PolarVortex

Or, as a friend of mine tells his wife, "Just because I'm on a diet doesn't mean I can't look at the menu." (But I don't think comments like that are helpful to a solid marriage.)

Funny, I just saw this a few weeks ago. Certainly many men would be just as... um... unfamiliar with world geography. If you're pressed for time, skip to 2:10 in the video for the important part. But in fairness, Jimmi, some Europeans are just as ignorant of North American geography. I once met a British man who told me he wanted to fly to the United States drive around all five of the Great Lakes in one day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cey35bBWXls

From a man's perspective... Certain behaviors are hardwired into the human brain. One is movement. Show me a computer screen with thousands of dots, and it will take me a long time to find one dot that has a different color from all the others. But if you start jiggling the dot, my eye will find it in about one-tenth of a second. That's why there's so much movement in advertising. Similarly, human eyes are hardwired to notice certain things, and those things differ by gender. If you're a woman and you want to understand what it's like to be a man, think about how you would notice babies as you go through your day. If you see a baby on the street or in the grocery store your eyes are pulled directly to them and they are very, very interesting. I have heard that women respond to images of babies the same way men respond to images of women. The images are very interesting and your eyes are pulled toward them automatically before you even know what you are doing. Obviously you can take this too far, and if your husband is leering and drooling then I'd say you have a problem. But a simple wandering eye? Par for the course. And... if I may say this politely and constructively... if there are trust issues in your marriage, they might pertain more to the privacy of emails, texts, and browser histories.

After I was baptized into the Church, a wonderful LDS woman in my ward turned me on to Postum, and I drank it every day. It was available at any Safeway, but they always kept it on the very bottom shelf and nobody ever bought it, so every jar I bought often had dirty water marks from where wet mops had slapped it when they washed the floors. They stopped making Postum a few years ago, but it still has its own website*, and you can order it today from some specialty distributor who acquired the license and trademark or whatever from Kraft. But it costs $10.50 a jar and $6.00 shipping, so I've never ordered it. I get Pero and its competitor Cafix all the time from Whole Foods. Totally herbal, with a kick and a tang not unlike those of coffee. I can't work without a warm beverage next to me. I have one now, in a monster cup that my coworkers nicknamed "The Jacuzzi." *The notion of Postum having its own website is almost as bizarre as the notion of an online dating site for the Amish. There really is one (http://www.amish-online-dating.com), and if you go there you hear background music of birds chirping, cows mooing, and wagons passing by. The "Quick Search" box allows "bonnets" to seek "beards" and vice versa.

I find this topic interesting, and I've been trying to think of a GOP position that would conflict with the LDS Church. The only one I can think of is the Equal Rights Amendment. I was surprised to learn that the GOP platforms in 1952, 1956, 1960, 1972, and 1976 endorsed the ERA (thanks, Huffington Post). The gap between 1960 and 1972 probably occurred because the ERA didn't really heat up until Congress passed the amendment in 1972 (and Nixon immediately endorsed it). In 1980 the GOP backed off and changed its endorsement to a "no position," reportedly because of Phyllis Schlafly's endless agitation around this issue. I don't know if the LDS Church took a position on the ERA, but I seem to recall that it did oppose it in some form. If so, then one could argue that the Church and the GOP were in conflict at some level. As of today, only seven states have never ratified the ERA in either chamber of their state legislatures*, and Utah is one of them. I think it's possible to be a good Democrat or good Republican without supporting 100% of the party platform. I have a business colleague who is a gay Republican, and he has no problem embracing most of the GOP platform and shrugging off or even criticizing the parts that are unfriendly (or insufficiently friendly) to GLBT causes. *One state (I forget which one) has a legislature with only one chamber. I don't think it's Minnesota, but I do know that Gov. Ventura pushed hard for a unicameral legislature for his state.

