Yuumoushin.com (勇猛心)

Towards the end of last year, I wrote a post about the “Amazing Wikipedia.” It was in response to a few articles at the time that criticized the “open edit” format. The primary concern being that since it’s an open source encyclopedia, information posted on the site isn’t always true or 100% factual. There were articles (probably still are) about how the concept puts too much power in an individual readers’ hands, essentially allowing a person to “edit history” to their liking. This morning on Slashdot I read an interesting little post and thought I’d share it:

“Despite all the controversy about Wikipedia’s work model, no one can argue the potential of a project that has so effectively demonstrated the usefulness of the ‘wisdom of crowds’ concept. And that wisdom has detected a large number of mistakes in one of the most revered founts of human knowledge, the Encyclopedias Britannica. Among the wrong information collected on this page are the name at birth of Bill Clinton and the definition of the NP problems in mathematics.”

It was only a matter of time, and shows that even the “big boys” make mistakes. And if time permits, I’d suggest heading over to Slashdot and reading some of the user posted points.

Landis says he didn’t take any drugs during the Tour de France, and apparently Armstrong believes him; however, Armstrong doesn’t feel the committee will see it the same way. In this ESPN article, Armstrong goes on to say the following:

“If you went to Major League Baseball and said, ‘We’re going to have random, unannounced, out-of-competition controls,’ they would tell you, ‘You’re crazy. No way, we’re not playing another game,’” he said. “The NFL, they would never do that. NHL, no way. Golf, forget it. Tennis, forget it. Of course cyclists get tested more than anything else, and perhaps that’s why they get caught more than anyone else.”

There are clearly a lot of things that go into testing, etc., but his point is an interesting one. Whether cycling is indeed the most tested sport, I don’t know (seems like the Olympics are pretty hammered as well), but why aren’t there more random testings? There are currently all of these “committees,” which are essentially designed to stop drug use in sports through what I’ve heard as “random testing,” yet, it seems that players are well informed in advance about testing dates. Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose? Isn’t the idea to catch someone in the act? I wouldn’t take issue with that. This brings up other privacy issues, as some players have argued, but the way I see it, it would be just like a random performance review at work.

Then again, are the fans really all that bothered by the doping? Someone I know mentioned to me once that he doesn’t care at all that players use enhancement drugs, as long as they perform and “entertain.” Being a pretty athletic person myself, I disagree. The intensity, drive, physical accomplishment…they are results born out of hard work. And a player that’s put in a lot of hard work and takes home the prize, that’s far more satisfying to me as a fan than someone who used science. Anyway, these issues are slowly chugging along so it will be interesting to see how it all pans out (if it ever does).