Go Topless Day

On Sunday Aug. 28, people in cities around the world stood up for women's right to go topless in public.  I guess they stood and giggled? But that's irrelevant. It seems that there are some women who think baring all is the key to equality. The ladies at GoTopless.org put it this way on their web site. "We are a U.S.-based organization founded in 2007 by spiritual leader Rael and we claim that women have the same constitutional right that men have to go bare-chested in public. As long as men are allowed to be topless in public, women should have the same constitutional right. Or else, men should have to wear something to hide their chests" Rael, founder of GoTopless.org and spiritual leader of the Raelian Movement (rael.org)
FREE YOUR BREASTS! FREE YOUR MIND!"

Wow! An un free breast is an un free mind. Who knew? I don't know this "spiritual leader, Rael (the leader of the Raelians, who in response to the arrest of Phoenix Feeley, a topless activist who was arrested for being topless in public in New York in 2005 decide to make uncovering boobs a public issue) but I sure wouldn't mind seeing her.....all of her. I wonder if I have bigger breasts than she? Anyway, the un free ladies held topless pride parades on the 28th of August. No word on whether they are more free now as a result. A boob map is shown below to show where they marched.  Most of the oppressed boobs are in the United States and Europe. But there are also boob marches in Asia and Africa.

Ok, I realize the cause is a bit frivolous. Anyone fighting for "the constitutional to right to go topless" must be pulling our legs. But even in an age of triviality, an age of what is real is fake and what is fake is real, perhaps those boob ladies might find a more meaningful and productive woman's rights cause.  Why, they could start with females in Muslim nations. Maybe the right to not wear a burka, to drive an automobile, so be seen as an equal.  But then giggling boobs is more fun that tackling real female oppression.

A question is why am I again writing about Go Topless Day? Uh, it might be a deep rooted psychological need, but it's probably because as a male I can't resist discussing boobs. Gee, I am so excited I am shaking my boobs. Aren't you sad not to see that sight?

Blast Off

Two for one sales are great. Who doesn't want a freebie.  But one deceased man might be pushing the limit on taste. You could say that Leroy "Blast" Black is gone but definitely not forgotten. Like it or not. That's because the The New Jersey man is remembered in two ways after his recent death at age 55. You see,  his wife and his girlfriend placed rival obituaries in the local newspaper the other day, a two for one many might find odd.

Well, give Blast credit for winning the love of two women at the same time. (Let's hope a third doesn't surface with another obit of Blast). The two death notices for him came about because "the wife wanted it one way, and the girlfriend wanted it another way," a spokesman for Greenidge Funeral Homes said. Greenidge just sends the obits to the newspaper for publication. It doesn't censor or limit the number of them. The good news is that there was only one funeral for Blast.

Both obituaries mention some of the same things, as in Blast's son, Jazz Black or that he died from cancer exposure contacted at work (he worked with fiberglass). But the two widows have some other variations in their obits of Blast. The one placed by Blast's wife says he is "survived by his loving wife, Bearetta Harrison Black" and lists two other children, while the other omits the wife but mentions "longtime girlfriend, Princess Hall" along with five siblings and "a host of other family, friends, and neighbors."

Blast was a lucky guy. At least both obits were written in praise of him. If given two obits from two different lovers most of us would be more likely to have some negative remarks somewhere in them.  And that would not be a blast!

Rio Olympic Reflections

Rio is history and I must say it was and enjoyable Olympics to watch.  So I suppose I should reflect now on some of the many interesting moments from the Rio Olympic Games. Here are a few of my personal favorites.

* The Au Natural medal- This one goes to Two Mongolian coaches who stripped their clothes off after their wrestler Ganzorigiin Mandakhnaran lost the bronze medal match after the judges awarded a penalty point to a Uzbekistan wrestler.  With all the rigged "voting" by crooked judges in gymnastics, boxing, judo and more I love this direct approach to  dishonest judges. I wish those coaches would have gone all out and dropped their underwear too.

