NeuroTypical

I'd say yes, because there's nothing in the WoW about "eating sparingly". "Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;" See, it's just talking about meat. Not partially hydrolized soybean oil, or ice cream, or any of the other nonmeat things we eat that make us fat. If you want to think about the WoW as a diet plan, you need to go up one verse: "Every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof; all these to be used with prudence and thanksgiving." I suppose one could make the argument that intentional overeating is not using food with "prudence". But again, intentional overeating isn't the only thing that makes us fat either. LM

Good advice for both of us. I see you are unwilling to make a specific prediction. So, it's just general vague doomsaying then? That's ok, but I'll keep contributing to my work's 401k plan if that's fine with you. Because from where I'm standing, the future looks far rosier than it does to you.

I always have to giggle when I hear stuff like that. I don't think you know what a depression from a hole in the ground. My dad's stories of living through the depression are so far removed from the reality for America today, it might have well been another world. Anyway, let's have some firm dates and specific predictions so we can figure out if you're full of it or not. Gas will be $6/gal by what date? What price will silver be by July 4? Unemployment will hit 20% by the govt measure by when? Are you up to the challenge? LM

Go eBay or amazon.com. You can usually trust someone with higher than 95 or 97% positive feedback. (To be specific, you can expect a 95% chance of a positive experience with someone with 95% positive feedback :))

Hi swampgeek,First of all, thank you for your service in the corps. Secondly, I would guess that you and I probably see eye to eye on more things related to self-defense than we'd disagree about. But thirdly, I wasn't making an observation, I was stating a fact. Google around a bit for numbers. You'll see things like a violent crime rate of 430 per 100k, but a property crime rate of 3036 per. Yeah, violent home invasions have been going up. But they've been going up from triple digits to slightly higher triple digits. Burglars who just want your stuff and no encounter with you are still quadruple digits. There are just more drug addicts wanting their next fix, than there are gang banger initiates wanting into the club or whatever. Of course yes, we live in a dangerous country, and yes, there are people looking to do you harm, and yes, it's every American's right to protect yourself from such (unless you live in Vermont or other places where the 'duty to retreat' doctrine has it's claws in people's souls). So yes, be prepared for whatever might come your way. But again, odds are, if you're sitting there quietly in your home and a back window breaks, a loud firm statement that they're not alone in the house is usually all it takes. I mean, if you have some sort of desire to make life more complicated than it has to be, then by all means, exercise your castle doctrine right and ventilate the 16 yr old punk trying to get quick cash for his next fix. I'm just saying that I'm happy to scare him off so he doesn't come back. LM

It will house 48 wards, but only has one chapel? How does that work?

I don't want to poo-poo anyone's buy advice, but I just sold my tiny little collection of silver for 243% what I originally paid. It was supposed to be an inflation hedge, but there has been only about 1.24% total inflation from my date of purchase. I'm not sure why the price went as high as it is. If you figure it'll keep going up, by all means, buy some.

Yes. Please treat us like sick babies who need hugs from their mommies. We tend to be very appreciative. Just make sure that we understand that only men get the benefits of being married. That way we will pull ourselves out of it when we feel better.

Meh. My thoughts are a real boring thread-killer in this case - so I'll keep them to myself.So - share details! What EVP? Do you have them somewhere we can listen to them?

Our prisons are full to brimming with convicts with permissive, apathetic, evil, or missing mommies. One reason it's hard to talk to someone in charge in a prison, is because that person doesn't want to spend all day on the phone with worried mommies telling him that poor Bubba gets upset if the crusts aren't cut off his sandwich the right way. Being a mommy like this doesn't guarantee you will raise a convict. But if you're a convict, you've got a better-than-half chance of having a mommy like this. LM

