Tough to pick a thread for it - here or news...

http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/13932/Ashenden-The-experts-were-only-allowed-to-see-the-first-nine-of-Armstrongs-38-blood-results.aspx

It may be wrong of me but I can't get enough of Ashenden dismantling UCI and McQuaid.

Oh fatty...

http://www.fatcyclist.com/2013/02/13/news-flash-armstrong-to-be-stripped-of-additional-titles/

Why bother resorting to fiction when he should be stripped of his 1998 Cascade Classic title?  

I was at 40.5 last week.  Explains a lot : )

I've seen this clip on youtube before...sick ! the team tt alone getting him back was sick

I'm always conflicted when I watch that video, it it totally badass - Mercatone UNO slays all... but we know how... strangley I don't get the same charge watching postal.

Jules, I am with you on that one. I think it was the come from behind TT back up to the front (everybody killing it to put one guy in contention), rather than 5 guys pushing the pace for 80km and blowing the rest of the field off their wheels. One seems sporting, the other feels like just waving a giant phallus around because you can.

...those guys were juiced to hell and gone. I think it has to do with Pantani being the underdog. Had he lived we might feel differently. Sadly

Poignant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=O9YL04v-J5U

Best.Analysis.Yet.

Pehaps the answer can be found on tenerife?

interesting read

Release the hounds.....

and bite him in the derriere!!!

Today I had the pleasure of riding around my local velodrome with Jeannie Longo and her husband. Found out she lives not too far away in France and rides there often. Never got around to asking them how that shipment of EPO from Joe Papp worked out.

Zing!

Just venting a little here, because the local dopers make me mad...

While picking up my bike yesterday from Ride Brooklyn, I was chit-chatting with Al about Mengoni's line-up this year and he mentions no more Jared Bunde (convicted doper) because he's down in Maryland getting his nursing degree, and better yet, it sounds like he's going for his NP degree which would give him the authority of prescribing medications.

In my first job, as a nurse, I can't tell you the times I had access to pre-filled EPO syringes. How easy it would have been for me to take those shots and order up extras from the pharmacy.

For those with weak morals and poor decision making skills, nursing is a dangerous career.

Yeah, apparently he didn't get in to Hunter so he's going to John's Hopkins.  He'll end up taking on a ton of debt, as that school is way more expensive than Hunter (where I'm at).  What's a good way to make money on the side? Hmmmmmm..... 

As you say, when I was a paramedic it was pretty easy to steal morphine, phenergen, and valium.  There's only so many safeguards they can employ.  The only reason people ever got caught was b/c they got greedy and lazy over time. And yeah, and an RN or especially an NP will have much greater access to tons more drugs.

Don't be surprised when he has a massive uptick in performance in his late 30's a few years from now.

 

Also, the dirty little secret is that no one in this business actually cares where you go to Nursing school. NO ONE. EVER. It's not like med school. It doesn't matter where you get your nursing degree. I've got friends in NP programs at Columbia in part for the name of the school, and they regret the decision on multiple levels.

Totally.  Unless maybe you go into academia. 

One of my prelim classmates didn't get into Hunter and decided for the TWO YEAR NP program at Columbia (IMHO that's waaaaay too fast to immediately go into being an NP.  Your first year you get your RN, then work while you finish up the NP.  Hunter's is 3 years just for RN and this lady has ZERO medical experience. Uhhhhhh....scary).  Her first year? $80,000.  Mine? Under 5. Woot!

I don't think she regrets it yet though, b/c she's got rich parents that I'm sure will pay for most of it.

Dan,

Not exactly. About when I graduated from RN school about 4-5 years back, hospitals clamped down on their purse strings big time. Two major hospitals in NYC closed altogether, and nursing graduates (even those with academic accolades, interesting and relevant previous experience like EMTs turned RNs, from "named" institutions) like myself found themselves locked out of most hiring cycles. My timing was good, and I had a few academic "ins" with Mount Sinai, so I got an interview and was hired relatively quickly after I passed my exam. Many of my smarter classmates, however, who took the licensing exam 3-5 months before me, were out of work for a long time. Even those who were on scholarship programs with the City that supposedly guaranteed them positions after passing the exam. Many hospitals had official hiring freezes, and everyone else experimented in a practice that still goes on today. Namely, "nurses are expensive, I wonder how few we can get away with having in our employ?"

The issue of not caring what school you come from is both deeper and broader. First, since I don't know when, forever, maybe, nursing has struggled to establish itself as a truly unique academic profession. For too long, and to too many people we're doctors' assistants, we're the people who wipe the asses of those who cannot do for themselves, we're automatic dispensers of pills and IV drugs, we're naughty and slutty. The best of us are none of that...we're free-thinking medical professionals, who provide care in a way that no one else can. In the ER, at least, we're often "first responders" and can make a significant difference in the kind of treatment and experience that a patient will receive.

Yesterday, I had a patient that was complaining of some pretty vague and non-acute type symptoms. It was the kind of thing that made the doctor whose attention I brought it to eyes roll initially. But I asked the patient some key questions, ran it through my old grey box, and had a hunch. So even before one of the Resident MDs had a chance to talk to her, I ran some basic tests on my own, got the expected results based on my assessment, brought those results immediately to the attention of the Resident, told her my personal plan of care (which she agreed with) and got the ball rolling on her care easily 40 minutes quicker than if I had simply waited for orders and instructions from the resident who hadn't seen her yet. She was suffering from the early stages of diabetic neuropathy, by the way, and had glucose levels 5 times the upper range of "normal."

Okay, enough patting myself on the back. The other reason why hospitals don't care what nursing school you go to, is echoed by what a few key folks in higher education have said publicly is trending towards. Namely, that the college degree is becoming less and less relevant and corporations are much more interested in training their own employees.

And so, in a career like nursing, where you learn your anatomy & physiology, and pharmacology is almost irrelevant. If you think for a second that Columbia students had a better pharm class than at Hunter, or Suny Downstate, or Pace student, you are dead wrong. In fact, all of our pharm classes SUCKED. And guess what, we all do rotations in the same place too. I'd pass NYU, Columbia, Suny Downstate students on the same floors at Mount Sinai when I was a student doing my rotations there all the time. And we all had the same complaints about our instructors who, in the field of nursing, across the board are uneven at best. Every program has a few outstanding teachers, but many more "retired" bedside nurses who, despite best intentions, are not quite up to the rigors of truly teaching well.

In nursing school, you learn a foundation. You get some knowledge, you are given the tools to pass an exam to get your license. But where you learn to be a nurse is on the job. If you are lucky, then your unit has a ball-busting nursing educator who will put you through the ringer with tests and classes and skills labs like I did at Sinai's Emergency Department, and amongst a sea of asshole nurses who don't give a crap about you, you'll find a few who will take the time to mentor you in that first 6 months to a year on the job when you will definitely want to cry, run screaming and question, what the hell you got yourself into at least every other day you are on the job.

So that's why they don't really care. They care that you've passed the exam and have a baseline and solid foundation, which they know you will get at almost any nursing school.

... Back to doping!

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/armstrong-s-cheating-won-record-riches-of-more-than-218-million.html