against an unholy alliance of academia, government, and multinational food, beverage, and pharmaceutical companies.

Nick Gillespie writing for Reason says:

Instead of taking it upon themselves to police more than true threats and instead of calling for government regulation of expression, Facebook and other social media services would treat their platforms as free-speech zones and focus instead on providing users with tools to personalize their experiences.

Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in.  Facebook (and Google/YouTube and The Rest) seem to have staked their future on being regulated utilities and using the high cost of entry as a bar to future competitors.  They seem to have decided if they piss off enough conservatives, they'll join the movement to get the Big Gov to regulate them.

Reason calls it a "Bonus Video" to hear CrossFit founder Greg Glassman say he's a "rabid libertarian". 

I Feel Sorry for the Women's Soccer Team

Probably not the way you think.

I feel sorry for them because they come across as horrible whiners.  The kind of people I don't want to be around.  Nothing is ever good enough for them.

They've just won what should be the ultimate victory of their careers (and I gather some of them did it four years ago, too).  They're the world champions, having gone through the tournament without a loss.  They should feel on top of the world.  They should be sky high with happiness; perpetual giddiness for days.

Instead, all we hear out of them is about victimhood; about how they earn less than the men and it's unfair.  In the case of apparent team spokesperson Megan Rapinoe, we hear how much she projects hate onto President Trump.  Their parade in NYFC seemed to be about grievances and not joy.

It has been widely reported that the pool of money for men's soccer is much bigger than the pool of money for women's, but as percentage of that pool, the women get a much larger percentage. 

According to Mike Oznian, a writer for Forbes, the 2015 Women's World Cup “brought in almost $73 million, of which the players got 13%. The 2010 men's World Cup in South Africa made almost $4 billion, of which 9% went to the players.”

The women got 13% of the pool, while the men got 9%; that is, the women got 44% more than the men.  Because the men's pool was over 50 times bigger than the women's pool, the men's smaller percentage turned into a bigger number of dollars.

I don't follow soccer - men's or women's.  Much like I don't care what any male athlete earns, I don't care what any of them earn.  The root cause of the disparity in the money between the sexes is that the men's sports are more entertaining, because the men play a more dynamic game.  Even Serena Williams, one of the greatest women's tennis players of the last 20 years, said the men's game is better.

Despite having won 23 Grand Slam titles, Williams, in a 2013 appearance on “Late Night With David Letterman,” said, “For me, men’s’ tennis and women’s’ tennis are completely, almost, two separate sports. If I was to play Andy Murray (then one of the best players in the world), I would lose 6-0, 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe 10 minutes.”

(To be honest, I always thought that with her musculature, Serena could play Free Safety in the NFL.  Except for almost certainly not having a clue how to play football.)

If they're trying to woo everyone in the country to support knee-jerk legislation ideas like Chuckie Schumer came up with to pander to them, count me out.  What the women need is for a generation of kids growing up now to become paying fans of women's soccer.  Attracting more ticket sales is the only answer.  Nobody playing today will benefit from that. 

I Think This Is My Favorite 2018 Olympics Story

This is the story of Elizabeth Swaney, a 33-year old American skier who by studying what it takes to qualify, persistence, dedication, and setting goals for herself, is skiing for Hungary in the 2018 Winter Olympics still underway in Korea. 

By all accounts, Elizabeth is a mediocre skier, but that didn't stop her dreams of making the Olympics.  She learned what she had to do to make it and did everything she needed to do.

Swaney's half-pipe run on Monday involved one quasi-trick, no air, and a last-place finish. She frequently did not clear the top of the half-pipe. She qualified for the Olympics by leveraging her grandparents' Hungarian birth to attend International Ski Federation World Cup events, where she regularly finished among the top 30 skiers because fewer than 30 skiers showed up to compete.

One commentator I heard said that, unlike the stars of her sport, she'd show up at small events.  Some of them were so small, they didn't have 30 skiers.  That guaranteed she'd finish in the top 30. 

International Ski Federation judge Steele Spence told The Denver Post, "She would compete in [events] consistently over the last couple years and sometimes girls would crash so she would not end up dead last."

The Guardian puts it this way:

A Harvard graduate who once ran against Arnold Schwarzenegger in the race to be California governor, Swaney only started skiing at 25 and has been driven ever since in her quest to compete at an Olympics. After raising funds through online donations to help fuel her Olympic ambitions, Swaney managed to qualify for Pyeongchang due to the sheer volume of competitions she attended.

OK, so she's not a great skier.  So what?  It doesn't appear that "great skier" was her goal.  Her goal was being there - at the Olympics, in the athlete's village, living the life of an Olympian.  She made her goal through persistence and hard work.  I just can't find fault with that.  Lots of athletes compete for countries other than where they live and train - you see it all the time.  She's Hungarian by their laws, she qualified by rules everyone acknowledges are the rules. 

Liz Swaney photo from Instagram. 

