Fiannan

This is really an interesting issue. For some of us it irks us to think of spying but for others it's a question of protecting one's child. The way I see it though, if one has cable TV one can opt out of stations that contain porn -- I really wanted to subscribe to a movie station when my wife and I changed our cable service but the movie station plays explicite porn from mid-night to 1:30am. Why worry about what the little ones are doing if they wake up in the middle of the night and happen to turn the TV on? The computer is a whole different story. One can access anything, and I mean that quite literally, on the net (much of it for free). Within 5 seconds (the time it would take to google the term and find the links) you can watch an outstanding LDS video like Joseph, Prophet of the Restoration or you can watch an Islamic terrorist group behead a kdnapped victim. You can look up interesting graphics of the human body that only a while back were only available at medical schools or you can view Japanese porn sites that might make Hugh Hefner blush. There is absolutely no way you can block sites -- I mean, as I have stated earlier you can bypass most net censoring devices by typing in a foreign word to get to porn sites from that country. That's just one of the simplest. A few days ago I was talking to a non-member guy who was involved in an activity along with my son. The teen knows I am LDS and asked if it was proper for the LDS girl who he went out with for a first date to have wanted to spend hours making out in her car. I merely asked him how he would feel if he had a 17 year old daughter doing that sort of thing and he nodded and completely understood the innapropriatness of the action without too much lecture. Ask your sons and daughters how they would feel if a family member or close friend was starring in a porn video on the net and how that would make them feel. If they have much empathy that might be enough to make them question looking at such things and get rid of the need to monitor them all the time.

Isn't Utah one of the least obese states in the US? As for sex, I am not sure what constitutes an unhealthy view. If people feel it is absolutely wrong to have sex outside of marriage then I would not call that unhealthy. As for anti-depressants, that has been argued for years without any conclusive evidence that the LDS lifestyle contributes to depression (I'd actually have to say that perhaps the high rates of such prescriptions is based on some members acceptance of "great living through pharmachology" viewpoint while perhaps the high rates are also due to non-members and inactives trying to cope with the LDS culture of Utah).

Nobody has a right to question what kind of girl you find attractive.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Housing Finance: Why True Privatization Is Good Public Policy October 7, 2004 Policy Analysis no. 528 I would like to point out the date this insightful article was published by a right wing organization. Too bad that the infotainment industry (sorry, the United States news stations not including Fox) would never point out that conservatives were questioning this years ago and liberals were making accusations against them for doing so.

Mr. Spock would agree but I cannot link to his web site. But here is a news article: 'Mr. Spock' Makes Foray Into Art, Leonard Nimoy Photography Depicts Female Jewish Divinity - CBS News

Depends -- is there an alternative rock station that plays goth metal? Just got this group's CD -- pretty good! My kids are requesting it for the car. YouTube - UNSUN - Whispers UnSun Need to pick this one up to our my 7 year old will do a jihad on me: Epica -- song, "Never Enough". My 8 year old really wants to learn how to sing in this musical style. No objections.

With the Democrats in charge we can easily expect the "fiarness doctrine" to be promoted so Glenn Beck and other conservatives will be silinced by the Reid and Pelosi Politburo.

Lewis and Clark hated the taste of salmon so they traded with Indian tribes for dog meat. In fact, it seems dogs were an important part of their diet while they were in the Pacific Northwest.

The really bad bathrooms are found on sleeper trains. When you first start out you just have a hole in the floor as a toilet, surrounded by some metal to stand on but they often put carpet in the rest of the bathroom. So you can just imagine what it's like after several hours and with the way trains can pull from one side to the next when traveling. Best to schedule a fast when using this form of transportation.

One wonders how the internet has caused this sort of thing to mushroom.

In the markets you can get entire toads on a stick as well as rabbit on a stick.

I can understand that -- people feel like they are eating their pet. One time I was with someone who said they would eat cat, but not dog, because they didn't like cats but had always had dogs for pets. Another time someone thought all the talk of dog meat was just some isolated thing in China but we were on our way to a fancy Peking duck restaraunt just after getting situated at our hotel and the first thing she saw practically was a street vender preparing dog kebobs. She didn't throw up then, but she did when she went to use a public bathroom for the first time.

Oh come on, the tax money is there for the grabs and with Hussein Obama, Dirty Harry Ried and Nancy Pelosi in charge the atmosphere is like when Willie Wonka releases the children to eat all the candy they want when they come to the chocolate river.

Ah, the China I am so used to!!!!! YouTube - Dog for Dinner This video really captures the atmosphere of wandering around the food establishments of any Chinese city (maybe witht he exception of Hong Kong). One thing I am lloking forward to is that someone going with me soon has never been to China and has never tasted dog -- but she says she is up to it. When I was in Ping Yow I was not aware dog was a traditional Chinese birthday meal. What a coincidence that my son ordered boiled dog -- and ordered a second helping on his birthday. I prefer the stir fry version.

I just have a little longer to return and sample the great tastes of China!!!

