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Jon Dawson takes a look at Pearl Jam's latest effort and a classic recording by Otis Redding.
New album: �Lightning Bolt�
Artist: Pearl Jam
Label: Monkeywrench
Rating: 4 out of 5
Pearl Jam�s tenth album �Lightning Bolt� is a vast improvement over their 2009 release, the energetic but largely forgettable �Backspacer.�
Being one of the last bands that were allowed to have an enduring career, a chunk of Pearl Jam�s longevity stems from their decision to abandon MTV and most of the hype machine they fed in the mid-1990s. Anyone who still follows Pearl Jam would have to pay attention to their music, not how good Eddie Vedder�s hair looked that week.
This freedom has allowed the band to release a string of solid, anthem-free albums (�No Code,� �Yield,� �Binaural�) that were miles away from the fist-pumping arena rock of their early days. Vedder�s obsession with The Who has served him well as Pearl Jam enters their elder statesmen years. Seeing Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey still get it done as they approach the age of 70 seems to have helped Pearl Jam handle being a middle-aged rock band. �Lightning Bolt� rocks as hard almost any other Pearl Jam album, and the vibe feels natural and unforced.
�Mind Your Manners� is the best rock song Pearl Jam have come up with in a while, flawlessly fusing the Dead Boys and The Who into a lean, mean pummeling machine. �My Father�s Song� provides a nice spotlight for the fluid bass work of Jeff Ament, while radio single �Sirens� is the perfect vehicle for an epic Vedder vocal. �Pendulum� is a spacey meditation on mortality that wouldn�t have been out of place on an early 1970s Pink Floyd album and serves as a nice mid-album pallet cleanser.
�Sleeping By Myself� � a song that originally appeared on Vedder�s solo ukulele album � is given the full band treatment here and it helps balance the bombast nicely. Another detour that works is the John Lee Hooker/ZZ Top boogie of �Let The Records Play,� which, if interpreted correctly, would be the band�s second tribute those round pieces of vinyl. Album closer �Future Days� wraps things up in a hauntingly cinematic fashion.
Pearl Jam have yet again found a way to satisfy their fans while still shuffling the deck enough to keep things interesting.
Classic album: �Pain In My Heart�
Artist: Otis Redding
Label: Atco/Atlantic
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5
Otis Redding�s 1964 debut album �Pain In My Heart� is a landmark recording that seemingly grows more powerful as the years go passing by.
Backed by Booker T. & the MG�s � the greatest soul/r&b band ever � Redding wasted no time staking his claim as the greatest Southern soul singer. Listening to his gut-wrenching performance of �Pain In My Heart,� it�s as if Redding was the kind of guy that simply overpowered his depressions. Surely a bit of acting was part of the gig, but it would be impossible to sing with such abandon unless some of the emotions were genuine.
Redding was already starting to blossom as a songwriter on his debut, with �These Arms Of Mine� and �Hey Hey Baby� reaching the heights of the established covers on the set. As for Redding�s ability to interpret other people�s songs, his reworkings of Little Richard�s �Lucille� and Sam Cooke�s �You Send Me� are performed with such confidence you�d swear these were brand new songs. A funky, gritty reading of the Ben E. King classic �Stand By Me� is an under-appreciated gem, and Redding�s marvelously funky take on Rufus Thomas�s �The Dog� is about as fun as music gets.
Although his career was cut short just as he was about to achieve massive crossover success with �Sittin� On The Dock Of The Bay�, Otis Redding�s mark was already made. Many soul singers of the 1960s found it difficult to transition into the 1970s and beyond, but Redding�s abilities and appeal hint that he may have been the one guy who could have pulled it off. All of his original album releases are highly recommended, and �Pain In My Heart� is as good a place to start as any.
Jon Dawson�s album reviews appear every Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or jon.dawson.com. Purchase Jon�s book �Making Gravy In Public� at Amazon.com or jondawson.com.


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European Commission: ACTA Is Dead, Long Live ACTA?
from the hidden-in-plain-sight dept
The first six months of 2012 saw Europeans taking to the streets in order to kill off ACTA in the European Union. Against all the odds, they succeeded in that aim, as the European Parliament voted to reject ACTA on 4 July last year. That defeat has certainly been burned into the memories of Karel de Gucht, the EU Commissioner responsible for negotiating first ACTA and now TAFTA/TTIP. When he was asked whether the latter might see ACTA sneak in by the backdoor, here's what he replied:
"ACTA, one of the nails in my coffin. I'm not going to reopen that discussion. Really, I mean, I am not a masochist. I'm not planning to do that.
So you might think that ACTA is definitively dead and buried in the EU. But then along comes a new free trade agreement, this time between the EU and Singapore, which has the following section, Article 11.44, paragraph 2 (pdf):
If the Commission advances new basic legislation, which I think she should, we will revisit the question, but I'm not going to do this by the back door".
