[polarbear]

I think you have to look at sports and performing arts, which are both arts in a sense, in the light of what it does to the person. If the sport/art becomes so finely tuned it seems similar to animal breeding where eventually the breed gets sour, developing bad traits. At the extreme it becomes a freak show. For example, in the NBA the game as gone from a good basic skills game to the TOWER of POWER, i.e. Shaq-ball. I know, it's a free market, yada yada....the beauty of basket ball is in the skill, ball movement, shooting, not in being 2 inches above the rim already.

[Slugman]

I read a science fiction story many years ago titled "The Mickey Mouse Olympics", about a future where all the big countries tried to cheat in the Olympics by genetic manipulation, so that basketball players were 8 feet tall with 8 foot wingspans, and swimmers had flippers, etc. It was all illegal, much like performance-enhancing drugs today, but like today, teams still cheated and tried to beat the system. The USA and Russia protested each other's entries in almost every sport, and in the end all protests were upheld and so we and the Russians, etc, were all disqualified, and all the medals went to countries too small and poor to be able to cheat. The way things are going, it is only a matter of time before this story comes true in some fashion.

[MooseAndSquirrel]

Speaking of ballet....... .....some funny comments.... Michael Caine on why he won't do nude scenes: "F'r Crissakes, it's ridiculous to do a film with your bits hanging out. You hold yourself up to ridicule. Anyone ever see a Steve McQueen or Cary Grant doing that? The head of England's ballet company was once asked would he ever do a naked ballet. He said, 'No. Never. You want to know why? Because everything doesn't stop when the music does.'"