Steroid Report Cites "Collective Failure"

NYTimes
Duff Wilson/Michael Scmidt

Former Senator George J. Mitchell released a blistering report Thursday that tied 89 Major League Baseball players, including Roger Clemens, to the use of illegal, performance-enhancing drugs. The report used informant testimony and supporting documents to provide a richly detailed portrait of what Mr. Mitchell described as “baseball’s steroids era.”

Mr. Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, was the most prominent name on a list that included seven other former most valuable players as well as players from all 30 teams. The list included more than a dozen players who have had significant roles with the Yankees, and more than a dozen Mets, too. It also included 11 players alone from the 2000 Los Angeles Dodgers.

Of all the active players tied to the use of steroids and human growth hormone, which are illegal without a prescription and banned by baseball, only Jason Giambi of the Yankees cooperated with Mitchell’s 20-month investigation. The Toronto Blue Jays’ Frank Thomas, widely known for his antisteroids stance, was the only other active player who agreed to talk with Mr. Mitchell’s investigators.

Mr. Mitchell’s report of about 400 pages was based on interviews with more than 700 people, including 60 former players, and 115,000 pages of documents, including receipts, canceled checks, telephone records and e-mail messages. The key evidence was provided by Kirk Radomski, a former Mets clubhouse attendant, and Brian McNamee, a former trainer for Mr. Clemens and Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte, who was also named in the report.

In the report, Mr. McNamee is quoted describing how he injected Mr. Clemens with illegal drugs at least 16 times from 1998 through 2001. Mr. Clemens, 45, adamantly denied the report’s accusations of his use of steroids and human growth hormone, his Houston lawyer, Rusty Hardin, said in a telephone interview Thursday night. Mr. Hardin said he had been told Mr. McNamee was pressured to give up names or face prosecution by the I.R.S. Special Agent Jeff Novitzky, who has led the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative and Radomski investigations.

Mr. Hardin criticized Mr. Mitchell for naming players based on uncorroborated allegations. “He has thrown a skunk into the jury box, and we will never be able to remove that smell,” Mr. Hardin said. Mr. Pettitte’s agent declined to comment.

In his comments at a Midtown Manhattan hotel Thursday, Mr. Mitchell acknowledged that his report was inhibited by limited cooperation and the absence of subpoena power, and that there was still much about drug use in baseball he did not know. The report was critical of the commissioner’s office and the players’ union for knowingly tolerating performance-enhancing drugs. It cited many instances where club officials knew about particular steroid use among players and did not report it.

“There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on,” Mr. Mitchell said. He recommended that the players on the list not be disciplined, but instead said that baseball needed to “look ahead to the future” and establish stronger testing.

Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, praised Mr. Mitchell’s 20 recommendations, which included the adoption of a more independent drug-testing program with more public reporting of results, and the establishment of a unit in the commissioner’s office to investigate reports of steroid use by players who have not tested positive.

Despite Mr. Mitchell’s general recommendation that the players in the report not be punished, Mr. Selig said he would review each player’s case individually and was inclined to discipline them.

“His report is a call to action,” Mr. Selig said. “And I will act.”

Donald M. Fehr, the executive director of the Major League Players’ Association, said he did not think the investigation was fair.

“Many players are named,” Mr. Fehr said. “Their reputations have been adversely affected, probably forever, even if it turns out down the road that they should not have been.”

Mr. Mitchell said “baseball’s steroids era” started roughly in 1988. It took 15 more years for baseball to start random testing, Mr. Mitchell said. He noted that testing has reduced steroid usage, but players have switched to human growth hormone, which cannot be detected in urine tests, which baseball’s program administers. “Everybody in baseball — commissioners, club officials, the players’ association, players — shares responsibility,” Mr. Mitchell said.

The report revealed that baseball secretly suspended drug testing for part of the 2004 season, for fear of criminal prosecution, after federal authorities seized the 2003 drug results as part of the Balco case. The suspension, of unclear length, was kept secret by agreement of the commissioner’s office and the players’ association.

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COMMENT: The Culture of Lying inevitably produces a nation of sociopaths.

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5 Surprising Symptoms of Infidelity

By David Zinczenko

Everybody thinks they can spot a cheater a mile away. Adulterers, after all, have the same characteristics, right? Wandering eyes, secret cell phones, last name Sheen. If only it were that easy.

Unfortunately, we live in a society where people fall out of their fidelity flight patterns and take off on their own different courses all the time, even though we desperately want to believe that our partners won't be unfaithful. That's why it's important to know some of the traits and sneaky signals that are common in people who tend to be unfaithful in the relationships.

Now, I'm not suggesting you automatically end your relationship if your partner falls into one of these categories, but I do think that these are some signs you should be aware of - so you can be on the lookout for warnings of wandering.

