Brian Was Here

My 2011: A Recap

2012-01-01T16:10:00.003-05:00

A recap of my year:

I worked a lot. Erica got a new job, and she works a lot there too. We moved at the end of April. Our new apartment is much nicer. We bought lots of furniture. We finally shaved the matted hair off of our cat, and he has been much happier ever since. We took a week-long cruise through the Caribbean in November. I started a home business, which should make a public debut early next year (2012).

Books read:
1. The 4-Hour Body, by Timothy Ferriss. Critics have been somewhat dismissive of it, but the stuff I have tried from it has generally worked pretty well. I recommend it.
2. Stages of Faith, by James W. Fowler. A bit slow at first, but an insightful treatise on religious experience across various faith perspectives. A good read for anyone who believes that his belief system is "the one true faith." This even includes atheists. (*Sidenote: most Mormons are stage 3 for life.)
3. Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, by Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery. Probably the best book on early Mormon history that I've read to date. I highly recommend it.
4. In-N-Out Burger, by Stacy Perman. A good overview of the origins and history of one of the best fast food chains on the planet. I have a profound respect for the company, not just because of its quality products, but also because of good business practices (it pays higher wages and still charges reasonable prices, yet demands quality work from its employees. Which they are eager to deliver.)
5. An Insider's View to Mormon Origins, by Grant Palmer. The most honest review that I can give is to say that I'm really glad I read this book. If you want to know more about it, feel free to ask.
6. The Big Short, by Michael Lewis. If you want to read one book that describes in detail what happened when the global economy nose-dived in 2008, this is it. This book is essentially a brilliant piece of journalism, and Lewis is now considered a go-to guy by members of Congress who want to know more about the latest recession. (He also wrote the book that the movie Moneyball was based on.) Read. This. Book.
7. Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. A timless classic, yet slightly different than what I had expected.

Movies watched:
1. The Green Hornet. 2.5 stars. Generic comic book movie, nothing special.
2. No Strings Attached. 2.5 stars. Not as bad as I expected, but also nothing special.
3. The Roommate. 2 stars. Essentially a remake of Single White Female. I hate giving Minka Kelly such a paltry rating, but the movie wasn't great.
4. Cedar Rapids. 3 stars. This stars Ed Helms (Andy from The Office), who is perfect in this role. I enjoyed the simple yet funny story.
5. The Adjustment Bureau. 3.5 stars. A rather unique sci-fi love story, but grippingly entertaining.
6. Take Me Home Tonight. 2.5 stars. A slacker has a coming-of-age evening. Set in the 80s. Kind of bland.
7. Battle: Los Angeles. 2.5 stars. Lots of mindless sci-fi action, and one of the most accurate portrayals of Marine Corps fighting that you will see outside of actual war footage. But still--a pretty ridiculous story and premise.
8. Red Riding Hood. 1.5 stars. As lousy and Rotten Tomatoes said it would be.
9. Limitless. 3 stars. A drug makes a guys supersmart, and he metaphorically sets out to conquer the world. Interesting and entertaining, but I didn't care for the ending.
10. Sucker Punch. 2.5 stars. Super cool action sequences and CGI sets. Weird storyline and ending.
11. Source Code. 3.5 stars. Probably the best original sci-fi film since Inception.
12. Hanna. 2.5 stars. Weird, a bit disturbing, but not bad.
13. Thor. 3 stars. A solid comic book adaptation, with good action sequences.
14. Bridesmaids. 4 stars. Hilarious! If you only saw one comedy this year, I hope this was it.
15. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. 2 stars. I expected much more from this franchise. Each movie in this series has slipped a little from the previous one. At least the first one was really good.
16. The Tree of Life. 3 stars. An extremely artsy film, but one I think most religious people can appreciate. It causes you to rethink your conception of God, in a good way.
17. X-Men First Class. 3.5 stars. A very well-done and entertaining prequel to the other X-Men films.
18. Super 8. 3.5 stars. A great original sci-fi film, with solid acting performances from its youthful cast.
19. Green Lantern. 2 stars. Very generic. Nothing exciting. Ryan Reynolds does better with comedy.
20. Transformers: Dark of the Moon. 3 stars. I think the Transformers movies get a bad rap. They are actually enjoyable if you are in the mood for mindless action and special effects.
21. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: (Part 2). 4 stars. Excellent finale to an excellent series of films/books. Everything I hoped it would be.
22. Captain America. 3 stars. Another solid comic book adaptation.
23. Cowboys & Aliens. 2.5 stars. Mainly hype and special effects, but not much substance.
24. Attack the Block. 3.5 stars. A very clever film about an alien invasion in a London slum.
25. Rise of the Planet of the Apes. 3.5 stars. My only complain about this excellent film is that I felt like during the first half of the movie nobody was treating these aggressive animals with the proper care that they warranted.
26. Fright Night. 3 stars. A rare remake that I'm actually glad I watched, with solid acting.
27. The Debt. 3 stars. A gripping Cold War tale of a Mossad operation gone awry. Enjoyable.
28. Contagion. 3.5 stars. I think this movie affected me more than most, mainly because I am aware of the role that pandemics have played in world history, and that we are well overdue for another one, based on current ratios of population to resources.
29. Moneyball. 3.5 stars. A well-told story that's bigger than just baseball. Reminiscent of last year's The Social Network.
30. Red State. 3.5 stars. A compellingly freaky movie that explores the thin line between religious zealotry and deadly cult fanaticism. Kevin Smith at his finest.
31. 50/50. 4 stars. Probably my favorite film of the year. Asks the question "What would it be like to have a 50% chance of survival at a young age?" Great cast, with great performances.
32. A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas. 3.5 stars. I'm a sucker for this series of films. A delightfully raunchy buddy flick.
33. The Descendants. 4 stars. A very close runner-up for my favorite film of the year. Deeply moving performances, with a very honest feel. Yet just light-hearted enough to keep you from crying.
34. The Muppets. 3.5 stars. I wasn't expecting much, but was blown away by how clever and entertaining this film was. It made the Muppets relevant again. Catchy musical numbers too.
35. Hugo. 3 stars. A solid film, with captivating visuals. My only complaint is that it dragged a little, but that's common with Scorsese films.
36. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. 3.5 stars. Gritty and raw, yet captivating. Not for the faint of heart. Closely followed the format of the Swedish film adaptation.
37. The Help. 4 stars. A gripping exploration of racial issues in the 1950/60s, that still manages to convey a relevant message for today.