* The Honest Big Baby medal- U.S. bantam weight boxer Shakur Stevenson flipped his shirt over his head and bawled non stop after losing the gold medal decision to his Cuban opponent. Shakur just doesn't believe in the " be a good loser" thing. While being interviewed by  TV after the fight he kept crying and mumbling, "I wanted to win, I wanted to win". After a few minutes of that, and unsuccessful attempts by the announcer to have Shakur remove the crying towel covering his head he announcer simply told Shakur "thanks' and ended the interview. No word on whether Shakur is still bawling.

* Gritty Comeback medal- Rio gets this for pulling off a nearly problem free Olympic Games. Going into the Olympics the narrative was that the sky was falling in polluted, crime ridden unprepared Rio. But the Rio Games had virtually no problems or complaints. I guess you can put lip stick on a pig and make her look like Ms. Universe.

* The He's The Greatest And We All Love Him medal- That one goes to Usain Bolt, the world's and Olympic Games best ever sprinter. Usain took his athletic prowess to another level with an almost Muhammad Ali charisma that endeared everyone to him.

* The Good Sports Person award-  When two 5000 meter runners, Abbey D'Agostino of the U.S. and New Zealand's Nikki Hamblin, collided and tumbled on the track,  D'Agostina, with a badly injured knee, quickly arose and did not continue to run her race. Instead, she stopped and helped Hamblin up, encouraging her to continue the race. She did, finishing last. Hamblin said it best after the race, That girl is the Olympic spirit right there. I'd never met her before. Isn't that just so amazing." Two gold medals for those two athletes, understanding what is most important in life.

* Favorite Winner award- A tie between the least likely of Gold Medal winners, Monica Puig of Puerto Rico (Gold Medal in Tennis) and Ahmad Abughaush of Jordan
(Gold Medal in Judo). Not only were they the only medals their country produced, but their unlikely fete charmed everyone in the crowd and made the concept of winning and losing what the ideal should be.

* The They Win Too Many Medals award- Are you as tired as I that the same countries dominate the same events at every Olympics? I find myself rooting against them sometimes. I speak of the swimming and basketball dominance of the U.S.; the table tennis, shooting, and diving of the Chinese athletes;  Kenya and Ethiopia in the long distance track races; Russian and former Soviet Union wrestlers; German rowers and equestrian competitors; Cuban boxers; Italian and French fencers; British sailors; and Japanese judo athletes. Hmmmm Maybe we don't need to watch the Games. The winners are a forgone conclusion.

* The He/She award- Caster Semenya of South Africa easily won  the 800 meter track and field event. Problem is, she was born with both female and male sexual characteristics, has super high testosterone that makes her run "like a man", and has the appearance and features of a man. Many athletes who compete against her have complained about the unfairness of allowing her to compete as a woman.  When Caster won her gold medal the crowd was deafeningly quiet and non supportive, the losing athletes barely recognized her and the debate about the fairness of unisex athletes competing as females continues.

* The Cheaters Will Be Embarrassed award- U.S. swimming star Lilly King  loudly challenged the fitness of allowing Russian cheater Yulia Efmova, who, just hours before her competition with King, was mysteriously reinstated to the Rio Olympics despite being a two time confirmed drug cheat. There is justice though,  because King stared down the Russian, denounced her presence in the competition and then and defeated her, wining the gold medal while the tearful Efmova was booed by the crowd in finishing second in the 100 meter breaststroke event. Let's hope we have more denunciations of drug assisted athletes.

In the end I hope that all the medals of the winners never tarnish.

PC Happy Meals

It's time for another "I knew we are living in the age of mindless political correctness" moment. It was bad enough when the PC police made "Merry Christmas" a greeting of intolerance, but now they have infiltrated the innocent world of children. Yep! PC pressure has convinced McDonald's Inc., the inventor of those non nutritious but good for the kid sprit Happy Meals that small children need to have physical fitness gadgets rather than toys in their Happy Meals. Instead of a plastic figurine, book or plush toy, McDonald's is giving away activity trackers with Happy Meals in the United States and Canada for what the company says is a limited time.