Cheating Sign #1: He Doesn't Pay His Bills On Time

Some research shows that unreliability and carelessness is part of a personality trait called "low consciousness," which is a marker for infidelity. Makes sense. A guy who's careless about his own responsibilities is going to be just as careless about his relationships.

Cheating Sign #2: He's A Do-Gooder

What? Your guy contributes to the local orchestra fund, the church, and the alumni association, plus he volunteers to build houses for the homeless. How could a guy like that give into the temptation of midnight motel rooms?

A study just published in the November issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology found that when there's a blurry line between right and wrong (as there often is with matters of infidelity), the people who become the worst cheaters are actually the ones who think of themselves as having the highest moral standards.

Why? The speculation is that these people can justify their wrongdoings with explanations that they weren't doing anything wrong at all. Simply put, not following the Monogamy Rules (a faithfully popular Men's Health story) makes it hard for the Do-Gooder to live in his skin.

Cheating Sign #3: He's Rolling In The Dough

A study in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy found that those people who earned more money were more likely to cheat than those who earned less. It's not because they have more income to open new credit cards, carry more cash, or spend more coin on mistress gifts. Some researchers theorize that those with lower salaries - and thus those who are more dependent on others in a relationship - are less likely to risk ruining the relationship.

Cheating Sign #4: He's A Yeller

While yelling and anger may not seem to be all that connected to cheating, a recent Australian study found that unfaithful partners show many of the same personality characteristics as abusive ones. Those who are more likely to be abusive (verbally or physically) are simply more likely to be unfaithful. What's already bad has the potential of getting even worse.

Cheating Sign #5: He's A Mirror Hog

Some research has shown that the single biggest trait of cheaters is-surprise, surprise-narcissism. These self-loving folks are so wrapped up in their own self-importance that they don't even consider the effect that cheating has on the other person. So what if I stray and have the occasional one-nightstand? I deserve to be happy. Have you seen these guns, baby!

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COMMENT: Those are also all qualities typical of born psychopaths. See Hervey Cleckley's Mask of Sanity or Robert Hare's Without Conscience.

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Why quantum physicists talk like mystics

MANILA, Philippines―One of the most difficult problems confronting psychics, mystics, visionaries or clairvoyants, is how to make what they see real to ordinary people who do not and cannot see it the same way they do.

And since they are in the minority, their views are often ignored or disregarded by the majority, which constitutes the mainstream opinion.

What psychics and mystics see as the real nature of the physical universe lies outside the purview of classical or orthodox science. And, because of this, it is considered to be unreal or non-existent.
To ordinary people, anyone who insists that there are such things as psychic or paranormal powers or phenomena must surely be hallucinating or imagining things.

This view prevails among the great majority of western scientists, despite so many incontrovertible proofs presented and reliable experiments conducted by reputable scientists showing that such things do exist.

This negative attitude may soon change. Psychics and mystics have found an unexpected ally within the ranks of a relatively new scientific field called by various names like quantum mechanics, modern physics, particle physics and, lately, quantum physics.

Indistinguishable

In fact, the way pioneers of quantum physics describe the ultimate nature of physical reality is often indistinguishable from the way mystics talk about it. [ COMMENT: See my article Quantum Mechanics is Wrong. ]
This uncanny and incredible parallelism in the thinking of both mystics and modern physicists was not lost on several keen observers of recent developments in science.

Four major and exciting books have come out in the last 15 years showing such parallelism. These are:

1. “The Dancing Wu Li Masters, An overview of Modern Physics” by well-known writer Gary Zukav

2. “The Tao of Physics” by physicist Fritjof Capra

3. “The Medium, the Mystic and the Physicist (Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal)” by psychologist Dr. Lawrence LeShan

4. “Mysticism and the New Physics” by science writer and researcher Michael Talbot

What has come out of the studies of quantum physicists is that it has rendered Newtonian physics and Euclidean geometry, which have been the bases of modern science for centuries, inapplicable when it comes to the sub-atomic particles of matter.

No longer the same

Matter can no longer be looked at merely from the way Isaac Newton and classical physics have always looked at it.

Classical physical science makes the following assumptions about the world:

1. There is an objective reality that lies outside of us, i.e. separate from us.
2. This reality is absolute, fixed and stable and can be observed, measured, weighed and analyzed.
3. It stays at a certain locus that can be pinpointed.
4. It exists either in the present, past or future.
5. Its activities or characteristics are governed by the deterministic laws of physics established by Newton.
6. The cause always precedes the effect, etc.

No one has ever questioned these assumptions [COMMENT: That is ridiculous gibberish.] that are regarded as true and absolute, until Albert Einstein came along and pointed out that everything was relative, including the nature of physical reality. [COMMENT: It is not true that everything is relative.] Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity shattered the very foundations on which classical physics was built. It laid the groundwork for the development of the new or modern physics now referred to as quantum physics. [ COMMENT: See my article Einstein Was Wrong. ]

Quantum physics deals with the nature, behavior and characteristics of the smallest, sub-atomic particles of matter.

