Phoenix Cardinals

I have learned that Tucson residents call the Arizona cardinals the "Phoenix Cardinals" or just "Phoenix." As I understand it, Tucsonians are sore that the stadium was put in Tempe rather than somewhere in between the two major Arizona cities.

Steroids

"Steroids don't make great athletes, they destroy them" This is the slogan for a commercial I see on MLB network and ESPN every so often.

Steroids are bad for your health, but it's just not clear to me that they can't make great athletes. Of course, it all hangs on what you mean by "great" and "athlete" (or "destroy" for that matter") but Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark mcGwire, Ben Johnson, Marion Jones, Sammy Sosa, Shawne Merriman, Alex Rodriguez, and other known steroid users were great athletes. Arguably steroids made them great (though Bonds, Clemens, and Jones were certainly great pre-steroids). What "destroyed" them was persecution for steroid use. This may well be legitimate persecution, but most of these athletes were good to great LATE in their careers. Of course, there are many steroid related deaths, particularly in football and wrestling, but could we assume that this is a result of misuse? Some athletes have access to better doctors and trainers who have found ways to minimize the risks of steroid use?

Is it so hard to say: "Steroids frequently cause health problems, don't gamble on them" Do we have to say that they destroy great athletes?

Maybe the assault on drugs has made me more sensitive than I should be about these things, but there seems to be a desire to misinform the public rather than educate it. Whether the drugs is heroin, marijuana, or steroids, the tactic is to try and scare rather than to present facts in a clear way. Granted statistics are contestable and in many cases because of the illegality, there are very few reliable statistics, but a lot of these messages are clearly false. And false messages can create cynicism and a feeling that steroids are in act less dangerous than they are.

Theism and forgiveness

This post may be entirely wrong. It's speculation. I haven't really revisited my religious beliefs since 2001 or so when I had a conversation about atheism and agnosticism with my father (who persuaded me into reluctant agnosticism). I'm not revisiting them now, but something did occur to me today.

One reason atheists seem like a lot "harder" people for want of a better word isn't only that their world is magically disenchanted or that the disappearance of the soul/body distinction has left them with base materialism as the only source of value. A further reason is that there is no forgiveness. As Sartre said, responding to a Christian theologist who complained that without God everything becomes permissible, the opposite is true. Without God, nothing is permitted.

This is not quite true perhaps, but it does signal that without God, your mistakes can only be forgiven by fallible men, who may or may not be so inclined. Since we are going to make mistakes and we cannot usually find peace without forgiveness, it is much harder to find peace without God. Actions, choices, and decisions are all the more agonizing with the knowledge that there is no omnibenevolent deity who loves you more or less unconditionally and is disposed to forgive you as long as you repent sincerely.

You can sincerely repent in front of the parents of the child you just accidentally ran over, but they may never be capable of forgiving you. They could hate you forever and you have to live with that as an atheist. You can find consolation in God however, who made you (and them) the fallible creatures that you are.

Moreover, belief means you don't always have to seek out those you have harmed in order to repent and feel like you are forgiven by an authority superceding all others.

Some have claimed that atheists are less likely to be moral human beings because they do not believe in hell. This could be true for those atheists who are not humanists, but note how at least some atheists are driven towards even stricter morals by the knowledge that there is no ultimate forgiveness, no salvation. Everything here is what matters and to deal with that pressure, you have to become "harder", again for want of a better word.

Clothing sites I dig

http://www.cryoflesh.com

http://www.plastikwrap.com

http://www.allycatmetalware.com

http://www.steampunkcouture.com/

Looking for interesting clothing online is hard. There's a lot of garbage and google is not usually very helpful. Lists of links like http://www.batgearbeyond.com/ tend to be either redundant or too large to be useful.

For boots, I'd recommend either http://www.pennangalan.com/ or the more extensive http://www.pleaserusa.com/

Happy Shopping...

Periodic Giants Update

Watching game 3 of the 2003 NLCS on MLB network. I don't remember Edgardo Alfonzo ever being good for the Giants, but he's 4-5 in this game.

