I care about all this because I want my kids to understand that winning isn't the direct object of sports, but rather an artificial construction through which honor sometimes can be achieved, and is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of greatness.
If the real "Jerry Springer Show" turns its rowdy, angry guests into objects of sneering sport, "Jerry Springer: The Opera" sees them as figures of passion, whose impulses, however base, translate into song that reaches for the stars.
Caveat emptor: at times, jiujitsu hurts, although truly harming your opponent is not the object of the sport.
And in "The Hunter," the green protagonist has ignited a prismatic explosion, launching many tiny creatures into the air and singeing himself in the process; the object of his sport, a rabbit of scumbled pink and white, looks on, clearly pleased.
Action cameras like the items GoPro sells are quickly becoming a general consumer electronic good where they were once the objects of only extreme sports athletes.
As another philosopher, Roger Scruton, has written: "Ideologies such as fascism which attempt to close the gap between society and state have invaded the institutions of sport … as ready objects of human allegiance, symbolic of local, territorial and national virtues".
He considers the materiality of sport, its embeddedness in the objects we use to play; and the generic place of rules, chance, cheating and winning.
I was not objecting to sports nationalism, including sports nationalism of the "distinct status" type.
Seen through a laser scanning microscope that reveals 3D structure, the tiny objects (shown) sport perforated outer walls with a single furrow, reminiscent of ancestral angiosperms.
These filters today are capable of recognizing images of objects like pets, sports, and food, as well as specific locations, like beaches or concerts.
