Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1984, Armstrong, Bohlman, Carmichael Training Syringes, Carmichael Training Systems, CTS, David Walsh, doping, Eddy B, EPO, extract of cortisone, Greg Strock, Kaiter, Latta, pro cycling, rocket fuel, USA Cycling, Wenzel
Took em long enough.
Strock, who was 17 in 1990, said later he was given pills and injections daily and told they were “vitamins.”
After a race in Washington in 1990, Wenzel took Strock to Carmichael’s motel room, according to the book “From Lance to Landis” by David Walsh, where Carmichael appeared with a hard-sided briefcase.
“Inside were pills, ampoules and syringes. Selecting an ampoule and syringe, Carmichael inserted the needle into the ampoule, drew some liquid and injected Strock in the upper part of the buttocks,” Walsh wrote. Strock said he was told the injection was “extract of cortisone” — a substance that does not exist.
Stock later saw Carmichael at other races with the briefcase, Walsh wrote.
In 2000, Strock and Kaiter sued USA Cycling in Colorado, claiming the drugs had ruined their health. Latta brought a similar suit in Oregon.
USA Cycling in 2006 paid Strock and Kaiter $250,000 each, according to Walsh.
Carmichael kept his name out of the lawsuit, according to Walsh, by paying Strock an amount believed to be $20,000.
“Carmichael agreed to settle very quickly,” Wenzel told a Danish newspaper in 2006. “In hindsight that was probably a smart idea.”
What’s more evil than a coach injecting a kid athlete with some illicit rocket fuel and lying to him about what’s in the syringe?
Kudos to Dave Phillips at CS Gazette for getting into Carmichael’s junk stack.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: biological passport, blood doping, doping, drugs in sports, EPO, Lance Armstrong, Orpah, PEDs, pro cycling, Vaughters
Lance, instead of going all righteous scorched earth on the corrupt UCI and the peloton weasels who all claim to have magically sworn off EPO at the same time, joined his former friends in trying to convince the world that cycling suddenly flipped a 180 in 2005-2006 and entered a fresh n’ clean era of high integrity racing. Matt Beaudin at VeloNews doesn’t get it either:
Lance Armstrong this week fessed up to doping during his seven Tour de France wins, but it’s the things he didn’t say, the things he may have lied about still, that may haunt him yet…..
It was reported in the run-up to the interview that Armstrong considered outing friends and giving up the Union Cycliste Internationale. He did no such thing, and offered little meaningful assistance to a sport that’s suffering from an image problem, in large part due to the culture over which he presided, and helped further with aggressive pursuit of anyone even hinting at talking.
Over nearly three hours and two evenings, the fallen Tour de France star said more in a few words (all yeses, admitting to doping, and doping in every Tour win) than he had in a decade, but he left many scratching their heads, particularly at the notion that his comeback in 2009, during which he finished third at the Tour de France, was ridden on bread and water when blood data said otherwise.
“The last time I crossed that line was 2005,” Armstrong told Winfrey. On night two of a two-part interview, Armstrong said that in conversations with his former wife, Kristin, she made him promise not to use performance enhancing drugs if he were to return to the peloton.
“She said to me, ‘you can do it, under one condition: That you never cross that line again.’ And I said, ‘you got a deal.’ And I never would have betrayed that with her,” he said. “It’s a serious — it was a serious ask, it was a serious commitment.”
That commitment, however, has been refuted by math. In the 2009 Tour, Armstrong’s samples showed fewer red blood cells over a three-week stage race than would normally occur, indicating he was injecting supplemental blood.
Scientists noted that Armstrong’s blood has a less than one a million chance of naturally appearing in such a fashion. Nearly 40 samples were taken over the course of Armstrong’s comeback, providing a baseline for a biological passport.
“The sport was very clean,” Armstrong told Winfrey, citing the very biological passport that ensnared him. “I didn’t expect to get third. I expected to win, like I always expected. And at the end, I said to myself, ‘I just got beat by two guys who were better.’”
