PolarVortex

Where did you get that idea? I would say it's inaccurate. I agree, many Republicans have voted for bigger government, but that's just because they're addicted to the same political crack that many Democrats smoke: using other people's money to buy votes from people who vote solely on the basis of how many government benefits they get. Any decent Republican theoretician will tell you that conservatives favor limited government. Reagan said it best: "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

I thought I posted on this topic already here, but I did a search and don't see it... hmmm. Forgive me if I am repeating an earlier post. Anyway, I cross the Golden Gate Bridge every week on the way to a class in Sausalito, and I'm very much aware of the debate around adding suicide barriers under the bridge. The bridge authority stopped keeping an official count of suicides right before the number reached 1000, and the unofficial count is now around 1600. On average, someone jumps once every two weeks or so, but it's not reported. During one especially bad month in 2013, someone jumped every three days. Not all bodies are recovered, but many are. A former boss of mine went to a San Francisco church where the choir director suddenly vanished. Everyone thought she had run away or been abducted, but her body washed up a few weeks later with all the signs of a bridge jump. I mention these grisly details because one interesting thing has come out of all this tragedy. A small number of people jump and survive. (One survived on her first jump, but not her second.) From what I have read, almost all the survivors report the same feeling: they step off into space, they feel the sickening weightlessness of falling, and then, for four short seconds, they suddenly regret that they jumped. I wouldn't be surprised if Robin Williams felt a flash of regret the moment before he died. Maybe some day we will make a drug that can let people feel that regret before they pull the trigger or step off a ledge. In any case, if you're curious about how depressed people see the world, the following TED talk was absolutely amazing. After watching it, I really feel more forgiving and loving to people who struggle with depression. I used to run from them.

I've watched Dial M for Murder (what a zany but perfect film title!) many times over the years and I like it more each time. Hitchcock's golden age was wonderful, but then he went off the deep end. I was genuinely sickened by Frenzy and stopped watching it. Speaking of how I stop watching films, I stopped watching The Graduate over the weekend. What a boring movie. And it's a sham anyway, according to what I read. The actors who played Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson were only six years apart in age in real life. Scott Walker is 12 years younger than the next First Lady.

So can the profile "headlines," which often make me laugh out loud, e.g., "Foodie seeks bad cook for weight loss purposes."

No, the area I live in is almost totally non-LDS or even anti-LDS. I saw some stuff for younger local singles on FB and even they were having trouble. In the 18 years I've lived here (off and on), I've personally met only two other Mormons outside of LDS venues. One had her name removed from Church records, and the other was a former LDS bishop who had come out as gay. I didn't even think such a thing was possible. As I recall, he had many, many children, and other gay men weren't much interested in dating him. Given the Church's emphasis on marriage, I sort of wish the Church would organize weekend regional events for singles over 40. Maybe one every three months or something in each state/province or major metro area. Just grab some stake center and do it, and find ways to get people there, even if you have to subsidize their travel expenses. Online dating is okay for some people, but meeting people face to face is so much better. I suppose I'm a bit of an exception because I'm very happy being single. But I'd love to befriend other single Mormons my age or either gender, even if they live 2 or 3 hours away. Don't give up... my mom was way past 40 when she married the man who became my stepfather. She had given up hope and then it just sort of happened, and they were very happily married until he passed.

Relationships can pop up in the most unexpected places. When I lived in Texas, I was carrying groceries from my car into my apartment and I heard the sound of gunfire. A few moments later a very nice looking woman ran up to me and said someone had fired a gun at her. She had been walking through the parking lot and had come across something that looked illegal (maybe a drug deal) and the car sped off. She ran after to get the license plate number and one of the passengers opened fire. Nobody was hurt, but we decided to call the police. A policemen arrived and I invited them all to my apartment to fill out the report. Nothing much happened after the report was filed, but I saw where the woman lived and I asked her out on a date a week later and she accepted. My friends called it "love at first shot."

I still like school and classes for meeting members of the opposite sex. If you've finished school, there are tons of classes for fun things and hobbies. If you're a man, take a class in cooking or creative writing. If you're a woman, take a class in auto repair or woodworking. You'll definitely stand out and be the class mascot. That's how I found my fiancee... a fun evening class like that. The relationship fell apart over religion a few years later, sadly, but it was nice while it lasted. A few years ago I started a book club by posting on Craigslist. It was hard, because I wasn't sure I wanted strangers in my home, but I got like 20 replies and had to start two separate clubs. That spawned a lot of great new friendships with interesting people. One of those new friends had the best advice ever about finding a spouse: focus on making yourself the most appealing person possible, and then (speaking metaphorically) get the biggest butterfly net you can find and swing it with a healthy laugh 24x7 wherever you go. That is, dating sites are okay, but don't get tunnel vision thinking they're the only path to love.