In determining the amount of damages for infringement of intellectual property rights, a Party's judicial authorities shall have the authority to consider, inter alia, any legitimate measure of value the right holder submits, which may include lost profits, the value of the infringed goods or services measured by the market price, or the suggested retail price.
Those with good memories may recall that something similar was to be found in ACTA, and that it was one of the problematic areas that led the European Parliament to reject the treaty. In fact, it's not similar, it's word-for-word identical with Article 9, paragraph 1 of ACTA (pdf). And it's not the only section that's been cut-and-pasted from ACTA: several other paragraphs are also direct copies.
This raises an interesting question. At the moment, the EU-Singapore FTA has only been "initialled": that means it must still be approved by the European Commission, the Council of Ministers representing the member nations, and the European Parliament. So will the EU's MEPs reject the new trade agreement because it represents ACTA by the backdoor -- or at least a part of it? That seems unlikely.
But if the European Parliament does pass the EU-Singapore FTA, de Gucht might then argue that the same sections from ACTA can now be pasted into TAFTA/TTIP, since they are no longer problematic. And if he does so, perhaps he will be tempted to include a few more sections from ACTA, on the grounds that he is doing nothing "by the backdoor", but doing it in the full view of everyone....
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Filed Under: acta, europe, european commission, european parliament, karel de gucht, singapore, trade agreements

subset: commoncrawl


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The greatest baseball player who ever lived was arraigned at a federal courthouse in San Francisco earlier this month. In a reversal of the usual trajectory, he looked noticeably slimmer than he had at the end of his playing days, when his head and torso had appeared vaguely salt-swollen, but he retained that particular combination of detached cool and deep-seated insecurity which had made him a compelling antihero on the diamond for much of the past two decades. "Can you tell us how you're feeling?" someone shouted out, as our man approached the metal detector by the entrance. "I'm doing very good," he replied, in that always surprising alto voice of his, and soon extended a hand, as if to wave in appreciation, at a nonplussed janitor standing off to the side. No such love for the assembled reporters, whom he acknowledged with a contemptuous little smile. ("I could learn how to press 'Record' on a tape recorder and write for a newspaper or a magazine," he once said. "But could you ever be good in baseball? Probably not. So don't degrade what I do, because I could put you to zero.") He rubbed his hands together, glanced at his watch, and stepped into the elevator to face the judge.
We're talking, of course, about Barry Bonds, the home-run king and seven-time National League Most Valuable Player, and presumed druggie. The fact that many readers may have blanched at my unqualified appraisal above is central to understanding his predicament. In the best-selling book "Game of Shadows," Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams suggest that Bonds was stung by all the joyful attention showered upon Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa during the record-chasing summer of 1998, and set about rededicating himself, in his mid-thirties, to the task of being properly recognized for what he already was: the best ballplayer of his era. He was then a three-time M.V.P., putting him in the exalted company of Mantle and Musial and DiMaggio. He had won eight Gold Gloves for his defensive prowess. He had stolen more bases, since entering the league, than all but three players, and hit more home runs than anyone but McGwire, who outweighed him by forty pounds. "Stan Musial didn't need steroids," Attorney General John Ashcroft once remarked, but in 1998 Bonds was already Musial's equal, and largely unloved. Within a few years, the formerly lithe Barry Bonds would be appearing on the cover of Muscle & Fitness, celebrated for his "sledgehammer biceps and thick, contoured delts worthy of Michelangelo's craftsmanship."
This prosecution is supposed to be our great reckoning, a legal remedy for a generation's worth of cultural complacency. That Bonds, like so many other players of his time, used performance-enhancing drugs is not really in question. He stands accused of lying about it—of defrauding us, in his testimony before a grand jury investigating high-level sports doping, about the nature of his greatness. For this, and for disrespecting the national pastime with his alleged deceptions, fans want his contrition. And Bonds, who approaches even casual conversation with the defensiveness of a hostile witness, is not inclined—perhaps never will be inclined—to give it. He seldom answers questions without anticipating the broader conclusion that others are likely to draw—in this case, the conclusion that he was just a cheater.
"I'll tell you how I cheat," Bonds told a couple of reporters during spring training some years ago, when he had become sick of all the pestering. "I cheat because I'm my daddy's son." Bonds's father, Bobby, was an alcoholic and largely absent during his childhood, but he was also a big-league All-Star. Bonds's uncle Robert was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs. His aunt Rosie was an Olympic hurdler. You could blame Bonds for genetic good luck, but don't demean his obvious abilities by suggesting that they were a chemically induced mirage.
Barry also inherited from Bobby, who was subjected to frequent racial taunts on the field, his lack of reverence for baseball as a cultural institution rather than as a paycheck, which made him a polarizing figure from the start. His on-field presence was a shade too statistically minded for a certain kind of fan. He excelled without aspiring to heroism—content, always, to accept a base on balls rather than risk humiliation by taking a cut at a low-percentage offering. (He is the king of walks, too.) He never seemed to enjoy himself enough, or to appreciate the luxury of making a living through child's play. Indeed, he disputed the notion, and has said that the last time he "played" baseball, instead of working at it, was in college.
