Peterkin

Certainly not. If you don't consider it commendable, I withdraw my commendation, even though I continue to approve of your moral stance.

Commendable!

Yes. And then, later, in a related sidebar, we were comparing the merits of North American men's and women's soccer teams, with regard to pay equity.

As Zapatos humourously pointed out: there are not so many transgendered athletes at the "top, elite levels" to destroy an entire sport, or shut out all top level elite female athletes, or be trounced by all the top level elite male athletes. Since top level elite professional sport is all that some fans care about, they might, in fact, be better entertained if one of these rare non-birth-defined contenders staged an upset victory or carried off a grand trophy once in a while. (I really can't imagine a long queue of male athletes lining up for sex-change operations just for a advantage in their chosen sport.)

Barr, too, though he's made a feeble attempt to distance himself from the erstwhile Perpetrator-in-Chief.

Diff'rent strokes....

They do look warm and cuddly!

Yes. Histrionic, but effective. Maybe someday the North American teams will develop field skills.... but I hope not the self-dramatizing and halleluyahs. And I'm the only person in my extended family who doesn't find baseball boring. It's not fast, but it's subtle and cerebral. Smart isn't boring!

That will be funny - all the women in one room, watching a game; all the men in another room watching a game; everybody watching for the unfair advantage that one transgendered player might have; nobody watching the turkey.

I guess - in Premier League. Not MSL. Of course not. Equity issues are as old as civilization and the power keeps shifting between factions. I was specifically addressing the matter of a social change becoming "normal" over generations. These didn't.

One of the truly pathetic sights, for me, is some great big tattooed macha-man falling on his knees in the spit-damp turf, gesticulating and miming mortally injured innocence when he's just grabbed another guy by the throat and thrown him to that self-same ground.

Right. We thought we were making equal pay and reproductive rights 'normal' since 1969. Now they're brand new issues again, because the generation that came along behind us grew old enough to have all the power. I didn't say stronger; I said better. As in more accurate, better co-ordinated, more effective plays, less fouling, far, far less histrionics and time-wasting. Matter of taste.

That which is progressive is not necessarily new.

For one thing, they play better soccer. For another, a large contingent of kids just coming of age (here they are again - those youngsters!) grew up with the game, and a lot of girls, denied participation in boy sports at an early age, have role models and heroes in that league, and they will probably come out to games in increasing numbers.

Which side is that? Never mind; I realize that this part of the matter is far off topic. What I'm really curious about is why people occasionally suggest that substantive change, or progressive change, in any area of public life cannot take place until a certain generation has died off. Why is it considered more likely that a fresh young cohort will achieve what the youth of the 1960's and 70's failed to achieve, or regain what we did achieve that is now being destroyed? Opposite points of view on social issues are older than I am, older than democracy, older than sport.

I understand that games have been long co-opted as commercial mass entertainment. I agreed that it's probably too late to reclaim them. Re-purposing is a concept I find problematic here: the purposes that competitive sport used to serve in early societies do not apply in modern ones. The functions it might serve now are divided by age, class and financial status: physical fitness, business team-building, the social solidarity of fandom, access to education for underprivileged youth, to teach the children the importance of winning, lucrative careers, investment opportunities, big cash prizes and advertising contracts, etc. Fun and friendship are irrelevant.

I always appreciate this kind of remark, especially accompanied by a big happy grin at the prospect of my imminent demise. I'm working on it.... OTH, not all young people are progressive.

I didn't mean to set a value on evolution. It doesn't 'go toward' anything, either good or bad; it's simply an on-going, undirected process of selection for survival that takes place in nature. My distinction was between fitness selection and imposed order. Imposed order has purpose and direction, but doesn't always contribute work to the survival of either the imposing or imposed-upon organism. That means, traits are acquired as an expedient, or a burden; as soon as the purpose is no longer served, the acquired trait is abandoned. For example, a generation of Eastern Europeans had to learn Russian in school. Once the USSR imploded, not only did their children not learn Russian, but even the older people stopped using it and forgot most of it. The something different a future generation becomes will be the result of many forces, some of which we can see, some of which we can surmise, and some of which we cannot predict. A great many people have had to become bilingual because of colonialism coming to their homeland, or themselves being forced to flee their homeland. Some citizens of ethnically diverse nations become bilingual through childhood exposure; relatively few people become bi- or multilingual by choice.

