What's your most controversial, non-political opinion?

[Xue Sheng]

It’s a shame stupidity doesn’t hurt.

I actually got the idea while I was trying to get an office to understand that their share drive was to big, taking up to much space and causing other offices problems.

they had multiple duplicate files in various stages of completion, the organization was overly complicated and no one could find anything, thus the file duplicates. Wanted to get rid of this mess. So I set up an organized folder system told them they needed to get rid of duplicate, and outlined various other things that needed to be done. When the head of this office said..that’s great but why don’t we just put or current share in a sub folder in the new system…..

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

I think if you have more than a handful of house rules, you're doing something wrong.

Now look here, I’m the DM!

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

I think if you have more than a handful of house rules, you're doing something wrong.

There are some things that needed addressing due to lawyer type players taking advantage of technical issues. Yes actual lawyer players. The worst! A good example is a lack of complete spell descriptions.

 

[Buka]

People take Martial Arts classes for lots of different reasons. Exercise, something to do, to have fun, whatever. And while that's certainly true, I believe that those that train diligently want, to some extent, to know how to defend themselves. It's self preservation - an instinct hard wired into our DNA.

We don't control it, we can't shut it off. When somebody is training on a regular basis in Martial Arts, deep down, part of them wants to know how to defend themselves.

To me, training hard for years and not learning how to defend yourself is just nuts.

 

[Gyakuto]

The whole ‘super hero‘ genre of films has infantilised modern cinema goers. Their huge popularity is an indication of how unsophisticated and undiscerning a huge swathe of the adult population has become.

 

[Gyakuto]

I am not advocating for athletes all becoming medical super-humans like the Russian dude in Rocky IV. Here's my thinking:

"Normal" ranges for things like hematocrit, iron levels, testostorone are really large and there is a huge difference from being in the bottom of the "normal" range and near the top of the "normal" range. Both are considered safe. When people drop below those normal levels by a standard deviation, drug therapies are employed to bring them back into the normal range. I experienced this myself, but the second I was in the normal range, of course, they stopped. I felt so much better that I can only imagine what it might be like to be in the high end of the normal range. When you go above normal, it becomes unsafe and people sometimes die or experience other health issues.

I could go to an anti-aging clinic now and a medical doctor would augment my testosterone and monitor it into safe-normal ranges.

There is legitimate medical practice around this. The problem is people scoring drugs from their team mates and self administering without any bloodwork.

Professional sports have gotten way more difficult in terms of # of games played, length of seasons and intensity of things like bike racing over an extended month.

A former minor league baseball player told me that they used lighter bats at the end of the season than at the beginning because they couldn't swing them anymore. During the baseball steroids era I wasn't surprised by the home run hitters who were obviously juiced, but by the pitchers and 2nd basemen who said "it's not about being bigger, it's about recovering from injury faster. I couldn't play a full season without this."

So, what if: There were medical protocols for sports medicine that responsibly and safely included tuning of these aspects of athletics blood chemistry. Doctors and athletes had to disclose what they were doing and lab work was mandatory to ensure that the athlete was staying within normal limits. If you go above normal limits, you are suspended and not re-instated until your lab work comes back normal. If you continually go above, then your treatment protocol is no longer approved. If anyone gets caught doing anything that isn't part of an approved, registered, professionally administered protocol they are barred from the sport for life. We give you a way to do it above board, that covers all of the legitimate excuses and levels the playing field with people who's body naturally produces higher levels of those things. Anything else is cheating and dangerous and you can't play anymore, no second chances.

I was the anti-doping officer for a national martial arts association. The research I read as part of the role, suggested that performance-enhancing substances were used by 60-90% of sports people! That’s just those that admitted to using them. It’s rife! If one sportsperson uses these substances, others have to use them in order to level-up the playing field (pun intended). The genie is out of the bottle and refuses to go back in.

