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It seems that everyone knows the lesson from the Spider-Man origin story – with great power comes great responsibility.

There is a similar quote from Eleanor Roosevelt though that I’d like to focus on today.

For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility.

It makes sense – if you’re not free to decide something, then you’re not responsible for it. It happens at work: the corporate policy tells you to do something, then it’s not your fault if it turns out bad. But if you are free to decide something then you have the responsibility for its outcome.

In this election year, I notice many of the ads are pushing for something called “reproductive freedom” but I also notice that no one is pushing for “reproductive responsibility”. I say they are two sides of the same coin. People want freedom with no responsibility. And in many ways this modern world appears to allow more freedom with less responsibility.

Consider what the end result is, not just of reproductive freedom with no responsibility, but of general freedom without responsibility. Is human nature such that people will do what’s good for them and others? That’s the benefit of natural consequences – it keeps peoples’ behavior in check.

I think the internet provides a glimpse of what happens. Consider the internet to be a virtual society with no physical consequences: people do and say things that they wouldn’t do in person. If we keep removing natural consequences from personal behaviors, it won’t be progress. And “reproductive freedom” is just the current example of that.

I was considering a variety of ballot proposals that have passed in a number of states in the last few elections, and I noticed the common theme of a smaller group getting the votes despite the larger population not being on their side.

The larger population was not necessarily against their side either. But a minority of people wanted something, and it passed, and thus became the law of the land.

Modern democracy caters to the squeaky wheel. And it is due to a lack of moral authority in individual people.

This wasn’t the case in the good old days (not going to get into specific timeframes). People back then knew right from wrong. Maybe they didn’t agree with other people on what right and wrong was, but they had their stance on topics.

People these days are less firm on what is right and wrong, and are more willing to let other people do their thing. So a strong-willed minority that is pushing an issue can get it passed, because the majority of people will take the attitude of “hey, if that’s their thing then who am I to tell them no?”

And so something passes and becomes law even if most people don’t agree with it, because they don’t want to take a stand on what’s good for society or what’s morally right.

I’m not saying you have to care about every issue, but I’m saying do be informed about the ballot proposals to know if you should take a stand on them. All that is needed for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing, and not vote.

My son had a school award night thingy and the email that went out beforehand with instructions and expectations said something along the lines of wear your Sunday clothes.

My guess is the people who worded that email either haven’t been to church in a while, or maybe only go on special occasions, or maybe they’ve only seen it in movies. Because my son wore a polo shirt and nice shorts, like he usually does for church. Maybe that wasn’t his Sunday best, but it was his church clothes.

Anyway, he was the only one wearing shorts.

I felt out of place for him, but he didn’t seem to be socially uncomfortable with it, so the award ceremony went well.

I just found it interesting the various gaps between the older generation and the younger, and between the formal church crowd and informal church crowd and the non-church crowd.

This is a guide for how to play the game Abalone. I normally like to link to the official game website, but in this case I could not find a publisher who owns the game. So if you want it you’ll just have to search any place that sells used games.

1. How do I win?
Be the first player to push 6 of the other player’s marbles off the board.

2. How do I push their marbles?
By having a line of marbles with a greater number than their line (or singlular marble). Think of it like sumo wrestling or reverse tug-of-war – if you have the advantage of more marbles in a line than do they, you can push them. You take turns moving your marbles.

3. How do I move my marbles?
Each turn, you can select 1, 2, or 3 marbles at a time if they are in a row and consecutive. You may move that set of marbles one spot in any direction – down the row or to the side. You can’t move them down the row if they are against a row the opponent’s marbles with an equal or greater count (you can’t push a “heavier” opponent).

And that’s the five hows for Abalone. I was extra efficient and got the five hows done in three hows. But for those of you who want the full five, here are two more.

4. How do you start the game?
It’s kind of like chess, with all the black marbles on one side and all the white marbles on the other. Unlike chess, black goes first.

5. How do I best position myself to win?
The simplest strategy is to get your marbles in the middle of the board. You win by pushing the opponent off the sides/edges of board, so winning movement is toward the outside, which means you must start on the inside.

It is a simple game, like a combination of checkers and Othello. And sumo wresting. But it does take some thinking and planning your moves.

There, now go play Abalone.

There are many ads on TV these days for various drugs and treatments for various ailments. Back when I was growing up, pharmaceutical companies didn’t advertise to the general public. So I have no memories of those commercials from my childhood.

Nowadays, it seems like over half the ads are for some new drug that I’m supposed to ask my doctor if it’s right for me. Well, not for these next several weeks as political ads have taken over. But once the election cycle is done I’m sure they’ll go back to normal.

On one hand it’s annoying seeing the same few commercials. On the other hand it’s nice of them to pay for the TV content, and someone’s gotta have the ads.

All of this to say, whatever happened to Ring Around the Collar?

Back when I was a child, that was the major ailment was plaguing everyone. At least that is how it seemed, based on the number of ads that were out there claiming to get rid of ring around the collar.

I’ll have to play some of those old ads for my kids, so they know how rough we had it growing up, and they can be glad that they live in a day and age where they never have to worry about ring around the collar.

As a note for the detergent makers, if you want to drum up more business, you need to find a more modern equivalent of ring-around-the-collar. My proposal: Ring Around The Hoodie. If there’s a way that someone’s hoodie could be perceived as not good, that might scare up some extra sales of your product.

Being a University of Michigan fan whose kid enrolls at Michigan State is like the situation in the Sound of Music. In the picture below, MSU people are like Herr Zeller and I’m like Max Detweiler. They are zealous for their cause and I don’t really care for it, but I don’t want to upset them so I give a half-hearted reply.

I think in the movie it was actually Rolf that gave the Nazi greeting that Max Detweiler somewhat returned, but Herr Zeller looks more appropriate for this image.

Thanks to someone’s generosity in loaning us her car while ours was in the shop, I got to hear a few days’ worth of satellite radio. So we tried to get a wide variety of stations while we could, and I tried to explain the significance of various songs in regard to the culture at the time. One of the songs that came on was “The Beat Goes On” by Sonny and Cher.

It was written to highlight how things are changing, and things are staying the same. And it oddly still works today. It reminds me of a monologue by Roy Rogers, I think. The way it was written it spoke of politics and societal events in a general enough way that it was timeless. I wish I could find it on the internet, but no such luck today.

Anyway, here are some of the lyrics to The Beat Goes On

Charleston was once the rage, uh-huh
History has turned the page, uh-huh
The miniskirt’s the current thing, uh-huh
Teenybopper is our newborn king, uh-huh

I suppose miniskirts are still around, not sure about teenyboppers anymore though. This verse is a wash: +1 and -1.

The grocery store’s the super mart, uh-huh
Little girls still break their hearts, uh-huh
And men still keep on marching off to war
Electrically they keep a baseball score

This one’s still true on all counts. Although it’s not noteworthy now that baseball scores are kept electronically, it was a big deal back then. But it’s still true today.

Grandmas sit in chairs and reminisce
Boys keep chasing girls to get a kiss
The cars keep going faster all the time
Bums still cries, “Hey buddy, have you got a dime?”

This one’s mostly true. Cars do keep going faster all the time. As far as I can tell, we’ve reached diminishing returns on that one, both in top speed and in 0-60 acceleration – however you want to consider “faster”. The things that not quite true is that bums don’t ask for dimes. They still ask for money, but in denominations larger than dimes.

And the beat goes on

Okay, this one’s the chorus not a verse. But it needs to be acknowledged that the beat is still going on today, so +1 for that too.