Let the Gay Games begin!

Last evening saw the opening ceremony of Gay Games 2014 in my hometown of Cleveland. The games have been held every four years starting in 1982. In 2018 it will be in Paris. I must say that I am proud of the city for offering to host the games and working hard to put out the welcome mat. The institution where I work (Case Western Reserve University) is hosting some events at its athletic facilities. And from all reports, the opening night festivities seemed to have gone well.
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A great idea

As the US population ages, there will be many people who are retired and in nursing homes. Such people may lack mobility and risk feeling lonely and useless, not a good thing for people who have such a wealth of life experience and so much to contribute. Stephen Colbert describes a nice program where older people teach English to foreign students by talking to them over the internet.
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The origins of the world’s stupidest cheer

In the urban areas of Sri Lanka, schools tend to be mostly single-sex K-12 and among the boys’ schools there were intense sporting rivalries. During those games, boys would show their support using generic cheers that were common to many schools. These cheers originated long before my own time and likely had been around for (I suspect) at least a century. One of them was used when your team had suffered a setback and was meant to show that this was not a cause for concern. It consisted of the following verse set to music.
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Changes on FtB coming tomorrow

The FreethoughtBlogs site is about to go through a major re-design that will be implemented tonight so that you can expect the site to be down for a short while during the transition. When it comes back up, it will look different. There are bound to be some issues that will need to be addresses so please be patient.