Category: thoughts

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National politics thoughts

An Age Problem

I’ve mentioned that I have a problem with the ages of most of the presidential candidates. Today a thought struck me that I think would put that problem in perspective. I realized that Elizabeth Warren – the third youngest legitimate candidate still in the race is only three years younger than Bill Clinton – who was our president 28 years ago. If I were to rank the candidates in age order relative to Bill Clinton it would look roughly like this:

  • Bernie Sanders (5 years older than Clinton)
  • Michael Bloomberg
  • Joe Biden
  • Donald Trump (3 years older than Clinton)
  • Bill Clinton (for reference)
  • Elizabeth Warren (3 years younger than Clinton)
  • Amy Klobuchar (14 years younger than Clinton)
  • Pete Buttigieg (35 years younger than Clinton)

Why is it that we are stuck choosing mainly between candidates who are older than a president we had almost 3 decades ago?

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politics thoughts

Nobody wants more health insurance

Image by Pictures of Money

Inevitably when lawmakers start talking about health care reform they end up dealing with health insurance reform. The funny thing is that if we think about it we realize that health insurance reform isn’t (or shouldn’t be) the real goal.
Go talk to people and see if you can find anyone who wants health insurance that will challenge their every medical decision and deny a significant chunk of their claims plus almost inevitably delay payment on the claims they don’t deny.
People are interested in some assurance that health care won’t bankrupt them. Insurance is the most common vehicle for that today, but that’s not because they inherently want insurance – just see those young and healthy people who would rather not get insurance because their brain assures them they don’t need it.

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thoughts

How the Big 12 should structure their conference championship

With yesterday’s rule change on holding conference championships the Big 12 has an opportunity to get their “13th data point” but they can structure it so that they only hold a championship when they don’t have a clear champion already. The way to do that would be to only hold a championship game when the team with the best conference record doesn’t have at least a two game lead in both their conference record and their overall record. (They might make an exception to the two game rule if the conference leader either lost to the team two games behind them or won on their home field.)

The two game rule means that most years they would be holding a championship game but it allows them to avoid a trap game for their conference champion when they already have a clear winner. (That 13th data point doesn’t mean much when 12-0/9-0 #1 team beats 9-3/7-2 #2 team again but it sure hurts the whole conference if they lose.)

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life thoughts

My Top Books for a Personal Library

Book corner
Photo by: Islxndis

JP and Bryce did a podcast on building a man’s library (almost 5 months ago – and I just finished listening to it). In the podcast they had top-5 lists from four people plus two more books from a fifth person and they invited listeners to compile their own top-5 lists.

Before I share my top-5 list I’d like to say that I really liked how their focus wasn’t about promoting some definitive list but on talking about how and why to develop a library of books based on your own values and interests. Considering that core message I want to share my thoughts on the lists they shared (as a point of reference) and how I chose my list (especially considering that I had the benefit of listening to the podcast and hearing the lists that were already shared there).

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culture life religion thoughts

Daily Religious Observances

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Photo by Eric Angelo

If there is one thing that sets apart spiritually stable people from spiritually unsteady people it is their participation in daily religious observances. It doesn’t matter what religion they belong to – it matters whether they willingly and consistently engage in personal acts of devotion. I got thinking about this after reading a comment from Peter Rival on this thread:

A parish that doesn’t nurture mid-week Mass attendance is one that will quickly see other practices fall to the wayside as well.

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culture thoughts

Commentary on “What is a Man (Again)”

Journey to Manhood
Photo by Rishi Bandopadhay

I was pleasantly surprised to hear JP and Bryce discuss my list of the Traits of Manhood on The Sons of Adam. Between their discussion of my list and their discussion of Bryce’s list the week before I am formulating three new posts that I hope to get feedback on as I further my definition of manhood. For today I’d like to share some of the thoughts I had as I listened to their podcast. (I had no forewarning that they were discussing my list and no preconceived notions of how it would be interpreted.) This post will touch only on those traits where I had thoughts in response to the podcast and will go in the order that those thoughts came.

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religion thoughts

Asking Questions within the Divine Institution of the Lord’s Church

Asking vs Advocating

Supporters of Kate Kelly love to repeat the claim that “she was only asking a question.” They consistently assert that she was a faithful member of the church and would have been satisfied if President Monson had prayed about whether women should receive the priesthood and then shared the outcome of that inquiry. All of this is meant to emphasize that her choice to agitate for change was simply an attempt to make herself heard and not an indication of her being doubtful of the person she acknowledges to be the Lord’s appointed mouthpiece today. Let’s examine that assertion.

While I will examine this assertion of supporting the prophet with a focus on the Kate Kelly situation I hope that readers can recognize that this exercise in examining the implications of what it means to sustain him and how that relates to our actual actions. I would also like to explicitly acknowledge that there are times when we must be vocal in order to affect change. The issue I am dealing with is how to recognize the boundary between advocacy and apostasy.

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life thoughts

Traits of Manhood

A Soldier is Welcomed to Kenya by a Young Child
Photo from UK Ministry of Defence

A discussion about Rites of Manhood on the Sons of Adam podcast concluded with a challenge to come up with a list of defining traits for mature manhood. What I expected to take an hour or two of thinking took much longer.

The Challenge

At first it seemed straightforward to try to make a list of manly traits. As I tried to do that I realized that I had to decide what I was listing. Traits that are consistent with manhood include traits that are simply part of being an adult whether male or female (like taking responsibility) while other traits that are consistent with manhood are traits that are natural to males whether they have achieved manhood or not (such as a proclivity for physical exertion).

Others may choose differently than I did but I chose to approach this from the perspective of what traits I would seek to instill in boys in order for them to achieve manhood. This means that my list more closely aligns with a list of traits that are consistent with being an adult than with a list of masculine tendencies. I did try to define how each of these traits is important as it relates to being genuinely manly.

The order of the traits listed is simply the order in which they coalesced in my thinking.

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thoughts

Opportunity in Detroit

1000 dollar home

The city of Detroit desperately needs an investment of human capital, in fact things are so bad that they are selling homes for $1000. Of course a $1000 home is a sure sign that the home is going to need more than the purchase price to make it work but I see this as an incredible opportunity for those who are willing to tackle the whole challenge. Let’s have a look at what that whole challenge is.

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culture Education thoughts

Open Prospective Longitudinal Study

Mind Research
Photo by: Chris Hope

I’ve been reading Triumphs of Experience and really coming to appreciate the value of prospective longitudinal studies. I’ll write a review of the book after I finish it (and I might finish as early as tonight). The limitations of this study are well known to researchers but despite those limitations the study has incredible value. Imagine the value of a study that didn’t have those limitations.

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