Another Disgrace of Olympic Proportions

In 2000, Marion Jones adamantly denied the use of performance enhancing drugs after winning 5 medals during the Sydney Olympics and became America's darling. Seven years later, the woman sobbingly announces to reporters that she pleaded guilty to two counts of making false statements to federal agents about her drug use. Her admission of drug use is yet another red mark on the Olympics. With the 2008 Beijing Games fast approaching, what can the World Anti-Doping Agency do to catch all the cheaters who are currently preparing to compete next year? In all likelihood, most cheaters will continue to get away with it regardless of what the agency may claim because the people "designing" the steroids and human growth hormones are typically 2 steps ahead of authorities.

Even with the tearful confession, I can't feel sorry for Marion nor should you. I have a hard time believing she had absolutely no knowledge of what was being given to her. Like Barry Bonds, she's claiming the flaxseed oil defense. You have to be a complete moron not to suspect something was up. Doping is a science and the cocktail of drugs are taken in a regimented way. To say that she was tricked into thinking she was taking flaxseed oil just doesn't fly because there's no way that the people supplying and administering the drugs would've given Marion just one drug.

With her confession also comes word of her retirement. I would really like to know the US Olympic Committee's official stance on her confession and what kind of ban, if any, will be put in place (even though she retired). Very few countries are as strict as Canada when it comes to the use of performance enhancing drugs among athletes. There's no better example than Ben Johnson's lifetime ban from competing under the Canadian flag. All countries should adopt this policy. Unfortunately, most nations care more about medal count and bragging rights.

Is Technology Killing the Art of Spelling?

I know this is going to make me sound like an old fart but I need to get it off my chest. When u r not txtn on a fone, try to spell the words properly. I frequent Internet forums/discussion groups for information and it drives me nuts when I have to try and decipher what some kid put out there. It's hard to respect someone or take them seriously when they type out a message like this guy:

"hey wutup every1?? i jsu moved in dis area and dun kno de ppl dat r gonan b goin to dis schoo nxt year. IM lookin for the afghans,iranis and de all ma brownies." (courtesy of a Facebook group)

Is it me or does this look like gibberish? I would seriously question this kid's ability to spell at a high school level. But I guess none of his teachers would see the problem even if he did have trouble spelling because of good ol' spell checkers. I have no issue with using short form but this is ridiculous. The scary thing is this is common practice among teens and preteens. What's even scarier is the fact that the English language evolves over time and this could be the direction it takes.

If you're a parent, please do your kid a favour and make sure he/she can spell correctly without the use of a spell checker on the computer.

Bye Bye Britney

Oh, how the once beloved Britney Spears has fallen. After last night's pathetic, amateurish performance at the MTV VMA show, it's safe to say her career is officially dead. The MTV producers took a gamble and it failed big time.

This was supposed to be Britney's big opportunity to promote her upcoming album so you'd think she would work her ass off to get back in shape and learn the choreography but that would make too much sense for a self-indulgent, trailer park princess. The fact that she had 2 kids is no excuse for the way she looked on stage. She could've chosen a more tasteful, yet sexy outfit to suit her current self instead of something young Britney would've worn on stage. She should've learned from someone like Nelly Furtado. Physique aside, this girl couldn't even keep up with her dancers. There is no excuse for that considering she used to be a capable dancer on stage. Probably the worst part of the performance was her inability to lip sync. I guess in her effort to keep up with the choreography, she forgot to keep up with her own prerecorded voice.

Justin Timberlake probably had a good chuckle (if he even bothered to watch). K-Fed must've pissed his pants laughing so hard. Let's hope for her sake that the new album does better than K-Fed's crap.

Is Elections Canada taking PC too far?

I'm glad we live in a country where people are allowed to practice their cultural and/or religious beliefs. However, Elections Canada is taking it too far with a new policy to allow Muslim women wearing burkas to vote without having to reveal their faces to confirm identity. Visual identification is in place for a reason. We need a transparent electoral system that is as black and white as possible. Look at the Florida debacle during the Bush/Gore election. This is not an issue about Muslims or the wearing of burkas. This is simply about making sure every person who exercises his/her right to vote is who they claim to be. Every Canadian should have to follow the same rules of law so no one can question the legitimacy of the results.

Before anyone starts to point fingers, it should be made clear that Elections Canada made this decision without any consultation from the Muslim community. No one lobbied for this new policy to be implemented. Hopefully, Parliament will be able to reverse the decision before the next election. Otherwise, I hope everyone will have a Halloween mask ready. Hmm? Darth Maul or George Dubya?

756 With A Big Asterisk

Love him or hate him, Barry Bonds made baseball history tonight after hitting the record breaking 756th homer. He topped that off later with his 757th career dinger. Regardless of what Mr. Bonds says, his record will always be tainted in my mind and the minds of many others.

Let's get one thing straight. Before he bulked up into a monster slugger, he was already on the road to the Hall of Fame. You could take all the performance enhancing drugs you want, but it's not going to help you hit a 90+ MPH pitch. The man was born with talent. What's in question is whether he could've accomplished the feat of breaking the long standing record set by Hank Aaron 33 years ago without performance enhancing drugs.

Of course there's no definitive proof that links Bonds to the use of performance enhancing drugs, but there's enough questionable evidence that makes you go hmm. He claims that if he did take performance enhancing drugs, it was administered to him without his knowledge. For anyone to go through such a physical transformation, especially a professional athlete, and not know what he/she is consuming is just ludicrous in my opinion. The training and dieting (I don't mean weight loss dieting) required needs to be well thought out. Even if you rely on high priced trainers and nutritionists to help you get there, you still learn much about what you're doing to your body.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what I think. Unless some indisputable evidence surfaces, Bonds will go into the history books as the man who holds the home run record and the asterisk next to that number will eventually fade.

What The D#@k

If you're into photography or know someone who is, check out the funny work of Aaron Johnson called What The Duck. What started as a blog filler for the band he was in turned into a popular Web comic strip among photo geeks like myself. You can catch all of his work at the What The Duck website by clicking on the duck below.

Canada Ignores White-Collar Crimes

With the recent verdict in the only Bre-X criminal case, Canada has once again shown just how lax its laws are towards white-collar crime (and every other type of crime for that matter). John Felderhof, the geologist involved, was found not guilty. He was the only person to ever be charged with a crime. Bre-X president David Walsh died of a brain aneurysm and fellow geologist Mike de Guzman supposedly fell to his death from a helicopter while flying over the jungles of Indonesia. Not a single other person involved with the company was ever charged. It's hard to believe that no one else could have been involved with one of Canada's biggest investment fraud.

Unlike our American counterpart, the Ontario Securities Commission did not feel the need to toughen regulations in the market, even after the collapse of Nortel. Here's an example of a company that operated for who knows how long with false financials and no one got as much as a slap on the wrist for their involvement. The CEO at the time, John Roth, walked away with well over $100 million after he cashed in stock options in 2000. Millions of Canadians suffered a financial loss either directly or indirectly as a result of the Nortel blunder and Mr. Roth gets to retire comfortably. Even after the replacement of key executives, inaccurate financial filings continued. No one has ever been held accountable in Canada.

I'm pretty sure that nothing would have happened to Ken Lay if Enron had been operating in Canada.