In the courtroom, at his arraignment, Bonds turned in his chair and assessed the loosely packed gallery several times, with what seemed a mixture of grievance and neediness. Once you have declared yourself "the most wanted man in America," as Bonds has done, it can be difficult to swallow the ebbing of interest. Here was a man who had refused, as if on principle, to swing at a bad pitch, and then applied that same steely resolve to his legal situation, at some cost to his dignity. More than seven years have passed since Bonds was called to testify before the grand jury, and nearly three and a half years have passed since he was first charged with lying to it. His baseball career never officially ended; it simply died on the vine of evidentiary hearings and postponements and superseding indictments.
Maybe they could show, circumstantially, that he had used steroids, but could they prove that he did so knowingly, in front of a San Francisco jury still basking in World Series glory? Bonds was taking all the way, still looking for a walk. He stood and pleaded not guilty.
The prosecution of Bonds, beginning this week, is to be followed, in July, by a trial of Roger Clemens, on charges of perjuring himself before Congress. The greatest batter and the greatest pitcher—a pair of boldface asterisks for the record book. Few doubt that either of them used steroids, yet none of their lesser contemporaries have been made to go to jail for it. Then, just offstage, there waits the all-time Tour de France victor Lance Armstrong, currently named as the target of a drug-related federal grand-jury investigation based in Los Angeles. He might have thought that, while cycling through the Pyrenees, he was out of our government's jurisdiction, but Armstrong's riding team was sponsored by the United States Postal Service.
The common link at the source of all these investigations—the "Eliot Ness of the steroids age," according to the Times—is an extremely tall and thin former I.R.S. agent named Jeff Novitzky, whose biggest claim to fame, before all this, was helping to bring down an extortionist California kickboxing instructor who brandished a samurai sword and called himself the Immortal Tiger. Novitzky grew up in Burlingame, on the San Francisco peninsula, less than ten miles from Bonds. He was a standout high-school high jumper and played basketball at a junior college nearby, in the late nineteen-eighties. That was around the same time that he saw an article in a local newspaper with the headline "GETTING ATHLETES IN TUNE" and featuring a photograph of four burly men holding a former musician aloft. The musician was identified as Victor Conte, a bassist who toured with Herbie Hancock and the seventies funk band Tower of Power. He had since become the executive director of something called the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO, "which is testing trace minerals in some of America's best Olympic athletes, trying to help them stay healthy and enhance their performances by bringing their bodies into the proper biochemical balance." Two of the burly men in the photo went on to test positive for steroids.
Novitzky was reminded of Conte again shortly before the Sydney Olympics, in 2000, when a shot-putter named C. J. Hunter tested positive, and was defended at a press conference by his "nutritionist," the BALCO chief and former bassist. Rumors circulated among amateur coaches on the peninsula that Conte had begun supplying his clients with more than biochemical balance. Novitzky conceived an after-hours stakeout scheme. Beginning in the summer of 2002, he devoted his Monday nights to combing through the dumpsters in the BALCO parking lot, looking for suspicious trash. He persisted in this weekly routine for nearly a year, amassing evidence for an eventual search warrant: empty syringe wrappers, correspondence from élite track-and-field athletes ("Vic, here is the check for the next cycle"), an issue of the underground magazine Anabolic Insider. It was during the period of dumpster surveillance that the Muscle & Fitness article about Bonds appeared, and quoted him saying, "I visit BALCO every three to six months."
Working under the auspices of the I.R.S., Novitzky was compelled to pursue a financial angle, even though his interest clearly lay in the drugs themselves and in their broader social implications. (He has since transferred to the Food and Drug Administration.) So he got a warrant to monitor Conte's e-mail account, and noted references to, among other things, Western Union transfers. He also subpoenaed bank records, and he discovered what he thought were abnormally large cash withdrawals and checks from National Football League players deposited to Conte's personal account.
In September of 2003, Novitzky made his move, leading an extensive raid on BALCO, involving more than twenty agents, some wearing flak jackets and carrying automatic weapons, and attracting the attention of local journalists, who soon realized that they were onto "the biggest sports doping case in American history," as the San Jose Mercury News later put it. Forty of the forty-two charges resulting from the raid were eventually dropped, and the money-laundering count that Conte pleaded guilty to was in the amount of a few hundred dollars, "a sum rarely, if ever, deemed worthy of federal prosecution," as his sentencing recommendation said. Conte spent four months in the Taft Correctional Institution—Club Fed, he calls it—followed by four months of house arrest. But the parade of All-Stars and world-record holders before the grand jury investigating the case, and the subsequent leaking of much of their testimony to the press by a rogue defense attorney, was enough to change the face of contemporary athletics. "It was the wrist slap heard round the world," Conte said.