Back in 2014,  US Navy Admiral William H. McRaven, gave a commencement speech to the University of Texas at Austin.  It has become a speech that was talked about a lot then and still bears paying attention, or watching the video.  It's called the 10 Life Lessons From Seal Training.  I think number 10 describes Liz Swaney perfectly. 

10. If you want to change the world, don’t ever, ever ring the bell.
“In SEAL training there is a bell. A brass bell that hangs in the center of the compound for all the students to see. All you have to do to quit – is ring the bell. Ring the bell and you no longer have to wake up at 5 o’clock. Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the freezing cold swims. Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the runs, the obstacle course, the PT – and you no longer have to endure the hardships of training. Just ring the bell. If you want to change the world, don’t ever, ever ring the bell.”

Reword that somewhat to "If you want to achieve your goals, don't ever, ever quit".  She set a clear goal, figured out how to get from nowhere near the goal to achieving it, and never, ever, quit.  In an Olympics mostly filled with celebrity Trump Derangement Syndrome, fawning over the North Korean Propaganda Minister, defining "not medaling while gay" as winning everything, I think I like Liz Swaney best of all.

Why I'm Not Boycotting the NFL

There has been almost a universal "Boycott the NFL" meme rippling through the blogosphere.  Many of you have said it.  I haven't.  I think a little explanation might make some sense.

To begin with, in terms of spending money on football, last year I spent a grand total of $0.00 - zip, nada, nothing.  I think that same sum holds for the previous decade or so.  I actually spent money on the NFL HD video package on DirecTV some years ago, and that would be all I spent.  A friend told me, "viewers = dollars" or eyeballs = dollars if you're online.  To be meaningful to the sellers, I'd have to be a viewer of their commercials.  I don't watch the commercials.  I couldn't even tell you who the advertisers are, except I'm sure there are beer commercials involved from somebody.  I'm not buying anything in response to any commercials during a game.

That means that in real dollars and cents, and in truthful "TV audience", I don't show up in the NFL's ledger at all.  I can't boycott what I'm not supporting with my money.  Do I end up paying tax money to support them?  If I lived in a city or county with a professional team, I'd assume so, but I don't live there.  Does the state tax us?  I honestly don't know, but I'm sure that nothing I could do in front of the TV would affect that. 

Second, I agree that the protests are stupid and juvenile; in other words they're just the thing you'd expect from a bunch of spoiled "man-child" brats.  Protesting "police violence"?  Please.  That's like "hands up, don't shoot", or the picture everyone has of Trayvon Martin as a 12 or 13 year old, not the large, functionally-adult man that died that night.  Both of those are total fabrications, lies from the get go. and to borrow the quote, the lies went around the world while the truth was putting on its pants.  The whole protest movement is based on a lie. 

To hear pro football players talk about being a disadvantaged class because of their race is insulting.  The minimum wage for a rookie drafted in the last round this year is about $485,000 year (average).  For a single person, that's over 40 times the poverty limit in this country, and in the top few percent of all wage earners.  Disadvantaged?  These guys have been pampered all their lives because they can run fast, throw well, or tackle hard.  Even the guys who technically didn't make the team, the practice squad, get $115,200 for the 16 game season.  

There's something more going on here, it's not just this protest stuff.  There seems to be an effort to shut down the NFL and football at all levels.  Think about the fuss about concussions, CTE and players dying from brain injuries.  What about boxers?  Boxers die from getting hit in the head repeatedly.  What about soccer or rugby or any other sport that involves getting hit in the head.  They don't seem to care about those guys, but they're trying to get parents to tell their kids not to play football and only football.  I think that the whole "kneel for the pledge" act is theater; something that Colin Pumpernick came up with to impress his girlfriend.  It's just been incorporated into a larger hard-left plot to get rid of football.  Rush Limbaugh has been talking about this for easily the last two years, if not more.

If it's really a hard-left plot to end football, then, well, why?  As I was putting together ideas on this topic, I ran across this piece on Hot Air, "The Left's (Brilliant) Scam Behind the NFL Anthem Protests."

Why? Because the activist Left has despised the NFL for years. They hate everything about it. It’s a game filled with big, tough, manly men engaging in the closest thing to warfare you can manage without guns. It’s a game rife with symbolism and, yes… nationalism. Even people who would never buy an album from a country singer could feel their blood heating up when Hank Williams used to sing, Are you Ready for Some Football. The military loves football and they fly jets over the stadiums in formation and send our nation’s finest out to pay tribute. And it’s not just the military. Our police and other first responders are frequently called out for honors at the games. Everything about it screams of apple pie, fireworks and patriotism. (Or, if you prefer, God, guns and flags.) And the activist Left hates it. Probably the only sporting event they despise more is NASCAR.

If I watch football, it's for escapism.  I want to avoid politics, and to see really good athletes do things very few people can do.  Avoiding the annoying politics is very easy.  I record the game and start watching an hour or two after the start.  I fast forward until the kickoff and miss the protest.  If the announcers talk about it, I either mute the audio or fast forward a little bit.  I fast forward through all the commercials, too, so I never really see any of them. 

