Ironhold

It's my understanding that here in Texas, this issue is a moot point: CCW permit holders are prohibited from bringing their weapons into a church.

Cast In Bronze tends to be suitably gothic. For those who've never heard of them - The centerpiece of the act is a pair of travelling carillons, an instrument made entirely of large brass bells that dates back to the Middle Ages. They've got the only two such traveling rigs in the United States, and travel around putting on shows. Four of their albums are up on iTunes, and so you've got plenty to work with.

Goosebumps. They decided to go "meta" instead of adapting any of the original works (or producing a new story). As a result, the film went back and forth between playing things straight and being a parody. It really couldn't find a niche.

That McCombs article that so egregiously violated the AP's own style guide? My peeps over at Get Religion finally got around to taking a look at it. They aren't impressed, either.

I actually know someone who was the victim of a predator. The predator removed the person's door so as to give them less of a chance to hide.

1. Removing the door is going to send the wrong message to the children. It's saying "Mommy and daddy think you're a lying little delinquent who cannot be trusted, and so we're going to treat you like you're in prison." Some kids will break under the pressure of trying to please their parents and "earn" their door back, while others will reach the conclusion that if their parents believe them to be trouble-makers then they may as well live up to it. 2. By removing the door, parents are also removing a layer of protection for the children. Even if the parents leave the kids alone most times, there's still the very real risk that siblings and other people won't. And even if these individuals don't seek to bother the child who resides there, the child's possessions can still be vulnerable to intrusion. In extreme instances, it makes it that much harder for children to hide from would-be predators... which is why some predators actually do this.

He was talking preemptively. As in "It doesn't matter if your kids haven't done anything wrong. Yank the doors off anyway."

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".