The Salt Lake Tribune reports on the coming replacement of Carolyn Tanner Irish as bishop of the Utah Diocese under the headline “Next bishop’s big challenge: Grow a shrinking Episcopal Church in Utah”: (more…)
From BBC News (by way of Marginal Revolution):
Dating by blood type in Japan
The black sheep though seem to be blood group B – flamboyant free-thinkers, but selfish.
“At the interview for my first job they asked me about my blood type,” said a man with blood group B, who wanted to identify himself only as Kouichi.
“The surprise was written on my face. Why? It turned out the company president really cared. She’d obviously had a bad experience with a B type blood person. But somehow I got the job anyway.”
Later, though, the issue of his blood came up again.
“The president was the kind of person who couldn’t take her drink and at one company party she got drunk. So she sent B people home before the others. ‘You are blood type B,’ she said. ‘Get out.'”
There is even a term for such behaviour in Japan, burahara, which translates as blood group harassment.
“A clause in the bill likely would allow most Amish families an exemption from the insurance requirement, but the bill could still create sticky issues for the young people who have not formally joined the church.” (link)
A disturbing aspect of laws with religious exemptions is the notion that religious beliefs are the only legitimate kinds of personal preference. Something matters so much that we pass a law or ruling to make that the way things are, yet there are exemptions for members of religious bodies that don’t think that’s the way things ought to be? Kind of lousy for the person who also disagrees with the law, but for non-religious reasons.
Liberty has to be upheld for everyone. Any law that can justifiably have a religious exemption is a law that shouldn’t exist at all. A person shouldn’t have to belong to a church to get relief from laws running his life. If religious people are only defending religious liberty, and that becomes the only liberty left, then soon enough it will be curtailed as well.
“Canadian MPs will be served seal meat this week in support of hunters fighting an EU ban on products from the animals.”
. . .
“Last month, an offer of seal meat caught by indigenous hunters to the world’s leading economic ministers at a G7 meeting in Iqaluit, 200 miles south of the Arctic circle, sparked outrage.” (link)
When women see a Husqvarna chainsaw or dirt bike, they will often let the men in their company know that Husqvarna sewing machines are high quality products. But just think how the market for sewing machines could possibly expand if Husqvarna put two-stroke engines on some instead of electric motors.
Reading via the internet, one can find any number of people who wish the entire Church were inactive so as to accommodate their preference for avoiding human contact with their coreligionists. Sunday School should be eliminated and leadership meetings and seminary and stake conference and MIA activities and proselyting missions, and couldn’t sacrament meeting be cut to half hour and held quarterly? Because “I dislike being in the same room with other people” lacks something as a rallying cry, often the would-be destroyers proclaim their devotion to service and dream of all the service they would be performing if the church wasn’t holding them back. I have my doubts.
A frequent target for the misanthropes is scouting. I wish to take up one small item that the anti-scouts throw down every time as an example of the silliness of scouting: knot tying. What kind of person never learned the square knot and the bowline? Answer: an incompetent person. A wise, experienced mother training our district’s den chiefs one Saturday said something that has stuck with me the eighteen years since: Scouts do craft activities because a boy who doesn’t learn to do things with his hands becomes a man who is handicapped. There are a number of cub scouts in whose hands I placed a hammer or a screwdriver for the first time. As with the tactile, so with the social. A couple times teaching knots makes it abundantly clear how socially useful the activity is, besides being a lot of fun playing with rope. The boys learn, and then they teach others. After watching this happen a few times, I thought “No wonder knot tying is the stereotypical scouting activity!” “Misfit loner” is a label that most people could apply to their own feelings during some period of their own youth. Scouting is an excellent setting for a boy to begin getting experienced at something, and then share his nascent skills with the next boy.
