MarginOfError
-
Posts
6228 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
19
Posts posted by MarginOfError
-
-
By all means...Let's stop everything, everyone is doing to just to make you happy....
:roflmbo:See, now you're catching on. Now if we can convince a few more billion people that that's what we should do, the world will be in good shape. ;-)
-
apologies in advance...I'm kind of talking to two people at once here.
It will take time for people to realize just how good of a President George Bush was.
Funny, people said that about Jimmy Carter, too. Still waiting.
Unfortunately for you, Bush's legacy is going to be put in the history books as, "Well, he wasn't Gore, and he wasn't Kerry." When that's the best you can say about the guy, you really don't have much going for you. (by the way, Skip, lay off all the secret combination stuff. Your rantings make it pretty hard to take you seriously)
With all due respect, I'll have to disagree with you on some things. But don't worry, I'm also going to disagree with Skip on a lot of things. You both seem to be fairly fanatical in your opinions.
You are correct when you say that we have not had as many attacks on American soil thanks to our troops being in Iraq and Afghanistan. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. If you move the war onto the enemy's home court, of course there will be less action on your own--that result is arithmetical. Now please note that I never said I was opposed to being in this war, but opposed to how it is being managed. If we're going to sit over there in a mismanaged, politically minded war, then our troops really aren't doing anything than serving as decoys to satisfy our need for safety. Now, I don't know about you, but I have a big problem with the idea of our troops routinely getting killed simply so that you and I won't. However, if they want to go in and fight this like a war, crush the enemy, and seize all their assets, and accept the inevitability of civilian casualties (you know, like you're supposed to do in war), then I'm all for it. So, I see two solutions to this problem that would make me happy:
1) Realize that under current management we're not going to succeed over there and pull out our troops, thereby letting the place devolve into mayhem.
2) Decide to fight this like a war, and go in and win.
Either solution works for me, so I really don't care which gets implemented...but the status quo simply won't do.
Next, yes, it would be nice if people realized that a lot of the terrorism stuff is something that could have been handled (and should have) during the Clinton administration. They dropped the ball. But the fact that Clinton made that really bad decision doesn't change the fact that the whole thing has been poorly managed under the current administration.
-
I do see the advantages, however. If it were me, I'd choose one wife who likes to cook, one who likes to take care of children, one who likes to clean, one who's very good with tools, and one who has a lucrative career. Then I'd spend my days playing golf and fishing.
-
We're never going to know all the facts about what went on over there. Intelligence reports are kept classified for a reason. However, I am acquainted with a young man who has worked in intelligence on some of the lowest levels (he collects intelligence from operatives in the field). He told me that there was there was ample justificatin for war.
That being said, the way this war has been handled has been frighteningly incompetent. Ever since the capture of Hussein it's felt like American involvement in Iraq has been influenced by public opinion. No one is being helped by this now.
As for disrespecting our 'wonderful president,' I think wonderful is a long stretch. Bush's presidency has proven two things to me: 1) Anyone in this country can rise to be president, and 2) not everyone is suited to be president. I'm very much looking forward for a change come January.
-
Of course guys are going for the 'trophy wife.' But a lot of that has to do with the structure of our dating system. First you meet, then you small talk, then you go on a few dates, and then it gets serious. When you go through those steps, your criteria for selecting a potential mate start of physical.
Very often, the guys that end up marrying someone who doesn't fit the accepted standard of beauty are the guys that developed friendships with these women before they developed romantic interests.
Then there's the fact that in our subculture we pressure our young men to get married before they've developed the emotional maturity to look beyond physical features.
-
The dash likely means that the building is on a corner. The building is 16 Maloohtensky Prospekt, but building 1 on the cross street. In any case, that was my experience with the addresses in that area.
I'm not sure what the second line means. It's most likely internal to the building. Write it down and take it with you, and hopefully you can get some help from a kind person there (avoid the babusya, they'll confuse you more than help).
