The other day I cleaned a large surface with denatured alcohol and wore a blue nitrile glove on the hand holding the soaked rag. The next day I had a small spot to clean and didn’t bother with a glove since small amounts of skin contact with alcohol are not harmful; we often use isopropyl alcohol to clean skin. This led to musing on the concept of denatured alcohol. Denatured alcohol is 90% ethanol, an alcohol so mild to the body that people drink it. Drinking ethanol, while not acutely toxic, is still a problematic thing, so its distribution is controlled by law and heavily taxed. Ethanol is so useful for other things though, like fueling cars or cleaning, that it is worthwhile to have a way to distribute it in a form unsuitable for beverage consumption. So it is “denatured,” rendered unfit for drinking by mixing into it poisonous substances, traditionally methanol. Because ethanol is harmful to individuals and society, we make it safe to use freely by rendering it too toxic to ingest.

“The first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the Internet.”

The obvious point is that it wasn’t the Internet the ruined her reputation, but her actions. Gennifer Flowers became a household name before the internet age, and she slept with Bill back when he was a measly governor.

If there’s anything historically unique about the era of Ms. Lewinksy’s…uh…service in the White House that made the story much bigger than it otherwise would have been, it was the emergence of sexual harassment as one of the pressing issues of the age during the early 1990s. You remember, Bob Packwood, Tailhook, the Clarence Thomas hearings, the movie “Disclosure.” No sexual harassment awareness raising > no Paula Jones lawsuit > no depositions about who Bill was having “relations” with > no perjury > no Starr report > no impeachment. The push to get rid of lecherous bosses was clearly a good thing, to a certain extent. But considering the sanctimony of the Thomas hearings and the “Year of the Woman” baloney that the Dems ran on in 1992, it’s amusing how quickly it backfired on them, not that they would ever admit it.

From WTOP:

“An elementary school in Anne Arundel County closed early Friday because animal control couldn’t catch a feral cat in the building.

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Ordain Women founder Kate Kelly has made a letter from her stake president public: link.

From the Washington Post:

Here is Adam McGavock, Metro’s sales director, describing what happens when a subway rider sticks a paper Farecard in any of the rail system’s 1,000 or so mezzanine gates.

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Through repetition a pattern emerges that would be ignored if only seen in a couple of instances. (more…)

“Amane Gobena of Ethiopia won the women’s race and Gebo Burka of Ethiopia won the men’s race in the 29th Asics L.A. Marathon. Gobena, 31, won in 2 hours 27 minutes 37 seconds, collecting $25,000 for the victory. Burka, 26, clocked a 2:10:37 to win a marathon for the first time. He also won $25,000. Gobena won $50,000 for winning the gender ‘challenge.’ The women were given a 17:41 head start and Gobena finished 41 seconds ahead of Burka.”
(link)

I wonder if I could beat Miss Gobena if she allowed me a four-hour head start? Actually I would prefer starting at the same time, but with an 18-mile lead. It would be sporting, in the sense that I’m not sure which of us would win, but not sufficiently interesting an outcome that anyone would put up a purse that would attract either of us to the challenge.

[The six sentence quote above was published by the LA Times as four consecutive paragraphs, but are here consolidated as one paragraph. It seems paragraphs are now what we used to consider sentences, and any periods in the middle of modern paragraphs would have previously been semicolons.]

We’ve passed through a much snowier than usual winter in my part of the country. How much more? So much more that shoveling away yesterday’s half-foot led to the fatal heart attack of a 60-year-old woman. (link) Those who celebrate Equal Occupational Fatality Day know that workplace deaths of men outnumber those of women by more than 12-to-1, as they should. I wonder if fatal heart attacks suffered by snow-shoveling woman are even more rare. I’d never heard of one before, while such fatalities for men are proverbial. I would be feeling pretty lousy about myself and my sons if that woman had died on our street.

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From a dozen years ago in LDS Church News:

“Helen Green, 90, is the oldest living member of the first branch Sunday School started in Lubbock. She made the journey with other family members from her home in Orem, Utah, to attend the dedication. Musing outside the temple before her dedicatory session, she recalled the days when the branch Sunday School was held in a courtroom with west Texas Church pioneer and Texas Tech professor J.O. Ellsworth presiding from the judge’s bench, the speakers giving their talks on the witness stand and the rest of the congregation often fitting comfortably in the jury box.”

“Because young men and young women ages 12 through 18 are a vital part of hastening the work of salvation, please invite and encourage them to attend the Saturday evening sessions of the stake conferences in 2014.” Thus the First Presidency was quoted regarding the schedule for our upcoming stake conference in March.

A couple months ago when an employee of the Church’s Research Information Division asked me and others of my ward what the Church could do to help families prepare youth for mission, I said a more coherent message was desirable. Is the great value of 18-year-old missionaries that they are simple (19-year-olds not being simple enough), or is it that they are prepared despite their youth? If this is the answer, I like it.

I now have to come up with a babysitter, though. Maybe the neighbor gentile girl will be available. Thinking about it, maybe I will stay home with the younger Mansfields. My thoughts are conflicting. The adult evening session has always been the more insiderish part of stake conference, for people willing to go to church on a Saturday night. I want the youth to be part of that, but can it remain that with a bunch of teenagers dragged along by parents? In particular, I fear an overdose of focus on the youth of the noble birthright during the inauguration of this change that I wouldn’t mind missing.

“At the beginning of that 40-year period [1890 to 1930], bread was the country’s single most important food and 90 per cent of it was baked in homes by women. By the end of the period, bread was still the country’s number one food, but 94 per cent of it was baked outside the home by men. With the exception of a few, mostly rural, households, bread production had been almost entirely displaced from the realm of women’s work and the space of the home.”

From “White bread bio-politics: purity, health, and the triumph of industrial baking” by Aaron Bobrow-Strain, quoted by Steve Sailer.

The Killers’ 2013 Christmas tune, with help from Owen Wilson and the BYU animation crew.

Apologies to John Mansfield if he was meaning to post this sometime.

Tomorrow evening an internal research group from the LDS Church is coming to interview some of my ward’s members. The topic is the youthening of missionary age eligibility, and groups of eight of us at a time will spend a half hour with the researchers. They want to meet with: priests and laurels; parents of priests and laurels; parents of soon-to-be, currently serving, or recently returned missionaries; ward mission leaders, ward missionaries, and members of the ward council to round out a group of eight. I am a father of two priests, and we have been asked to be on hand.

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Russia is having about as much fun as a nation can with a yard-long metal stick. The Olympic torch sans flame launched aboard a Soyuz to the International Space Station, and on Saturday a couple Russians will spacewalk with it. But that’s not all:

“Last month, the Olympic flame traveled to the North Pole on a Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker. Later this month it will sink to the bottom of the world’s deepest lake, Lake Baikal, and in February it will reach the peak of Mount Elbrus, at 5,642 meters (18,510 feet) the highest mountain in Russia and Europe.” (link)

Slate enumerates Seven Ways the Government Shutdown Will Hit Women Hardest. This isn’t supposed to happen to Julia’s Life Under Obama.