TV Shows I watch(ed):
1. Pan Am
2. Attack of the Show
3. One Tree Hill
4. Modern Family
*I had very little time to watch television this year. At least I saw a lot of movies!

Places I visited:
1. Minneapolis
2. Southern California
3. New Orleans
4. Jamaica
5. Grand Caymen
6. Cozumel, Mexico

Major furniture items purchased:
1. Set of couches
2. Rustic dining room table
3. New dresser
4. Bookshelves
5. Coffee table
6. End table
7. Sealy posturepedic mattress and bed frame

My personal weight differential:
I hit a low of 160 lbs back in early April. I hit a high of 186 lbs. just before Christmas. There were ups and downs in between. But a 26 lbs. shift for a 5'8" individual is pretty significant.

Goals for 2012:
1. Attain a net worth of $1 million. (Hey, why not aim big?)
2. Lose 30 lbs. (Just to see what happens if I do.)
3. Run my first ever marathon (The Marine Corps Marathon in Oct) with a Boston-qualifying time. (This is why I'm dropping 30 lbs.)

Here's to a healthy, happy, and successful 2012!

My Diet

2011-10-09T14:31:00.002-04:00

My diet Sunday through Friday:

Protein shake
2 scrambled eggs
1 serving of refried beans
8 almonds
Tuna and black bean salad with mayo
Protein shake
Grilled chicken with either grilled veggies or salad
Protein shake

My diet last Saturday (*typical of most Saturdays):

Yogurt cup
Protein shake
Oatmeal raisin cookie
Cream cheese danish
4 fun size packets of Reese's Pieces
Elevation cheeseburger with 3 beef patties, plus all the toppings
Elevation fries
3 cans of diet Pepsi Max
Protein Shake
2 cups of macaroni salad from grocery store
Brownie from Au Bon Pain
Most of movie theater nachos (shared with wife)
Small movie theater popcorn (wife did not eat any)
McChicken sandwich from McDonald's
Protein shake

I've been doing this for 3 weeks now, and I've lost 6 lbs. I only go to the gym on Saturdays, and I usually walk about 2-3 miles per day. On Mondays I do kettlebell swings at home (alternating arms with a 35 lbs. weight. Start at 10 reps per side, then 9, etc. until down to 5 per side. Take no rests. Should take about 5 minutes max, and leave your heart pumping a mile a minute.)

And I feel great.

Things to Achieve Before I Die

2011-06-19T08:59:00.003-04:00

Oh, blog of mine. How I have neglected you over the last few months. It's inexcusable, really. But if you want an explanation, I was working 60-80 hours per week for quite a while; pretty much since late February. Although I'm still pulling in 60 per week right now, I at least get my weekends off. Such is the life of a contract attorney. When the work is plentiful, you make boatloads of money. When it isn't, you cross your fingers and hope that you make enough to get by. Right now, thankfully, I'm in the former category.

When you work all the time, you start to daydream about what you would like to do if you didn't have to work at all. I've often heard that people who retire get depressed because they no longer feel like they have a purpose. I understand why that happens, although a small part of me thinks that those people simply lack imagination. I've gone through my own stretches where I didn't have either work or school, and they did tend to get boring after a while. But I also had the thought looming over my head that either vacation was going to end, or my new job was going to start soon, etc. So I wasn't really making any life altering plans or pursuing my dreams during those periods. I was basically filling time, which ususally consisted of sleeping in, getting some basic exercise, watching tv, going to the store, and doing a lot of cooking and reading. It's nice for a week. It gets old after a month. But if/when you hit retirement and you don't have anything looming over you in the future, you would think people would start to reflect on what they would like to do before they die, and figure out a way to do some of them. I understand that sometimes health and financial reasons can limit this, but not everything has to be expensive or require a robust physique.

So I decided to put together my own list, based on the things I would like to do right now if I had the means to retire early. I'm sure priorities will change over the years, but at least I can look back on what I was thinking at this moment in time. I realize that this is a "bucket list" or sorts, yet it differs in that I'm not including places I would like to visit, people I want to meet, books I want to read, etc. It's a list of things I would like to accomplish, which I feel would give me satisfaction when I look back on a life well-lived.

