Who cares about performance enhancing drugs?

I am so sick of hearing about the performance-enhancing drugs scandals in major league sports, I don’t dare turn on the TV for fear I might vomit. Who @$#% cares??? Why does the United States Congress waste time with hearings about something like this when we have war going on, and so many other issues that are FAR more important? It’s insane, just like the country’s morbid fixation on the plight of Britney Spears.

As technology advances, there will be more and more ways to enhance or improve our bodies. I admit that it’s unfair for those who use technology to enhance their performance to compete with those who do not. But lets embrace technology. Let’s have two leagues: one for “enhanced” athletes, and one for “naturals.”

Personally, I think the enhanced league will be much more interesting to watch.

Voters just proved themselves dumber that I ever imagined

...and I always thought they were pretty dumb!

California’s Proposition 91 was qualified for this election in 2006, but shortly thereafter another measure was enacted which rendered Prop 91 obsolete. There was no way to get it off the ballot, so the original proponents published the following as the argument IN FAVOR of this proposition in the voter’s guide.

“VOTE NO ON PROPOSITION 91. IT'S NO LONGER NEEDED.

As the official proponents of this measure, we are encouraging you to VOTE NO ON PROPOSITION 91….”

And so on, explaining why it’s obsolete but stuck on the ballot and should not be supported.

See http://www.voterguide.sos.ca.gov/argu_rebut/argu_rebutt91.html

No argument against it was published, since presumably none was needed. There was no advertising on either side, and the major newspapers and other publications who make recommendations recommended voting against prop 91, since that’s the only sensible thing to do.

And what happened? 42% voted in favor of prop 91!!!! What a bunch of pathetic morons! Ok, 58% voted no, but that should have been 100%. What a bunch of retarded, uninformed, random-voting losers!! Do you seriously want these people, who obviously have not even bothered to look at the voter’s guide that was mailed to them, to run your government? This explain so much about why California is in such a mess – it’s because so many important issues are decided by dumbass voters who throw darts at their ballot. Seriously, unless people are willing to spend some time studying each issue they should keep their lazy asses home and NOT VOTE.

Another example: Los Angeles’ Proposition S was a trick – it authorizes a tax on cell phones, but used deceptive wording to sell itself as a tax reduction. It passed by a wide margin. I suspect that most people who voted for it thought they were voting to decrease taxes, not raise them. Suckers!!

I think it should be harder to vote. I don’t know how, but somehow we should discourage people from making uninformed decisions that affect everyone.

Liberals and conservatives are two different species?

Well, not quite… but the cover story of this week’s issue of New Scientist brings up an issue I’ve been kicking around in the back of my mind for a couple of years. It’s the idea that our political persuasions are linked to our personality types which are largely determined by our genes.

"Are political leanings all in the genes?" http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19726411.800-are-political-leanings-all-in-the-genes.html

There is a substantial and growing amount of evidence that conservatism and liberalism are strongly correlated with personality traits such as openness, extroversion, and conscientiousness. Liberals are more open, tolerant, and more extroverted; conservatives are more honest, dutiful, and conscientious (organized, self-disciplined, and responsible). Xenophobia and stronger fear of death are also correlated with conservatism. Liberals are less troubled by conflicting sources of information, and tend to be more open to new ideas. All of this data comes from psychological testing and studies involving heredity, including identical twin studies (as well as common sense).

I suspect that there are other genetically determined factors at play. I think that libertarians value their personal freedom above all else, and are more likely to recoil from someone else telling them what to do. They are independent, risk takers, and they value freedom and possibilities more than equality and safety. Liberals and socialists are more risk-averse and don’t mind someone else being in charge of their lives, as long as they are taken care of and don’t have to worry about the future. They value equality more than freedom and opportunity for growth. These characteristics are probably genetically linked as well.

What is the implication of this? The best political/economic system is the one under which people are happiest. But if people are fundamentally different in what makes them happy, then there may not be any single best political or economic system. Perhaps there should be different systems that people can choose from, either by moving or by opting into our out of certain programs. This also supports the idea of federalism: that the states should be free to control their own policies and politics, and should only be loosely bound together by the federal government, as opposed to the one-size-fits-all top-down system which the US has been moving toward for the last several decades. But perhaps we can go even farther – perhaps we can find a way to accommodate both types within the same system by giving people options, so that they can live together in peace.

The closing paragraph of the New Scientist article reads:

So the guy at the bar may never agree with you, but perhaps realising that can be liberating. "We spend a lot of energy getting upset with the other side," says Alford. We often think our opponents are misinformed or stubborn. Accepting that people are born with some of their views changes that, Alford points out. Come to terms with these differences, and you can spend the energy now wasted on persuasion on figuring out ways of accommodating both points of view.