Pro football players are skilled dancing monkeys.  All I want to see is some good dancing. 

Not a hard image to find. 

The inevitable conclusion to this line of thinking is that if we do bankrupt the NFL in five years by boycotting every business that sponsors them, we're handing the left a win.  If that matters.

As the Tour de France Wraps Up

I know I've written about it a few times, but Mrs. Graybeard and I tend to follow the Tour de France every year.  No, we don't turn our lives inside out and watch the daily coverage every day, like we used to when we were Lance Armstrong fans, but we've watched a handful of stages this year and kept up with the progress.  We watched the insanity on Mont Ventoux last weekend.  Mont Ventoux, "The Giant of Provence" is one of the legendary mountain climbs in the tour, and the only climb to claim the life of a tour rider: British cyclist Tom Simpson in 1967.  (Other deaths have occurred in the tour, but on descents and other bad accidents).  This year, the crowds filling the road caused a camera-bearing motorcycle to slam on his brakes, which led to a chain reaction of cyclists smashing into the motorcycle and going down.  Tour Leader Chris Froome's bike broke, and his team car couldn't get him a replacement because of the traffic jam that caused the accident, so Chris started running up the mountain!  No one could recall ever seeing any cyclist run up the mountain.  There are "neutral assistance" emergency back up bikes, and they got him one that fit horribly.  His team car eventually caught up with him, got him a bike set up for him and he finished the climb.

The week before, riders started in a 100 degree hot valley to climb a different mountain, to Arcalis in Andorra, only to find a cold storm at the top of the mountain, dropping the temperature into the 40s and peppering the riders with penny-sized hail.

Tomorrow is the last mountain day and the last day where big changes to the final lineup are a real consideration: Megève to Morzine-Avoriaz.  This is almost in Switzerland, so after the stage the teams will be flown to Chantilly, outside Paris for Sunday's almost ceremonial ride into the city and the sprinters' race down the Champs-Élysées.  It appears Chris Froome will win his third Tour, putting him into a rarefied group of cycling legends - that haven't been kicked out for doping.

Shifting gears radically (see what I did there?), this year is the first year that Tour officials are monitoring bikes with infrared cameras for signs of cheating by embedding small motors in the frame to give the cyclist extra power.  They're calling this "mechanical doping". 

Infrared camera guns, developed by the CEA (the French Atomic Energy Commission) were being used to capture the thermal envelop of each bicycle. Peculiarities in the envelopes would reveal whether or not a micro-motor was embedded in the cycle’s frame. The motors could be used to enhance the cyclist’s performance ― his hill-climbing ability or his speed on a straightaway ― but, used in a competition, it would be considered cheating.

As surprising as this might sound, it's not hypothetical.  This past January, the women's under-23 world cyclo-cross world championship had a competitor's bike seized by the UCI (competitive cycling's governing organization) - for being suspected of having a motor assist.

UCI inspectors had been examining bikes during the event, and the bike of European under-23 champion, Belgian Femke Van den Driessche was detained after something suspicious was found.

It was later confirmed that her bike did contain a motor and the 19 year old rider was given a six year suspension for cheating.   She was also fined 20,000 Swiss francs and ordered to pay legal costs.

Professional athletics is a domain of tiny differences between competitors.  In this year's Tour de France, Chris Froome currently has less than 5 minutes over the second place rider, after 82 hours of racing - 0.1% difference in time.  While that EE Times piece talks about 300 watt motors and using them for long periods, I don't think that's the scenario at all.  Picture the end of race stage.  Everyone has been putting out 700 or 800 watts - sometimes more - for as long as they physically can.  Everyone is turning themselves inside out.  Everyone's legs feel like they're turning to rubber.  A motor that gave a rider 50 or 100 Watts that no one could match would guarantee the stage win.  Think giving the rider just a little margin, not the power to ride the entire stage.  Just a small advantage to use when everyone is burned out.

Cross section of how the motor is setup inside the seat tube of the bike, with a gear to add drive power to the cranks.  The battery can be in the seat tube, in the down tube, or in the saddle bag that many riders keep under their seat.  (Source)

The consistent testing of athletes for doping chemicals hasn't eliminated cheating, it just pushed the cheating out of their bodies and into the bikes.  It's probably better for the riders' health, but it's still cheating.  While the UCI originally addressed cheating at the bike by mandating a minimum weight that bikes can't go under, this is a new frontier.  It never ends.

NFL Reeducation Center

I know this is a small story, but apparently the National Football League held its annual price-fixing fest, the draft, this past weekend.  The first publicly declared gay football player was drafted and will be a Ram.  I'm not unaware of the irony in that statement, and I hope you're not either.

That's not the story.

The story is that a safety for the Miami Dolphins, Don Jones, said something politically unacceptable on the Twitter when he saw the images of the draftee and his boyfriend kissing.  He is now being sent for reeducation.  They actually say that in almost those exact words.  From the story on Fox News:

Miami Dolphins safety Don Jones was fined an undisclosed amount Sunday and will undergo educational training after sending a negative tweet about Michael Sam, the first openly gay player to be selected in the NFL draft.
...
Jones apologized for his comments Sunday and described them as inappropriate. The Dolphins said Jones has been excused from all team activities until he completes training related to his comments.

