At least the Monday-morning-quarterbacking on the Super Bowl has a half-life of just a few hours compared to the the ceaseless coverage in the two weeks prior to the game. I'm thinking that the post-game interest in Madonna or Gisele has already fizzled and there'll need to be a serious wardrobe malfunction to re-capture the imagination of the the collective sports/entertainment/voyeur world. Let's hear it for the return of Big Monday basketball!
As a cycling enthusiast, I was disappointed to read of the two-year ban handed down by the Court of Arbitration de Sport in Geneva to TdF champion Alberto Contador. Irrespective of whether you're a fan of the guy or not (I"m not), this is a bad result for the sport. He's stripped of his 2010 title, and loses all of his placings since then. And there's a money-thing that has yet to have been decided.
From what I've read, there's not a debate that a banned substance was found in his blood in a test during the 2010 Tour. Contador tried to argue that the ingestion had occurred randomly from tainted food. From afar, that sounds like a weak argument. With no convincing position to explain it, the Court essentially had no place to go except for the penalties.
On a slightly related matter, the US Department of Justice has decided to walk away from it's fraud case involving Lance Armstrong. I think that their appetite for high-profile cases has waned with their poor results in the Barry Bonds and Roger Clemons investigations. Note that Contador's situation was on the doping itself, while the LA case was on deceit to the USPS who was the team sponsor at the time in question.
(The US Anti-doping Agency says that it will continue to look at LA on the doping-side. There are definitely some folks in cycling who want to hang Lance out to dry. A couple of his former teammates have fallen on their swords about their own doping, and feel like LA has gotten away with it, and profited greatly. And, unlike their facts, his money has allowed him to fight the DOJ system with the lawyers and PR people experienced in such dog-fights. Which raises one of my long-standing opinions about law: court cases aren't about determining right and wrong; its about winning, Baby!)
Speaking of something's half-life, when will the media be satiated of the sexual escapades of Camelot? That pillar of hard news in broadcast television, nbc, (I refuse to capitalize it!) has the now-68 year-old former intern to JFK on their prime-time news(?) program. I mean really. Let's pull something salacious from
50 freakin' years ago and call it news-worthy! I actually kind of liked Brian Williams at one point several years ago. The cool aid really got to him.
One of the nice little features to my new laptop is a standard memory-card reader. This allows me to just pull the card from either of my cameras and directly download the pics. Very handy. (Now I see that my new desk-top tower has a similar slot!) This is in contrast to a corded download process originally, and then a USB port thingamabobber converter that I had used up through Christmas. Makes you wonder about the technological half-lives of thingamabobber manufacturers.
More later.
BCOT
1 comment:
I found it particularly interesting that the DOJ gave no reason for closing the case after two years of being funded by the tax payers (romney's 16% included). The lead prosecutor was featured in outside magazine a year or so ago. If I had to guess, that guy is probably now pulling the DOJ assignment equivalent of being stationed at a remote weather station in Alaska. I wonder what the total DOJ cost was to chase LA?
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