1. Finish a triathlon. Not a sprint distance triathlon. Not an Olympic distance triathlon. I want to finish an Ironman triathlon. That's a 2.4 mile swim, 112 miles of cycling, and a 26.2 mile marathon run at the end. The test of a true athlete. I'd have to say swimming would be the weak link for me. I could probably swim a breaststroke for that distance, with some training, but I would probably go so slow that I would get disqualified. So I would probably need someone to teach me an efficient freestyle technique.

2. Write a book. Of fiction. I've actually put a lot of thought into this, and I even have a rough story line that I've put together in my head. It will likely be called The Balancing Act, and will tell the tale of a young LDS man who leaves the church, falls in love with young lady, and through the course of the relationship discusses topics of life, religion, and ultimate truth with her. The relationship ends, she encounters LDS missionaries, and decides to convert. The crux of the story will be how they both find happiness in their respective journies, and how they each find what they were missing in progressing from one faith tradition to another. That's just a brief overview of what I have pieced together so far. There will also be political intrigue, heartbreak, and even a climactic car crash.

3. Learn several new languages. I haven't put a limit on the number. I know I previously alluded to taking up Farsi. I pretty much learned the alphabet, got really busy with work, and promptly forgot the alphabet. I'm sure it would come back to me quickly. So I would start with Farsi, probably branch out to Portuguese, then maybe try my hand at something like Korean. If you've got free time and some good study materials, then I figure an intelligent person can become fully functional in a new language within a year. Seems entirely possible to me.

4. Go back to school for some additional degrees. You would think that a B.S. and a J.D. would be enough. Not so. There are so many other things I would like to become somewhat of an expert in. The three likely contenders would be: an M.A. in Theology, a Ph.D. in Economics, or an M.A. in Counseling/Therapy. Theology, because I am very interested in giving some serious study to biblical texts and origins, as well as language and translation. I feel like my own church is severely lacking in this area. For example, I recently found out that the King James version of the Bible is not the most accurate translation, despite the rumors I have constantly heard at church. (The New International Revised version or New American Standard are two of the best translations.) Economics, because I feel like so many people in this field sell out to the highest bidder, and I want to get past all of that so I can draw more accurate conclusions. Counseling, because I think the LDS community needs more good therapists, people who can get to the real heart of a matter, instead of merely offering the same sort of shallow, canned answers you sometimes get at church.

5. Record a music album. I want to get good at using digital effects to create drum tracks, bass grooves, and other sound effects. Then I want to edit them all together to create an audio track that I can accompany live with my electric guitar. I would literally be a "one man band." I figure that the technology is here, so why not be one of the first to try it? Maybe even spruce it up with a pre-designed laser light show or other special effects. With the right equipment and ingenuity, it could be way exciting.

6. Get trained as a chef. I realize this could also fit under #4, but it just felt like a separate point to me. I don't need any sort of degree or certification. I just want to gain a lot of cooking skills, so that I could run a small kitchen or create exquisite masterpieces for dinner guests from time to time. Essentially, I want to become an incredible amateur chef. So I'll need some additional training.

That's about it for now. I just need to get rich, retire early, and start pursuing my dreams. Easier said than done. So, dear reader, what are the things on your list?

Book Review: Mormon Enigma - Emma Hale Smith

2011-04-04T19:45:00.003-04:00

To whom it may concern:

I am an amateur LDS church historian. I think the seeds were planted in my at a rather young age. When I was about 9 or so, I read the Book of Mormon in its entirety. My decision to do this had to do with the fact that my mother was my sunday school teacher at the time, and she was bribing our class with a candy bar upon completion of each of the major books in the BofM (2 for Alma). Since the candy was at home, I could claim a bar immediately upon completion of each book. Also, there was another student in our class with whom I got into a friendly competition to see who could complete the whole thing first. The combination of immediate candy and healthy competition allowed me to read the whole thing. The upside: I won the competition. The downside: I retained very little of the information I had read in such a short time (it was literally only a couple of weeks).

By the time I completed my freshman year of college, I had read through the BofM an additional three times. I was quite acquainted with all of its stories and history. During that freshman year, I also took the first of three courses in Mormon church history. It covered basically the church chronology from Jos. Smith Jr.'s birth through his death. When other missionaries left for two years without knowing much about their church other than the basics taught in sunday school, I was already well-versed in both BofM history and early modern church history. This helped me feel like I had a very grounded testimony of our church, warts and all. To me, places like Kirtland OH, Jackson County MO, and Nauvoo IL weren't just a jumbled list of locations; they were important locations in the early history of my people.

It also prepared my testimony for some of the more difficult aspects of our faith. I wasn't shaken when confronted with stories about JS digging for gold during his youth (he did, mainly for the money he was offered), translating the BofM by looking into a smooth stone placed into a hat (he did), receiving a revelation to start a bank that ended up losing its investors all of their invested funds (yeah, that happened), or the polygamy question (JS married over a dozen women, many of whom were teenagers). All of these could be difficult things to hear out of the blue, but I wasn't shaken because I had learned of them all within their appropriate context in church history. When I hear about people leaving the church in their mid-life after discovering these things, I somewhat pity them for having built up the church into such a perfect straw-man in their minds, because their bubble was bound to eventually burst. To me, the gospel of Christ is perfect; the church will inevitably be flawed in various respects, especially as our population grows increasingly larger and more far-flung. Consider, for example, the plight of homosexual youth in our church. Our church simply has not come up with a good way to deal with this dilemma, meanwhile gay members are leaving the church in droves. It's not because they don't have a testimony of Christ's gospel -- it's just that the church basically offers them a Sophie's Choice of lifelong celibacy or eternal damnation for acting in accordance with their biological wiring. I'd probably make the same choice as many of them, were I to be placed in their situation.

