Shut Up And Listen 48

But, Is It A Sport?
Figure skating is not a sport. 
	A sport involves objectivity. One team scores the most goals. One person runs faster than the other. One guy knocks the other one out. It’s easy to see who wins.
	But not figure skating. No, it’s a judged competition. The recent scandal about the Canadian pair being screwed out of the gold medal at the Olympics proves this. 
	We have Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, who performed wonderfully at the Olympics in pair figure skating, but were awarded silver in favour of a Russian pair who did not perform anywhere near the Canadian pair’s level. Why? Because of the judges who fixed it so the Russians would win. And from what I’m told, this goes on all the time in figure skating.
	And it can because of the pure subjectivity of the “sport.” Was their triple lutz better than their quadruple twirly thing? Who the fuck knows. You can’t just look at two figure skating performances that are relatively the same and say with complete certainness that one is better. You can with hockey teams. You know how? Who scored more goals. You can tell with baseball, too. You know how? Who scored more runs. Same with football, basketball, soccer, rugby, cricket, and all sorts of others.
	Yes, these sports have referees that can alter the outcome, but that is on larger scales and, in my mind, detracts from the sport. At the root, when kids play, it comes down to objective results. There’s no judging on who scored the best goal and that team wins. 
	Running is a sport because whoever runs the fastest wins. No judging of who ran with the most artistic quality. Just the fastest.
	Boxing is a sport at its root, even though recent versions, sadly, include judging. Really, boxing is about beating the shit out of the other guy. All those technical victories are shit and fuck them.
	But not figure skating or ballroom dancing or diving or gymnastics or synchronized swimming or any of those “artistic sports.” They require someone to look at them and say “That one looked better, so it wins.” They are not sports.
	Now, when I get into arguments with people, they assume my saying they aren’t sports is me saying they aren’t extremely difficult. They are. I can’t do most of them. But not everything that is difficult is a sport. Beating a video game is not a sport. Writing a song is not a sport. Asking out a girl is not a sport (not an Olympic one at least). Building a Website is not a sport.
	I’m sorry, but figure skating is not a sport. Live with it.

Flaherty Does It Again
Okay, so I was going to write about Tuesday’s debate amongst the five candidates for leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party, and who would be the next Premier, taking over for Mike Harris, but Jim Flaherty said something much more interesting a couple days later.
	On Thursday, Flaherty said he intends to pass a law that will require all homeless people to either go to a shelter, detox centre, mental institution or jail rather than sleep on the street. He would hire special police to get this accomplished too.
	And he thinks this is the compassionate manner. He has announced no plans to increase funding for shelters, which is were most would rather be. He calls it “tough love.” Or as some of us would rather call it: being poor is illegal.
	I never thought right-wingers would go so far as to do this. This would be a huge violation of human rights. I admire the idea behind it; you know, helping those who don’t have as much as us to not have to live on the street, but the answer is to not call them insane criminals.
	Not only is that a question, but it costs $140 a day to jail an adult, which amounts to $51100 a year. That is more than my mom makes a year. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to provide low cost housing? Build a house that could last the person a lot more than just a year for around the same cost.
	But what concerns me the most is the idea of allowing the police to run around, gathering up the homeless and if they resist in any way . . .
	How this guy plans to win this thing is beyond me. First he essentially says that Natives are not real people and now he wants to jail people who aren’t as rich as he is. I really want to join the PC party just to vote for someone else to try and ensure that this fucker does not even come in third place or higher. I want this guy to lose and to lose by a lot.