Funny Blog

The job hunt into the vast world of corporate law has made me appreciate this a lot more. It is pretty funny and he also wrote a book that I hear is good.

http://www.anonymouslawyer.blogspot.com/

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Into the Archives: The Unanswered Question on Advertised Persecution

Working for the federal government this summer seems to have drained all of the residual creativity that my first year of law school so generously left behind. Go figure. I was looking at old posts today (pre-Sheldon, Chris M.G., et al. - was there ever really such a time?) and noticed that this one never recieved any comments; most likely a sign that it was just a crappy post. But I liked it, and the question still bothers me, so I thought maybe LYMA v. 2.0 could take a crack at it:

Since most of you aren't in New York, you probably have never heard of Falun Dafa. Now I'm sure they are nice people, and from what I understand, they have a good cause. But they seem to have taken over Manhattan sidewalks with their "demonstrations." At the core, these groups usually consist of five or six normal looking people sitting peacefully in meditation. That's fine, and if that were all, I'd have no problem. But surrounding these folks are usually ten or so other people charged with acting out the Chinese government's current methods of torturing the followers of this practice. To compliment this troupe of budding actors, Falun Dafa has chosen to litter the area with incredibly graphic pictures of the flesh wounds and body burns generously handed out by Chinese authorities. This afternoon, while I was walking to lunch thinking about the pleasures of acquatic pesticides and how they may or may not kill lobsters, I was confronted with one of these disturbing reinactments. Needless to say, the whole thing just wierded me out. If meditation is your thing and you want converts, hey, tell me about meditation, but I'm not sure anyone ever joined a movement based on pity alone.

So this led me to another thought. A lot of groups point at persecution as a sign of the rightness of their cause. The early Christians did it; Jews do it; Mormons do it; Republicans do it; African-Americans do it. The list could go on. But the idea that persecution lends credibility to your movement is just a false one. I imagine that the Klan could claim a good bit of "persecution" these days, and I'm pretty sure their movement isn't too credible.

My question is this: If past persecution remains in the past, why bring it up? Why should LDS people even worry about the fact that there was an "extermination order" in Missouri, or that the United States government sent troops in 1857 to occupy Utah? I see a big difference between remembering the past so it doesn't repeat itself and remembering the past so we can all feel sorry for how bad we had it. I'm sure the Falun Daufa people are attempting (in an incredibly roundabout way) to enact change within China as much as they are looking for converts, but how do you guys think this applies in other circumstances?

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Summertime....

...and the livin' is easy...... or at least it is supposed to be according to the song. In a sad and strange turn of events, I, who used to LOVE summer, have come to really not enjoy it at all. I think this is due to the event of WORK, which makes me think that should I ever get a real job, it should be teaching so I can have the Summer off.

There is so much that can be done during the summer and I have done almost NONE of it. We have a park right behind our apartment. Have i ever gone outside and tossed a ball around or just walked outside to enjoy the trees and grass ( if you can call what they grow here "grass")? I haven't even been to a barbque!

I did, however, get to go on a summer vacation ( Thank the Lord Almighty). With so many of my co-workers gone on vacation I have had nothing to do, for let's see here....close to 4 MONTHS now.... and I am NOT a HAPPY CAMPER at work... but that's a completely different story.

I went home to good ol' Idaho. It was FABULOUS!!! I remember thinking when we moved out here to "big city-land" that big cities had their advantages.... I even remembered some from Japan, but after returning home to Idaho- for the life of me, I CAN"T REMEMBER WHAT THEY ARE!

Is it the smokestacks that I have to walk next to everyday on my way to work? No.....
Is it the awful customer service that is EVERYwhere? no......
Maybe it's the rude drivers on the road? or the lack of any real geographic beauty in the area? nah......


Idaho was wonderful!! It was clean and quiet. There were mountains and trees!! and COLOR. Purple mountains and fields of green and yellow and purple flowers....In big city land I feel like I live in Black and White. It's kind of like in the movie "Runaway Bride" when Ike (from NY) and Maggie ( from the country) get married. All the people from Ike's side of the family are dressed in black from head to toe and are talking on cell phones. On Maggie's side everyone is wearing colorful clothing and talking to each other.

