NeuroTypical

We're told there will be government on the earth during the millenium. Earthly governments, staffed by humans. We'll still have nations, and lines to draw on maps. A few things I find very interesting when thinking about the millenium. First, the Lord will use deadly violence to overthrow anyone who needs overthrowing. Second, His ensuing world government will use force to obtain total obedience from individuals and nations, whether they like it or not. Sounds great, if you're the right sort of person. Sounds a bit challenging if you're the wrong sort. I find it interesting that even after the wholesale slaughter of the wicked, there will still be plenty of people around who need to be subdued and ruled by force.

Commandments: 1. Thou shalt not question the destructive nature of climate change. 2. Thou shalt not question humanity's role as the leading cause of destructive climate change. 3. Thou shalt automatically assume anyone who does question, is a tool of the right, and probably beats their domestic servants.

I haven't seen anything official yet. But there's a facebook page for us mormons to coordinate how much space we have and who we can take - set up by someone I don't know.

32000 people now ordered evacuated. A friend's fiance, and maybe two other coworkers have probably lost homes. The Air Force Academy is on mandatory evacuation, as is my place of employment. The kids and I wore N95 masks in the car as we went shopping. No, this is some fire - two days later, picture taken further away than the first picture:

My wife and I stuck the kids with a sitter and saw it opening night. If you enjoy witnessing the scottish male in full bloom, you will absolutely love this movie. There was an endearing twist to the movie that made it a completely different experience than we expected. We're going to see it again with the kids.

Some of the people who do this sort of thing, have sucesfully made it through similar traumas, so it's not exactly new shocking behavior. If you can feel the spirit during an R-rated movie, you may be cut out for this line of work. If not, there are a gazillion other ways to fight evil.

Where is your loss or your doubt? Do you doubt God's existence, or His goodness, or His church? Is it an issue with how He allows evil to exist? We need a little more information before we can help.

In the LM home, our firearms are kept in a locked safe. Our kids will not have access to them until such a time when we feel they could handle a situation like this news story. One would hope this 14 yr old got some instruction and experience from a parent, since he knew exactly where the gun was. (One would hope.)

Yep - I'm just on the other side of the 'prepare for a possible evacuation' line here in Colorado Springs right now. The morning news tells me it's now 3500 acres, but not a single structure has been lost so far. Here it was on Saturday afternoon, when it was under 500 acres:

I've witnessed what Anne describes, and I feel similarly. Currently, my family lives in a ward with a lot of military and a lot of very staunch constitutionalists and conservatives - but we tend to not get all preachy about elections and candidates and whatnot when we're at church. To put it another way, I know personally of two or three ward members who commit the crime of Thinking-Differently-Than-Me about politics. My wife and I buddy up to these people immediately, and we put forth effort to guard their feelings against the ravening hoards of conservatives (even though we are otherwise part of the hoarde). It's a golden rule thing. I don't mind walking around amongst groups of people when I'm a oppressed minority, but it sure is nice to have one person come over to me and stick out their hand and say "Yeah, you're way wrong about a lot of stuff, but I'm glad you're here."

I know a little bit about it, since I helped put a guy behind bars for 5-life. He's set to get out this year (his 5 year mark), having gone through some sex offender program of instruction and counseling and testing. I don't know what any of that means, but most folks who do know, would probably say it doesn't mean much. Terms of his upcoming parole include living in a 'halfway house' of sorts, specifically set up for sex offenders, and completing more programs before he's finally fully released.Communities and cultures try to draw a just line between treating offenders as someone needing rehabilitation to make them better, and someone who must have their rights limited in order for the community to be protected from future acts. There are passionate and good people on both sides of the issue. One thing a lot of folks can agree on - is that what we have now stinks in various ways.

A vigilante is someone who brings justice without authority. After a crime has allegedly happened, and after the alleged crime is no longer happening.Someone using possibly deadly force in order to stop the commission of a crime likely to cause major harm or death to an innocent victim, is not being a vigilante. Because the crime is occuring or about to occur. Scaring a guy away from your child, and then tracking him down and beating him to death - that's a vigilante. Anne has rather interesting opinions about how it's possible for someone to use just enough force to stop an attack, but not enough force to injure or kill someone. So from her standpoint, I suppose it makes sense that there's no such thing as justified deadly force - only people acting as vigilantes. But for the rest of us, who understand that stopping someone isn't as easy as it sounds, the line between vigilante and non-vigilante is easier to understand.

"I can't miss you if you never leave." - LM's wife, upon hearing that LM was having reservations about taking a travel assignment at work.

There are approximately eighteen gazillion-bajillion people incarcarated in the US for sex offenses - maybe a quarter to an eighth of them for offenses against a child (but don't quote me on those numbers). I don't think we have pedophile-only wards (at least not in the U.S.). From what I hear, prisons will take some steps to keep inmates from harm, and will act to remove known threats. But they're a prison - they can't keep everyone away from everyone else all the time. It would be cost prohibative, not to mention a violation of civil rights. The prisons don't advertise what charges go with an inmate. Most folks are smart enough to lie about why they're there. Sanduski is in trouble because he's in the news and everyone will know. But again, you can't give him special treatment because "something" "might" happen. Yes, lots of valid justice system complaints. But here's something to think about: Yeah, you can make a case that chance of murder in prison is a bad thing. But how are you on, say, being sodomized in the shower? How about getting beat up? Shunned by other inmates? Consider the sentence: "Do you know what they do to pedophiles in prison?" An honest answer to that question, has done quite a bit to keep offenses from happening. Living through the answer does something to keep people reoffending. How far do you want to go to end that reality, and make prison for abusing a child no worse than, oh say, a 3rd time weed posession felony? Consider a sliding scale of justice, with frowny faces and time-outs on one end, and getting shanked and murdered on the other end. We all draw our own lines where we consider "justice" to land. Below the line is a lack of justice, and above the line is abuse of power. I know where I draw the line, but I'll be hesitant to judge where someone else draws it.

