Moebius

In football the runner and the offensive line would also be 8 feet or whatever. Don't think it'd make much of a difference. Baseball on the other hand would have a lot more home runs. Players like Ichiro who has a high batting average would suddenly become home run kings since it doesn't matter how far you hit it out of the park as long as it is out of the park. In fact, soccer seems like the sport that would be least effected, although I guess you'd be able to kick the ball a lot harder.

So what you're saying is that because so many people violate the rule so often, we should get rid of the rule? Seems like an awful reason.

When I wrote the word "force" in my post, I actually thought about adding a disclaimer but decided that it was obvious waht I meant and it wouldn't have been necessary. I guess it was. I didn't mean "force" in a "gun to head" sense, but rather in a vernacular sense. It just means that it is something you would have to do -- as in, you would have to juice IF you want to be competitive.

Yeah alright. But that means in order to be competitive and to keep a level playing field, basically EVERYONE, regardless of talent, will have to juice in order to be competitive. You're basically just adding steroids to both sides of the equation, which theoretically makes no difference as far as the competition goes. Like I said, the only thing you'd be doing is FORCING every athlete to juice if they wish to remain competitive. On top of that you're basically erasing all the previous sporting achievements by creating a pre-steroid era and a post-steroid era, making objective comparison pretty much impossible. What happens is, even if someone who is juiced to the max somehow pulled off a 8.5 second hundred meter dash, the achievement is meaningless except when compared to the juicers that come after him. I'm not saying that that would be inherently wrong in a moral sense, but it just seems entirely pointless since you're just shaving seconds for the sake of shaving seconds. Suppose that you were able to put bionic limbs on all athletes that allow them to run the hundred meter dash in 3 seconds, what would you have achieved? All you have done is shift the achievement from a humanistic one into a technological one. Bottom line is that this is not really a moral issue. in the end it comes down to preferences. Since professional sports is essentially a product, it simply comes down to what the customers would prefer to consume. And I think it's fairly obvious that most people would prefer athletes who achieve because of their genes and training than because of the chemicals they consume.

What are these technologies you are referring to? And what exactly is your formulation again? Sports are arbitrary, whether you like it or not. Take a pig skin from point A to point B, shoot a leather ball into a hoop, so on and so forth. Of course, the rules can and does get tweaked if the participants thinks it would make the game better. Technologies can be improved in terms of diet and training technique. The only thing we're talking about here is technology that chemically (and maybe in the future, mechanically a la the Bionic Man?) altering the very physiological nature of man -- in the context of a fair and competitive sport.

I don't understand what you mean. Your body does naturally need protein, to repair torn muscle fibers and what not. How you get the protein is irrelevant. On the other hand, your body has no natural need for bovine hormones or synthetic testosterones. How do you mean? Restricting what can be put into a race car is an instance of a bad rule based on rationalism? Could you explain that? As far as I can tell, sports rules basically fall into three categories: Fun, Fairness, and Safety. Those are the underlying factors of virtually all rules. The point of having those restrictions is to have a uniform standard for all participants -- a "fairness" issue. It's as arbitrary as the size of a basketball, the length of a gridiron, or the minutes in a period, but they all have the same purpose. There is nothing as far as I can tell that is "bad" about these rules. They're just rules. Your argument is based on an arbitrary "ostensive purpose" for sports. You're basically just trading one arbitrary line for another. A similar -and one that is probably closer to the truth- argument would be that the purpose of playing sports is to have fun, and the purpose of watching Pro Sports is entertainment. In that case, any rule that makes the sport more fun or entertaining should be proper. Steroids makes the game unfair, unfair games aren't entertaining, therefore it should be banned.

So I guess the question is, why? What principle distinguishes the negative risks of performance-enhancers from the negative risks of training regiments? What does performance-enhancer have to do with talent? Barry Bonds has the same (tremendous) talent as a power hitter with or without steroids. But yes you're right, it IS a preference issue, which is why in my first post in this thread I said you can very well have a normal league and a steroid league. And the point of a free market isn't so a business can be run how the owner wants. In a free market, it is the consumer who does the demanding. In this case, free market just means that if enough people wants to watch something (say, sports played without steroids), someone is going to provide them with that product. Considering the climate right now, it would appear that most consumer of sports prefer -as I do- to watch sports without steroids.

