lethargus

But being a fan of a team from a particular community is silly when nothing about that team truly represents that community other than a management team that has money to recruit leadership and players. How many players and coaches on a team are actually from and grew up in the community for they are currently representing? It's even more ridiculous in baseball where a person could come from another country or soccer where they will spend their complete budget getting a poster boy from the UK.

I can understand picking a player and liking the team because of that player, but do most people then stop liking the team when that player is drafted to another team? Seems the norm is to like a team, and then if a particular player is on that team it's a bonus, otherwise they still like a player but ultimately root for the original team.

I think most of the complaints about sports fans has to do with the lack of thought one makes for being a fan of a particular team. Many seem to do so for childish reasons (the person likes the colors, mascot, or the city the team plays for) or because of something more annoying, one was raised that way. They never question if they support the vision of the team, or the management, or the coaches or players (most of whom never lived in the city for which they play). But hey, they are my city's team!

I certainly will not force my children to grow up liking a particular team/company just because I or my family likes them. I would hope that I would teach my children to appreciate a well played game (or well run company) and make the appropriate choice for mature reasons. I would also hope I would teach them that you do not need to have devotion in the face of mediocrity.

One has a choice in who one roots for and one should use proper reasoning when coming to that choice. Rooting for a particular team/company should not be a mindless activity.

Be a fan of excellence.

Here are some books and audio that have been insightful and enjoyable to read about mindfulness and related topics.

Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life - Thich Nhat Hanh

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness - Jon Kabat-Zinn

Still the Mind: An Introduction to Meditation - Alan Watts

Also, these two audio CD collections are helpful:

Out Of Your Mind: The Nature of Consciousness - Alan Watts

Guided Mindfulness Meditation - Jon Kabat-Zinn

Many policies become "lawyerly" to avoid ambiguities and loopholes. What happens when you make it less "lawyerly"?

Do you really think that either are a healthy choice? You're comparing two poor choices with each other and both will likely have the same outcome if eaten regularly. No nutritional label is going to change that.

Also, you're making the assumption that people can make a proper choice after reading a nutritional label. I could show someone that is less informed the nutritional data for various pieces of fish (that hasn't been breaded or deep fried) and they would think the fat and cholesterol content means that it's horrible for you when in fact fish has been shown to be beneficial.

The burden placed on the healthcare system are not by health conscious people but rather the people making poor lifestyle/food choices.

First, do you think that a health conscious person really needs that label to make a choice? Chances are they are conscious enough to make the proper choice to begin with. They are also probably making choices between items that are healthier than what an average person eats from a typical fast food joint.

Second, if they are already health conscious, I would go so far as to say they, on average, use the healthcare system the least in terms of ailments caused by poor food choices. So if you take a slightly healthy person and possibly make them marginally healthier, are they really using the healthcare system less, as a whole, to make a difference?

Yes I know, seeing it on the package after you order it couldn't possibly stop you from repeating the same mistake and avoid ordering it the next 100 times.

The moderately health-conscious person is not the average American. The average American is ignorant and overweight and has led a life of poor eating choices. Not because of lack of information, but because of lack of caring and lack of habit. No nutritional label is going to change that.

Unfortunately the government is in the business of creating illusions. As long as we slap a label on something we create the illusion that we are making progress.

This is along the same lines that the government thinks they are making school lunches healthier by adding a fruit cup with their food but pay no attention to that fruit cup being loaded with sugar because of the heavy syrup in the container.

It just creates the illusion that we are doing something healthy, but not actually fixing the problem.

I do not believe that there is much we can do about the majority of adult Americans, but we could start shaping the future for the children and foster proper eating habits from the beginning.

I believe this will just keep the moderately health conscious people being health conscious but will leave the ignorant unchanged and continue to make poor food choices. Take McDonald's packaging for example. They have been putting nutrition information on their packages for some time now but do you think that deters Joe Blow from ordering his super duper extra large king size Coke and fries?

Do you really need nutritional information hitting you in the face to realize that deep fried chicken that you're going to eat is bad for you?

It's not as if they use this information to decide between a hoagie and a salad. They use it to decide if they should get the huge hoagie or the one a couple of inches smaller.

"Which is what a large amount of people already do, who own a TV."

I don't necessarily agree with this statement. I do not believe people are as selective with what they watch if they own a TV (yes, I know, there are always exceptions). When you actively seek out the content when/where/how you want it, as well as probably paying for it in some cases, you are much more selective with what you watch and how much time you spend watching it.

If people own a TV, they are using the hundreds of channels they have to suck up time rather than providing them true entertainment. People who own TVs, in my opinion, are much more likely to channel surf and just find a boring show to fill up their time because they find nothing else to do. This gets even worse with the increasing use of DVRs.

It turns into not filling an interest/entertainment need but rather providing a diversion.

I do not believe they should just blindly get rid of the review process of app updates, but I do think that there should be some priority given to them. I believe that a developer should be able to push updates out to their apps with relative quickness compared to getting a new app approved. This would even benefit Apple for the applications that are teetering on making a decent amount of sales but are lagging in the sales due to some kind of problem/stability issue.

"Both platforms are much more open and on a mac you have very little trouble with stability or malware or even quality. "

I believe there are other factors that can contribute to this. I think the laptop/desktop portion of Apple still attracts a certain individual that typically requires things to be well designed and stable. Unfortunately the cell phone market is not the same way, especially when you factor in free or extremely cheap applications compared to more expensive OS X counterparts. The iPhone appealed to a wider audience, including Windows users who arguably put up with a lot crappier inefficient software.

I think when originally putting the app store in place, it was a fear to have this crap trickle into the Apple app store.

Also, Apple has a vested interest in the success of applications in the app store whereas it doesn't have as much direct benefit from applications released and sold independently for OS X.