Category Archives: Culture

Name That Olympic Medalist

Here’s a quick test.

Quiz 1. What country won the first gold medal in the 2016 Rio Olympics? What is the medalist’s name? What event did the athlete participate in?

Quiz 2. Who is the ONLY summer Olympian to win 6 medals in 6 consecutive Olympics? Okay a hint. This Olympian is the ONLY athlete ever to win Olympic medals on 5 different continents.  And again, what country does this athlete represent?

Quiz 3. Who is the medalist with 2 gold medals in 2 consecutive Olympics, holding both the Olympic and Wold records, and is called “The Worlds Greatest Athlete”? What country does this athlete represent?

Easy, right?  How many did you get right?

If you missed any the athletes are:

  1.  Ginny Thrasher, Team USA, Gold Medal, 10m air rifle
  2.  Kim Rhodes, Team USA, Bronze Medal, Skeet
  3.  Ashton Eaton, Team USA, Gold Medal, Decathlon

I suspect most people have never heard of these athletes. The US media ignores the achievements of all of these great athletes.

For Ginny Thrasher and Kim Rhodes I believe the media and sponsors ignore both of them because their events involve guns.  Plain and simple the liberal progressive media hates guns and the Constitution.  Why is it that in the “progressive” world where it’s supposed to be about empowering women and minorities, these ladies are ignored?  There were a bunch of Hollyweird “celebrities” who were bashing 19 year old college student Ginny Thrasher after she won gold.  Hillybob praised women who wore burkas at the Olympics but made no mention of the hard work and achievements of Ginny and Kim.  In fact it was the same day that Ms. Thrasher won gold that Hillybob was praising the burka wearers.

Ashton Eaton is another anomaly.  He’s the world and Olympic record holder, and twice Gold Medalist in decathlon, and almost no one knows his name.  Okay this may offend some readers, but I feel that Mr. Eaton is ignored because, “He ain’t white and he don’t look black neither”.  Not what Madison Avenue wants to promote.  Did he get a cereal box deal?  Bruce Jenner did when he won gold in the same event.  Jenner was all over the news and had million$ in endorsement deals.  I recall a front page picture of Jenner in the Los Angeles (Tass) Times.

Praise (and dollars) only goes to those who fit the “progressive” agenda.  Go figure.

PC, And I Don’t Mean Personal Computer

Gender neutral speak.  One way or another that’s what the English language is becoming.  The higher education institution, (formerly known as) Prince…ton, has just issued guidelines on “inclusive language”.  You can read the guidelines here:  Inclusive Memo

I find it ironic that the memo has been issued by the “HuMAN Resources Department”.  Shouldn’t that be renamed the “Non-gender-specific-mass-of-semi-sentient-protoplasm Resources Department”?  Of course if we want to be inclusive we should not refer to it as a “Department”.  That would mean a division of the university.  Not very inclusive.  “Non-gender-specific-mass-of-semi-sentient-protoplasm Resources Generalized-location-on-the-university-campus”.  There, that’s better.

Okay, maybe I’m lazy but it’s tiring (boring to me) that we have this push to neuter everything in life.  You can see in my posts that I do not always use “inclusive gender neutral speak”.  Where a pronoun is appropriate I will use the masculine form.  If a reader feels that I’m excluding women, that’s their problem not mine.  And just how far are we going to go with this?

With the fear of “man”, instead of saying “men and women” should we now say “men and woes”?  Hmmm, I’ll just let that one hang there…

I find it ridiculous that “the chairman” has been neutered in many business circles to just “the chair”.  Sheesh, I always thought the chair was where you rested your arse.  I didn’t know that an inanimate cloth covered wooden object had an opinion.  Of course a chair does have the closest connection to the orifice that many PC people speak out of.

If we want to be inclusive, what else should we get rid of.  Why do we celebrate Sally Ride’s (first American woman into space) achievements?  Let’s only put John Glenn in the history books.  Why do we have men’s and women’s athletic records?  Should we rewrite the United States Constitution?  “All men are created equal…”

Stop the madness!

“One small step for person.  One giant leap for people”.

Young Person, Seizing the Day

In my earlier post “Young People, Seize the Day!”, I wrote in part that now young folks can collaborate via the Internet.  I mentioned this to a friend of mine and he brought up what I consider to be an excellent example of a young person taking advantage of this global knowledge.

My friend’s 20-something daughter bought a condo last year and the dishwasher stopped working the other day. The dishwasher displayed an error code on the front panel. She was going to call and pay someone to come and repair it, but decided to search online to see what the error code was indicating.  She found that the code meant that the drain valve was not closing.  She also found an online video that showed the most common cause of the valve malfunction was caked up soap around the drain valve.  The video showed how to remove some parts to get to the drain and how to clean it.

Now this young gal had never repaired anything in her life.  She didn’t even have any tools. So what did she do next?  She emailed her dad and asked him what kind of pliers she should get.  He went online and found a set at the local big box hardware store and sent her the link to the pliers set.  She then went to the hardware store and bought the tools.

This young lady took apart her dishwasher, by herself, with only the knowledge gained from the online video and her new pliers.  Sure enough the valve was caked with soap.  After she cleaned out the valve and reassembled the dishwasher, voilà, fixed!

I find this very impressive.  Very impressive indeed.  The knowledge via the Internet empowered this young lady to take charge of things in her own life.  I imagine that she also gained the sense of accomplishment after fixing the mechanical beast.

To some, this may seem like a small victory but it probably will forever change this young lady’s view of her abilities going forward in life.

One small step…