The social role models are having trouble this week. Evidently the
former European Union education minister Jan Figel is said to have been
awarded a PhD in social science on the basis of a thesis that was copied
from a book he co-wrote years earlier. He did not cite his co-author in
the thesis, while bike riding great Lance Armstrong being convicted by a
non-legal bike riding organization of using the banned bike riding
enhancement drug EPO will forfeit his seven Tour de France wins in seven
days or so. He should have afforded Roger Clement's lawyer.
There
is too much money in pro sports in comparison to the amount of money
paid to the poor for work these days, and it draws too much social power
in the wrong direction. If Armstrong had actually used the banned drug
EPO it may give him the opportunity to promote it for cancer survivors
and others seeking to climb to greater heights themselves physically,
yet that should not be a reason to provide scholarships to college
athletes instead of scholars.
With the fundamental human
proclivity for cheating, as MSN called the Armstrong fiasco being too
common-even in public education (my books were not co-written at all nor
packaged by publishing collectives) it is a real disadvantaged for
individuals competing against the collectives of prevaricators,
dissimulators, organized collectives and sundry other impediments to
individual financial progress. If Lance Armstrong cannot be trusted if
several also-rodes on his U.S. Postal Bike Racing team claim that they
saw him use EPO molecules instead of say, HillyBilly Brand Special Corn
Syrup as an injectable item to pep up his post-cancer bike riding, at
least we know that President Obama's college transcripts are excellent,
and so were those of G.W. Bush, if only they would ever have released
them for public scrutiny.
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