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So, according to Wikipedia, that song was made at the request of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, performed by Robert Preston and written by Meredith Willson. This was in 1961.

First of all, I will admit that I can’t hear that song without thinking of the part in Orwell’s 1984 where Winston Smith is forced to exercise by the severe woman on the telescreen. But the real point is that government health initiatives are not exactly new.

I think most people have a certain aversion to being told what to do by anyone–or feeling like they are–even if they know it is the right thing to do. The old Libertarian in me understands this impulse. But that said, I think the Republicans really ought to get over their visceral hatred of Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign. I am becoming quite tired of them saying things like “she’s telling us what to eat”, and trying to paint her as a hypocrite over nonsense like this.

What I wonder is: did anybody complain about that Robert Preston song at the time?

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From a Newsweek article about Sarah Palin:

“This derives partly, of course, from her standing as a possible presidential candidate with presumed frontrunner potential, a status she seems inclined to maintain for as long as possible.” [Emphasis mine.]

I don’t know if it’s intentional or not. It may be, or it may not be, but it’s potentially possible either way.

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It strikes me as ironic that at the end of a week in which David Brooks was denounced by Conservatives for a column he wrote, the Conservatives also have been unwittingly arguing for one of Brooks’ old ideas: “National Greatness Conservatism“. There’s quite a bit of chatter on Breitbart sites and the like about how the end of the space shuttle program is another symptom of Obama not believing in “American exceptionalism”. Even the guy filling in for Glenn Beck yesterday was talking about it.*

If you ask me, this is where the Nationalistic part of the Party really shows up. They don’t really hate government, they only want a government that aggrandizes American superiority. They will never want to cut Space spending, and they sure as hell will never cut the closely-related Military spending.

Personally, I think both are of tremendous importance, but the Space shuttle program needed to be ended. Human beings have a difficult time in space, and I personally believe that the near to mid-future of space exploration lies, as it should, with remotely controlled machines, like the Mars rovers etc.

*I’d like to provide you with a link to a transcript of this show or something, but I’m dashed if I can find it. It seems to be impossible to get at anything on the Glenn Beck site without taking a loyalty vow to the Esoteric Order of Glenn Beck.

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Via Chris Bodenner of The Dish, an article about the wisdom of Richard Nixon. This quote from him is amazing:

“I think of what happened to Greece and Rome, and you see what is left — only the pillars… What has happened, of course, is that the great civilizations of the past, as they have become wealthy, as they have lost their will to live, to improve, they then have become subject to decadence that eventually destroys the civilization. The U.S. is now reaching that period.” 

How interesting. Especially curious to me is that Nixon said that in 1971, and almost exactly nine years later, Ronald Reagan, in his acceptance speech, said:

“The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership –in the White House and in Congress — for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us. They tell us they have done the most that humanly could be done. They say that the United States has had its day in the sun; that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems; that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities.

My fellow citizens, I utterly reject that view.” 

Kind of a major shift, no?

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Bleacher Report has a list of the 40 greatest sports movies. I looked at it, but I’m not really familiar with most of the movies on it.

I have never really liked movies about sports. First, most of them seem to be variations on the theme of “underdog defies odds to win”, which is boring and predictable, in my opinion. Second, they feel artificial because there are usually a host of extra factors introduced to provide the drama. This is necessary, because by itself a fictional or fictionalized sporting event contains very little dramatic potential. There needs to be something else involved, but it usually feels contrived.

I’d like to see a movie about a sports team that was just utterly dominant all the time. A team full of spotless personalities that consistently shredded the “loveable underdog” competition. The only question is: how could you get drama out of that? It could only work as a comedy, I think, and then only because of its contradictions with the expected.

Or maybe such a movie already exists. I wouldn’t know. I don’t like sports movies.

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So, I was reading the late Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States this past weekend. Reading this book on Fourth of July weekend is probably enough to consign me to Hell in the opinion of some Conservatives, for Zinn aimed to de-romanticize many of our well-known historical figures, like Columbus and the Founders, and to tell history from the perspectives of native Americans, women, slaves and so forth. He was also a socialist, and certainly an obsession with class permeates his book.

One issue I see in it, particularly in Zinn’s section on the Founding Fathers, is that his reasoning often takes this form: the rules of the government were made by the powerful, and protected their interests. (A lot of this, in the case of the Founders, is based on the work of Charles Beard) This is certainly true, and it’s worth keeping in mind. But it is also worth remembering that the powerful always make the rules by definition, because that is what power is. This is trivially true, in other words.