If he’s lying, the question is why. …
via Velonews.com: Zip the lips: After hours of TV, too many Armstrong questions remain.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bagman, cash, creepiness, doping, false confessions, hanky panky, LANCE, payoffs, UCI
“…in favor of the wider profile he could give the sport.” Also: In favor of six-figure cash awards.
Verbruggen, who has been accused of turning a blind eye to Armstrong’s activities in favor of the wider profile he could give the sport, insisted that on his watch the UCI “had always fought against doping.”
via Verbruggen happy Armstrong denied UCI doping complicity.
I mean, Lance tell Orpah no hanky panky, so must be true. Right guys? Yah! Okay! — Hein Verbruggen
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Ochowicz, USA Cycling, Verbruggen, weasel power, Weisel power
In a 2008 interview with the Journal, Verbruggen said he had never been involved in a business relationship with Ochowicz and Weisel. Reached by phone Wednesday, Verbruggen declined to comment. “It’s getting ridiculous,” he said when asked about the account.
Neither Weisel nor his lawyer responded to emails and phone messages Wednesday seeking comment about Verbruggen’s account at Weisel’s former firm. …
via New Twist in Armstrong Saga – WSJ.com.
Since we’re rounding up the weasels how come nobody mentions Chris Carmichael.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Armstrong, blood bags, Bruyneel, credibility, CSE, defloyded, Dr. Ferrari, EPO, HGH, Landis, PEDs, Positively False, Positively Positive, Stapleton, Tailwind sports, testosterone patches, weasels, Weisel
Is here IN ALL ITS GLORY (google docs pdf).
Taking blood out, putting blood back in, hidden refrigerators, ball patches, the whole nine yards.
Of course Floyd prior to singing like the canary had been telling everyone how clean he was, begging us to believe he was railroaded by the lab, and asking for money from his loyal fans for his defense. The Floyd Fairness Fund. And wrote a book called Positively False. Now he stands to make a boatload of cash as a Relator in a fed whistleblower case.
The allegations are probably true, and I maintain that Floyd’s win in the Tour was one of the greatest of all time, illicit though it was, but Floyd is roughly as credible as a goose poop.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cost of extraction, energy, Kurt Cobb, Natural gas, oil production, peak oil
Here and there on occasion. Kurt Cobb in the CSM:
Currently, there appears to be no new transformative on-the-shelf technology that will significantly reduce the cost of extracting oil and natural gas. And so, barring a deep economic depression, we can look forward to prices for oil and natural gas that are consistently above the cost of production and therefore far above the bizarrely low forecasts in the air today. In fact, we should expect costs to continue to escalate as we seek out resources that are ever more difficult to extract and refine.
via Natural gas, oil prices: why the long-term forecasts are wrong – CSMonitor.com.
Filed under: maps, Uncategorized | Tags: al Qaeda, AQIM, China, coup, France, Germany, Libya, Mali, Qaddafi, realpolitik, Sanogo, Taureg, Toure, UN
click to enlarge
By no means unknown…
Former president Touré, who came to power in a coup in 1991, enjoyed US military and economic support for many years. According to figures released by the US government, Washington backed Mali with $138 million in 2011 and planned to increase its support to $170 million in 2012. A joint military manoeuvre between US forces and the Mali army took place in January.
The new ruler is by no means unknown to the US government. Sanogo took part in language training courses in Texas from August 2004 until February 2005. In 2007, he was schooled by the US Secret Service and trained as an infantry officer in Georgia for five months.
It is quite possible that Sanogo’s coup was arranged in cooperation with the US government. However, imperialist forces will not be happy with the result because Mali’s north is still in the hands of the insurgents. A future UN intervention supported by the US cannot be excluded, because for Washington, Mali is particularly important from the standpoint of containing Chinese influence in Africa.
Just as the international intervention in Libya was aimed in part at denying China access to North African oil, a military intervention in Mali in cooperation with the US would target Chinese influence in the country.
This influence has grown in recent years. Chinese direct investments in Mali increased 300-fold from 1995 to 2008. Mali ranks with Zambia, South Africa and Egypt among African countries where China has made its largest investments.
