Part of a quote is not always enough

The failure of the press to correctly quote and correctly translate a portion of an interview with German President Horst Köhler in its original context has put the press on thin ice. An interview with President Horst Köhler was recently translated into slightly simplified form from the German, leaving out key contextual signals. Given how easy it is to get complete information nowadays, this is unprofessional and too lax. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/europe/01germany.html
Here is the quoted statement made by President Köhler in an interview on May 21 or May 22 on his way back from visiting German troops in Afghanistan.

He was speaking in general terms, no longer about Afghanistan specifically. He had already expressed his support for the troops and said they were there to ensure the security of Germany. What followed this was what the German press jumped on and distorted:

"Meine Einschätzung ist aber, dass insgesamt wir auf dem Wege sind, doch auch in der Breite der Gesellschaft zu verstehen, dass ein Land unserer Größe mit dieser Außenhandelsorientierung und damit auch Außenhandelsabhängigkeit auch wissen muss, dass im Zweifel, im Notfall auch militärischer Einsatz notwendig ist, um unsere Interessen zu wahren, zum Beispiel freie Handelswege, zum Beispiel ganze regionale Instabilitäten zu verhindern, die mit Sicherheit dann auch auf unsere Chancen zurückschlagen negativ durch Handel, Arbeitsplätze und Einkommen. Alles das soll diskutiert werden und ich glaube, wir sind auf einem nicht so schlechten Weg."

"My assessment however is that in general we are moving toward [the realization], in fact coming to understand throughout society, that a country of our size with its focus on foreign trade and thus also dependence on foreign trade, also must know that in case of doubt, in an emergency, military action is necessary in order to safeguard our interests, for example [keeping] trade routes free, for example preventing regional instabilities, which are certain to have a negative impact on trade, jobs, and income. This should all be discussed and I think the start we have made is not bad.” (my translation)

That is the complete version, with the omitted portions in bold. A bungled and shortened version of his statement is reported by the New York Times with all things apparently up to standard today, meaning they multiplied the misrepresentation. Here is the NY Times version, available as the full story at the beginning of this post:

“A country of our size,” he said, “with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests, for example, when it comes to trade routes, for example, when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes.”

This version omits the previous sentence that people across society are coming to this realization, so the New York Time makes it sound like "people have to 'get it' and gain this awareness." That is grossly unfair. Especially if journalists repeat a mistake again in translation by not doing their homework. President Köhler was fulfilling his job and speaking in broad strokes, his only option for having an impact since his office enjoys no executive powers.

Now people are saying he was insulted. I beg to differ, he was more than insulted, he was made a target and misrepresented in a "soft blow" "hatchet job." This is a proven method of look-away mobbing and his response to silent mobbing while in office was appropriate, because his person and his high office were each maligned by "sins of omission."

I will remember his courage and feeling for others, on the Winnenden shootings, on the monstrous visage of short-term profiteering, which he decried in the most unequivocal terms and his deep interest in the destiny and circumstances of many people in Germany and especially Africa.

It seems a bit oversimplified for Germany's ARD to claim that Germans "don't understand" his resignation - the ease with which a publicly-financed broadcaster feels called upon to say what Germans think and pretend to be able to gauge this, even before it has sunk in, amounts to arrogance and presumptuousness. Even when their air time is paid for by the people, ARD has overstepped professional tenets and standards.

Teamgeist or esprit de corps

Given the calamity occurring in the Gulf of Mexico, it is striking how the entire group of upstream mineral oil producing companies have not created a pool of funds to unleash an unprecedented effort to contain and alleviate the damage. OPEC should not stand by, but send 5 representatives to stand with President Obama and the governors and commit to a clean-up.

In addition they ought to finance a people-controlled/grassroots-represented containment and de-escalation team with full spending power matching 1 percent of the affected coastal region's budget and a local draft of volunteers and this amount matched by double this amount from Big Oil - the teams to be staffed, 50 percent by oil company managers who are answerable to the other 50 percent who are non-oil-company representatives from affected local communities.