Five weeks before jury selection was set to begin in the case of U.S.A. v. Barry Bonds, the Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Nedrow raised an "atmospheric concern" with the presiding judge, Susan Illston. He was worried that Bonds's lawyers (there are seven) might allude to "missing parts to this story" or to "a chapter untold," with the implication that such gaps might be exculpatory. Illston cut in swiftly. "Nobody's going to need to draw that map," she said. "It's going to be obvious." Then, referring to the prospective jurors, she asked, "What should we tell them?"
The problem was that the most important witness was not expected to testify. He was Greg Anderson, Bonds's former trainer and an associate of Victor Conte's. In 2005, Anderson pleaded guilty to steroids distribution and money laundering, stemming from the BALCO raid, and served three months in prison, followed by three months of house arrest. Not long after reëmerging into civilian life, he was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury investigating Bonds, and refused, claiming that the government was breaking a plea-bargaining promise it had made to leave him alone. Held in contempt of court, he then went back to prison, for three stretches that together lasted more than a year. Think of him as the BALCO equivalent of Whitewater's Susan McDougal: a conscientious objector who bore the brunt of the ordeal so that someone far greater need not be humbled. Two years ago, his mother-in-law's house was raided, as part of a federal tax probe that seemed conspicuously aimed at pressuring him to reconsider.
With the trial fast approaching, and the reality of Anderson's determined resistance setting in, Nedrow and his fellow-prosecutor Matthew Parrella had just dropped six of the eleven charges against Bonds, leaving them with four counts of perjury and one count of obstructing justice. Among the casualties of the streamlining was this meandering bit of grand-jury testimony:
NEDROW: Did you ever get anything else from Greg besides advice or tips on your weightlifting, and also the vitamins and the proteins that you already referenced?
BONDS: This year . . . when I was going through—my dad died of cancer, you know. And everyone knows that.
NEDROW: Yes, I'm sorry about that.
BONDS: And everyone tries to give me everything. You got companies that provide us with more junk to try than anything. And you know that, as well. I was fatigued, tired—just needed recovery. . . . And Greg came to the ballpark, and he said, you know, "This will help you recover," and he rubbed some cream on my arm—like, some lotion-type stuff, and, like, gave me some flaxseed oil. That's what he called it: called it some flaxseed oil, man. It's, like, "Whatever, dude." . . . What's lotion going to do to me? How many times have I heard that? "This is going to rub into you and work." Let him be happy. We're friends, you know?
Bonds and Anderson had met in middle school, drifted apart in their late teens, and reconnected in 1998, post-McGwire-and-Sosa. Anderson, who had played college baseball in Kansas, was by then a fixture at the World Gym in Burlingame—a "dungeon gym," according to Bonds, as opposed to a "richie gym." He drove a Chevy Tahoe with vanity plates that read "W8 GURU."
"My other trainer was, like, 'You do three sets of legs, three sets of this'—three, you know?" Bonds explained. "And Greg is more, 'Sixteen sets of chest, more biceps,' to really maximize and expand your muscle. And I liked that philosophy."
The friendship, to judge from Bonds's account, consisted primarily of Anderson pushing Bonds to work harder, and Bonds calling Anderson unprintable names in return. "He's the type of person who motivates me because I don't want to look at him no more," Bonds said. "You need that in your life." Any and all attempts by Nedrow to inquire about substantive discussions they might have had—say, about whether the cream and the so-called flaxseed oil were really undetectable "designer" steroids—were met with incredulousness by Bonds. "I mean, you have friends," Bonds said at one point. "Do you discuss their personal lives all the time? No." Bonds's depiction of friendship was like a caricature of male bonding, except without the sports banter. ("Don't come to my house talking baseball. If you want to come to my house and talk about fishing, some other stuff, we'll be good friends.")
What remains less clear is what was in it for Anderson, who, as the "Game of Shadows" co-author Lance Williams told me, comes across as the Job of this long proceeding: "all suffering, all the time." Bonds told Nedrow that Anderson lived out of his car sometimes. "Greg has nothing, man," he said. "This is the same guy that goes over to our friend's mom's house and massages her leg because she has cancer and she swells up every night for months. Spends time next to my dad rubbing his feet every night." When one of the grand jurors asked, "Have you ever thought of maybe building him a mansion or something?," Bonds replied, "One, I'm black. And I'm keeping my money. And there's not too many rich black people in this world." Bonds was sometimes called Black Barry Pie at Junipero Serra High School, in San Mateo, where he had only two African-American classmates. He paid Anderson, who is white, fifteen thousand dollars a year in cash—not as a salary but as a gesture of friendship and good will.