I remember getting into an argument with one of my missionary companions after correcting him (politely) over a statistic regarding polygamy. He mentioned to an investigator that polygamy had never been practiced by more than 3% of the church at any time (who in their right mind discusses polygamy with an investigator! Oy vey). This was based on a number from a book written by Gordon Hinckley several years before becoming president of the church. It was also later proven to be incorrect, as historical records from Utah in the late 1800s show that the incidence of polygamy in the adult population was probably somewhere between 30-50%. Our missionary companionship was severely strained throughout the following weeks, but he was fortunately placed elsewhere during the next set of transfers. Sometimes knowing the full history doesn't win you friends with those whose faith is based on a simpler (albeit incorrect) belief.

As a missionary, I had a copy of the church history manual with me for much of the time, and I read through it at least twice. After returning to BYU post-mission, I enrolled in the second course of church history. It was a fascinating course, and I wrote a 10 page research paper on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Long story short, the massacre was an evil deed committed by local leaders in southern Utah, acting independently of church leadership in Salt Lake City. But Brigham Young probably could have handled the situation much better, especially in the aftermath. As it stands, one man was basically "thrown under the bus" for the whole situation, and was eventually executed, while the others involved essentially were allowed to escape justice.

The church historian in me was basically set aside as I finished up my undergraduate studies and moved on to law school. Other interests and responsibilities occupied my time for several years. Recently, however, I have returned to my church history interests, as I moved into the work force and no longer have textbook after endless textbook to read each evening. I have found many sources to be very helpful in this pursuit, although I must first preface their disclosure by stating that their is a common bias in history: It tends to be written by the winners. Imagine what German textbooks would look like today if Hitler had succeeded (fortunately, he did not). Instead, WWII history is told from the point of view of the Allies. You would get a very interesting, enlightening, and markedly different history if you looked at the records of German peasants from that era, or even those of country folk from places like Poland or Belarus. But to get the most accurate picture of what really happened, you would probably want to investigate sources from as many different perspectives as possible. Reading the history from only the winners' perspective will not paint the whole picture.

That being said, I have been careful not to delve into sources that merely exist to criticize the church or its doctrines. Just as I would not read a U.S. history book that attempts to explain how evil our nation is, nor would I read a history of my church that only wants to paint us as evil and misguided people. I have chosen sources that are meant to complement or offer a different perspective from that of the materials from my church which I have already explored in depth. My future reading list includes Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman, as well as a psychological textbook on religion called Stages of Faith, by James Fowler (I'm a stage 4!). Additionally, I am an avid listener to several Mormon-themed podcasts, notably Mormon Stories, Mormon Matters, and Mormon Expression. But the source that I want to discuss today is the fascinating book Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, by Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, first published in 1984.

Although the life of Joseph Smith Jr. receives much attention from LDS scholars and church members alike, the story of his wife, Emma Smith, rarely receives much attention in the modern church. She plays a prominent role in church history during her marriage to Joseph, even becoming the first president of the Relief Society of the church, but is essentially forgotten once Joseph is murdered and the Quorum of the 12 decide to move the church to the Utah Territory. A part of me had always wondered what became of her after the westward migration, since all I knew was that she had stayed behind in Illinois.

Perhaps a good synopsis of this book should start with her marriage to Joseph. Emma, a well-educated woman, was truly a perfect complement to Joseph. What he lacked in shrewdness and education, Emma more than made up for. While he was the charismatic and visionary face of the church, she was a very practical and thoughtful woman who could more than hold her own. She was intensely spiritual and well-versed in the Bible. While Joseph struggled with the ways and means of organizing and leading a church, Emma struggled with the ways and means of running her household and caring for her family, in addition to her growing responsibilities within the church with regards to the Relief Society. Lastly, she stood right beside Joseph as he endured some of the harshest trials that anyone could be put through.

Her history also helps paint a picture of Joseph as a flawed individual, somewhat removed from the highly-revered status that he retains within traditional church accounts. Through examination of her personal records, as well as those of her husband, sons, and close associates, we learn that Joseph had a temper, was somewhat naive (especially with regard to the law), and was often a poor judge of character. Unlike the leaders of the modern LDS church, who have been prepared for their offices through years of church service, Joseph was basically thrust into the role of prophet without any formal training. He was bound to make many errors along the way, and no one was closer than Emma to observe this.

We also learn the back story behind several doctrines unique to the LDS church. For example, the Word of Wisdom came about after Emma got tired of the smoky mess that became of the room where early church leaders would meet, as she was the one who generally cleaned up after them. After several complaints to her husband, Joseph received a revelation that basically advised the membership against drinking most forms of alcohol or partaking of tobacco. Some of the men complained that the women weren't being asked to give up anything, and so it was decided that coffee and tea were also to be given up (because they were favorites of the women), just to be fair. This revelation was never presented as a binding standard of worthiness, as evidenced by anecdotes of Joseph drinking from time to time with associates, or his approval of Orrin Porter Rockwell's construction of a tavern across the street from Joseph's house in Nauvoo. (*For an interesting read on the history of the Word of Wisdom, look here.)

