The Economist runs with Josh's recent "iFascism" musings, and comes up with an interesting analogue of software user-friendliness and the U.S. healthcare system

Perhaps this is something to expand on.

This is all.

Being an avid cyclist, I thought I would change gears for a bit in honour of le Tour de France approaching its finish.

Doping is disallowed in sports currently for two reasons, of which the first was far, far more important when these rules started being put into place:

• Cheating: it gives an unfair advantage.
• Safety: many of the drugs used, or the manner thereof, are unsafe.

In reality, of course, it is arguable how much of an advantage doping really is given its prevalence: an argument has been made that doping merely evens up the tables with everyone else who is already doing it.

Ideally, it seems that the meaningfulness of sports would be derived from essentially the science: research into training, equipment and the ultimate human capabilities that are applicable to the population at large. In the view of sports as a research vehicle for the improvement of the human race, performance-enhancing drugs would seem to be a valid component.

The safety issue parallels the larger drug discussion in that making doping legal and controlled would dramatically increase its safety. A process should exist for determining the allowable substances and dosages thereof - and naturally modifying the lists as new research is available. Courses would be administered under controlled circumstances by qualified medical personnel, and the effects rigorously monitored. Generally applicable research could be then pushed down to "regular people" or specific subgroups such as firefighters.

Undoubtedly, some athletes would balk at the idea and stick with "natural" methods only. This is fine, because bringing doping out of the shadows would simply allow having separate categories for the two groups.

Performance-enhancing drugs are not an "easy-button." To compete in the enhanced group, one would still need to train just as hard as the naturalists do - if not harder. If we imagine a case where "casual" users could obtain some of the drugs as well, they would similarly need to do the basic training to reap any of the benefits - and that training might be a little more comfortable. Sitting on the couch will not make the muscles grow, tone the butt or expand the lungs, drugs or no drugs.

The last couple of days, I have had to reduce my TPMCafe browsing and post-following, because about 60% of all posts and comments are dominated by a really fucking tiresome back-and-forth arguing among a relatively small set of people.

Kindly, stop reading eachothers' comments for a bit. I do not even want to see lame apology posts about it. I will assume you are all winners on the Internet for having gotten the last word so no-one feels bad.

...How in the fuck is it that we liberal westerners, who already by and large agree with Obama's foreign policies and do not really harbour any particular islamophobias, are able to judge the Cairo speech to be historic, a turning point, a speech truly addressing the Muslim world and really completely revolutionary even though everything in it has been said a thousand times before but this time it is different and how we can really feel kinship and bridge the divide etc., etc., etc.?

Yeah, this is bad.

Title says it all, pretty much. Need to do some rethinking of the list criteria, folks...I dunno if it is just that there are no other posts and the list was autopurged, but this is not working.

...And when they decide, through their elected representatives, to add and strengthen regulation, to nationalise banks, and to provide healthcare to all, try to enjoy it as you would have the ill-gotten rapacious fortunes you meant when speaking of the "free market".

Douglas Rushkoff writes a treatise on the ailments of what we call "the economy". I am usually loath to post direct links, and I do not fully agree with the specifics of the article, but I think it manages to illustrate, quite casually on the side no less, the absurdity and fundamentally self-defeating nature of "the economy" as it exists today.

As an aside: TPM, thank you so much for the Markdown formatting option!

After watching the 6 o'clock news report about the horrible rhetoric of some of his supporters, McCain was seen going to his window and yelling "I'M TIRED AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO STAY AWAKE ANY LONGER!" at nearby clouds.

http://download1.legis.state.ak.us/DOWNLOAD.pdf

...At least evidenced by the quality of posts here today.

What the hell happened?

Every Senior White Republican Political Candidate Should Have Pro-Life Alert.

Ahmadinejad accepts a two-state solution and recognising Israel.

Via The Guardian.

It may be inconvenient for Kissigner to admit it, but he DOES agree with Obama's position of negotiation without preconditions.

To simplify the illustration, McCain says to Iran: "I demand you completely dismantle all your nuclear energy programs, and then maybe I can negotiate with you about dismantling your nuclear energy programs."

Obama (and Kissinger) say: "let's talk about dismantling your nuclear energy programs."

Which do you think works better?

Kissinger first articulated this in March of this year, per Bloomberg:

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said the U.S. should negotiate directly with Iran over its nuclear program and other bilateral issues.
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"One should be prepared to negotiate, and I think we should be prepared to negotiate about Iran," Kissinger, who brokered the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur war and peace talks with the North Vietnamese, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Asked whether he meant the U.S. should hold direct talks, Kissinger, 84, responded: "Yes, I think we should."
:


The Nobel Peace Prize winner said any direct talks between the U.S. and Iran on issues such as the nuclear dispute would be most likely to succeed if they first involved only diplomatic staff and progressed to the level of secretary of state before the heads of state meet.

Here is Kissinger at the GWU former SoS symposium on Sept. 15th, transcript excerpted from CNN:

KISSINGER: Well, I am in favor of negotiating with Iran. And one utility of negotiation is to put before Iran our vision of a Middle East, of a stable Middle East, and our notion on nuclear proliferation at a high enough level so that they have to study it. And, therefore, I actually have preferred doing it at the secretary of state level so that we -- we know we're dealing with authentic...
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(CROSSTALK)
:
SESNO: Put at a very high level right out of the box?
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KISSINGER: Initially, yes. And I always believed that the best way to begin a negotiation is to tell the other side exactly what you have in mind and what you are -- what the outcome is that you're trying to achieve so that they have something that they can react to.
:
Now, the permanent members of the Security Council, plus Japan and Germany, have all said nuclear weapons in Iran are unacceptable. They've never explained what they mean by this. So if we go into a negotiation, we ought to have a clear understanding of what is it we're trying to prevent. What is it going to do if we can't achieve what we're talking about?
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But I do not believe that we can make conditions for the opening of negotiations. We ought, however, to be very clear about the content of negotiations and work it out with other countries and with our own government.