Friday, May 21, 2010

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) In the true spirit of this weekly item, for the handful of you who hang on my every word and worried what happened to my post yesterday, work has been an absolute bear this week. Pity because I had the funniest, most incisive and insightful post on the planet written, but of course, that's not going to happen.
 
2) Cavemen grunted. Cavewomen moaned. As funny as this item is, think about the implication of this: it means that masturbation did not just happen, but was encouraged, as was sex play. It also means that women and men experimented with sex, continuing the behaviors seen in lesser primates. Further, it means that a sense of morality, which likely existed back then, was not universally shared. There's a lot more to human behavior than meets the eye.
 
3) Germany finally comes to its senses.
 
4) Think you had a bad day yesterday? Look at Lance Armstrong's day. There's probably some fringe element that thinks he deliberately crashed his bike to get out of the Tour of California, I'd bet, but he risked an awful lot to duck a blood test and reporters' questions.
 
Lance claims that he has undergone the most stringent testing of any athlete in any sport in the world. Not only does he submit to every random test without hesitation, he claims to volunteer the results of his own testing online. It would be easy to dismiss these as window dressing. On the other hand, as with Gary Hart in 1988, there's always someone laying in wait. By now, I suspect he'd have been tripped up on such a bold claim. On the other other hand, maybe his doping is just that far advanced. But here's the thing: he doesn't have anything really on the line in this incarnation of his comeback. Altho he is clearly in top form to win races, he hasn't. He placed third in the Tour de France, his game lifted by the competition with Alberto Contador. In the Tour of California, he was in or near the top ten until he fell yesterday, but he had an enormous disadvantage to overcome in that he was not the team leader (Levi Leipheimer is) and was working in support of him. His stated goal in this comeback was to raise awareness of cancer, which he clearly has accomplished. It would have been foolish of him to risk it all for the sake of taking chemicals that haven't given him an advantage over everyone else.
 
But people have done dumber things for less, so...
 
5) Proof of intelligent design.
 
6) It's a bill, such as it is.
 
7) Meat isn't the only thing being smoked in your favorite restaurant. Makes me want to head over to the CIA for lessons.
 
 
9) Because Rhode Island also shares a border with Mexico, I presume.
 
10) Introducing the newest PeTA spokesman for spaying and neutering....Octomom!