I wonder, as a side-bar, whether team sports might not change in regard for and enforcement of the rules if the teams were mixed sex; the players might exhibit a lower level of aggression. But hockey fans, for example, would hate that: they appreciate "the physicality" of the game (read fouling, fighting and brawling) They're paying watch gladiatorial combat. I wonder how much that lust for violence contributes to the insistence on the status quo. And i sometimes wonder it's contributed to rendering most sports unenjoyable to those of us who used to play for fun.

I wouldn't call it evolving. Imperialism, whether by force of arms, persuasion or economic pressure, is an imposition of one culture on another rather than a natural development. So, whether the transformation is permanent or temporary depends on how long the empire can hold on to its colonies, satellites and dependent allies. There is some small movement among colonized peoples of North America to reclaim their own heritage and language. We also see fierce backlash against Anglo-American domination in the Middle East, while China appears both ready and able to start a new cycle of imperialism. While the language of business has been English for a while now, economic power is not as concentrated as it may appear on the surface https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/billionaires-by-country but more diverse, mobile and pervasive. There is no guarantee of continued American world dominance. At the moment, it looks like a tussle between the US and China - which I suppose would make it bipolar - but a lot of variables are unpredictable. Will the US tear itself apart in civil strife? Will climate change or pandemic wipe out major populations? Will Russia and the rest of the world blow one another to smithereens? Will the financial machinations of a few unprincipled players collapse the global economic structure? The trend we can see is of the past; not necessarily of the future.

It means that even the devil he knows (intimately) is preferable to people who might change the unbalance of power.

Probably true. Oh well.

I'd be okay with that. Suppose you exclude the brutal sports from co-ed classification and keep them segregated? Probably most women could live with that, but it still leaves the transgendered out in the cold. I suppose, if they really wanted to play American football or rugby, they'd have to out in different leagues for the best fit. Of course, big mass-strength-twitch sports already exclude a lot of men, and team sports divided by age disadvatage slow-growing boys, while unfairly benefiting fast-growing girls. How about the experts and organizers of each sport coming up with an innovative system of classification for their sport; try out a few ideas and see what works? They wouldn't have to spectate: they could participate.

You don't have to go so far. The roadways only need to be permeable, or convex (whichever is appropriate to its use) in order to collect water, and a light colour, to reflect sunlight, instead of absorbing it. OTH, your house walls - what isn't covered in vegetation, need to be thick and heat-retentive, to cut down on heating/cooling. You need not depend on solar energy (which still carries a biggish ecological burden in its batteries and distribution system); you can augment it with whatever natural energy is most readily available in a locale: wind (This is one of many available models https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/04/06/could-this-be-the-safest-most-powerful-wind-turbine-in-the-world) wave or tide generators (not sure about these; they seem to need a lot of unwieldy infrastructure and mechanical devices https://www.alternative-energy-tutorials.com/wave-energy/wave-energy.html https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/tidal-energy/) and of course, good old hydro, which ought to be done on small scale, according to local ecology and conditions, instead of damming the big, life-blood rivers, so that the trickle that finally reaches the ocean is too shallow for salmon to negotiate. https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/planning-microhydropower-system Of course, the most important, decisive aspect of power is how it's used. We've been unforgivably wasteful for a very long time. We need to make our houses and factories far more efficient (and wherever possible, self-sufficient) https://www.nxtcontrol.com/factory-ecomation/ and we need to rely a lot less on technology and a lot more on human motive power - we'd be a whole lot healthier, too. There are ideas and experiments and projects all over the world - and people (I mean normal people, not eco and architecture geeks like me) hardly ever hear about them. If you build earth-sheltered, packed earth, straw-bale or cob house, or build thick rock walls to collect heat, you have protection from heavy weather, and a lot less sail surface for the wind get hold on. If you then make the roof a low curve, it's a natural shelter. https://www.buildwithrise.com/stories/underground-homes You have to make sure you're digging above the water table and the flood-plain of the nearest river. With city apartment buildings, this is more complicated. I would very strongly recommend low-rise, low-profile, blunt-cornered buildings with deep cellars and reinforced exit tunnels. Those tall forest-buildings in Milan and Singapore look beautiful, but they are vulnerable, and hard to escape from. Put a berm around the whole complex, https://www.stantec.com/en/ideas/elevating-low-rise-development-its-a-swell-idea and you're practically home-free - plus some really good skateboarding, sledding opportunities for the residents... Here is a cool design for a public building https://www.visitnorway.com/places-to-go/eastern-norway/oslo/oslo-opera-house/

no Relevance to gender?