The Daily Dose/February 10, 2018
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Notes from around the Human Experience…
HIGHER…STRONGER…STONED: The 2018 Winter Olympics are underway. The first Olympic record is in the books with Japanese ski jumper Noriaki Kasai appearing in his eighth Games, the Nigerians, of all people, have a women’s bobsled team and the next two weeks will be filled with the usual triumphs and heartbreaks an Olympic fortnight produces.
As usual, though, the big story is doping – athletes gaining an advantage by using processes and substances that are currently illegal. Doping is so prevalent the IOC was unable to prepare for this year’s scandals because it only cleared the decks of doping issues from the 2014 Games as the torch bearer was limbering up for Friday’s opening ceremonies.
Get Your Official Daily Dose Policy Right Here: We’ve said this before:
Professional athletes should be able to put whatever they want into their bodies. Make everything legal and nobody is cheating.
Long-time readers of this crap know we have always supported legalization, for a variety of reasons:
- One, they’re doing it anyway. Current testing methods catch only a fraction of dopers. Also, current testing methods are always a step-and-a-half behind the latest doping protocols. This is borne out by the number of samples from past Olympics that are later found to be illegal.
- Two, doping doesn’t give you talent, it merely helps you get the most of the talent you were issued at birth. We are regular weightlifters here and we take a pre-workout supplement. It makes about a three percent difference. It has its benefits, but it hasn’t made us Arnold.
- Three, while some say legalization would put some athletes in less developed countries at a disadvantage, they’re already at a disadvantage. Making doping legal would do more to level the playing field for them than keeping doping illegal would.
- Four, it puts us fans in a bind because we are never certain which performances are legal and which are not until after the event is completed.
- Five, us fans don’t really care. Time and time again we continue to watch and spend our money to attend events where there are no guarantees top performances are compliant with current anti-doping standards.
The Bottom Line: The resources given to ensuring compliance with current doping regulations are not getting the job done and are ultimately being wasted. The current anti-doping system is broken and beyond repair. It is time to let athletes put whatever they want into their bodies.
CSA! CSA!: Jefferson Davis, who had resigned his seat in the United States Senate on January 21, is notified by telegram of his election provisional president of the Confederate States of America on this date in 1861. A convention meeting in Montgomery, Alabama had elected Davis the day before, and he would be inaugurated on the 18th.
Great Moments In The Cold War: The United State and Soviet Union swap spies on this date in 1962, with the Soviets releasing spy plane pilot Gary Powers and the US releasing captured spy Rudolph Abel. The exchange took place on Glienicke Bridge – also known as the Bridge of Spies – spanning West Berlin and East Germany
Powers, flying a CIA spy plane, had been shot down over Soviet airspace in 1960. Powers’ cover story of being a wayward weather plane was not believed, though it was months before he admitted anything. Powers was ultimately convicted of espionage and been serving his sentence in a prison east of Moscow. Abel had been convicted of espionage in 1957 and was four years into his 30-year sentence.
Hot, Constitutional Amendment Action: The Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution takes effect on this date in 1967 when those rascals in Nevada take time out from shooting dice and become the 38th state to ratify the amendment.
The amendment is rather useful. It clarifies that when a president dies the vice president becomes president and not acting president, provides for filling a vacant vice presidency and provides for how a president can be declared unfit.
The amendment was necessary because the constitution was rather vague on rather a vice president became president or acting president, said nothing about filling a vice presidential vacancy and did not cover an incapacitated president.
Oh Yeah: The Twenty-Fifth Amendment had been sent to the several states on July 6, 1965.
No, I Guess We Can’t All Get Along: An estimated 5,000 male Kenyans of Somali descent are massacred by Kenyan security forces at an airstrip in northeast Kenya on this date in 1984. Before being slaughtered, the males had been held at the airstrip for several days without food and water.
The Kenyan government would not admit anything until 2000. Until then they had only acknowledged a few dozen deaths in a “security operation”.
Quotebook: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. – Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), 1965 Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Pluto will next move inside of Neptune’s orbit in 2227.
Today’s Stumper: How many constitutional amendments are still awaiting ratification?- Answer next time!