In addition to the United States, France also has an intense interest in its former colony, and is just waiting to “rescue” the country’s cultural heritage with a military intervention backed by the UN Security Council. ….
Map and text via http://mediarevolution-amat.blogspot.com/2012/08/western-powers-preparing-intervention.html
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1984, Alan Lim, Amgen, ball patch, blood bags, blood doping, blood packing, Boulder, caffeine, Chris Carmichael, Contador, cortisone, David Millar, doping, Eddy B, EPO, Ferrari, Festina, Festina Affair, Floyd, Floyd Fairness Fund, Floyd Landis, Garmin-Slipstream, Greg Lemond, Hein Verbruggen, hematocrit, juan pelota, Lance Armstrong, Landis, Levi Leipheimer, Moninger, Moreno Argentin, Moser, Och, Orpah, Pantani, PDM, pig hormone, Puerto, Rebecca Twigg, Riis, Schlecks, speed, synthetic hormone, Tailwind sports, Testa, testosterone, Thom Weisel, Tommy D, Tugboat, Tyler Hamilton, UCI, Vaughters, Verenque, Wiggins
Not necessarily a positive activity in which to involve oneself.
Bike riding, however, is still the best.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 2013 oil price, Brent, crack spread, crude oil, EIA, energy, gas prices, oil price predictions, refinery profits, transportation, WTI
Always kind of funny. Flat-line forever.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Aichi, bicycle accident statistics, bike-car crashes, brakeless, brakeless fixies, cycling accidents, FARS, fixed gear, Japan, Osaka, Saitama, Tokyo, track bikes, urban cycling
The number of cyclist fatalities in Japan last year.
According to the data, there were 633 fatal bicycle accidents last year, with most occurring in Saitama, Tokyo, Aichi and Osaka prefectures.
via Police recommend safety training for reckless cyclists ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Armstrong, blood bags, blood boosting, blood doping, blood packing, cycling, doping, EPO, Garmin-Cervelo, Garmin-Slipstream, Garmin-weasels, jumping the couch, Lance Armstrong, Lance on Oprah, Millar, peloton lies, transfusions, unmarked motos, Vaughters
And Vaughters, TD, Levi, etc. All very concerned. I would be too. What if LA blows the lid off this “we all decided to quit doping and race clean in 2006” nonsense? Could be trouble in the tangled web.
“My biggest concern is that it will be completely stage-managed, that he will just be ‘given the ball,’ and that it will all be about his emotions rather than concentrating on exactly what he did wrong,” said Millar.
via Millar leery of ‘stage-managed’ Armstrong interview with Winfrey.
When reading about supposed new leafs turned it’s important to keep in mind some things: THE SAME PEOPLE
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: blasted on EPO, blood doping, blood packing, doped to the gills, doping, Dr. Ferrari, EPO, ironman, Lance Armstrong, lava fields, Operacion Puerto, peloton, pro cycling, rocket fuel, triathlon, Vaughters, weasel power, weaseldom, witchhunt, xterra
He’s one of those triathlon guys when it’s all said and done.
…In the end, no matter how much Tygart and Armstrong had fought each other, they still needed each other. Armstrong, 41, would like to resume competing in triathlons and running events that are sanctioned by organizations that follow the World Anti-Doping Code. Tygart wants to know how Armstrong so skillfully eluded testing positive for banned drugs for nearly a decade.
[…]
“I think it’s very valuable to them to know exactly how Lance avoided getting caught and how tests were evaded,” said Jonathan Vaughters, a former Armstrong teammate, a vocal antidoping proponent and a current co-owner of the Garmin-Sharp professional cycling team. “They need someone on the inside to tell them how it was done, and not just anyone on the inside, someone on the inside who was very influential. Someone like Lance.”
via What Would Lance Armstrong and Usada Gain With Confession? – NYTimes.com.
