Slashdot Mirror
Permormance-Enhancing Contact Lenses
coastal984 writes "With all the allegations, criticisms, congressional hearings, and suspensions concerning performance-enchancing steroids and supplements in sports, namely Major League Baseball, Nike has now introduced performance-enhancing contact lenses. These new lenses, which give players wearing them a scary orange/amber tint to their eyes, block out useless blue tones and make colors such as red (i.e. the seams on a baseball, vital to batters) easier to see. They also block out sun rays and help ease shadows, as well as improve overall vision. There are also versions for golfers and other sports, and soon to be versions for night contests as well."
Hardly. This is not really a newsworthy piece - if sunglasses with the same tints, etc, have the same effect, you can hardly call contact lens' that do the same revolutionary in any sense.
excuse me for my ignorance... why would these sports-tweaked contacts be more useful than normal contacts for you?
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
These appear to be the same as the shooting lenses, skiing goggles, driving glasses we've had around for years, just in contact form.
In most sports, you should be wearing safety glasses anyway, and whatever fashionable tints you want incorporate, you can incorporate there.
I suspect people put this tint into contact lenses because you probably look kind of stupid wearing pink safety glasses.
If there are no negative health effects, then what's the big deal?
I can't understand why making ourselves better in these kinds of ways is in any way bad.
Its fine in real life. But in sports, you have to make a decision - do you want to see competition based on the hard work of the athlete or the hard work of his doctors and technicians? If you want to see the later, then no problem.
If you want to see human atheletic competition than artifical body modifications - chemical, mechanical or otherwise, need to be kept out and a clear and up to date definition needs to accompany that ban.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
There's a difference between better technology and doping. Look at it from a sporter's point of view. If doping were legal, a sporter would be forced to inject performance-enhancing drugs to 'score'. This can never be completely safe, since those people already put tremendous strain on their body during competition (think cardiac arrest).
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
How is this anything other than an improved version of sunglasses? It's not like these lenses link into a laser-calibrated swing mechanism that helps the guy hit better. Personally, I think this is a great step forward.
Thinking back to when I played, I wonder if it helps outfielders pick up fly balls better - even with sunglasses, sometimes the glare of the sun can make a ball uncatchable.
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