Word: blakes
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...nine years, Canadian triathlete Jasper Blake has been selecting from a menu of technological aids in a bid to get to the top of his event?a leg-sapping, lung-wringing combination of swimming, cycling and running that only the fittest, and perhaps dorkiest, athletes can win. "Triathlon is a nerdy sport," says the intense, lean, 1.7-m Blake. "We have the weirdest group of people into the most gimmicky, gizmo things...
...When training on his bicycle, Blake uses the SRM Powermeter, a data-crunching disc attached to the bike's crank arm. Invented by a German company, the device measures the power and rhythm of each pedal push, as well as the cyclist's heart rate. He's even got gizmos working for him as he sleeps. Blake has pitched a plastic "high-altitude tent" atop his queen-size bed at his home in Victoria. A compressor pumps in air containing 15% oxygen, equal to the rarefied air 3,000 meters above sea level, compared with 21% oxygen at sea level...
...Like many Olympic hopefuls, Blake trains in a modern matrix of tech and technique, mind and body. Olympic coaches and athletes now exploit a wide range of mechanical, video and computer devices designed to coax peak performance out of human bodies. Complex cables propelled by pulleys drag runners faster than they thought they could sprint. A new machine from France lets speedsters run virtual-reality races against the best in the world. Innovative video software allows swimmers and divers to break down their performances frame by precious frame. Like Blake, many athletes have been "sleeping high [in altitude-simulation tents...
...language that originated in the West. The authors point out that even as Western Europe and America began evolving into liberal democracies with capitalist economies, a countercurrent of opposition accused the newly emerging "modern" world of being devoid of spirituality. In the arts, Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Blake charged that industrialization was stripping people of their individuality and their connection to the past, while in politics, Karl Marx accused capitalism of ruthlessly exploiting workers. Buruma and Margalit spotlight the often striking overlap in language and ideas between Europe's intellectual rebels from the late 18th, 19th and early 20th...
...management and introduced some Jack Welch--style discipline. Before he arrived, stores were not even connected by email. One resulting inefficiency: individual stores had tried myriad ways to keep plants in the garden sections watered properly, but "no one could tell you what worked and what didn't work," Blake says. Now several outlets are methodically testing solutions...