OT: Junior Seau dead?
Cops in Oceanside, CA are investigating a possible shooting involving former NFL star Junior Seau ... law enforcement sources tell TMZ.
We spoke with an investigator in the coroner's office .. who told us they got a call to respond to the scene ... though the details surrounding the situation are still unclear.
Cops are currently at a residence where 43-year-old Junior is believed to be staying.
People in law enforcement are telling us Junior Seau is dead ... but we are unable to confirm that right now.
http://www.tmz.com/2012/05/02/junior-seau-shooting-police/#.T6F7KlK_tf8
Edit: Seau's death has been confirmed via multiple news sources. Here's the LA Times article...
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/05/junior-seau-dead-gunshot-…
You clearly knew enough about his family situation, personal health, and mental acuity to declare his act to be selfish.
When the argument you're attempting to make can be so easily reversed and thrown right back in your face, perhaps you ought to spend a little more time crafting it, or better yet, don't use it at all.
Also, there was a clear (and I thought blatantly obvious) reason I ended each statement with a question mark, and began each statement with "perhaps." I was attempting to get you to not be so quick to rush to judgment. There may be more to this story than we know.
This of course went over your head, and in a hilarious bit of irony you accused me of doing the exact thing that you did, and that my original post insinuated that you ought not do.
While I agree I have no clue as to Seau's mental state or factors affecting it, more times than not people who commit suicide think of nobody but themselves when they kill themselves. That's why I was, and still am, confident in my belief that Seau acted selfishly. It doesn't matter if he had the brain of an 80 year old, 180 year old, or 800 year old, his family clearly still wanted him around and his actions have brought them nothing but pain, sadness, and anguish.
how many people have you sat and talked with as they were in the process of committing suicide? How did you become an expert on what or whom they're thinking of as they pull the trigger?
Do you need to talk to a person in the act of commiting suicide to be able to see the heartache it always causes to the people that person was close to? An unselfish person doesn't consciously put the people that love him/her into those positions.
if you've never been in the presence of someone committing suicide you have no idea what you're talking about and no business stuffing your thoughts into their heads.
So the person who commits suicide simply takes care of themselves while their families and friends are left to suffer and wonder. Awesome.
This exact argument is what got one of the multiple reincarnations of Bouje banned.
People who commit suicide are at the point where normal levels of rational thought are impossible due to the acute mental health/neurochemical imbalances they are suffering through. Suicidal people - who often suffer from extreme levels of guilt and feelings of worthlessness - may believe that their loved ones are in fact better off without them, no matter how misguided this belief may be.
Think about it: to be at a point where you can seriously act against all instincts of preserving your own safety in such a dramatic way, it would seem that something would need to be seriously awry in the way your brain was operating.
I suffer from and medicate for depression and, while I haven't had serious thoughts of suicide, I've found that when I am at my lowest is when I forget my family and friends even exist to support me and I feel alone with my problem. I am capable of getting so focused on a singular issue (be it money, relationships, etc.) that I can totally lose sight of everything that is good in my life. If, God forbid, I were to act on that and take my life, that would be an easy out for me and my problems and a very selfish move. I'd be "free" but my family and friends would have to live second guessing everything that they did.
The argument that it was a selfish act can certainly be made, but that's easy for any random person to say. You have to think about it from the perspective of a guy who probably had serious brain damage which caused big time depression along with other psychiatric problems.
Take Huntington's disease, for example. Because of the neurodegeneration it causes, all those people end up with dementia and depression. Some 30% try to commit suicide while about 10% actually do. I imagine Junior Seau's condition made him feel similar.
Judging by the reactions of his family (his mom, in particular), he wasn't someone that they suspected of having any sort of psychological issues. Even if he was exhibiting those types of symptoms, ask his family whether they wished he hadn't blown a whole in his chest.
Of course his family is devastated. Even if he wasn't thought to have any problems, that doesn't mean for a second he didn't have psychological issues. It's just important to be cognisant that the guy had to have been suffering in some way or another.
...since in the fall of 2010, he was arrested for domestic abuse, then drove his car off a cliff immediately upon his release (fell asleep, he said) with his ex-girlfriend claiming that no, he wasn't trying to harm himself and he would never, ever do anything like that; just an accident...
