Years of Poems and Spirits

Song is leaving for Beijing again. We thought it would be nice to spend a day in the city instead of being stuck on the east side.

Dinner at Waterfront Seafood Grill: Great sound view, spectacular sunset, pricy menu (the burning-through-your-wallet kind), excellent Lamb Rack.

Seafair Torchlight Parade: The lamest street fair I’ve ever witnessed. Where the New Orleanians turn funeral parade into a festival, the Seattlites turn a festival into a funeral parade. There was even a large contingent of Fa Lun Gong band: a wierd sight that left me … 哭笑不得 (or “not sure to frawn upon or to laugh at”).

The Simpsons Movie: for an long time fun, the movie is hardly any more entertaining. But it didn’t ruin the brand either. The really fun part was the experience of watching it: as different people picking on different jokes, it reminded me watching an episode with a group of guys in a bar. There is “solitary” movie and “social” movie. The Simpsons certainly belongs to the latter.

Heard the news that Alert Ellis passed away. I have heard about his life story and a NPR interview. I admire what Ellis was trying to do but find myself lack of motivation to carry out his instructions.

But just remembered one thing when I heard the news. In 2004, when Song and I were traveling from Athens to Meteora, we met a young woman on the train. I tried to strike up a conversation but we could hardly understand each other so the conversation was a bit awkward. When I finally realized that she was a counselor on her way to a local clinic, I mentioned behavior therapy. She instantly picked it up and mentioned either REBT or Ellis’ name—I forgot which because she said it in almost perfect English and took me by surprise.

Just one of those things I would have forgotten had I not seen the news today … Is it time to read “Remembrance of Things Past”?

About Tour de France: now Vinokourov and his team were kicked out. La Tour is getting crazier by the year. It is almost a crapshoot today to call someone a top rider since you don’t know what will happen to him next.

I enjoy watching the Tour every year. Not that I like to watch a bunch of sweaty white guys (talking about the whitest sport, cycling beats out golf AND hockey) wildly shaking their skinny asses on the road. But there is this deeper, almost religious sense of self-torture-till-redemption that has a meta-physical appeal to me.

But endurance cycling has changed a lot from the days when riders shared a cigarette on their way to Champs-Élysées. Today, any tour rider appears to me as a human-bot riding on a sleek machine. I could never forget the image of Jan Ullrich sprinting in the first time trial in 2003 when he beat Lance by more than a minute. That guy looked like a Terminator on a mission.

I suspect La Tour, as the way it is, is no longer sustainable (hijacking a popular term). The challenge it poses to the riders and the hype around it is too much for any human to handle. The fact that a diverse group of riders are using drugs year after year tells me this is a systematic problem not a random one.

If the Tour is serious about solving the doping issue, it has to use a systematic solution as well. I’d propose the following: shift the emphasis on team standing instead of individual ones and adopt a more liberal snitching system.

By becoming a team sport, the Tour can reduce the pressure on individuals and making cheating more difficult to carry out or remain secret. The snitch idea is to borrow the prisoner’s delimma in Game Theory, although this is probably not a very “Frenchy” idea.