I don't understand what all the hubbub is about, bub.  Sure, he's the first openly declared gay in the NFL, but I can't imagine anyone would think there are no gays in the NFL.  Some percentage of people are gay, although the exact percentage is something is probably not known with great precision.  There are those who want to exaggerate the number higher, and those that want to exaggerate it lower, but at least in my view, any sample of the population will have some percentage that is.  I played a little football in my younger days, and every team had "that guy" who was considered gay. 

It's the fascistic reeducation center aspect of the story that's the important part.  Don't mess with the gay mafia, or you'll be eliminated.  

 

(The People's Cube) 

Pretty Durn Impressive

Watch what a modern crossbow can do to equally modern level IIIA body armor:



Granted this is $1450 "Tactical" crossbow, but cutting through soft body armor and then getting 14" penetration into ballistic gel is nothing to laugh at.  Even though it's only 150-ish ft. lbs, it's very effective when a single, well-placed shot will do. 

The only drawback to this bow is the long cycle time to reload, but you won't have too little penetration; the same guy shows the same crossbow putting arrows through a car door, too.   It's interesting that the first crossbows were used to cut through the first soft body armor (leather and chain mail) and today's crossbows can cut through modern Kevlar body armor. 

Years ago, an older guy I worked with told me that if you're ever shot with a crossbow, you were going to wish you were really shot with a gun.  He went on to tell a story, I have no idea if it's true, of a homeowner who heard the proverbial bump in the night of a burglar in his home, and armed with his crossbow, literally nailed the perp to the wall, like a bug in a science lab, and left him there until the police came. 

Annnnddd.... It's Over

Although there isn't a rider or team we particularly care about, and the sport as a whole has suffered from the continual destruction of its past heroes for doping, the lovely Litespeed-riding Mrs. Graybeard and I have followed much of the Tour de France this year, the 100th Anniversary. The tour concludes tomorrow, but today saw its last real fighting stage with a brutal mountain climb up Annecy-Semnoz in the Alps.  Mountain climbs in the tour are rated with an algorithm that factors the percentage grade, length and altitudes.  "Easy" climbs are Cat 4, going to Cat 1, but today's stage and the legendary mountains of the tour - Alpe D'Huez, Ventoux, and many others - are HC, the French abbreviation for "Beyond Categorization" - too hard to categorize. 

Twenty years ago, when I switched from jogging to cycling to save my knees, I ran across a saying on the internet cycling forums: TIOOYK - There Is Only One, You Know - and it's true, there's just no other sporting event that's like grand tours in general, and the TdF is the big one. There is just nothing else in sport with majesty, color and spectacle of the Tour.  Not to mention the raw athleticism.  Get a group of boys playing together on bikes and you can guarantee that they'll eventually race to see who's fastest.  You want to race?  Fine, let's race up that mountain most people can't even stand up straight on. 

Cycling is the only sport where competitors from different teams have to cooperate to win.  The physics of riding in a group is that the inner riders, sheltered from direct air drag by the outside, can reduce their power output by 20% to as much as half in a really big peloton (the term for the big group, the platoon, of cyclists).  A breakaway of a single rider can rarely win, but manages to do so once or twice per Tour.  A group of perhaps 6 to 10 can give each other enough advantage to hold off the rest, on the "easy" flat stages of the race.  When the finish line nears, though, the cooperation turns back into a race, with guys trying to stay in second or third to get enough shelter from the wind to make a break for it. 

(source)
As an example of a small group taking turns pulling into the wind to help each other, here's a scene from this year's tour, racing to the summit of Mt. Ventoux, "The Monster of Provence", on last Sunday's stage.  Chris Froome of the UK is in the leader's yellow jersey, and young Colombian cyclist Nairo Quintana in white - Quintana won today's stage.  In this stage, Froome broke away from Quintana with about a km or so to go and won easily on the epic mountain.  The tour wraps up tomorrow with the essentially ceremonial ride into Paris and along the Champs-Elysee.  Barring a meteor strike on his team bus or something equally odd, Chris Froome will win the Tour overall, with Nairo Quintana winning the best new rider's white jersey and second place on the podium (probably along with a fat new contract!)   It's a gentleman's agreement that the only real competition tomorrow will be the final sprint on the Champs, and the three podium positions will go unchallenged.  Usually. 

New Florida Record Burmese Python

Jason Leon, a south Florida resident, was driving an ATV around the Florida City area with some friends when he noticed a snake's head sticking out of the brush.  He got off the bike, grabbed the snake behind its head and started pulling it out.  And pulling... and pulling.

“I’m actually really mad I had to kill it,” Leon, 23, said Monday. “But at one point it coiled around both of my legs and my waist, and I wasn’t going to take a chance on letting that thing get to my neck.”