Frankly, I don't think there is anything we can do about this. Hitting is football. You cannot eliminate that aspect of the game. The NFL is between Scylla and Charybdis on this issue.
Safer helmets, limiting big hits...the NFL can only do so much before hurting the product. I think we may have to accept that this is, like drug abuse in music, part of the industry.
But, we can't accept what is going on in football. If the life expectancy of an NFL player is only 55 and those who make it past that age are usually crippled mentally and physically, that just is not acceptable. I love watching football, I've given up hours of my life every Saturday in the fall for years and been happy to do it since I can't think of anything more enjoyable. That said, I can't keep doing it much longer if the game does not become noticeably safer.
The music industry is littered with corpses of people who died as a direct result of their passion for music. ODs, suicides, murders, etc.
I think if we are to ban football then we should consider banning music.
That's not a very good analogy. While drugs often go along with music, music does not require drugs. You cannot play football without the hits.
Or, like gladatorial fights, you could decide it's something civilization shouldn't allow.
You know, like everything else in life, I'm sure there is a faction of people that would love to see them return.
I'm sure there are.
I just think that "personal agency and free will" arguments only go so far. We regulate or outlaw a fair amount of self-destructive behavior.
When the population being impacted is overwhelmingly poorer (at least, growing up) and less-educated (despite those free "educations") then much of society, you essentially are bribing poor, athletic freaks to sacrifice 30-40 years of their lives in order to support their parents and themselves in a away they couldn't possibly do otherwise.
If I had read the Hunger Games, I might say it sounds something like that.
Agree with some of this, but I would not consider NFL players less-educated than the average citizen. Only around 60% of adults have any college education whatsoever, and only something like 27% have a four-year degree. If you restrict the sample to residents of poor, crime-ridden communities (where many of these players are from), the percentages are considerably lower than that.
If players can avoid long-term health issues, that free education is a good deal. It's a big "if," though.
It's tangential to the larger issue here, but I think in order to have this conversation, we need to be honest about what the "free college education" entails, and how it compares to the education I, for instance, received at the same school, on the aggregate level.
I know what you're saying, but OTOH, the actual knowledge you acquire in college is often not very relevant to your future profession. It's more just having the degree that counts.
While a liberal arts degree and the associated major may not be directly relevant to your future profession, a degree says you have a great ability to learn and apply knowledge quickly. There are very few professions where that is not a valuable skill.
I am not arguing that a college degree is unimportant. It's more the type of degree that is increasingly inconsequential. A lot of employers really don't care what your major was as long as you have the degree.
between self-destructive behavior and bribing someone else into self-destructive behavior.
I understand the arguments against drastic regulaton of the former. I don't understand the arguments against regulating the latter.
Would you be a poster on multiple Gladiator blogs at the same time you're asking for it to be abolished?
I don't think I said I thought it should be abolished. I said that's an option.
I do think it need to radically change.
Then you're comparing it to something that would widely be considered something that should be abolished. So it's either a grand bit of hyperbole, or a really poor comparison, or maybe both.
I don't think you can really say the two are close and be pro football (unless your also pro gladiators), but you can say there needs to be major reform in the sport, and still be a fan of the sport.
How is this so difficult for you:
Gladiator fights were once a widely accepted part of civilized society that civilized society decided no longer belonged.
One could decide that that human carnage currently being strewn around by organized football is something civilized society could decide no longer belongs. I am not advocating the position - I am mentioning it as an alternative to the above poster's resigned sigh that "welp, we gotta accept it". We do not, actually, have to accept it.
Do I need to explain that I realize football players don't use swords and tridents?
What you are saying is not difficult to understand. It is just a bad comparison. Try bare knuckle boxing or something more comparable.
You can say that society might start looking at football like gladiator games, but "I'm" not looking at them that way, but when you're simultaneously making parallels and saying they have similar problems, it comes off as insinuating that society should look at football the same way. You don't have to believe somebody got killed by a trident to say something should be banned, or regulated. But it ignores all the other things that are risky that we still are "allowed" to do. You can make extreme examples, but don't be surprised when it comes off like the athlete who likens his million dollar job to slavery. Even if he really knows his sport car to the Stadium isn't really being dragged in chains on a slave boat.
Calling football the modern day gladitorial games is a pretty solid analogy.