Perhaps we should simply allow doping and let ‘big pharma’ sponsor our sporting events…’The Pfizer Olympic Games’! ‘Astra-Zeneca World Rugby Sevens Series’. ‘The Moderna American Rounders Game Thingy’. Imagine the 100m sprint run in 5.4sec! Imagine the excitement of witnessing high jumpers going onto orbit!

Or, in an exercise in reductio ad absurdum, one might suggest that athletes should not be allowed to train at all, but be forced to be couch potatoes, drinking beer and eating pizza. This would counter the huge wealth, knowledge and coaching advantages that Western countries have in training their sports people, compared with the third world countries. On the day of the 100m heats, the ‘athletes‘ could be wheeled out to the starting blocks on a sack barrow (Emblazoned with fast food outlet sponsor advertising) and allowed to waddle down the track in 20.6sec. The winner would be an entirely natural, superior genetic athlete! Marvellous!

 

[Dirty Dog]

I was the anti-doping officer for a national martial arts association. The research I read as part of the role, suggested that performance-enhancing substances were used by 60-90% of sports people!

Performance enhancing substances, or illegal performance enhancing substances? The difference is crucial.

One of our kids was huge into body building (see what I did there?) He used a lot of protein powders and such to improve his performance, but never anything like steroids.

 

[Gyakuto]

Performance enhancing substances, or illegal performance enhancing substances? The difference is crucial.

One of our kids was huge into body building (see what I did there?) He used a lot of protein powders and such to improve his performance, but never anything like steroids.

Oh, I thought ‘illegal’ was implicit. But of course, performance-enhancing substances very rarely start out being illegal and some take many years to find their way onto WADA’s list of banned substances.

Unfortunately, that young person is unlikely to become a champion competitive bodybuilder because of the ubiquity of anabolic steroids within that past time. I assume you meant anabolic steroids

 

[Argus]

I was the anti-doping officer for a national martial arts association. The research I read as part of the role, suggested that performance-enhancing substances were used by 60-90% of sports people! That’s just those that admitted to using them. It’s rife! If one sportsperson uses these substances, others have to use them in order to level-up the playing field (pun intended). The genie is out of the bottle and refuses to go back in.

Perhaps we should simply allow doping and let ‘big pharma’ sponsor our sporting events…’The Pfizer Olympic Games’! ‘Astra-Zeneca World Rugby Sevens Series’. ‘The Moderna American Rounders Game Thingy’. Imagine the 100m sprint run in 5.4sec! Imagine the excitement of witnessing high jumpers going onto orbit!

Or, in an exercise in reductio ad absurdum, one might suggest that athletes should not be allowed to train at all, but be forced to be couch potatoes, drinking beer and eating pizza. This would counter the huge wealth, knowledge and coaching advantages that Western countries have in training their sports people, compared with the third world countries. On the day of the 100m heats, the ‘athletes‘ could be wheeled out to the starting blocks on a sack barrow (Emblazoned with fast food outlet sponsor advertising) and allowed to waddle down the track in 20.6sec. The winner would be an entirely natural, superior genetic athlete! Marvellous!

Oh god...

I'm pretty sure athletes would have the highest mortality rate of any profession in either of those scenarios.

 

[Gyakuto]

Oh god...

I'm pretty sure athletes would have the highest mortality rate of any profession in either of those scenarios.

As soon as big money enters sport, the pressure to win, sometimes by any means, increases greatly. One of my academic students was an Olympic Gold medalist heptathalete and as soon as she crossed her ‘amateur’ gold medal finishing line, she was worth £3million in sponsorship alone!

 

[Dirty Dog]

Oh, I thought ‘illegal’ was implicit. But of course, performance-enhancing substances very rarely start out being illegal and some take many years to find their way onto WADA’s list of banned substances.

Unfortunately, that young person is unlikely to become a champion competitive bodybuilder because of the ubiquity of anabolic steroids within that past time. I assume you meant anabolic steroids

I did, yes. Fortunately, competition was never his goal. He wanted to look good, and he wanted to (and now has) become a police officer.
He was top of his class at the academy in shooting, unarmed combat, and the obstacle course. He nearly pooped his pants when he got tazed, though. And according to body cam video his friends send me, he yells things like "I'm going to catch you" constantly when he is in foot pursuits, which I find funny.

