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Archive for February, 2012

A Las Vegas Scottish Ceilidh!

Posted in Arts, Living well, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

On Saturday I went to Las Vegas’ annual Scottish Ceilidh with two of my children.  As always, it was excellent and we all loved it. Performances included music and dance.  Music was mostly by a local staple, Desert Sky Pipes and Drums.  Here’s a clip of them doing their thing:   Most of the concert [...]

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When I Read the Learn’d Bloggers

Posted in Religion, tagged on February 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

With apologies to Walt Whitman:   WHEN I read the learn’d bloggers; When the assumptions, the speculations, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the insults and the grievances, to spread, magnify, and justify them; When I, sitting, read the critics, where they lectured with much applause on the Internet, How soon, [...]

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Official Bible Verses of This Blog?

Posted in Random, tagged , , on February 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Deuteronomy 10:1– At that time the Lord said unto me, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and come up unto me into the mount, and make thee an ark of wood.   1 Chronicles 22:2– And David commanded to gather together the strangers that were in the land of Israel; and [...]

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How Good Are Democrats at Helping Cities?

Posted in Politics and Society, tagged , , , , , , , on February 25, 2012 | 11 Comments »

Consider the chart below:    City Has had only Democratic mayors since Last time a Republican was mayor Detroit 1962 1962 Washington, D.C. 1961 1883 New Orleans 1936 1872   Of course these examples are cherry picked, but they certainly do demonstrate some dangerous myopia.  One could argue that there are plenty of cities historically [...]

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Where Did All Your New Money Come From?

Posted in Politics and Society, tagged , , , on February 23, 2012 | 5 Comments »

Last year I read this article about the many standard devices that are combined into a smartphone, and I considered getting one.  As I shopped around, though, a scary fact slapped me–while the initial cost of a phone could be reckoned with, the monthly fees would be impossible. Articles such as here, here, and here [...]

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So You Want to Make Dead Mormons Gay…

Posted in Religion, tagged , , , on February 22, 2012 | 3 Comments »

A satirical web site has gone up inviting users to help the “many Mormons throughout history [who] have died without having known the joys of homosexuality.”  You enter a name, click a button, and the deceased will then somehow have the chance denied them in mortality. I think this is a great idea.  Seriously. The [...]

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Jews, Mitt Romney, and Baptism for the Dead

Posted in Religion, tagged , , , on February 19, 2012 | 6 Comments »

This week, Nobel prize-winning author of Night Elie Wiesel asked the LDS Church to stop doing proxy baptisms in its temples for Jewish Holocaust victims.  Apparently, an errant church member erroneously entered such a name into our database, though no baptism was actually performed, as that would have violated a church policy that already bars [...]

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How Scripture Study Counteracts the Negative Effects of Sensory Overload

Posted in Religion, tagged , , on February 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

From a great essay at  Segullah: Input always travels the path of least resistance. So the second time we see the new image, it will travel the same route. And before long, the new neural pathway has been stimulated enough to “desire” of itself continued activation. A habit is born. After that, when the brain [...]

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The Libertarian Internet: Wikipedia, Craigslist, and Ebay

Posted in Politics and Society, tagged , , , , , on February 11, 2012 | 8 Comments »

The recent kerfuffle over SOPA got me thinking again about how relatively free the Internet is–not in terms of cost, but as a beacon of freedom. Consider three of the online world’s greatest success stories, Wikipedia, Craigslist, and Ebay.  Each exists with minimal interference by the managing authority–those who run each site merely set up [...]

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Beautiful Basketball

Posted in Living well, tagged , , , , , on February 10, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

An amazing lump-in-your-throat sports story from Yahoo! It was nearly midnight on Wednesday. Doc Rivers had to go. He needed to hightail it back to Boston, where the Los Angeles Lakers are waiting to take on Rivers’ Boston Celtics on Thursday night. But that reality could wait a sweet moment longer. Right now, Doc was [...]

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Highly Recommended Blog: Feeling Good Through Food

Posted in Living well, tagged , , , , on February 10, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Last week I found, courtesy of Facebook, a new-ish blog run by a friend from church.  She’s chronicling her family’s efforts to maintain healthy eating habits, but this little blog is already much more than that.  Each entry gives easy recipes, yes, but the site itself also houses advice on where to find affordable whole [...]

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The Simpsons and the Nevada GOP Caucus

Posted in Politics and Society, tagged , , , on February 9, 2012 | 4 Comments »

In a classic fifth season episode of The Simpsons, we see brief glimpses of conventions held by the two major political parties.  The Republican convention is a scene of unmitigated evil.  The Democratic convention is shown as a bunch of goofy losers who can’t do anything right. If those stereotypes held true, then Nevada’s Republican [...]

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Reviewed and Recommended: Cloak, by James Gough

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , , , , on February 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

I have a secret.  It’s James Gough’s young adult fantasy novel Cloak.  It’s a terrific read and a solid entry in a trending genre but, thanks to Gough being a new author and Cloak being put out by a small press, you’ve never heard of it.  It’s a secret I’d love to have more people [...]

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More Stephen King-Inspired Media About Teens

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , , on February 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

A few days ago, I noted that the plot for the movie Chronicle is very similar to the plot for Carrie.  That reminded me of another similarity. I read The Hunger Games a couple of years ago and really liked it.  But the basic template was not new. A tyrannical government in a future dystopia [...]

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Public Schools Teaching Ethics?

Posted in Education on February 7, 2012 | 2 Comments »

In 1938, a Mormon apostle spoke at a training for teachers of religion classes in the church, and asked if their job was merely to instruct students in good behavior.  He said: The teaching of a system of ethics to the students is not a sufficient reason for running our seminaries and institutes. The great [...]

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