Guilt by Association

HBO's "Big Love," the Warren Jeffs trial, Mitt Romney's two grandmothers, you can't escape news about polygamy these days.

All the publicity surrounding polygamists these days has repercussions for average Mormons, and for Utahns in general.

In My Estates and Trusts class, we were talking about how the law handles children omitted from a parent's will. One student raised his hands and asked, in all seriousness, "do they have special provisions in Utah because polygamy is allowed?"

*sigh*

I, of course, informed the class that polygamy is not allowed in Utah -- but I really shouldn't have had to do that.

I'm Picking Up Good Vibrations . . .

Sadly, I have experienced this phenomenon. it used to happen a lot when I had my old phone in my pocket. Not so much now that I have a holster.

I Knew It !!!

I always knew the shoe companies' marketing was a crock! ("trainers" is British for tennis shoes)

Long live the 25 dollar Sketchers!

Pro-Life in Hollywood

I've always liked Kelsey Grammar (Frasier) and Patricia Heaton (Ray's wife on Everybody Loves Raymond). They have a new show coming to Fox, and Heaton is active in "Feminists for Life." National Review interviewed her and she had some very sensible things to say.

The feminists of the ‘60s and ‘70s felt that in order to promote the agenda of equality in the workplace, which I believe in, that they had to denigrate this other very important aspect of being a woman, which is being a mother and bearing children. To even have to compare these two things is ridiculous. I think a mistake these feminists made was that you had to be more like a man to compete in the world. What that leads to is woman having abortions in order to compete. And that’s not really having a choice. So, that’s a big mistake, and you have to spend a lot of time undoing that notion.

Women need to protect their right to bear children without harassment from boyfriends, or parents, or employers, or professors, and no one should be able to tell women that they cannot bear their children, or that they should have to sacrifice their child in order to accomplish other things in life.

The Real-Life Impact of Liberals in Power

Very interesting look at employment numbers on a state-by-state basis. This article compares job growth since 2001 with the national average.

Total Blue-state employment growth has been only 3.3 percent during the current expansion, which began in November 2001, compared with the U.S. rate of 5.5 percent. Meanwhile, total Red-state employment growth has been 7.5 percent, more than double that of the Blue states.

Unsurprisingly, Michigan is dead last at -5%. But, more interesting is the fact the "Red" states (those voting for Pres. Bush in both 2000 and 2004) are doing much better than the "Blue" states. the Red states in the West are doing particularly well.

the labor market doesn't care who is in power, but the policies put in place by those who govern can either encourage or discourage employers, and this article makes a good case that liberal policies discourage job growth. (the situation in France and Germany being an extreme example)

Boys Adrift

National Review Online has an interview with a physician who has written an interesting book on some of the problems many boys and young men seem to have doing something constructive with their lives.

(I realize I have very little room to talk here, glass houses being what they are, but . . .)

Girls are achieving more than boys are these days. More girls graduate form high school, and many more graduate from college than do their male classmates.

One factor he blames - video games:

These new video games are so exciting, so realistic, so engaging, that many boys get addicted to them. They play them 10, 15, 20 hours a week. I very often hear of parties where the girls stand around talking with other girls, while the young men are in the next room playing Halo on the 55-inch flat screen or watching their buddies play. We’re seeing more and more young men who would rather play these video games rather than try to meet girls.

Anyway, food for thought certainly, especially for those of us raising boys. The doctor blames five factors for the increasing prevalence of "failure to launch" (quoting from www.boysadrift.com):

Video Games. Studies show that some of the most popular video games are disengaging boys from real-world pursuits.

Teaching Methods. Profound changes in the way children are educated have had the unintended consequence of turning many boys off school.

Prescription Drugs. Overuse of medication for ADHD may be causing irreversible damage to the motivational centers in boys’ brains.

Endocrine Disruptors. Environmental estrogens from plastic bottles and food sources may be lowering boys’ testosterone levels, making their bones more brittle and throwing their endocrine systems out of whack.

Devaluation of Masculinity. Shifts in popular culture have transformed the role models of manhood. Forty years ago we had Father Knows Best; today we have The Simpsons.

There Are Just No Words . . .

I'm reminded of the line from "Crocodile Dundee:"

"someone's put two Dunnies in here!"

Only now a Japanese company combines the two functions in one device, and they want Americans to buy it. Apparently 60% of Japanese homes have one of these. The company really can't understand why more American aren't interested.

I can enlighten them a bit. their device is designed to automatically clean one's backside using a nice warm flow of water. I don't know about everyone else, but when I stumble into the bathroom in the middle of the night and turn on the hot water, IT ISN'T HOT! Who would pay$5000 for a device that will shoot them in the *** with a jet of cold water in the middle of the night? Even if the device has a sensor to run the water till it's warm, who wants to wait 1-2 minutes to wipe and dry?