Anderson's vow of silence extends to the press as well as to the court. "He's never given an interview," one of his lawyers, Paula Canny, told me. "What's the point?" She added that Anderson is her own personal trainer, and "awesome" at it. (He has retained roughly eighty per cent of his business.) "I don't think any of us thought in 2003 that it would turn out like this," Canny said. "I think on some level all of us had hoped that when Obama and Eric Holder came in they'd say, 'Enough is enough.' "
On the date of Bonds's arraignment, Anderson was summoned before the court yet again, so that Illston could reiterate her intention to remand him into custody for the duration of the trial if he doesn't change his mind. A number of the more jaded observers jokingly speculated about whether Bonds might accidentally drop a roll of unmarked bills on the floor, for Anderson to scoop up, while a middle-aged woman who identified herself as a "very good heckler," from Section 139, in left field, at the Giants' A.T. & T. Park, approached Anderson and congratulated him for his courage. The old friends did not make eye contact. Anderson wore a dark suit that barely contained his stocky frame, and walked with an awkwardly wide gait, as though suffering from a groin injury. His hair was spiked and he had a soul-patch goatee, just shading gray, which extended beneath his chin. Illston asked if his commitment remained firm. He nodded without speaking—silent to the very end. Mark Geragos, an Anderson attorney who had also represented Susan McDougal, clarified for the record: "He's taking the not-testifying to the _n_th degree." Bonds chuckled, along with everyone else. Anderson's forty-fifth birthday is in a week. He is prepared to spend it behind bars.
The sports-watching public's interest in steroids has always been slightly muddled. When, in 2005, the self-proclaimed Godfather of Steroids, Jose Canseco, published a memoir, naming old teammates and opponents who had used, he was briefly lionized for his bravery and honesty. I remember going to a book signing of Canseco's at a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan, and finding middle-school health teachers and concerned parents in the audience, eagerly anticipating some face time with the new whistle-blower. "I think you're doing something important, especially for the young people," one man said. Canseco seemed bemused, and advised them all to read the book. Had they done so, they'd have found passages like this one, on the first page:
Steroids are the future. By the time my eight-year-old daughter, Josie, has graduated from high school, a majority of all professional athletes—in all sports—will be taking steroids. And believe it or not, that's good news.
A year or so before that, I was at a bar with a young major leaguer—a teammate of Bonds's, in fact. The beer seemed to be working its way through him quickly, and another member of our party teased him about his weak bladder. Defensively, the player replied that he was taking thirty-five pills a day, and that the intensive supplementary regimen of vitamins and minerals was hard on his digestive system. When the conversation naturally turned from supplements to steroids, the player changed the subject, after assuring us that he'd never been tempted himself. He was, however, happy to admit that he was popping dozens of pills. There was no shame in it.
I thought of that exchange when I visited Victor Conte recently at his office, in San Carlos, Bonds's home town. Conte now runs Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning, or SNAC, the aboveboard business he had long operated in conjunction with BALCO, which is now defunct. The SNAC office is decorated with framed, signed pictures ("Dr. Victor, You the man!") of famous track stars and running backs and ballplayers. I also noticed a poster on the wall advertising a product called ZMA Nightcap, "the original 'grow as you sleep' formulation," available in root-beer-float and apple-berry flavors. ZMA, which is composed principally of zinc, magnesium, and vitamin B6, is a legal, over-the-counter supplement. To be sure, there are important and legitimate medical distinctions to be made between O.T.C. "anabolic mineral support formulas," such as ZMA, and potentially dangerous hormones that actually alter the body's chemistry, and require a doctor's prescription, but the moral component—which is what traditionalists and politicians are referring to when they decry athletes' "taking shortcuts" or "cutting corners"—applies to both. The idea that there is a large pool of professional baseball players who follow a natural path of eating ham and eggs and drinking milk, while working hard, and then a group of unnatural and lazy frauds, like Bonds, is misguided. (Bonds made a point of telling the 2003 grand jury that he'd got up at four in the morning that day so that he could fit in a full workout before suffering their inquisition.) There are players like Bonds, perhaps, and then there are players like my bar companion. Unless you're a child, there is nothing natural about growing as you sleep.
"Are there all sorts of things that I do now with athletes that I believe truly do—and science supports that they do—enhance performance?" Conte asked. "Yes. And are they legal? Yes." He pointed at a large appliance with a breathing mask, stationed by the foot of a treadmill, called a hypoxicator, which he contrasted with synthetic erythropoietin (EPO), a drug favored by cyclists and runners, because it boosts red-blood-cell counts. "A hypoxic training method increases red blood cells that aid in oxygen transport and utilization," Conte said. "But EPO is illegal, because you inject it, and the use of a hypoxicator is not. And, if you end up with a similar result, why is one legal and the other not?" He added, "You're asking me, 'Where do you draw the line?,' and I'm saying it's really blurry, and I think that people are going to look back and view me differently a decade from now."
Conte, who is sixty, has a thin mustache and wears small wire-frame glasses that give him the appearance of a barrel-chested laboratory chemist. He began using steroids himself at the age of forty-six. ("It made me feel like a million bucks.") Like other ex-cons, he has spent a lot of time ruminating on hypocrisies in the justice system, and elsewhere. "Federal taxpayers paid for me to be in this Club Fed for a hundred twenty days," he said. Then, of course, there were the costs incurred to put him there in the first place. He went on, "And, if you'd like, I'll tell you a little bit about what goes on there, including smoking marijuana, female guards having sex with the inmates, cocaine, alcohol." He'd since learned that steroids and human growth hormone are "rampant in law enforcement, no doubt about it," he said.