We must? According to who? Which cases?Teaching kids about compassion in intertiwned with teaching them about the human condition and educating them about the horrible things that we do to ourselves and each other. It's also necessary to teach the difference between help (as in providing food, shelter, clothing, job training, etc.) and enabling (helping homeless folks support their addictions and chosen lifestyle, etc.) From what I see in my kids, a lack of compassion isn't a problem. Knowing what actually helps vs. what doesn't help is what's lacking. Misplaced compassion helps keep a lot of addicts in a position to support their addiction. I carry a stack of "you are invited to a free meal" cards in my wallet, giving directions to the rescue mission. It's a great teaching moment to hand a cardboard sign guy one of these things, only to have them wave it aside and demand money. It's important for kids to see that some people will try to pull compassion out of you through decietful means. Our church welfare system provides a great pattern to follow. Anyone who can be self-reliant, should be self-reliant. Anyone having problems being self-reliant, the church helps, if they are willing to work for it, and have a goal of eventual self-reliance. When we woke up to news of the Japanese earthquake, I pulled my kids aside and let them know that without even getting up from the couch, our family was already helping in three different ways. First, our donations to the church's humanitarian aid fund would certainly be put to good use. Second, as a citizen of one of the most generous and charitable nations on earth, our tax money would be paying for the various govt relief efforts that would soon be headed to Japan. Finally, I assumed the place I work would be writing out a check to a relief agency and setting up a matching fund deal for employees (and they did).

My wife took a "Personal Protection in the Home" class a while ago, put on by our local cops, sponsored by the NRA. It came with a very handy spiral bound binder about this situation. It had a pretty thorough walk-through of such a situation, pretty much summed up by a picture of the whole family in the bedroom hiding behind a bed, mom on the cell phone to the cops, dad pointing a gun at the bedroom door, yelling "We know you're here, we're armed, and we've called the cops". I'm more than happy to barracade and wait for cops - as long as the whole family is with me. If the kids are across the house however, my wife and I will be taking a much more active role in making them safe. I think whatever you personally decide to do, it doesn't hurt to practice it as a family every now and then. The average intruder is looking to rob the place, and probably was thinking nobody is home, and will run off when they find out you're there. If they've intruded knowing you are there, the stakes are much higher and you may be in danger of your life.

Sounds like a healthy reaction.

My local small town police chief tells me about the only time he was ever injured by a detainee in handcuffs. It was a 14 year old girl, who basically grabbed his arm, pulled herself up and kicked backwards so hard it dislodged his kneecap. By his account, children and young teens are more dangerous than adults in such situations. No ability to compute long-term consequences, fewer inhibitions, a much shorter distance between human and animal. Drunks and folks on something are predictable. Normal adult suspects are mostly predictable. Children and young teens will kick your kneecap off before you can blink.

The cops I know tend to have something in common - they want to go home at the end of the day. That means there is no such thing as laughing off someone threatening to kill you. A pepper-sprayed kid with behavioral issues, is a just fine and dandy kid with behavioral issues who gets to give lots of interviews to Today and whatnot later on. Much better than the alternative methods of subduing someone threatening violence. Yep - pepper spray and tasers are wonderful tools for police. When you think about minimizing the risk of injury (to the offender, bystanders, and the cops), would you rather have them wrestling and possibly injuring someone, or clubbing someone with a nightstick, or shooting someone?

Is he mad at the church (doctrine, God, etc), or has he encountered a jerk or hypocrite or evil person who happens to be mormon? Why is he mad?

If you know what you believe, and why you believe it - nothing you read about the more 'interesting' parts of our history and the players in it, will affect your testimony. If, however, your testimony includes a whole bunch of "It's just what I was always raised with", then yes - expect to be challenged and learn all sorts of things that will make a difference with your testimony. Some folks found the experience a testimony growing and deepening experience. Others just can't come to grips when discovering their assumptions about how it was, conflicts with what actually was. It was pretty clear for me. Did my testimony hinge on the divinity and reality of Jesus Christ, or did it hinge on [insert church criticism based on historical fact] not being possible? LM

Well again, there are laws providing for exceptions to this rule. Part of the Colorado immunization form contains a "Statement of Exemption to Immunization Law" section, where you can claim a medical, religious, or personal reason to not provide immunization records.Here is a website with links to exemptions/waivers/etc. for every state and a bunch of countries besides the US. And just to make it clear again - my kids are fully immunized, and I'm a big believer in immunization. I just want to minimize the amount of information I provide to the government about my kids. We homeschool them and take part in a 1 day a week "Homeschool academy" thing in a public school.

