New Comics

I've re-ordered and added two comics to my list on the side.  They are still in order of favorite.

Garfield and Over the Hedge were the two that were demoted.  I think Garfield is simply funnier in my memory than it is in reality.  As for Over the Hedge, I've just been disappointed for the last couple of months, so I had to knock it down.

I've also added two.  One is the Pajama Diaries, which is another one about families with young kids (like Baby Blues), but this one is more mother focused than family focused.  I discovered it while I was in my Women's Pysch class, which made it all the funnier. I've wanted to have it on the daily list, but I never found a place that updates it daily until this last week.  I've also added Gill, which is a new webstrip by Norm Feuti.  It has only run a couple of weeks, but as far as I'm concerned any strip of Norm's is bound to be gold.  Gill is last on the list right now because it's new, but it'll be moving up after a chance to prove itself.

How stupid do you think I am

I heard the following quote yesterday on a Degree Clinical Protection commercial:

1 out of 4 people think they sweat more than the average person.

I'm sorry, but this is one of the lamest statistics I have ever heard, and I follow political news. First off, there's the whole "think" aspect to this study.  There's no diagnostic tool applied, just a personal survey.  Then on top of that there is a statistical fallacy.  This statistic implies that the average person is a median, not a mean.  When using a median for an average by definition 50% of people are above and 50% of people are below.  Therefore, 2 out of 4 people sweat more than the average person by definition.

All in all, a totally lame and insulting technique of hocking your wares.

Sorry it has been so long since I posted anything. Haven't had much to say I guess. Here is something I'm working on for my father-in-law. I figured I'd use my own blog to see how well it worked.

Trying out a Hulu embed

I've become a big fan of Hulu (after all, they have the full collection of Arrested Development for free), and for no reason other than the fact that I can, I am embedding this:

value="http://www.hulu.com/embed/O7keIO3wHnahN_qJHeQI2Q/94/116">

Fa-reekin' Ridiculous

Found this article today:

Quebec girl goes on class trip after taking father to court

 By Matt Reeder

TORONTO (Reuters) - A Quebec father has decided to appeal a decision by a judge who ruled he had no right to stop his 12-year-old daughter from going on a school trip, even though the girl has already gone on the outing.

The dispute began in May when the girl had a disagreement with her stepmother. That prompted the father to forbid the girl to go on a three-day outing with her classmates to celebrate their last year in elementary school. The girl then moved to her mother's house.

The parents, who live in the Gatineau region of Quebec, are divorced, and the father has legal custody.

Last week, Quebec Superior Court Madam Justice Suzanne Tessier ruled the girl could attend the outing despite her father's wishes. She went on the trip this week.

Kim Beaudoin, a lawyer handling the father's case, said the judge's ruling raises unsettling questions for families.

"It's dangerous to let kids play their parents. They have to learn to respect rules," Beaudoin said in an interview on Thursday.

Beaudoin said her client feels the judge had undermined his authority over his daughter.

"He doesn't think a judge should be allowed to take away a punishment," she said. "And he doesn't think another parent should be allowed to say 'Well, come live at my house, and you won't have to live that punishment."'

Miriam Grassby, a family law attorney in Montreal, said it's not that simple.

"In Quebec, even if a parent has legal custody, both parents retain parental authority," she said. "If one parent has custody, the parents still have to make the decisions jointly."

The girl's lawyer, Lucie Fortin, maintained on Thursday that she exhausted all other avenues - including negotiating with Ms. Beaudoin - before presenting the petition to the court.

"This trip will not be possible next year," said Ms. Fortin. "It's the end of elementary school. It'll never come back. It's once in her life."

She also said it is an isolated case, and disagreed that the ruling would open the door for other children to rush to court whenever parents try to punish them.

"It's very, very rare," she said, adding that she finally decided to present the petition to the court last Friday because the girl's trip was planned for Monday

Ms. Beaudoin is preparing to file a formal appeal.

(Editing by Frank McGurty)

Despite how rare this situation might be to have any judge remove the punishment of a parent that is not abuse is outrageous.  It doesn't matter if kids  can't do this in our legal system, it builds on the message that the government is better at raising our kids then we are.  Which is the most dangerous ideology that exists in the world today.