Polygamy also factored heavily into early church history, and Emma perhaps played the key role in the development (if you can call it that) of the doctrine. To put it bluntly, Emma never agreed with the idea of polygamy. She considered it evil, and never believed that its practice had been divinely revealed to her husband. Although Joseph secretly married several wives, Emma never fully agreed to the arrangement, and refused to give a public approval of the doctrine. This is likely why polygamy was never openly practiced within the church during Joseph's lifetime, although opponents of the church were fully aware of what was going on. Several difficult facts also became apparent through this ordeal. Joseph's plural marriages generally consisted of little more than him telling certain women that God had appointed them to be his wives and that their salvation depended upon it. Joseph would sleep with them from time to time, yet have them stay with their relatives rather than living in some type of polygamous compound with him and Emma.

Several members also left the church at this time, largely over disagreement with the practice of polygamy. Many people who knew what Joseph was doing simply stopped believing in his as a prophet. Another extremely difficult nugget to swallow is that, prior to the revelation regarding polygamy, Emma recorded that she had caught her husband in bed with a woman who had been boarding with them for a time, although it is not exactly clear if she was specifically referring to sexual relations between the two. During the last year of his life, Emma also recorded that Joseph told her that the revelation regarding polygamy had been a false revelation. A similar claim was made by a handful of other sources. However, many prominent men in the church had already started taking on plural wives, and so perhaps a snowball effect is what kept the doctrine alive as the membership later moved to Utah. An honest read of the materials does leave doubts as to whether the doctrine had ever been divinely inspired.

A few months prior to Joseph's death, several sources, including Emma, recorded that Joseph blessed his 11 year old son, Joseph III, that he would eventually inherit the role of prophet and leader of the church. Unfortunately, Joseph was killed shortly thereafter, and his young son was in no way equipped to be a prophet. In the aftermath of the martyrdom, Emma was left with the very difficult task of grieving, caring for her family, and looking after the vast expanse of properties and debts that her husband had acquired during the last decade of his life. This was coupled with the increasing threats of mob violence from groups all across Illinois. Brigham Young basically declared that the property held by Joseph Smith was technically church property, while Emma claimed that much of it belonged to her family. If Brigham was to take the property, Emma would be on the hook for the debts, but would have nothing to show for it. Financially speaking, she would be destitute. Fortunately, she was able to secure some of the property and eventually pay off many of her husband's debts, although it would take her years to do so. Brigham Young, knowing that Emma vehemently opposed plural marriage, used the situation to attempt to leverage Emma into publicly supporting the 12 and polygamy. If she were to move to Utah and support the church, she would be financially taken care of and her boys would eventually be given leadership positions within the church. If not, she would essentially be cut off from all of their help. Because of her strong disbelief in polygamy, she chose the latter option. From that point on, Brigham basically villified her to the general body of the church out in Utah, and claimed that she had brainwashed her sons into falling away from true church doctrines.

Emma remained in Nauvoo, and eventually the mob situation settle enough so that she could go on living. Several thousand church members had stayed in the east, many of whom had been opposed to polygamy and Brigham's leadership of the church. Emma eventually married a man named Lewis Bidamon, who was not a religious man, although he held many traits in common with Joseph. He also treated Emma and her children very well, and was in many respects the only father that some of her children ever knew.

Once Joseph III entered his 20s, he was approached by some of the members in the east who wanted him to lead their church, as they believed that Brigham Young had lead the main church body astray. Joseph declined the offer, as he understood the difficulties that his father had endured as a prophet. However, after the death of one of his young children a few years later, Joseph declared that he had received divine guidance that he should follow in his father's footsteps and guide the church in the east. This was the beginning of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. At this time, the only real difference between this church and the Utah church concerned the practice of polygamy, which the Reorganized church completely opposed. The Reorganized church sent several missionaries out to Utah at various times, and thousands of people were converted to their branch of the faith over the ensuing decades. Joseph led the church until his death in 1914, at which point one of his sons took his place. Emma joined the Reorganized church, and for the remainder of her life fully supported her son as its leader.

I absolutely love the perspective that this book gave on early church history. It was also refreshing to learn of the origins of the RLDS church (now known as the Community of Christ), something that is never discussed at all in the modern LDS church. Emma Smith was a fascinating woman, and endured more in her life than perhaps any other woman in the church during that era. For almost a century, she was villified by the LDS church for basically not following Brigham Young to Utah and supporting polygamy. Perhaps hers is the last laugh, as the church eventually had to abandon polygamy in order to avoid the persecution that it elicited from the U.S. government (although it would be much more accurate to say that the government was really afraid of the complete blending of religion and politics in the Utah Territory, and polygamy was just the pretext for arresting church officials). Fortunately, her legacy has been largely restored in modern LDS circles, thanks in no small part to this wonderful book.

If any of you have questions about Emma Smith or this book, I'd be glad to answer them for you. Also, I highly recommend obtaining a copy of this book, which can be done fairly cheap if you buy used on Amazon.

David Beats Goliath Within the OODA Loop

2011-03-11T15:31:00.002-05:00

I came across an interesting article online today. (Sidenote: I may start subscribing to The New Yorker; I have been very impressed with many of its articles.) The gist of it is that a traditionally weaker opponent can beat a stronger one by studying the rules of the game, figuring out the weak spot or "choke point" of the opponent, and then exploiting it to the advantage of the weaker opponent until victory is achieved. The article is long, but I highly recommend it if you have about 15 minutes to spare.

