at the least, different in the mind of the spectator
the whole reason sports are interesting is because it is about human struggle leading achievement. the spectator identifies with the struggle
if the athlete is using drugs, you sever that psychological connection, because the drug is seen as making the struggle easier. equipment doesn't do that psychologically
so if you had a sport where drugs were 100% legal, what you would have is an immediate drop off in interest in that sport, which would fade away. meanwhile, the fans would move on to some other sport that was more "authentic", meaning, they got more out of it by watching it
say you have two scrabble players. one is allowed to just sit there and use his mind. the other is allowed a dictionary, a computer program that looks for good letter compbinations, seven letter words, etc
who would win most of the time? obviously, the guy with the enhancements
but more importantly: WHO WOULD BE INTERESTED IN CONTINUING TO PLAY
if its not a struggle, there is no interest. the guy bumbling through the game using his own mind would find pleasure when he won on his own merits, and therefore continue playing the game based on his sense of accomplishment. without that sense of acoomplishment, there is no reason for someone to continue in the endeavour, simply because of the psychodynamics of what keeps a human being snegaged and involved and interested in an endeavour: they see themselves in it
if you achieve everything through enhancements, you disengage. its not about you anymore, so there's no interest in doing whatever it is that you do with enhancements
so the scrabble player with enhancements would probably play 10 games, and then never play again: its boring, you wouldn't get naything out of it
while the scrabble player working with just his own mind would probably play 1,000 games, and enjoy his experience, and be glad fo rit. he would have ahigher quality of life and higher sense of self-regard
science as a pursuit would get less interested college students if the image of science was a bunch of pill poppers. no one wants to get involved in that, if the whole point is to look for a pursuit where you place your own mark, rather than the mark of a pill. that's not you. therefore, you're not interested in doing that
baseball would experience a steep decline in interest
ask yourself: why is baseball appealing in the first place? because people self-identify with the struggle going on on the field. so when there is achievement, there is pleasure in the spectator
now if that achievement were due to a drug, rather than human perseverence, you've just destroyed the psychology of why sports are enjoyable to watch. you've severed the ability of the fan to empathize with the action on the field
so no, enhancement will never be legal in sports. or rather, if it is ever made legal in a particular sport, people will instantly stop being interested in that sport, and that sport will fade away, to replaced by interest in another sport, where the action is authentic, wher eit is about human effort, rather than a drug. because that's people are interested in seeing: human effort
because they are a microcosm of our lives: human struggle leads to success. this captures the imagination, allows us to identify with the struggle
if you remove the human struggle, if you replace hard work with a simple injection, you remove the aspect of the equation that allows us to identify our own personal struggles in what is going on on the field
say for example you made all biochemical enhancements in baseball legal. what would happen?
baseball would experience a steep decline in interest. why? because people simply don't find watching it pleasurable anymore, because they cease to see themselves in the sport
if whatever you are doing is not 100% human, its less interesting
if human scientists to constantly self-doped to increase brain power, elss people would go into science. why? because the image of the scientist would change to something that was less appealing to teenagers. who wants to spend their lives self-enhancing via drugs just to stay in the game? if you think that doesn't affect the appeal of sports or science, you simply don't understand human nature
prescribe to freudian psychology, let me use it as an example of why you are wrong for the sake of simplisitic analogy, just to get my point across:
say everyone has an id, an ego, and a superego
that sum total is you
say you smoke some doobage, your superego is reduced, allowing your id to predominate
that's not the real you, that's you, minus your superego
duh
the real you is let out when you sublimate a part of yourself? no, wrong: its not a moral or prudish observation, its a logical one- your superego is as much as part of you as your id
so if you sublimate your id, you are less of yourself, you are infact, blotting part of yourself out, not freeing yourself of some artificial imposition. what are you freeing yourself from? something that part of you!