In this unseen world of particle physics, sacred laws of Newtonian physics no longer apply. In fact, the behavior of the smallest particles of matter defies all previously known and accepted laws of physics.

That is why it took these new physicists a long time to realize and accept what they were seeing in their laboratories and in their mathematical formulations.

In essence, what governs the behavior of the smallest particles of matter is human consciousness. This led the great modern physicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington to declare that the “stuff of the universe is mind stuff.”

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COMMENT : Wrong!

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Girl, 13, gets detention for hugging two friends

MASCOUTAH, Ill. - Two hugs equals two days of detention for 13-year-old Megan Coulter.

The eighth-grader was punished for violating a school policy banning public displays of affection when she hugged two friends Friday.

“I feel it is crazy,” said Megan, who was to serve her second detention Tuesday after classes at Mascoutah Middle School.

“I was just giving them a hug goodbye for the weekend,” she said.

Megan’s mother, Melissa Coulter, said the embraces weren’t even real hugs — just an arm around the shoulder and slight squeeze.

“It’s hilarious to the point of ridicule,” Coulter said. “I’m still dumbfounded that she’s having to do this.”

District Superintendent Sam McGowen said that he thinks the penalty is fair and that administrators in the school east of St. Louis were following policy in the student handbook.

It states: “Displays of affection should not occur on the school campus at any time. It is in poor taste, reflects poor judgment, and brings discredit to the school and to the persons involved.”

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Comment: No, liars, it is NOT "in poor taste", it does NOT "reflect poor judgement", and it does NOT "bring discredit to the school" or "to the persons involved."

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Parents urge change in policy
Coulter said she and her husband told their daughter to go ahead and serve her detentions
because the only other option was a day of suspension for each skipped detention.

“We don’t agree with it, but I certainly don’t want her to get in more trouble,” Coulter said.

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Comment: No, don't risk anything to stand up for the truth - that might model behavior that would enable your children to grow up capable of resisting the Evil...

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The couple plan to attend the next school board meeting to ask board members to consider rewording the policy or be more specific in what is considered a display of affection.

“I’m just hoping the school board will open their eyes and just realize that maybe they shouldn’t be punishing us for hugs,” Megan said.

Ban on lingering hugs sparks dispute at Oregon school

BEND, Ore. (AP) — A 14-year-old girl received detention over a lingering hug she gave her boyfriend at school, infuriating her mother and putting school officials on the defensive.

School officials said they had warned Cazz Altomare that lingering hugging was unacceptable, but she continued to disobey the rule when she received the detention earlier this year.

Rules at Sky View Middle School in Bend permit "quick hello and goodbye hugs," but administrators said some students have been taking advantage of it.

"It's not like we are the hug Nazis," Laurie Gould, spokeswoman for the Bend-La Pine School District, said Monday. "Kids hug, they hug hello and they hug goodbye, but if you take it farther, you make people uncomfortable."

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Comment: People? Which people exactly? And on what basis are they uncomfortable about hugging? How about if they learn how to take care of their own feelings?

Is everything that makes someone "uncomfortable" to be banned? How about the truth? That makes some people uncomfortable.

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Cazz got detention after giving her boyfriend a protracted hug in the hallway at Sky View Middle School in Bend.

Her mother, Leslee Swanson, was infuriated by the punishment. When she went to pick her daughter up from detention, she gave her a good, hard hug.

"I'm trying to understand what's wrong with a hug," Swanson, 42, said in a story Sunday in The Bulletin of Bend. People should not "blindly accept these fundamental rights being taken away from them," she said.

Gould said "usually kids don't get detention just for hugging."

All middle schools in the Bend-La Pine district restrict hugging to some degree, as well as hand-holding and some other forms of physical affection.

"Really, all we're trying to do is create an environment that's focused on learning, and learning proper manners is part of that," said Dave Haack, the principal of Cascade Middle School, also in Bend.

Students only end up with detention after repeated warnings earlier this year, he said.

Outside Pilot Butte Middle School on a recent lunch break, two seventh-grade girls said they disagreed with the policies.

"I think we should be able to hold hands or hug at least," said Annie Wilson, 12. "Because it's not doing anything bad."

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Comment: So important is caring touch for humans, we should view this "crackdown" on hugging as an attack on the human race.

Example 1

At the beginning of the last century, the mortality among children under two years of age, living in orphanages in Europe and in North America, was almost 100 per cent. These children were being well taken care of physically. They had all the food and health care they needed. Yet they died in their hundreds.

Their physical needs were being taken care of but no one was allowed to touch them. At that time, it was thought that cuddling infants would spread infections and make children morally weak.

Example 2

The soothing effect of the touch could be seen in scans of areas deep in the brain that are involved in registering emotional and physical alarm...

