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Let the Games Be Doped
Hugh Pickens writes "John Tierney poses the question in the New York Times 'what if we let athletes do whatever they wanted to excel?' Before you dismiss the notion, consider what we're stuck with today — a system designed to create a level playing field, protect athletes' health and set an example for children, that fails on all counts. The journal Nature, in an editorial in the current issue, complains that 'antidoping authorities have fostered a sporting culture of suspicion, secrecy and fear' by relying on unscientifically calibrated tests, like the unreliable test for synthetic testosterone that cost Floyd Landis his 2006 Tour de France victory and even if the authorities manage to correct their tests, they can't possibly keep up with the accelerating advances in biology." Read on for more.
Hugh Pickens continues: "Bengt Kayser, the director of a sports medicine institute at the University of Geneva argues in an article that has been supported by more than 30 scholars in the British Medical Journal that legalizing doping would "encourage more sensible, informed use of drugs in amateur sport, leading to an overall decline in the rate of health problems associated with doping (pdf). In the competition between increasingly sophisticated doping — e.g. gene transfer — and antidoping technology, there will never be a clear winner. Consequently, such a futile but expensive strategy is difficult to defend.""
It ends badly: http://www.hulu.com/watch/4090/saturday-night-live-weekend-update-all-drug-olympics
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I think we should give them steroids & in the case of American Football, chainsaws as well.
There is a war going on for your mind.
.. and your average starting line will look like they've been made in Spore's Creature Creator.
You should join the debate club with that incredible logic you're using.
FARNSWORTH: He's good, alright. But he's no Clem Johnson. And Johnson played back in the days before steroid injections were mandatory.
BENDER: Clem Johnson? That skin bag wouldn't have lasted one pitch in the old Robot Leagues! Now Wireless Joe Jackson, there was a blern hitting machine!
LEELA: Exactly! He was a machine designed to hit blerns! I mean, come on, Wireless Joe was nothing but a programmable bat on wheels.
BENDER: Oh, and I suppose Pitchomat 5000 was just a modified howitzer?
LEELA: Yep.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
But by all means let them fly down a hill at more than 50 mph with only lycra and 2 inches of clearance between them and pavement.
I can see your point.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I say let 'em go for it. Have an "Unlimited" class of Olympic events, with half-ton, fission-powered, gene-spliced, titanium-boned monstrosities jacked up on nervous system stimulants strong enough to make Case from Neuromancer piss himself. Pole vaulting with nuclear pulse detonation boosters? Biathlon with AEGIS-guided weaponry?
We'd of course need to clear a sufficient radius around the arena so we can squash the frothing bastards' inevitable thirst for global domination by nuking the hell out of them at the "closing ceremonies".
She's a man baby!
Well if it is your mother, she is quite mannish.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Just think of it as evolution in action. Plus how else are you going to get free lab rats for human enhancement technologies? Let the gene and drug doping flow, then we can just cherry pick the ones that stand the test of time and use em on real people.
Only socially constructive use for professional athletes i can think of, anyway ...
/joking
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
We shouldn't let journalists dope either. Case in point: this article.
I draw the line at androids! no athlete should have less then 40% natural body parts! THEIR body parts!
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Wrong direction, everyone should be riding the exact same bike. The Tour is about the athletes not the equipment.
I completely disagree with this. There are approximately 200 athletes in the Tour de France and I think it would be cruel and unusual to make them share one bike. It would be hard enough to get them to fit on there let alone figure out who actually won.
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They *hate* that.
And more for those who die on the track...
It would be just my luck to get picked for the ski-jumping...
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Yes, I have dominated a little kid at checkers, and I enjoyed every moment of my victory, including the precious look of frustration moments before he threw the board and started crying. As a matter of fact, before we even started playing, I super-glued the board to the table to make sure he couldn't even throw the board. *THAT* was a priceless look of frustration, let me tell you.
I also made sure I got to play the black side, and I put needles in the red pieces, so every time he tried to move a piece, I got to see him wince -- and once, when I let him make a move that would king him, he got so excited he gripped the piece hard -- whoo boy, the screams and the hint of blood on his finger just cracked me up.
Seriously, who dominates a little kid at checkers? If you're going to win, at least make it close. Present the kid with options of multiple decent moves, and let him experience the ramifications of choosing the better move, and the ramifications of choosing the worse move. Use the game to reward strategic thinking, to reward planning ahead.
Aside from your checkers example, though, you make a very good point. The system in which the athletes perform rewards winning, and it rewards cheating without being caught. It does not reward honest play directly.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Really!? you too?
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?