your understanding of who and what you are is wrong
of course alcohol is addictive. but not virally so. so its different. all drugs are different. you can't say "well this is addictive, so if you are against something addictive, you have to be against everything addictive" no. each drug is different. for example, it has been said nicotine is more addictive than heroin. but nicotine doesn't put you in a glassy eyed drooling state that makes you unable to have a job or a relationship, so it must clearly be considered separately. same with alcohol. obviously, marijuana should be legal: its less harmful than alcohol. so really, what you want to do is talk about a drug's HARM, not just it's toxic effects, or it's incapacitating effects, or its addictive effects: every drug is different
lsd is more incapacitating than heroin. but its not addictive. nicotine is more addictive than heroin. but its not incapacitating. you have to think of each drug differently
which is my whole point. give me a random sport, say javelin throws. various guys try it, a few are really good at it. they get recognition for this
now some other guys enhance. they get the recognition. but it becomes known they achieved their glory via enhancement. two things happen: 1. people think less of their individual achievement 2. people think less of the entire sport of javelin throwing
this is not a moral or prudish point, its a simply logical point: if something takes less effort to achieve, it is less remarkable. if you enhance to achieve something, something anyone can do, what you did becomes less remarkable, YOU become less remarkable. the entire field you are competing in, if enhancement is widespread, becomes less remarkable. and finally, the whole idea of human achievement becomes less remarkable. oh, so you can throw a javelin? well, if i bulked up on steroids, i can probably throw further than you, so who cares about your achievement
again, tis not a moral or prudish observation: when you make less of the equation about 100% pure human effort, and more about tricks and cheats and nonhuman biochemical intervention, then you've altered what it means to achieve. it simply means less, its simply less interesting. life itself is less interesting
that's why people try to keep drugs out of sports. it destroys the entire reason sports are interesting in the first place: an ability to identify with the human struggle, an ability to imagine the endless limits of human effort and perseverence. who cares about human effort if you can just inject something and do the same? why try at anything at all? it's all fixed, it's all a joke. humanity is lessened
i think you need to rethink that characterization. i think you will find most people think enhancement via drugs denigrates and tarnishes whatever it is that someone is doing. i guess the example of barry bonds didn't sell that fact to you. want some more? i have plenty of examples:
affects someone else, or society at large, or not at all. and therefore people can "stick their nose into someone else's business" because someone else's business is affecting them
i think that taking performance enhancing drugs does not affect anyone but the user, but i at the same time sense in you a very strong sense of outrage over people getting involved in someone else's private business
yes, you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't affect someone else. but its possible that you are not aware of all of the ways your behavior has negative consequences on other people. society has a right to get involved in your "private" business if its not really private after all, if it has negative public effects. sometimes i think some people need to reevaluate their "that's private business!" label on some behavior which obviously isn't
of course, people also invent bullshit reasons and fears to stick their nose in someone else's bedroom, this is true. and such people should be beat down. so both is true: 1. there are bullshit reasons fearful people invent to invade other people's private business 2. some behavior some people regard as totally private do in fact have public consequences that some people are unwilling or unable to admit or recognize
example: too often you see completely naive and inexperienced people arguing for the complete decriminalization of things like cocaine and heroin and methamphetamine, when it is a fact that the addiction rates and the lives destroyed by these drugs means society has every right to fight these drugs. it is nice to argue about your personal privacy in a vacuum. but at some point, you have to pay the rent, buy some food, and go to work and maintain your relationship with your girlfriend, family, etc. hardcore addictive drugs like heroin, cocaine, and meth destroy your ability to do those things, so they aren't really private behavior at all. something like marijuana isn't addictive, so it should be 100% legal. but only a complete fool thinks heroin, cocaine, or meth should be legal. they must have zero experience with these drugs and what they do to human lives, and what they do to society, which somehow must clothe and feed and house what are now zombies, but who would have been productive members of society if addictive drugs never got to them
taking drugs for enhancement is actually self-defeating, psychologically and philosophically. you can cut at the issue with two simple questions: how much of what you do is you? how much of it is the drug?
philosophically speaking, you lose some of your identity when you self-enhance. if you don't buy my argument, i have two words for you: barry bonds. the guy was a great athlete and probably would have made a huge impact on baseball without steroids. now you tell me what his legacy is. what would his legacy be without steroids? you say he would have achieved less physically? ok, but at least whatever he achieved be his own, and not due to a drug, which therefore tarnishes his legacy and diminishes it, to something less than what he would have achieved without steroids
the issue may seem trivial or laughable, but its not. because you not only alter how the world sees you and your accomplishments, you also alter your own self-perception, permanently and negatively. when you alter how you view yourself, you alter your sense of identity, your individualism, your sense of self-regard and your will. if you shortchange yourself, if you tell yourself that some of what you do or did is because of a drug, instead of your own creativity, perseverence, hard work, charm, etc., then you permanently diminish your own sense of self-regard. on this issue alone, enhancement through drugs is not worth it. because it's one thing to cheat and never get caught. its another to cheat, never get caught, but always know yourself that you are a fake. or even if steroids for sports or brain enhancement for science work were 100% socially acceptable: you still have to deal with how you have altered how yourself view your own accomplishments as being a product of something that is not 100% your own
i am not talking about habituation or addiction, i am talking about altering the perception of self, and belittling your own contributions. it's a psychological and philosophical trap: you eventually wind up seeking the drug to BE yourself, rather than to ENHANCE yourself. show me someone who says "no, i can always keep those two issues separate," and i'll show you someone who is low on the self-awareness scale and is in fact most vulnerable to this subtle weakening of self-regard and self-identification
get drunk, smoke marijuana, hey whatever. taking drugs for recreation is actually an act of blotting out the self, destroying oneself temporarily, for the sake of freeing the id and having pleasure. and therefore, this is behavior that is not what i am arguing against in this comment and therefore i am not your typical "just say no to drugs" prude
what i am saying is that if you do any drug to heighten yourself, you achieve the opposite: you denigrate and diminish a sense of self. it is psychologically and philosophically unavoidable. drugs do not enhance life, they blot it out. for recreation, this is fine. but in any aspect of yourself where you should be emphasizing your own contributions, enhacing yourself, you wind up in the end doing psychological harm in the realm of self-regard, removing oneself from your own calculation to yourself about how much you matter and how much you yourself change in this world, rather than some drug
chicago and new york city fare pretty well, but most sprawling american cities have awful rail service. they were built from the ground up based on road transportation rather than rail. this is not good
east asia and europe has left us in the dust when it comes to rail service . while we spent most of the 20th century ripping up what we built up in the 19th century, other parts of the world remained committed to rail or at least let it limp along on life support. the usa pretty much killed rail: ripped up the lines and buried them under suburban subdivisions
but with gas prices climbing, it should behoove those in positions of power to update, revive, or pioneer rail services in major american cities. it's a matter of economic security nowadays, not an environmentalist's pipe dream. due to fuel concerns, environmental concerns, quality of life concerns (remember, this threadjack is under a story about traffic congestion), i think the 21st century will represent a renaissance in railroads
Concerning this oilfield which lays below the Dakotas and Saskatchewan: if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? You watching? And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake... I... drink... your... milkshake! SLURP I drink it up!