“One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy, so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man.”—from Baden-Powell’s farewell
Yesterday I heard that J.D. Salinger finally died, and was told by a radio announcer once again that all adolescents identify with Salinger’s creation, Holden Caulfield. You could probably find dozens of writers today claiming the same thing. I can’t think of a single teenager I’ve known who reminds me of that self-absorbed, vulgar whiner. Apparently, though, journalism is teeming such people. When we were assigned the book in high school, I remember mostly mocking all around of the character and his oh-so-authentic speech patterns.
“Instead, the relative difference between partners’ levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives.”
(link)
Steve Sailer informs us that Pat Buchannan very pointedly doesn’t exist at the Google prompts. I tried the exercise Sailer went through, and found that he is correct. In Google’s defense, I would rather spend a half hour watching a Green Acres rerun than one of those newsy shows with Buchannan and his pals.
Dear Times and Seasons,
A comment at your web site by one of your writers, Frank McIntyre, filled me with disappointment, but not so full that there wasn’t room left for disgust. Those feelings were particularly intense because they were in response to reading something so ugly in a place intended to interest faithful Latter-day Saints. In order to express his indifference to the material stocked on shelves of Deseret Book, Mr. McIntyre chose to add more color to the expression of his sentiments by claiming “I have no dog in this fight.” How can Mr. McIntyre be so indifferent to the cruelty of dog fighting that he thinks it is acceptable to use such a phrase?
Suppose one of his children heard that phrase and wanted him to explain what it meant. Imagine their horror as they came to understand that below the surface, their father’s mind is laced with gambling and bloodshed. He should spend some time volunteering at a shelter for abused animals so he can fully feel the inappropriateness of his words and thoughts. Alternatively, if he has a free weekend coming up, he and I could meet at Club Gallistico in San Juan to consider some—ah—economic propositions. He’d better bring plenty of green, because I don’t want to fly home with a pocketful of IOUs.
Most insincerely,
John R. Mansfield
[The following is taken from pages 12-15 of Lighter-Than-Air Flight edited by Lt. Col. C.V. Glines, USAF, published by Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965.]
The preliminary flights in a captive balloon were preludes to the next logical step in the Montgolfier experiments—free flight. But it was not a matter of simply cutting a rope and letting the intrepid aeronauts go with the wind. The King of France, Louis XVI, would not permit any such manned flight to take place. The Marquis François-Laurent d’Arlendes,an influential friend of de Rozier, interceded and gained an audience with the King. Pointing out that the first manned tethered flights had been successful and that the animals used in the free flight had all survived, d’Arlendes pleaded that two men should now be allowed to ascend for the glory of France.
What is going on with Google? They often put up alternative graphics for a day commemorating holidays or anniversaries of one thing or another, but last week they started marking Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary and they haven’t stopped. On Wednesday, it was Big Bird’s legs. On Thursday, they were still at it with Cookie Monster taking our queries. One Friday, Ernie and Burt were up on the home page, perhaps doubling as a celebration of It’s a Wonderful Life. Over the weekend I had no need to search web pages, but today, Monday, they are still at it with the vampire who counts things. Which seven-year-old did Brin and Page leave in charge of the store? Probably one who no one has seen in thirty years.
Solomon Nunes Carvalho (1815-1897) was a Sephardic Jew born in Charleston, South Carolina who was invited to join John C. Fremont’s 1853-54 expedition as an artist and daguerreotypist. In February at Parowan, Utah, he separated from the expedition due to illness; the expedition had passed a rough winter in the Rockies, surviving off the flesh of their horses for fifty days. From Parowan, “I left for great Salt Lake City, in a wagon belonging to one of a large company of Mormons, who were on their way to ‘Conference.'” After three months convalescing, he traveled to Los Angeles, California with a party “consisting of twenty-three Mormons, missionaries to the Sandwich Islands, under command of Parley Pratt.”
Hoping all enjoyed a delightful Nevada Day this past weekend, here is a portion of Carvalho’s account of May 30, 1854 during their stay in Las Vegas:
