President Gordon B. Hinckley 1910-2008

President Hinckley passed away yesterday evening. I'll miss him, but I'm glad he'll be reunited with his wife. What an incredible life!

I'll miss his sincerity and candor. His words always made me feel a desire to do more and to be better. Listening to him in many Priesthood sessions, I always got the sense that he keenly understood the consequences of sin, and had faith in the ability of each of us to repent, to arise and be men of God.

He showed that you can be humble, meek and righteous, and yet speak with candor, humor and divine authority.

When I go, I hope I go like Pres. Hinckley, quickly and in relatively good health, and I hope to be half the man, half the servant of Christ that he was.

Black History Month

Now we know what happened to the Chanukah Ham guy. He's working at Walgreen's!



D'oh! This is probably not the aspect of black history Walgreen's ought to emphasize.

You Know You're In France When . . .

. . . offering your customers free shipping is ruled illegal.

No, that's not a joke. An excerpt from the article:

The Tribunal de Grande Instance (a French appeals court) in Versailles ruled back in December that Amazon was violating the country's 1981 Lang law with its free shipping offer. That law forbids booksellers from offering discounts of more than 5 percent off the list price, and Amazon was found to be exceeding that discount when the free shipping was factored in. . . Now it's choosing to pay €1,000 a day rather than follow the court's order. . . Amazon can do so for 30 days (€30,000), but after that time the court will review the fine. They could raise it, or they could lower it, but given that Amazon has chosen to flip the justices the bird, guess which outcome is more likely? At some point, if Amazon doesn't change its ways, the fine will probably be jacked up so high that the company has no choice but to comply.

Vive la France! Vive la socialisme! and Vive la expensive books!

From the files of Big Brother

The nanny state continues it's malignant growth. A Tyranny Update from Walter Williams via Townhall.com:

The California Energy Commission has recently proposed amendments to its standards for energy efficiency... These standards include a requirement that any new or modified heating or air conditioning system must include a programmable communicating thermostat (PCT) whose settings can be remotely controlled by government authorities. A thermostat czar, sitting in Sacramento, would be empowered to remotely reduce the heating or cooling of your house during what he deems as an "emergency event."... the thermostat must be configured in a way that doesn't allow the customer to override the czar's decision.

Get ready for mandated 68 degrees in the winter and 78 degrees in the summer. Babies, illness or personal preferences be damned! Will Californians really put up with this? I hope not, because California lunacy has the tendency to spread. Forget the Mexican border fence, let's start work on the California border fence. We'll make it like the Berlin Wall. We'll welcome all escapees, but won't let them return.

Someone has to save them...

Why I Quit the Social Sciences

MSNBC has an encouraging headline today:

Bucking the trend in many other wealthy industrialized nations, the United States seems to be experiencing a baby boomlet, reporting the largest number of children born in 45 years.

The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births. But non-Hispanic white women and other racial and ethnic groups were having more babies, too....

The same report also showed births becoming more common in nearly every age and racial or ethnic group. Birth rates increased for women in their 20s, 30s and early 40s, not just teens. They rose for whites, blacks, Hispanics, American Indians and Alaska Natives.

If I were to guess at the reasons, I would say things like: "people are confident in the future" or "people are well-to-do enough that they can support a larger family" or simply "Americans love family and value children."

According to "the experts," however, I would be mistaken. The actual reasons, of course, are:

a decline in contraceptive use, a drop in access to abortion, poor education and poverty.

Huh??? That the stupidest thing I've read in weeks. I must have missed the Supreme Court's over-ruling of Roe v. Wade, and the onset of the current Depression with its widespread poverty. I'm sorry, but poor education does NOT explain an increase in fertility among women in their 30s and 40s.