but at least the average slashdotter learns something from this story. beforehand, we all assumed you had to be a bore to sue google. now we all know you could also be a boring
#1: that current copyright law rewards content creators. it actually rewards content distributors
#2: that current copyright law is the maximum benefit for creators in terms of reward and protection. no copyright law at all provides equal benefit
how the heck can i think that?
say i give away a copyrighted song for free on the internet. under the old way of understanding, this is hurting the content creator. in actuality, this is giving the content creator free publicity. then how does the content creator cash in? radiohead simply put out a tip jar on the website that gave away its music for free. they made millions. they also made more than if they were working under the old copyright system, since they would only get fractional pennies while the distributors made dollars on every cd
yeah but radiohead was made by the conglomerates. yes, this is true. and radiohead was also owned by them. radiohead, prince, the beatles: after enough fame, you can cut yourself free, and make real money. all fo the one hit wonders form the 70s, the 80s, the 90s: they lived the high life of limos and big hotel rooms for a few months, all paid for by the conglomerates. when all is said and done, they were left with a few pennies. the very elite like michael jackson and the rolling stones cash in by retaining the rights to their songs. they get leverage on their name. but you are talking about the ultra-elite here, not the vast majority of artists
content creators will always make money from advertising and concerts. consider those nobodies featured in apple itune ads. that's how they cash in. they are paid by apple. not because some copyright law got them paid. they were unknown. its easy to enforce a check from apple
in the new world, their recordings are simply free advertising, not another revenue stream. the old copyright world will still exist, where content creators do deals with conglomerates that heavily promote them, reaping millions for the conglomerate, fame for the creator, and a contract that lets them see very little actual money. this is the way it has been for decades, and the way it will continue to be
meanwhile, the internet simply opens the chance for tiny niche players- the guy at the local bar, etc., to get their stuff out there, to get known. to self-distribute. the assumption is that by giving his music away free on the internet, he is losing out on cash. this assumes that anyone would actually pay him, or that he would actually make money via the conglomerates, then, or now. so copyright law doesn't serve him, nor would it ever. the idea is to give it away for free to make fame, which you then cash in on via concert venues and ad deals
now we have an open door to the possibility of the internet-made music sensation. who, by giving away their music for free, catapults to fame via word of mouth, and cashes in with concert venues and advertising
and then, if an artist gets lucky and enters the realm of the ultra-elite like jay z, concerts and ads will be his cash cow. yes, he won't make any money from recordings. and so what? that's just advertising for him now
it's a different paradigm, it works, it rewards artists, often better than the old system that rewarded the distributors. and it doesn't require copyright law. because copyright law assumes only a few distribtutors, its enforceable. with everyone a distributor on the internet, its unenforceable, and simply not part of the cash equation
its the television model: television is given away for free over the air. yet it makes billions: advertising
1. eat putrid rotten food 2. live in oxygen deprived standing water 3. have been doing so for hundreds of millions of years
therefore, their immune systems should be absolutely spectacular
however, some of their adaptations might be more systematic. that is, rather than fight off infecting agents, they may simply let infectious agents traverse their organ systems with impunity, without any resistance, and also without offering any safe harbor. in other words, it is one thing to have a fanatical vigilant guard at your front door who lets no one in, it is another thing to let anyone in your house who wanders by, simply offering nothing inside worth stealing
i would suspect therefore that a lot of the alligator's adaptations to remaining infection free are so very fundamentally different from our body's approach to infection as to be inapplicable to how our bodies approach the subject. they're way of life is so different and ancient as compared to ours, some of their adaptations may be inapplicable to our own bodies
it is interesting to see ministers and legal wranglers reaching back this far in copyright history for a sense of stability and coherence in copyright law. it shows desperation, confusion, fear. however, what the internet has done to copyright is yet a more fundamental reordering of the landscape than even law going back to the 1800s
it is simply that at one time, the means of production and distribution of media was confined to a few players. this meant that agreeing on rules, and compliance and enforcement was relatively simple and straightforward. as recently as the 1980s, if someone was counterfeiting vhs tapes, for example, the operation was ponderous, slow, required a heavy initial investment, and was relatively easy to trace and shut down those few random players. this limited piracy to a few hardy organizations
but today, the power of global distribution that was once confined to the likes of bertelsman and sony is in the hands of every college kid. enforcement? ha! compliance and agreement on the rules? ha!