The good news is that give away has been pulled, at least temporarily, after the kiddies seemed to be suffering from skin irritations after wearing the devices. Let's hope the limit is short and the pull permanent. If we are lucky the novelty of convincing babies that they should track their fitness movements will be a short one. After all, PC reasoning is not based on logic. It is feel good nonsense that usually has a short shelf life. But for now McDonald's says that its “step-it” trackers are part of a promotional campaign aimed at getting kids moving again. So they are giving away the fitness trackers in six  kid friendly colors that will count junior's steps and blink according to how quickly or slowly the child is wearing the device is moving. Just like air head mom and dad wear when they want to be lean, mean, planet saving machines!

Wait a minute! Isn't McDonald's filing those same kids with fatty junk food? I wonder what a fitness tracker and fast-food have in common? Oh, yes. I know. Given mom and dad are already PC brainwashed and ready to enroll their urchins into the same kind of stupid behavior as mom and dad, it might expand Mc Donald's profit waist line. Also,  the step-it tracker is good PR for McDonald's to show the critics who say their business is pushing junk food to kids, that McDonald's actually wants the little ones to be healthy heathens. Good marketing equals more profit.

This is not the first time Mickey D has seen the PC handwriting on the wall. In 2011, McDonald’s began offering the choice between fruit or Go-Gurt with Happy Meals after years of pressure from consumer groups and food activists to increase the availability of fruits and vegetable "options" on their menu. Most kids did the normal thing when allowed to choose. They said no to healthy and yes to better tasting french fries and greasy burgers. Ah, my faith in humanity was reassured by those kids making the logical rather than PC choice. maybe we have not yet brainwashed kids out of being kids rather than Mini idiotic PC consumers.

I think a better approach to kid fitness today is not to take away the soul enriching burger, fries and coke or to try to make kids fitness nuts. Rather it is to remember that the age old logic that physical activity is what is most important for fitness to everyone, of all ages.  Making playing outside rather than typing on a computer or cell phone inside hour after hour, is far better than trendy step-it trackers that kids will tire of in a matter of days. parents might try restricting electronic media time for their kids and insisting that junior runs and plays out side several hours a day. Why, it might be a great idea to have the little ones walk or ride a bike to Mc Donald's once in awhile to order a non PC  burger, fries shake and apple pie lunch.

Confused Human

Even I sometimes wonder why I hate those cell phones so much, and why I refuse to use most of the electronic gadgets that everyone else is addicted to. I can not, or don't want to, keep up with the latest communication device. If a time machine were available I surely would go back to the 50's 60's or 70's when humans were not robot appendages who stopped thinking for themselves because...well...they don't have time for thinking anymore. After all, there are so many mindless cell phone apps available to make life more bearable.

I am pretty sure the reason for my aversion to modern communication is that it is because those devices give me too many choices and to much information. If you put a child into a rom with several jars of delicious cookies, and don't put any restrictions on the kid, nor provide a code of etiquette for him, I am guessing he is going to quickly have a bad tummy ache. From my detached view (I use very few modern communication devices aside from this desktop computer) I think modern humans have tummy aches too.

They live their lives in an alternative world, call it cell purgatory. It's an underworld where the person thinks his cell is helping him improve his human experiences but instead is merely taking him or her away from real human contact. Perhaps this is why we have so much trouble assimilating relevant information. Our choices sometimes seem to counter conventional reason, making us shift core beliefs quicker than Hillary Clinton can lie. (That's Fast!)

The pace of change today does baffle me. Before I have time to rant, "Wait! You're making a mistake", the change has already become the new standard. Don't humans need to change slowly as a way of vetting whether the change is necessary or an illusion?  In 2102, for example, both Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton declared that same sex marriage was wrong. They spoke in their campaign debate that they thought "marriage should be between a male and female". Now both believe the opposite, and now both even declare that transgender bathrooms are a "basic right"? Being trendy does help in politics. But I still am trying to figure out how someone can have a third sex called "transgender"?

