Ironhold

A few years ago I was in the audience at a stake event; I don't remember if it was stake conference or stake priesthood meeting. One of the speakers told the audience to go ahead and remove the doors from their children's bedrooms. His logic? As minors living in [the parents'] house, they have no right to expect any privacy. Thus, you, the parent, have the right to look in on them at any minute of any day. I had to leave the stake center or else I'd have burst out yelling at him. edit - he said that all parents should do this, regardless of whether or not their kids have been causing problems. In his eyes, kids don't deserve one whit of privacy.

Hikikomori is poorly understood, even in Japan. This is in large part due to the stigma surrounding it. In a nutshell, what happens is that children from middle-class and upper-class backgrounds suffer psychotic breaks that cause them to completely withdraw from society; these often come about because of the high demands being placed on them by society and culture. All they do is live at home and vegetate; if they are active in any fashion, it's to pursue a (narrow) selection of hobbies. Some can be rehabilitated and brought back to a state in which they can function in society, but others just fall apart. Children from low-class backgrounds do sometimes suffer this, but they don't have the option of staying idle; their parents cannot afford for them to do so, and so if they withdraw from everything else then they are usually forced to somehow work in the family business. Regardless, to say that "individualism" is the cause is quite the overstatement.

With the Luby's shooting in Killeen - Among the survivors was a woman named Suzanna Gratia Hupp. Hupp and her parents were at Luby's that day, and her parents were among the dead. Hupp claimed that because of Texas' then-existing concealed carry laws, she was forced to leave her gun in her vehicle. If she had been allowed to carry her weapon into the facility with her, she argued, then she could have dropped the shooter before he was able to kill as many people as he did. It was through Hupp's efforts, first as a speaker and then later as a member of the Texas House of Representatives, that the state CCW laws were overhauled.

I saw "Pan" last weekend. Good if forgettable fantasy movie in its own right, but impossible to reconcile with the larger Peter Pan mythos.

Actually, a lot of characters in the Batman mythos had their lives change at some point because of "one bad day". Some of them, like Dick Grayson, Commissioner Gordon, and Barbara Gordon, dug deep, found the strength to overcome, and now use their strength to protect the innocent. Others, like Batman, have been left at least somewhat unhinged by what took place. However, they're still better people than whoever wronged them, and so strive to do their best with what sanity they've got left. Then we have folks like Jason Todd and Two-Face, whose bad day sent them around the bend. They have it in them to do good, but they also have it in them to do very, very bad things. The question for them is whether or not the focus should be rehabilitation or incarceration. And of course we've got people like the Joker and Poison Ivy, who use their troubles as an excuse to make others suffer.

I've had the misfortune of being the "first responder" in a tragedy. ...that is, the first person on-scene who both had a cell phone *and* a working knowledge of how to use a fire extinguisher.

The artist behind the controversial image has removed the image at the request of the photographer whose photo she used as the basis for the design. She still stands by her sentiment, however, but the image is gone.

Thing is, you don't need a gun to slaughter people on a large scale. All you need is a trip or three to the local grocery store. Even innocent everyday items can be made lethal if people know what they're doing. This is why targeting guns alone won't work: we'd just be treating a symptom instead of the full disease.

It's to the point now that if I see McCombs' name in the byline, I know the article is going to be a hack job. McCombs can't be bothered to do even basic research on most topics, and is generally too lazy to use any term but "Mormon" no matter what group is being discussed; if the full name of any organization is mentioned, it's usually near the end of the piece instead of near the beginning. Remember the brother who delivered the Conference talk in Cantonese a few Conferences back? McCombs' first draft of the article identified the language as Mandarin. Someone at the AP hastily redid the article, but the comments were left untouched.

