Being a competitive athlete, albeit many many echelons below Olympic athletes, I have mulled this over before. The burning question is, where do you draw the line? Nike's athletes like Galen Rupp live in a climate-controlled house where the air pressure is set to the equivalent of 12,000 feet altitude, have electro-stimulation machines designed to increase muscle mass, and use zero-g treadmills so they can log more mileage without the wear and tear of actual running. Is this not considered an unfair advantage?
I am not advocating that we allow doping, but why exactly does using chemicals that enable your body to recover faster constitute cheating, whereas sleeping in an altitude tent and utilizing "weightless" treadmills is allowed? Furthermore, some forms of doping don't even use chemicals at all. Some athletes have a small amount of their blood drawn and stored for a few months, and then re-injected back into their bloodstream a short time before competition; this results in an increased amount of red blood cells, thereby giving them the ability to carry more oxygen to their muscles. This is also prohibited in sanctioned competition. Who decided what is fair and what is considered illegal or unethical, and how will the line progress as time passes?
I have found that dark blue fonts on a light grey background provides the optimum vieweing environment. Perhaps this started way back when I was still using Juno for email and that was their default color scheme, but I find the grey background to be sufficiently neutral (neither black nor white, both of which feel jarring to my eyes) and the dark blue has enough contrast to stand out clearly on the background.
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Being a competitive athlete, albeit many many echelons below Olympic athletes, I have mulled this over before. The burning question is, where do you draw the line? Nike's athletes like Galen Rupp live in a climate-controlled house where the air pressure is set to the equivalent of 12,000 feet altitude, have electro-stimulation machines designed to increase muscle mass, and use zero-g treadmills so they can log more mileage without the wear and tear of actual running. Is this not considered an unfair advantage?
I am not advocating that we allow doping, but why exactly does using chemicals that enable your body to recover faster constitute cheating, whereas sleeping in an altitude tent and utilizing "weightless" treadmills is allowed? Furthermore, some forms of doping don't even use chemicals at all. Some athletes have a small amount of their blood drawn and stored for a few months, and then re-injected back into their bloodstream a short time before competition; this results in an increased amount of red blood cells, thereby giving them the ability to carry more oxygen to their muscles. This is also prohibited in sanctioned competition. Who decided what is fair and what is considered illegal or unethical, and how will the line progress as time passes?
I have found that dark blue fonts on a light grey background provides the optimum vieweing environment. Perhaps this started way back when I was still using Juno for email and that was their default color scheme, but I find the grey background to be sufficiently neutral (neither black nor white, both of which feel jarring to my eyes) and the dark blue has enough contrast to stand out clearly on the background.