I don't like where this graph is headed. Via Atrios.  Posted by Outlaw Genius  at 9:02 PM 0 comments

  Earlier today the General and I were talking during our weekly conversation about efforts to fight malaria, and how the simplest solution is often the one that doesn't directly combat the virus itself. His case in point was hookworm in the pre-Civil War South; it affected much of the population because they were poor and had to walk around barefoot, thus being vulnerable, and was perhaps a major reason why the South lagged behind in economic production. The solution to this mess wasn't to go after the hookworm, but instead for everybody to wear shoes. As such, the best way to combat malaria would be to increase quinine shipments to affected areas, thus negating efforts to genetically engineer the Mansquito.

It may seem like a stretch to go from hookworm and malaria to drug testing in sports, but bear with me. Up to now all the efforts of WADA, the IOC, the US Anti-Doping Agency, and reluctantly, the major professional leagues, has been on drug testing to combat the spread of doping. The problem is, well, it's still a problem. Even stars who came up in sports like track & field, promising that they would be clean and would reclaim the sport from cheaters are turning up positive. Tim Montgomery claimed the world record, then tested positive; the mother of his child, Marion Jones (herself once married to a confirmed doper, CJ Hunter), has had a positive 'A' sample and is awaiting the 'B' sample results. Track and field, sport in its purest form, is beginning to be torn asunder by drugs, and like cycling, may be in danger of collapsing into irrelevance.

But how to fight doping? Unfortunately, we can't do it through testing. Had it not been for an anonymous source in San Francisco, we would have never known about the Cream and the Clear, and Barry Bonds would, without a doubt, be the Home Run King right now. Despite efforts to develop definitive tests, there is still no way to determine several performance enhancers. Indeed, in endurance sports the only way to determine doping is testing testosterone levels and ratios, which may work (see: Floyd Landis) but is not foolproof. As long as athletes have lots of money and scientists have their phone numbers, there will always be a new designer drug around the corner, and law enforcement and WADA will be playing catch-up.

The solution could be to stop fighting the drugs, and instead make the athletes want to be clean. In this exhaustive, comprehensive article from Outside, Don Catlin, the man who knows drug testing more than anybody in America, knows the system is "fatally flawed."

WADA's rules demand abundant caution before declaring a test positive, and during my visit to Catlin's lab, I see why. When Allison Evans, who runs many of the EPO tests for Catlin, shows me the results of one test, I think it looks positive. But after applying a statistical analysis, she declares it negative. Catlin says he thinks his lab, owing to caution, exonerates ten guilty EPO users for every one it declares positive. He says he's so fed up with the politics of the test that he's decided not to reapply for a USADA grant that supports the EPO research in his lab.

Heid says the whole idea of routine testing for proteins is worrisome. "Analyzing tiny amounts of samples belonging to the protein field gets really complicated," he says. "Most of these methods for [proteins] are still in development, in a research state, and not even useful in practical work."

This bodes ill for WADA's ongoing effort to develop a test for HGH and IGF-1. After a decade of research, experts don't even agree on whether or not a validated, usable HGH test exists. WADA says it does. Catlin and other sources say it doesn't.

Catlin thinks the answer lies in a voluntary system, in which athletes submit themselves to testing for biomarkers; after establishing a baseline for performance, the athletes would be given doses of enhancing drugs to determine the effect on that baseline. Continued testing afterwards then monitors those biomarkers, and anything falling outside individual norms would be flagged and investigated. In this way, the athlete's own body can be used against him or her to determine guilt or innocence.

"You'd approach it as a physician does a patient," Catlin continues. " 'Is something going on in your life? I am worried you are taking growth hormone, and you know we do not have a bulletproof HGH test, but we do have these blood markers, so I want you in here every week. We are going to track you, and I want to see that go down, and if it doesn't go down, a committee of your peers, other athletes, is going to want to talk to you.' "

That's it. No punishment. If Joe doesn't agree, or his levels stay high, he would revert to the old system and take his chances. But he'd also lose the built-in absolution of the Volunteer Program.

Catlin's explanation reveals two critical ingredients of the program. First, he hopes to rejuvenate the role of the sports physician, to make doctors the system's eyes and ears. (Currently, some athletes avoid physicians for fear of being discovered; this endangers their health.) Second, Catlin believes the enforcement of the program's rules must be left to a panel of athletes. His plan makes athletes the judges, not USADA or WADA.

Under the program, there's no need to prove an athlete is shooting up HGH, so you don't need a complicated test for it. Because athletes booted out of the program won't be banned from competing, there will be no subsequent legal battles. Authorities will never again have to worry about unknown steroids floating around the sports netherworld, because Catlin isn't looking for specific causes—drugs—but instead for their effects. Yet another advantage, Catlin argues, is that fewer legal battles and complex drug tests should mean the Volunteer Program will be much cheaper to operate once the initial research is finished. And an athlete like Lance Armstrong—dogged by doping whispers throughout much of his career—would have the opportunity to trumpet a definitively clean bill of health.

In addition, Wired also wrote earlier this year about using the body's own chemical makeup to improve performance without the nasty side effects and legal aftermath of doping. Much like Nike's Oregon Project, the idea is that through technological and biological advancements, there will be no need to take performance enhancing drugs. Using blood tests to help, not indict. It's a radical hope to save sport as we know it. It may also be the only hope.  Posted by Outlaw Genius  at 7:29 PM 2 comments

  Amazing infographics going up over at Princeton's International Networks Archive. I especially like the one about international water supply; happy thoughts!