Shifts could be handled like on the North Slope. 2 weeks on - 2 weeks off, with one day set aside for briefing/debriefing between team shifts.

"Machines don't get irony"

"The text with a gold-colored background here," explains Willer, "was already translated and edited last year, so today the customer doesn't have to pay for it anymore."

"Eine Maschine versteht keine Ironie" - taz.de: "'Was hier golden unterlegt ist', erklärt Willer, 'wurde bereits im Vorjahr übersetzt und editiert, dafür braucht mein Kunde heute nicht mehr zu bezahlen.'"

Who decides if a piece of work should be left out or included and thus billed for. It should be the service provider who decides if they feel text repetitions should be charged at a lower rate, if justified. the alternative is accepting these terms as dicatated by the customer.

But when customers start pressuring you to come down in price for matches and repetitions (a match is simply a later repetition), not only does the amount you earn decrease, but a gap is created between what you do and what you are paid. If the number of repetitions saves you 25% of the work, you can bet that the agency wants a 50% discount. So you end up doing more work for the same price. The only other option is an unprofessional one: translating disconnected sentences which are not yet in the database and not spending even a half a second reading from one sentence to the next. That is an approach which is reckless and runs counter to how texts should be skillfully dealt with during translation. It can be likened to a surgeon saying she doesn't need glasses, after all that ear is on the left side of the patient's head, since she knows where it is, she commands: "Scalpel." and lops it off. Oh, I'm sorry, it was the next person's ear!! Not to worry, I have malpractice insurance for that. Translators can say: "Oh, I have liability insurance for financial loss," I'll accept those terms (ha, ha, life is fun!). A gross and insanely absurd analogy which has a pithy logical core. Do you care about your patient, do you care about your text? The texts my colleagues translate are often for heavy machinery with high voltage and potentially dangerous situations can arise from incorrect translation. Anyone who voluntarily places others at potential risk while also jeopardizing their own reputation by agreeing to "blind" fuzzy-match-only translations is taking an uncalled for risk. In some cases a proofreader makes sense, but with fuzzy matches being blindly accepted, a proofreader is then forced to use production resources to fix things you as as the translator could have done right in the first place.

It is not the marketing damage large institutions inflict upon themselves when making bad decisions about translations. This is systemic. The problems with "Fluggastkontrolle" (airline passenger "control") being rendered as "passenger control" is not the question here, though embarassing enough for Munich's Airport when they closed it down and the unchecked and very translated sounding phrase "passenger control" is shown to millions and millsion on all the German TV stations and international stations, too. No.... this issue goes deeper than that.

So, try to avoid agents who allow customers to force this on them. And end-customers, you are risking things... Discourage dialogs about repetitions and fuzzy match discounts. You decide that, not them, for your expertise is required for a successful processing/translating of the patient/text.

There's no such thing as a free lunch, except for maybe in the translation industry when critical sentences in a new manual don't get paid for - the customer/agent gets the free lunch, but uses the sentence for monetary gain in a transaction--publishing the content or selling it as a manual with a system or piece of potentially dangerous equipment. What bookseller is in the business of letting the same book be purchased for the price of one because the content repeats in the second book? I won't wait for your answer... As a colleague once said to me: "This is also true for filling up your gas tank at the pump." The major oil companies don't give a discount because their goods repeat themselves.

