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Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

as an adjunct ideology:

http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1400/fv01386.htm

and I will claim that any one person or group of persons is thoroughly arrogant to be monolithic. 

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Re: Is it the President's job to solve moral issues?

In following the previous post, I will also suggest that President Nixon did more for this country than many people realized then, let alone now. He allowed people to see the difference between the president, and the Presidency.

It is that difference that, perhaps, caused the topic question to begin. There is a tradition of honor and distinction that the Presidency bestows upon the president. While corruption and scandal are not new to presidents, in almost all cases, the president elected to the Presidency has risen above themselves to make their tenure, if nothing else, an honourable one.  Simply look at the records of presidents (both pre-Presidency and in-Presidency) such as Ulysses S. Grant, William Howard Taft, or either of the Roosevelts as exemplars of this perspective.

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Re: Re: Is it the President's job to solve moral issues?

I'm not sure that a government official elected by the populace through the distillation of the electoral college qualifies de facto as a moral harbinger. Given the process through which an individual achieves the Presidency, I would suggest rather the opposite, at least in our time. A revisiting of The Best And The Brightest (David Halberstam) or Fear & Loathing On The Campaign Trail 1972 (Hunter Thompson) among others should clarify my meaning.

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Re: What Are Some General Guidelines?

I would like to suggest that posters not be able to tweak the rating or vote on their own post. Seems self-defeating.

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Re: What do you think of the Big Picture (Big Think's newsletter)?

I truly love the concept of the 'big picture'. But in this climate of 'spam filters' it isn't reaching enough of those who need to see it. I would love to say, for a forum such as this: the hell with spam filters - get people out there who don't necessarily have the 'contribute' meme active get this forum put before them.

Yes, I'm what might be considered an 'overactive' contributor. And I challenge anyone within this forum who have already contributed to say to their friends: "Dig in. We want to have a say in the world. There are already major people who have had some input here. Is it not possible for those here to not only have a contribution in the world but are willing to share it publicly?"

Perhaps I am overestimating the ability for this forum to have a real effect. Perhaps I am waisting time better served to my own work. For some reason, that I don't quite understand, I don't think so.  I suppose part of that *un-understood* reason is the same effect I get when I mentor or advise someone I see of having promise.

And I *do* contribute locally - as either a mentor, a gadfly to my artistic friends, or a personal contributor. I don't live in this forum as a vacuous intellectual misanthrope. All of my contributions here are subsequent to and in accordance with my own philosophical system.

And I am making a rather broad assumption: that the majority of people here are contributing actively within their own particular part of the world at large, and not just showing up to throw a verbal nickel into the internet version of Ellis Island. One can only hope. 

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Re: Why do we cheat to compete? What is to be done? What are we to think?

Let's look at some of the motivations for cheating in its various forms.

One of them is one of the seven deadly sins: greed. Improving player stats is a great way to get a more lucrative contract, so a player may decide to cut corners. I will not deny that professional athletes work hard all their lives to enter the major leagues in whatever is their sport.  However, the idea gets into some of them that by using artificial (and often illegal) methods to attain even higher levels of performance.

One of them is the system. Part of the earliest stages of the system is Little League Baseball. To begin achievement at that level takes two things: parents who will either participate in a player's training, or will invest in someone to teach them the fundamentals of the game. Here is where the parents also can do some of the most psychological damage. If you've been to a little leage game in recent years, or read the police reports (in newspapers that actually report them), you may notice on national scale an uneasy trend of parents physically abusing umpires and coaches for game events and play calls. For children of little league age, it is unconscienceable that they have to witness such behaviour from adults. But it also gives them a notion that if things go well, parents will be happy with them. So they go to great lengths to make sure that they do well, at any cost.

By the time they reach high school, or that age group in AAU organizations, the notion of win at any cost is so ingrained that they start using all kinds of extra substances (including steriods, presumably to increase muscle mass).

Here is where a glaring difference appears between professional baseball in the US, and professional football and basketball. Have you ever noticed how few baseball players come out of college teams? More now than in the previous years of baseball, but still a relative minority. It seems that this is because once a player goes into AAU or other high school level program, if there is even a rumour of them going to college for an education, they would be dropped from the program they were already in. And don't even mention the central and south american recruiting systems that have burgeoned in the past twenty years. Can you say, right now, without looking it up, how many players from college systems were in the 2007 All Star Game (not even mentioning their names)? I can't.

In many of these minds, cheating will get you there. Once you're there, cheating will get you more. And a side question related to that last segment: how many players named in the Mitchell Report came out of college systems? I will not say with certainty, but I will hazard a guess: none.