I don't think you should draw the line based on safety. I recall a Sports Illustrated article that talked about how NFL linemen have a average life expectancy of just under 60 years -- over a decade below the average. The amount of training, stress, and pressure, not to mention excess weight, probably isn't safe. In any case, let's say that there is a pill that is completely safe that can transform anyone who took it into a heavily muscled 7 footer that benches 800 lbs, runs the 100 meters in 8.9 seconds, and with a 60 inch vertical, I would still rather watch games played without them.

Sports is about a lot of things. Winning is only one of them. Do you think the fan reception of Barry Bonds would have been any different if he had won a World Series? Do you think that fans would NOT feel differently if it turned out that Michael Jordan jumped as high as he did because of steroids? Yeah it's true that fans love winners. But they love winners who won because of their skill, abilities, and heart. For many the use of performance enhancing drugs is akin to cheating. Winning isn't an end onto itself, and if someone is perceived as having won because he cheated, he gets no love. I don't know what playing beautifully have to do with this topic. But it certainly counts for a lot -- just not as much as winning. Winning is great, but winning with style is just better. In any case, the reason I watch sports is for the drama. From the point of view of the spectator, winning is not in and of itself entertaining. I would not enjoy watching for instance a completely stacked team blowing away the competition away game after game after game with the conclusion always being a foregone conclusion. And certainly I would prefer to watch a team or an individual that plays beautifully -provided that they are COMPETITIVE- than one that dominates with brute force in an tactless, minimally skilled fashion. An example would be my preference for Kobe Bryant's recent 81 point in a game performance compared to Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point performance. In absolute terms Wilt may have scored more points. But he did it by having his teammates force feed him in the post play after play after play in an era where he is the only 7 footer on the court. Kobe Bryant on the other hand scored in the natural flow of the game with a deadly array of offensive moves, both inside and outside, and from a guard position no less. In sports, beauty counts.

Sure it's fair. Take track and fields as an example, because it's probably the purest form of body performance competition. The whole idea is that -all else being equal- who can run the fastest, jump the highest, or throw the furthest. The whole idea is that you are comparing individuals in terms of their genetics, skill, and mental toughness. It is only "unfair" when you introduce factors beyond those three things -- in this case how good your chemist is.

I was actually thinking on this, and wondering where you would draw the line. And I think the bottom line is any food stuff is "natural" because that is what your body biologically require for nourishment given activity. You lift weights, your body needs protein, you run, your body needs carbohydrates, so on and so forth. The difference between steroids and food is that your body would not ever NEED large doses of synthetic testosterone by itself, let alone growth hormones extracted from a bull and what not. Note that this is not an argument about "natural good, man-made bad". The issue here is fair competition. There may be other ways of drawing an objective -albeit arbitrary- line between what is "natural" and what isn't. The term "nature" in this case is simply a arbitrary and idealistic state-of-being approximated by the rules. This type of restrictions is obviously done consistently in virtually all sports from the material of your baseball bat to the engine of your race car.

I really don't have a problem with the private use of steroids. In sports though, it is an issue of fair competition -- which as you said, should be a private matter. Personally I don't think athletes -who sport for a living- should not be coerced to ingest or inject potentially harmful substances in order to compete. If you're going to allow steroids in sports, you might as well create an all-steroids league where massive athletes can juice 'till their heart's content. Heck, I might even watch it. Another point is sports as a way to show the potentials of human capabilities -- not pharmaceutical potency. Sure, it would be great to see someone run a three minute forty-five mile, but the number itself isn't an end onto itself. What would the Olympics mean for instance if some extremely gifted kid from Africa was able to shatter the world record thanks to his natural gifts and hard work, only to have a another guy dosed on a dozen different drug concoction beat him to the metal? Does it mean the winner was a better runner? Or does it mean he have a better chemist? To me that would ruin the whole point of the competition -- that of celebrating the possibilities of the human body.