Last fall, while watching the Giants play the Phillies in the playoffs, Conte saw a commercial that made him laugh. It was for the Web site IsItLowT.com. "A little shadow of a guy comes on the screen and goes, 'Are you half the man you used to be?' " he recounted. " 'Would you like increased muscle mass, enhance your sexual libido, blah blah blah?' And you go there, and they give you a list of things to tell your doctor, and they sell you testosterone cream and gel. Major League Baseball is promoting the use of testosterone! 'Oh, it's O.K. for the fans, but not the players.' " He shook his head. "It's two different standards to me," he said. "Hank Aaron's held to one standard, Barry Bonds another. They didn't drag Hank Aaron in and say, 'Did you use stimulants?' " (Aaron, like most players of his era, experimented with "greenies," or amphetamines, which are now banned by Major League Baseball.)
Conte said that he was hoping Novitzky "will also be on trial here," as the lead prosecution witness. Two weeks ago, he followed up by sending me an e-mail that linked to news that his viewpoint is evidently gaining wider acceptance. At a recent House Appropriations subcommittee hearing, the Georgia Republican Jack Kingston grilled Novitzky's current boss, the F.D.A. commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, about the scope of these ongoing doping probes. "I just sense that this is blown out of proportion in terms of resources put into it," Kingston said.
What troubled Conte most of all was the misunderstanding of motive. Money had never been the point, which is why Novitzky's I.R.S. background so galled him. Back then, as now, he had made nearly all his income from the sale of ZMA. The illegal drugs were a hobby born of fandom. He saw himself as the Owsley of Swat. "What I've always enjoyed doing is being in the trenches with athletes," he said, and related the thrill to the adrenaline that comes from being onstage in a band, performing for thousands. "It was exciting for me to be at these games and watch Barry smash it into the McCovey Cove. I would selectively spend my time with those who had a good chance of doing something historic. I was going to the Olympic Games. I was going to world championships. I was going to Super Bowls. That's what I loved to do. Deepak Chopra calls it 'timeless awareness.' "
Conte raised the curious complaint that Novitzky was unknowingly engaged in a campaign to "dismantle the entertainment value" of sports, and while that may, in effect, be true of many Olympic events, where the prospect of watching people set new world records is arguably what holds our interest, it seems less clear that our enjoyment of a team sport like baseball hinges on ever-upward trajectories of human achievement.
Barry Bonds at his best was a kind of walking thought experiment. Earning eighteen million dollars a year, he had his own cook and his own nutritionist, from Stanford. He had a personal stretching coach, and a running coach, and, of course, a weight guru with a sophisticated understanding of pharmacology. He had a whole corner of the clubhouse to himself, with a reclining chair and a private big-screen TV, so that he could find comfort and relaxation amid the naturally chaotic media atmosphere. His enablers indulged and even encouraged his surliness, correctly realizing that sensitivity to others could only be detrimental to his game. ("I told him he's way too nice," Anderson said to an acquaintance who was secretly recording the conversation. "Every time he's an asshole, it just fucking works. He fucking plays good because he's being himself.") Bonds wore an elbow pad better suited for a hockey player, which allowed him to lean fearlessly out over the plate, thereby shrinking the strike zone. The lengths to which he went in pursuit of maximizing his talents are perhaps unparalleled in the history of the sport. So, then: what if a paid professional became so good at that supposedly most difficult of all things—hitting a pitched baseball—that no one else really wanted to play against him?
Bonds was intentionally walked with the bases loaded. He was intentionally walked with the bases empty. He was intentionally walked, in fact, one out of every five times he came up to bat in 2004—and that's not counting the several dozen times he was unofficially sent on his way, with junk so far off the plate that even the most impulsive of batters would never have dared swing. He alone among the known accused achieved a level of dominance that threatened to undermine the rules, and did so against drugged pitchers, let's remember, who were also better rested, with the newly fastidious attention to pitch counts, than their predecessors. Watching Bonds hit at the end of his career was transfixing—his success rate climbing improbably up the ladder, across the fifty-per-cent mark, nearing sixty, and then beyond, obliterating the old cliché about baseball being a game that teaches failure—even as it suggested something uncomfortable about where the game itself was headed. With his minimalist stroke and robotic discipline, he was like a video-game player who had found a loophole in the programming code to exploit. It's fun until, all of a sudden, it's not.