Wow. Chat rooms are a magnet for all kinds of trouble. I once worked with a guy (not LDS) who spent a lot of time in chat rooms. He struck up a conversation with a woman who claimed she was 21, and he very stupidly began asking her questions about her body. They flirted online for a few days and then drifted apart. But she wasn't a 21-year-old woman. She was a 14-year-old girl, and copies of all her chats were saved as transcripts on her computer. Three years later, the girl's parents found these chat transcripts with my co-worker's juicy comments and online name. The parents called the police, who called in specialists who tracked down my co-worker. He came home one night from work and found his house sealed off with yellow tape. His wife and kids were hysterical as the cops carted off every computer in the house and then arrested him. This co-worker didn't go to jail, but he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 3 months in some strange halfway house thing where he could leave only to go to work. He told his kids he was on a 3-month business trip so they wouldn't find out. The halfway house itself sounded charming... one of the house rules was "Do not murder other residents" (or so he claimed). He got through it, but now he has a criminal record. I found out about all this because he used me as a reference for a new job and he figured I should know the whole story. But a criminal record is a big deal, even in California. When I met this guy, he was a high-tech software puke pulling down $100K+ a year. The last I heard he was peddling water heaters. All from a few unwise minutes in a chat room.

This whole conversation got me curious. I went to LDSPlanet and signed up at the "free" level and browsed around. Lots of women who seemed perfectly respectable. Many had lovely personal statements about the Church, and they all seemed honorable and sincere. A total of 378 possible matches of women near my zip code within 10 years of my age, but only 15 or so closer to my age. But then I live in Silicon Valley, not South Succotash or Hooterville. About $54 for a six-month membership. I dunno, if I were out looking for a spouse I might try it. P.S. I have some additions to our little list of no-no's for profile pictures: No black lipstick, no Halloween costumes, and don't post more than 50 pictures of yourself... you might look desperate.

That's too bad, Leah. Your post reminded me that last year I also tried one LDS dating site (not LDSPlanet) with a chat room. I entered it and started lurking. I had other work to do that night, but I kept my eye on the chat room traffic. I was appalled. Very quickly I realized that most of the men were simply looking for one-night stands with any woman within a 3- or 4-hour driving radius. (Some probably would have taken a 3- or 4-hour flying radius.) And this was ostensibly an LDS site. I fled the chat room and felt like disinfecting my computer and keyboard with Lysol. I was thinking about the couples I mentioned in an earlier post (older LDS people who married or remarried later in life). One couple met online, but the rest of them did it the old-fashioned way: fierce networking with friends, relatives, business contacts, neighbors, and anyone else they could find. One woman set a goal of getting 500 Facebook friends within a year. She stopped at 250 or so... the friend of one of her new Facebook friends ended up proposing to her after an introduction and brief courtship. valdree, have you considered moving right now to an area with more LDS people? Fishing in a small pond is a lot harder than in a big lake. But I wouldn't give up on the dating sites unless you go for months without any nibbles from nice guys. You only have to find one winner and then it's game over.

Well, I did find this, and I learned a new expression: Debbie Downer. http://www.eharmony.com/dating-advice/dating/five-big-online-dating-profile-mistakes-made-by-women-over-40/#.VM60rUISvU4 Also do a Google search for "online dating worst profile picture" to get some examples of what not to do. That one of the woman in a bikini eating a watermelon is certainly one for the ages.

Oh no... the polar bear in my profile picture is not wearing a shirt. Or pants.

Hi Valdree, I listen to LDS podcasts all the time. Many contain interviews of all kinds of LDS people. The site LDSPlanet is mentioned more than the others, and I've heard several people mention how they found spouses there. (I mean, these people connected with new friends who eventually became spouses, not that already-married people found their current spouses' profiles on-line there... but I suppose that could happen, too.) Disclaimer: I have no connection to LDSPlanet and do not earn money by referring people there. I am a man in my fifties who never married. I thought about using LDSPlanet last year, but I am currently a less-active LDS member in the process of returning to the Church, and I figured I should get that all repaired before I start hunting for a spouse. I checked out LDSPlanet last year and it seemed reasonable, but I didn't really get very deep into their site. Don't do all your shopping at the same store. I have a lot of single friends (non-LDS) who tell me about their dating adventures. All on-line dating sites, I think, are 20% gold, 75% sand, and 5% poison. You may have to sift through a lot of sand to find some gold, and if you're unlucky you might cross paths with a really scary person who turns out to be a criminal or worse. That may be less of a concern on an LDS site than on a site for the general public. Be defensive, but by all means fling your sails to the wind and see where it takes you. Also Google for tips on how to make your profile stand out. For men, I think I read that the most common blunder is posting photos of themselves without a shirt. For women... I don't recall the most common blunder. Maybe posting photos of yourself with hair curlers? Anyway, do craft a good profile and best wishes! I know many LDS couples who married or remarried after age 40, and I adore them all. Cheers, Polar

I agree totally. But what conclusions can you draw from this observation? That good and evil are simply delusions of the human mind? I wouldn't conclude that at all. The teachings of Jesus make is clear that the intentions of the human heart are the key to deciding whether something is good or evil. I would say that good and evil are attributes of human choices, not of any specific outcomes or of any particular arrangement of how the chips land in the scenarios your mention. Oh, and nice joke, Vort. I've heard many strange explanations of the Trinity, but comparing it to a hot dog is quite innovative. Bravo. If I might extend it, the Baptist missionaries might add, "Just eat it and don't ask where the meat came from."