-
[Q] So unitl polygamy comes back we can still learn from women's examples in our past. [/Q]
until?? Are you making plans already? ;-)
-
Careful...I know what you are saying in your post (and I like it) but don't fall into the society's (Satan's) trap of making it sound that these things are in some way inferior to the "Sex and the City" lifestyle.
You make a good point, and I apologize for leaving that implication. In the interest of full disclosure, my wife wants to do nothing but cooks, sew, clean, cross stitch, and maybe learn to garden. I have no problem with that because she sincerely wants to spend her life doing those things. Any time I suggest she go back to school and finish a degree she rolls her eyes at me and stops listening.
So to clarify my point, women in the Church need to feel comfortable pursuing the life activities that they want to pursue, whether that be homemaking, medicine, or even managing a fast-food restaurant.
If I were to give my idea of a feminist revolution in the Church a basis in scripture, it would be
[Q]And then cometh the judgment of the Holy One upon them; and then cometh the time that he that is filthy shall be filthy still; and he that is righteous shall be righteous still; he that is happy shall be happy still; and he that is unhappy shall be unhappy still. (Mormon 9:14)[/Q]
which I would interpret as saying that you'll only be as happy in the eternities as you are in this life (generally speaking, of course). Thus, to make yourself less happy by conforming to a gender role that isn't a role you desire only compromises your eternal happiness. (Again, if that gender role truly makes you happy, go for it).
-
Honestly, I think the Church could use a few more good feminists.
I have a good friend who got her undergraduate degree at a prestigious institution in Cambridge, MA. She then moved with her husband to Utah for a couple of years where she pursued a Master's degree. More than once, upon telling women in different wards--sometimes different stakes, who had no affiliation with each other--that she was getting a Master's degree, she received incredulous looks and the question, "Isn't a bachelor's degree enough?" The obvious implication was that a woman doesn't need any more education than an undergraduate degree (if that). Talk about disappointing.
So, I think the Church could use a few more feminists to help break the stereotype that good Mormon women do nothing but cook, sew, do genealogy, and spend their lives pregnant. (Admittedly, we've made lots of progress on this already, but we've still got a ways to go).
-
I'm afraid I still have to disagree with you. In an ideally functioning unit, Scouting and the Aaronic Priesthood are supposed to be inseparable. There is no more loss of focus in the Boy Scouts having a campout to celebrate the restoration of the Priesthood than there is in the Priests' Quorum having a cookout to celebrate the Fourth of July.
-
I apologize if this has already been stated, but I didn't want to read through all of the posts. In any case, I seem to recall President Hinckley stating in his 60 Minutes interview that women would receive the priesthood when God told us to extend it to them. The day could come when women are asked to bear the priesthood to better the world.
But bear in mind this one interesting thought. We perform priesthood ordinances in the temple. Among those ordinances are the washings and anointings. But male ordinance workers perform this ordinance for men, and female ordinance workers perform it for women...ergo, women wielding the priesthood.
That's all I'll say about my quirky views on the priesthood (which are probably borderline heretical anyway).
-
I appreciate your disagreement beefche, and I'll reemphasize what I said about leaders needing to be trained to use young single adults properly. There's no doubt that singles wards are a solution (in spite of my viewing them as a tragedy)...I'm suggesting that they just aren't the best solution.
-
All the more reason for government to get out of the marriage business entirely.
-
Regarding the original question, I refer you to Elder Oak's talk in the May 2005 CES broadcast. He talked about dating, courtship, and marriage. So,
dating non-lds...okay
courting non-lds...dangerous
marrying non-lds...be prepared for your spouse to never be lds.
-
The Scouting program is the activity arm of the Aaronic Priesthood program. They are so intertwined that it is difficult to determine where one stops and one starts. When opportunity allows for these programs to be run as the Church intends, they mesh together very well.
