Am I the only person in the western hemisphere who pointedly does not have a problem with athletes taking performance-enhancing drugs? I have no problem with this whatsoever.
Oh, for goodness’ sake. This is so very eyeroll-inducing.
1) Athletics equipment and clothes
All throughout the history of athletics, the equipment and supplies have been *continually* professionally, wholly modified and tweaked so that they increase athletic performance. Their regulation dimensions, their manufacturing process in factories, the athletic equipment that is legally allowed to be used on the field -- all have been tweaked, improved, enhanced for optimal output of performance.
Golf balls have been altered so they fly farther. Athletic shoes and uniforms such as running shoes and swimmers' trunks have been streamlined and made aquiline to maximize efficiency from the athlete’s effort.
Swimmers and track runners have had suits designed to make them more sleek, more streamlined. The uniforms have been engineered so as to extract the maximum performance output from those athletes.
And have you seen the sneakers on athletes nowadays? If the type of sneaks that I'm seeing in Footlocker is the sort of merchandise available to the common folk, then imagine the type of top-secret robot human cyborg-hybrid kicks that Olympic and professional athletes have access to. All those aerodynamic, foot cushioning, the laser-precision prime optima support for the heel of the foot and the ball of the foot, the tendon bone to skeletal muscle joint. Support for the *knees* is essential. That is the large bursa join that bears the entire body’s weight.
support for [[[joinis muscle to musck forgot name]]] Biomedical research has been allocated towards sports medicine. Binding tape stuff that athletes wear is wrapped around their ankles and other joints to stabilize and offer support, like say if they have a sprained ankle. Scientific research into human anatomy and physiology has been funded to find the pressure points that must be cushioned and supported to obtain optimal performance.
A main theme of this is that none of those things, not the outfits worn by the athletes, not the balls, the pucks, the golf clubs, the track running shoes. All the little supportive accoutrements -- none of these things are part of the athlete’s body. None of them have anything to do with the athlete's talent/ability/skill/training. Veritably ALL of it is what would be categorized as "performance-enhancing."
2) Food and nutrition
These Olympic athletes have access to the most skilled doctors of sports medicine. And the most skilled doctors of regular medicine. They have experienced coaches who can guide and mold them.
Of course nutrition is very strictly regimented, and calculated. Athletes have registered dieticians consulting with them. They have nutrition consultants who plan their daily caloric intake. These athletes have nutritionist experts giving them advice on dietary supplements, vitamins and minerals, essential amino acids.
Nutrition programs have been revolutionized and improved so that people eat better. So that their bodies maximize the return-for-calories-investment. The athletes' physicians study physiology and metabolism. They study the pharmacological basis to optimize the amount of sustenance they can squeeze out of their food regimens.
The two main sources of fuel-- protein and oxygen. Protein is needed to feed those muscles. Oxygen is needed to aide those muscles in processing the protein. And processing the calcium, and the potassium, etc.
All the various and sundry nutritional supplements, multivitamins, health-enhancing, metabolism efficinizing, caffeine, sugar. Nutritionally stuffed and loaded protein shakes. So what exactly is the difference between all the plethora of food and medicine --and-- performance-enhancing drugs? How are all these things NOT performance enhancers?
What about b12 injections, folic acid, iron supplements, energy drinks, energy boosts???
vitamin supplements, mineral supplements, iron, B12, B6, folic acid, erythropoietin, multivitamins, calorie powders, protein supplements, dietetic recommendations. These are strictly meticulously crafted, medically proven optimally to increase the human body's efficiency, to improve the human body’s response to the precise combination of nutrition for the body's metabolism requirements.
*Where exactly is the cutoff point between and performance-enhancing drugs?
3) Other happy druggies
Doesn’t the entire freaking country take drugs to make them more happy, less stupid, and/or more focused? There are drugs for better memory, drugs for controlling attention deficit disorder, others. Echinacea, Ritalin, Zoloft, Prozac, that Surge stuff, energy drinks, ginkgo biloba, Ambien, Lunesta. People take all sorts of drugs to improve memory, mood, sleep, energy. There is one supposedly memory-enhancing drug called "glutaphos" that Filipino college students swear by. I know of this because I have a friend who is a Filipino nursing student.
There's Viagra. (Crickets chirping.)
In other words, the entire country takes performance-enhancing drugs. Why is it suddenly frowned upon when athletes do it?
4) Other talented druggies
The same goddamn hypocrites that are fanboys that cr__ themselves at the mention of any of the 1960s drugged-up revolutionary music bands -- all somehow magically morph into pristine lily white pure angelic innocent pure-hearted little angels once we start talking about Olympic athletes. "Ohmigosh no we would NEVER EVER EVER besties forever and ever dream of giving athletes caffeine."