If he is convicted, Bonds will almost certainly get no more than a few months of jail time, and likely less. (The cyclist Tammy Thomas and the track coach Trevor Graham, both convicted of similar charges relating to BALCO, were given only home confinement.) But he will certainly be humiliated. Thanks to a late pretrial ruling by Judge Illston, we are to be treated to a star witness—by tabloid standards—who will talk about the putative shrinkage of Bonds's testicles, and about the effect that his training methods may have had on his off-field performance. The witness is Kimberly Bell, Bonds's jilted mistress, for whom he once allegedly offered to buy a house in Arizona, using cash gleaned from autograph-signing appearances, as a tax dodge. When things went sour, she wrote an e-mail to John McCain, offering to tell all. The Senator wasn't interested, but Playboy was: her story, "The Bonds Girl," appeared in November of 2007, accompanied by photographs. (The admissibility of the pictorial as a potential defense exhibit has not yet been resolved.)
"With respect to testicular atrophy," the Bonds attorney Cristina Arguedas began, in an unsuccessful appeal to have this subject ruled off limits, "when it has occurred, this effect is so slight that a trained medical examiner needs a special instrument called an orchidometer." She later added, "The case that the government is putting on is going to be featured very heavily on the Drudge Report, and we think that's unfortunate." Legally, maybe so, but the entertainment value holds promise.
The most unlikely casualty of the steroids era may have been an African-American undercover narcotics officer who signed up for a membership to Greg Anderson's gym in the spring of 2003 under the name Ronnie G. Allen. He was forty-six at the time, and built like Anderson: five feet seven, about two hundred pounds. In his thirties, while off duty, he had played running back for a semi-pro football team, the San Mateo Outlaws. He had also worked several prior cases with Jeff Novitzky, and says that he introduced Novitzky to the art of dumpster diving. His real name is Iran White, and not long ago I met him for lunch at a Red Lobster in San Jose, where he recounted the unhappy end of his law-enforcement career.
White's assignment was to befriend Anderson, and, through Anderson, to get to Bonds, whom, White says, Novitzky referred to as "that fucker." After a couple of scouting visits to the gym, he approached Anderson. They began lifting together. Anderson told him to come back in the future with a long-sleeved shirt. (Showing off your muscles is considered bad form among serious lifters.) All the better for the wire he was wearing, White figured. Before long, Anderson let slip that he'd need to be disappearing on occasion to visit a client of his—"the big guy"—who worked at the ballpark. White asked if he might come along sometime, and Anderson consented. "I knew that Greg had a certain place in his heart for blacks, and I exploited that, because I had to," White said. "He thought I was cool."
About two months into his sting operation, and shortly before he'd been planning to accompany Anderson to a Giants game, White woke up his wife and said that he was having a heart attack. The right side of his body soon became paralyzed, and he couldn't speak. He'd suffered a stroke.
A Playboy article that first revealed White's undercover role, in 2004, said that his doctors believed he had torn a shoulder muscle while lifting—while trying to keep up with Anderson's philosophy of maximal reps, executed at "an excruciatingly slow pace"—and that a blood clot had drifted up into his brain. White has since come to view the injury as a form of divine intervention—removing him from an unworthy case. Several hours after arriving at the hospital, he began to recover some mobility and regained his speech. He decided that he would take the next day off and resume work the following day. "As soon as I uttered those words, I kind of spun around, laid back down, and a second stroke hit me," he said. He remained paralyzed for weeks, and has not worked a job since. "It's like I took a bullet in the line of duty," he said.
Our conversation proceeded slowly, with White, who now speaks in a halting whisper, frequently recalling events in his past that he deemed significant for their apparent connections. He told me about an encounter he'd had with a crotchety Willie Mays, Bonds's godfather, at a car dealership, years ago, while working for the Menlo Park police department. ("I was in uniform, and I didn't want to be too fanatic," he said.) And he told me about his earliest awareness of Barry Bonds. "I think I was in college at the time, when I heard he was at Serra High School and he was tearing it up," he said. " 'Course, reportedly he was a little snot." White's brother-in-law said to him, of Bonds, "Someday, he'll be better than Bobby Bonds. He'll be greater than Babe Ruth." White mimicked a look of skepticism, and then raised his eyebrows: "Lo and behold."
After a couple of hours, White grinned and said, "Oh, incidentally, after I turned fifty-two, my doctors recommended that I use some cream." He began making slathering motions with his arms. "I don't remember the medication most of the time, but when I do use it I can tell that I'm thinking clearer," he said. "I see things better. I'm much more alert." He then walked me out to his car, which was parked in a handicapped spot. He wanted to show me a scrapbook he'd compiled of big busts he had made. "This is, like, ten kilos of coke," he said, pointing at one image. "That's three hundred pounds of marijuana. . . . These are meth labs that I investigated that just blew up and burned to nothing. . . . This guy, I caught him in the process of a rape." The Bonds case was a sorry way to go out. Before saying goodbye, White reached into a briefcase, retrieved a small bottle of testosterone, and squeezed a glob onto two fingers, which he then raised over his head and inserted down the back of his collar. "So I just put some right there," he said, smearing the steroid into his skin. "Simple as that. What's the big deal?" ♦**{: .small}


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And there's the rub, 2/3rds of the fleet was wiped out, Poe asked her what's going on, and she wouldn't tell him anything, and death seemed a few hours away at best. From his perspective, it did seem necessary. Consider my example situation below.The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2018-05-14 01:21pm
Its her job to inspire confidence, yes. But I'd presume that it is also Poe's job not to challenge her authority or disobey orders unless necessary.