There are two types of American toilet-goers.

Type A likes to get in, sit down, get it out, get up, and get gone.
Type B likes to linger, maybe read a bit, think over the cares of the day, and so on.

Neither type has a use for this type of toilet. The Type A person has no time to wait for a shower and a blow-dry, and I (the type B) certainly don't want to be halfway through a good article in PC World when my toilet decides I'm done and attacks me from behind.

Our throne is one of the few things in life that is completely under our control, and we like it that way.

Communist Absurdity

The communist Chinese government has decreed that Buddhist monks cannot reincarnate without government permission. They have even set up a procedure monks must follow.

In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

This is consistent with the communist view of religion as "the opiate of the masses." Communists really believe that people are dumb enough to follow whatever procedure they concoct to stamp the spiritual out of life. Either that, or the PRC finally concluded "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," gave up trying to secularize Tibet and decided to become experts in reincarnation

This is, of course, all a ploy to weaken the influence of the Dalai Lama who has been an opponent of the Communist takeover of Tibet since the 1950s. Communists consistently underestimate the power of deeply held beliefs. Communism cannot replace religion because it doesn't have the power to truly change a human heart. There never have been any truly converted Communists. (Even Stalin was seen praying in church as the German army closed in on Moscow). Communism is just a vehicle to gain power. Its tenets cannot answer the basic questions of life in any remotely satisfying way -

"Where did I come from?" - Religion answers this "from God," Communism answers "Nowhere, but now you're here, you must serve the state."

"What is the purpose of life?" - Religion answers (LDS) "men are that they might have joy." Communism: "You are here to serve the state."

"What happens when I die?" - Religions have many answers to this (reincarnation, exhaltation, Nirvana) all more appealing than communism's offering "you stop serving the state and cease to exist." (P.S. if you fall out of favor, we'll help you cease to exist sooner, then deny you were ever born.)

And people wonder why I don't like trial law . . .

A man in West Virginia is suing McDonald's for $10 million over a drive-thru order mistake. He's allergic to cheese and mistakenly got a cheeseburger. He didn't bother to check the burger before he bit into it. His mother is also suing for reckless endangerment for having to drive him to the hospital.

A woman in Michigan is suing the makers of Starburst candies because they don't warn consumers about the dangers of the candies being "too chewy." Her lawyer just wants to make sure others avoid this danger.

A New Jersey man is suing Starbucks because his tea was too hot and the Starbucks employee didn't put the lid on right. His wife is also suing for losses due to his injury.

Thou shalt not covet . . .

Even though it's one of the ten commandments, I don't think people really pay attention to why it's so important not to covet. This article from NRO really struck me as deeply insightful. Jealousy and covetousness are certainly going to need to be overcome before we can claim to be "the pure in heart." some quotes:

We almost never discuss envy anymore. “One may admit to pride, avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, and laziness, and one may even boast of them,” Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora wrote 20 years ago in Egalitarian Envy. “There is only one capital sin no one admits to: envy. ... Its symbol ought to be a mask.” This is a shame; the most pathetic of the seven deadly sins is perhaps the most consequential.

Indeed, just look again on the 20th century. Envy turned Germany cruel. In Russia, the ideology of envy — socialism — likewise ran amok under the label Bolshevism and threatened to overrun the world. The consequences of envy run even deeper. It will never be known how many millennia man endured in misery and darkness under the moldering blanket of envy. Helmut Schoeck writes in his timeless masterpiece, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior, that whole societies, hobbled by envy, rejected innovation, and prosperity, preferring the arrested development of all to the advancement of the few.

Like the “scientific socialism” that concealed envy behind a slide rule, today’s liberals invoke social science as justification for their covetousness. In one famous study, a majority of people said they would rather make $50,000 if others earned $25,000 than earn $100,000 if others were making $200,000

[T]hese studies turn a vice into a virtue. With the exception of the self-esteem movement, which glorifies pride, it’s difficult to imagine another area where we so shamelessly tout a sin as the basis of public policy. All men lust in their hearts; shall we dole out concubines for those of us who can’t live like Hugh Hefner? Envy has its social utility, of course. Schoeck argues, along with Nietzsche, that envy helped hone our sense of justice. Fine. But America is supposed to be different, in part because unlike, say, Germany or Russia, America had no feudal past and hence lacked the historic breeding swamps of envy. America’s egalitarianism is supposed to be political and nothing more: No man is the involuntary servant of another. Beyond that, he is the captain of his self.

The man who orders a better meal than me has done no harm to me. And it is no man’s (or bureaucrat’s) job but my own to cool the fever of my futterneid.

The whole article is very insightful, I'd encourage you to read the whole thing. and let no one say that personal vice doesn't impact anyone else.