I'm bumping this thread up because of... reasons. As I've mentioned before, I work for a small-town local newspaper. I'm a movie reviewer, edutainment columnist, courier, and stringer. Yes, it takes a toll. But if it's got my name attached to it, you can rest assured that I did my dead level best under whatever circumstances I had to work with in order to produce a work I was proud of. Yes, there have been a few instances in which gross editorial interference has soured a piece, but that's not something I can control. I think you all can understand, then, why I feel like screaming every time I see Brady McCombs' name in the byline. McCombs is a reporter for the Associated Press. Specifically, McCombs is their #1 reporter for all things dealing with the church. McCombs also routinely violates the AP's own Style Guide, the Holy Bible of how to write media reports. His latest farce is this article here. The entire article is about the issue of diversity within the senior leadership of the church, but not once does he mention the church's full name. It's always "the Mormons" or "the Mormon church". The AP Style Guide quite clearly states that this is verboten; if you're dealing with the main body, it declares, then you must give the full name of the church at some point. So not only did McCombs botch the job yet again, the editor responsible for vetting this article botched it as well by not catching things. As far as the content of the article goes, McCombs delivers a triple play of incompetence by not examining the backgrounds of the three new Elders or thinking to ask the people he quoted about them. This includes Elder Renlund, as we've mentioned, whose time in South Africa is actually pertinent to the discussion at hand. I can't figure out how it is that McCombs is in the majors while I'm still on the farm team.

Something that people don't want to admit is that there's a recurring theme among mass murderers in the United States: mental illness. Charles Whitman himself recognized that he was becoming erratic, and his autopsy discovered a tumor that could have been causing it. The University of Virginia shooter was known to be mentally ill even as a child, but his parents refused to have him institutionalized because they feared being stigmatized. Ft. Hood (2009) demonstrated signs of mental instability and religious radicalism, but his co-workers at Walter Reed were afraid that if they reported him then they would be branded as "racist" (a career-killer in the military). Ft. Hood (2014) was flagged as being mentally ill, but the paperwork to deny him gun ownership didn't get passed around in time to stop him from making the purchase. The Luby's shooter showed signs of being psychotic and had some massive rage issues, especially towards women. The Sandy Hook shooter had been flagged as mentally ill and so denied the right to own guns, but his mother circumvented the ban by buying the guns for him. The Columbine Kids were known to be mentally ill and were receiving treatment at the time. However, their doctor gave them medicine for an "off-label" use, medicine that was known to cause psychotic episodes in minors. Et cetra. What we need is a multi-pronged approach to address this issue. One prong is the "See something, say something" movement meant to get people paying attention to those around them in order to see who might need help. Another prong involves helping educate people in order to remove the stigmas surrounding mental illness and seeking treatment. The third prong, obviously, involves overhauling the nation's mental health care system. The fourth one would be to discourage doctors from off-label prescriptions unless they feel it's absolutely necessary.

It can't. Most so-called progressives don't understand that.

Before anyone says anything - I'm just fine with diversity. The issue is how it happens. For example, the University of Michigan was right to be concerned about the disproportionate college enrollment rates by race. But the bonus point system benefited no one. Instead, I'd have recommended that the college begin working with the various public schools in order to help prepare students for college and identify specific issues that need to be addressed. IE, back around 2000 (three years before the decision), Central Texas College worked out an arrangement with various local high schools that allowed students to take "dual-enrollment" classes in certain subjects, like "Computer Science 101". The classes would be taught on the CTC campus, and students would receive credit at both their high school and CTC. I recall there being a small fee for doing this, but IIRC the fee was smaller than the full-fledged cost of tuition. This arrangement means that by the time the kids graduated high school, they'd already have CTC credits built up... credits that could easily transfer to any public school in the state.

Back when I tried to be a member of the Boy Scouts, we were working on the genealogy merit badge one month. At the time, the badge literally required us to discover new family members. Well, my dad's side is about as researched out as it's going to get. And at the time, we knew almost nothing about my mom's side due to her biological father dying when she was young* and her mother's family being back in the old country (her mother was descending into Alzheimer's at this point and so couldn't have remembered anything if she tried). That meant I couldn't complete the badge requirements because there wasn't any way for me to get new names at the time. I was supposed to get an exemption because of this, but the local scouting program was such a jumbled mess at the time it never happened. I was so frustrated by this that I just gave up going to scouts all together. *A few years ago, the National Archives announced that you could apply online to get copies of military records. My mom found enough information about her father to request his records, and his records contained enough information for us to locate and contact his family. Mom and my aunt were both able to visit this past summer.

With my dad's family, family history is church history, at least as far back as 1844.

Looks like I'll be seeing "Pan" this Friday. I've kinda had my fill on "the story behind the story" and "revisionist" films, and so hopefully this won't disappoint.

Back when I was doing my undergrad work, I had to take two semesters of "Introduction to Business and Personal Law". The New Haven decision came down during the semester, and so we wound up talking quite a bit about matters in class.