Well, that's a relief. I drink this crap from Celestial Seasonings called Roastaroma (roasted chicory and barley with delicate notes of chocolate and a carob finish) that I have to order on-line because no stores around here carry it. It's totally herbal and it allowed me to stop drinking coffee. I'd give up one of my fingers or ears before I give up my Roastaroma.

I thought herbal tea was okay. If it's not, I'm in deep trouble. And right before I was baptized in the 1990s I remember doing some research over the coffee thing in the WoW, and I remember reading about one bishop who said that if pressed on the point he would not deny a TR to a member who drank Sanka. I got the feeling that this bishop was holding a minority view... when I mentioned this to the missionaries they were appalled.

What a great example of Poe's Law. Even now I'm not quite sure how to interpret this comment. :)

Just out of curiosity, do LDS YSA wards have anything like Sadie Hawkins dances, or is that contrary to LDS teachings? In my younger years I attended a Baptist church. One year my singles class decided to throw a Sadie Hawkins dance. When the church leadership found out about it, they dropped a huge guillotine blade on the idea so fast that our ears rang for days. That was followed by a bitter and public denunciation of the leaders of our class, who were held up as hooligans trying to overthrow the Biblical commandment that women remain subject to men. That always struck me as just downright silly, but I must confess that in the moments before the dance was cancelled I found myself dreading the whole idea and wondering how I could possibly say "no" to some of the women in the class, many of whom in retrospect would have made terrific spouses.

Either that or she was watching a really boring show on the television in her bedroom. Doesn't matter... I always give people the benefit of the doubt. Always. It avoids so much needless friction in life.

A long time ago a lady I was dating called me and left a message claiming she was so sick she couldn't get out of bed. In the background I clearly heard clinking sounds from weight machines at a gym.

I find it very difficult to imagine the nonexistence of the universe. I can try to picture the universe as a large darkened sphere seeded with zillions of galaxies, and then I imagine that this sphere disappears like Samantha on Bewitched. I simply cannot comprehend what is left: no time, no space, no energy, no matter, no π, nothing. Jimmi, you earn bonus points for mentioning my hero, Donald Knuth. He came up with one of the greatest proverbs ever. He once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."

Possibly, but I'm still amazed at what mathematicians can prove these days. There is something called Graham's Number, which for a while was listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest known number of interest to mathematicians. If you could write digits as small as electrons, just writing Graham's Number would fill up the known universe. Actually, if you could write digits as small as a Planck Volume, Graham's Number would still fill up the known universe, according to Wikipedia. The last 500 or digits of Graham's Number are known, but the first digit will probably never be known. There's a YouTube video out there where someone asks Professor Graham himself what the first digit of his famous number is, and he laughed, "Well, in binary it would be a 1." ROFL

Isn't party registration public information? The Salt Lake Tribune reported in 2012 that... "Eleven of the 15 apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — including LDS President Thomas S. Monson — are registered Republicans, according to public records obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune. The other four did not affiliate with any political party when they registered to vote and none of them voted in this year's Democratic primary. All 15 voted this November." http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/55391586-90/church-lds-republican-mormon.html.csp How they voted, of course, is secret. (Ask Alison Lundergan Grimes about her experiences with secret ballots.) [Corrected typo. — Editor]

Spices are good but can be troublesome to stupid chefs. A while back I read that cinnamon has great health benefits. One web site pretty much claimed that cinnamon can cure anything except death. Late one night I was in bed eating a big bowl of oatmeal. It was probably my dinner that night. I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to put cinnamon on the oatmeal, so I sneaked back into the darkened kitchen, opened the cupboard, and took out the little plastic jar of brown powder. I put a lot on the oatmeal, maybe 2 tablespoons. Brought it back to bed and put a big spoonful into my mouth. I immediately gagged so hard that oatmeal started dribbling down my chin and falling onto my pajamas and my blanket. That "brown powder" I thought was cinnamon was not. It was turmeric. All the labels in my kitchen face forward now.

