I have to admit that this was published well after the fact so I have no pictures handy to add and I am going to dispense with the statistics for now. Despite the sparseness of this post I did want it recorded that we welcomed our fourth son to our family today and everything went perfectly (especially perfect in that Laura no longer had an insatiable itch thanks to the cholestasis brought on by the pregnancy).
It’s not exactly the message you would expect to hear on election day. For those who know me it’s not a message they would ever expect to hear from me. As I drove to work this morning after casting my vote I got thinking about how destructive an uninformed vote can be. I won’t claim that there is a definable standard of what constitutes being informed. I think that is a decision that must be left to each potential voter, but for those who know they are not informed (those that can’t even see past the party label enough to recognize the party platform for example) not voting just might be your patriotic duty.
After years of learning about myself in various jobs I began to have a greater understanding of what kinds of work really interested me. Following the advise and conclusions I reached from reading Paul Graham’s “How to Do What You Love” I began to seek ways to focus more on doing what I was good at in my work than those things that were mundane or tedious for me.
Interestingly the first real breakthrough for me came when I gave myself permission to dislike my job. Not that I was actively trying to dislike my job but that I relinquished the burden that came with the assumption that I must like my work. Related to that, I stopped worrying about how others might perceive my efforts at work. I abandoned the pretense that I must stay at work longer to make sure I got the minimum number of expected hours at times when I could not do anything effective with the time. Previously I stayed longer so that nobody could question my effort as a way to compensate for the fact that I had not been connecting with the current work and thus was not able to use the time effectively.
This morning as I went to the temple I began to wonder if I was in the middle of a common conference tradition of going to the temple to mentally prepare for General Conference (or to make up for the fact that a weekly Saturday trip would not be possible with the temple closed on conference weekend). It was busier than I have seen it before with almost as many people waiting to perform ordinances as performing them. It was so busy that the man who normally keeps everything in order flawlessly was hard-pressed to keep everything straight with so many people coming, waiting, and going.
As I thought about it throughout the day I considered some other conference traditions that we are trying to establish in our family. We have developed a tradition of having some fun treats in stock for the weekend so that the kids can be more self-maintaining and so that they can look forward to the conference weekend. We also have a tradition of going out to dinner as a family the night before conference as a fun way to start a long weekend. I am also trying to establish a tradition of taking Friday (or most of Friday) off of work so that I can do any tasks that would normally be saved for the weekend in order to allow myself to focus on the conference rather than dividing my attention with other tasks.
All in all, I think we have some good traditions to work on so that conference weekends are getting to be perhaps our third biggest holiday of the year at our house.
I have been watching the redistricting process with interest although I have not been able to be as vocal in the discussions as I might have wished. This late in the process we can see the forces at work and the concerns being raised. On top of that, I have been asked how I think the lines should be drawn (not what my map would look like so much as how I would go about drawing it). It time now to no longer be silent. Before the final vote on the maps is completed by the special legislative session I need to speak up – and so should everyone else who has not already been heard in this process.
I have been pleased with the process at times and disappointed with the results at other times. I am going to talk about what has happened in the redistricting process so far, good and bad, and also answer the question of what I think is the appropriate process for completing this decennial task.
I’m a big fan of the CATO Institute and their perspective on constitutional government but no matter how much I may generally agree with them, that cannot give them a free pass to use use absolutely terrible logic to promote a position. You’ll have to take my word for it that I would dislike the use of terrible logic to promote a position I agree with but in this case Robert Levy uses this terrible logic in support of one of the worst ideas ever promoted in this nation (in my opinion – I recognize that is very subjective). With that introduction – lets break down the flawed logic in Marriage equality: religious freedom, federalism, and judicial activism.
Levy addresses what he calls “three jurisprudential issues that are central to the debate over same-sex marriage: religious freedom, federalism, and judicial activism.” Unfortunately those three jurisprudential issues are not the core of the debate over same-sex marriage. They are one step removed from the core of the debate but they are the focus of the legal wrangling because the proponents of same-sex marriage have declared the debate of the core issue, namely whether same-sex marriage is beneficial for society, to be resolved in the affirmative. This is a critical re-framing of the issue because if that core issue were truly resolved in the affirmative it becomes much easier to make the arguments in these satellite issues and thus produce the intended legal outcome for proponents.
When Google+ started there were a lot more people wanting to get in than there were openings—it reminded me a lot of the launch of Gmail in that way. One big difference for me was that I got an account less than 24 hours after the launch where I had to wait weeks for Gmail (thus preventing me from getting simply my name as an email address which was one of the major reasons why I wanted an invite). With Google+ I was in early enough that there was no link to invite people most of the time.
Once things settled down I thought it was interesting that unlike Gmail invites in the early days there was no number indicating how many invites I could offer. I don’t know when that changed (I don’t look at the invite link generally) but I just noticed today that I have 150 invites available (I only have 96 in Gmail—as if they had any purpose anymore).
When I saw that I thought I should try to find people who wanted invites but in trying to find requests all I found were a bunch of articles talking about the current status of invites and a few posts of people offering invites. I noticed that they generally asked for something in return (“like me on Facebook” or “follow me on twitter” for example).
I decided to make my own offer: let me know that you want an invite and I’ll send you one at the email address of your choice. I don’t care how you let me know but leaving a comment is probably the simplest way. Anyway you choose, I’ll give them out on a first come, first served basis.
UPDATE: I’m not entirely sure how simple this will be but here is a direct link to use one of my invites. If anyone tries that link I would appreciate at least one person leaving a comment to tell me how well it worked.
UPDATE 2: Lots of people used my direct link without making comments as evidenced by the fact that I have no more invites and nowhere near 150 comments here. If anyone still wants an invite you can let me know and I will send invites as they become available.
Last night Savannah asked me what time I went out weeding in the mornings. I told her 6:00 and apparently she set her alarm for 6:30 this morning so she could join me. When she came out I was still finishing scriptures but then we went out together and I taught her the tips to pulling weeds among plants you would like to keep. So not only was I pulling weeds this morning, I was growing workers.
When I got inside I discovered that not only had I been training up a new worker I also had an audience while we were out there:
From the way Alyssa talked after we came in I have the feeling that I may soon have two kids out working beside me on some mornings.
Regardless of how much some people may talk about the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States during their celebrations on the fourth day of July each year, and despite reports suggesting that participation in such celebrations makes children more likely to identify politically as Republicans, it seems obvious to me, based on the situations that we currently face as a nation and the fact that they have been steadily building under the leadership of both major parties, that what is really being celebrated on this day is fireworks.
Certainly some are celebrating as much as fireworks, parades, and traditional American cuisine all at once, but none of this constitutes a celebration of American independence, of our nation, or of our system of government. True celebrations of these things may only take place in the most insignificant of ways on this national holiday. Some may argue that a real celebration of our nation’s independence and of our system of government takes place at the polls each November. I would agree that voting is a real form of such a celebration, but it is only the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve been thinking about the massive disconnect between the abysmal ratings that Congress enjoys (8% approval I recently read) and the virtual invincibility of Congressional incumbents (incumbents consistently win 90% of the elections where they seek reelection).
I realized that the apparent disconnect was not as stark as it first appeared (11 out of 12 disapproving of Congress while 9 of 10 chose to reelect their Congressional representatives). The reality is that eleven out of twelve people people disapprove of Congress but only five out of twelve vote for someone new when given their current member of Congress as an option.
The fact that six out of twelve voters disapprove of Congress and yet they consistently vote the same people back to represent them over and over again is evidence of a colossal failure on the part of the voters of this nation. They fail to recognize that Congress is working exactly as designed given the input they provide at the polls in November of each even year.