I'm way overdue

After the flurry of comments I received over the weekend (thanks Dad and Kendra), I realized that I ought to finally post some thoughts over here.

Here's something funny, I actually cited myself from this blog for a paper I handed in this last semester.  I'm not sure how wise that was, but I got an A in the class so I figured it was fine.  I did the story about Spencer wearing a tiara in from of the A/C repairman.  I wanted to use the story for a paper, and I liked the way that I wrote it for the blog, so rather than put it in word for word and risk having it get picked up by one of those online plagiarism checkers, I just cited myself.  An idea to any college students out there.

Also, yesterday I gave my first lecture (of what I hope will be many throughout my life) on marriage relations to a church group.  I was invited in as a guest lecturer for the Elder's Quorum.  I based my discussion on the four predictors of divorce identified by Dr. John Gottman.  For anyone wondering the four predictors are:

1. Criticism: Turning complaints about a thing or situation into an personal attack.

2. Defensiveness: Denying your own problems when they're raised by bringing up unrelated problems

3. Contempt: The conscious decision that you are better than your partner, and disregarding all opinions he/she holds.

4. Stonewalling: Unwilling to engage in any discussion about problems though any means of communication (verbal or nonverbal), or disengaging from an argument using the same technique.

I took conference talks and Ensign articles to show that the Brethren have been saying the same thing for decades.  I think that it went well.

Soapbox Moment

On Friday morning I parking in the Institute parking lot at UNT and found various empty beer bottles and cans strewn all over our parking lot.  The Institute is surrounded by a bunch of old crappy town-homes that are filled with guys, so it isn't really a surprise. 

Of course I cleaned them all up, after all, you never outgrow your Aaronic Priesthood responsibilities.  I just have to ask whatever happened to teaching people respect.  We teach that we're supposed to be tolerant and open-minded, but somewhere along the way we missed the lesson on not dumping your trash into the church parking lot next door?

Daily Comic Strips

I've added a series of links to my favorite comic strips over on the side of the blog. These are all the ones that I check daily. They are, for the most part, in a rank order starting with the one I like the most first (FoxTrot is the exception since it is only published on Sundays, otherwise it would be #3).

If you're a comic fan feel free to stop by and take advantage of my links so that you don't have to waste time typing in web pages. (I'm desperate to get my pathetic hit counter going.)

If there are any over there that I failed to include that I should have please leave a comment.

One good economic indicator

I know that there is a lot of gloom and doom out there about the economy, but something has finally happened to me to improve my economic situation:  I CAN BUY GENERIC OTC ZYRTEC!!!

In order for me to survive, I require a daily antihistamine plus an intranasal spray.  Claritin has been OTC for a couple of years now, but doesn't work during my worst times of the year.  Allegra is still prescription, but did have a generic that only cost $10/month after my insurance made me jump through major hoops, but it still didn't work as good as Zyrtec.  In order for me to use Zyrtec, I would have had to pay full price, which up until January was about $2.33 a pill.  Then Zyrtec went OTC which dropped the price (at Sam's Club) to about $0.40 a pill.  Now it is available as a generic from Sam's Club in a 350 pill box for $17.14 which is less than $0.05 a pill!  Totaling an annual savings of $832.20 vs. the prescription price.

If you're an allergy sufferer like me, I'm sure you appreciate just how good this news is.

Shame Shame

Read this in the Dallas Morning News Yesterday:

Associated Press

SAN ANTONIO – University of Texas at San Antonio students wanted to draft an honor code that discouraged cheating and plagiarizing.

Unfortunately, it appears they copied another school's code without proper attribution.

The student in charge of drafting the code said it was an oversight, but cheating experts say it shows a sloppiness among Internet-era students who don't know how to cite sources properly and think of their computers as cut-and-paste machines.

"That's the consequence of the Internet and the availability of things," said Daniel Wueste, director of the Rutland Institute for Ethics at Clemson University. "It doesn't feel like what would be in a book. You Google it and here it comes."

Akshay Thusu said he took over the project a month ago and inherited a draft from students who came before him. He said he discovered that a group of students attended a conference five years ago put on by Clemson's Center for Academic Integrity.