There are many advantages to this combination, such as the infrastructure of the BSA providing camps, reservations, and multitudes of other organized activities to ease the burden on the Young Men's leaders. I wouldn't get too caught up in the differences...however, if your son doesn't like Church, but does like scouts, I would take advantage of the different names so that he doesn't apply the negativity to scouts as well.
-
DON'T DO IT! Singles Wards are a tragedy. I used to be in charge of Young Single Adult activities when the Stake Presidency started discussing with us the possibility of a Singles Ward. I eventually talked them out of it. Part of my defense was from Chapter 8 (maybe 9, I can't exactly remember) of the Church Handbook of Instructions where it says, "The needs or single members are best met by traditional wards and branches."
However, if your area was like mine was, you may have to help teach local priesthood leaders how to utilize young adults properly. Young adults are often not given the callings and responsibilities in traditional wards that will make them feel important or like they're growing. Singles wards are just a way to avoid a larger problem of how singles are treated in the Church.
While I'm on my soap box, young single adults make the BEST teachers...especially for youth. I've heard it said so many times that having a young married person in the youth organization is such a great idea because it sets an example of how important worthy marriage is to the youth. Well, turns out that most youth aren't confused about the importance of marriage, or about how marriage works. If they have a functional family, they've usually got some idea of how these things work. What does worry the youth a little is how to survive post high school and college as a single person. That tends to be something they don't see a lot of examples of.
Disclaimer:
There are some cases where singles wards make sense. Usually in areas around colleges where the membership is predominantly single students (and therefore transient). Singles wards work very well in these areas. They are also wise to require the members of these units who get married to start attending 'married' wards. It's kind of awkward to go back to a ward where you've been flirting with half of the membership.
-
Just remember KuriChan, most stereotypes exist for a reason. Simply put, men are selfish pigs. You know what else, women are selfish pigs too. So it all balances out in the end.
Let me address your flaws though:
flaw 1) a bar/club is a perfectly acceptable place to meet people. It's their behavior that is important to observe. If you decide to investigate further, you then want to explore other activities outside of the bar/club. If they guy can't seem to leave the scene, that's when you should be worried. I used to love going to bars. I'd drink milk and play pool with my friends and we met a great many friends at these bars. Then again, we also made a lot of new friends at Barnes and Noble and Denny's.
flaw 2) Ever hear of Dialectics Theory? It's an explanation of relationships involving people's needs for opposing tensions. For example, sometimes you need intimacy, and sometimes you need space. Sometimes you want stability and sometimes you want novelty. Yes, women somtimes want a macho, take control kind of guy. Sometimes they want something else. Now man up and learn to be both.
flaw 3) Mostly justified. But understand that many (not all) people (men and women alike) will date people similar to the person they first fell in love with (especially if sexual relations were involved). They find it familiar, and therefore it must be comfortable and safe. It's a much deeper psychological issue than your comment recognizes.
flaw 4) see my comments to flaw 2
flaw 5) This often tends to be true. Occasionally, you'll find it isn't. Sadly though, you're wrong about shallow people dying off. Ever notice that the people you least want to have children are the ones that have the most? And then you have shallow, lousy parents who raise shallow lousy kids. These people just shouldn't be allowed to breed.
That all being said, the best people to court are your friends. Most people hate it when I say this, but there is very little difference between friendship, courtship, and marriage. In fact, they only differ in 1-2 respects: time spent with the partner, and sex. But every principle that applies to maintaining a good healthy relationship with a friend applies to maintaining a good healthy relationship with a spouse. The lesson: stop looking for new people to date, look for new friends, and then date your friends.
-
I suspect most of the participants on this board didn't attend elementary and high school in the No Child Left Behind era (more appropriately named Every Child Left Behind). In trying to make educational achievement an objective and measurable goal, a lot of the creative value of education is getting lost by the public school system's need for money. The problem is that education currently is focused on getting the right answer when focus should be placed on how you got any answer. Essentially, if you teach people to think, they'll come up with their own answers, and eventually, they'll discover creative ways to get to the right answer.
