What Defines Cheating In Sports?

I personally have no interest in following professional sports, but I do occasionally read other people talking about sports or listen to people talking about sports on the radio. It seems that there is a lot of hoopla over steroids and whatnot. I'd be curious to know what people are actually upset about when a certain athlete is found to have used steroids, or blood doping or whatever the heck it is that athletes do; is it because they broke the rules of the sport or because it is unethical and subjectively dirty and underhanded to use these substances? Personally the only argument I can support is that the athletes broke the rules of the sport. If the rules say you can't take drug A B or C then you ought to be disqualified. But if there aren't such rules I don't see using drugs in the same sense of cheating. There was some guy in the Tour De France who was kicked out for having a blood transfusion or something. I find it hard to feel much enmity towards these guys because whatever they are putting in their bodies they're still huffing it on a bike for miles and miles. To me cheating in a bike race isn't using drugs, it would be if you put a motor on the bike or sticking a rod through a guy's spokes, having your friends pull a rope across the road as your rival passed by, taking a shortcut off the course or something. Chemicals are a much more nebulous subject.

I'm sure if I was allowed to take every single performance-enhancing drug known to man I still would not be able to throw a baseball as good as the worst professional ball player out there. The degree of physical ability and training that pro athletes have seems amazing enough to me. I would be more likely to call drugs cheating if there exists such a drug where you can take a guy off the couch, inject him with this substance and he can beat the undrugged pro athlete who has been training and practicing for years.

I dunno, I'm just glad I don't actually care about this subject! HA!

Quark License Administrator

The government isn't the only group that can treat you like a suspected criminal at all times. Take for instance, Quark Inc. If it were up to me we would never pay money to endure this sort of anti-piracy abuse. Quark does not trust you, they think you are a low down dirty software pirate stealing bread from their table. You pay them five fucking grand for their goddamn page layout software and then you have to endure the most draconian software licensing scheme I have EVER encountered. Why? Because you're not a valued customer, you are a potentional enemy and thus you must prove yourself worthy every time you boot the program. Convicted child rapists probably undergo less scrutiny than the average Quark user! My fear is that Adobe will also adopt this customer-is-criminal approach too. Look, I realize piracy is an issue but it did not stop these companies from becoming HUGELY SUCCESSFUL. Legit, paying customers are keeping these guys afloat and as a legit user I must protest this draconian horseshit. I want to pay to use a page layout program, not appease some whiny Quark License Administrator software! Fuck QLA, fuck it right in the ear.

I Don't Get MySpace

In addition to not being hip to myspace whenever the hell it started becoming the popular thing I also developed an unexplained aversion to it. I don't know why. Perhaps it's the fact that every myspace page I ever looked at is a design abortion? What the hell is going on there? Why does everyone choose to use a complex photo background so you can't READ ANYTHING??? I don't have cause to go there but whenever I have the page looks like digital vomit. They remind me of those copy protection schemes used by computer games back in the old days where you had to read something using a red filter over your eye.

That's what I like about Blogger here, its templates do not encourage hideous web design. You have to try harder to fuck it up and make it an illegible mess. Seems like with MySpace the illegible mess goes with the territory. I don't get it.