This concept is very similar to an idea I came across in Quantico called the OODA Loop. OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. This "loop" is basically how humans process information and react to situations. We are constantly observing and reacting, hence this process follows a loop: as we react, we take in new information, and repeat the cycle. As used in military training, the idea is to get within the loop of your opponents, thereby gaining the advantage. Do something unexpected to throw them off guard, and the increased time it will take them to orient and decide will give you a window within which to exploit their weaknesses. The idea originated from a fighter pilot who realized that acting quickly and counter-intuitively upon first engaging an enemy jet would cause enough confusion to allow him to shoot the jet down. He did this by drastically altering speed and/or direction within a very short amount of time of engaging in the fight. This was one of my favorite lessons during Marine officer training. (Sidenote 2: much of officer training was designed to create confusion in chaos, thereby allowing the trainers to get within our OODA loops and exploit our weaknesses. Then they weeded out the ones who didn't adapt quickly enough to the stress.)

Reflecting upon these two pieces of information caused me to recall a story from my own life where I learned firsthand how effective this logic could be. The event took place when I was barely 14 years old, and a few weeks prior to beginning high school. At the time, I was a short and fast young buck, with aspirations of joining the track team in the fall. I knew I could run faster than any of my friends, which served me to advantage from time to time with backyard sports. But I was by no means the fastest kid in school; rather, I was just considerably faster than average, and nothing more.

I lived about 3 tenths of a mile from our local church building, in a quiet suburban area of southern California. The streets from the church to my house were constructed kind of like one of those annoying pieces in Tetris--the ones that are shaped like boring version of a lightning bolt, are really difficult to place, and always seem to drop at the most inconvenient time. Every Wednesday night was a youth group activity, where all the teenage boys would get together and create havoc of some sort, generally of a basketball nature. I would walk there and walk home, since I lived so close. I had brothers close in age to me, and they would do the same.

One evening, upon ending our activity, one of our advisors offered me a ride home. I declined, stating that I would walk. My brother was also walking. Someone in the car suggested that I race the car to my house, since it was known that I was pretty fast. I think I even enlisted my brother, stating that we would both beat the car. And there it was: the challenge had been thrown down, and the contest of man/men vs. machine was about to begin.

Obviously, the fastest man alive can't beat even the crappiest of cars over paved roads for a third of a mile. This may have been why some of the guys in the car were chuckling at me for making such a bold assertion. But I had an ace up my sleeve. I knew that if I prevented the car from going faster than me, it would never beat me to my house. This is why I had to enlist the aid of my brother. He was crucial to my potential for success (although, tragically, his inability to grasp the overall strategy also sewed the seeds for our failure, as will be explained).

Our (my) strategy was thus: once we were out of the church parking lot, we would wait for the car to hit the road, and then jog slowly directly in front of it. If the car would try to swerve to the side to get around us, we would space out enough to maneuver in front of it. Imagine if you and your friend are driving down a 2-lane highway, side by side, and a car comes up behind and wants to pass. So long as the two of you remain side by side, the third car cannot get around you. You have frustrated its ability to go faster than you. My strategy was the same in this instance, but it required a partner in crime in order to effectively choke off the ability of the car to get around both of us. If it had been just me, the street was too wide and I wouldn't have been able to stay in front of it.

Unfortunately, this strategy also required faith that the car wouldn't clip us or run us down. Initially, it's a bit nerve-wracking to run down the street with a car close on your heels. Instinctively, you feel as if you should move out of the way. Danger signals go off in your brain, because you are doing something unexpected, something that you have been taught your whole life not to do. (Don't go playing in the street!) Being the astute young man that I was, I had determined ahead of time that breaking social norms by running in the road was acceptable once you let go of your mind-block. I had also determined that my youth leader from church was upstanding enough to not let his car come within about 10 feet of the crazy teenage boy in front of him, as even an accidental clip could cause serious injury. Things like that are generally prosecuted as reckless driving or attempted murder, no mater how crazy the teenage boy may have appeared.

My brother failed to grasp both of these details. As we were jogging side by side down the middle of the road, spaced about 8 feet apart, I kept telling him to stay in front of the car. He had such a worried look on his face, as though he was going to get mowed down at any moment. I had to constantly shout at him and reassure him that he was going to be fine. Since this was a very quiet neighborhood, there were no other cars on the road. We got about halfway home before my brother finally caved in and moved over to the sidewalk, allowing the car full of my peers and youth advisor to breeze on by, shouting in victory and honking the horn before parking in my driveway 200 yards down the street. I think that he was afraid of getting run over. So long as we held tight to our plan, the car had been unable to drive past us. But once fear and uncertainty overcame my brother's resolve, he faltered and we lost.

Had this plan been successful (by being followed exactly), it would have been a perfect example of the strategies outlined in the links up top. Similar to a martial-art like jiu-jitsu, it focused on finding the weak point of the opponent and exploiting it to achieve victory. You don't have to be bigger/faster/stronger/wealthier to win; you just have to have a greater resolve and a perfect understanding of the rules of play, as well as an unexpected approach to catch the opponent off-guard. I very much doubt that my church advisor had expected that I would run directly in front of his car the entire time, and that unexpected action almost bought me a seemingly impossible victory.

One of my next moves in life will be to apply these principles to politics, in time for the upcoming 2012 elections. To see how much my actions can change events that seem way beyond me. (And be warned, dear readers: I am a very staunch Democrat...)

This Will Blow Your Mind!