the assumptions about distribution that created copyright law as we know it is so fundamentally altered as to be so alien a landscape that copyright law is simply completely and utterly destroyed. for those of you doubting this, you are simply in denial. you can't make a law that is impossible to enforce. well, you can, legislative bodies do it every day. but it simply doesn't mean anything, it's hollow, it's a joke. that's what our copyright law has become
the last ten years has simply been a slow process of awakening the world to this fact. the next ten years will simply be more awakening to this fact, everyone getting on the same page: copyright law is broken. utterly
this is what they mean by disruptive technology. the internet destroyed copyright law by making every single individual in 2000 have the same distribution power that was confined in 1990 to sony and bertelsman
obviously, rights and morality and ownership in the realm of media are issues that are still valid. these issues still need to be addressed legally. but the legal and compliance framework around these issues will need to be built almost from scratch, and copyright law as we know it must be thrown out almost in its entirety: all the basic assumptions it is founded upon are completely reordered
personally, i think some form of copyleft a la "free" software will be the basis for our new legal framework about all media and distribution: music, books, movies, etc
democracy and propaganda don't mix? not theoretically, but in the entire history of democracy?
and why do think men like Clausewitz, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, or Tokugawa have no place in a democracy? i could just as easily as add patton, or washington, or grant to those names, and no meaning has changed
you don't have an enlightened view of the way the usa is or should be. you have a cotton candy naive view. you need to take a harder look at the world you actually live in and the real nature of the human beings that populate it. you seem very sheltered, and your opinions don't seem informed, they seem magically wishful and escapist
all countries think they are the best in the world. everyone is ethnocentric. every nationalist looks outside his borders and sees worse, on whatever arbitrary measurement. they may not say 'land of the free, home of the brave' but they say something else with the same meaning: we are the best country in the world
as for the age of my examples, i leave it to your intellectual discovery as to whether or not there are contemporary non-american examples of american crimes noted in the comment i was repsonding to. or if only the usa commits these crimes
and thinking it should be, for any rationale, is stupid
and thinking you can make the usa better than anyone else, with language and rhetoric that emphasizes how the usa is especially bad (for doing what everyone else does already, but not mentioning that), is doubly stupid
you don't make the world a better place by focusing all of your attention on the usa
mankind will always be in conflict. all you get to choose is the manner of the conflict. words or bombs. take your pick
an ideological battlefield of lies, demagoguery, propaganda, half-truths, manipulations, etc., is superior to bombs and guns
blood on the streets or lies in the mind. you choose
because choosing no conflict whatsoever is not possible, if you truly understand the human condition as it always was and always will be
i subscribe to the theory of catharsis: when you scream your vile emotions, you are purging yourself of feelings and desires that would otherwise result in you stabbing or killing someone. if you have a bad feeling, and bottle it up, it doesn't go away, it explodes at some later point. so i would rather that vicious screeds and crude language come in buckets than one drop of blood be spilt. because according to the theory of catharsis, those vile words serve as a real world replacement for spilt blood
of course you can say lies incite violence. i would reply to that that you can only plant a seed. if lies turn into violence, those lied to are already predisposed to murder and maim. so there is nothing created by the lies. furthermore, you lie to enough to people, and they become deadened and exhausted to the calls for action in the name of lies
in other words, let it all out: all of the vile monstrous words. no censorship of any thought, no matter how vile. and thereby deaden the world to actual physical violence, through exhausting the demagogues, and vaccinating people from their lies through constant exposure
so yes: give me propaganda. buckets of it. from every point in the spectrum of ideology. in the name of reducing violence
Slashdot Mirror
at the least, different in the mind of the spectator
the whole reason sports are interesting is because it is about human struggle leading achievement. the spectator identifies with the struggle
if the athlete is using drugs, you sever that psychological connection, because the drug is seen as making the struggle easier. equipment doesn't do that psychologically
so if you had a sport where drugs were 100% legal, what you would have is an immediate drop off in interest in that sport, which would fade away. meanwhile, the fans would move on to some other sport that was more "authentic", meaning, they got more out of it by watching it
and you just made me think of something:
say you have two scrabble players. one is allowed to just sit there and use his mind. the other is allowed a dictionary, a computer program that looks for good letter compbinations, seven letter words, etc
who would win most of the time? obviously, the guy with the enhancements
but more importantly: WHO WOULD BE INTERESTED IN CONTINUING TO PLAY
if its not a struggle, there is no interest. the guy bumbling through the game using his own mind would find pleasure when he won on his own merits, and therefore continue playing the game based on his sense of accomplishment. without that sense of acoomplishment, there is no reason for someone to continue in the endeavour, simply because of the psychodynamics of what keeps a human being snegaged and involved and interested in an endeavour: they see themselves in it
if you achieve everything through enhancements, you disengage. its not about you anymore, so there's no interest in doing whatever it is that you do with enhancements
so the scrabble player with enhancements would probably play 10 games, and then never play again: its boring, you wouldn't get naything out of it
while the scrabble player working with just his own mind would probably play 1,000 games, and enjoy his experience, and be glad fo rit. he would have ahigher quality of life and higher sense of self-regard
science as a pursuit would get less interested college students if the image of science was a bunch of pill poppers. no one wants to get involved in that, if the whole point is to look for a pursuit where you place your own mark, rather than the mark of a pill. that's not you. therefore, you're not interested in doing that
by making statements that support it
"You may not like yourself after using drugs, but that is not related to your basic understanding of the "self.""
