Tour de France - and drugs

We're half way through the Tour de France. All the usual spills and drama. But most worrying, the drugs issue, which won't go away. There are riders who do magnificently one day, then fade the next; riders who leap up Alpine or Pyreneean passes like mountain goats - then suddenly fade. You just can't help remembering the past: Anquetil, eyes out on stalks with amphetamines; Tommy Simpson who OD'd to dramatic effect; Theunisse and Rooks, who improbably trained for their climbing triumphs in the Netherlands; Pantani who looked wonderful at the time, but is now dead from an overdose; Richard Virenque, who was the French angel of the mountains, but then couldn't hack it when he got caught out; the totally improbable Bjarne Riis who later admitted his chemically assisted Tour win in 1996; and of course Lance Armstrong, who we suspect got away with it for years by clever doctoring.

Last year everyone, including me, got caught out with Floyd Landis - a classic case of up one minute, down the next. So who are the main suspects on this year's tour? Well, Rasmussen is already under suspicion because of his strangely 'forgotten' drug checks, and today I witnessed a rider surging up mountains (which he has never ridden before) in a manner which suggested he was off a different planet. The only problem was that he was drinking water at a rate that I have never seen since Miles Davis was interviewed in the middle of his drug-fueled mid-1980's drop-out period. And where was this mountain accelerator from? Colombia. Watch this space.

eLearning: the key concepts

Online learning is everywhere these days - for good reasons. Schools want to encourage the use of IT; colleges want their courses to be available 24/7; and universities want to sell their courses to people all around the world. This is a publication aimed at intermediate to advanced users which seeks to explain the main issues. An introductory essay clears the ground by looking at the many terms used in eLearning to describe what is sometimes almost the same thing (eLearning, distance learning, blended learning, flexible learning, and computer assisted learning). They are nearly the same, but not quite, and the authors do a good job of making the necessary distinctions. This also acts as a survey of the problems and possibilities of learning in the online world. They take account of such issues as the fact that many tutors in higher education receive no career advancement or recompense for the courses they might design... Read more >>

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Print Journalism

More than 12.5 million national newspapers are sold in Britain every day. The figure goes up to 14 million on Sundays. And for every copy of the Guardian sold each day, ten copies of the Sun cross the counter - which is what led former Sun editor Kelvin McKensie to call the Guardian 'the world's worst newspaper'. This publication covers every possible aspect of print journalism, and I suspect it has been produced in the hope of becoming a standard text in departments of journalism and media studies. The chapters are written by ex-journalists now teaching at four universities - City London, Sheffield, Cardiff, and Lincoln - so it seems there must be a regular career path leading out of the Street of Shame and showing other people the best way to get there. Articles in the first section deal with the history, structure, and the financing of print media. Who owns what; which titles sell most copies; and how they make a profit... Read more >>

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