So he killed with a knife.  The snake measured 18 feet 8 inches long and weighed 128 pounds, a new state record.  Here, three people at the University of Florida lab in South Florida pose with the snake to put that size into perspective:

(credit)

The Burmese python is an invasive species here in Florida, especially the Everglades.  There have been statewide hunts for them, organized hunts, and challenges to chefs to develop recipes for pythons and the other invasive species we have problems with.  The python permit is a year long permit that allows you take several different species of reptiles. 

Waiting for the inevitable "tastes like chicken" or "18 foot long hot dog" jokes to start...

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05

/20/3407473/palmetbay-man-wrestles-kills.html#storylink=cpy

I Know This Isn't Really Important...

...but I just want to get it off my chest.

Lance Armstrong, you are dead to me.

The time trial up L'Alpe d'Huez, 2004.  I was watching that day, and, basically every stage of every Tour de France that Lance rode in, if it was televised.  I had a US Postal Tee shirt, and sent money to Livestrong.  Sucker.  (I may have bought a Tee shirt, but I never went for the full "kit" - a USPS jersey and bike shorts - let alone the Trek USPS bike - I may be crazy but I'm not insane).

We bought into the hype and the story.  In 1997, the year after Armstrong's bout with cancer, Mrs. Graybeard was battling cancer.  We were dedicated cyclists; it seems inevitable and natural we follow Lance.  As someone had put it, Armstrong became an ambassador of hope.  Maybe he didn't even really intend to, but after "the book" he became the symbol of hope to millions of Americans going through cancer treatments.  People would hang their fears on his powerful, gaunt body and watch him scale mountains.  You'd see pictures like this one in oncologists' chemotherapy rooms all over America - probably all over the world.  We wanted to believe - and it was an easy story to fall for.  A guy stricken with the most feared disease, beats it, then goes on to win the most grueling event in sports, faster time trialing and better climbing than anyone alive.  If he was stronger than his rivals, like Jan Ullrich, and able to climb better, it was because he trained harder.  Having gone through the agonies of chemo and surgeries, it was easy to believe the perspective helped him to endure more pain.  While Jan could train hard, Lance could turn himself inside out with pain, and be just that much better.

What a pile of crap.

When Jan Ullrich was busted for doping, he said something to the effect that if Armstrong could beat him when he was doping, he knew Armstrong absolutely had to be doping.  We idiots said, "he's just a genetic freak - there has to be one on the planet who can do it".  Chris Carmichael, Lance's coach just said, "At that level, they're all genetic freaks".  The clues were all around.  But, still, he never failed a drug test.  Being a professional cyclist meant they'd come to his house on random mornings for screenings.  Being a stage leader in le Tour means you get tested every day, as well as the random testings. 

So it turns out, he was not only the biggest fraud in sports, but a terrible excuse for a man.  He not only lied about what he was doing, he viciously attacked other guys - former teammates and friends - who told the truth about him.  A despicable, pathetic man.  You know what the ironic part is?  I'll take odds the hormones and stuff he was taking either gave him the testicular cancer that made him famous, or made it much worse. 

You may have also noticed that although all seven Tour titles were stripped, not one of them has been re-awarded to the second place riders.  They have all been stripped for doping, too. 

Lance, you are dead to me.  And I think professional cycling is, too. 

Penn State

(source)
I've been hesitant to say anything about this because I just don't feel comfortable with the story; it seems like there's something else going on.  The behavior of all of the people involved seems so bizarre, I'm waiting for some other shoe to drop.

Nevertheless, there were riots the other night on the news JoePa was fired.  Students - you ought to read a little about what's going on before you protest this.  The way I see it, Joe Paterno ought to be in jail; or at least on house arrest.  Same goes for the school president, Graham Spanier, who didn't report the rapes to police and the coaching assistant, McCreary, who stumbled across the rapist, Sandusky, in the midst of raping a child and did nothing.

I've thought about this a lot over the last several days, and I keep coming back to the conclusion that there's only a couple of appropriate responses to finding a rapist in the act, and they all involve firearms on brain stems - granted you may need to use a shovel or fire extinguisher if you're in a gun-free/victim-terrorization zone.  If it was your son, your daughter, or wife, or mother; if it was you, what would you want the person who finds it to do? 

OK, so McCreary proved himself to be a coward and just reported it to his boss, Paterno, the next day.  Paterno, in turn, proved himself a coward and reported it to his boss.  At some point, these cowards have another trigger point: if they don't see Sandusky taken away in cuffs within a few days to a week at most, they need to report it to the police themselves.  Having not done that, they're accessories to child rape and need to be behind bars.

The inimitable Mike V. over at Sipsey Street did a great piece yesterday talking about when "The Institution" - the collective - becomes more important than mere individuals, this sort of thing happens.  You've probably read it; if not go read.  I can only say that the only possibility more revolting to explain what went on at Penn State is that the institution which Paterno, Spanier and the others are protecting is not Penn State, but a child sex slavery ring. 