try parsing that comment of yours a little further, then get back to me
because putting gas in your fuel tank and tying a class ii titan rocket to your car is the same thing ;-P
baseball would experience a steep decline in interest
ask yourself: why is baseball appealing in the first place? because people self-identify with the struggle going on on the field. so when there is achievement, there is pleasure in the spectator
now if that achievement were due to a drug, rather than human perseverence, you've just destroyed the psychology of why sports are enjoyable to watch. you've severed the ability of the fan to empathize with the action on the field
so no, enhancement will never be legal in sports. or rather, if it is ever made legal in a particular sport, people will instantly stop being interested in that sport, and that sport will fade away, to replaced by interest in another sport, where the action is authentic, wher eit is about human effort, rather than a drug. because that's people are interested in seeing: human effort
why are sports attractive in the first place?
because they are a microcosm of our lives: human struggle leads to success. this captures the imagination, allows us to identify with the struggle
if you remove the human struggle, if you replace hard work with a simple injection, you remove the aspect of the equation that allows us to identify our own personal struggles in what is going on on the field
say for example you made all biochemical enhancements in baseball legal. what would happen?
baseball would experience a steep decline in interest. why? because people simply don't find watching it pleasurable anymore, because they cease to see themselves in the sport
if whatever you are doing is not 100% human, its less interesting
if human scientists to constantly self-doped to increase brain power, elss people would go into science. why? because the image of the scientist would change to something that was less appealing to teenagers. who wants to spend their lives self-enhancing via drugs just to stay in the game? if you think that doesn't affect the appeal of sports or science, you simply don't understand human nature
there is no difference between putting gas in your fuel tank and tying a rocket engine to your car. nope, no difference at all there friend ;-P
prescribe to freudian psychology, let me use it as an example of why you are wrong for the sake of simplisitic analogy, just to get my point across:
say everyone has an id, an ego, and a superego
that sum total is you
say you smoke some doobage, your superego is reduced, allowing your id to predominate
that's not the real you, that's you, minus your superego
duh
the real you is let out when you sublimate a part of yourself? no, wrong: its not a moral or prudish observation, its a logical one- your superego is as much as part of you as your id
so if you sublimate your id, you are less of yourself, you are infact, blotting part of yourself out, not freeing yourself of some artificial imposition. what are you freeing yourself from? something that part of you!
your understanding of who and what you are is wrong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg
of course alcohol is addictive. but not virally so. so its different. all drugs are different. you can't say "well this is addictive, so if you are against something addictive, you have to be against everything addictive" no. each drug is different. for example, it has been said nicotine is more addictive than heroin. but nicotine doesn't put you in a glassy eyed drooling state that makes you unable to have a job or a relationship, so it must clearly be considered separately. same with alcohol. obviously, marijuana should be legal: its less harmful than alcohol. so really, what you want to do is talk about a drug's HARM, not just it's toxic effects, or it's incapacitating effects, or its addictive effects: every drug is different
lsd is more incapacitating than heroin. but its not addictive. nicotine is more addictive than heroin. but its not incapacitating. you have to think of each drug differently
which is my whole point. give me a random sport, say javelin throws. various guys try it, a few are really good at it. they get recognition for this
now some other guys enhance. they get the recognition. but it becomes known they achieved their glory via enhancement. two things happen:
1. people think less of their individual achievement
2. people think less of the entire sport of javelin throwing
this is not a moral or prudish point, its a simply logical point: if something takes less effort to achieve, it is less remarkable. if you enhance to achieve something, something anyone can do, what you did becomes less remarkable, YOU become less remarkable. the entire field you are competing in, if enhancement is widespread, becomes less remarkable. and finally, the whole idea of human achievement becomes less remarkable. oh, so you can throw a javelin? well, if i bulked up on steroids, i can probably throw further than you, so who cares about your achievement
again, tis not a moral or prudish observation: when you make less of the equation about 100% pure human effort, and more about tricks and cheats and nonhuman biochemical intervention, then you've altered what it means to achieve. it simply means less, its simply less interesting. life itself is less interesting
that's why people try to keep drugs out of sports. it destroys the entire reason sports are interesting in the first place: an ability to identify with the human struggle, an ability to imagine the endless limits of human effort and perseverence. who cares about human effort if you can just inject something and do the same? why try at anything at all? it's all fixed, it's all a joke. humanity is lessened
"we" do?