No it is not condemning of people who take medications, it is sound advice -- I said, after all, that medications may be necessary at times but it's best to take a wellness approach and try to reduce the need for the medication. We should not condemn or be too quick to pass judgement but if you go to your doctor and he prescribes medicines to help you relax without giving you suggestions for natural relaxation (i.e. exercise, meditation, etc.) then there's something wrong. If a person smokes a couple of cigareetes a day and is obese, and their doctor doesn't tell them that obesity will take more years of life off you than smoking a couple of packs a day (yet he asks you to stop smoking two individual cigarettes) then again something is wrong. Again, we should not judge someone if they are LDS and are on medications or judge someone LDS who has to drive a truck and takes caffeine pills to stay awake. All I am saying is that becoming too dependent on pills is dangerous -- and with doctors giving our prescriptions for powerful mind-altering drugs to little kids nowadays for conditions that are suspect at best our society really neds to re-evaluate what the costs and benefits are to our increasingly drug dependent culture.

It is fascinating how the religions of Abraham (Jews, Christians and Muslims) all have similar versions of what will happen. Jews believe there will be a huge battle and the Jewish messiah will come and they will win -- conquering all the earth's people and from what I understand becoming a master class over these people. Christians believe in a huge battle where most of Israel is destroyed but that Jsus comes and saves the day. Muslims believe that Christians and Muslims unite to destroy the unbelievers (the anti-Christ will be powerful at this time) but then Jesus returns, tells the Christians to convert to Islam, half of the Christians refuse and go to war with Islam and, at some point Jesus kills the anti-Christ and his elite Jewish army and, depending on interpretation, all Jews (or just the bad ones) and pigs will be terminated. Correct me if I am wrong in any of these since end-times prophesy is not necessry my main study.

Medication is necessary at times but I think we should try to find as many options that are natural as possible. I know someone who is overweight by 20 kilograms and she has a problem with portions of her foot that have torn. She definently needs to use pain medications but if she would loose the excess weight that would be like taking a 20 kilo backpack off your shoulders -- which might cause the problem to heal or at least get far less severe. I think we are way too into the drug thing -- no doubt due to the influence of huge drug-making corporations wining and dining doctors, lobbying in congress and even the ads we now see on TV that would not have been allowed in the early 1990s.

I absolutely abhore the notion of serial dating -- it smacks of serial monogamy and is absolutely not what I will promote in the values of my daughters. There was a tape circulating a few years back in the Church and I think it was being listened to by a lot of YA and teens. It was promoting the virtues of meeting lots and lots of guys and exploring around until you found the right one. The problem is, then you get kind of a "Sex and the City" view of relationships and you never actually put the effort into discovering if you REALLY are compatible with someone. To learn if the other person is the right one you need to learn about them (ggod and bad) and evaluate them -- you cannot do that with the "I'm with one guy this week and another one the next.". Believe me, my teenage sons (and their friends) have a term for such girls (particularly the ones in Church) and I'd better not use it here or this may get bumped into the over 18 discussion forum. Good guys don't want to date such girls and who could blame them especially when there are plenty of great girls (members and non-members alike) with more wholesome attitudes on life? Now of course we have to define what is dating. If dating is going together, alone, with a member of the opposite sex to go jogging, biking or shopping then I guess I have been on dates throughout my marriage. Neither I, nor my wife, would see this as dating nor would most people I know so it's kosher. When dating is occuring that is when you have the expectation that a relationship may develop and you start sharing intimate parts of your life with the other person. I would teach my daughters that you should be friends with someone and then begin dating them if you are interested in them and you already know what kind of person they are. Then again, my kids are Swedish and the Swedish mentality on dating (that my wife instills) is WAY more wholesome than the revolving door attitudes now prevelant in the USA.

As long as the women are built like Rosie O'Donnel then maybe...

Agreed. And why am I reminded of the scene in A Clockwork Orange where Alex's old gang buddies have become cops but still have the ame attitudes as before? I like the option given to many criminals in WW2 -- enlist or go to jail. Why not allow violent offenders to join the military and get that violence channeled towards the enemy? Maybe they can do some good and it allows a kid who hasn't perpetrated against others to not have to be on the front lines? "Servie means citizenship" to quote from a fun movie from the 1990s.

One should not discount the cultural effect of MTV. Up until the mid 1980s I believe the typical fashion of dancing was to pair up and dance with a partner -- if interested in the other person you would try to start a conversation, then follow them back and see where that went (the eventual goal, at a church dance, to get their phone number). That has changed -- even in regards to church dances. I believe, due to MTV (please check out the segment on this at PBS Frontline -- "The Merchants of Cool") young people now imitate the vouyeristic world of the camera as it relates to the individual. People dance, not so much to socialize, but to show off -- as if they were some dancer on MTV performing for the audience. If your goal is to NOT relate to the other person, to learn who they are and maybe form a bond, then it becomes a contest to get attention -- much like those MTV spring break specials, except one does not strip off. One does have to sympathize with one of the students featured in the OP article -- the norm taught by TV is provocative and highly sexually charged but many young people get the impression this is how you are supposed to dance. True, dancing is, after all, a socially acceptable form of fertility courtship but one should not feel like they have entered a Roman orgy when they go to a high school dance, or especially a church dance. There should be standards set and followed.

I love the mountain areas around there (Ocoho?) for camping around Prineville. Are you coming 80 from Idaho or over 126 through Sisters? They usually keep 126 pretty clear due to Hodoo and other resorts as well as it's a link between the Willamette Valley and Sisters/Bend/Prineville. Visiting family in Prineville?

You know, the Dhali Lahma (too tired to check the spelling right now) said that if someone breaks into your house to hurt you then shooting them is totally okay.

Maybe while women are motivated a lot by emotions men are motivated by wanting a beautiful wife so their children will be beautiful. See? Men are really the caring ones -- wanting what's best for their future offspring.