I never attended a college with a football team, but anyone who knows any thing at all about college sports knows about Joe Paterno.  Truth be told, I've always respected him.  No longer.  At this point, he's among the most despicable people I know of.

Shotguns on brain stems.  The only appropriate response. 

The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions

No, this isn't about the charade being sold as a "deal" to allow the country to escape "default".  I was going to tear that apart, but figured with my work schedule, by the time I was able to tear it apart, someone else would have.  If you want good details, Ann Barnhard has an excellent piece on American Thinker:  "We the Stupid".

This will be be about gun control. 

From an article on the same subject in NRA's First Freedom digital edition (which I don't think I can link to for non-members), I get this article on American Spectator, "Split Wide and Dis-Armed".  I follow football somewhat; more than some, less than others, but I'm sure many people have heard of the ex-New York Giant Plaxico Burress.  Plaxico is the guy who famously shot himself in the thigh when a Glock he was carrying illegally, without a holster, slid down his pants and he grabbed it.  In a New York City nightclub.

The short version is that Plaxico spent two of his most productive (salary-wise) seasons as an NFL pro in prison for being stupid.  And he has followed up that stupidity by being stupid again. 

One might think that this injustice would spark the former Steeler and Giant to lay down $1,000 for a National Rifle Association lifetime membership. Instead, after losing the bulk of a $35 million contract, endorsement deals, and nearly two years of his life behind bars, Burress, perversely, has joined forces with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

(from the American Spectator article)  While I would suggest that instead of a life membership in the NRA, he spend that thousand dollars on some training in how to be safe with a handgun, that isn't what this story is about.

Just three days before Burress's unfortunate incident in a Manhattan nightclub, fellow Giant wide receiver Steve Smith had been robbed at gunpoint. In recent years, gun wielding assailants have murdered unarmed NFL players Fred Lane, Darrent Williams, Steve McNair, and Sean Taylor.

Sean Taylor was a 24 year old Free Safety for the Washington Redskins, from the University of Miami.  Sean had been involved with stupidity with a firearm also, and as part of his plea bargain, surrendered his right to a firearm.  Sean didn't shoot himself, or anyone else, but he lost his temper and pulled his gun when his life wasn't in danger.  This is mild stupidity compared to Burress, but it cost him his life:  

Taylor had been accused of brandishing a gun, making threats and initiating a street fight on June 1 of last year with a group of people he believed were responsible for the theft of his two all-terrain vehicles out of a neighbor's driveway. After Taylor retreated from the fight, his blue GMC Yukon Denali was sprayed with gunfire while it was parked in a neighbor's driveway.

No charges were filed in the shooting incident, but Taylor was charged days later with one count of misdemeanor battery and one count of felony assault with a weapon. The felony charge was tripled in January with the addition of two additional victims to the case, raising the maximum prison time he faced from 16 to 46 years. The three felony charges each carried a minimum three-year sentence. 

As Flynn says (back to American Spectator):

The court-ordered revocation of Taylor's Second Amendment rights, along with the inevitable media-frenzy that vilifies athletes who carry protection, literally made him a cliché: the man armed with a knife at a gun fight. Wielding a machete to fend off home invaders, Taylor, just 24 and one of the most promising defensive players in the NFL, lost his life 18 months after he lost his gun rights.

Football is a rough sport played by rough men who frequently come from bad neighborhoods.  Their wealth makes them a target for anyone after money, and their status as "stars" makes them targets for anyone who thinks beating up a star will improve their reputation (called "cred" in da hood).  The types of people who think this probably think it doubles their cred if they kill the big, bad football star.  You can add State Prosecutors to the mix of people think damaging a football star gives them cred.  

"At worst, [Taylor] got into a fight confronting the thieves who had stolen his property." Sharpstein and his wife, Janice Burton Sharpstein, argued since they joined Taylor's defense team in February that the charges were overblown and that Taylor had been singled out by a publicity-hungry prosecutor. That prosecutor, Mike Grieco, gave up the case in April after Sharpstein discovered Grieco had links to media reports of the Taylor case on a personal Web site that detailed his exploits as a Miami Beach disc jockey  (emphasis added)

In my book prosecutor Grieco and anyone who insisted Sean Taylor give up his right to self defense as a condition for letting him continue to play football work for a living is an accessory to his murder.

This isn't going to end any time soon.  NFL Players will continue to attract the dregs of society, and more people need to respect their need to defend themselves.

Taylor's free-safety successor at the University of Miami enjoyed a happier fate. Brandon Meriweather survived a South Florida gun attack by returning fire. Though a college teammate endured a gunshot wound, Meriweather emerged unscathed as the cowardly burglars turned tail. High fives to Brandon, right? Not exactly. The media viciously attacked him and his draft-day stock dipped.
...
Sports media are buying the post-prison anti-gun makeover of Burress as a sign of maturity. It's really a sign of stupidity. Advertising one's unarmed status isn't a good idea. It will win him plaudits from the likes of Brady Center President Paul Helmke, who said that the former Super Bowl star "has learned directly, and painfully, about the risks of gun ownership." But there is a greater risk than owning a gun. That's the risk Plaxico Burress takes by making such a public proclamation of not owning one.