i think you need to rethink that characterization. i think you will find most people think enhancement via drugs denigrates and tarnishes whatever it is that someone is doing. i guess the example of barry bonds didn't sell that fact to you. want some more? i have plenty of examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France#Doping
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9D0CE1DA1731F930A35751C1A967958260
affects someone else, or society at large, or not at all. and therefore people can "stick their nose into someone else's business" because someone else's business is affecting them
i think that taking performance enhancing drugs does not affect anyone but the user, but i at the same time sense in you a very strong sense of outrage over people getting involved in someone else's private business
yes, you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't affect someone else. but its possible that you are not aware of all of the ways your behavior has negative consequences on other people. society has a right to get involved in your "private" business if its not really private after all, if it has negative public effects. sometimes i think some people need to reevaluate their "that's private business!" label on some behavior which obviously isn't
of course, people also invent bullshit reasons and fears to stick their nose in someone else's bedroom, this is true. and such people should be beat down. so both is true:
1. there are bullshit reasons fearful people invent to invade other people's private business
2. some behavior some people regard as totally private do in fact have public consequences that some people are unwilling or unable to admit or recognize
example: too often you see completely naive and inexperienced people arguing for the complete decriminalization of things like cocaine and heroin and methamphetamine, when it is a fact that the addiction rates and the lives destroyed by these drugs means society has every right to fight these drugs. it is nice to argue about your personal privacy in a vacuum. but at some point, you have to pay the rent, buy some food, and go to work and maintain your relationship with your girlfriend, family, etc. hardcore addictive drugs like heroin, cocaine, and meth destroy your ability to do those things, so they aren't really private behavior at all. something like marijuana isn't addictive, so it should be 100% legal. but only a complete fool thinks heroin, cocaine, or meth should be legal. they must have zero experience with these drugs and what they do to human lives, and what they do to society, which somehow must clothe and feed and house what are now zombies, but who would have been productive members of society if addictive drugs never got to them
taking drugs for enhancement is actually self-defeating, psychologically and philosophically. you can cut at the issue with two simple questions: how much of what you do is you? how much of it is the drug?
philosophically speaking, you lose some of your identity when you self-enhance. if you don't buy my argument, i have two words for you: barry bonds. the guy was a great athlete and probably would have made a huge impact on baseball without steroids. now you tell me what his legacy is. what would his legacy be without steroids? you say he would have achieved less physically? ok, but at least whatever he achieved be his own, and not due to a drug, which therefore tarnishes his legacy and diminishes it, to something less than what he would have achieved without steroids
the issue may seem trivial or laughable, but its not. because you not only alter how the world sees you and your accomplishments, you also alter your own self-perception, permanently and negatively. when you alter how you view yourself, you alter your sense of identity, your individualism, your sense of self-regard and your will. if you shortchange yourself, if you tell yourself that some of what you do or did is because of a drug, instead of your own creativity, perseverence, hard work, charm, etc., then you permanently diminish your own sense of self-regard. on this issue alone, enhancement through drugs is not worth it. because it's one thing to cheat and never get caught. its another to cheat, never get caught, but always know yourself that you are a fake. or even if steroids for sports or brain enhancement for science work were 100% socially acceptable: you still have to deal with how you have altered how yourself view your own accomplishments as being a product of something that is not 100% your own
i am not talking about habituation or addiction, i am talking about altering the perception of self, and belittling your own contributions. it's a psychological and philosophical trap: you eventually wind up seeking the drug to BE yourself, rather than to ENHANCE yourself. show me someone who says "no, i can always keep those two issues separate," and i'll show you someone who is low on the self-awareness scale and is in fact most vulnerable to this subtle weakening of self-regard and self-identification
get drunk, smoke marijuana, hey whatever. taking drugs for recreation is actually an act of blotting out the self, destroying oneself temporarily, for the sake of freeing the id and having pleasure. and therefore, this is behavior that is not what i am arguing against in this comment and therefore i am not your typical "just say no to drugs" prude
what i am saying is that if you do any drug to heighten yourself, you achieve the opposite: you denigrate and diminish a sense of self. it is psychologically and philosophically unavoidable. drugs do not enhance life, they blot it out. for recreation, this is fine. but in any aspect of yourself where you should be emphasizing your own contributions, enhacing yourself, you wind up in the end doing psychological harm in the realm of self-regard, removing oneself from your own calculation to yourself about how much you matter and how much you yourself change in this world, rather than some drug
chicago and new york city fare pretty well, but most sprawling american cities have awful rail service. they were built from the ground up based on road transportation rather than rail. this is not good
east asia and europe has left us in the dust when it comes to rail service . while we spent most of the 20th century ripping up what we built up in the 19th century, other parts of the world remained committed to rail or at least let it limp along on life support. the usa pretty much killed rail: ripped up the lines and buried them under suburban subdivisions