Boxing. 100 years ago boxing was king. Hell, the whole plot of Ocean's 11 (the clooney version of which came out like 12 years ago) revolves around a big title fight. The last huge boxing match was...?
Who is the heavyweight champion of the world? 25 years ago everyone in america knew that answer. But at some point the brutality became more than people wanted to watch as they saw former boxers with no mental capacity. Look at Ali, he has been crippled by his sport.
You don't think that the violence and damage inflicted by football will start turning people off? Boxing is still legal, it's popularity just disappeared.
People LOVE violence. The more brutal the better. Just look at the increasing graphic nature of horror films and video games. Look at the rise of a sport even more brutal than boxing in UFC. Look at the love of fights in hockey and big hits in football.
Boxing tailed off because no longer believed in the authencity of the fight. It became assume that fights were as much as influenced by unscruplous gamblers as the skill of the fighters. The lack of charismatic or intriguing boxers did not help either.
Brutality does not scare people off, it brings them in. Let's be honest here, humans are a tad bit sadistic by nature. We love ourselves some violence.
But there are a multitude of reasons for boxing's decline, violence being one of them. But that would hold more water if it didn't parallel the rise of MMA and such. Some of the other reasons boxing is no longer king aren't that different from baseball, or even horse racing. Horse racing hasn't declined because of the violence...it's just demographic changes.
I had always heard (remembered hearing?) that Ali himself did not believe that his Parkinson's was due to boxing. In fact, it's almost certain that boxing did not cause his Parkinson's, per se. But, googling around, I think I've learned that Ali's attending physicians have determined that boxing absolutely worsened his condition.
"Ali's physical exams and tests indicated a surprising amount of abnormalities, all of which seemed to be boxing related. It was found that Ali had a hole in the membrane separating the two sides of his brain. While this type of abnormality is often congenital, being punched in the head repeatedly, if not causing such a condition, can certainly exacerbate and worsen it. Further complicating matters, Ali was shown to have a series of degenerative changes in his brain stem; a part of the brain that is linked with dopamine production, a neurotransmitter that is lacking in those afflicted with Parkinson's-like afflictions. Ali's brain stem was shown to be significantly damaged, and his attending physicians, in a statement released at Muhammad Ali's behest, stated that they believed Ali's brain damage to be boxing-induced."
I am really, seriously, sad today.
http://voices.yahoo.com/muhammad-alis-battle-against-parkinsons-syndrome-is-640067.html
It's by no means a perfect parallel, but when you look at the socio-economic class most NFL players came from, and the actual amount of education received, combined with the limited options they have given those two factors to make a good living, it's a better parallel than you care to admit.
Should we ban firefighters, police officers, soldiers, miners, musicians, airline pilots, NASCAR drivers, and skiers? There are inherent dangers in all of the jobs.
The way I see it is if people know going in the dangers then who am I to tell them not what to do?
I agree. And there are several lawsuits that claim the NFL deliberately mislead players regarding the risks of head trauma, hence, the entire point.
And I assume I don't need to point out the difference in socierty's need of policemen, firemen, and football players.
A more appropriate comparison would be skiers. That is a very dangerous sport. The luge is as well. Baseball can be dangerous too. There is an inherent risk in many jobs, some of which are purely for entertainment. In my mind NASCAR is far more dangerous. Not only do you have the risk for concussions, but also the risk to life. A NASCAR driver is speeding around a circle at 100 mph in a car loaded with gasoline in close quarters with other like cars.
If any sport is to be banned it has to be NASCAR. Besides the needless consumption of oil, the aforementioned dangers present are greater than what a football player faces.
The risk of dying in a flaming crash is relatively obvious.
The risk of your brain slowly dying over the course of 20 years due to amassed collisions is less so.
Hence the lawsuit.
And, hence the difference in the assumption of risk.
They can go back to leather helmets, and adopt rugby's rules of tackling (a player must be wrapped up). Those two things would cut down dramatically on helmet spearing. If rugby players can avoid long-term damage, there should be a way for football players to as well.
I think it's clear that the sport needs to roll back the clock on how it's played, certainly. But when do you go to? The guys from the 70's and 80's don't seem to be fairing very well either.
Widen the field and crack down as hard as you can on HGH and steroids. The greater speed and size that comes from performance enhancing drugs must be making the head injury issue worse, though even totally get rid of them would not be a panacea, of course.