The media ruins everything through overexposure and pathetic coverage, from politics to celebrities to crime. I think it is a bit unfair to take it out on sports and competition. What people like Michael Phelps do is nothing short of amazing, and we shouldn't penalize his accomplishments, the entertainment he provides, or competition in general because the media is sick.

I'm not so sure it is 'amazing'. What I think is 'amazing' is to have a dream of putting men on the moon and realizing it, to come up with a way of connecting people all over the world and to allow people to travel around the globe in extremely short spans of time.

Athletes are - I'm sorry - overrated. Yes, it is great that they can do what they do, and I'm happy for them that they achieve their goals. But I'm just as happy for some local kid competing at ping-pong and winning, there is not much class difference there (in my opinion).

Sports are a means of finding your own limits, then exceeding those limits.

The media indeed messes it up, and for all those other categories you listed as well.

The amount of work, dedication, persistence, and pain Phelps has endured to achieve the results he has is no less than the work, dedication, persistence and pain an engineer on the first Apollo mission endured. Phelps and the engineer just happen to be good in different domains. They are both amazing people with amazing accomplishments. The world takes all kinds.

Work, dedication, persistence, and pain have no inherent value.

Don't look at the effort. Look at the final result. Lolita took all of four months to write, and it's terrific. That's less time than it took Ed Wood to make any of his movies, all of which bombed.

> Lolita took all of four months to write

Lolita took all of four months to type. It took years to create. (Phelps swims 100 yards so fast because he's trained for years.)

Are you sure Nabokov didn't think about the issues that led to writing Lolita in the years before he started putting words on paper? Maybe he really did put in more effort (e.g., in writing other novels) before Lolita was such a result in such a seemingly short time. Nabokov's autobiography suggests he worked hard for a long time developing his craft.

I think whether he spent 10 years on it or 15 minutes doesn't really matter, the work stands on its own, it is a creation. Sports as such - especially top sports where the 1/100th of a second counter makes the difference - does not create anything of inherent value.

The guinness book of records might make you believe otherwise, but it really does not matter who ran a little faster than his fellow humans.

Without Nabokov, Bach or van Gogh though, we'd all be a little poorer.

I don't think it's penalizing him not to place the spotlight on him. I do think it's penalizing a lot of other people to make the entire Olympic week about Michael Phelps.

You mean the NBC treatment of the Olympics. Whoever decided that slow-motion, voice-over, life-story, was the way to cover live sports events should be shot.

> Don't know who was downvoting you.

This started about a week ago, maybe a bit longer, no matter what I write, first it will go to -1 or -2, then slowly back up. Weird...

> really don't think society should have any center whatsoever, but that's crazy talk.

I don't think that's crazy at all. We value things like beauty, speed, strength and so on. But everybody has a story, and when you dig deep enough everybody has hidden strengths, all it takes is the right circumstances to bring them to the surface.

What we need to recognize is that 'spectator sports by the clock', beauty contests and so on have essentially become so meaningless that what you wear in a race (or in a beauty contest!) will make the difference between winning and losing.

I'd like to see a guy like Lance Armstrong compete on a 70's racing bike. Those bikes were plenty fast, but I highly doubt he'd make a chance.

All that drives it now is money and some weird nationalistic drive.

Let's refocus from sports to stuff that actually matters (and no in the /. sense), let's hold a competition who has done the most good for their neighbourhood. Let's have countries outcompete each other on slashing their defense budget, on minimizing their crime rates and political record.

All that energy going towards slicing .01 of some record or other it fails to excite me.

I was being a bit ironic when I said crazy talk. I think society ought to decentralize and focus on smaller communities, with more emphasis on the local than on the global, without many exceptions. It's crazy talk because it won't happen, though I think it would be better in the long run.

Let's have countries outcompete each other on slashing their defense budget, on minimizing their crime rates and political record.

I find it sad that Americans aren't competitive in things like that. We're, what, #37 for health care satisfaction? Push it up again! USA! USA!

This started about a week ago, maybe a bit longer, no matter what I write, first it will go to -1 or -2, then slowly back up. Weird...

That means you've made it on HN! Either there are bots, or your name is well-known enough to provoke random downvoting. When I tried using HN with a second account for several months, I was surprised that I wasn't bobbing under -1 every time I posted in a popular thread. Now it's back. Oh, well.

Perhaps you haven't really paid attention to how much endurance and power Lance Armstrong brings to the table, even late in a multi-stage race. In the history of biking there have been very few people with his abilities. Seems like a poor choice as an example for your point.