but with gas prices climbing, it should behoove those in positions of power to update, revive, or pioneer rail services in major american cities. it's a matter of economic security nowadays, not an environmentalist's pipe dream. due to fuel concerns, environmental concerns, quality of life concerns (remember, this threadjack is under a story about traffic congestion), i think the 21st century will represent a renaissance in railroads
to effectively defend canada, the first thing you need to do is get that chip off your shoulder. talk about an inferiority complex
Dear Canada,
Concerning this oilfield which lays below the Dakotas and Saskatchewan: if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? You watching? And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake... I... drink... your... milkshake! SLURP I drink it up!
Bludgeonly yours,
the USA
i find bright red letters on a bright blue background to be quite soothing. try it sometime, i promise you will thank me
why didn't the mckees sue when the borings did?
it simply means the mckees aren't boring enough
but at least the average slashdotter learns something from this story. beforehand, we all assumed you had to be a bore to sue google. now we all know you could also be a boring
however, you are making some assumptions
#1: that current copyright law rewards content creators. it actually rewards content distributors
#2: that current copyright law is the maximum benefit for creators in terms of reward and protection. no copyright law at all provides equal benefit
how the heck can i think that?
say i give away a copyrighted song for free on the internet. under the old way of understanding, this is hurting the content creator. in actuality, this is giving the content creator free publicity. then how does the content creator cash in? radiohead simply put out a tip jar on the website that gave away its music for free. they made millions. they also made more than if they were working under the old copyright system, since they would only get fractional pennies while the distributors made dollars on every cd
yeah but radiohead was made by the conglomerates. yes, this is true. and radiohead was also owned by them. radiohead, prince, the beatles: after enough fame, you can cut yourself free, and make real money. all fo the one hit wonders form the 70s, the 80s, the 90s: they lived the high life of limos and big hotel rooms for a few months, all paid for by the conglomerates. when all is said and done, they were left with a few pennies. the very elite like michael jackson and the rolling stones cash in by retaining the rights to their songs. they get leverage on their name. but you are talking about the ultra-elite here, not the vast majority of artists
content creators will always make money from advertising and concerts. consider those nobodies featured in apple itune ads. that's how they cash in. they are paid by apple. not because some copyright law got them paid. they were unknown. its easy to enforce a check from apple
in the new world, their recordings are simply free advertising, not another revenue stream. the old copyright world will still exist, where content creators do deals with conglomerates that heavily promote them, reaping millions for the conglomerate, fame for the creator, and a contract that lets them see very little actual money. this is the way it has been for decades, and the way it will continue to be
meanwhile, the internet simply opens the chance for tiny niche players- the guy at the local bar, etc., to get their stuff out there, to get known. to self-distribute. the assumption is that by giving his music away free on the internet, he is losing out on cash. this assumes that anyone would actually pay him, or that he would actually make money via the conglomerates, then, or now. so copyright law doesn't serve him, nor would it ever. the idea is to give it away for free to make fame, which you then cash in on via concert venues and ad deals
now we have an open door to the possibility of the internet-made music sensation. who, by giving away their music for free, catapults to fame via word of mouth, and cashes in with concert venues and advertising
and then, if an artist gets lucky and enters the realm of the ultra-elite like jay z, concerts and ads will be his cash cow. yes, he won't make any money from recordings. and so what? that's just advertising for him now
it's a different paradigm, it works, it rewards artists, often better than the old system that rewarded the distributors. and it doesn't require copyright law. because copyright law assumes only a few distribtutors, its enforceable. with everyone a distributor on the internet, its unenforceable, and simply not part of the cash equation
its the television model: television is given away for free over the air. yet it makes billions: advertising
and concert venues
alligators also:
1. eat putrid rotten food
2. live in oxygen deprived standing water
3. have been doing so for hundreds of millions of years
therefore, their immune systems should be absolutely spectacular
however, some of their adaptations might be more systematic. that is, rather than fight off infecting agents, they may simply let infectious agents traverse their organ systems with impunity, without any resistance, and also without offering any safe harbor. in other words, it is one thing to have a fanatical vigilant guard at your front door who lets no one in, it is another thing to let anyone in your house who wanders by, simply offering nothing inside worth stealing
i would suspect therefore that a lot of the alligator's adaptations to remaining infection free are so very fundamentally different from our body's approach to infection as to be inapplicable to how our bodies approach the subject. they're way of life is so different and ancient as compared to ours, some of their adaptations may be inapplicable to our own bodies
it is interesting to see ministers and legal wranglers reaching back this far in copyright history for a sense of stability and coherence in copyright law. it shows desperation, confusion, fear. however, what the internet has done to copyright is yet a more fundamental reordering of the landscape than even law going back to the 1800s
it is simply that at one time, the means of production and distribution of media was confined to a few players. this meant that agreeing on rules, and compliance and enforcement was relatively simple and straightforward. as recently as the 1980s, if someone was counterfeiting vhs tapes, for example, the operation was ponderous, slow, required a heavy initial investment, and was relatively easy to trace and shut down those few random players. this limited piracy to a few hardy organizations
but today, the power of global distribution that was once confined to the likes of bertelsman and sony is in the hands of every college kid. enforcement? ha! compliance and agreement on the rules? ha!