My family moved into a new house that has quite a bit of land around it. The people down the street own llamas ( no Napolean Dynamite jokes, please :) There's a rooster that crows by it every morning and you can hear the cows mooing not too far away. Dont' get me wrong- my parent's don't live in podunk town- Just on the outskirts of a fairly good sized city. The only stench I had to deal with was the skunk at the end of the road, who my little sister has named "Charlie" and who endearingly lets his presence there be known fairly regularly.

Maybe I'm just weird, but I LOVE that. And as I sit here in my rut at work and try not to get teary from thinking how great it was to be home and how much it sucks to be back in big-city land, if any of you can remind me why big cities have their perks- or what YOU like about them, please feel free!!!!

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When is it unethical to intentionally walk a batter?

Ok, it's bottom of the 9th, two outs, your team is ahead 3-2. There is a runner on third. At bat, the other team's best hitter. On deck, the worst hitter. Do you:

A) Try to strike him out?

B) Intentionally walk him?

C) Bean the sucker in the head?

Answer: B - You don't want to pitch to him, he'll get a hit and win the game. You don't want to bean him, if you miss that could mean the tying run steals home. It's simple. You walk him and take your chances with the other team's worst hitter.

Now let's change the situation up a little bit. Let's say you have the exact same situation, but it involves 10 year-olds playing in their league's championship game. And lets pretend just for fun, that the batter on deck that will hit if you walk their best hitter just happens to be recovering from cancer. What do you do in that situation? Do you still tell your pitcher go for the intentional walk?

Needless to say, the poor Dad who was the coach of that team did just that. He saw the best hitter walk to the mound, the cancer survivor in the on deck circle, and he went for the win. Part of me thinks that's horrible, part of me wonders if I wouldn't have done the same thing.

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Herb and his friends

This is our new Betta fish Herb. We got him for my wife's birthday last week. An interesting thing I learned about Betta fish as I prepared to buy him is that they don't like other Betta fish. In fact if you hold a mirror up to them they try to fight the reflection. I thought this might be an interesting thing to try once or twice when we got the fish, however I have since realized that fish tanks are made out of glass. Glass reflects images. So poor herb spends all of his time either trying to fight the sides of his aquarium or cowering in the roman columns that decorate his cage in order to avoid the "other fish". I still think it is a better life than at the pet store in a three inch jar.

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So You Think You Can Not Get Kicked in the Crotch

A friend (to protect his anonanymity) and I were having a discussion about the fox dancing reality show "So You Think You Can Dance" (and yes I am deeply ashamed). We had a little difference of opinion when it comes to the LDS contestant (after some research I discovered that three of the final eight were actuall LDS, crap). My friend is of the opinion that he always wants mormons to do well because of the brotherhood that we should have for each other and he really wants Benji to win. I feel like just because someone is mormon doesn't necessarily make me want them to take over their respective world, in fact I would rather not have all of America associate me with this particular show or with performance dancing. Personal bias admitted, I think that dancing for competition is really lame, even a step below figure skating. At best I don't care how he does. How about you?

I did have an idea that would make the show (and all TV for that matter) a lot better though, a designated crotch kicker/face puncher. Anytime I see someone do or say something that I think is stupid, someone runs onto stage and POW! Of course you would have to change up when and where the kicker showed up to keep up the element of surprise, but with all of the reality TV out there he or she could rotate shows at random to keep up the mystery.

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Utah's Porn/Porno/Pornography Problem Revisited

In a recent comment Sheldon implied that Salt Lake sits near the top of the Google Trends list for places with the highest ratio of persons searching the word "pornography." With google's authoritative results before my eyes, I suddenly realized that my biannual eye-rollings at the General Conference talks on the subject may have, in fact, been out of place. Not that I ever disagreed with the concept: I thought (and think) that porn is awful stuff...degrading, destructive, etc. But I guess I just couldn't imagine that it was that big of a problem for most LDS people. (I know, I know....watchmen on the tower...you're right, ok!!)

But having dug into this whole Google Trends thing a little more, I'm not so sure that the Mormon pornography epidemic is what it seems. Check out these two Google Trends searches on variants of pornography: porn and porno. In both of these lists, Salt Lake City is nowhere to be found.

