cheaters

Posted 2005-08-25 12:17:00 by Jim Crawford Apparently the French are up in a huff about Lance Armstrong, a suspected non-frenchman, winning the Tour De France for the 7th time in a row this year, so they've tested his urine samples from 1999 and claim to have found banned endurance-boosting hormones. Why open the 1999 urine? Why not this year's urine? Apparently urine ages just like fine wine. Personally, I'd like to see more transhuman sporting events that parallel existing ones. We already have speed-based events where it's permitted to enhance the participants via heavy machinery, why not a speed-based event that limits the kind of motion that's permitted, in the vein of speed walking or the various styles of swimming, but permits performance-enhancing drugs? And once the technology is in place, why not powered exoskeletons? It's all a matter of degree, and you can't say that powered exoskeletons would be too extreme, because cars are already even more extreme. Another take on the whole performance-enhancing drugs problem is that cheaters who get away with cheating really are better than their competitors at delivering “The Whole Product.” The concept of “The Whole Product” explains, why, for instance, the PS2 is the best video game system of its generation. The short version: if you ask an expert to look at the PS2 next to the Gamecube and Xbox in a laboratory, it's going to come out on the bottom every time. If you ask a gamer what system to buy, it's a no-brainer. Even before any of the systems had come out, Sony had so much more mindshare than the competitors that it was a no-brainer even then. Similarly, VHS had a better whole product than Betamax because the porn industry embraced it. Easy decision there. Oh, and as I was saying, a cheater who wins and gets away with it is not limiting his or herself to the arbitrary rules of the laboratory, and... hm. I guess the analogy doesn't work as well as I thought. Oh well. “Mm, yes, ze 1999 urine, she is peaking zis year.” [link to this] [See more on “life”]

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