2011-03-05T07:32:00.002-05:00

To start, I would like everyone to link to D&C 89, and contemplate verse 17 in particular for a moment, before continuing on.

Ok, now click on this link to read an article that may blow your mind a little bit. It's fascinating. I'm not saying I'm going to do what this article suggests, but it's definitely food for thought. (Or should I say "drink" for thought?)

Now, if that article put your off your guard a little bit, then realize what you might have experienced to a small degree is called "cognitive dissonance." It's the feeling that you get when you hold one belief in the face of evidence to the contrary, which evidence you also believe in simultaneously. (*Note to self: extra kudos for spelling 'simultaneously' correctly without having to check it.) Some people have a big problem with that. I don't. I find the whole idea of cognitive dissonance very interesting, and even necessary for developing a higher level of faith.

But if you want to blow your mind completely wide open, click on the link posted below. I'm warning you, however, that many of you are probably not ready to handle it. It's a large chunk of information coming at you all in one chunk. It may leave you lying awake at night, staring blankly at the ceiling. A small percentage of you may start to actually go insane. But it's extremely fascinating, especially for those of you who love history.

You're gonna need about 7 hours of time to listen to the podcast series available in this link. Get ready for some major cognitive dissonance. And consider yourself warned.

A Rewarding Experience

2011-02-11T16:45:00.001-05:00

I like finding out that I have lots of free money coming to me. It makes my day.

And no, I have not filed my tax returns yet for this year. So there may be more free money coming in a while (although it is equally probable that my wife and I may owe a little bit in taxes -- it's hard to guage because this is the first year that we have earned any significant amount of income). My free money has come from a different, and unexpected, source.

I do my banking with a certain large bank. Let's just say that if the U.S. were to have a national bank, it might get confused with this bank. I've had a checking account there since I started college. In fact, I think my account is still considered a student checking account, even though I'm now almost 2 years out of law school. But I'm cool with no monthly fees, as well as a credit card with a decent limit.

I'm really responsible with my credit. I almost never carry a balance on my card, paying it off in full each month. I never even come close to hitting my credit limit, and I rarely get above 20% of it. And now it is finally paying off.

Apparently, I was automatically enrolled in some sort of free rewards program through my bank (which issues my credit card). For every dollar that got charged and paid off, I got one reward point. Although they have been sending me advertisements about their rewards program for the last couple of years, I usually ignored them because I assumed that they just wanted me to sign up for some service that was going to end up costing me $12.99 a month or something. Well, that ignorance actually ended up paying off.

I must have charged about $58 thousand worth of stuff to my account over the last few years. (Don't worry, I paid it all off on time, for the most part.) Which translates to 58 thousand points. That's a lot of freakin' points. I can trade them in for all sorts of free stuff. Gift cards, discounts, and even cash back. If you save up enough points (at least 25,000) the cash back rewards pay off at a rate of 1 dollar for every 100 points. Well, for those of you that haven't already done the math, I have over $500 coming to me. Cool beans. The check should arrive in a couple of weeks.

It's kind of nice to log on to your bank account, and suddenly realize that you have a decent chunk of unexpected income coming your way.

But now that I realize the rewards that I can get, I'm gonna start using my credit card more often. Since I never carry a balance, I am trying to figure out a way to get some of my regular fixed expenses paid through credit. For example, my wife and I are looking at moving into a new apartment in a few months, and we are hoping that we can get into one that allows us to pay our bill via card. Also, I'm going to see if there is a way to have my monthly student loan payment charged to my card. Since I currently pay these by check each month, there's no worries about carrying a balance. Think of the points I can rack up. I can probably get at least a couple hundred bucks in rewards per year.

This is totally gonna change my life.

2011 Goals Update 1

2011-01-30T20:21:00.003-05:00

Well, 2011 is about a month over by now, and I guess I should supply an update of how my new year's goals are coming along. If you recall, I listed 4 things I wanted to do this year in a previous blog post. So far, I have made a fair attempt at most of them.

Flexibility: I started out the new year by doing about 12 minutes of stretching each morning shortly after waking up. This went pretty well for about a week. I still do stretching, but not every day. There is a reason for this, which will be explained later when I discuss my other fitness goal(s).

Learning Farsi: Haven't really done much on this one. I found out that Rosetta Stone only takes Farsi up to a level 3, and not a level 5 as I had assumed. Which means that it won't be able to get me to a near fluency level. I have searched far and wide (through google) to find other self-teaching methods, but there is a general lack of them for the Persian language. I came across a link to a series of free internet lessons that looks quite promising, so I think I may work my way through that series by July 1, then contemplate purchasing whatever I can from Rosetta Stone.

Podcast: I have recorded my first podcast. It's about 40 minutes long. I want to record 4 or 5 more, then I will set up a separate blog and figure out how I want to host the recordings. I was fairly pleased with the first recording. It will discuss my mission experiences in Madrid Spain during '99 - '01. I will be giving more of a cultural/"lighter-side of" type narrative, instead of the typical spiritual experiences narrative that seems common with discussions of missionary experiences. It should be pretty good.

Fitness: I have been following the muscle-building routine in my new favorite self-help book, The 4-Hour Body, pretty much to a T. The chapter I have been working on is called "Gain 43 lbs. of muscle in 28 days." Three weeks in, and I haven't quite seen that much progress. However, I have put on about 12 lbs. of (what appears to be) additional muscle mass. My waist to hip ratio dropped from somewhere around .91 to .87, which is apparently not too shabby for an adult male. I plan to continue for another 3 weeks, then switch to a different routine. Erica is also doing some of the exercises in the book, namely the chapter that discusses how a woman can transform her body by doing 10 minutes of kettlebell swings for 3 days a week. After 2 weeks, we can definitely see a difference. I thinks she's actually starting to enjoy it too, despite her general disdain for vigorous physical exercise. So go us!