Now, distrust of concentrated power is a very healthy thing in my opinion, and of course more equal distribution of power is theoretically what representative Democracy like ours does. We elect people who will act in what they think is the best interest of their constituents. But these people still have quite a lot of power; all voting does is give the people the chance to pick who they think will act in their best interest with power. And this is where things like charisma and personal qualities can be something of an “X factor”, and sometimes lead to undesirable results.

So, I’m not sure what exactly Zinn would have liked to see in place of this system, since 100% equality of power seems impossible. Still, Zinn’s idea of looking at history from a different perspective is very interesting one, and all the more so given the outright hatred his work inspires among the Conservatives.

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It’s… well, basically what I said here still applies, although overall it wasn’t as boring to me as Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance was. It’s sort of like if you combined that game and BioWare’s Jade Empire. It’s by no means bad, but it just doesn’t quite work for me. It has many good ideas, but they don’t mesh together well.

The choice system is pretty good, although at times it felt perfunctory.  The writing was definitely above-average, but the story, though not bad in itself, was a little formulaic. Towards the end, one does get a taste of some of the themes from the fascinating Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer–small wonder, as George Ziets was a lead designer on both–but it seemed like those themes were not as fully explored as they might have been.

I know this all sounds pretty lukewarm, but I still want to stress that it’s still a perfectly acceptable game; it’s just that it seems somewhat flat. Bottom line, though: I’m not really this game’s target audience. I hate “hack and slash”, dungeon crawling, loot-collecting games. The fact that I could even tolerate this is, I suppose, to Obsidian’s credit.

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Deborah Siegel decries sexism towards our most prominent female Presidential candidate and possible female Presidential candidate:

Palin, of course, has been characterized for some time now as ambitious, devious and none-too-bright. Bachmann takes hits for her brightly colored attire and “unhinged” statements. Such charges just don’t stick to men in the same way.

I don’t know that I’ve heard Bachmann criticized for her outfits. I’m sure it’s happened, but I don’t think it’s going to be a campaign-ending problem. (Also, I bet if Mitt Romney wore a bright yellow suit, people would talk.)  As for “unhinged statements”, there are men who’ve been criticized for unhinged statements. (Barry Goldwater.)

As for the Palin allegations, lots of male politicians have been considered too “ambitious” (Barack Obama, and almost every other candidate–it’s a last resort) “devious” (Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton) and “none-too-bright” (Dan Quayle, George W. Bush)

I’m sure there are people who hate Bachmann and Palin because they are women. There are, alas, bound to be misogynist attacks against them. I don’t doubt that. But none of the things Siegel lists for Palin and Bachmann seem to qualify. This is all the more interesting because, in the preceding paragraph, she lists several insults against female politicians that do qualify, so it’s not like she doesn’t know how to find them.

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It ſeems the Preſident called on Congreſs to curtail their July 4th receſs Harry Reid agreed to this, ſaying “the Senate will reconvene on Tueſday the day after the fourth”.

It is my opinion that both the Preſident and Congreſsperſons ſhould have to work through the fourth of July. However, in honor of the holiday, they ſhould be required to do ſomething ſpecial.

You know how athletic teams ſometimes wear “throwback” uniforms? That is juſt what our politicians ought to do on July 4th. They ſhould be required to wear wigs and tri-corner hats and all of that on July 4th.

By the way, I remember the U.S. Army ſuggeſted they would adopt “throwbacks” for their April Fools’ day joke this year. I was trying to think of ſomething ſimilar to do on this blog…

(Explanation here.)

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Airplanes can change the weather, according to a new study. It’s not a major effect, but it appears they can marginally increase local precipitation.

This is the sort of thing I find fascinating, for I cannot help thinking that people will gain greater understanding of the various ways we can manipulate the weather in the coming decades. I suspect that one of the ultimate effects of the climate change issue will be not having “no impact”, but rather people discovering new ways of changing the weather patterns. (I know weather and climate are different things, but they are nonetheless related.)

Of course, this might not always be a good thing; as people will probably think they know more than they do, and end up making costly mistakes. It reminds me of early efforts at economic manipulation, when policy makers were doing things to the economy that often had the opposite of the anticipated effect. Obviously, economies and weather patterns are both very complicated systems.

But then again, I may just be crazy. That’s a theory many of my friends propose when I mention this.