Everyone should have a core of beliefs and they do differ, but today those beliefs are situational and very fleeting. Baskin Robin invented the flavor of the month. Today we have a social norm of the month, often set by the more extreme of outsiders in the society. My determination to resist the devices that make communication an illusion has and will lend me to ridicule. But I see that ridicule as an affirmation that I am not yet a slave to mindless texting, twittering, and the rest.  Being out of step with the world today may be the best step one can make to keeping a foot in reality.

Get Rid Of Synchronized Swimming

Can you explain this to me? Why has the International Olympic Committee banished wrestling from the next Olympics  in 2020 while continuing to keep synchronized swimming in the Games?  That's right. Wrestling, a sport that goes back to times before the Greek Olympics, is out and that synchronized swimming mess is in. Wrestling, a sport in every sense, one that values strength and contact is out, and that silly sideshow of water dancing is in. There's no question the synchronized women are athletic, muscled, agile women. But let's put them in a swimming race or some other sport, not in synchronized swimming. They are embarrassing the whole concept of international sports.

Many argue that synchronized swimming isn't a sport. It's like that other silly event in the Olympics, rhythmic gymnastics. I agre with them.  But now they allow men to do that event  too. In my view the reality of synchronized swimming is like reality TV, a manufactured exhibition masking as a sport. It involves huge amounts of beauty make-up and beauty contest looks which make any trace of attempted athleticism disappear. Yes, those lovely girlie thighs do strain with effort and we men like to look at the pretty ladies in the pool, but I'm distracted by the twirling toes and the bleached teeth framed by painted on beauty pageant smiles.  Where is the athleticism? It's more like an act one would see in Vegas. Hmmm Maybe they should saw the ladies in half in the pool like they do at magic shows. I would watch that!

How unlike sport is synchronized swimming? This is how.  At the Beijing Olympics a pair of Chinese twins who came in fourth overall, performed a four minute routine entitled "Little Birds Jumping and Flying Happily." It didn't make me happy. During their turn to synchronize for us, the Canadians blew water from their mouths, as if they were comely fountains spouting water. Canada should be banned form the U.N. for that alone! I hope the Canadian government will take away their synchronized swimming working cards.

The Russians, who won the Beijing gold medal wore swimsuits with so many weird sequins that it was hard to see what they were actually doing. They must be the Liberace inspired synchrnized swimmers. That did it for me. I vowed after Beijing to change the channel and vomit if synchronized swimming ever again appeared on my TV. I know that synchronized swimming takes hours and hours of training  and endurance for each routine, but so does doing the Tango. Do we make an event in the Olympics for tango dancers?

Whenever I fall asleep watching too much of the Olympic Games on TV  I always dream of a burly and angry wrestler wringing the neck of a synchronized swimmer. Now that's an Olympic event that would really be worth watching.

Unisex Dilemma At The Rio Olympics

I just read a fascinating article in Sports Illustrated magazine (by Alexander Wolf) that impacts the Olympic Games to show that ever there, political correctness is active. One event that will be controversial happens next week when a South African unisex woman named Caster Semenya is the overwhelming favorite to win the 800 meter track and field event. Problem is, she was born with both female and male sexual characteristics, has super high testosterone that makes her run "like a man", and has the appearance and features of a man. Many athletes who compete against her have complained about the unfairness of allowing her to compete as a woman.

Caster is 5'10" and weighs 161 pounds, with muscular arms, broad shoulders and narrow hips. Her voice is a baritone and she exhibits what non pc types call butch behavior. Her race in Rio will trigger an emotional debate on gender and sports  between those who favor traditional views of male and female and the new age pc mindset that a person can declare whatever sex desired as the real one.

Many of the athletes who have to compete against Caster, medical experts and sports journalists say that Caster has an intersex condition, in which a person has anatomical sex characteristics of both males and females. That causes her to be hyperandrogenous. Her body produces much higher levels of testosterone than most other females. And that in turn builds greater muscle mass and allows her to run faster.  So she is competing as an "almost man" against women.