From the "Diversity for the sake of diversity" files - [1] The Economist: "La Vie En Rose". In 2010, France passed a law requiring that 40% of the members of all corporate boards be female... never mind the fact that France did not have enough qualified, experienced female business or industry leaders to meet that goal. Instead, companies decided on a short-term fix that consisted of nepotism and hiring "decorative" women who would allow the men to handle all of the real business. [2] Jayson Blair. Fellow New York Times staffers pretty quickly figured that Blair was a plagiarist, but most were too afraid to say anything because executive editor Howell Raines was so committed to having a "diverse" staff that they were afraid of having their careers ruined by questioning the integrity of Raines' poster child. [3] Ricci v. DeStefano (aka "The New Haven Case"). The fire department in New Haven, Connecticut, was looking to promote 18 people. The promotions would be based on who got the highest scores on a test. 17 of the 18 were white (one had a learning disability), and the other individual was Hispanic. When the city realized that no blacks had made the cut, they declared this to be de facto proof that the test was discriminatory and threw out the results. This case, coupled with her "Wise Latina" comments, nearly derailed Sonia Sotomayor's appointment to SCOTUS as she was one of the judges who ruled against the firefighters in the lower courts. [4] Gratz v. Bollinger. The University of Michigan required that all students wishing to enter the school had to first take an entrance examination; you needed to get 100 out of 150 possible points to pass. Thing is, African-American, Hispanic, and Native American students were spotted 20 points simply for their race; this was a higher bonus than for a perfect SAT score, which was only 12 points. This meant that members of these minority groups could hypothetically get in ahead of higher-scoring whites and Asians simply because of their race. Yeah. I could go on, but I think these four incidents help explain why "giving someone preferential treatment on the basis of color or gender can potentially backfire spectacularly, not least of which by being discriminatory against other groups".

Yeah... Frankly, what I care about is whether or not a person can do the job. Everything else is secondary.

Wow but the author's a whiner. "We don't have anybody who could satisfy the politically correct crowd, so something must be wrong with the senior leadership!" seems to be the author's basic thesis. We don't know why God called these three people, but the author is more than willing to declare a reason: That's right: the author thinks that the apostles were called in large part because of a desire to keep the church leadership white and male. They haven't even been in office a week. Let's give them a chance to show off what they can do for the church. And as far as diversity goes - I can rattle off story after story where "diversity for the sake of diversity" backfired spectacularly. I'm a business type, and so I've studied the issue a lot as part of workplace controversies.

There are any number of reasons why a person may not want to let on what kind of shape they're in. This can be anything from simple pride to a fear that others may be demoralized if they knew the full details. For example, FDR went to length to hide his paralysis from the general public; not only did he not want people to think of the President as being infirm, he feared that foreign spies and would-be assassins might identify the kind of special equipment he needed (such as an elevator to board planes) and so recognize where he was.

Anime News Network (no direct link because some of the site's content is risque) is reporting about a major social media uproar going on in Japan right now. Back on September 10th, an already controversial artist published a drawing claiming that the refugees aren't seeking freedom but the right to live in freedom on other peoples' money. This isn't the first time the artist in question has provoked others through her artwork, but because it's so topical and involves platforms like Facebook & Twitter it's gotten attention on both sides of the Pacific.

Anyone here decide not to go on a mission? Did you suffer any negative consequences because of it? During my senior year of high school, my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Both of my older brothers had long since moved away and my dad was working long hours at his new job. If I was to go anywhere, I realized, mom would largely have no help in taking care of her and tending to her affairs. As such, I decided that I'd go to a local community college, make myself available to help my mom out as much as I could, and let the chips fall where they may. I've spent much of my life since regretting that decision. Back then, there was a massive push among the local leadership for people to go on missions. I spent the better part of the next decade coming to dread both stake priesthood meetings and any Sunday in which stake representatives were present. Not only would these events inevitably degenerate into "Mission! Mission! Mission!", those of us who never went found ourselves in the crosshairs. One stake rep actually went so far as to essentially declare that we were "worthless" and had nothing to contribute to the church. Even to this day, I still don't like stake priesthood meetings. As an extension of the whole "mission" focus, the young women of the stake had it drilled into them that anyone who wasn't a returned missionary wasn't worth their time as a possible spouse. Friendship and non-exclusive dating could take place before people left, but once you hit adulthood it was "returned missionary" or nothing; once again, no one ever said anything about asking why people never went. This is a large part of why I've given up on ever finding a spouse.

