Well, I'm not ready to commit to a regular stream of editorials. But I am going to write this one, and I'll leave it posted until the stars go out, one by one. What has this to do with science fiction and fantasy? Absolutely nothing. But it does have something to do with an Olympic sport that I have passionately loved and followed for decades. Let's set aside the genrismatic declarations around here for once and agree that there is more to life than dodging the insults of the news media who portray us all as geeks.

Today I chased a dog around my house and when I got finished running for the first time in a couple of months I wasn't winded. I've had a rough summer, with allergies, family deaths, and miserable aftermaths from taking on responsibilities I didn't think three months ago I'd have to contend with. I've been sick more times than I can count this year and for no reason other than that I refuse to wear a mask when mowing the weeds (if there's still grass out there, it's gone undercover).

What's that got to do with Olympic sports? Absolutely nothing. And everything. Damn, I felt good when I finished running. Two days ago I could barely breathe. How I cleared my lungs so I could chase a dog around the house isn't important, but it does give me a very strong feel for what anyone who depends on good health goes through when they get sick.

If you've ever seen a picture of me you may have noticed I have a slight pot belly. It looks worse for you than for me because I look down at it. And it's not for lack of trying to maintain an exercise program that I have the dang thing. I'm either just one of those people whose bodies store every calorie they can get their hands on, or I've been subjected to the mysterious fat accrual virus (yes, that's actually a theory the medical community is playing with).

It's not so long ago I was still able to do a 20-minute workout several days a week. That may not seem like much to an Olympic athlete, but if you surf the cable channels late at night you know it's a lot more exercise than those svelte pitch-women for the various exercise machines get in a month of Sundaes. At least, that's what they'd have you think.

I diet, I exercise, I cut back on the fast foods, the sweets, the fat-laden stuff. I suffer for my cause, which is just good health, or as good as I can maintain it. What does an Olympic athlete go through? Much worse. What does a gold-medal-winning Olympic athlete endure? You'd better believe it's a lot more than my 20-minute workouts.

So, let's cut to Sydney. The games have been sliding by, largely ignored in America by people who don't enjoy watching 15-hour-old taped events where the announcers tell you who won the competition at the beginning of the show (probably because they know you can read about it on the Internet).

Well, I haven't ignored them. I love gymnastics (and swimming, and diving, and rowing, and track and field, and ...). I don't watch much sports television because most of it, quite frankly, no longer interests me. I'd watch gymnastics every weekend if they'd show it. Sometimes the closest my schedule comes to letting me catch gymnastics is watching the national cheerleader competitions on ESPN (which, if you haven't seen them, are every bit as interesting as the men's high bar and the floor routines -- but I digress).

So, who rules in gymnastics this year? The Chinese did well, the Russians managed not to shame themselves, the US disappointed itself. But Romania was great as usual. Whatever we Americans may think of our European cousins and how they have mangled their politics (in our collective perception) for the last 100 years, they have great sports programs. And Romania is world-renowned for its gymnastics program.

Imagine my surprise, then, when -- amid a flurry of wild accusations about drug abuse pouring out of these Olympics -- I find the International Olympic Committee has stripped a 16-year-old girl of her gold medal for taking cold medicine. Their sin is that that they know she took cold medicine. Everyone knows she took cold medicine. But the IOC is adamant in saying they shouldn't give her back the medal she won fair and square.

Who am I talking about? Andreea Raducan, the 16-year-old all-around gold-medalist. What did this girl do to deserve to be made an example of? She got sick, her team doctor recommended she take a couple of pseudoephedrine tablets. No parent in America would think twice about suggesting that their healthy, fit 16-year-old take two tablets of what is essentially Sudafed.

But what is so shameless about this decision is that one of the two judges is an American, Maidie Oliveau. There is something wrong with an American who acts like an automaton and doesn't question the sensibility of the rules being enforced. This is, supposedly, what we Americans pride ourselves on. Heck, our science fiction stories are filled with the principle of questioning everything. But maybe Ms. Oliveau has been too busy reading drug manuals to catch up on her ethics and science fiction.