Nice quote

Titus Engel leads Freischütz production at Kampnagel in Hamburg - November/December 2004

Wie ein Torwart, der sein Tor verlässt, stampfte Engel bei den Jägerchören über den Rasen und stachelte die bierernst schmetternden Herren des Männerchores an. Seines Jacketts entledigt, mit Hosenträgern und langen Haaren, stahl er seinen Schauspielkollegen mitunter die Show.
//
Like a goalie who leaves his goal, Titus Engel strode across the lawn for the hunters' choruses, exhorting even more heroic tones from the exuberantly singing glee club members. Free of his tails, with suspenders showing and long flowing hair, at times he managed to steal the show from his dramatic counterparts.

http://www.bode-engel.com/presse/medienberichte-zu-der-freischuetz/flensburger-tageblatt-22112004/

Wall Street Pursues Profit in Bundles of Life Insurance - the Great New Leveraged Money-Cow

I was reading the New York Times today and saw this story: Back to Business - Wall Street Pursues Profit in Bundles of Life Insurance - Series - NYTimes.com: "Critics of life settlements believe “this defeats the idea of what life insurance is supposed to be,” said Steven Weisbart, senior vice president and chief economist for the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group. “It’s not an investment product, a gambling product.”

The overall article caused my skin to literally crawl. Some things come immediately to mind. Purposely innocuous terms such as "life settlements" need clarification. It seems like "securitizing" will upset people even more. It is morally questionable and worthy of condemnation to bundle or pool completely unrelated policies taken out by people who do not know each other, people who wanted to protect beneficiaries against future loss based on their individual policy premium payments.

Here is an anology. You have ten horses you have taken care of for years. A cowboy has a lame horse. He comes to you, the rancher, and says: "My horse is lame, can you borrow me one, and, as insurance, that nice gelding, too, as I'se a got a couple high-stakes rodeos comin' round and needs a backup, too." The farmer thinks rodeos are just great and agrees, charging 15 dollars a week per horse, but says he does't want to read about his horse in some cockamamie bank holdup in Montana, either. Oh, and just leave your lame horse with me, I'll have her good as new in 2 months. The contractual parties agree that the rancher's horses cannot be temperorarily "subletted" to anybody else. The cowboy ends up using the one horse each weekend in calf-roping, rents the other one to his barrel-racing cousin on the rodeo tour and during the week hires the horses out as draught horses to a quarry. The vagabond entrpreneurs make 250 bucks a week, per horse. A month later the cowboy returns the horses, who are looking rather gaunt, pays 30 bucks for feed for his recovered horse, takes it and rides off, not troubled by what he did.

All semblance to the life settlement and CDO industry is purely unintentional. It would seem like a horse or a pile of premiums just lying there is just too irresistible to some people. At what point does someone blow the whistle?

Insurance corporations are involved in pooling risk with potential profit involved. These insurers are accepting premiums from individuals and it behooves (get it?) the insurers to reflect on the example they set if they use the premiums entrusted to them for synthetically depersonalizing and spreading risk against potential loss with a profit motive, rather than just assessing normal actuarial risk.

The mechanics are questionable. Using policy premiums to involve more intermediaries making front-end fees should be made a punishable offence and severely mandated against. If insuraers lack self-control, government regulation is warranted.

The problem is that premiums paid don't look like horses being dishonestly rented out at rodeos. In this modern IT age, why is that not possible, to introduce an "Old Paint" tag to prevent abuse of premiums.

There is a cloak of smoke covering up what is happening. Who in the world among us people who lead a normal workaday life can get their head around "collateralize" and "debt obligation" all in one product name. Shouldn't it be renamed: "A vehicle for intermediaries to earn substanital fees from originating and "securitizing" life insurances policies"?

These deals, so brazenly made to sound harmless by generic-sounding labels such as "collateralized debt obligations" (CDOs) appeared to the Wall Street investment firms to be, to use The Washington Post's phrasing (thank you, Jill Drew), a "surefire way to profit from the booming real estate market without much risk to their companies. They engaged in a kind of financial alchemy, creating a trillion-dollar chain of securities on the back of subprime mortgages and other loans, which were sold to investors in private offerings that no government regulator scrutinized."