Bunk-owski. Tygart knows exactly how Armstrong dunnit, because the other guys who had also “eluded positive tests for nearly a decade” testified all about it. And those guys are on Vaughters’ team. He reaches the seventh level of weasel in his quote above.
(After 6-month suspensions those fellas will be back racing and cashing in on their doping by next season. But of course, they all decided at exactly the same time not to do it any more, and race totes clean now. ALL CLEAN NOW. Go home.)
When reading or listening to Vaughters it’s important to keep in mind some things: THE SAME PEOPLE
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: crime rates, lead, lead and violent crime, leaded gasoline, molecules, Pb, Rick Nevin, violent crime
All sorts of theories have been offered and several more have been proffered to explain the drop in violent crime rates in the U.S. What about Pb?
Rick Nevin, “How Lead Exposure Relates to Temporal Changes in IQ, Violent Crime, and Unwed Pregnancy”
This study compares changes in children’s blood lead levels in the United States with subsequent changes in IQ, based on norm comparisons for the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) given to representative national samples of children in 1984 and 1992. The CogAT norm comparisons indicate shifts in IQ levels consistent with the blood lead to IQ relationship reported by an earlier study and population shifts in average blood lead for children under age six between 1976 and 1991. The CogAT norm comparisons also support studies indicating that the IQ to blood lead slope may increase at lower blood lead levels. Furthermore, long term trends in population exposure to gasoline lead were found to be remarkably consistent with subsequent changes in violent crime and unwed pregnancy. Long term trends in paint and gasoline lead exposure are also strongly associated with subsequent trends in murder rates going back to 1900….
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: auto sales, bailouts, cars, FRED, Government Motors, light vehicle sales, transportation, vehicle miles, Vmt
…with vehicle miles traveled in yellow.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: FHWA, oil consumption, traffic volume trends, US oil consumption, US oil demand, vehicle miles traveled, Vmt
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alaska, Beaufort Sea, Coast Guard, energy, Kulluk, oil production, peak oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Shell
‘Season full of headaches:’
Adding to a season full of headaches for Shell Alaska’s debut offshore-drilling program in the U.S. Arctic, the company’s Kulluk drill rig was stuck Friday in monster seas off the coast of Alaska as its tugboat’s engines failed and the Coast Guard cutter that came to assist became entangled in a towline.
There were no immediate threats to crew or equipment, but Shell Alaska was rushing additional aid vessels to the scene as the Kulluk, which drilled the beginnings of an exploratory oil well in the Beaufort Sea over the summer, sat without ability to move forward in 20-foot seas about 50 miles south of Kodiak.
via Coast Guard cutter hits trouble trying to aid Shell rig off Alaska | Local News | The Seattle Times.
Don’t freak out, but this is what Peak Oil For All Intents And Purposes looks like.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Art of Cycling, art of urban cycling, Energy Benchmarking reports, energy efficiency, energy use in large buildings, EPA, Greener Greater Buildings Plan, LEED, NYC, NYC Finance, plaza, Seagram Building, urban cycling
As part of the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan, Finance is required to publish a benchmarking report that shows the Energy Utilization Index (EUI) and Energy Star ratings of city government buildings.
via NYC Energy Benchmarking Reports.
The Seagram Building (1958) scored a 3. Out of 100. I wrote a paragraph about this influential building in Art of Cycling.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: blood doping, doping, EPO, Lance Armstrong
From ESPN:
LONDON — Lance Armstrong is being sued for more than $1.5 million by a British newspaper over the settlement of a libel action, which followed doping allegations against the cyclist that it published.
The Sunday Times paid Armstrong 300,000 pounds (now about $485,000) in 2006 to settle a case after it reprinted claims from a book in 2004 that he took performance-enhancing drugs.
“It is clear that the proceedings were baseless and fraudulent. Your representations that you had never taken performance enhancing drugs were deliberately false.”
— Sunday Times, in letter to Lance Armstrong’s lawyers
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: apparently nein, Bad Nigel, Bakken, Christian Parenti, Colorado Springs Gazette, energy production, fracking is new technology, fracking is old technology, fraulein, icepick, limits to growth, Nigel Somebody, oil production propaganda, peak oil, propaganda, shale formations, stabbing one's eyes out, Thatcher
All on the same page.
