See Them Run

See Them Run from Syd Woodward on Vimeo.

Radiant City

We may be moving to Calgary, but we will definitely not be living in Cranston, Evergreen, Chaparral or any of the other nasty "communities" profiled in Radiant City!

5 Easy Ways to go Organic

From NYtimes.com

Switching to organic is tough for many families who don’t want to pay higher prices or give up their favorite foods. But by choosing organic versions of just a few foods that you eat often, you can increase the percentage of organic food in your diet without big changes to your shopping cart or your spending.

The key is to be strategic in your organic purchases. Opting for organic produce, for instance, doesn’t necessarily have a big impact, depending on what you eat. According to the Environmental Working Group, commercially-farmed fruits and vegetables vary in their levels of pesticide residue. Some vegetables, like broccoli, asparagus and onions, as well as foods with peels, such as avocados, bananas and oranges, have relatively low levels compared to other fruits and vegetables.

So how do you make your organic choices count? Pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene, whose new book “Raising Baby Green” explains how to raise a child in an environmentally-friendly way, has identified a few “strategic” organic foods that he says can make the biggest impact on the family diet.

1. Milk: “When you choose a glass of conventional milk, you are buying into a whole chemical system of agriculture,'’ says Dr. Greene. People who switch to organic milk typically do so because they are concerned about the antibiotics, artificial hormones and pesticides used in the commercial dairy industry. One recent United States Department of Agriculture survey found certain pesticides in about 30 percent of conventional milk samples and low levels in only one organic sample. The level is relatively low compared to some other foods, but many kids consume milk in large quantities.

2. Potatoes: Potatoes are a staple of the American diet — one survey found they account for 30 percent of our overall vegetable consumption. A simple switch to organic potatoes has the potential to have a big impact because commercially-farmed potatoes are some of the most pesticide-contaminated vegetables. A 2006 U.S.D.A. test found 81 percent of potatoes tested still contained pesticides after being washed and peeled, and the potato has one of the the highest pesticide contents of 43 fruits and vegetables tested, according to the Environmental Working Group.

3. Peanut butter: More acres are devoted to growing peanuts than any other fruits, vegetable or nut, according to the U.S.D.A. More than 99 percent of peanut farms use conventional farming practices, including the use of fungicide to treat mold, a common problem in peanut crops. Given that some kids eat peanut butter almost every day, this seems like a simple and practical switch. Commercial food firms now offer organic brands in the regular grocery store, but my daughter loves to go to the health food store and grind her own peanut butter.

4. Ketchup: For some families, ketchup accounts for a large part of the household vegetable intake. About 75 percent of tomato consumption is in the form of processed tomatoes, including juice, tomato paste and ketchup. Notably, recent research has shown organic ketchup has about double the antioxidants of conventional ketchup.

5. Apples: Apples are the second most commonly eaten fresh fruit, after bananas, and they are also used in the second most popular juice, after oranges, according to Dr. Greene. But apples are also one of the most pesticide-contaminated fruits and vegetables. The good news is that organic apples are easy to find in regular grocery stores.

For a complete list of Dr. Greene’s strategic organic choices, visit Organic Rx on his website.

http://www.paulpottsuk.com/frontpage?cmd=cookie/check

A Tarnished Golden Girl Can’t Outrun the Truth

A seven-year race to stay ahead of the performance-enhancement posse that long ago rounded up the flawed, opportunistic men in Marion Jones's life is over. She was tripped up not by a snitch, not by a drug test, but by the floppy, loose laces of her own face-saving lie.

She did not believe she could come clean when she told federal agents in 2003 that she had not used the designer steroid THG, also known as the clear, in preparation for her five-medal harvest at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. She could not plead ignorance by playing the flaxseed oil card she has turned over now, the way her Balco compatriot Barry Bonds did in front of a grand jury investigating the case.

Because unlike baseball, which played deaf, dumb and blind to the culture of sports pharmacology until 2002, the Olympics was long into chasing down cheats. Jones, in a desperate cover-up to protect her legacy, has finally been confirmed as one of them.

She is expected to plead guilty in federal court today to lying to federal agents about her drug use and to an unrelated financial matter. Given the international suspicion that has attached itself to Jones in recent years, her three gold and two bronze medals will no doubt be stripped by the International Olympic Committee, as well they should be.

“Is Marion Jones a bad person?” Victor Conte Jr., the brains behind Balco, said last night in a telephone interview. “No. Marion made mistakes. The pain and suffering she is about to endure in public is going to be devastating to her.”

In the summer of 2006, when Jones was dealing with a questionable drug test that turned out to be a false alarm, I still found myself wishing for her to be remembered as the beautiful blur in silver shoes she was in Sydney, Australia, guilty only of questionable associations. Admittedly, that sentiment reflected a double standard, an indication that keeping tabs on elite athletes peeing into cups was in itself something of a spectator sport.

Root for some while demonstrating indifference, if not downright intolerance, for others. We are all human, captivated by some storybooks more than others.

