More on Drugs and Athletes

So I’ve been following the whole Barry Bonds steroid thing. I like Bonds because he is an amazing player and because he’s not as likeable as the other major sluggers of our time. Bonds is unafraid to make an issue of race where it is an issue, where other players will simply pretend like it doesn’t exist in order to make white fans and — more importantly — commentators comfortable.

I was reading the sports section of the Sunday New York Times over dinner tonight and was struck by their coverage of drug use in major league baseball. The argument was, in a nutshell, that drugs had become more of an issue now than in the 1980s (when a bunch of ballplayers who were using coke got busted) because they were “performance enhancers” rather than pleasure drugs. One source was quoted to the effect of saying that the commissioner should do something before he has a widow in his office asking him why he didn’t do anything.

That’s very interesting reasoning that major league sports take a major toll on professional athletes bodies over the course of a professional career. Even baseball, which is theoretically less damaging than football (where it seems like they invent new injuries every year), has a legion of retirees nursing a variety of chronic conditions (many painful) and a variety of addictions. Moreover, the entire sports world is designed for “performance enhancement” — from diet to special machinery to regimens of conditioning to the growing phenomenon of stars’ children exceeding their own achievements — Bonds and Peyton Manning are prime examples. All this is to say that the whole schtick about purity doesn’t cut it. Sure, as a baseball fan, I’m concerned that players not take steroids because eventually that would mean everyone would have to take them to compete, and that would suck given the obvious impact they have on players’ bodies. On other other hand, let’s not be ridiculous and claim that it’s somehow tainting an otherwise untained game. Major league sports is not that different from Hollywood — its professionals and stars live in a world all their own, a world defined and judged by standards of artifice. I’m not against artifice. I love it. But let’s not pretend it’s something else.

Snow Removal

here is an absolute spectacle. One large plow and two small ones come to clear the road and sidewalk, and then this giant vaccuum thing comes and sucks up the snow. It’s wild. Before it all starts a siren sounds and people move their cars, or they get towed around the corner. . . .

“You Need a Headset”

Like everyone else I get songs in my head and can’t get them out. But they sound different these days. I am not making this up. A couple weeks ago, the music in my head started to sound different — more detailed, with a wider stereo “soundstage” (that’s such a silly sounding term). I thought maybe someone had slipped me something good in my diet coke or something. When I told Carrie on Thursday, she thought it was probably because so much of my music listening has been on headphones this fall. Between the commutes to and from campus with the iPod, and the headphones at my desk (since Carrie’s in the same room and may not want to listen to music while she’s writing), I have spent a lot more time on headphones.

Quiet Time

on the blog, but not in my life.

I have been silent here while working away on a number of tasks. This week has featured a goodly number of meetings (all day M, about half of T), syllabus prep, housecleaning, and a potluck for my (and Carrie’s) grad students.

The meetings were productive, as meetings will be.

The History of Communication syllabus is almost done. the course has colonized my consciousness for the past two weeks. I’m still messing with methods of evaluation and a couple readings, but it is going to be a really good class. The only unfortunate thing is that because of a space crunch and the fact that tutorials were not booked ahead of time, (whoever is in charge of space at) McGill cannot provide me with rooms that have moveable desks for the TA-led tutorial sections (for readers at other schools: tutorial=recitation=discussion section=confernce section=?). This is unfortunate as it makes small group exercises more difficult, at least if I want the students to face one another. Since students are known to dislike group work maybe they’ll think it’s a good thing. But I don’t. Anyway, we’ll put in for such rooms for next year and see if we do better.

After spending most of the day at school Thursday, we shopped that evening and Friday we cleaned for an end-of-semester potluck for the grad students enrolled in our courses who were still in town. The cleaning sucked, but after we were all done the place looked awesome and was soon populated by grad students and their partners. The whole thing was a ton of fun, lots of great food was brought, and I enjoyed it so much that we will be having a proper party sometime this winter or spring, as I believe we have an outstanding layout for such an event. Party hosting secret: real wine glasses, real silverware, everything else disposable or recyclable. Cleanup took about 30 minutes, with a little help from the last stragglers. Next time I’ll hopefully have a camera and take pictures.

The theremin was a hit — at least with the gearheads — and the cats even made brief appearances.

In fantasy football news, I fear that our team is doomed. Two starters had season ending injuries, and with last week’s loss, we’re one game out of the playoffs. It’s still mathematically possible, but if only we knew that Carson Palmer was going to have an awesome game against the Ravens.

This coming week should see more blogging, I hope. In that spirit, onto the next entry.

Questions of the Evening

1. Why do I believe that I should not be tired even though I’ve had way more than an 8-hour day and got up early, to boot?

2. Should I organize my history of communication course chronologically or thematically?

3. Will the students actually be ready to plow through all the weird history I want to give them?

4. If I actually decide to do the 30-day free trial of the slightly bizarre-yet-imtriguing “life balance” time-management software, how much of it should I blog? Will it be funny or pathetic? Will it work? Or be interesting?

5. Does our fantasy football team stand a chance with Priest Holmes out for the season? Is there any chance Darrell Jackson will score two touchdowns between now and the end of the game, thereby scoring for us an amazing comeback win?

A big update, eh?

Seems like the blog is due for it. I read a bunch of blogs most days, and yet they’re not up in the column. There’s a spambot going nuts in my comments (though Tobias has kindly suggested one possible solution). Winter break is coming, and this may happen. I just hope I don’t accidentally flush all the old comments or entries or something. Will have to look into backing it up. Or selling out and moving the shop to livejournal or something (don’t worry — through the wonder of frames you won’t notice the difference if I do something drastic like that).

I am happy to report that the article on disciplinarity and digital media is now out the door to the Information Society. My original plan was just to make the revisions the reviewers wanted here and there in a day. Instead, it was a complete rewrite and three days, but that’s just me. It dawned on me that all the stuff I’d cited on disciplinarity was from the 90s (except of course, the French in translation, who wrote earlier). Is the concept pretty much dead? I asked a couple people at a party Friday. Will said yes, he hadn’t seen anything on the topic lately. Nobody else could think of a decent 21st century book or article on the concept. Mine won’t be the first — I’m not being modest, but it’s for one of those special “future of the field” issues, so it’s not like I’m trying to say anything new about disciplinarity.

The end of the semester is such a relief. I’m even cleaning a little. Just don’t remind me about the 500 things I still need to do. Tally for the weekend: two nights of socializing (good, but not excellent like 3 would be; this is partly the effect of a cold), and at least for the first football game this afternoon, I’m going to sit on the couch and watch it. Maybe gaze at the New York Times occasionally. It’s a big game for our fantasy team too. If we win, we control our own destiny for the playoffs. If we lose, it’ll be hard to get in. Current record: 8-4. Here’s to hoping Brad Hoover blocks for Nick Goings and doesn’t steal carries from him.