What does this mean? Well I'm no expert on porn-search terminology, but I suspect that there are at least a few possibilities. The first is that a majority of Salt Lakers don't grow up with the same exposure to pornography as do people in other areas (by exposure I don't mean that they don't have equal access; I just imagine that it's not generally assumed that teenage and college-aged boys will be into porn). Due to this lack of exposure, those who do choose to access it may be more likely to use the "official" term, the word they ironically hear from the pulpit.

Now if you assume that the majority of porn-searchers out there don't use that term, it makes sense that Salt Lake heads the field in "pornography" searches. If the vast majority of people looking for pornography don't type in "pornography" to search for it, then any place that does use the term to search out porn, even if the number of searchers are dramatically fewer, will lead the field. Again I'm not an expert in the area, but I think that this assumption makes sense for a few reasons. First, if you're after naked bodies, why take the time and effort to use the proper term when the shortened version will bring the exact same results? Second, I suspect that most people who discuss porn (are there any?) don't use the word pornography in their everyday conversation. To me, using the entire word "pornography" comes across as victorian, more like the word you would use to talk about it in a sociological study or in a church sermon. Finally, the three other cities that beat out Salt Lake are all in India where English is not the first language. I admit that this could be way off from reality, but I can imagine Indian teenagers quickly skimming their Hindi-English dictionaries so they can look at naked american girls and finding the word "pornography" before their faces.

The second option here is that Salt Lake City does indeed have a problem with pornography. This conclusion obviously depends on the assumption that people search porn/porno/pornography at relatively similar rates.

As is so often the case, I imagine that the truth probably lies somewhere between these extremes, that General Conference talks on the subject are given so often for a good reason and that Mormons, like a lot of people, struggle with encroaching temptation.

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Barak's Call to Renewal

Here are a few excerpts from a recent speech by Barak Obama. I won't detract from it by commenting, except to say that it is nice to know that there's at least one Democrat out there who gets it.

"For some time now, there has been plenty of talk among pundits and pollsters that the political divide in this country has fallen sharply along religious lines. Indeed, the single biggest "gap" in party affiliation among white Americans today is not between men and women, or those who reside in so-called Red States and those who reside in Blue, but between those who attend church regularly and those who don't."

"Conservative leaders have been all too happy to exploit this gap, consistently reminding evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design. Democrats, for the most part, have taken the bait. "

"At best, we may try to avoid the conversation about religious values altogether, fearful of offending anyone and claiming that - regardless of our personal beliefs - constitutional principles tie our hands. At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word "Christian" describes one's political opponents, not people of faith. "

"This religious tendency is not simply the result of successful marketing by skilled preachers or the draw of popular mega-churches. In fact, it speaks to a hunger that's deeper than that - a hunger that goes beyond any particular issue or cause. "

"Each day, it seems, thousands of Americans are going about their daily rounds - dropping off the kids at school, driving to the office, flying to a business meeting, shopping at the mall, trying to stay on their diets - and they're coming to the realization that something is missing. They are deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough. They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives. They're looking to relieve a chronic loneliness, a feeling supported by a recent study that shows Americans have fewer close friends and confidants than ever before. And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them - that they are not just destined to travel down that long highway towards nothingness."

"If we truly hope to speak to people where they're at - to communicate our hopes and values in a way that's relevant to their own - then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse. Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome - others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends. "

"In other words, if we don't reach out to evangelical Christians and other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, then the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons and Alan Keyeses will continue to hold sway."

"More fundamentally, the discomfort of some progressives with any hint of religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in moral terms. Some of the problem here is rhetorical - if we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice. "

"Imagine Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address without reference to "the judgments of the Lord." Or King's I Have a Dream speech without references to "all of God's children." Their summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible, and move the nation to embrace a common destiny. Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not just rhetorical, though. Our fear of getting "preachy" may also lead us to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent social problems. After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten point plan. They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness - in the imperfections of man."

"Solving these problems will require changes in government policy, but it will also require changes in hearts and a change in minds. I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturers' lobby - but I also believe that when a gang-banger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels somebody disrespected him, we've got a moral problem. There's a hole in that young man's heart - a hole that the government alone cannot fix."

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Tropical Storm Chris heads for Leeward Islands

It appears some members of LYMA may be due for some notoriety.

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