I didn't see bytor's comment as an indication of desirability, just as taking a guess about what would happen. I share his guess - when an inmate population discovers a child molester in their midst, it does not go well for the molester. A lot depends on which prison, and what kind of inmates he'll be around. PrisonChaplain, do you have any insight to offer about Sandusky's chances?

Dan Peterson (and presumably his associates Louis Midgley, George Mitton, Gregory Smith, and Robert White) have been given the boot from the Maxwell Institute. Maxwell Institute News Page: A New Beginning for the Mormon Studies Review Word on the street seems to indicate that the Maxwell institute wishes get out of the business of directly confronting arguments and criticisms directed at the church and its tenets. Leaked internal memos show that Prof. Peterson strenuously disagrees with the move. And he is not going quietly. Sic Et Non (Daniel Peterson's Blog): Of Gratitude, and Its Expression My testimony came about by study, faith, prayer, and direct personal revealation. But much of the boldness I've cultivated in expressing it, came from Dan Peterson and FARMS. In fact, I gave myself my current screen name after I considered myself adequately schooled by Peterson and FARMS in apologetics.

Wait - isn't the primary stewardship of the father, to raise capable, strong, mature kids who are able to take care of themselves and handle problems that come along? From my way of thinking, the father's reaction as father, would be to discuss the matter with his daughter with his daughter so they can figure out what the daughter should do and be and feel when adversities of life (like being called a bad word) come. From his role as father, the dad does not call the other boy over for a talking to. The boy is not in his stewardship. He may choose to tell the parents/guardians of the boy, so they can take action. But no, he shouldn't deal with the boy directly. Right? I mean, consider a situation for a moment: You go find your 12-13 yr old kid one day, and she tells you that a strange man made her go into his house, gave her a talking to, and assigned a punishment. Doesn't anyone else freak out a little at such a prospect? Even after you learn what your kid did, it's not the strange man's place. Now, if the father happens to be bishop, and does have some stewardship over the boy, I would still meet with both the boy and a parent at the same time.

No matter what anne actually meant by those words, the words themselves could not be further from the truth.John Moses Browning, firearms designer, arguably the most important person in the development of modern semi-auto and full auto firearms, credited with 128 gun patents, inventor of the 1911A and the Browning .50 cal machine gun, was a Mormon. He was born in Ogden Utah and served a mission to Georgia in 1887. A sizeable percentage of operational firearms on planet earth today, still operate on principles and designs he created. His father, Jonathan Browning, had a gun shop in Nauvoo that has been restored as a museum and is still part of the church tours. The guns he made at that time were imprinted with "Holiness to the Lord - Our Preservation." He made the trip with Brigham and the pioneers. Our history is replete with fascinating accounts of us both taking up arms to defend, and laying them down to promote peace. At the top of it's game, the Nauvoo leigon was the biggest military force in Illinois. Mormons have been in our nation's armed forces since the pioneer days. Mormons fought on both sides in WWII. LDS are over-represented in federal arms-bearing professions like the CIA and secret service. I had a bishop in Utah who had a conceal-carry permit. One Sunday here in Colorado, we had more of our senior ward leadership out hunting than we did up on the stand. Yes indeed, without fear of any relevant contradiction, LDS and guns are most certainly related.

Yeah. A guy can always claim he figured he was talking to an adult who was roleplaying or lying to him. (In this case, he was talking to an adult.) A good bust involves exchanged pictures, and then a meeting where the guy shows up. One the positive side, for every jerk who misses the appointment, there is a jerk who makes it. Police offices with internet sex crimes unit do good business just sitting around and having predators fly hundreds of miles just to get arrested.

Yep. Get a lawyer. Get a support system. Tell them everything that is happening. Protect yourself and your children. After that, the only thing you can do, is work on your end of things. You won't be able to change him, you can only change yourself. Sorry to hear this is happening to your children.

Ah - gotcha. The phrase is actually an old army saying from at least WWII (when my dad picked it up).

Of course we have all that stuff. We just don't try to pawn it off on our kids as something to do with our Lord and Savior.

I'll go one you step further - my family and I make a big deal about the non-Christian roots/elements of a lot of normal Christmas tradition. Don't get me wrong, we have several touching and meaningful Christmas traditions centered on the actual birth of Christ and the resulting good news. Each kid has their own little nativity scene which they set up and talk about. We read from the Bible on Christmas eve. But we refuse to force-assimilate some poor pagan's winter rite into the Christian collective just because our culture won and theirs lost.We keep Christ in Christmas - but we keep Him very much out of the Germanic Paganism of yule logs and mistletoe, the Livonian guildhall tradition of decorating trees, and the Roman Saturnalian winter festival tradition of partying and gift-giving. We acknowledge that Santa Claus has Catholic roots going back to Nikolaos the Wonderworker, but good St. Nick is very, very far away from the red-nosed jolly fellow modernized and popularized in a brilliantly sucessful consumer marketing effort intended to sell Coca-Cola. Of course, we respect the time-honored reason behind candy canes: Keeping children quiet in church.

Don't wanna get hit by a car? Don't wander into a place where you might get hit. Don't wanna get your iphone wet? Don't wander into a place where water might fly.

How random. Yes I am - but are you talking about Alan Sherman? (I'm still sharpening pencils pointedly - not a partner in the agency yet.)