Heck, even the bands in more recent, more decade-appropriate time lines were heavily into drugs. All those garage grunge bands in the early 1990s, all those alternative skater bands in the mid 1990s.
I'm not much of a music buff, and I find most sports to be boring as hell. But I am able to detect the seething hypocrisy. How come drugs are okay in one entertainment profession, but not in another? This is what is called a double standard.
What about all the classic poets and writers? Weren’t a lot of them pretty heavy drinkers? And yet we have no problem showering them with praise and worship. Wasn’t Sir Arthur Conan Doyle a crackhead of some sort? His character sure as hell was. In case you don't know who that is, he is the person who authored those "Sherlock Holmes" stories.
All the celebrated so-called classic authors, the ones they made us read in AP English in high school, and this had to have been the good stuff because it was for college credit. They were all habitual drunkards. Half of them had diphtheria or tuberculosis or something. Whatever the heck medicines they served to hospital bedridden patients back in the 1800s, it probably drastically altered their consciousness. That’s why most of them are outlawed nowadays. But it produced great literature.
The doping-critics love to screech and scream that athletes discovered post-bellum to have been doping, should have all their awards, recognitions, medals, honors stripped from them. They say the athletes should be stripped of their titles and recognitions. Much like how Cinderella’s jealous stepsisters ripped off her dress to shreds and tatters when they didn’t like her wearing it. They squawk that the athletes should be banned from ever being allowed to attend an Olympic event even sitting as an audience member, ad nauseum.
Alcoholic classic writers. Oh, yeah? Well then, perhaps we should go back in time and retroactively redact ALL of the commendations ever showered upon some of the most talented, inspired, prolific people in human history. Tossing back psychedelic hallucinogenic drugs.
Musicians doing drugs. We should additionally posthumously redact ALL of the awards, accolades, recognitions, and any acknowledgement that we ever recognized to a talented entertainer. Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin. Bob Dylan. Led zeppelin. Beatles and the stones, or so I've heard. The Doors dude.
5) To address the accusation that athletes taking performance-enhancing drugs is "cheating."
BS. Come on, golf balls have been altered so they fly farther, athletic shoes and uniforms such as running shoes and swimmers' trunks have been streamlined and made aquiline to maximize efficiency from the athlete’s effort.
This is not cheating. Cheating is copying off someone else's work. Cheating is passing off someone else’s work as your own. Plagiarism. Cheating is stealing another's ideas and claiming them as your own original brainchildren.
Oh, for goodness’ sake. This is so very eyeroll-inducing.
1) Athletics equipment and clothes
All throughout the history of athletics, the equipment and supplies have been *continually* professionally, wholly modified and tweaked so that they increase athletic performance. Their regulation dimensions, their manufacturing process in factories, the athletic equipment that is legally allowed to be used on the field -- all have been tweaked, improved, enhanced for optimal output of performance.
Golf balls have been altered so they fly farther. Athletic shoes and uniforms such as running shoes and swimmers' trunks have been streamlined and made aquiline to maximize efficiency from the athlete’s effort.
Swimmers and track runners have had suits designed to make them more sleek, more streamlined. The uniforms have been engineered so as to extract the maximum performance output from those athletes.
And have you seen the sneakers on athletes nowadays? If the type of sneaks that I'm seeing in Footlocker is the sort of merchandise available to the common folk, then imagine the type of top-secret robot human cyborg-hybrid kicks that Olympic and professional athletes have access to. All those aerodynamic, foot cushioning, the laser-precision prime optima support for the heel of the foot and the ball of the foot, the tendon bone to skeletal muscle joint. Support for the *knees* is essential. That is the large bursa join that bears the entire body’s weight.
support for [[[joinis muscle to musck forgot name]]] Biomedical research has been allocated towards sports medicine. Binding tape stuff that athletes wear is wrapped around their ankles and other joints to stabilize and offer support, like say if they have a sprained ankle. Scientific research into human anatomy and physiology has been funded to find the pressure points that must be cushioned and supported to obtain optimal performance.
A main theme of this is that none of those things, not the outfits worn by the athletes, not the balls, the pucks, the golf clubs, the track running shoes. All the little supportive accoutrements -- none of these things are part of the athlete’s body. None of them have anything to do with the athlete's talent/ability/skill/training. Veritably ALL of it is what would be categorized as "performance-enhancing."
2) Food and nutrition
These Olympic athletes have access to the most skilled doctors of sports medicine. And the most skilled doctors of regular medicine. They have experienced coaches who can guide and mold them.
Of course nutrition is very strictly regimented, and calculated. Athletes have registered dieticians consulting with them. They have nutrition consultants who plan their daily caloric intake. These athletes have nutritionist experts giving them advice on dietary supplements, vitamins and minerals, essential amino acids.
