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IED and cell phones in the same post. Time to get in touch with my contacts at DHS.

16 months post open heart surgery and I feel AMAZING! I had no idea that I wasn't feeling well.....go figure. Life is pretty much like nothing bad ever happened and I am back to the gym again and doing whatever I want.....maybe even better, My LDL cholesterol is 60....weird and I had one 100% blocked artery and three more that were nearly 100% blocked. Anyways, I am going to post more about the whole experience from cardiac arrest to surgery and recovery. Maybe it will be useful to someone... The irony is that I had been away from the forum for a year or so and posted "I'm back" the night before the heart attack.About 6-7 hours after posting "I'm back" I was in the ER flat lining. Should have stayed gone....

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765683196/LDS-Church-announces-3-new-missions-2016-mission-president-assignments.html The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced 168 new mission president assignments, effective July 2016. The Church has also announced the creation of three new missions. The Democratic Republic of the Congo Mbuji-Mayi Mission will be created from a division of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Kinshasa and Democratic Republic of the Congo Lubumbashi missions. The Nigeria Owerri Mission will be created from a division of the Nigeria Port Harcourt Mission. The new missions will become effective on July 1. The Vietnam Hanoi Mission will be created from a division of the Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission during the first half of the year.

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned... I made an effort to at least skim everything to avoid repetition, but you know how it is sometimes There are a couple of really big practical problems with the idea of a rape exception... How do you define such an exception? Would the rapist have to already have been convicted of the crime in order to enable the victim to obtain an abortion? Criminal proceedings can very easily drag out for years - far beyond the 9 month gestational period for a human being.If an accusation is all it takes, then we could expect to see an upswing in accusations of rape, even if there was no such crime committed in most of these cases. The accusation alone being enough to obtain the abortion, we would see mens' reputations ruined by those who are willing to take that approach to get out of pregnancy. So while I do understand the desire to create an exception that might be more compassionate toward the victim of a rape, the simple fact is that it sounds a lot better than the reality would be, and would create a new crop of problems. So it's either have rape victims unable to get an abortion (which may be necessary but tragic, given the perspective that the unborn child shouldn't be made to suffer for what their father did) or make abortions universally available to cover all of these cases (given the perspective that the emotional damage to the victim outweighs the moral problems associated with the abortion).

Great point. We do love our labels in this culture, don't we? Maybe we're so tempted to do so because our lives are always inundated with information that we sort of need to try and tie things off in little packets in order to make them easier to process. Homophobe, cop-hater, addict, moonbat, thug, nutjob, zealot, science denier, commie... So easy to pigeonhole people and problems into little boxes where we can just use habitual responses to them... But those labels rarely apply in any useful sense, and things are so much more nuanced. I don't know how to tell the difference between a genuine porn addict and someone who just has a bad habit, but I think we can definitely agree that avoiding the bad habit in the first place makes the question of addiction meaningless.

I agree 100% with this statement. Christianity vilifies porn. Rightly so in my opinion, by the same token Christians, because the tolerance level is so low are very quick to throw out the addiction label. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Priesthood holder X views porn 1-2x a week ( a bad habit) we tell him he is addicted. Priesthood holder X say wow I'm addicted to porn and the effort to quit or change the bad habit goes away. Why because he is an addict and can't help himself or so we tell him. No one should look at this stuff it is terrible, terrible stuff, but we shouldn't throw the "A" word around so freely either.

Nobody works on my brakes but me. OTOH, there are plenty of "extra hands" tasks that are pretty hard to screw up in most car repairs. (Even a brake repair; much easier with someone else to mash the pedal.)

It's been too long since I played D&D (15-20 years I'd imagine). I played by the rules as found in an old red manual that almost looked like a magazine in size. I think it might have been before AD&D, but I don't know for sure. I can dig around the attic some time and see if I can find it.... easier method perhaps - the book looks like this. Anyway, I found I was much more fascinated by the GURPS system of leveling up individual skills and attributes based on usage rather than the hack and slash grind to level up and mysteriously become better at everything - especially things you're character's never done. I also like the added realism of not increasing HP. I mean when your character gets stabbed through heart while sleeping he should die, not laugh it off as the dagger only did 12 HP damage against the Level X character with 73 HP. But that's just me, I did enjoy D&D as well, just once I experienced GURPS there was no going back really. I haven't played GURPS in a decade either though, so there you have it.

I'm going to push on this a bit. Babies are being butchered inside the clinic, from the pro-life perspective. Young teenage girls are being told it's right for their future, right for their family's reputation, right for freeing their boyfriend from responsibility...then, when guilt settles in, they're told it's THEIR choice. Never mind, that it was done for everyone else. In the mean time, the young bio-dads are told they have not say in the matter, no responsibility (other than, perhaps, to help pay the blood money), and we wonder why they act so irresponsibly. Sometimes I wonder if we know more righteous indignation, rather than less. We're taught to judge nothing, be angry at nothing, not to get our danders up. Yes, cool and soft-spoken comes across as dignified, sophisticated, respectable and well-bred. However, this is an issue where some good, old-fashioned Jeremiah-like shouting might be in order. Rather than being an issue of control, it might be one of being able to sense the heart of God.

At the same time I was addicted to porn, I was also addicted to heavy duty narcotics. I took nearly 1000mg of morphine at a time. I did this for eleven years. I came off the narcotics cold turkey. The rush one gets from looking at porn is extremely similar to the rush from drugs. And, just like the drug addict, the porn addict needs more and more to get the same effect. Porn addiction is all about the new and different. He quickly gets tired of the same filth and needs something new and different to satisfy his craving. This is why a man into porn is always looking around at women when out in public. He needs that constant stimulation to keep from going into withdrawal. A drug addict or alcoholic coming off their drug of choice can stay away from the people and places where they bought their drug and partied. A porn addict's drug is walking around in front of him everywhere he goes. This is why I tell men with porn problems to stay away from the TV, movies, and avoid the beach, pool, and malls. You can't control what is out in public, but you can avoid the places that tempt you. You can also not bring it into your home.

First time in a movie theater in over 5 years - I just saw Star Wars tonight with my daughter, AWESOME! Need to go see it again.

When the medical team brought me back....all I could think about is what happened to the music.