Stickybuffalo.com

So, did you know that oil prices, which were actually really uncomfortably high a few years ago and only fell back largely as a result of a global recession (to which they most likely contributed), have been rising lately and, especially in conjunction with but perhaps even without the effect of “unrest” in the middle east, may well choke off economic recovery?

Especially here in the United States where, largely as a result of taxes making up a relatively microscopic portion of the price paid for petroleum by consumers, the economy is both highly dependent on oil and thus really staggeringly dangerously vulnerable to high oil prices?

Yeah. Amazing. Who would have imagined…?

Tell you what. Mr. President? I like your “we are not going to keep refighting the same battle over and over” approach to health care reform. Can we start taking a similar “we are not going to keep blithely putting our foot into the same trap over and over” approach to energy policy? Some time? Acknowledging that no it’s not really your fault but that, at the same time, it will at least start to be if you leave office having deferred this problem to the next administration just like your predecessors have been doing for 30 or 40 years? (Also acknowledging that while I like the high speed trains, they aren’t really going to be of adequate scale or timeline as a solution, by themselves.)

What’s that you say? Americans have turned from the oil-industry-friendly party to shift power toward the oil-industry-fanatically-worshipful-I’m-talking-literal-blood-sacrifices party?

Oh. Right.

Christ almighty god. America collectively may well deserve the full consequences of the absolutely determined intentional fucking stupidity which has led us to this pass, but personally I do not. Dear fucking lord.

I suppose we’d probably better just hope that these guys iron out the minor little “technical details” and change history, then. (Not holding my breath for that, either.)

Ah, Cancun.

I’ve never been there. Admittedly I’m not much of a sand-and-sun person anyway, but Cancun’s reputation as a kind of ne plus ultra of “girls-gone-wild, fly to another country in order to binge on mediocre alcoholic beverages and hop into bed with strangers, college-age American’s fantasy” has always made it seem a particularly stupid and pointless destination to me.

And, in that sense, it seems entirely appropriate as host for the latest stop on international diplomats’ endless world tour of climate change conferences.

Writing as an environmentalist, as someone very concerned about climate change and as someone who considers a binding international agreement to sharply curtail greenhouse gas emissions to be the real most urgent priority facing nearly all the world’s governments, both individually and collectively, I nonetheless have to ask: is there any point whatsoever to this gathering? (more…)

[note: this started as a response to charlie's tour de france post, but got a little too long for the comments thread.]

if you think that’s bad, just wait ’til 2012, when gene doping will be in full flower just in time for london.

“It is possible to introduce genes into people and change the DNA of some of their cells, genes that affect the way muscles function or the way that they heal after injury,” he said.

Although gene doping is probably still in its infancy, as techniques become more sophisticated naturally occurring hormones could be boosted or altered to enhance performance.

“In mice and in monkeys and in other tests that have been done, the animals have shown increased amount of blood production,” Dr Friedmann said. “Those mice have in fact become much stronger and much more muscular.”

…and we’re still at least a decade away from developing a test that will be able to detect it. some think it’s already going on in beijing this summer:

Dr Peter Larkins is a former head doctor for Australia’s athletics team and past president of Sports Medicine Australia.

“I think it is happening now,” he says of gene doping.

“I can’t believe that 10 years after gene therapy has been proven and we have mice that grow muscles twice the size of normal mice and mice that are called marathon mice because they run all day, I can’t believe the scientists who have been unethical enough to help athletes cheat for the last 30 years aren’t giving that technology to some people.

” Associate Professor Bob Stewart, a drugs-in-sport expert from Victoria University, is also pessimistic.

“We just have to accept the fact that athletes and biochemists are a jump ahead of the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) testers,” he says.

“accept facts”??! sounds like surrender talk to me!

seriously, though. the puritans and drug warriors and self-deluded nostalgia mongers who run professional sports (yes, the olympics are a pro outfit) have an extremely simple choice to make: either figure out a way to remove big money from the equation, or deal with the fact that athletes as a group are going to continue doing whatever is required of them to stay competitive. it’s unreasonable — hell, it’s unfair — to expect otherwise from people whose livelihood is competition.

and please, no lectures about sportsmanship and unfair advantages from the olympian sector, when the IOC already sanctions huge technological and economic advantages for certain competitors. why is it that the larger, developed nations always seem to do best in the medal count, anyway? is it because we’re naturally superior, or could it be that our teams enjoy superior training facilities and equipment, better coaches and staff, larger and more competitive recruiting pools, and more all-around institutional support?

drawing the line at drugs seems pitifully arbitrary, especially when the pace of development in the doping sciences is so fast that we can’t even agree on a stable universal definition of what “doping” is in the first place, or in some cases, as charlie notes, how to differentiate between doping and legitimate sports medicine. besides, as long as prohibition prevails and doping happens underground, the aforementioned institutional & economic disparities mean that only the most technologically disadvantaged dopers — the ones who can only afford treatments that the piss police have already figured out how to catch — will get caught.

it seems obvious that the hardline anti-doping stance is more ideological than anything else. but don’t take my word for it: ask WADA chair Dr. Gary Wadler why cannabis is also a no-no:

“Specifically, three criteria are used when considering whether or not a drug should be on the Prohibited List: (a) Does the drug or method have the potential of enhancing performance? (b) Does its abuse represent an actual or potential risk to an athlete’s health? And/or (c) does its use violate the spirit of sport? To be even considered for addition to the Prohibited List, the drug or method under consideration must fulfill at least two of the three aforementioned criteria.

The use of marijuana… is considered to represent a risk to the athlete’s health and its use violates the spirit of sport.”

that is to say, “drugs are bad, m’kay?”