But an admission makes it virtually impossible to cast Jones as Conte would: a sympathetic victim. No man in her life — not Conte or her onetime coach Trevor Graham, who allegedly supplied Jones the clear, or her former husband C. J. Hunter — made her do it.

Just like Bonds, she is claiming to have been unwittingly enhanced, but why would anyone give Jones, a college-educated woman, the benefit of the doubt when her legacy has been built on lies? At the end of the day, she didn’t train or run by the rules in the summer of 2000. Her medals should be meaningless to all but her enablers.

“Marion wasn’t doing anything the others weren’t doing,” Conte said. “Was she on performance enhancers? Yes, but she was the superior athlete. You don’t just take performance enhancers and win gold medals.”

The problem with this rationale is that not everyone she ran against has been caught or even implicated. In a sport that bestows glory and wealth by virtue of eye blinks, would Jones have been America’s golden girl on the strength of her own natural gifts? Ben Johnson couldn’t prove he was the real deal after Seoul, South Korea. Neither can Jones — too late and too bad.

The chance for Olympic greatness may come once in a lifetime. Jones was 24 in Sydney, in the prime of her sprinting life. More than anything, she cheated her own potential. She is reported to have said in her letter that she lied to the agents because she panicked, but it sounds like that was also the case when she started using the clear in 1999.

In Sydney, she became the subject of suspicion when Hunter, her husband at the time and a former world champion shot putter, was revealed to have failed a drug test. At a news conference now immortalized by time and place and those in attendance (Conte and the renowned lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, among them), Jones stood by Hunter, the way she would later stand by a boyfriend, Tim Montgomery, another of the track tainted who bore witness to Jones’s inability to choose well.

For all of his expressed sympathy, Conte dogged her by volunteering revelatory information whenever he could. That he was right makes him no more a hero in any of this than the baseball steroids snitch José Canseco. It is just more evidence of what happens when an infestation comes under attack.

“I think at some point, someone, some athlete, has to step up and ask for forgiveness for all that has happened with Balco,” Conte said.

The way it looks, at least right now, it won’t have to be Bonds, unless his Balco middleman, the trainer Greg Anderson, decides to talk. As for Jones, in time, and perhaps after some jail time, depending on the terms of the expected plea, forgiveness should not be out of the question, only the retention of her medals.

The Cup in Cranbrook

more photos on Al Maudie's blog

The "walk and work" desk

From cbc.ca

There's no doubt that sitting at a desk in front of a computer all day is hardly conducive to weight loss. But what if employees could exercise while they work? That's the aim of a specially designed vertical workstation.

The workstation can be locked in place over a treadmill, allowing employees to work at a computer while simultaneously walking on the spot at a speed of their own choosing.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who designed the standup "walk-and-work" desk, suggest it could help overweight workers shed pounds as they perform what are traditionally sit-down tasks.

"Along with obesity, the sedentary nature of work is increasing because of the common use of desktop computers," the authors write. "By 2010, it is estimated that more than half of the workforce from developed countries will be working at computers."

"We are therefore interested in devising and validating approaches that promote physical activity in an obese person in the workplace, without sacrificing work time."

In a small study, published online Monday ahead of print in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the researchers had 15 obese volunteers use the treadmill-cum-desk and measured how many calories they burned compared to sitting at a conventional desk. All of the participants had sedentary jobs and none did regular exercise.

The scientists measured the energy expended by the 14 women and one man with an average body mass index of 32 (a BMI of 25-plus is considered overweight) while they worked and walked for 35 minutes out of an hour, compared to the number of calories used as they worked seated at a normal desk.

Participants burned an average of 191 kilocalories an hour while at the vertical workstation, walking the equivalent of 1.6 kilometres an hour, compared to 72 kilocalories per hour while working sitting down.

Principal researcher Dr. James Levine said that by using the vertical workstation a couple of hours per day — and boosting energy expenditure by 100 kilocalories an hour — an obese employee could shed 45 to 65 pounds over the course of a year.

Commenting on the study, obesity expert Dr. Arya Sharma of McMaster University said the vertical workstation is one idea for incorporating physical activity into the workplace.

"I would love to have a desk like that," Sharma, scientific director of the Canadian Obesity Network, said Monday from Hamilton.

But he cautioned that the study results shouldn't be misinterpreted. Because exercise increases appetite, employees using the device would have to guard against eating more, "which would bring them back to zero," Sharma said.

As well, a person would not keep on losing weight at the same rate by keeping to the same level of exercise, he said.

"For the first 10 pounds, you might have to do two miles [3.2 kilometres] a day, and once you've lost 15 pounds you might have to do three miles [five kilometres] a day … etcetera, because your body, as it gets lighter, uses less energy [calories]."

"If you think this is the solution to make all fat employees thin, you're wrong," Sharma said.

The vertical workstation, designed by Levine and his team, costs about $1,600 US and is available for purchase.

Perdita is back

Perdita Felicien won silver in the 100m hurdles at the World Champs in Osaka Japan. Glad to see she is back after an up and down few years since her fall at the Olympics in 2004.