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Equine Speedometers
Makarand writes "According to this article in The New Zealand Herald
scientists at Massey University (NZ) are using
GPS to
monitor racehorses during their training programme. GPS technology is being used to follow horses around a racetrack and measure how far and fast horses gallop each day. This GPS data along with heart rate measurements is transforming racehorse training into a science."
How is this "off-topic?"
If they can use GPS to estimate the speed of horses, then the same techology can be easily used to estimate the speed of cars.
This especially becomes more interesting as GPS becomes common in cars... it could easily be one more example of how big brother enters our lives.
Gesh.
Davak
Like most sports/races, it's been a science for decades. it's called doping. I guarantee the money that is spent on doping research(and both the technology to test for said drugs as well as the technology to skirt testing) will always pale in comparison to the money spent on GPS units, laptops, and database programs.
Doping is almost at crisis levels in the world of sports; it's rampant. What's pathetic is when you tell a league you're going to test them months in advance, test them, and find a large # of them still using the drug, because they were too stupid to stop(this would be baseball we're talking about here.) Imagine the results if it had been a surprise test; the implied #'s are staggering. How many were using and were smart enough to stop? Most of them. So when you catch even a 20th...
What if we did drug testing in the golf league? Figure skating? Downhill skiing? They've tried to do it in cycling, but found such a scandal, the sport would be over if they locked everyone up who was using(in a raid in Italy, cops found an entire team doping up. It was like a high school houseparty raid, complete with people hiding in closets and jumping out windows). Once has to wonder if Lance Armstrong's results aren't the result of miracles, but all the cancer drugs glaxo-cline pumped into him.
It's also a national embarrassment when a large number of US olympians were found to be using drugs as well. While I despise those who advocate legalizing pot, it's shocking that the US snowboarding team would get sent home for lighting up, yet a dozen US track+field athletes are found to be using performance drugs and they don't even get their medals stripped.
Lesson here for young kids? 1)use drugs and you'll beat people who don't; you'll be successful, rich, famous. 2)You probably won't get caught since drug makers are usually ahead of the testing technology. 3)If you do get caught, you've still gotten millions(or hundreds of millions) and 4)If you've got a good enough lawyer, you'll probably get to keep your medals anyway, and you'll be knocked down the endorsement ladder pretty far, but still make in a week what most people make in a year.
Please help metamoderate.