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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (33247)	3/24/1999 4:09:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

As to American physical conditioning there is no question in my mind that we are far fitter and in better health than ever before. Physical turn downs in the first world war I read were very high, as in world war II (after the poverty of the Great Depression). A look at pictures of shirtless soldiers and marines in World War II suggest that no one had even seen a set of weights. I remember my first sight of hundreds of naked young men in college swimming class. Not a very pretty sight, and these were among the richest and best-off youth in America. Pity the nude photographs were destroyed, because I am convinced young men are much healthier and stronger now. The next mass nudity was in pre-induction in 1952. The man in front of me couldn't straiten his right arm, the man two places in front of him had one lung destroyed by tuberculosis, and the man behind me had been kicked out of the service for unfitness in 45 and was an alcoholic. The last three of us were drafted. My platoon in Marine boot camp at Parris Island, mostly draftees, were walking wounded when we started. Little obesity (which one would find lots of today). Many of them got their first glasses and had their teeth fixed for the first time. When the Marines started requiring a 50 mile march, many could not complete it, especially the old fat master sergeants who had spent 4 years in Japanese prison camps, and some in my battalion, the most elite in the Corps (we thought), couldn't complete a 10 mile march. Today's Marines would have laughed us to scorn. There is no question that there are 1000 times as many people who could complete a 3 hour marathon as 50 years ago. I remember in the 1930's we considered a two-miler a "distance man."

To: Dayuhan who wrote (33247)	3/24/1999 4:19:00 AM
From: PiMac	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

SR: My eveidence is always thin or an unreferenced summary of my impressions or my readings, so I know the apology. I of course, agree with you. The specialists are bending themselves out of shape to get ahead and the rest of us let them. If side effects don't occur in the leaders, then it surely does in the society. What I see is a massive flattening and extending of Every normal curve. Estrangement from one another and ourselves results. I believe it comes from the adoption of the "leaders and great men philosophy" and the laissae-faire economic system that codependantly supports it.