We all know that Poe has blame, he swiftly disregarded Opsec and Commsec. We can rightly hold him over the coals for that one. Finn and Rose for hiring someone who wasn't their contact. DJ more so for selling them out. And even Manaka for not just giving the Slicer's name. Poe's staging a mutiny when he thinks everyone's lives count on his doing it is due to Holdo's bad leadership, that's on Holdo's refusal to brief anyone on what's going on.Fair enough.Dealing with frightened, angry, disillusioned and frustrated subordinates is the primary job of a senior leader. Its the #1 thing they are there to do, to inspire people to be better and accomplish more than they think they can. To be blunt, anyone can come up with plans, and commanders rarely do that themselves. They are there to execute, through the inspiration and management of people.
I'm not saying anyone (Holdo or Poe) handled the situation ideally. I'm just saying that there are reasons for that given the situation (both explicite and implied) other than "Holdo is evil" or "Holdo is stupid." And that Poe bears some of the blame.
If person A was driving a car towards a cliff, and person B is in the passenger seat, and doesn't see them slow down, but instead accelerate, without knowing that person A is planning on landing in the secretly set up cushion at the bottom of the cliff and that they should survives Person A set up without Person B knowing, they will rightfully think that Person A is going to get them killed. This is only compounded when Persons C and D have heart attacks from the seemingly suicidal driving.
Person B is worried for their life, as well as the lives of Person E, F, and G, who are also in the same car, worried about dying as well. Person B is entirely in the right to try and stop the car by whatever means possible with the information they have at hand.
Poe isn't flipping out because he's naturally rebellious or that he's afraid of following a woman. He's afraid his leader is getting them killed pointlessly, and has already gotten two captains killed, and is acting in self defense.
But it wasn't, so Poe's actions are justified from his available information. It might even hold up in a Court Martial.
Agreed.As you noted, that's kind of the relationship Poe has with Leia, but giving him that relationship with Holdo would have been arguably redundant, and would have required a major re-write, as ray noted.Snip Fax's brainstorming for a better film.
I think the problem is two-fold: one, the need for secrecy is never clearly stated. It makes sense as a justification after the fact, but it should have been stated in the film. It would have cleared up a number of plot issues that have been raised in this thread, while still leaving enough to make the audience think Poe was right about Holdo.
You can do that, but unless handled right, it can make Holdo look irrational due to personal grief. And I'm not sure if having the female leader being out of control with her emotions to the point that she gets two ships destroyed because she can't communicate properly is a good idea.Secondly, we don't really get a chance in the film to find out much about Holdo, or see things from her perspective. So we just get half a film of Poe (as previously noted in this thread, a character the audience has already gotten to know and presumably identify with) saying she sucks, followed by a twist. Holdo's goodbye to Leia and her final sacrifice help to make her more sympathetic and give her more depth, but it would have probably helped the audience to sympathize with her if we'd found out a bit more about her.
I might have played up the idea that it was some of Holdo's people that Poe's stunt at the start got killed- given her a stronger personal reason to dislike and distrust him. Hell, maybe even have Holdo blame Poe for Leia being incapacitated, since his stunt wiped out their fighter cover and exposed the Raddus to Kylo's fighter attack. Give her more of a reason for a personal animosity towards Poe. The latter would tie it into her other main relationship in the film (her friendship with Leia), and Leia's recovery could then provide a stronger reason for her to reevaluate her opinion of Poe.


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Mainers who signed up for insurance through Healthcare.gov paid an average of $99 per month in premiums, according to federal figures released Wednesday.
That's about a third of the $282 per month Maine consumers paid in 2010, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The figures reflect those who buy their own coverage in the "individual market," rather than get health insurance through work or government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Maine consumers paid slightly more than the national average of $82 per month, the new U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report showed.
The report offered the first in-depth analysis of the prices consumers will pay for private plans offered through the federal government's health insurance marketplace.
Nearly 90 percent of Maine residents who selected plans through Healthcare.gov qualified for tax credits to help them afford coverage.
The marketplace, a key component of President Barack Obama's health reform law, allowed consumers to shop for health plans and, depending on income, qualify for federal financial assistance to offset their premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
During 2014, paying for those health insurance subsidies is expected to set the federal government back $20 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Without the tax credits, premiums in Maine averaged $443 per month, dropping 78 percent with the subsidy, according to Health and Human Services.
Mainers who selected silver plans, the most popular option, paid an average of $87 per month.
"Consumers have more choices, and they're paying less for their premiums," new U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said in a news release. "Nearly seven in 10 consumers who signed up for marketplace coverage are paying $100 or less for that coverage. When there is choice and competition, everybody benefits."
More than 44,000 Maine residents signed up for private coverage through Healthcare.gov during the open enrollment period that officially ended in March.


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