Thanks to Robert & Rosemary Brown (et al), the 1980s and early 1990s were analogous to the Marianas Turkey Shoot. As anti-Mormon after anti-Mormon went down in flames, the tide of the battle began to turn. Their generation ultimately formed a shield wall that provided breathing room for the next generation. This next generation used the early and mid-1990s to organize various defenses of the church and ready them for presentation. Many of these people decided that traditional outlets of presentation were insufficient, and so we began seeing a lot of apologetics websites begin to emerge. SHIELDS, for example, lists its founding as February 1997. Their work paved the way for the next generation, the generation of Mormons that appeared on the scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Thanks to this new treasure trove of online resources, we were able to quickly educate ourselves on the various controversies and the actual facts surrounding them. We also made use of new resources like Wikipedia and others to gather information beyond this. ...Information that we immediately put to work. To compare the internet of the era to the Wild West would be to insult the Wild West. The anti-Mormons of the period were playing defense, and they didn't like it. What should have been polite discussions quickly degenerated into trench warfare as critic after critic used a combination of outdated arguments, lies, slander, ridicule, personal insults, and even threats of physical violence in an effort to silence whatever Mormons they came across and denigrate everything the church stood for. SLC, by all appearances, barely even knew what was going on. And my local & stake church leaders were so convinced that the internet was little more than a delivery service for porn that I was hesitant to go into details concerning just what was really going on. No, we were essentially on our own. All we had was what we could piece together from various print sources and the handful of early websites. I saw one minister sanction male-on-female spousal abuse as a means of preventing women from joining the church; said minister's favorite hobby was writing dirty limericks making fun of various church leaders. I saw another minister ruin his health by putting his efforts to destroy the church ahead of everything else, even his own well-being and sanity. I've been threatened, as have others, and was even personally insulted by what was once a big-name anti-Mormon writer & minister. Et cetra. This actually played a large part in the destruction of my love life; the one romantic relationship I actually ever had was being conducted long-distance, and a particularly excessive round of back-and-forth one week set off a chain of events that led to us drifting apart.* Finally, someone at SLC finally realized that maybe, just maybe, this internets thing could be used as a missionary tool. This decision was met with a general chorus of "It's about time!" coming from those of us who had been on the front lines. By the time Mormon.org, the whole "I'm a Mormon!" campaign, and even the Bloggernacle as we know it came into being, we'd done a surprising amount of the heavy lifting in ensuring that the internet was a place where this could happen. This is why whenever someone goes off about how glorious the internet is and how easy it is to speak with people, all we can say is "You're welcome." *I've tried to re-enter the dating scene multiple times since, but it's all fallen apart. Most Mormon women I've tried to date are so caught up in the whole "I'll only date a returned missionary!" nonsense that they walk right past me without a second thought... never mind the fact that I never went because I was helping care for a mentally ill relative. Most non-Mormon women walk right past me because the recession has resulted in my paycheck being smaller than it should be for my education and work experience. I can't make it rain, and so they aren't interested. I've pretty much given up on ever getting married, and a decade later still blame myself for how the relationship ended (along with wondering what ever happened to her).

Back in 2000 when I first started on the internet, LDS.org was still in what could be described as an "open beta" stage. The search engine didn't work very well (which led to more than a few shouting matches as my mom blamed me for not miraculously producing what she was looking for, no matter how vague). The archives were spotty at best, with Sunday school manuals only going back a few years and the church magazines only being archived to the mid / late 1980s, and only then with pronounced gaps as issues hadn't been converted over. And anyone who tried to copy and paste the scriptures into something else (like a Word document or a message board post) had to go clean up a bunch of stray code that came along with everything. Mormon.org, meanwhile, was nothing more than a pipe dream. It's undergone quite a few revisions in the 15 years since I first found it, ultimately becoming the site it is now. The search function is comprehensive, allowing people to rapidly access a wide amount of material. The magazine archives now go back to circa 1971 with minimal gaps in issues. And the scriptures were code-free before the last update accidentally knocked out the footnotes. So just think about it next time you access the church website: 15 years ago, most of what you take for granted didn't exist.