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

Republican voters are ignorant and stupid (more…)

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.”

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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.

Be glad you didn’t have to walk a mile in his shoes.

and empathetic zombie salmon.

An idea whose time has come.

Poul Anderson was a good and very prolific writer of science fiction who occasionally was great. (more…)

Sowell contrasts modern boxing with golden age boxing.

President Maxwell taught us that we really only have our will to give. He’s right, but we’ve started giving a gift each year to Christ during the Christmas season, some small devotion usually. It lights up the season for us.

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 he may casually admit to wearing women’s cosmetics.

“Because its Christmas Eve, not Christmas Steve.” Coming soon to a surreally vast rightwing conspiracy near you.

As I was singing in the bath this AM–why do the streets have no name, do you think? Negligence in the municipal roads departments?–I pulled up from the treasure vaults of memory something I’ve been meaning to tell you. (more…)

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