Several people have commented on the concept of "weeding out friends." Based on your view of the matter, comparing your friends to weeds can be either insulting or highly accurate. Obviously, no nice person would compare a human being to a nuisance plant that should be torn out and discarded. On the other hand, if a friend is a bad influence on you or lowers your opposition to sin and evil, then it's simply good spiritual hygiene to prevent that friend from putting down deep roots in your life and choking out your own fruit. I went through a Facebook phase and also felt uncomfortable unfriending people. I felt a tiny bit like a Texas governor signing an order to execute a prisoner on death row, and I was terrified that my newly unfriended friend would find out and retaliate somehow. (What can they do? Unfriend me? LOL.) But some of my Facebook friends had really bad ideas about marijuana and tax evasion and recreational sex outside marriage. Unfriending them was sort of like transplanting them to a distant part of my garden behind a brick wall, not ripping them out of the ground and tearing them up. My own feeling is that Facebook is turning into a drug for some people and violates the spirit of the WoW.

A friend of mine forwarded me a really scary news story about sitting at your desk. Some medical research has shown a possible link between sitting at a desk all day and all kinds of medical woes, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and early death. And exercising 30 minutes at the end of the day doesn't undo the damage of sitting. It scared the daylights out of me. I moved my computer to a drafting table that I can raise up high so I can stand as I work. Every 30 minutes I get up and walk around the house, and every 2 hours I walk around my block 3 times (20 minutes). After two weeks I feel much better and have lost 2 pounds without even trying. (But my block is on a really, really steep hill.)

Yellowcake

I've never been able to separate atheism from nihilism. I understand that many atheists claim they can build their own meaning, but they have no way to prove that their opinion of meaning is not a delusion. Ultimately I found God, but I'm still not convinced that God is a noun. (That doesn't mean I think that God is a preposition or something... just that the final realities of existence are not obligated to fit into humans' grammar boxes.) In any case, Claire, I have really enjoyed your posts and those of CatholicLady. Thank you both for the time to take to write down your thoughts. Have you heard of Leah Libresco? She writes about religion on Patheos and describes herself as an "argumentative atheist" who converted to Catholicism. Her first book, Arriving at Amen, will be published in a few months. She's speaking Monday night at a nearby Catholic church, and I want to attend. Will write a trip report here if I go. Best, PV

Skyfall, and I stopped watching a third of the way into the movie. Way too violent, and it was PG-13. I don't get our culture. Watching people shoot each other with guns and watching men fight is not even slightly entertaining to me. Even Judi Dench couldn't save this sorry movie, which is saying a lot.

I've read some scholars who spin the Abraham and Isaac story slightly differently. They claim that Abraham and Isaac were part of, or at least moved within, a larger pagan community that sacrificed children all the time. The significant part of the Abraham and Isaac story is not that Abraham would prepare to sacrifice Isaac (which would be a common thing at that time) but that God would intervene to stop the sacrifice, thus making it clear to all that God absolutely rejects human sacrifice, even with the knife raised and ready to kill. I know the actual text of Genesis makes it sound like God is a scientist with a white lab coat and clipboard to test Abraham's faith, but that's only one dimension of interpreting this very complex story. Jeremiah 32:35 seems to indicate that child sacrifice was always repugnant to God, which has led some to think that Abraham imagined God's original command to sacrifice Isaac.

I just heard an interview with Jack Miles yesterday. (He is the author of God: A Biography, and he writes about Biblical figures as literary protagonists instead of as historical persons or deities.) The interviewer asked him about the apparent rise of nonreligious people in the U.S. Miles replied that all categories of people in the U.S. are seeing the rise of people who don't like being categorized, and he specifically mentioned the huge and growing number of political independents. Just because someone is politically independent doesn't mean they are apathetic about politics. Similarly, just because someone doesn't identify with a specific religion or denomination doesn't mean they are apathetic about religion. Having been a member of both the LDS Church and a radically liberal progressive church in California (not at the same time, of course), I have to say that the liberal church was far more political. Out of a membership of several hundred people, there were only two Republicans that I knew of, and he and I were in the closet, politically speaking. My memories from the LDS community were that Republicans were in the majority but that everyone's choices of political parties were respected and honored.

Vulcan observers

If I were in your shoes, I'd sit down with your friend and tell her you saw her photographs and found them quite shocking (your words). Then I'd open a conversation with her about why she is doing it. If there is some intended greater good here, then I might continue the friendship. For example, her photographs might be done to raise awareness about human suffering so society can stop it. I'm not sure I'd like that, but I would try to understand her view. But if it's just her form of expression that she finds fulfilling or profitable, I'll drop-kick her photographs and her friendship without the slightest hesitation. And I'd tell her to her face why I'm terminating the friendship. My own feeling is that our society is starting to find entertainment value in human suffering, which I totally oppose and am sickened by. And I'm glad you didn't swing the ax on me because of my occasional anti-Obama posts.

Me too. Scott Walker never finished college, but I bet he'd make a better president than many Harvard Law grads.