This bit by Christian Parenti in The Nation is an example of lefty journalists carrying water for the oil and gas lobby, unknowingly or not, by repeating the false narrative that fracking is new technology:
As the economists say, demand calls forth supply. Just look at all the new shale gas. The United States has gone from having a twenty-year supply of known reserves to a 100-year supply, thanks to the new technology of hydraulic fracturing used to get at both gas and oil. Whatever one wants to say against the practice of fracking (and, for the record, I believe it is dangerous and so I’m against it), it has opened up huge new fossil fuel reserves and thus pushed the notion of “peak oil” further into the future. (The real problem is not too little oil, but too much oil and the pollution it causes.) In other words, technology and innovation continue to transcend the limits of supply.
Parenti is depressingly incorrect on a fundamental level. Fracking hasn’t “pushed the notion of ‘peak oil’ further into the future.” Peak Oil has dragged fracking into the present. I do agree about fracking being environmentally dangerous, but Parenti needs to spend more time researching his subject. Like five minutes more.
via http://www.thenation.com/article/171610/limits-growth-book-launched-movement#
Even anti-fracking activists in anti-fracking pieces blindly repeat the industry’s PR that fracking and horizontal drilling are new technology. Do some research kids! It’s good! From Truth-out.org:
Advanced fracking technology has allowed gas drillers to uncover previously unavailable gas reserves from deep underground shale formations. The new technology, known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, has quickly industrialized rural communities in states across the US and become one of America’s most high profile environmental controversies.
I mean, that writer really sounds like he knows what he’s talking about with that string of words there, does he not?
Local news outlets always get it wrong. That’s their job. If they don’t, it signals something really major is about to happen, like the water getting sucked out to sea before the tsunami hits.
New technology has allowed drillers to reach oil for the first time that’s been trapped under the Kansas soil for millions of years. Horizontal fracking drills a diagonal path through the rock, releasing it with a combination of chemicals, water, and sand.
I enjoy that part — where ‘horizontal fracking drills a diagonal path…” Icepick, eyes. Stab, stab, stab.
Of course the Colorado Springs Gazette opinion writers got it terribly wrong. They should call that paper Everything In Here Is Wrong. Gazette. But You Love It Gazette:
New technology, fracking, makes the area a promising source of natural gas and oil that our country needs if we are to free ourselves from foreign fuel.
via http://www.gazette.com/articles/oil-148424-council-gas.html#ixzz2Fq8T83ZN
No surprises there. But the Germans?
Germans — wrong:
Thanks to a new technology called fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, shale buried deep underground and hard to reach can now be extracted in a more lucrative way.
via Deutche Welle: http://www.dw.de/whats-behind-the-natural-gas-boom-in-the-us/a-16459631
You’d think the German reporters would be more precise or something, but apparently nein.
The Brits have been deciding if they want to “take part in the fracking revolution,” or not, as if the country’s notable lack of shale formations were a minor technicality.
Former British Secretary of State for Energy from the Thatcher years Nigel Somebody got it all hilariously wrong in his recent wildly incoherent pro-frack screed in the Daily Mail:
Until recently, the cost of extracting the gas has been prohibitive.
He got that part mostly right.
But the combination of two innovative technologies — horizontal drilling and fracking to release the natural resources — has changed all that.
No Nigel. Bad Nigel.
Fracking is also “new technology” over at Reuters, big time:
The Bakken shale formation and its bounty of oil and gas is a proving ground for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” as the new technology loosens more than 150 million barrels a year out of the ground in Montana and neighboring North Dakota alone.
via http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/14/usa-montana-schweitzer-idUSL1E8NDII420121214
To review, fracking is NEW. new new new. New technology, that has unlocked previously unreachable reserves of oil and gas.
Are we all on the same page now?
Related posts: Fracking is old technology, Chris Martenson on the fracking narrative
Industrialized Cyclist Notepad 