The sub-prime loans tanking nationwide stripped back the opaque names given to these "derivatives" and reverse-hedge hocus-pocus. The smoke cleared in every part of country and caught them with their pants down, shrugging their shoulders and saying: "... but I never intended to actually poison the well, after all I only poured things in for a few seconds." Or: What exactly did happen to Hamlet, that only took a few seconds, too, right? The spirit and intention are longer in the making. Can the concentration of financial prowess be to some degree removed from Wall Street or London financial powerhouses or what-have-you given how what they do sometimes occurs unfairly on the backs of the workforce. At the expense of what are actually people who are not driven by the profit mantra alone? Most people just want a fair benefit from working honestly and creatively.

Mediterranean impressions

A poem in celebration of August

Cicadas whirring as day's heat fades to night
Flip-flop steps bounce off a beachside boardwalk

Ibizenco espresso machines have gone silent
Instead, salt wind and the beat of the waves

Frolicsome, family, friends saunter by sunchairs
Three-fifty a day or seven for two

But our bed is the sand, the curls left by Neptune
Our sport to cavort without care in the sea

Our glee ringing out with a splash and a dive
Our bodies revived in the aquamarine pool

Bike knees churn uphill, the wind not working
The sweat on our brow pouring down in the sun

Some tapas - an ¡Hola! - a cordial reply
Welcoming strangers who smile with their eyes

Romano, Italo, Tedesco, and gringos
On these shores we're all just amigos.

Selective indignation on a crooked field

Philippe Sands felt a rock in his shoe and couldn't let it go until he had interviewed enough people involved to be able to analyze and ultimately write a book about it. The title: Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. The conclusion an intelligent reader of his book can make is that state and military power was abused at multiple levels and on multiple fronts in how detainees captured after 9/11 in the fight against terrorism were treated in contravention/violation of Geneva Conventions. His interview here reveals the compelling arguments to be found in more detail in his book. This courageous British lawyer, married to an American and living in the US, wants all facts on the table so that due process can follow. The response, showing individual responsibility (as in doping in my previous blog in 2007) being taken by people who were in power needs to be heard. The Rices, Rumsfelds, Cheneys, Addingtons, Hayneses have a duty as former civil servants or professionals to consider how they acted in the long run and step forward in candor and a contrite spirit, come clean without a trace of spin or tactic. The appearance of Condoleeza Rice on YouTube this week was appalling. It has to end. www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05092008/transcript2.html?print

EXCERPT #1:

PHILIPPE SANDS: The story's a simple one. Back in '71, '72, the British moved as the United States has done now, to aggressive techniques of interrogation. They used pretty much the same techniques: hooding, standing, humiliation, degradation. Five techniques, they were called. [...] They went up to court, actually, and they were ruled to be illegal, in 1978 by the European Court on Human Rights. But there was a bigger problem, even beyond their illegality, in my view. And that was this: That what the use of those techniques did was to really enrage part of the Catholic community, who felt that IRA detainees alleged to be terrorists, were being abused. And it turned people who were perhaps unhappy with the situation into being deeply and violently unhappy with the situation. And if you speak to British politicians who were involved in that period, and the British military, what they'll tell you is that there is a feeling that the use of those types of techniques extended the conflict.

INCONSISTENT STANDARDS or as my Dad once called it... SO MYOPIC

Where is a fair shake and a level playing field now? Are all detainees created equal in our acutely aware, globalized world, and are they endowed with certain inalienable rights?

Indignation on whose behalf? On behalf of IRA detainees held by the British. On behalf of a "fallen brother." Hmmm. Indignation at basely carried out cruelty. Which extended a very difficult stand-off by years and years. This is a classic double standard if there are constantly dark green and light green bus passengers (shackled "air-freight" detainees flown around like hocks of ham) as you throw principles under the bus.

DEBATE SQUELCHED or A SIN OF OMISSION

Who went silent on the gross injustices in American detention practices, so myopically rationalized by one congressman who brazenly said, without knowing, or caring(?), for the truth, that "3,000 Americans died," when the victims were in fact from 90 different countries. The pain was felt inside and outside the US. The most serious blow was to the rights of the common man and the common weal internationally. London was eventually hit, Madrid was too, and so were a series of other terrorist objectives elsewhere.

