Home
The Daily Dose/October 12, 2007
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
Notes from around the human experience...
ON THIS DATE: In 1999, the United Nations estimated that the population of the world had reached six billion people. Nobody really knows if this is true or not, but we humans like to make note of milestones like this, and the UN spent a lot of time and money figuring this out and even went so far as to designate a Bosnian child born two minutes after midnight as the planet's six billionth person.
USA! USA! The US Census Bureau was the fly in the ointment, insisting that the world had reached the six billion mark the previous July.
FunFact: Current world population is estimated by various sources as between 6.6 and 6.7 billion people.
USA! USA! Vol. 2: Current US population is estimated at 303 million people. Give or take.
What This Planet Really Needs Is A Good Famine: The world's population has grown at an unprecedented, perhaps alarming, rate in the last couple of centuries.
History Lesson: This wasn't always the case. World population was estimated at 250 million in 950 AD and took 650 years to reach 500 million and another 204 years reach one billion, in 1804. From there it was a relatively short 123 years to two billion, in 1927, before mankind settled in and began adding another billion people every 12 years or so.
The exponential rise in the world's population wasn't from families having more children, because throughout history families pumped out kids left and right because only until relatively recently could families be relatively certain all their kids would live past childhood. But the industrial revolution resulted in more prosperous people who were able to afford better living conditions, like rat-free homes, a single bed for everyone and access to better drinking water, which resulted in longer lives. Corresponding advances in agriculture, medicine and transportation led to mankind being able to feed these people.
We Report, You Decide: Though world population continues to grow, it is not growing as fast as it used to. In the late 1980's, the world was growing by about 85 million people per year. Now it is growing by a mere 75 million people per year, as no less than twenty countries, mainly in Europe, are either producing fewer new people than the number of people that are dying or leaving, or, if they do have a positive birth rate, they aren't producing enough new people to overcome the kids that die before reaching adulthood.
ALSO ON THIS DATE: In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt changed the name of the presidential residence to the White House. It had been known as the Executive Mansion.
HEY, DON'T FORGET US!: On this date in 1968, the 19th Summer Olympic Games opened in Mexico City. It is the latest opening date for summer Olympiad held in the northern hemisphere, and the high altitude contributes to the world record in the long jump being obliterated by Bob Beamon, and the triple jump world record being broken no less than five times by three different athletes. It is also the first Olympics where athletes are tested for doping, with one athlete, a Swedish pentathlete, being disqualified for being sloshed.
We Are Not Making That Up: It's true. Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall tested positive for having had "a couple of beers" before the pistol shooting portion of the pentathlon competition. Exactly why someone would want to slam a couple of brewskis immediately before competing in a discipline that demands steady hands isn't clear, but the Swedes eventually had to forfeit their bronze medal.
AS LONG AS WERE ON THE SUBJECT: From these humble beginnings, drug testing in sports has evolved into its current fiasco. The World Anti-Doping Agency has an impossible task - eliminating doping in all international competitions - that history shows it has been ill-equipped to handle.
Item 1: The recent Marion Jones imbroglio is a good example. Jones, who had doping allegations following here since high school, recently admitted, after years of denials, to taking steroids and having been on them while winning five gold medals at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Despite this, Jones never failed a drug test because tests in place at the time were unable to produce a positive result even when the athlete was juiced up from here to Reno!
It's hard to know what to think. The recent world track and field championships in Japan this past summer produced zero positive drug tests, though a French hurdler did test positive before the meet, which shows either that testing has caught up with athletes, at least for now, or doping is so sophisticated now that its impossible to catch anyone.
Something Else: Though the World Anti-Doping Agency likes to give the impression it is the all-knowing master in this matter, it is not, as the Floyd Landis case shows.
Landis, recall, tested positive for having an abnormally high high testosterone/epitestosterone ratio after stage 17 of the 2006 Tour De France, a result that would ultimately strip him of his title. He recently lost an arbitration case in the matter, and has announced he will make a final appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, headquartered in Switzerland.
Listen Up: Now, we are not passing judgment on whether or not Landis was doped up or not. Using the circumstantial evidence that makes Internet columns like this so much fun, it is not completely unreasonable to conclude that Landis may have had some help, because what he did in stage 17 was utterly incredible. Following disastrous 16th stage that saw him fall from the first to eleventh, eight minutes behind the leader, he not only won stage 17, he did so by six minutes and moved into third place overall, 18 seconds out of second place and 30 seconds behind the leader. And he did this with a bad hip that was eventually repaired in a procedure known as resurfacing, which is similar to hip replacement.
Interesting in the Landis case was the decision by the arbitrators who denied his latest appeal, who admitted that Landis' tests were marred by errors in procedure and otherwise sloppy practices, but were not sufficiently sloppy or egregious to invalidate his results.
Well, Why Weren't They?: We realize that doping labs aren't to be confused with the supreme court or even Judge Judy. But athletes are entitled to have their testing conducted in labs that aren't run by the Keystone Kops, in an environment that is free from sloppy practices and errors in procedure and that produce results that are completely beyond reproach. If it can't do this, its results simply do not have merit and athletes must be given the benefit of any doubt.
It's difficult to legislate fairness and morality and even more difficult to enforce it. While everyone here at the Writer's Shack would be thrilled to see competitions where the only thing athletes ate before the big game were their Wheaties, this is simply never going to be the case. Athletes have always have tried to enhance their performance and they are not going to stop now, and it is a waste of every resource allocated to try to, and we renew our more or less ignored call to let athletes put into their bodies whatever they want.
Comments? Recipes? Threats? Email us here!
Home |
|