(Lee, we should get on this bandwagon. It'd be incredible; you come up with an idea and do the econometrics behind it, then I make it look all pretty-like.)  Posted by Outlaw Genius  at 7:18 PM 0 comments

  I may add more later, but for now, today's sports analogy for the economy at large. Enjoy!  Posted by Outlaw Genius  at 3:44 PM 0 comments

  Among other things, this site will also be the neutral ground for airing out differences between the General and I. With that in mind, how do you, dear reader, stand on the usage of the hyphen: badassery or bad-assery?  Posted by Outlaw Genius  at 7:58 PM 0 comments

  So the problem with this blog is that while I may have things I want to link to, I don't know how to talk about it. Being paired up with a great mind like Lee's, I get a little gun-shy; we have fantastic conversations about all of this stuff, but my blogging is so geared around irreverence and one-liners, and not the kind of analysis that readers should (rightly) expect. Thus, I haven't done much of anything here, but I'd like to correct that. Anyway, here's some good stuff I've found over the past few days:

• A scathing indictment of the collapse of the Doha Round. I've been a free trader for some time now, which still leads to some contentious discussions with those on the left who think I'm categorically 'with them', so this was a good round-up of just what the Doha Round may have meant. Even if I do prefer the Moustache of Understanding's way of approaching globalization to those at the National Journal.

• Kevin Drum's belated, but worthwhile, posting on the latest 'duh' news of the Bush tax cuts. Turns out that over 20 years, the tax cuts would bring in about one-tenth of a trillion to the GDP. Or the equivalent of one mocha latte at Starbucks every week. (Hey, I was able to bring my one-liners over here!) Anyway, I've always considered the comments on this blog to be the best of any that I read, but you have to be able to pick out the gems from the usual, and heightened, troll-combat.

• A couple things from Slate: the first is a piece on the bellweathers of US economic performance, UPS & FedEx. Analyzing the margins of the two companies to determine which one is signaling the economy as a whole, Daniel Gross asks the question, but doesn't really answer it. Which leads me to the Lewis Black line of "Wh wh why even open your mouth?" The second takes the Euphemism of the Summer and applies it directly to Slate for a very enlightening look at publishing, beyond what the Times' Book Review did this morning. Publishing is facing a turning point, maybe not now, but within the next five years; Sony wants to come out with the first viable eBook reader, but if somebody can successfully put text on an iPod (cause seriously, what can't you put on that thing?), then it will happen even sooner. And I can't wait.

• New Yorker piece on Boeing v. Airbus, round I-can't-even-count-anymore. I remember reading Rick Perlstein's excellent piece on the Democrats which started with a story about Boeing & Airbus, an analysis that framed the way I looked at the modern economy afterwards. This piece is a good update, but I like James Surowiecki's take at the end about how short-term performance doesn't really lend itself to long-term analysis. Am I being contradictory to what I said about just above about Daniel Gross? Maybe. So?

• Finally, and I haven't read this yet, but the Times' magazine (which I consider to be perhaps the superior weekly in America) on a topic that I am increasing becoming passionate about. Those of you who read my blog may recall my mentioning an argment with a gentleman who thought that capitalism couldn't solve environmental problems. My response is that while, yes, capitalism does indeed cause problems, it also gives us the tools, and indeed the motivation, to solve those problems. Capitalism is simply a means to achieve ends; if we can get people to care about the environment and conserving nature and creating alternative energies by appealing to their pocketbook rather than their love of spotted owls, I'll take it. I dare say that all of us would.  Posted by Outlaw Genius  at 2:02 PM 0 comments

  Kevin Drum linked to a most fascinating piece yesterday (admittedly, the cover story in the magazine that pays him to blog) on conservatives and governance. I've read it twice now and find the article to be very well written and much in tune with evidence beyond the three issues he cites-Iraq, FEMA and Medicare. Why just today Drum writes in response to Justice Scalia's majority opinion in Hudson v. Michigan:

This is, of course, why I decline to take originalism seriously. Even its proponents pretty obviously understand that it's ridiculous to pretend that nothing has changed in the past 200 years, and they mostly use originalism as little more than intellectual cover for making the conservative rulings they want to make anyway. But when conservative rulings require that originalism be tossed overboard, they do so without apology. Some doctrine, eh?

All of which reminds me of a conversation that Lee had last summer with a colleague of ours in which he said that capitalism and conservatism, when both are true to form, cannot be reconciled as they are mutually exclusive. Which reminds me of Marx talking about capitalists were indeed the most revolutionary party, but we can save that for another time.  Posted by Outlaw Genius  at 6:26 PM 0 comments

  Wow, 30 hours and no initial posting from the OG. Apologies to all of you reading this then (um, Hi Mischa!). By way of introduction, this is a joint venture by two men, thrown together in the cosmos by a little thing we like to call Duke "We don't even want to mention the word 'lacrosse'" TIP. I served as Lee's teaching assistant last summer, and we decided to combine our respective blogging powers, his being impeccable and invaluable analysis on the political, economic and legal news of the day, and mine being the ability to make said analysis look pretty.

We do have a mission for this blog; while both of us have our own individual blogs, we will be using this forum to take a hopefully profound, mostly serious, sometimes irreverent, but always genuine attempt at making sense of the world around us. While we may betray political leanings on various issues, we are both decidedly independent of not just political parties, but also political labels. Through this blog we will address articles and events on issues as wide ranging as our interests and curiosity allows, that we might help affect a fresh approach to public policy and social thought. We might not have the answers, but we can at least start asking the questions, and in a free society, that is indeed most essential.  Posted by Outlaw Genius  at 10:57 PM 0 comments