Rules are supposed to be the glue which keeps a society from tearing itself apart. Everyone gives up a little freedom so that we can all live together and, hopefully, share the same opportunities. Rules are supposed to be our creations, not our decision-makers. We use the rules to help us make better judgements, not to condemn us. When rules become the excuse for condemnation then society is on the path to self-destruction. Even the Olympic system has to make some adjustments to reality here.

The Olympics have long been laughed at and pooh-poohed by people who have refused to turn a blind eye to the gross hypocrisy the system engages in. Politics, nationalism, and often national government policies have been inflicted on the Olympics. An American President refused to send American athletes to Moscow in 1980 to show the world how terrible the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan was. He didn't stop the war. He didn't save any lives. He didn't prevent any atrocities. He simply made a statement at the expense of hundreds of athletes which he could proudly write about in his memoirs.

For revenge a Soviet Premier refused to send Soviet athletes to Los Angeles in 1984. Well, I guess the American President showed them, didn't he? And when an American businessman stepped into the politics and created the Goodwill Games in an effort to bring sports competition back online, he was laughed at. Those competitions are now respected, but they are suffering from the same congested pressures that afflict the Olympic system.

That is to say, the Goodwill Games and the Olympics have been invaded by political correctism. The war on drugs has been carried to an absurd extreme. I don't use illegal drugs. You almost have to hold me down to get me to use legal drugs when I'm sick. I've never liked drugs, legal or otherwise. From the time I was a young teenager up through my early twenties I watched drugs destroy life after life. I heard all the lame, stupid excuses about what isn't addictive, what doesn't hurt you. I watched sad life after sad life end in the gutter, or worse, snuffed out.

There's no excuse for the use of steroids in sports programs, but if there are steroid or steroid-like byproducts in natural health and fitness products which haven't been banned, then the IOC and its partners in crime need to get a better system or else just throw the whole thing out. If athletes want to be stupid enough to destroy their health with steroids and pretend they've accomplished great things, letting them do so would be far, far preferable to stripping a 16-year-old who may never get another chance to compete in the Olympics and win a gold medal, of her well-earned prize. An American Supreme Court justice once wrote "it is better to let 500 murderers go free than that one innocent should go to prison."

Two pseudoephedrine tablets, any doctor worth his or her license could tell you, are NOT going to boost performance -- especially if taken at the last minute. In fact, they might not even be enough to take down the symptoms of the cold which led the doctor (who has been banned from practicing at these and the next Olympic games) to suggest the girl take the medicine.

The people running these games obviously have no common sense. One must wonder what greater purpose they think they are serving. If they want to fight illegal drug use among athletes, why don't they sponsor a world-tour of former steroids users who are dying from cancer? Maybe that will help keep the next generation from trying to cheat. Stripping Raducan of a much-deserved gold medal makes absolutely no sense.

And when a doctor's first priority is to ensure that the ridiculous rules against cold medicine are upheld over the health and safety of a gymnast about to perform feats which could leave her dead, permanently paralyzed, or otherwise seriously injured for the rest of her life, that doctor's license should be yanked. Screw this banning from the Olympics because the rules were broken! What about ensuring the athletes are alert and fit to compete? Maybe the doctor's mistake was clearing Andreea to compete at all. I'm sure the medical literature must be filled with studies showing how it's necessary to let the common cold get the better of Olympic athletes.

Well, since asking the IOC to engage in any sort of intelligent action after embarrassing itself in front of the world once again (remember how the IOC president implied Sydney would be better than Atlanta -- hey, I liked the Atlanta games) is a waste of time, maybe we should just mount a campaign to disband the organization and start over again.

The first priority for the successor organization should be Athletes First. The second priority should be NO politics. And the third priority should be Make Intelligent Choices. Why couldn't a non-team doctor have been consulted? Why couldn't some sort of waiver process have been implemented? It's bad enough when a healthy athlete makes one mis-step on the bar routine, we have to send them out there to perform in front of millions of people with congestion and their histamines flowing down their faces?