Is that fair? We separate men and women into categories because we want women to be able to win some competitions. After all, if the pc crowd had its way and all competitors, male and female were lumped together in the same event, few women would ever win in sports that require physical strength as a prerequisite. In April 2011 the IAAF (it runs international track eligibility) introduced what it called "eligibility rules for females with hyperandrogenism." These say that, "A female with hyperandrogenism who is recognized as a female in law shall be eligible to compete in women's competition in athletics provided that she has androgen levels below the male range." The normal testosterone range for females is .5 nmol/L to 3 nmol/L. For men, the range is approximately 10 to 30. That's a big difference but the Olympic Committee in Rio is ignoring that standard.

The International athletic ruling boards are in a quandary about what to do about her eligibility. She has a huge advantage and most of the other female athletes are openly unhappy about it. They want her banned or to be forced to take medication to suppress her male testosterone( several years ago she did and ran poorly as a result and stopped the suppression as a result). The politically correct world today that cheers transgender rights has forced them to back down and she will compete as a heavily favored as a unisex athlete.  It should make for a very interesting race.

Olympic Table Tennis

Though not too familiar with table tennis, I have enjoyed the matches I have seen taking place at the Olympic Games this year.  The speed and athleticism of the game is astounding, but what I notice most is how good the eyes of the contestants are, They see blurs like we see slow motion. Hitting a table tennis ball is like hitting a baseball, I assume. Players with eye deficiencies like" lazy eye" would not be able to hit it often enough to be competitive.

Anyway, watching that sport played at the Olympics is enlightening. I played  table tennis, what we called ping pong, a few times as a kid since a friend had a ping pong table in his carport. My skill was limited, very limited, so I never had aspirations of playing after that childhood experience.  Who wants to play a sport they are not competitive playing? I never had much success in sports with a moving ball, but then my eyesight depth perception has been impaired since birth. But what about table tennis? When di that sport begin? I decided to check to find out and here is the story.

The sport got its start in England towards the end of the 19th century when, after dinner, some upper middle class Victorians decided to turn their dining room tables into miniature versions of the traditional lawn tennis playing field. Who would have thought a game dominated today by Asian players was invented by the British. Those clever Brits adapted table tennis to what was available in the home. They used a line of books as the net. Rackets were lids from empty cigar boxes, and a little later, parchment paper stretched around a frame. The ball would be either a ball of string, or perhaps more commonly, a champagne cork or rubber ball.

My research uncovered this evolution if the game. "When the game first started it was called by a number of different names. “Whif whaf,” “gossamer,” and “flim flam” were commonly used to describe it. The words, as can be assumed, were derived from the sound that the ball made when hit back and forth on the table. In 1901 though, English manufacturer J. Jaques & Son Ltd registered one of the more popular names, Ping-Pong, as a copyright. He later sold the trademark to the Parker Brothers in the United States. Then in the 1920's the name and the sport were revived in Europe as table tennis."

It evolved further during the 1900's into the ball and table we see today. Today it is a highly developed and technical game of speed and  skill.  Until the 50's Europeans were the best players Americans showed little interest in it beyond a parlor game kids played. In the 1940' the Japanese  took over the game and dominated. later other Asian nations, particularly  China, became the world's best. Most of the medal winners in the Olympics this year are Asian, with China being the dominate country. many of the American and European contestants are of Asian heritage.

I think there is little passion for ping pong here today. It's too bad. Table tennis is an exciting sport to play or view.

Olymnpic Swimmer Fingers A Cheat

Drugged athletes is a topic of note again, this time at the Rio Olympics. That's largely because the International Olympic Committee and other International organizations who are supposed to police drug cheaters don't do a particularly convincing job of banning them. Russia's Olympic team was partially banned this year, an improvement after evidence showed that the Russian government itself instituted and ran the drug cheating program for it's team's athletes. But many of the cheaters were reinstituted after ridiculous appeals allowed them back into the competition.

Surely, the pressure from the big bear Russian government made the ban dissipate, making for pathetic situations where drug cheats with recent failed drug tests compete side by side with athletes with no such drug usage background. When the cheats win, rancor increases and some fans demand the International regulators do the job they are supposed to and ban all athletes who record a positive drug test. The good news is that some athletes are also now speaking out against the cheaters.