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The environment and personal behaviour

People who raise the hue and cry for the government to do something about the environmental issues the world faces should start the solution at the personal level. There are a myraid of things that an individual (multiply by approximately 200,000,000 to get the gross effect) can do on a daily basis. I will list a few:

1. Stop driving everywhere. That effects petroleum consumption, carbon emissions, and one's weight. Walk or bicycle, or at the very least use public transport. Yes, I know that for some it is a humiliation beyond comprehension to ride with "the po' folk". In a lot of cases I think people would find a surprise at who *actually* rides the buses, the Els, and other public conveyances. I certainly had no trouble getting around Manhattan on the subway, other than figuring out the usual point-A-to-point-B issues.
2. Unless one's profession requires living remotely (farming and ranching come to mind), think about why one feels the need to live somewhere that requires more than a couple of miles of driving to obtain daily necessities, or to commute to work. What is truly one's motivation for a home that is far removed from a community, and does not function in any productive fashion?
3. Lose weight. It takes more energy to haul obese people around; it costs more in the medical care to keep obese people at least functional (not to mention the chemical by-products from pharmaceutical manufacturing); it costs more to clothe them, and (rather obviously) to feed them. (see #1).
4. Pay attention not only to what one eats, but whence it comes, and the footprint it takes to produce. As an example: beef cattle are the least efficient in terms of the space required to produce by a fairly wide margin. I don't have the statistics that I read recently right at hand, but I think I'll track them down for the purposes of this discussion. If one needs meat (as I do on occasion), as the commercial says: Eat mor chikin. Or fish. Or rabbit. And, whenever possible, eat local produce (minimal transportation, refrigeration and packaging).
5. Pay attention to packaging. Is it necessary to buy everything in hermetically sealed plastic which will require a couple of centuries at minimum to bio-degrade, or packaged in metal?
6. Stop making babies. Encourage other people to stop making babies. It's environmentally irresponsible (see the first five items, and multiply by the number of children). It is socially irresponsible, since so many of them will be more likely to be part of a problem than part of a solution.
7. Vacations: they're a psychological appendage which for practical purposes is about as useful as wings on a chicken; they are a barbaric leftover from the industrial revolution. There is so much to be done right where one lives - instead of stuffing kith and kin into the minivan or SUV and driving all over the place, find constructive work to do (that is dissociated with one's 'day job') within one's community. "A change of work is the best rest." [Conan Doyle]

Just a few thoughts - anyone with functioning brains can extrapolate from there.

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Re: Senator, why don't you actually DO something

There are two fundamental problems with this line of thinking in relation to vehicles:

• The Manufacturers are unwilling to participate except to the level of vehicle efficiency mandated by the government. The government is not going to change the efficiency improvement levels that are already in place. And the efficiency improvements do not sufficiently address things like trucks, SUVs, and the like.
• The Consumer is not going to go for such vehicles any time soon. The average consumer is only partly interested in fuel efficiency - size and amenities in a vehicle are also very much in the consumer's mind when a purchase is being considered. Then there are the aftermarket products, such as high-rise modifications to make a truck look as though it stomp a Saturn without going into four wheel drive, or a 500-watt stereo system (which often requires an oversized alternator to power, which, in turn, requires more fuel to power). If you look at the sales ratio of truck/SUV vs. passenger vehicles, and do the math of the comparable fuel ratings based on that ratio, you'll see what I mean. People don't want nice, efficient transportation, they want the ability to intimidate the 'nice' vehicles with something nearly the size of a half-track. They also don't care that those of us who strictly walk, bicycle, or use public transportation have an equal right to the road. I do all three (and don't own a vehicle), and it can get ugly at times. How many people do you know that hop into their hummer to go to the store for a gallon of milk? Bleah.

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Baseball & the Energy/Environmental Crisis

As I was reviewing my posts from last night, a question occurred to me - would it be environmentally conscious of all major sports to schedule more day games to eliminate the need for the thousands of watts of lighting for night contests? I was apalled when Wrigley installed lights; I had been there a couple of times prior to that, and enjoyed it thoroughly. In fact, all the MLB games I have attended have been day games. I realize that attendance might be seriously impacted for weekday games; but weekends, at least would be fair game for all daytime scheduling.

And, in my opinion, television could just deal with it.

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Why do we cheat to compete? What is to be done? What are we to think?

[For the beginning of this thread, see http://www.bigthink.com/rest-diversions/7454].

Babe Ruth had his beer and dogs; Paul Hornung (self-admittedly) had a near-all-night binge before Super Bowl I; Joe DiMaggio had Marilyn. Scandalous? Hardly. Public faux-pas? Certainly. Damaging to the profession? Not so far as I can tell. Ruth smacked homers. Hornung blew by the Raiders. DiMaggio was, by all accounts, a baseball hero.

Those of us who follow sports in general, I believe, expect a certain level of ethical behaviour from the participants, especially the professionals.  As baseball is arguably the most perfect game, I am hopeful that those in charge step back and take a practical and beneficial view of their responsibility to the players, the organizations, and especially the fans.

A side note on the participation of government in professional sports:
Professsional baseball is a business, first and foremost. Like theatre, it takes butts in seats to make things work, to pay the players, the organization, the light bill, etc. Part of the documentation linked in the previous post includes transcripts of RICO hearings on baseball, which, if I'm not mistaken, are within the purview of government. Since performance enhancers provide a non-level playing field in sports for various reasons, I will suggest (until convinced otherwise, by legal means) that such related hearings are also within the purview of government.

I will agree with other commentators that the tendency for the Clemens hearing to become bipartisanly ineffective made it a strutting contest between Democrats and Republicans. Reps. Waxman and Shays certainly (albeit indirectly) clashed swords interestingly at the end, leaving both Clemens and McNamee rather scathed. Unfortunately Clemens and McNamee (and others in the very near future, I suspect) have set themselves up for it.

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