Baseball and steroids

So, a couple days ago, Congress spent a whole day talking about steroids in baseball.

Now, one of the main draws of baseball is its traditions and links tot he past, stories and records and things. The records-keepers of baseball are so anal they gave Roger Maris a * by his 61 home runs in a season because the season had like three more games then when Babe Ruth hit 60. They ban aluminum bats because they work so much better, they'd completely lose the comparison to the old stats. And probably endanger the pitchers even more if it was hit right back at them. So yeah, from that point, things like steroids destroy the comparison to the older stats. The same with the Olympics.

On the other hand, with new methods of training, nutrition, and equipment, the boundary of what's possible keeps changing. Is it cheating to train athletes by having them live in houses with lowered oxygen levels, that makes their bodies work more efficiently? There's no good place to draw a line, really.

Of course, the important thing is there was no bloody reason for Congress to waste a whole day on this crap, anyway. Aren't there more important things for them to be doing? Like, y'know, a war, looming deficits, crappy economy, etc, etc, etc?

Tags: Mindscribbles, Politics, News

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"Emotions are not opposed to reason: they fuel it. Why would we bother thinking about things without wonder and love, or anger and outrage? And why, if we didn't care, would we bother trying to get things right? Nor is reason opposed to the emotions: my emotions, at least, get downright testy when I decide to let them do whatever they want to, without bothering about what that might be.
...
Reason and emotions, to me, are like the two parts of a pair of scissors: they have to work together to work at all, and there is no opposition between the two. And it is only when they are intertwined with reflection, I think, that they are the full-bodied emotions they are capable of being." - hilzoy, via Obsidian Wings

Tags: Quotes, Links

"He said, She said" and the Doctrine of False Objectivity

There's been a good bit of media criticism going around on the Internet. Things like The Daily Howler and well... most every right wing site and blog. Republicans and right-wingers have been doing it for years, their constant chants of "liberal media" have gotten accepted as a common meme, despite being, y'know, false. Oh, there might have been a kernel of truth, forty or fifty years ago, but not so long as I've been alive. People like to quote "Oh, well blah percent of reporters register as Democrats." Whoop-de-doo. Hey, news flash, people can be Democrats and still report accurately. And honestly, I'm more worried about the people who control the media, who tend to be CEOs and moguls who tend to...vote Republican. Shock.

Much of the liberal criticism on the other hand, is more recent, and focused more on things like the pack nature of the news (there's all these papers talking about Clinton! There must be something there! Who cares if those papers are Republican fronts! SEX!) and the most annoying, to me, the "objective" journalism where they report what each side says and then DON'T LOOK INTO IT.

Reporting both sides doesn't make you objective. If the President says 2+2=6, and the Democrats say 2+2=4, then that's not "Opinions differ on math", the truth isn't somewhere in between both "extremes," 2+2 doesn't equal 5. The media's job, in theory, is to report the truth. But they've been cowed by threats and years of browbeating, and are afraid to be labeled "liberal media", so they bend over backwards. So instead of "PRESIDENT CLAIMS 2+2=6, IN DEFIANCE OF FACT", we get "OPINIONS DIFFER ON EQUATIONS" as the headlines, with a tiny little thing eight paragraphs in that says "and by the way, 2+2 still equals 4."

Laziness, cowardice, stupidity, whatever you want to call it. But that's what makes me annoyed about the "mainstream media" usually. If they'd quit sucking, I'd have no problem with them, and have no problem with the parts that don't suck.

Tags: Politics, Mindscribbles, Language