I'm hearing about the Brian Williams thing from a lot of news sources, not just Fox News. It's still on the front page of the Huffington Post, which is hardly an organ of GOP propaganda.

A very insightful comment, and one that I agree with totally. There is a language school not far from me that intentionally uses non-native speakers to teach the beginning courses for a foreign language. The rationale is that non-native speakers can explain the twists and quirks of the new language to new learners far better than a native speaker could. I think this is a close parallel to convert missionaries.

3. My assigned ward meets at 9:00am in a very unusual building. I think the Church must have purchased it from some other denomination because it looks much more like a Catholic or Protestant church than an LDS meetinghouse. And it must have been a while ago, because the Church logo out front is the old one with the four lines and smaller "the" and "of." I always loved that old logo. Chinese ward at noon, YSA at 2:20pm.

I was disputing the specific claim that allowing same-sex marriages will affect opposite-sex marriages in any way. I suppose some heterosexuals could say, "Well, allowing gay marriages will change the definition of marriage, and that will hurt my feelings," but that seems like a cop-out to me. And leave out children and adoptions, that's a separate debate. Like I say, I'm skeptical of same-sex marriage, but in a secular society with separation of church and state I'm more skeptical of people who claim that certain rights apply only to some people for no good reason.

I am not comfortable with the idea of same-sex marriage, but I can't really say it comes from some intellectual objection or simply the discomfort of making a big social change that pushes us into uncharted waters. However, I have never understood the argument that allowing same-sex marriage will endanger or degrade opposite-sex marriage. If two men or two women get a piece of paper from a county clerk that slightly changes their taxes, rules for inheritance, and visiting rights in hospitals, then I don't see how this affects heterosexual couples at all. I rarely agree with Barney Frank on anything, but on this topic I think he has a point.

But won't we have self-driving cars 400 years from now? You have a point... a friend of mine was just in a bad car accident, and on the ambulance ride to the hospital a chatty paramedic told him that on average all Americans will be in 2 serious car accidents in their lives, and the odd are overwhelming that these accidents will be within a 10-mile radius of their homes, or something along those lines. The ambulance company then billed my friend's insurance company $2000 for a 1-mile ambulance ride. I guess they had all this expensive equipment to hoist injured people into the ambulance so no paramedics need to bend over, and they had to recover the cost for it. (I'm not ridiculing paramedics, many Americans are simply too fat to lift these days.)

How utterly charming, Iggy! Wishing you all much happiness. "Ethel" was a common name for pets in my family, too. I must say, all this "due diligence" over prospective spouses (i.e., bishops huddling and comparing notes on lovestruck couples from different wards) is quite fascinating. Is it commonly done, or is it just a sensible precaution these days when dealing with the Wild West of online dating? I seem to recall one president of the Church (President Kimball, I think) whose granddaughter snagged a new boyfriend in a neighboring ward. When President Kimball caught wind of it, he called the bishop of that ward and demanded a complete report of the young man. The bishop was shocked to get a call like that, but the young man was clean so the bishop's report was favorable. Sounds like this sort of thing goes on more than I realized? It actually makes a lot of sense to me. Who knows, if I ever start dating again maybe I should ask the lucky woman to provide me with letters of reference from her previous suitors. But that information will probably be available on Yelp some day soon.

What a touching poem. The only dog poem I know was one I memorized in 3rd grade, author unknown: We had a dog His name was Spot Whenever we cooked He licked the pot Whenever we ate He never forgot To lick the dishes. Thanks a lot!

Welcome. Can you tell us what your mission was like (in general terms)? How are things out in the field?

I used to shop at the regular stores like JCPenney, but the siren call of outlet malls finally reeled me in. You can get some phenomenal steals there, especially in January and in months that start with an "A". It's actually cheaper for me to drive several hours to an outlet mall and shop for clothes all afternoon than to purchase clothes near my house. I can get lots of shirts and trousers for what seems like pocket change.