We're talking about the ECONOMIC definition of Price, correct? As in, the point where supply meets demand? That is obviously what the original poster was referring to, otherwise he could just go for a dictionary. In economics, market price is not determined solely by the seller. An example would be a buyer's market -such as the current real estate market- where the need for the seller to get rid of the house outweighs the need for the buyer to acquire the house. In this case the price would be set by the buyer, not the seller. Even if we were to drop all context and go with your vanilla definition, you are STILL wrong because it would only be "PRICE is the monetary value assigned to a good or service", without regards to the factors that had set the price.

Did you actually read what he said? Yeah the final price is $5.00, and the buyer may only want to pay $1.00. But I am sure the seller would love to charge $9.00 if he could. You are confusing the fact that the $5.00 price is not determined solely by the producer. Buyers can in fact influence the price simply by not buying. Bob's explanation is sound.

I would go as far as to say that if you read a lot as a kid in general, you would learn foreign languages faster. Reading trains you to articulate your thoughts, which is fundamentally the point of all languages. Obviously you do not need to live in the US to learn English. It just speeds up the process tremendously, if only because you are constantly forced to use it. This is true. Although I would say that it is much easier for a non-speaker to learn English than it is to learn Chinese. Chinese is simply a far older and denser language, which consequently loads a lot more meanings and culture onto each character. It is less literal and precise but far more metaphorical and descriptive, as well as having a much freer grammatical structure. To me, English has always been a better language to think in, while Chinese a better language to express in. In many ways, this is also reflected in the respective cultures. I'd say that learning to speak a language is, if not more important, at least more practical. Generally learning a foreign language begin naturally with listening, followed by speaking, reading, and finally writing. That also the rank from the easiest to the most difficult for most students.

I taught English as a side job back in college. I would say that the key to fluency is to first build up your vocabulary. The best way is through reading, but any way that you can continuously come into contact with the language -- conversations, television, whatever -- works. Of course the idea is that you continuously read things that are slightly more difficult than you are used to. Like weight lifting, you won't get very far by trying to bench two hundred pounds from the get go. Anyway, regarding learning a foreign language, obviously there are many factors. One of the most important would be the age at which you start. You sound like you began learning at a relatively early age. Personally I began learning English when I was 12, and I would say it took me until about 15 to be fully fluent, and another year to be above average compared to my American peers. If I had begun at 8, it probably would have taken half the time. Another major factor is your mother tongue. Someone whose native language is European based obviously would have a much easier time learning English because of the similar linguistic structure. Chinese on the other hand is completely and utterly different from English, making it difficult to cross over. For an average natively educated Chinese, his exposure to English begin at around middle school. A few hours a week in school, with teacher who themselves are not fluent English speakers. Mostly they just pick up simple vocabularies and basic grammar. By college, the very motivated can read technical texts like a textbook and have simple conversations, but they are far from fluent. As far as Atlas Shrugged goes, the very length of the novel would discourage most from actually reading it in English.

I think that would read "White People".

Well yes, as I said, the only exception is those who are lucky enough to be educated (or living in your wife's case) in the United States. Living in an English speaking country and being immersed in English 24/7 for two years is worth more than a decade of private lessons in China. I'm sure being married to a white guy who speak little to no Chinese helps too. There are no short cuts to being fluent in a language, and the amount of time spent speaking, reading, and thinking in it makes an absolute amount of difference. To translate a novel I don't think it's possible to use a machine; nor should a skillful translator need a machine. My approach to novel translation is probably closer to that of being an interpretor. The problem of course is that it requires the translator to be a good writer both technically and thematically, and would ideally have a basic understanding of Objectivism.

Whatever you were thinking, what you actually said was "educated people" and "most young adults. I don't think that constitutes the elite top 1%. Anyway it is true that high achievers are into taking English lessons. That is the nature of globalization. Most though only get to the point where they are able to converse or write simple reports in English. Reading a massive novel like Atlas Shrugged in English is beyond the abilities of most of the "high achievers" unless they were educated in the States or are naturally gifted linguistically. I am actually pretty interested in reading Atlas Shrugged in Chinese however. I speak and write fluently in both languages, and I have been doing a bit of free lance translating jobs. I would say the most difficult thing to translate is poetry, with novels being a close second, since you may potentially lose a huge amount of information if you simply translate each word literally. It would be interesting to see the techniques used and how well the material translates.