This is a prime example of social science failing to see the trees for the forest (to turn the metaphor around). They are taking a generalization and applying it to a specific case (the U.S.) which may not fit the generalization. All this "expert" did was think of the generalizations commonly used to explain the decline in fertility which usually accompanies economic development, then... and this is a basic logical fallacy... assumed that since fertility increased, the level of development as measured by the above factors must have declined.

Anyone who has had any logic training at all knows that:

If A (development), then B (lower fertility)
Not B,
ergo not A

is not logically sound.

That is what I hated about the social sciences. They all seem to believe that because the group acts a certain way on average, individuals within the group act the same way. No allowance is made for individual choice or action. Everything is averages, means and standard deviations.

Social Science cannot explain individual cases that deviate from the norm. It cannot account for Ghandi or Hitler, Mother Teresa or Stalin, the Pioneers or the Crusades, Jim Jones or Jesus Christ, and it cannot, apparently, explain why Americans love and value children more than Europeans do.

The Primary Season

(WARNING: extremely wonkish analysis follows. Read at your own risk, May cause insomnia or mild cynicism)

Well, if you watch the news, you know that apparently the race for the presidential nominations is over. Iowa and New Hampshire have spoken, What else is there to say? McCain and Clinton it is, the comeback kids. . .except that the media is ALL WRONG!

It's really irritating to a confessed political junkie like me. Now, I couldn't care less who wins the Democrat primary, so I'll just shot apart the conventional wisdom on the republican candidates.

1. "McCain and Huckabee are winning all the delegates since they've won IA and NH, and they're getting all the press. . ." But (according to CNN) Mitt Romney actually leads the delegate count, even after Hew Hampshire.

2. "Romney's lost the first two primaries, he'll never recover. . ." but you probably didn't even hear about the Wyoming caucus, did you? Held between IA and NH, Romney won that one hands down, and it has exactly the same number of delegates as New Hampshire. Tradition has made everyone focus on those two states. But this year is different. It used to be that IA and NH were first, and everyone else was quite a but later. Not so this year, the schedule is compressed so much that no one has time to run out of money or lose momentum before the next election. There are 8 primaries and caucuses in January this year, there were none in 2004. There are another 19 in the first 5 days of February.

3. "IA and NH are the most important, they are representative of the GOP as a whole." They are not! New Hampshire is a suburb of Boston now, and is full of quirky, secular people. they also let independents vote in any primary they want. IA is a small state who's voters worry more about Ethanol subsidies than anything else. This is not the GOP on a national level. In addition, the only reason these two states are important is the incessant media coverage they receive. Only 5% of the necessary delegates have been awarded so far, with Romney winning about half of them.

4. "It'll all be over on Feb. 5th, Giuliani will sweep in and take the nomination." Not likely. The GOP needs 1191 delegates to win. 949 are awarded on Feb. 5th (Super Tuesday). Even if Giuliani swept them all, (not possible, as some are awarded proportionally) He couldn't clinch the nomination. Giuliani hasn't competed in any race so far. and if he's counting on Florida to give him a big boost with it's 114 delegates, tough luck, FL and a few other states (including MI) lsot have their delegates when they moved their primaries before Feb. 5th in violation of party rules. Even after Super Tuesday there are several large delegate totals to be decided. (e.g. Texas - 140, Ohio -88, N.Carolina - 69, Pennsylvania - 74, Virginia - 63 = 434 delegates). In all over 1000 delegates are awarded after Feb. 5th. A well organized campaign with money and resources to compete to the end can make up a lot of ground.

In short: This year is different. there is no front runner and it is certainly NOT over yet.

Random Picture Day

Just some stuff from the internet.

Remember those lighthouses we visited in July? This is why we went in July, not December. This also may explain how the dead fish came to be stuck in the walkway.

1 gigabyte, then and now (note the little SD card in her hand).

Sorry, only slightly funny.

Save it for the gym, man.

Hey, smile, this is for posterity! Are you smiling? Aunt. . .whoever you are. . .uhhh. . . number 3, a little to the left!


Who's this sign for?