But the moment that they felt their husbands' hands -- the men reached into the imaging machine -- each woman's activity level plunged in all the body's regions gearing up for the threat...

But this system often becomes overactive in situations that are nagging but not life threatening, such as worries over relationships, deadlines, money or homework.

Example 3

So basic a human need is touch that neither children nor adults can live without it. Children who live in abusive homes and who are deprived of touch, have been known to wither and die. The need for touch is real, and persists throughout our lives.

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Broward County assistant public defender punished, judge rebuked for joke

From The Sun-Sentinel

A veteran Broward assistant public defender is being punished for an inappropriate courtroom exchange with a judge about a teenage boy who had sex with an adult male.

Brian Reidy, a supervisor in the Broward Public Defender's Office, has written an open letter of apology, has been docked one week's vacation and must address his colleagues at a staff meeting on Friday, he and his boss, Howard Finkelstein, said.

Circuit Judge Jeffrey Levenson's role in the exchange is "regrettable," said Broward Chief Judge Victor Tobin. Levenson, 50, apologized for his conduct at an administrative judge's meeting on Tuesday and "everybody is on notice that we expect the finest of conduct in our judges and our lawyers," Tobin said.

The remarks were made Thursday when the judge and attorneys were working out jury instructions. The case involved a 41-year-old man charged with four counts of unlawful sexual activity for having consensual sex with a 16-year-old football player.

According to a transcript:

Levenson asked what position the boy played.

The prosecutor, Adriana Alcalde, said he was a linebacker.

But Reidy replied: "Tight end."

And then Levenson weighed in: "Wide receiver?"

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COMMENT: Only people with no conscience could think that would be a funny thing to say; it shows no ability to experience human feelings.

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Alcalde expressed her dismay: "Judge, you know, I don't think that that joke is even remotely funny."

Levenson immediately apologized: "I take it back, it was politically incorrect, and I really apologize for that."

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COMMENT: 1.) You cannot "take it back"; that is both childish and mechanical. 2.) It was not "politically incorrect", it was inhumanly wrong behavior. 3.) He says "I really apologize for that." For what? For being politically incorrect, which he wasn't, so he has actually not apologized at all.

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Public Defender Finkelstein said he is appalled that one of his staffers would engage in such inappropriate banter. As for the judge, Finkelstein said, he should be ashamed of himself for reducing a group of people "to nothing more than a punch line to a joke."

Tobin, the chief judge, took a softer stance. He said Levenson, one of the "hardest-working" and "most community-oriented" judges on the Broward bench, had been told "we need the utmost in professionalism and good conduct from the judges."

In an interview with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Levenson acknowledged judges are "held to a higher standard" and he had crossed the line.

"I should not have made that comment, it exhibited insensitivity," he said. "I apologized at the time and I apologize now. I feel that I'm a fair, sensitive, neutral arbiter and I always strive to be."

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COMMENT: 1.) No he didn't. 2.) No one can prove that you don't feel that - but what about reality?

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Alcalde said she remains incensed by the comments. "It was said in a tone that there was no doubt that it was meant to poke fun at the victim."

Rowling sues Hogwarts Castle replica in India

From MSN:

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is suing organisers of a religious event for constructing a replica of her imaginary Hogwarts Castle in an eastern India city, officials said.

Rowling and her publishers Bloomsbury are seeking $57,000 from the organisers constructing an elaborate castle from canvas and papier mache in Kolkata for the upcoming Durga Puja festival, court officials said.

The Delhi High Court has summoned the builders on Friday to present their case, they said.

The suit, which runs into 394 pages, argues the organisers of the Hindu festival can stage the upcoming event in the gigantic marquee only after paying $57,000 to the British author.

Rowling's fictitious world depicts the castle as an ancient school of witchcraft where her eponymous hero Harry Potter learns wizardry.

The marquee in Kolkata's Salt Lake district replicates the imaginary castle's outer contours and includes an imitation marble staircase and flagged stone floor in the entrance hall, lit with flaming torches, witnesses said.

The festival organising secretary, Santunu Biswas, said his team would go ahead with the preparations for the four-day festivities, eastern India's most celebrated annual religious carnival.

"What we are building is not a violation of copyright act anywhere in the world because it's a religious festival and has nothing to do with money-making," Biswas said.

Another organiser, Robin Mukherjee, said he was stunned.

"The summons came at a time when the marquee is almost ready and we don't know what to do now as we cannot afford to pay the fine," the visibly angry official added.

"It's just a theme ...We have also modelled the Titanic and no-one sued us," he said.

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COMMENT: Why did they think they could do this without getting permission first? JKR created some greatness, and other people - who could not have created the greatness if their lives depended on it - come along and just take it. Then, when the person who created it dares to stand up for herself, they are "stunned" and "visibly angry."

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