Let's hope no one ends up putting a toe tag on Mr. Burress for bringing a fist to a gunfight.  

Men in Tights?

Hat tip to Bayou Renaissance Man for a laugh at this link on MAMILs - Middle Aged Men In Lycra  As a cyclist, I could say a lot.  The author's world is a bit different than the reality I live in, but it could be I don't hang around other middle aged cyclists enough.  His conclusion, though, shows he's as close as a brother from another mother:

I and my band of hill-climbing brothers disagree. It's about becoming a happier and healthier person rather than sliding towards mediocre oblivion at the bottom of a pint glass.

When I first started riding "seriously", back in 1994, it was for the reason a lot of "MAMILs" do: my knees couldn't take running.  I had started running in the late 1970s, and with some time away due to commitments I just couldn't get out of (read: college), had been running for about 20 out of that 24 years.  Back then, I vowed to never be seen in Lycra. 

There's an important point he doesn't make: cyclists don't wear Lycra because they think they look good any more than firefighters wear heavy fireproof clothing to look good; they wear it because Lycra is extremely well suited to the demands of road cycling.  Within a year, I started wearing Lycra shorts, but only under other clothing.

Then something happened - the Florida summer sun, which will melt an aluminum bicycle out from under you.  Eventually, you get so close to dying of heat stroke that your pride takes a back seat and you take off the outer layers, just to get that extra degree or two cooler.  In my case, I started wearing Lycra without a covering layer of baggie shorts when I stopped caring what other people think. 

In keeping with the article, I do own a carbon fiber bike.  It's not my regular ride, though; that's titanium.  By keeping an eye open and not being in a rush, I bought both a carbon fiber and a titanium bike for nicely under a k-buck each.  Like any hobby, you can accessorize to you heart's content and run up the price.  I've added a little bling to each.

FYI, the lovely Mrs. Graybeard cycles with me and knows all about prices and such.  We don't need to play games like trading shoes for jerseys, or silly things like that.

Nowadays, as 60 becomes closer than 50, we aren't really serious cyclists anymore.  We regularly tell jokes and have a few laughs while we're riding. 

Edit:  8/20.  The BBC link was broken. 

The Really Beautiful Sport

Around Castle Graybeard we are watching the Tour de France as we do every year that Versus (and before, OLN) have been carrying it.  For the last month or so, as the World Cup hype machine has gone into overdrive, I've heard a lot of references to soccer as "the Beautiful Sport".  IMAO, that's just not right.  The Tour de France, and grand cycling tours in general, are the real beautiful sport.  And - is it just me? - but I'm not half as annoyed by the sound of those "Vuvuzelas" as I am at hearing and seeing the word "Vuvuzela" everywhere.  Mrs. Graybeard and I are fans of Lance Armstrong, but would be shocked silly to see him win.  He is an incredible athlete, but is over the peak of the sport.  He may be more fit than any other 38 year old out there - but he's 38.  Chances are, last year's winner, Alberto Contador, will repeat. 

What is le Tour de France?  (Same applies to the Tour of Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and other grand tours)  How is the winner determined?  Simply, the guy who rides the route around France in the lowest total time wins.  The tour typically last 3 full weeks, 21 days, around 2300 miles or so.  There's two days off, so while the average is over 100 miles in a day, there are short days that might measure 10 to 30 miles.  Grand Tours are a mixture of individual sport and team sport.  Because of the potential (and reality) of enormous crashes, times are usually given to groups where bikes overlap length, so if you finish last in the group, you get the same time as the first, and if you crash in the last 3 km of a stage, you get the same time as the last in the group.  This allows for a bad, bike-breaking crash to not cost you the minute to get a replacement bike and get to the finish line.  There is a great deal of strategy and tactics, making it an event that combines aspects of intellectual strategy with athletics; chess, poker and racing.

Field sprints feature this sort of carnage a large percent of the time.

One of the aspects that always impresses me is how the route is lined with spectators, sometimes in random spots along these 100 mile routes.  They get a few seconds of riders going by, then go home.  In the major stages, crowds grow to over a hundred thousand fans.  They may camp out for days to watch the riders go by, and wait days to get off the mountain.  It's as if it's a Super Bowl every day for 3 weeks, and the game comes to you, instead of you going to the game. 