This winter the Giants haven't made many moves at all. They were after Nick Johnson, but he just signed with the Yankees. While I was hoping the Giants would sign Johnson, I would prefer a right handed hitter for AT&T park. Left handed hitters not named Bonds are just not at an advantage in the ballpark. So who are the right handed pull hitters on the market the Giants can afford? Adrian Beltre (blech), Russell Branyan (double blech), Jack Cust (maybe), Mark DeRosa (eh...)...

I would be all for getting Cust and De Rosa maybe, and throwing Sandoval behind the plate where he belongs. Freddy Sanchez and Edgar Renteria up the middle (blech...again) No, this is not the year for the Giants. We need to get rid of Renteria and his contract.

Nice pitching, nice bull pen. Looking forward to another year where a 3-0 deficit is game over.

Preachy commercials

There's a recession afoot. Why do I see government sponsored anti-drug, anti-smoking, and anti-drunk driving commercials dominating the airwaves like Tiger Woods' affair? Is there nothing better to spend money we don't have on?

I wonder what the impact of these commercials is too. I also wonder whether it's ethical for commercials to claim that if you drive drunk "you will get caught." Clearly that's a lie. I guess it isn't fraud, since the government isn't selling anything, but that clearly cannot be true.

License to breed

Jinx sometimes says things like: "I wish there were a license to breed." She intends this to be an expression of annoyance rather than a public policy recommendation. While I generally oppose the idea that I need to ask permission to do anything that doesn't harm anyone, having a child is a responsibility and one that does impose significant costs on other people.

Now, on average I actually believe that more is better with respect to human beings. Disliking a fair number of them does not prevent me from knowing that the more people there are, the greater my income and opportunities (including opportunities to feel superior). Even considering the disadvantages of natural resource scarcity and crowded cities, you cannot be a philosophy professor on a desert island.

But to say that we're all equal and therefore are entitled to an equal right to reproduce does not answer the question of whether in fact we should, nor does it answer the question of whether we should be held liable when our children predictably turn out to be the screw ups that everyone knew they would be.

As long as it doesn't really harm anyone, I agree that whether you reproduce or not is no one's business but yours. But sometimes people are harmed or burdened by your impetuous desire to get your rocks off. I do believe individuals are entitled to take risks, but they are also responsible when things go poorly. And in many instances, a person's life story is all too predictable.

There are of course limits to parental responsibility. There are many things that no one could have predicted, but for those things that were predictable why shouldn't there be liability?

If you pass on a genetic condition or raise your children to be the kinds of persons that impose burdens on others, surely you bear a part of the responsibility. As adults, we do not spring fully formed from Zeus' head. We come from somewhere. And while it is generally a good thing when we take responsibility for who we are, we are certainly not always fully responsible.

I think there are solid pragmatic reasons why courts should not be burdened with apportioning responsibilities in this way, but I also think the world would be a better place if parents took responsibility for their genetic and environmental influence.

You are entitled to consider the joys of parenting as a reason to have a child, but you are not entitled to be selfish at the expense of others. The eighth child of an Amish woman in rural Pennsylvania and the the eighth child of an inner city single mother are very different kinds of decisions. Does liability penalize people who are already in difficult circumstances? Absolutely, but being in difficult circumstances does not seem to be a sufficient reason to impose costs on other people.

There is no need for a license to breed any more than there is a need for taxi or cosmetology licenses, but that doesn't mean that the world wouldn't be a better place if people took responsibility for their actions.

Something old, something new

I haven't regularly updated a blog for a long time now. I am told that it is frowned upon to blog if you are an academic. We have professional images to maintain after all. Moreover, why put a lot of work into something that is not academically published? Well, rest assured, I don't plan to put a lot of work into this.

Thoughts occur to me now and again that aren't particularly academia related and that I don't really feel like repeating to everyone I know. Blogging is always a conceit. After all, who cares what I think. And I'm with you on that: who cares? Yet, people always ask me what I think about X? (out of politeness or genuine interest I'll never know)

I used to blog my opinions about politics. I'm going to mostly keep those to myself. But every day life is full of interesting details, odd paradoxes, and completely incomprehensible events. Hopefully, jotting things down will help make sense of some of this. If no one else but me gets anything out of this, that will be fine. If someone else gets some benefit, all the better.