VIdeo Game Diets

I guess it could come to this. West Virginia, which has the worse child obesity rates in the country, hopes to put a DDR game in each of its schools. At it stands, DDR has been proven to help improve health:

"Preliminary results from a 24-week study of 50 overweight or obese children, aged 7 to 12, showed that those who played the game at home for at least 30 minutes five days per week maintained their weight and saw a reduction in some risk factors for heart disease and diabetes."

Here's a link to the full Yahoo! article.

I think this is a step in the right direction, but we really need to stop eating McDonald's and get rid of soda machines in schools. There's little help in playing DDR and then cooling down with a 200calorie Pepsi.

I've decided

...that college allows such a relaxed lifestyle.

When else am I going to be able to put my dirty dishes on a conveyor belt and see it disappear without having to clean it myself?
When else am I going to be able to do four loads of laundry at once?
When else am I going to be surrounded by such awesome people?

I don't know if I'll be ready to leave come June.

Who the Heck is Dana Gioia?

The Stanford Daily broke the news that a dark horse was chosen as the class of 2007's Commencement speaker: Dana Gioia.

Now honestly, how many people know who this guy is? I admit, when I first read the article, I was pretty upset - since 2000, Stanford has had an impressive list of commencement speakers:

2000: Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General
2001: Carly Fiorina, HP CEO
2002: Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State
2003: Alejandro Toledo, President of Peru
2004: Sandra Day O'Connor, US Supreme Court Justice
2005: Steve Jobs, Apple CEO
2006: Tom Brokaw, NBC News Anchor

But now it's

2007: Dana Gioia, Poet??????????!?!?!

It's easy to be upset about this. After all, we're Stanford, we should get the most famous person in the planet, right? I sensed a little bit of arrogance during my conversation at dinner, myself included, ragging on Gioia because he wasn't "famous." I did decide to look at his CV and after learning a little about him, I'd be interested to hear what he has to say.

Things to like:
1) Impressive career
- BA Stanford, 1973, MA Harvard, 1975, MBA Stanford, 1977
- VP of General Mills 1977-1992
- Fulltime poet
- Current chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts

2) Diverse background
- Experience as a businessman, bureaucrat, poet, writer, composer
- Has translated works from Latin, Italian, German, and Romanian
- Commentator for BBC Radio

And you know, he willl probably know that nobody knows who he is, and will make a joke about this, which will be funny.

On the other hand, there's a lot of justifiable criticism for Gioia as commencement speaker. Given the Iraq War and the landscape of American politics, someone more pertinent to that might have been more relevant.

But, I'm going to come down and defend Gioia as commencement speaker. First, Gioia has commendable accomplishments, and given his diverse and successful career, you don't need to be a billionaire to deliver a good speech. And given that he's a poet, and a full-time writer, I'm sure he'll have something insightful to say. Second, I think there's something to be said about the importance of the arts in America. Gioia, as leader of the NEA, seems to be at the helm of promoting and protecting the arts in America, and with so much attention on the Iraq War and politics, there's hardly any appreciation for the arts, much less at a very techie place like Stanford.

On the other hand, it's easy for us to all get upset since as seniors, we had a chance to vote for our speaker. There was little transparency in this whole process, seeing as how the Stanford Daily was the one to inform us of Gioia. I'd definitely fault our Senior Class Presidents and the whole selection process for not telling us who else was considered and most importantly, who the seniors voted for. After all, it's our commencement and it's pointless to let us decide who to have if that decision doesn't even matter in the longrun. I honestly doubt that even a small minority picked Gioia as our speaker. Bill Clinton must have been in the top 3. But, it seems like we're stuck with Gioia, whether we like it or not. If students want to fight the decision, so be it, but I'd only support them to the extent of increased transparency in the entire process.

Being cultured

Stanford Lively Arts has been offering us some great performances this year and for great student prices! Last Friday, the Richard Alston Dance Company came to perform some contemporary dances. There was free pizza before the performance and our RFs reimbursed the 9 of us who went for the $10 tickets. Although I didn't know much about the company, I must admit that it was 2/3 weird, 1/3 awesome. And by that, I mean there were three different dances, the first two based off contemporary arrangements that were...weird. It was very atonal, very dissident, and very harsh on my ears. On the other hand, they were very graceful dancers. To be able to perform choreographed routines without any rhythm was pretty impressive. For their final number they performed a dance off of some Scott Joplin swing music, including "The Entertainer."

I guess what I liked most was that I went to a performance that I would never have gone to otherwise. And with a great lineup for the rest of the quarter, I'm hoping to go to the following concerts as well:

- The Emerson String Quarter, February 10th
- Jupiter String Quarter, April 1
- Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, April 25

Photoshop Phriday

Something Awful.com is awesome. One of my favorite sections on the site is Photoshop Phriday where users creatively alter a bunch of historical pictures. Check out the latest thread on Clown History. The commentary is especially funny.

Priorities

I had mistakenly scheduled my hall dinner during the UCLA vs. Stanford basketball game. It was too late to reschedule the dinner so I had to miss the game. I watched the first half on television, and it didn't look that good at all. Stanford was down by almost 20 points and at that point, I was okay going to California Pizza Kitchen. The dinner itself was good so when I got back, I thought I had made the right choice. But, when I came back, I found that Stanford had rallied to beat UCLA 75 to 68. Lawrence Hill is now the Espn.com player of the week. And Stanford is ranked #23 by the AP Press. What a horrible game to miss! But, I guess it made me realize that when it comes down to play and my job as an RA, I have to defer to my job.