 

[Gyakuto]

I did, yes. Fortunately, competition was never his goal. He wanted to look good, and he wanted to (and now has) become a police officer.
He was top of his class at the academy in shooting, unarmed combat, and the obstacle course. He nearly pooped his pants when he got tazed, though. And according to body cam video his friends send me, he yells things like "I'm going to catch you" constantly when he is in foot pursuits, which I find funny.

And I thought US police officers were obese, donut-gobbling people with firearms whom you always call ‘sir’.

 

[Steve]

I was the anti-doping officer for a national martial arts association. The research I read as part of the role, suggested that performance-enhancing substances were used by 60-90% of sports people! That’s just those that admitted to using them. It’s rife! If one sportsperson uses these substances, others have to use them in order to level-up the playing field (pun intended). The genie is out of the bottle and refuses to go back in.

Perhaps we should simply allow doping and let ‘big pharma’ sponsor our sporting events…’The Pfizer Olympic Games’! ‘Astra-Zeneca World Rugby Sevens Series’. ‘The Moderna American Rounders Game Thingy’. Imagine the 100m sprint run in 5.4sec! Imagine the excitement of witnessing high jumpers going onto orbit!

Or, in an exercise in reductio ad absurdum, one might suggest that athletes should not be allowed to train at all, but be forced to be couch potatoes, drinking beer and eating pizza. This would counter the huge wealth, knowledge and coaching advantages that Western countries have in training their sports people, compared with the third world countries. On the day of the 100m heats, the ‘athletes‘ could be wheeled out to the starting blocks on a sack barrow (Emblazoned with fast food outlet sponsor advertising) and allowed to waddle down the track in 20.6sec. The winner would be an entirely natural, superior genetic athlete! Marvellous!

While fun to think about, I think it's important to remember the downstream effectives that the funnel of professional sports creates. For every doped up professional athlete, you have dozens or more doped up college or second tier athletes, and hundreds or thousands of doped up amateur athletes, and a generation of doped up high school athletes. The point being, regardless of what we think about adults choosing to dope or not through the lens of competitive advantage and sportsmanship, it has a huge impact downstream all the way down to the point where kids (and their parents) are just starting to think, "Hey, I might have a chance to make a career out of this."

 

[Xue Sheng]

Another of my most controversial, non-political opinion..... Dogs are better than cats.....

 

[Steve]

And I thought US police officers were obese, donut-gobbling people with firearms whom you always call ‘sir’.

Only the really good ones.

 

[Steve]

Another of my most controversial, non-political opinion..... Dogs are better than cats.....

I get this completely.

I grew up with dogs. Always considered myself a dog person, and that hasn't changed. But I have learned over the last 10 years that I'm also a cat person. My two feline a-holes are pretty darned cool.

I think I've evolved into just being a rescue animal person... dogs or cats. I think when my wife and I retire and have a little more free time, we're going to foster animals for the human society or a local rescue. I'd like to focus on senior animals, dogs or cats.

 

[Xue Sheng]

I get this completely.

I grew up with dogs. Always considered myself a dog person, and that hasn't changed. But I have learned over the last 10 years that I'm also a cat person. My two feline a-holes are pretty darned cool.

I think I've evolved into just being a rescue animal person... dogs or cats. I think when my wife and I retire and have a little more free time, we're going to foster animals for the human society or a local rescue. I'd like to focus on senior animals, dogs or cats.

I too had a cat once....dogs are still better.... that is my unsupportable opinion and I'm sticking to it

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

Another of my most controversial, non-political opinion..... Dogs are better than cats.....

Only the really good ones.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

I too had a cat once....dogs are still better.... that is my unsupportable opinion and I'm sticking to it

Perhaps you need to try a different recipe?

 

[elder999]

Another of my most controversial, non-political opinion..... Dogs are better than cats.....

Damn straight!