Dope

NYT article on sports and doping:

Ultimately, the debate over athletic doping extends beyond sport. ”The current doping agony,” says John Hoberman, a University of Texas at Austin professor who has written extensively on performance drugs, ”is a kind of very confused referendum on the future of human enhancement.”

First the athletes, then the rest of us mortals.

In addition to the various details of the dopnig world — the way legit science filters into the supplements, the fact that there’s an international trade in urine samples, and that urine-sample-couriers are routinely bribed — they note that the word “doping” has been in use since about 1900 and apparently is related to the Dutch word “dop” which referred to the pre-battle booze Zulu warriors drank.