THREE MINUTES

 BILL MOYERS: Going back to the hearings, one member of the committee, Representative Trent Franks of Arizona, a Republican, said--and I quote--"The results of a total of three minutes of severe interrogations of three of the worst terrorists were of immeasurable benefit to the American people. A full 25 percent of the human intelligence we've received on Al-Qaeda came from just three minutes worth of rarely used interrogation tactics."
PHILIPPE SANDS: Well, I remember that very well. And I appreciated very much everything that Representative Franks had to say. But I've described that to my friends in London as a sort of Monty Python moment in the hearing. Because he alleged that there had been three individuals water boarded. They had been water boarded for no more than one minute each. And they had spilled the beans. And I was sitting there watching him and thinking, well, that's new information. I've never heard that before. Where on earth does that come from? Counterintuitively, I can't imagine how a water-boarding of one minute is suddenly going to produce useful information. We don't even know if it is useful. But also, imagine the scene. You've got guys there with stopwatches. We're gonna waterboard him for one minute, and then we will stop. And in that one minute, everything will come up. I don't know where he got all that from. I thought he sounded as though he made it up on the spot...

THE POISONED WELL
I scoffed at this, and fired back in emails, even in my own family, when the party claptrap line was served up. But nobody would talk, though some may have been lurking. There was a silence hanging like a cloud over family communication.One family member near to me stated: yes, you have to torture in circumstances which help your country. I was galled and sickened.

So many in general were hoodwinked and taken in by this pushy, arrogant, mean-spirited mentality, some spreading it themselves, most chomping down on it hook, line and sinker. And, still, a sizeable portion of the US population is not visibly, palpably upset over the crimes. At the same time those not willing to talk sacrificed part of their family's otherwise intact communication, squelching debate and left those bringing up the subject "out in the cold" with the light switched off, to ensure their own, albeit momentary, political, and by extension, tax and monetary gain, and just chime in, or emotionally check out, on the difficult issue.

IT ALL COMES OUT IN THE WASH
Now, as we are being thrust further into a severe economic crisis, as my landlord says, "the correct and incorrect ones become visible in hard times." This phrase can cut both ways and has to be applied with an eye to when one day you yourself are down. In weakness, as we all have our own special weaknesses, we are exposed, and when things are going well, the ones with self-serving, illegal and selectively indignant methodology can cover up their trail with equivocation and (self)rationalizations, but time eventually brings around the reverse set of circumstances and lays bare tracks and exposes motives, which can be ferreted out by those willing to dispassionately take notice, like the man who prompted this blog post: Philippe Sands.

CLOSING ARGUMENT
EXCERPT #3:
BILL MOYERS: Do you think that people like David Addington and John Yoo and Jim Haynes, and the other lawyers you've mentioned who advised and were on the torture team, should ultimately be held responsible in court for what they did in government at this period of time?
PHILIPPE SANDS: If they were complicit in the commission of a crime, then they should be investigated. And if the facts show that there is a sufficient basis for proceeding to a prosecution, then they should be prosecuted. Lawyers are gatekeepers to legality and constitutionality. If the lawyers become complicit in a common plan to get around the law, to allow abuse, then yes, they should be liable.