Nutrition programs have been revolutionized and improved so that people eat better. So that their bodies maximize the return-for-calories-investment. The athletes' physicians study physiology and metabolism. They study the pharmacological basis to optimize the amount of sustenance they can squeeze out of their food regimens.
The two main sources of fuel-- protein and oxygen. Protein is needed to feed those muscles. Oxygen is needed to aide those muscles in processing the protein. And processing the calcium, and the potassium, etc.
All the various and sundry nutritional supplements, multivitamins, health-enhancing, metabolism efficinizing, caffeine, sugar. Nutritionally stuffed and loaded protein shakes. So what exactly is the difference between all the plethora of food and medicine --and-- performance-enhancing drugs? How are all these things NOT performance enhancers?
What about b12 injections, folic acid, iron supplements, energy drinks, energy boosts???
vitamin supplements, mineral supplements, iron, B12, B6, folic acid, erythropoietin, multivitamins, calorie powders, protein supplements, dietetic recommendations. These are strictly meticulously crafted, medically proven optimally to increase the human body's efficiency, to improve the human body’s response to the precise combination of nutrition for the body's metabolism requirements.
*Where exactly is the cutoff point between and performance-enhancing drugs?
3) Other happy druggies
Doesn’t the entire freaking country take drugs to make them more happy, less stupid, and/or more focused? There are drugs for better memory, drugs for controlling attention deficit disorder, others. Echinacea, Ritalin, Zoloft, Prozac, that Surge stuff, energy drinks, ginkgo biloba, Ambien, Lunesta. People take all sorts of drugs to improve memory, mood, sleep, energy. There is one supposedly memory-enhancing drug called "glutaphos" that Filipino college students swear by. I know of this because I have a friend who is a Filipino nursing student.
There's Viagra. (Crickets chirping.)
In other words, the entire country takes performance-enhancing drugs. Why is it suddenly frowned upon when athletes do it?
4) Other talented druggies
The same goddamn hypocrites that are fanboys that cr__ themselves at the mention of any of the 1960s drugged-up revolutionary music bands -- all somehow magically morph into pristine lily white pure angelic innocent pure-hearted little angels once we start talking about Olympic athletes. "Ohmigosh no we would NEVER EVER EVER besties forever and ever dream of giving athletes caffeine."
Heck, even the bands in more recent, more decade-appropriate time lines were heavily into drugs. All those garage grunge bands in the early 1990s, all those alternative skater bands in the mid 1990s.
I'm not much of a music buff, and I find most sports to be boring as hell. But I am able to detect the seething hypocrisy. How come drugs are okay in one entertainment profession, but not in another? This is what is called a double standard.
What about all the classic poets and writers? Weren’t a lot of them pretty heavy drinkers? And yet we have no problem showering them with praise and worship. Wasn’t Sir Arthur Conan Doyle a crackhead of some sort? His character sure as hell was. In case you don't know who that is, he is the person who authored those "Sherlock Holmes" stories.
All the celebrated so-called classic authors, the ones they made us read in AP English in high school, and this had to have been the good stuff because it was for college credit. They were all habitual drunkards. Half of them had diphtheria or tuberculosis or something. Whatever the heck medicines they served to hospital bedridden patients back in the 1800s, it probably drastically altered their consciousness. That’s why most of them are outlawed nowadays. But it produced great literature.
The doping-critics love to screech and scream that athletes discovered post-bellum to have been doping, should have all their awards, recognitions, medals, honors stripped from them. They say the athletes should be stripped of their titles and recognitions. Much like how Cinderella’s jealous stepsisters ripped off her dress to shreds and tatters when they didn’t like her wearing it. They squawk that the athletes should be banned from ever being allowed to attend an Olympic event even sitting as an audience member, ad nauseum.
Alcoholic classic writers. Oh, yeah? Well then, perhaps we should go back in time and retroactively redact ALL of the commendations ever showered upon some of the most talented, inspired, prolific people in human history. Tossing back psychedelic hallucinogenic drugs.
Musicians doing drugs. We should additionally posthumously redact ALL of the awards, accolades, recognitions, and any acknowledgement that we ever recognized to a talented entertainer. Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin. Bob Dylan. Led zeppelin. Beatles and the stones, or so I've heard. The Doors dude.
5) To address the accusation that athletes taking performance-enhancing drugs is "cheating."
BS. Come on, golf balls have been altered so they fly farther, athletic shoes and uniforms such as running shoes and swimmers' trunks have been streamlined and made aquiline to maximize efficiency from the athlete’s effort.
This is not cheating. Cheating is copying off someone else's work. Cheating is passing off someone else’s work as your own. Plagiarism. Cheating is stealing another's ideas and claiming them as your own original brainchildren.