When I was in grad school I was required to prove that the area under the Normal (Bell) Curve was equal to 1. The traditional and well known proof requires converting to polar coordinates, but I don't really care for working in polar coordinates, so I chose to look for a different solution. Instead, I used a couple of calculus proofs, some properties of the Gamma Function, and integration by parts to develop my proof. When I turned it in my professor looked at the first line and said, "this isn't right." I assured him it was and asked him to take a closer look. He read it over and before long the entire department faculty was complimenting me for developing a proof that none of them had ever seen.
Moral of the story: give people the tools they need, show them how to use them, and let them create their own solutions.
-
Keep in mind that the courts in Texas only had a problem with the State taking custody of the unmarried and unabused girls. The court didn't care that the girls who had been forced to marry and bear children were taken into custody. In order to take the younger girls, the State would have to show imminent danger, but a belief system is not sufficient evidence. The State would have needed proposed wedding dates, or invitations, or announcements of some sort linking an underage girl to a wedding in order to take action.
To suggest that we could nail someone for child abuse for a system of beliefs gets really shaky when you think about it. What about parents who believe that childhood immunization is wrong and refuse to immunize their child? Do you can those parents for abuse/neglect? Or what about vegan parents who refuse to give their child cow's milk? In these cases the belief forced on the child by the parents may put the child at risk but that doesn't mean the child in in imminent danger.
As for giving out contraceptives to minors: that may encourage underage sexual activity, but it is assumed that such activity is consensual, and not abusive. Furthermore, giving out contraception has the potential to reduce teen pregnancy and the ocurrence of STD's, which is can be argued to be protecting youth. I realize that there is a huge can of worms involved in this issue, but that'd probably be best moved to another thread.
-
One theory I've heard is because they were closer to Adam and Eve, who had "perfect" bodies when palced on this earth, and the Fall made their bodies corruptable, but not immediately corrupted. As generation after generation went by, more corruptions began seeping into the gene pool (not sure how, I guess genetic mutation?) causing the human body to age faster, and illnesses and such started cropping up, killing people off before their time.
Incest tends to deteriorate the quality of DNA structures, particularly when incest is perpetuated over several generations. Since all of Adam and Eve's children were related and shared similar DNA, their relations with each other could have provided a catalyst for genetic deterioration that would have eventually stabilized until the DNA structures became sufficiently diverse.
Just a thought, although a little gross.
-
The Bible may condone capital punishment, but it also condones slavery. Are we to assume that I can have a slave for up to seven years now too?
Point being, sometimes the laws that God gives man are laws that a limited by the capacity of the faithful to understand and accept. I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that some future revelation will specifically put the Church in opposition to capital punishment.
At the same time, I personally find that unlikely. I'm not a big fan of capital punishment, but do believe that there may be some very rare instances in which it is appropriate. Also, capital punishment is a lousy deterrent of crime. Studies have shown that the only real deterrent of crime is the belief of getting caught. When people commit a crime, they don't measure the punishment as heavily as they measure the probability of getting caught, so if you want to deter crime, you need to increase the perception that if you commit one you will be caught.
Lastly, if you want to prevent a lot of these crimes, more prevalent use of the death penalty is going to have a very low impact. The largest correlates of violent crime are poverty and low education. Tackle these problems, and you'll get a much bigger payoff in reducing violent crime. (coincidentally, legalized abortion appears to have an effect in reducing crime, albeit a very inefficient one).
Did the American Government really lie?
in Current Events
Posted
I think, Islander, that we agree more than you imply by your post. I do think that preserving our freedoms and our families will require that someone dies. My issue with the war (in its current state) is that we're not doing the killing (not enough anyway). If we're going to be over there, let's fight a war and win it (which usually requires stomping your enemy into the ground). But if we're not going to have an aggressive campaign to win, then I'd just as soon not have our troops there. Essentially, let's do it right, or let's not do it at all.