Soccer and football merge, in a way

This is an intriguing development. German soccer reporters are noticing that some strikers have more running and more creative responsibility in their job description. One aspect at play here is the similarity with US football:

(English translation follows) "...mitunter wirken die Laufwege wie die von Wide Receivern im Football - einem Sport, bei dem Spielzüge und Laufwege vorher angesagt und auf dem Spielfeld bis ins kleinste Detail abgestimmt sind. Andrej Woronin etwa startete beim Spiel seiner Berliner Hertha gegen den FC Bayern vom Mittelkreis aus, bewegte sich auf die rechte Seite. Nach zehn Metern schlug er einen Haken und lief diagonal in Richtungs des Strafraums, um seinem herandribbelnden Mittelfeldspieler Cicero Platz zu machen. Auf Höhe des Strafraumkreises folgte der zweite Haken, Woronin lief nach rechts in die Gasse. Dorthin spielte Cicero den Ball, Woronin schoss ihn an Michael Rensing vorbei ins Tor." http://www.sueddeutsche.de/sport/527/466112/text/4/
"...[strikers in soccer] sometimes appear to be running patterns like wide receivers do in American football - a sport where plays and running patterns are called [in the huddle] beforehand and are defined down to the most subtle head-fake detail. At the beginning of the Hertha BSC match against FC Bayern for example, Ukraine star striker Andrey Voronin of Berlin started running from the center circle toward the right flank, then veered in a "V" pattern back from the sideline, running diagonally towards the penalty area, which cleared a path for the dribbling midfielder Cicero. At the top of the penalty area, Voronin again cut back on a second hook, spurting into a "seam" and taking a pass from Cicero to kick the ball past goalie Michael Rensing into the goal."

This choreography can be seen in knowing looks before the beginning of a half or during extra time in championships. See 22-yr-old Pitroipa's mischievous smile at his teammates in Hamburg two nights ago just before the whistle blew for 15 more minutes of overtime. Lo and behold, a play had been called with a "pattern" just like in US football, with a double pass involving Jonathan Pitroipa which failed, but was agreed on beforehand. What a shame that the young striker was stopped (and "taken out") by Bremen goalie Tim Wiese in the final minutes. The outcome of the 120 minute ordeal hung on whether the Burkina Faso playmaker's dash for the goal and cunning foot-flick of the ball around the last defender, would culminate in a rousing victory. It was oh-so-close to becoming a great play-of-the-day. He is player to watch who HSV management want to groom and develop over time with a contract till 2012. He plays all over the midfield and can dribble into dangerously close range of the opponent's goal on his own or with a give-and-go or speedily recovered an errant ball with his lithe and heads-up moves.

If one of his striker teammates like Petric, Olic or Guerrero are saddled with an injury or benched for accumulated yellow cards, his hour will have come.

Gerhard Richter - S. with Child

Gerhard Richter - S. with Child Having recently learned about how Gerhard Richter handles his medium, I realize how protracted and personal this must have been in the making. I sense the floor dropping out from under me in this work. And it works. Yes, it's a Madonna and Child, but no, it's not, it's S. with, not and, her child. First he takes a snapshot and, leaving nothing to chance, traces its outlines onto his ground and then the work begins in earnest. An important feature is how he split the snapshot into wide, evenly spaced striations so a cross-texture of rough wooden planks seems to cut through the picture-plane. The upper left takes this wood of the horizontal "fencing" and allows it to be a staging area for his colors and textures. His palette self-referentially laps over into the scene--the unformed and as yet uncombined pigment the medium from which he will weave the image of a beloved mother and child. The palette affords a view of his own inner life, laid bare, on display alongside that of his wife's Bonnard-like intimacy. Their snapshot, his materials, converge into art. I feel like the label "in process" hangs over this piece. His far younger second wife, the second generation of his infant son, a second layer running across the piece by the cross-planking, weather-warped and deteriorating, as though the snapshot of "S." had been left on a billboard in wind and weather. The fudged, undried buon affresco countenance of S. a foil to what snapshots are meant to do, preserve. Biographically, she brings to him renewed conjugal unity, their child staving off his barren years, yet accelerating their approach by making the artist a father and partner of more than a companion--the adults now fellow parents. The process detaches you from the immediacy of a family album. The suckling child on S's breast rendered by Gerhard Richter into a mist-beaded contemplation of how we fade away in the flesh--at the same time the religious ikon quickening our human soul with its eternal image of maternal and religious nourishment. The weathered effect of his prepared canvas gives the scene a fragile honesty, as delicate as the English Patient's book of life.