the assumptions about distribution that created copyright law as we know it is so fundamentally altered as to be so alien a landscape that copyright law is simply completely and utterly destroyed. for those of you doubting this, you are simply in denial. you can't make a law that is impossible to enforce. well, you can, legislative bodies do it every day. but it simply doesn't mean anything, it's hollow, it's a joke. that's what our copyright law has become
the last ten years has simply been a slow process of awakening the world to this fact. the next ten years will simply be more awakening to this fact, everyone getting on the same page: copyright law is broken. utterly
this is what they mean by disruptive technology. the internet destroyed copyright law by making every single individual in 2000 have the same distribution power that was confined in 1990 to sony and bertelsman
obviously, rights and morality and ownership in the realm of media are issues that are still valid. these issues still need to be addressed legally. but the legal and compliance framework around these issues will need to be built almost from scratch, and copyright law as we know it must be thrown out almost in its entirety: all the basic assumptions it is founded upon are completely reordered
personally, i think some form of copyleft a la "free" software will be the basis for our new legal framework about all media and distribution: music, books, movies, etc
democracy and propaganda don't mix? not theoretically, but in the entire history of democracy?
and why do think men like Clausewitz, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, or Tokugawa have no place in a democracy? i could just as easily as add patton, or washington, or grant to those names, and no meaning has changed
you don't have an enlightened view of the way the usa is or should be. you have a cotton candy naive view. you need to take a harder look at the world you actually live in and the real nature of the human beings that populate it. you seem very sheltered, and your opinions don't seem informed, they seem magically wishful and escapist
all countries think they are the best in the world. everyone is ethnocentric. every nationalist looks outside his borders and sees worse, on whatever arbitrary measurement. they may not say 'land of the free, home of the brave' but they say something else with the same meaning: we are the best country in the world
as for the age of my examples, i leave it to your intellectual discovery as to whether or not there are contemporary non-american examples of american crimes noted in the comment i was repsonding to. or if only the usa commits these crimes
and the usa never was better than anyone else
and the usa never will be better than anyone else
and thinking it should be, for any rationale, is stupid
and thinking you can make the usa better than anyone else, with language and rhetoric that emphasizes how the usa is especially bad (for doing what everyone else does already, but not mentioning that), is doubly stupid
you don't make the world a better place by focusing all of your attention on the usa
mankind will always be in conflict. all you get to choose is the manner of the conflict. words or bombs. take your pick
an ideological battlefield of lies, demagoguery, propaganda, half-truths, manipulations, etc., is superior to bombs and guns
blood on the streets or lies in the mind. you choose
because choosing no conflict whatsoever is not possible, if you truly understand the human condition as it always was and always will be
i subscribe to the theory of catharsis: when you scream your vile emotions, you are purging yourself of feelings and desires that would otherwise result in you stabbing or killing someone. if you have a bad feeling, and bottle it up, it doesn't go away, it explodes at some later point. so i would rather that vicious screeds and crude language come in buckets than one drop of blood be spilt. because according to the theory of catharsis, those vile words serve as a real world replacement for spilt blood
of course you can say lies incite violence. i would reply to that that you can only plant a seed. if lies turn into violence, those lied to are already predisposed to murder and maim. so there is nothing created by the lies. furthermore, you lie to enough to people, and they become deadened and exhausted to the calls for action in the name of lies
in other words, let it all out: all of the vile monstrous words. no censorship of any thought, no matter how vile. and thereby deaden the world to actual physical violence, through exhausting the demagogues, and vaccinating people from their lies through constant exposure
so yes: give me propaganda. buckets of it. from every point in the spectrum of ideology. in the name of reducing violence