GENERAL


Do Steroids Work Because We Think They Work?

Posted by Jonathan in GENERAL on 03-07-10    No Comments


How awful would it be if Mark McGuire, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and every other doper and juicer had gone to all that trouble for nada?

Well, that might just be the case.

I’ve been digging around in the dusty ole performance enhancing drug world trying to get a handle on this human growth hormone nonsense. As I’ve been moaning about for some time, there really isn’t much “there” there when it comes to information about HGH.

And I came across a 2009 study. Done by Falk Eippert at The University Medical Center in Hamburg, the research used sophisticated imaging technology to show that pain was actively reduced by nothing more than a placebo. The test imaged the cerebral centers of subjects with mild burns who were given a fake pain reducing ointment. The sham goop worked just as well as something called naloxone, which actively blocked nerve receptors. This study was widely quoted at the time: it was clear the power of mere suggestion can help those with active burns help themselves.

With this kind of evidence, how big a stretch is it that high power athletes can recover faster, grow larger and hit further simply because they believe they can. And how interesting would it be to de-cloak the shady world of performance enhancing drugs to actually study this question. We really still don’t know if drugs really do enhance performance, or just give us the will to think they do.

As the great Zen Master Yogi Berra said, “Ninety percent of this game is half mental.”




The HGH Mess: Garbage In Garbage Out

Posted by Jonathan in GENERAL on 03-04-10    No Comments


When it comes to performance enhancing drugs in sports, it really is about not letting the facts get in the way.

Never mind the testing procedures for everything from steroids to human growth hormone to even amphetamines is at best a hit or miss affair. Or the policies to administer and regulate these drugs in organized athletics make little sense. Or that media coverage drifts between the hysterical and the clueless. The spiraling buzz, for example, around supposed HCH doc Anthony Galea has reached the ridiculous.

But now nonsense over HGH is spilling out into the larger world.

Case in point, a fella named Edwin. Maybe it’s his picture on the left or maybe not. Anyway, a guy who signs his name as Edwin has the, tip top number one Website across all major search engines for the term “HGH.” His site, HGHFacts, outranks similar fluff sites like HGH9, HGH.com, Eternal HGH and about a dozen other dubious sources of information about human growth hormone. About the only thing close to factual information is the Wikipedia entry on the subject, which I have to say is particularly thin. And even the Mayo Clinic’s page on HGH has little real data.

Bottom line: information and HGH don’t mix.

If sports is really trying to get itself clean around HGH, how about we start with some real numbers. What does HGH really do?  What are the dosage limits? What are the hard cases of abuse? And maybe even the success stories. It seems we are pretending HGH does not exist. And that only creates a vacuum for dopes like Edwin to step in and define the conversation.

No wonder Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran and Alex Rodriguez get sucked in. They’re just overpaid kids. If these are the facts we are giving them, heaven help all of us.




Winter Olympics Trivia Challenge

Posted by Josh in GENERAL on 02-22-10    No Comments


How well do you know Winter Olympics Tech Trivia? Take our first-ever Facebook Trivia Challenge and find out: http://bit.ly/9hBk4C




NBCOlympics.com: Just Go Ahead And Make It A Facebook Page

Posted by Jonathan in GENERAL, INTERNET on 02-18-10    No Comments


Could we be looking at the high water mark for Web sports content?Spend any time on NBCOlympics.com and I would have to say, yes.

The site is far from awful: plenty of up to date news, medal information and support content. But if you dig into the video assets, slideshows and results pages, it all gets pretty thin, pretty fast. Most of the videos are highlight clips, ancillary segments, and anti fan stuff like the AT&T Soundtrack.The occasional live games are usually meaningless   And, even more worrisome is alot of what is here is not really NBC;s. The tweets pages, for example, are the open twitter feeds from the athletes. Take a look at Anton Ohno’s page. It’s easier to follow this one Twitter, honestly.

As a fan, there’s just not that much there, there.

And the lack of content is hurting sports traffic. Liz Shannon Miller over at NewTeeVee reported 13.6 million uniques over the first 4 days to the site, with something nutty like 2.5 times the traffic over the 2006 games. Now sounds impressive, but compare that to a 25 percent increase in traditional broadcast ratings over Turino, and suddenly the Web site isn’t really as big as it should or could be.

And the reason here is obvious. NBC isn’t making enough money on the Web to justify the games cost. And so it shall remain a TV event. And I wondering, if that will be the case for most major sporting events from the Superbowl to the World Cup. If the Internet can’t deliver the traffic muscle for the Olympics to pay for the events, where will it?

Probably not anywhere. Sports will remain a TV event for a long, long time.




Mid Atlantic DirecTV Users Frozen Out Of Olympics … And Everything Else For That Matter

Posted by Jonathan in GENERAL, TELEVISION on 02-17-10    No Comments


DirecTV freezes out in Mid Atlantic

DirecTV freezes out in Mid Atlantic

If what we are hearing from Mid Atlantic sports fans we know, opting for DirecTV for the Sunday Ticket may not have been such a good idea. What’s the issue?  Satellite reception during snow storms not only sucks during the storm, but it sucks for as long as there’s snow. And considering Snowmaggedon has been going on for three weeks now, our stringer outside of  Baltimire has been out of TV service for nearly a month. Missing the SuperBowl, the NBA All Star Game, The Daytona 500 and the first three days of The Olympics. In fact, he is just getting his service back today, just in time to catch women’s curling. The poor guy is losing his mind.

What happens is the white stuff gets into the parabolic dish that aims the satellite signal at the receptor. That’s the big long thing sticking out above. So whatever reception there is, is crap, if one gets reception at all. Here’ a first hand quote of our friend in Bmore.

People who thought they could rely on (DirecTV) are screwed. And if you have an emergency — like 4 feet of snow — and you need to know what’s going on in your community, you can’t rely on getting TV reception. Radio is king, man.

The bottom line for fans is, if your are thinking of going with DirecTV or Dish, be sure you can get up to the dish to clean the thing. Or consider going with cable.