Tour de Farce

There's a big problem in this country, a big problem in sports. Someone needs to step up, say enough is enough, and we're going to do what we can do to combat that problem.

Jim Scherr, CEO of the United States Olympic Committee, commenting on the U.S. situation

I know I owed quite a lot to fellow athletes around me who were a model to live by. If it wasn't the inspiring endurance of runners like Todd Volk, Tony White Bull or Jeff Turning Heart, it was looking at the achievement in sports such as wrestling. Fellow South Dakota sports teammate in track & field, Jim Scherr, with his brother Bill, are examples of this.

In the statement above, Jim has framed the crux of competitive sports in plain, unequivocal language. I hope he realizes he may be the one who can step up--and put a stop to all of it. With a little help from powerful friends. The malady calls for concerted action, not just from within the sports world's governance organizations.

Sports heroes are looked up to, set an example for others to follow and plant seeds of hope in young athletes who truly believe in them. This year, I have noticed a failure on the part of professional road bicyclists to grasp their role model function. As one confession after another rolled in to the news ticker here in Germany over the past few months, there has been surprisingly and disappointingly little talk about the squandered chances to set a positive example to young people. With media focusing on the failings of certain big names, they are not providing coverage about the underlying dilemma. Through ineffective leadership and insufficient stewardship, a wonderful sport is being dragged down by blood doping and drug abuse. With each passing interview and confession, I have yet to see a role model look into the camera and frankly admit the sense of shame he must feel that he has disappointed the next generation of aspiring cyclists who are looking up to him.

Where is the "I am sorry." directed at young athletes?

Instead only one word of "Bedauern" (regret) creeps in, while looking quite unconcerned, the focus is on the embarrassment of the individual athlete and the self-centered shame of the nation affected. Accusations of complicity between athletes and organizers are passed back and forth. The sport in general and the tour in particular morphs into a farce with teams wanly protesting by refusing to start at the starting line. Credibility suffers. A general sense of unease emerges and dishonor to the establishment and community. Cyclists who admit to manipulation or doping are punished, though the penalties may not impress them, they are so oversponsored. After admitting their error, they are back on the saddle somewhere.

What needs to happen
It is certainly a tragicomic affair this year and devastating to those who love the sport. Funnily, though, I am not seeing a strong, grass-roots emotional tug anywhere, just unease. It may be too late to reschedule the tour to next year and have a blackout moratorium until the rules are rewritten so the farce can be stopped. A needed step back so the seed of hope in young cyclists is not suffocated. But it would not have been a bad move.

Maybe a gold medal 10k winner in Tokyo is in fact among the racers - one who will get up after stumbling and win people's hearts over. Someone who will speak up for the values which have to come into focus for the sport to regain its place as a great test of honest endurance. Is it possible that a fallen racer will reconsider and start a campaign for reinstating the honor and pride the sport has lost. The rules can't merely be changed, a sea-change needs to be set in motion, too.

Afterthought - but my main point.
See Bill Bradley's book Life on the Run where, significantly at the close of his popular book, we find him and his teammate at a basketball clinic, passing their knowledge and skills on to younger people. Senator Bradley's book tells of Willis Reed explaining the basic low post moves a center should have down pat for his defender, going through the motions for 50 young school kids on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. "After you drive once you've got him set up for the drop dribble. ... take one bounce away from the basket, turn, and shoot. You'll have him flat-footed." Bradley continues by relating how "Willis gives the group a little lecture about hard work, responsibility, and the need to set goals. He says practice and study go hand in hand with a clean life. He speaks with the assurance of a man whose life has been built upon moral certainties. ... The kids are enraptured. 'There isn't much these days that hasn't been done,' he says. 'There's been a man on the moon and somebody has already run a mile in 3:55. But you have a chance for a real first: One of you can be the first Indian to play in the NBA.'"