So, ESPN has decided that UFC is a sport now. I’m kind of conflicted. It’s just guys beating the shit out of each other for the titillation of a blood-thirsty crowd. But I guess it’s no different from boxing. Or Nascar.

Speaking of which, I hate that ESPN is so transparently chasing dollars in its coverage. Every day it jettisons a little bit of sophisticated analysis to increase its shameless self-promotion and desperate cries for contemporary popularity (hey, did you know that there’s this thing called “fantasy football”? ESPN suddenly won’t shut up about it.). Enough about the Little League World Series! It was fun 10 years ago when it was quirky and non-commercial, but at this point it’s just an obnoxious way to give kids too much attention. I don’t want to see coverage of this stupid event all day ever day. That time could be better spent on, well, actual sports highlights (preferably featuring adults).

Incidentally, and quite contrary to the thesis of this post, someone in management seems obsessed with getting people to care about soccer. All of a sudden, the top 10 highlights regularly feature exciting goals from the English Premier League or other international play (or, whenever Beckham does anything, a clip from an MLS game). I like soccer, and I’d be happy if it took off, but if Pele couldn’t do it I’m pretty dubious that Mr. Posh Spice can pull it off.

And then there’s ESPN Deportes.

Hey, they’re remaking The Matrix with the guy from Van Wilder! I mean, basically. It does look pretty cool, though.

I am back in Boston. I have a couple of weeks before classes start up again, so I think I might find a project to occupy my time until football season starts. I am thinking about upgrading essentially every component of my desktop pc–this 1.67ghz AMD processor and piddling 1gb of RAM just aren’t cutting the mustard anymore. I think it’s offending my awesome flatscreen monitor to be associated with such a pile of garbage. I am going to stop writing sentences that begin with “I”.*

^* Except this next one. I am contemplating making a permanent shift to placing all non-quoted punctuation outside of quotation marks from now on. It makes a lot more sense, but I don’t want people to think that I’m some kind of dorky anglophile. Well, you know what? Screw it. It’s just the internet. From now on, periods and commas will go outside of punctuation marks!

Doing something is better than nothing.

Not sure whether it’s better to replace your gas-guzzler with a hybrid or a high-mileage hatchback? The important thing is not which one you choose, but just that you choose one, now.

It’s not clear what the best way to deal with the myriad of problems chronicled in Al Gore’s powerpoint presentation? Don’t spend years debating whether to incentivize reduced corporate polution or to just mandate it–just pick one and run with it.

There are so many options for keeping track of your schedule–Google Calendar or Yahoo Calendar or a paper Moleskin? I think you guys know what I’m getting at here.

It’s so easy to find oneself paralyzed by the choices, and do nothing. I do it all the time. But most of the time

Um, that’s where I left off on writing this entry. On June 29, 2006.

I LIKE SQUIRRELS!

[Comics Curmudgeon]

Aw, man. My moment of internet relevance is over.

I guess I’ll just have to figure out a way to disable something else annoying. It’s a tough decision: Carlos Mencia, or people who stand on the left on escalators?

This article on the psychological effect of an artificial heart is totally fascinating.

Much of the original artificial heart work was driven by the technological optimism born of the space program. Some of the current work is driven by the idea that our brains and bodies are separate entities. But now, in light of Houghton and other victims of psychological and cognitive trauma after intervention in their bodies, some scientists fear that we are tampering not with a bodily machine but with the human spirit.

“We’ve got to understand the organs and systems coming into our lives. We haven’t paid a lot of attention to the psychological or emotional aspects of thinking of ourselves as bodies,” says Arthur Caplan. “People interested in eternal life through body regeneration or organ substitutions” consider humans to be “a brain on top of a complicated bag of water,” he says. “Ship that brain elsewhere, and it would still be you. Not true, exactly. Not that we couldn’t adjust or adapt. But in some subtle ways, our sense of self — who we are — is shaped by our carcasses. Shaped by the containers we drag around.

“People who have their heads frozen to live forever, like Ted Williams — my view is that if you get your head stuck back on something” that isn’t your body, “your identity will be shredded. It isn’t you anymore. It could lead to despair and depression, rather than gratitude that you can live forever. If you find yourself embodied in a different way, your perceptions and awareness of the world would be changed.”

I used to read a lot of fiction that directly or implicitly considered what it means to combine the organic and the inorganic. Though these issues have always been with us, the sophistication and the functionality of the technological measures we take to augment our fragile bodies is making things quite a bit more complicated and interesting.

