Search

Ethical questions normally arise in sport because its participants are human moral agents and because its practice community entails the observance of rules and responsibilities that humans generally owe one another in a social practice of voluntary competition. Since nature sports are not defined by this kind of inter-agential activity, it would appear that there are no comparable ethical constraints on their pursuit. This paper considers conflicts of preference versus right between humans, how these are resolved, and whether these rights are relevant in assessment of nature sport activity vis-à-vis nonhuman creatures. Relying on a goods perspective instead of a rights framework, via Korsgaard, I argue against an assumption that human preference is sufficient to override consideration of nonhuman animals' functional goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of planar meta‐lenses on flexible materials has profoundly impacted the long‐standing perception of diffractive optics. Despite their advantages, these lenses still face challenges in design and fabrication to obtain high focusing efficiency and resolving power. A nanofabrication technique is demonstrated based on photolithography and polyimide casting for realizing membrane‐based multilevel phase‐type Fresnel zone plates (FZPs) with high focusing efficiency. By employing advantageous techniques, these lenses with nanostructures are directly patterned into thin polyimide membranes. The computational and experimental results have indicated that the focusing efficiency of these nanostructures at the primary focus increases significantly with increasing the number of phase levels. Specifically, 16‐level phase lenses on a polyimide membrane can achieve a focusing efficiency of more than 91.6% of the input signal (9.5 times better than that of a conventional amplitude‐type FZP) and focus light into a diffraction‐limited spot together with very weak side‐lobes. Furthermore, these lenses exhibit considerably reduced unwanted diffraction orders and produce extremely low background signals. The potential impact of these lenses extends across various applications and techniques including microscopy, imaging, micro‐diffraction, remote sensing, and space flight instruments which require lightweight and flexible configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two prevalent assumptions in the philosophy of sport literature are that all sports are games and that all games are contests, meant to determine who is the better at the skills definitive of the sport. If these are correct, it would follow that all sports are contests and that a range of sporting activities, including nature sports, are not in fact sports at all. This paper first confronts the notion that sport and games must seek to resolve skill superiority through consideration of sport activities that have no such aim. The reduction of sport to game is also shown to be untenable and due to misunderstanding the point of sport activities, specifically, why people engage in them. This leads to reconsideration of the dominance of an instrumental conception of sport and the pursuit of excellence as anthropomaximising efficiency. The Norwegian tradition of frilutsliv is explored as a counterpoint to both conventional and nature sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper refines a number of theoretical distinctions relevant to deceptive play, in particular the difference between merely misleading actions and types of simulation commonly considered beyond the pale, such as diving. To do so, I rely on work in the philosophy of language about conversational convention and implicature, the distinction between lying and misleading, and their relation to concepts of seduction and bullshit. The paper works through a number of possible solutions to the question of what is wrong with simulation and its difference from strategic fouling, including the argument that games and their rules operate like contracts. I conclude that the wrongness lies in the injustice of unfair advantage gained through actions that silence opposition by resort to unanswerable play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores ludonarrative dissonance as it occurs in sport, primarily as the conflict experienced by participants between dominant narratives and self-generated interpretations of embodied experience. Taking self-narrative as a social rather than isolated production, the interaction with three basic categories of dominant narrative is explored: transformative, representing a spectrum from revelatory to distorting, bullying and colonising. These forms of dominant narrative prescribe interpretations of the player’s experience of play and of self that displace their own, with the end result of dissonance and self-alienation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A study seeks to examine the epistemology of 'coming out' as gay or lesbian that is not only applicable to revelation of sexuality, but can explain how self-revelation is possible given the assumption that the self is a constructed and hence fluid subject, rather than an essentialist given. The motive for denial of desire and ultimately self-deceit is very often the rejection of identification as x or y, and since queer theory directly addresses some of these issues of identity and the construction of self through desire, much of the discussion focuses on desire for same sex objects.

The author points out the benefit to be obtained from the remote sports or natural environment rather than on less urban environment. She argues that engaging in remote sport can enhance the knowledge of an individual in appreciable ways. She says that all sports have the possibility to develop self-understanding and personal growth but sport carried from remote and wilder places have much benefit because it commonly demands a higher than usual awareness and response to risk.

The article focuses on various aspects of gamesmanship. Gamesmanship is a strategy designed for winning regardless of athletic excellence. Violation of the rules nullifies gamesmanship. Also gamesmanship relies on the rules in order to exist. Winning is a goal of the activity of sport. Although winning is an indicator of excellence, it does not indicate that winners are excellent. Excellence is the description not of a score line but of a deliberately extended activity. Competition in sports is valuable as it compels a response to various kinds of challenge, whether to one's level of physical competence or to one's sense of self.

This paper responds to Kevin Krein's claim in (2015) that the particular value of nature sports over traditional ones is that they offer intensity of sport experience in dynamic interaction between an athlete and natural features. He denies that this intensity is derived from competitive conflict of individuals and denies that nature sport derives its value from internal conflict within the athlete who carries out the activity. This paper responds directly to Krein by analysing 'intensity' in sport in terms of the relationship between attention and reflection and the interaction between self and environment. I reply directly to Krein's rejection of self-competition as based on a mischaracterisation of internal struggle and argue that the weighing of incompatible desires does not involve a fragmented self. I argue that the unique intensity to which Krein refers is strongly comparable to the Kantian conception of the sublime and explore how sublime experience fits Krein's account and outline some serious problems that such an ideal of experience poses for nature sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A case is described in which excision of excess gingival tissue by conventional gingivectomy and simple restorative treatment with porcelain veneers produced a dramatic improvement in the patient's appearance with minimal sacrifice of sound tooth tissue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]