Popular Culture & History: Brief Opine

Aurora Borealis, Facebook-Travel+Leisure

Satire

The Independent by Evan Bartlett in offbeat January 5

Cited

'Bodybuilding forums are a strange place, that much we do know. How many days there are in a week, we also thought we knew. Although after reading a thread on a bodybuilding forum that has now gone viral we are slightly confused.

A forum.bodybuilding.com thread, like many others, starts with a simple question from a user called m1ndless: “Is it safe to do a full body workout every other day?” Adding: “If I go every other day I will be at the gym 4-5 times a week, is that over training?”.

A few users suggest their tips on training before Steviekm3 points out: That makes no sense. There are only 7 days in a week. If you go every other day that is 3.5 times a week. From here, chaos begins. Justin27 pipes in to defend Steviekm3’s point that if you trained every other day it would average out at 3.5 times per week.

Inexplicably, another user called TheJosh is absolutely certain that if you train every other day then you train four days per week: Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Sunday. He neglects the fact that you can’t maintain this pattern without breaking the every other day rule, and Justin27’s angry attempts to correct him make the whole thing worth reading.

Their exchange contains playground insults such as: “Did you fail grade 2 math?”, “Maybe you should look at a calander (sic)” and “you my bright friend are el wrongo”.

In fewer than five pages the thread, which is from 2007 but has gone viral in the past few days,'

End Citations

Yes, I have been 'way off' with my bodybuilder satire on this blog since 2006...

My apologies.

Memespp.com

Popular Culture & History: Brief Opine

Rolling Stone By Nick Murray, Christopher R. Weingarten, January 5

Cited

'14 Reasons Every Teenager Should Know Who Paul McCartney Is

Calm down: Millennials should be aware of Kanye's special guest

On New Year's Eve, Kanye West and Paul McCartney dropped their collaboration "Only One," an Auto-Tuned, Stevie-tinged meditation on parenthood that a spokesperson calls "the first publicly available recording from what has become a prolific musical collaboration between these two legendary artists."

Some folks — most likely joking — started posting variations of "Who is Paul McCartney?" and a cyclone of activity soon took over Twitter. There were smug folks angry or saddened that kids don't know their hugely famous elders; there were equally smug people defending a teen's right not to know someone whose biggest hit came out 46 years ago; there were headlines from news organizations that fueled the fires.'

End Citations

Cited

Al Di Meola, Jazz guitarist from Facebook, January 3

'I may be bold in expressing my views but I can't sit back and say nothing so here goes.... WHAT THE HELL HAS HAPPENED WITH THIS GENERATION? A continuation of the sad decline of music! This is a nightmare! This arrogant clown doesn't deserve to be in the same room as the great artist Paul M.'

End Citation

This is largely a popular culture article and story, one I would usually just ignore and would not write about.

I just listened to the track in question and it is in my opinion, musical 'pop' mediocrity. I am not a fan of Paul McCartney as a musician primarily, that is the music he has done as an individual artist, largely since the 1980s, but I do have a significant collection of work he has done on compact disc and iTunes with the Beatles and Wings from the 1960s and the 1970s.

I reason McCartney has reached at points a level of musical excellence.

I would agree with Mr. Di Meola, that I also have on compact disc and iTunes, that McCartney is a great artist. Greatness being primarily a quantitative measure here in comparison to excellence which would be more qualitative; but the Beatles by some documentation have sold the most audio recordings in history and this would be a measure of quantitative greatness.

My philosophical issue related to this rather silly popular culture story is that even if 'Some folks — most likely joking — started posting variations of "Who is Paul McCartney?"', the joke does demonstrate some truth about modern Western society.

That being an implied lack of historical knowledge in many key areas, academic and other.

In reality, if many younger persons, do not know who Paul McCartney is, or who the Beatles are, it is not a huge philosophical and theological concern.

I also realize that there are some conservative Christians that do not closely follow secular popular culture, but are culturally and historically aware in other areas. They may follow classical music, or modern Christian music, as examples.

I listen to classical music as well, Vivaldi, for one, which is from approximately three hundred years ago.

My philosophical issue with this popular culture story can be related to the statement:

Churchill Museum

What (George) Santayana wrote (in The Life of Reason, 1905) was: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

This type of popular culture story, although silly, in a sense provides some evidence that many in Western society, including some young persons, lack historical knowledge. They lack historical context for much knowledge.

This includes music history, but also more importantly as I have written on my blogs, there is a lack of historical knowledge within Western society in regard to Religious Studies, Scripture, Philosophy, secular History and other disciplines, academic and otherwise.

Many in Western society claim to rely on science, which is a valid and essential academic discipline. But how many actually know much about it? How many will read documented academic sources?

Instead today in Western society persons are largely flooded with popular culture messages of conformity from the media, peer pressure and other sources.

Without much truth presented in historical documentation, both Biblical and secular, but most importantly from my perspective, Scripture, one is open to historical deceptions of the past.