Monthly Archives: December 2011

Get Used to Gingrich, He’s The Next Republican Candidate

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Has there ever been a primary election like this? I don’t recall there ever having been a single person in second place the entire primary election with, so far, three (or is it four? Do I count Bauchman or not?) first place front runners having risen and fallen. And now it’s Gingrich’s turn to be the Evangelical darling. I call this one for Gingrich if for no other reason than he’s not a Mormon.

Apparently the news media is out of tune with the Republican party (well, we knew that…). For they were unable to guess that the “I hate Mormons” factor of the Republican party would have caused the single least likely candidate to end up getting the nomination. Even just a few weeks ago, the idea that the Republicans running Gingrich seemed literally unthinkable to anyone that didn’t understand just how bigoted 1/3 of Evangelicals are towards Mormons.

Even now, the news just doesn’t seem to get it. Even just a few days ago they were still saying things like “Is Mitt Inevitable?” or even “Mitt is inevitable.” It just doesn’t make rational sense to run Gingrich, so no one (expect the 1/3 of Evangelicals that is bigoted) rationally expects it. Even now the media still thinks Gingrich is going to ‘flare out’ like the other anti-Romney candidates have. They still don’t ‘get it.’ It’s his religion, stupid. Continue reading →

Word Policing: The Difficulty of Words and Meaning

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Touching (from dictionary.com)

  1. affecting; moving; pathetic: a touching scene of farewell.
  2. that touches.

Last night my wife made a comment to my daughter about “touching her teeth to her tongue.” My son quickly corrected my wife and said “should you have said that you touched your tongue to your teeth?”

 A child’s naïve comment, right?

 Or is it? Continue reading →

Reporter speculates that if Mitt loses presidential race, he will become the president of the Church

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This was too rich not to share.  A Bloomberg reporter speculates that if Romney loses the presidential race he’ll become president of the Church.

 

Ultimately, it isn’t hard to see Romney, whose fervor for the Mormon faith runs deep, becoming president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. When he was in his 30s, Romney was bishop of his congregation and president of the Boston-area church. He would be the most visible leader of the fast-growing and controversial denomination since Brigham Young.

Age wouldn’t be a barrier for the 64-year-old; the current president is 84, and it’s not uncommon for Mormon presidents to be in their 90s. The prohibition against smoking, drinking and other transgressions leads to a longer lifespan, it would seem.

What about Huntsman?  No mention of future Church service, not even being promoted to Patriarch or temple president.  It seems there are drawbacks to being wealthy and attractive.
I am sure this is how most outsiders see the Church president, as somebody picked from prominent Mormons.  If they knew about the decades of service most presidents have put in as apostles or members of the First Presidency before becoming the prophet, perhaps they would change their views a bit.  Btw, hat tip to Nate Oman for linking this article.

Teaching Methodologies for Church and School

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Having a Master’s Degree in Teaching, I spend a lot of time studying different teaching methodologies, both in and out of the Church.  In doing so, I’ve recently constructed a typology of major methods of core teaching methods used by instructors I’ve observed over the years.

It all ties into my depiction of a lake or ocean below.  Note, I have a variety of degrees, none of which are in the fine arts….

Here we have a body of water. It represents the knowledge/truth available to mankind. For my legend, we have different representations.

The goal is to reach a level ‘A’ of knowledge in the subject (religion, science, etc).

The methodologies fall along these lines.  ‘B’  shows a method where the instructor goes deep into the logic and structure of the data available.  This differs very much with ‘C’, also known as the “water skipper”, because such an instructive method only touches briefly on the surface, and then skips to the next topic.

These two methodologies explain the difference between how Japan and USA teach math.  The Japanese will pick a math theme and focus on it, sometimes for weeks.  The students learn in depth how to understand the material, and can often take that information and expand it to other deep areas of knowledge. Meanwhile, USA math skills are often very shallow, skipping along the surface, expecting the students to pick up the deeper stuff later on in another class, or on their own.  From the USA’s woeful standings in the world concerning math knowledge of students, we can determine that ‘C’ is a poor methodology.

Continue reading →

Selling a Life—Marriage

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I have spent countless hours mulling over the loss of my marriage covenant, what went wrong, what mistakes I made, and what meaning my experiences have for the larger picture of life. I believe I have gleaned yet another lesson by comparing marriage to the contract of citizenship.

Growing up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with parents who have a strong marriage, I was taught what a marriage entails. There are many explicit agreements, including a wife listening to her husband when he listens to the Lord and the covenant to remain together throughout eternity. Even as a teenager and before I had a husband, I took the marriage covenant seriously enough to study it and to shape my life around its expectations. In doing so, I adopted several implicit obligations in a covenant marriage, including the expectation to grow together, to be patient and forgiving of my spouse’s faults, to give everything I had.

Under the government, in one sense my life and my liberty are theoretically unalienable, which means that even I do not have the right to sell them or trade them. I cannot put myself into indentured servitude or slavery, request a doctor to end my life to donate organs to save another, nor legally volunteer to be executed or incarcerated on another’s behalf.

But like everything, there are shades of grey. I can accept employment which pays me far less than the work is worth, or risk my life to donate organs to save another, so long as death is not guaranteed. I can sacrifice my time, talents, and even my personality for another. I can be raised or manipulated to believe I have no other choice. So these so-called unalienable rights are not as unalienable as we sometimes think. There is not really any such thing as an unalienable right in reality, only in the world of legality. And many people, as I claimed in the last post, confuse the difference between reality and legal rights.

Continue reading →