Nineteen year old swimming star Lilly King is one who is leading the charge. She loudly challenged the fitness of allowing Russian cheater Yulia Efmova, who, just hours before her comptetition with King, was mysteriously reinstated to the Rio Olympics despite being a two time confirmed drug cheat. There is justice though,  because King stared down the Russian, denounced her presence in the competiton and then and defeated her, wining the gold medal while the tearful Efmova was booed by the crowd in finishing second in the 100 meter breaststroke event.
After the race King took her crusade against doping to a new level by insisting that American athletes previously banned for drug offenses should also have been kicked off the United States team.

 King is making the case, and I agree, that any athlete who has a failed drug test should be automatically kicked out of the Olympics. No more should an athlete claim "they made me do it" in response to state run cheating programs like the ones the Russian government has long operated. the "everyone does it" defense has also long since been shown to be a false one.

When asked if U.S. athletes who have fallen foul of the drug testers, such as sprinters Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay, deserved to be in Rio, King, 19, she told it like it is. "I have to respect the track authorities' decision even if it is something I don't necessarily agree with," King said. "But do I think people who have been caught doping should be on the team? They shouldn't. It is unfortunate we have to see that. It is just something that needs to be set in stone that this is what we are going to do. Let's settle this and be done with it. There should not be any bouncing back and forwards."

Sadly, international sports events are showpieces for dictatorships like China and Russia, who lag behind in real life success for their citizens. They pump up athletes and organize expensive athletic programs backed with steroids and other drug enhancing aids in order to boast the pathetic 60's communist mantra that " our system is better because we win the most medals". No one believes it, especially not the cheating nations, but state wide cheating continues anyway and the competition is tainted by the advantages the cheaters have.

Individual cheats are just as common as state cheats and are found among all nations. That is harder to detect (there is less often as smoking gun showing the cheating) than government run drug aid programs, but enforcement of cheating by individual athletes is also enforced inconsistently. Maybe King's statements about ending cheating can be a start in enforcing the drug ban rules. Out of the mouths of babes does come wisdom. Will other clean athletes echo King's complaints? A completely clean Olympics is likely an impossibility, bit a completely honest attempt by the sports organizers to stop it is not.  Should we expect and accept anything less?

Naked Underwear Day

Did you miss National Underwear Day? I guess there is also an International Underwear Day too, or else people in other countries don't wear underwear. Yuk! How did this underwear holiday get started? Freshpair, a big underwear seller, founded National Underwear Day on August 5th, 2003. Originally it was a New York City model event with massive underwear giveaways, and a Times Square runway show. But that has expanded. My native New Orleans does it big that day.  Parade happy New Orleans has a big underwear parade on August 5th.

Besides an opportunity to see shapely and not shapely people in their underwear. The New Orleans parade attempts to set a new Guinness World Record for the 'Largest Gathering of People Wearing Only Underpants/Knickers'. Why, I am not sure. But goals are goals. At least wearing only your underwear in August won't freeze your butt. I suspect that most of the participants are younger people with more pleasing body images. I hope so. If you ever saw the Naked Bike Ride participants, for instance, you'll most remember not the hot, sexy babe on the bike, but rather, the old, fat fart. Train wrecks leave lasting images.

National Underwear Day aside, the most common question men and women get is, "What kind of underwear do you wear"? The boxer versus briefs subject reveals a personality trait, I suspect. Real men don't wear briefs. And can you imagine the wine steward who uncorks that $1000 bottle of wine at the city's most expensive restaurant wearing briefs underneath his tuxedo? This is not to say that whatever a man wears underneath is suit is clean.  A woman would never wear "dirty underwear". But a man takes it as a badge of honor to do so.

As for women, they seem to refer ":lacy underwear" more than men. It's supposed to impress the man who is at heart uninterested in how lacy a woman's underwear is. Most men are only interested in getting the lady's underpants off, not in looking or feeling them. This explains why There are no Victoria Secret stores selling only male undergarments. Men are practical about underwear. We wear it for comfort and protection, not for show. What really distresses us is when our women buy us and force us to wear those underpants with hearts on them or Santa's picture at Christmas.  They should keep their silly underpants to themselves!