Typical crowds spread along the sides of a mountain stage

On a typical day, there is a breakaway of a handful of riders away from the main group of riders (the peloton), mostly to get their sponsors names on TV, but to take that once or twice every tour chance of winning the day.   It may surprise non-cyclists that a stage that's 120 miles long over flat terrain is considered too easy for the big names to try and get ahead; they wait for much harder stages.  Perhaps the most interesting part of bicycle racing, and what sets it apart from other sports, is that competitors must cooperate.  Because the physics of riding a bicycle at the speeds they ride is so brutal, you must take turns riding in front, breaking the wind, so that you can keep the required speed up.  Riders shelter each other from the wind, saving 20% of their energy and more in big groups, allowing their bodies to recover.  If the breakaway is to succeed, the members of different teams must cooperate.  But, the guy who is in second place, or farther back, has an advantage as the race approaches the finish line.  I have seen the leader literally stop in place to get the second guy to go around him and stop trying to stay behind him.  One of the most intense events to witness is a bunch sprint, where all of the teams put their fastest sprinters up front, protecting them from the open wind until the last few hundred meters.  Then the sprint specialists take off, achieving speeds of over 40 mph. 

The pattern of the multi-Tour winners, especially Lance, and Miguel Indurain, has been to stay in the group (peloton) most of the time, saving energy for the individual time trials and mountain stages.  The Tour categorizes mountains as 4 (easiest) to 1 (hardest) and then throws in some climbs that are so difficult they are "beyond categorization" or HC.  The most famous climbs in the Tour are these HC mountains, almost always with a mountain top finish.  Names like Alpe d'Huez, Mont Ventoux, and Col du Tourmalet are the places where tour legends have been made.  As a Lance Armstrong fan, I will always remember his performance on Sestriere in the first tour he won, as well as the Alpe d'Huez time trial. 

The Alpe D'Huez time trial: Lance in the alley of noise.

So find the VS channel on your cable or satellite system and check it out.  I'm recording the 2 hour version every afternoon and watching in the evening.  Tomorrow, Monday, July 12, is the first rest day.  The coverage will be a summary of the first days of this years race.

The Difference Between Sports and Government

The difference between sports and government might be a perfect model for the difference between the private and public sectors.

Sports: let me confess publicly here that I'm a lifelong fan of the Miami Dolphins (Team Website). Three years ago, they had the worst year in team history and one of the worst in NFL history, going 1-15 (sorry, Detroit Lions). As the off season started, the head coach, Cam Cameron, was fired and Bill Parcels brought in. Soon, Tony Sparano was hired as head coach. They went about the business of putting their administration into place, firing old coaches, hiring replacements, releasing players who they thought didn't fit in any longer (such as Zach Thomas, and Jason Taylor - two stalwarts of the previous years) and bringing in others (QB Chad Pennington). They never said a word publicly about the previous coaches, just acknowledged that there were problems that needed to be addressed. The following season, they went from worst to first and won their division. Admittedly there was luck involved in some of those wins. There is always luck involved. Much of that luck vanished last year, but there's not much doubt that the major problems are at least being addressed.

But the bottom line was: the new leaders were leaders. They didn't bitch about the situation they inherited, they sat down and tried to find ways to fix it. They didn't blame the previous coaches for ruining the team. They came in, got to work, and worked long and hard to get themselves out of a bad mess.

Government: surely I don't have to link to the number of times the Obama administration has talked about the problems it inherited from the previous administration, do I? Even now, over a year in office, I don't think a week goes by without someone saying it. How about the Christmas Day underwear bomber? First we got "The System Worked" from Janet Napolitano, then an explanation that it worked in the sense that it didn't work at all. The only thing that saved the people on that plane was that the bomber was incompetent, and then the passengers jumped him. Not only did the system not work - this guy did everything but tattoo "Terrorist" on his forehead in fluorescent pink ink - but no one has been held responsible. No one has been fired or put in jail for it. Going back, no one was publicly held responsible for the 9/11 attacks. No one was held responsible for the sub-prime crisis. No, bad things "just happen" in a good system.

Look - no leader gets everything the way they want it. In industry, you get hired to be the leader specifically because the company thinks the current situation is broken. You suck it up and get to work. Leaders don't blame other people. They take responsibility for what they're hired to fix.

And that's the essential difference between a private company trying to make a profit and a government office, trying to maintain itself.

When I started work as an EE, I worked in a company doing government contracts - DOD work. A wise, older, systems engineer had a model for the government that is as valid as any I can think off. Most of us have seen pictures of the rubber sheet model of gravitation, where a heavy object deflects the space-time continuum like a bowling ball on a rubber sheet. Gravity well is pretty much everyday language - at least for geeks. Think of a flat rubber sheet but add in peaks and valleys of responsibility - he called it the blame density function Every action a bureaucrat makes can be thought of as trying to avoid a localized peak of the blame density function. Every system is designed to spread out blame so that no one is left with high blame density.

Whatever happened to Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" acceptance of responsibility?

I hold the highest title an engineer can hold where I work. I have been told it is because I "take ownership" of my projects. My philosophy comes from a simple fact: I know who's going to be fixing the thing at 10 o'clock on a Friday night and it sure isn't the "previous designer" (if there was one) and it sure isn't the guy telling me "you can't do it that way". And, yes, BTDT on a Friday night before.

But let me put it as an even easier question. If you were a fan of a losing team, which you would rather have: the leader who takes responsibility and tries to fix everything, or the bureaucrat who wants to assign blame?