Materials from the conference, which are used by many universities, were probably the main source of UTSA's code, Mr. Thusu said. That's why parts of the UTSA draft match word-for-word the online version of Brigham Young University's code.

BYU credited the Center for Academic Integrity, but UTSA didn't. That will change, Mr. Thusu said, who plans to submit a draft with proper citation to the faculty senate.

"We don't want to have an honor code that is stolen," Mr. Thusu said.

John Barrie co-founded a company that checks student papers for plagiarism. He said Turnitin.com screens about 125,000 student papers per day against Internet sources, library journals and a database of student term papers.

About 30 percent of papers are "less than original," Mr. Barrie said. About half of the cheating hits come from the Internet, and the other half from student papers. A fraction comes from library sources, he said.

Mr. Barrie said Wikipedia.org, where any user can write and edit entries, is the biggest source.

"You tell me: Is that a scary trend?" Mr. Barrie said.

It is so nice to know that my alma mater's code of conduct is so respected that other schools are gladly copying it word for word.

Adolescent Prefrontal Cortex

For anyone wondering, the research that is looking into this theory gets stronger and stronger with each study done.

(click on the picture to read the text)

Two Movie Recommendations

Every now and then some movies come out that don't get the attention they deserve. If you haven't seen either of these, I highly suggest you do.

I hope I didn't freak him out too bad

Today we had an a/c guy come to do some preventative maintenance on our system (hasn't been done since we moved in, figured it was time).  We scheduled it for this afternoon since I'd be able to be home, and Laura decided to take advantage of me being home by going to the gym.  Janelle insisted on going with Laura so she could play at the kids club, so it was just Spencer and me when the a/c guy arrived.

The guy took an immediate liking to Spencer (who can't?) and told me that he just has his first baby six days ago (a boy).  I congratulated him.  Throughout his visit he was shocked by just how busy Spencer was, I guess realizing that he was seeing a glimpse of his future.

At one point right before the guy left, Spencer ran up to me holding one of Janelle's tiaras on his head, and of course it was backward.  The guy looked at Spencer and said "whoa, look at that," with kind of a worried expression on his face.  I then took the tiara from Spencer, turned it around, and put it back on Spencer's head saying, "Spencer, it goes like this."

I wish I'd had a camera at that point because suddenly the guy just looked dumbfounded.  I couldn't quite tell exactly what he was thinking about me letting my son wear a tiara, but there was a definite reaction.

My Women's Studies teacher would be so proud.

Anyone feeling like getting mad?!?!

For all you Texans the link below is guaranteed to set you off like Vesuvius:

Jim Borgman, Political Cartoonist

Awkward moment

Why can't I help but stare at eyebrow piercings? Seriously, there is something grotesquely memorizing about them. I think it is like when you see someone with a big scar and you can't help but stare. My problem is that I'm at a university with a whole bunch of pierced eyebrows and every now and then one of their owners catches me looking at them. Then I have to do that quick, glance away hoping they interpret that as a passing glance, rather then a stare.


In other news I have joined a research team and I need to analyze 150 future life history's of college students to try which the grad students will then use to run their statistical analysis. It is total, bottom-of-the-barrel, agonizing grunt work. But hey, at least I'm now in the barrel.

I don't think I need to comment much on these

We were discussing women's issues in advertising today during my Women's Psych class. We watched this video, which I think is a mandatory lesson for just about every single woman out there.

This is the second video we watched. It made me feel a bit guilty since I know that even Janelle has doubts about her own beauty. A specific example is that she has a gray tooth from a falling accident she once had. In our concern over her oral health, she got it into her head that her gray tooth is a blemish that detracts from her beauty. It is sad how sensitive even the littlest girls are to their appearance.

My Nerd Score

I found this on Ben McMurry's blog. I'm very disappointed that I did not beat his score.

Favorite Memories of President Hinckley

While I have been around long enough to remember four different presidents of our church, President Hinckley is really the only one I have ever known.  I was too young to remember anything about President Kimball; however, I do remember his funeral.  By the time I was old enough to understand who President Benson was, the only tangible evidence of his presidency was his empty chair during General Conference.  My most lasting memory of President Hunter was that I learned about his death from the news scroll while watching the O.J. Simpson trial.  President Hinckley on the other hand, I have known my entire adult life, he was the president during my mission, and has been a constant I could rely on as an example.

