Cutthroat Classic Mountain Run – An Epic Trail Experience

2010 Cutthroat Classic.

The 11.1 mile trail run starts at Rainy Pass, elevation 4,880’, is no walk in the park. It’s a run in the wilderness, and literally a breathtaking thrill. No surprise: this event sells out well ahead of race day every year. The course climbs for 5 miles to almost 7,000’ before it descends for about 6 miles to the Cutthroat Lake camping area.

So what do you do when your competition consists of former and current Olympians? You try not to get horribly intimidated before the gun goes off, keep repeating to yourself that you need to run your own race, and hope you don’t look too star-struck. But Laura McCabe and Leslie Hall definitely cut down on the intimidation factor despite their fame and Olympic merits – they’re so sweet and friendly you might just forget they’ll eat you for breakfast once the race is on.

The Value of Digital Timeouts

Yours truly on a training ride along the Mediterranean coast in southern France. PHOTO: Kent Murdoch

I have long suspected that it’s good for you to unplug during your workout. Research reported in the New York Times on August 25, 2010 confirms my theories. An unplugged run, ride or ski feels better than a trip to the increasingly wired gym.  The article points out that the brain needs downtime to process the world.

Google-Verizon Deal Gets Murkier, Media Co’s Don’t Object

While media companies are usually quite loud and clear, it has been remarkably quiet from the content providers in the aftermath of the Google-Verizon announcement Monday. I suspect that other media companies, such as Time Warner, Comcast and News Corporation as well as other Internet Service Providers such as AT&T choose to keep a low profile because they assume the deal will go through in some shape or form. When that happens, they too want to have their plan of attack ready for the market, be ready to capitalize on the new revenue opportunities that a tiered internet represents.

Fighting for net neutrality, then, seems to be up to the consumer advocacy groups, the law and media professors and others who actually have the best interest of the public in mind.

A Major Blow to Net Neutrality

As the Comcast v. Federal Communications Committee case was overturned in April, the large Internet Service Providers claimed that they had no intentions of creating a system where content providers would be able to pay more to secure speedy delivery of their content, or vice versa, that the ISPs would charge content providers for guarantees that their content would load faster. Such deals could mean the end of the open Internet and net neutrality, the very core of what makes the Internet so powerful.

Just a few months after the Comcast case was decided, the New York Times reports that Google and Verizon have negotiated exactly such a deal for ten months. A deal between the two companies could severely limit the power the FCC has in regulating the Internet and securing net neutrality.

The Importance of Net Neutrality

Research questions: Why does net neutrality matter? What are the potential dangers/negative consequences of broadband providers being able to control the content? Free speech, advancement of research and development, exchange of ideas and education are just some of the areas that would be stymied if Internet Service Providers are allowed to decide which Internet content moves fast, which moves slow and which doesn’t move at all.

Introduction: The issue of net neutrality falls into at least a couple of categories. On one level, net neutrality is a matter of the First Amendment, free speech, which is a pillar of our society and a prerequisite for progress and communication. While largely a philosophical and political angle, there are also legal aspects to the issue on this level. Do the service providers have the right to determine which content (speech) their customers are allowed to access? I would argue that this is a violation of the First Amendment.

Second, there is the issue of the legal basis of the Federal Communication Commission’s ability or inability to regulate this area (i.e. the internet service providers and how they manage their networks), a legal/regulatory angle.