Pope Francis Takes On The PC Police

Pope Francis may be the Donald Trump of popes. He can't sit still and zip his lip when speaking will only bring more misery to himself.  Need a few examples? He has said that; all dogs go to heaven when they die, that Syrian refugees should be allowed to go to any country in any number they wish, and be given instant citizenship; that "It's not true that to be a good Catholic "you have to be like rabbits." Instead "responsible parenthood" requires that couples regulate the births of their children; that if a couple opts to not have children it is a "selfish choice"; said that his native Argentina is suffering from a Mexicanization (he mean that Argentina was being ruined by drugs, and crime are pouring into the country); that he has praised the Palestinian nation while condemning Israel as a troublemaker; that he believes the spread of genetically modified crops is destroying ecosystems.

Ok, that's a sample. Francis , for better or worse has even more opinions than I! Not that's troublesome. The latest though is one surely to get Francis in trouble with the PC police. You see, he has dared to break the 11th commandment of wacky liberalism, "Thou shout not criticize a tranny". What Francis said was that he feels pain that children are being taught at school that gender can be a choice, adding that his predecessor, Benedict XVI has labeled current times “the epoch of sin against God the Creator.”

Oh my! Pope Francis has insulted all the trannies of the world and the concept of convincing a small child that he or she is not a he or she, but rather a what...or something. “We are living a moment of annihilation of man as image of God. ”Francis said: “Today, in schools they are teaching this to children — to children! — that everyone can choose their gender.”  Wow! It's a good thing they didn't tell Francis that he had to install transsexual bathrooms in the Vatican.

And who is at fault for this PC tranny revolution? He blamed this on textbooks supplied by “persons and institutions who donate money.” The pope blamed what he called “ideological colonizing” backed by “very influential countries” which he didn't identify. One such “colonization” he said — “Ill say it clearly with its first and last name — is gender.” 

He's got a point, I think.  The PC police has begun colonizing the world with idiocy and false "choices" like deciding to abandon male and female sexuality for the transgender. The left PC agenda is more often advanced with inane choices like that than through serious battles. But I welcome the religious leader of the world's Catholics to the War on Political Correctness. This could be fun.

Are the Olympic Games Still Relevant?

One of my favorite sporting event is the Olympic Games. I like both the winter and summer games even though most of the sports are foreign and sometimes strange to me. In a world of artifice, of phony reality TV, mindless phone apps and political correctness, watching live competition between the best in their field is refreshing. There is no affirmative action, no privilege, no favoritism (well, excluding the crooked judging in gymnastics) in the games. The Olympic Games are the world as it used to be in microcosm.

Who can't get excited by watching men's handball or rhythmic gymnastics? Opps! Bad example,. Still, if that is shown when I am watching the games I am somehow unable to pull myself away from the scenario where, for example, that Pakistani with one eye and a life in a Pakistani ghetto has the chance to defeat the British aristocrat in the bronze medal match.  It's illustrative that the games, for all their faults, are a last bastion of the old world values that I so miss in the trendy but empty world in which we live today.

I am not a sociologist, but my anecdotal evidence suggests that as technology advances, cultural values decline. Their seems to be an inverse relationship between the two, illustrated in the detachment so many humans have escaped to (clutching their cell phones in their refuge). Is not our community today not one, but rather a mass of individual enclaves in which the occupant creates his or her own separate world?

I wonder how long the Olympics can remain relevant in today's landscape. The Games are under attack from within (corruption of the Olympic committee, cheating scandals by teams and individual athletes, bribery to host) and without (apathy of the media and sporting spectators, manipulation of the games by TV and corporate sponsors, and the idea that such big event sporting contests are irrelevant today). Are the Olympic Games no longer relevant? Is the world in which a computer game app is more exciting than a real competition between the world's best the new reality? I hope not. Regardless, I'll watch that Indonesian sprinter compete in the 100 meters competition that he has no chance of winning because it's a better reality than is a life clinging to a cell phone reality.