1) "Be Ye Clean" I remember this talk.  It was the first time in my life that I knew a conference speaker meant their words for me.  I even reported on this talk for seminary.  Recently, President Hinckley gave this talk again during Priesthood session because he said that we needed a second dose, and that too few of us remembered it.  I felt a tinge of pride to not be in the group who didn't remember the talk.

2) "I challenge you to a dual"  Again, from conference.  I will never forget this moment as President Hinckley challenged Russell M. Nelson to a dual for giving a conference talk that President Hinckley described as a eulogy.  It was nice to see such an admirable person having a sense of humor.

3)  My Mission Call.  As many of you know there are very few things in life as exciting as getting a mission call.  I can honestly say that I was surprised by a call to the Philippines.  (I had my money on Russia-long story for another time).  I loved my mission though, and felt blessed to be sent to a country that was close to President Hinckley's heart.  He had dedicated the country in the 60's and had followed its phenomenal growth since then.  Shortly before my mission he had toured the Philippines, I'm always bummed that I missed that, but being able to share the Prophet's love for a spiritually blessed nation is something I will carry my entire life.

4) Temples.  I think just about everyone will have this on their list.  Once a person understands how amazing a temple is, there is no way someone cannot appreciate the building spree that took place during President Hinckley's tenure.  As someone who loves to travel, there is a great piece of mind being somewhere so far away from home, but knowing that you have access to a temple.  I'll particularly remember the contrast I felt after spending 4 months in mainland China and then being able to visit Hong Kong.  I made a Temple trip a high priority since it had been so long.  There were two other Americans in the room with me and everyone else was either Chinese or Filipino.  It was a powerful learning moment.

5) 90th Birthday.   It seems crazy to think that this was almost 8 years ago, but I got to go to the 90th Birthday celebration in the Conference Center.  It was the first major gathering held there, and it was basically a trial run for learning how to get people in and out of the building so they would have a working plan in place before General Conference.  Despite a fairly hectic seating, when it finally started it was great to be able to wish President Hinckley a happy birthday.  Although it wasn't part of the plan for the evening, it was great when Gladys Knight got the entire building to sing "Happy Birthday" (after the cameras were turned off of course, so the church wouldn't have to pay royalties). At the time I didn't think we'd get the chance to wish him many more, he sure showed me wrong.

6) The Perpetual Education Fund.  This was almost as though the brethren were reading my mind and knew what it was that was my biggest concern for the welfare of the Church back in the Philippines and other impoverished nations.  In reality it just shows how in touch they are with the problems facing real people.  At the time, I was at BYU and very concerned about what was becoming of people I knew back in the Philippines.  In reality I was getting regular reminders because I was still receiving email from girls desperate to marry me in order to get a chance at a better life here.  While unlike some of my missionary friends, I never tried to solve the problem that way, I was praying for the Church to implement some sort of plan to help members deal with the economic challenges of where they live.  Sure enough, I wasn't the only one concerned.

I'm sure I could list 20 other things, but I think that President Hinckley would probably worry that I was wasting my time.  He'd want us to move forward and not dwell on his death; to use the end of his life as a spiritual rebirth of ours.  While it is hard to imagine the First Presidency without Gordon B. Hinckley, I'm reminded of this quote:

"At the close of one particularly difficult day, I looked up at a portrait of Brigham Young that hangs on my wall. I asked, 'Brother Brigham, what should we do?' I thought I saw him smile a little, and then he seemed to say: 'In my day, I had problems enough of my own. Don’t ask me what to do. This is your watch. Ask the Lord, whose work this really is.' And this, I assure you, is what we do and must always do." 

Each Prophet is called to serve at a time when their service will do the most good.  While it is hard to imagine not having President Hinckley up there any more, the Lord has other men waiting in the benches, men who have been foreordained and set apart to serve at a time when they will be most effective.  I know that I can look forward to a lifetime of men serving in that position that I will respect as much as Gordon B. Hinckley.