Dear Cory:

I am a boingboing fan, and your posts are generally right up my alley. But at times you’ve got a certain problem I like to call “michaelmooritude,” whose primary symptom is that you preach to the choir in a particularly polarizing way. The end result is that your sycophants and antiponents (it should be a word!) get pumped up while people without a dog in the hunt get turned off by your over-the-top rhetoric. Here’s the latest example (naughty word in the subject line!):

I still use the Reasonable Agreement EULA at the bottom of all my emails: “READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies (“BOGUS AGREEMENTS”) that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.”

That’s terrific, Cory, but I don’t think it has any positive effect. Anyone who is inclined to agree with you and knows enough about the issue to do so will probably still agree with you after reading this. But Anyone who has drafted a real EULA before will get only one thing out of this: Cory Doctorow thinks I eat babies. And anyone who has no idea what a EULA is will still manage to get one thing out of this: Cory Doctorow seems willing to go out of his way to antagonize people over an issue that doesn’t really matter very much.

My point is that because of the huge readership you have, you’re in a rare position to popularize relatively obscure but relatively important issues. Copyright law innovations, net neutrality, freedom of speech and, yes, unconscionable legal agreements (not to mention unicorns and lolcats). But all too often you take a confrontational, aggressive stance that does nothing more than froth up the waters on both sides without actually persuading anyone to consider the issues and, potentially, change their mind. There’s a great justification for this kind of thing–the other side does it, and if nobody on my side does it, the other side will win!–but I don’t actually buy that. In more or less every big election in America (and probably other countries, but I don’t know enough to speak about them), each side has its kneejerk supporters. And those kneejerk supporters get excited when their leaders rev them up with high-energy, accusatory rhetoric. But everyone who isn’t a kneejerk supporter gets turned off by this stuff–they’re looking for someone to help them work through the issue for themselves, not just tell them what to think.

It’s easier to take that kind of position, and in some ways more rewarding. I’m sure you get tons of “hell yeah! keep on fighting!” emails every day, and I’m sure you get plenty of “you’re the devil!” hate emails every day–but people don’t bother to send “I didn’t understand this issue, but something about your tone bugged me so I’m not going to look into it anymore–but from now on I’ll have an unconscious aversion to your point of view” emails.

Anyway, to get back to this particular example. The interesting thing here is that you’re managing to make the same mistake twice, with two different effects. The first time is when you append the message to your emails–here, you’re pushing people’s buttons individually. The second time is when you post on boingboing to tell everyone about it. And here, of course, you’re broadcasting your rigid and kinda obnoxious message to the unwashed masses.

Just to clarify a couple of things:

1. It’s not that I disagree with you about EULAs (or most of the other issues you write about often). In fact, I write this only because I think that the way you advocate for these things is often hindering the improvements I care about–and I want you to use your powers for good.
2. It’s not that I think you’re bugging most people, or even a sizeable minority. I think you’re just bugging the most important people–the undecided 25% whose opinions will make or break a campaign for change. Who cares if your natural adversaries get pissed off? It’s not like they were going to change their minds and agree with you. And by that same token, who cares if the people already on your side get excited by what you’re writing? They were already on your side! The big issue is the people who don’t know or don’t care–these are the people you’re trying to reach.

On the whole, I certainly think you do much more good than harm to these movements, but I think you could do quite a bit more by focusing on getting the right information to the right people (while still, of course, “mobilizing your base” to increase general awareness and interest–just not doing the latter at the expense of the former).

Amid an amazing column describing Gilbert Arenas’s only local competition for the position of eccentric-but-loveable-sports-star–a column which includes a description of Chris Cooley’s trip to a West Virginia strip club with his fiancée and her aunt and uncle–is this ominous statement:

Said Cooley: “I would just tell you this: I don’t change at all with Christy. She’s the kind of person who’ll do whatever I want to do. We have a blast.”

It sounds to me like this sacred union will last for two or three years–however long it takes for Christy to get sick of always doing what Cooley wants to do.

As an aside, Chris and Christy is a terrible name combination. It’s like marrying your cousin–it just isn’t right. If she takes his last name, they’ll be Chris and Christy Cooley. They’ll probably name their kids Christian and Kristen.

None of this bodes well for the marriage, but it’s great offseason entertainment. Go Skins!