I have never heard of folks leaving the church because of CES shennanigans either. I've heard of people who get all bent out of shape and leave because the church doesn't teach what they think it should, but that's not the same thing. It's not like the CES has 'the secret real history of the church' and they keep it from all of us. That's just silly. Anyone who wants to learn about the church outside of CES - go for it. I'd guess that maybe 90% of the stuff I've learned about my faith, it's doctorines and history and people, wasn't learned in any institute classroom. (I'm not knocking that 10%, it's just that I went inactive as a teen, only 1 year into the institute program.) LM

I don't think our church has a problem with priestcraft. Some individual members might have a problem with believing that since the church employs them, they are now prophets or holding a superior priesthood or something. Those people are called unrighteous jerks, and as long as everyone understands that, things usually don't get too bad.

Interesting question. Implementing something like that might be more difficult than it might seem. I'm not sure how someone would go about enforcing such a policy. My gut reaction is that, as a general rule, I am against the govt dictating how a business works. So no, I wouldn't support some law or something forcing businesses to modify their sick-pay policies based on some social engineering deal. As for businesses doing it themselves, I would be concerned about privacy issues. Are we going to start requiring proof of illness and doctor's notes whenever someone wants to take a sick day? My employer sure doesn't want anything like that from me, unless I'm like signing up for short-term disability or something. And one more complication, how do we know who is immunized and who isn't? My kids' school doesn't have a "kids aren't immunized" form, they have a "mind your own dang business I'm not sending you any vaccination records" form. Do school employees have the same deal?

I have used the egg cartons/dryer lint/ wax deal, and was so happy with it I swore I'd never use anything else. Then someone pointed out that shredded paper is better than dryer lint, on account of all the rayon and nylon and dyes and other manmade stuff that ends up in dryer lint. Small improvement on an excellent solution.

I don't know if it's 3 years of delaying or bureaucracy or what, but feel free to bug them until you get an answer. Get on the bishop's calendar every other week for five minutes, to follow up on anything you should be doing, and what he said he would do. Once it's to the SP, ask the SP's exec sec for a date when action will be taken. Follow up on the date. Some things need to go up to the first presidency. You can't really bug them, but you can sure track progress until it heads up to them. It's possible that you might hear an answer you don't want to hear along the way. Are you humble enough to hear it?

Yeah, the patience and defending stuff is nonsense, but there are real considerations here. Kids in single parent situations are more likely to live in poverty, get involved in crime, go to prison, and have children out of wedlock than kids living in a home with both a mother and a father. However, if your husband is repeatedly cheating on you, he's not really a husband. He's an immature child in an adult's body. What can we say? You created a situation with no good answers for your kid. You can expect her to have all sorts of issues with dating stability and whatnot because of who her mom picked, and who her dad is.Beer drinking and riding ATV's on Sunday you need to just stop talking about. You gave up all right to complain about that, when you took him into your bed and made a child with him. And you reinforced your lack of right to complain about it when you married him. Marital infidelity is one thing. Making kids with and marrying someone, and then grousing about who that person is, is not valid. Knock it off. No easy answers for you. If you think God is suggesting a course of action, go with that. If you pick divorce, please seriously consider focusing on raising your kid, instead of finding some other jerk to share your bed. A sucessful 2nd marriage is a very rare thing, most of them end in divorce, which is still more crap your daughter doesn't need in her life.

Elphaba is right. I've heard all sorts of people from all over the political spectrum grousing about the cost of wars, and I've heard people talking about how we could better use those funds. But not in the blanket terms being argued about here. The video, however, is still brilliant. And it does very well counter Michael Moore's claim shown at the beginning of the video. It also helps put into perspective of relative sizes of sources of wealth and sources of debt.