• Please use real names.

    Greetings to all who have registered to OPF and those guests taking a look around. Please use real names. Registrations with fictitious names will not be processed. REAL NAMES ONLY will be processed

    Firstname Lastname

    Register

    We are a courteous and supportive community. No need to hide behind an alia. If you have a genuine need for privacy/secrecy then let me know!
  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

World Cup Watch

Robert Watcher

Well-known member
Every store we passed, we saw all the employees gathered around a flat screen TV - or they had a P.A. System and large speakers broadcasting the World Cup match between Mexico & South Korea today —— then as we approached the park, we saw the crowds filling the square in front of a gargantuan screen displaying the game. By the time we got to the Mexico/Guatemala border, we passed a group of people sitting on the sidewalk watching the match, and we noticed then that the score was 2-0 for Mexico. BTW Mexico won the game 2-1 we later found out.




E66EBB29-7612-4CF4-B527-F47401F4CF3E.jpg




576C86A6-C5ED-4EEC-9290-FDCB12285FC2.jpg



 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Every store we passed, we saw all the employees gathered around a flat screen TV - or they had a P.A. System and large speakers broadcasting the World Cup match between Mexico & South Korea today —— then as we approached the park, we saw the crowds filling the square in front of a gargantuan screen displaying the game. By the time we got to the Mexico/Guatemala border, we passed a group of people sitting on the sidewalk watching the match, and we noticed then that the score was 2-0 for Mexico. BTW Mexico won the game 2-1 we later found out.




E66EBB29-7612-4CF4-B527-F47401F4CF3E.jpg




576C86A6-C5ED-4EEC-9290-FDCB12285FC2.jpg





Robert,

Good job here!

I believe it was Karl Marx who once said that “sports”, (or was it religion??), that was the “Opium” of the masses. Well I would t take away that pleasure!

Sports is such an easily followed and understood competition between peoples without the concomitant bloodletting of actual tribal wars!

Your pictures are restated all over the planet!

Wonderful!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
From Wikipedia:

"Religion is the opium of the people" is one of the most frequently paraphrased statements of German philosopher and economist Karl Marx. It was translated from the German original, "Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes" and is often rendered as "religion... is the opiate of the masses."

The quotation originates from the introduction of Marx's work A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, which he started in 1843 but which was not published until after his death. The introduction to this work was published separately in 1844, in Marx's own journal Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher, a collaboration with Arnold Ruge.



But frankly, Robert, sports today is a far better fit and TV, with “famous people” qualified as being famous because they are famous!

Asher
 
From Wikipedia:

"Religion is the opium of the people" is one of the most frequently paraphrased statements of German philosopher and economist Karl Marx. It was translated from the German original, "Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes" and is often rendered as "religion... is the opiate of the masses."

The quotation originates from the introduction of Marx's work A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, which he started in 1843 but which was not published until after his death. The introduction to this work was published separately in 1844, in Marx's own journal Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher, a collaboration with Arnold Ruge.



But frankly, Robert, sports today is a far better fit and TV, with “famous people” qualified as being famous because they are famous!

Asher

Sorry Asher, but your last sentence that likens sport to an opiate makes no empirical sense whatsoever. Within brain centres involved in behavioral action and reward or nonreward, opiates create a continuous flood of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which results in an emotive experience of bliss, which in metaphorical terms is experienced as like being in heaven. In sport such as the FIFA World Cup, the neurotransmitter activity of players and their fanatical supporters show phasic fluctuations depending on momentary outcomes within a game. That is why you observe behavioral/emotive expressions ranging from bliss to despair. In metaphorical terms, these behavioral experiences fluctuate periodically from ascention to heaven or descention to hell. And by the way, Marx notion of religion as an opiate doesn't make much sense either if you observe the behavior of people engaged in such routines. Cheers, Mike
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Sorry Asher, but your last sentence that likens sport to an opiate makes no empirical sense whatsoever. Within brain centres involved in behavioral action and reward or nonreward, opiates create a continuous flood of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which results in an emotive experience of bliss, which in metaphorical terms is experienced as like being in heaven. In sport such as the FIFA World Cup, the neurotransmitter activity of players and their fanatical supporters show phasic fluctuations depending on momentary outcomes within a game. That is why you observe behavioral/emotive expressions ranging from bliss to despair. In metaphorical terms, these behavioral experiences fluctuate periodically from ascention to heaven or descention to hell. And by the way, Marx notion of religion as an opiate doesn't make much sense either if you observe the behavior of people engaged in such routines. Cheers, Mike

Thanks Michael for your better insight! I wouldn’t question the neurochemistry. But the reward portions of sports is certainly a distraction from economic realities of social unfairness, which Marx was concerned with.

I know a young woman who opened her shirt to a patient of mine with diabetes and fed him sugared foods from her clandestine 200 lb bag. He was so happy and whenever he was approaching another diabetic coma, she had him transfer an apartment building to her sole possession! The family begged me and my colleagues to write medical opinions to declare he was insane. But unfortunately he was just enamored with the joy of womanhood! It’s every man’s right!

Both sports and religion mask our critical understanding of economics too!

Asher
 
Top