Most of their textbooks are in English, so a certain degree of fluency is required. Understanding a textbook however is very different from reading a work of literature, since the later is far more subtle and filled with nuances. English courses are a requirement in most Asian countries. But its effectiveness is questionable. Many American kids take foreign language classes during middle school and high school. How many of them actually become well-versed in those languages? It is the same in Asia. As far as non-native languages go, you need to use it or you lose it; most Chinese do not need to use English in their daily lives.

I'm Taiwanese. Reading simplified Chinese is doable for most but is a real pain. The spoken language is the same which allows you to more or less guess at the characters you do not recognize, but it makes for slow and tedious reading. Most Taiwanese will find it very difficult going through a novel as dense as Atlas Shrugged in simplified.

I'm guessing because Ayn Rand said that it was immoral. But then she came from a different time and different social background.

I am not saying that refusing to sign the citation is typical. I think the guy would have signed it, but simply wanted a clarification on the charges -- which is pretty typical. Out of the hundreds of summons you've written, I think you have to discount all the ones that are clearly guilty first since they would just take the summon. What you're left with is people who are barely over the speed limit, in which case I don't think arguing or asking is out of the ordinary. You honestly think that a young white guy driving in seemingly the middle of nowhere with his young wife in a relatively good-conditioned SUV would rather be arrested and thrown in jail than to just eat a traffic ticket? Sorry but I think not. To me it is pretty clear that he did not realize he was being arrested, or for that matter that not signing to summon would lead to arrested. Yeah sure maybe he thought he could weasel his way out of a ticket. But then that's not really an unreasonable assumption since that's done ALL THE TIME (although in my personal experience mostly when the driver is a young attractive woman). He got out of the car probably thinking that the cop was going to produce proof of his speeding or whatever, and suddenly and inexplicably the officer pointed a weapon in his face and began shouting -- so he panicked.

That is pretty interesting. My problem with making homosexuality a morality issue has always been the possibility that it might have biological roots. It would sort of nullify the whole "the nature of masculinity is such and femininity is such and if you act otherwise you are damaging yourself" argument. Of course this study only applies to fruit flies so its implication on human beings is unclear. The article does indicate however that the fruit flies are bisexual and not strictly homosexual. It also mentioned that the condition can be controlled with drugs. Which kind of raises the theoretical question of whether homosexuality in humans should be treated (like a disease) if such treatments were possible. Another question -assuming there is a biological pre-disposition toward homosexuality- is whether it is simply a defect, or whether it serves some sort of function in the greater evolutionary scheme.

This whole situation probably could have been avoided in the first place if the officer had simply stated plainly that the young man had two options: sign the citation, or be arrested. That was the first thing that the officer could have done to defuse the situation. The conversation between the young man and the officer was cordial, and I agree with Old Toad that -given the lack of any explanation or warning what so ever as far as we can tell from the officer- there was really no reason why the young man should think that he was being arrested. Well, at least not until he had a weapon pointed at him completely out of the blues and told to put his arm behind his head -- when seconds before the police officer had been completely calm. He was suddenly threatened with force and placed in a escalating violent situation. The situation was so sudden in fact that he very well might not recognized the weapon as non-lethal, and he was obviously scared and had no idea what was going on. So the second thing the officer could have done to avoid the situation was -when faced with an apparently unarmed and civil young man- give advance warning about the arrest without shouting and pointing a weapon at the man's face. The tazer could have simply been out in plain sight to indicate that he was armed. Obviously the young man did not behave ideally. But all of his actions were pretty typical and not unexpected. BECAUSE the police officer is an agent of the law dealing with citizens who are generally unfamiliar with legal protocols, I think he has the responsibility to communicate clearly what he was going to do in a non-threatening situation. Not necessarily going over the law letter by letter, but at least state concisely what he needs from you and why. I don't necessarily think that the officer did anything illegal or deserve some sort of punishment, but he definitely handled the situation very poorly.