Part of my weight training routine also prescribes my diet. Not "diet" in the usual sense of the word, i.e. calorie restrictions and avoided foods. Rather, diet as a means to fuel my body. I have gone from getting an average of about 100 grams of protein per day, to over 150 grams per day. This is no small task. I eat almost a dozen eggs a week, a protein bar snack each afternoon, and copious amounts of cottage cheese, all in addition to my old diet. I also get to ignore any notions of "off-limits" foods, as I need about 3500 calories a day to sustain me. And guess what -- I'm not getting fat. It's kind of weird, in a way, as well as quite liberating. I know that I would have to change my ways if I were to go off of my weight lifting routine (which only has me going to the gym for a total of about 1 hour per week), but for right now my motto is: eat, eat, eat!

I also take a bunch of supplements, as well as drink over 1 gallon of water daily. Here are the pills I ingest along with my food:

Prior to Breakfast
Alpha-Lipoic Acid
Cissus Quadrangularis
Fish Oil Pills
Acidophilus (a probiotic)
Whey Protein powder (mixed in with a fruit smoothie)

Prior to Lunch
Alpha-Lipoic Acid
Cissus Quadrangularis

Prior to Dinner
Alpha-Lipoic Acid

Before Bed
Policosanol

I also take some L-Glutamine powder with some chocolate milk immediately after a workout. Don't worry, so far no side effects other than muscle gain.

I hope your new year's goals have been equally as fulfilling!

2010: A Recap

2011-01-08T16:40:00.002-05:00

I'm a week late in posting my annual wrap-up. I've been busy. Last year at this time my days consisted of running, weightlifting, and counting the hours until USMC officer training started. Now, I wake up at 6 every morning, get my daily routine started, and try to make it into work before 9. Perform basic legal work all day long while listening to a handful of my favorite podcasts, and usually head home sometime between 6 and 7. If I'm lucky, I don't even have to go in on Fridays. Some days I hit up the Bally Total Fitness gym downtown (especially lately, after establishing some new training routines as suggested in The 4-Hour Body, by Timothy Ferriss). I save most of my chores for Friday and Saturday, such as grocery shopping and light household cleaning. My wife and I are also big movie connoiseurs, as will become evident through some of the movies listed below. Last night we finally saw the remake of True Grit, which was every bit as good as the critics made it out to be. Unfortunately, it does not make it into this year's list, because I didn't see it until 2011. That's how the list works, folks.

Let's start things off chronologically. I was inducted into USMC Officer Candidate School in January of last year. The weather in Virginia was the most brutal that it had been in a generation, and I ended up slipping on some ice during my first training week. This sprained my knee a great deal, and I ended up hobbling around on it for the next 5 weeks until I finally went in and opted out of the program. My goal of becoming a JAG will have to be realized through a different military branch as a result of this decision, although I do not regret leaving the program I was in. My long term ability to walk and run was more important to me than completing the roughly 7 additional months of physical conditioning and combat training that the marines require. The other branches don't put JAGs through anything as physically rigorous. Despite my injury, though, I did get into some of the best shape of my life. I could do 17 pullups in a row, and run 3 miles in under 20 minutes -- two things I couldn't even do back in high school!

After leaving the program, I went to work as a contract attorney in DC, where I have been steadily employed since. Law may be the only industry where temp jobs earn you $30-45 per hour, with the possibility of overtime. It's not something I want to do forever, but it's pretty good compensation for the rather un-complex nature of the work. Plus, they let me listen to podcasts and music while I work. Pretty awesome, if you ask me.

In June, my wife and I flew to California to attend her half-sister's wedding at the beach. It was a great ceremony, and a really cool reception. While we were in town, we also decided to take a cruise to Mexico and Catalina Island. Erica went scuba diving at the latter location, and I ate authentic fish tacos at the former. If only the weather hadn't been unseasonably cold for that time of year, it would have been an ideal vacation.

In July, my wife went to Minnesota to visit family for a week or so. While she was gone, a teenage girl crashed into her parked car with a huge Toyato Tacoma pick-up truck. It totally demolished our car. This is why we shouldn't text and drive, people. The insurance company tried to scam us out of over $1,000 by claiming our car was a manual instead of an automatic, but a little phone call from Brian Bowen, attorney-at-law solved that problem. After receiving our fair compensation, my wife put a down payment on a 2010 Kia Soul, which is way awesomer than her previous Ford Focus. We love everything about that car. So I guess it all worked out for the best, in a way. I also drove a rental car to Minnesota to pick up my wife, and finally bring home all of our wedding gifts that had been sitting there for a year. I discovered that you actually can drive from DC to Minneapolis in under 24 hours, with the assistance of Pepsi Max and excessively cool air conditioning to keep you awake. Also, make sure that your overnight stop on the way back doesn't coincide with a NASCAR event; otherwise, you will find it extremely difficult to find an open motel room anywhere. But you'll meet some interesting people if you do.

Life breezed along until the holiday season, when Erica and I decided on a whim to take another cruise, this time to the Bahamas. Let me just say that the trip was fantastic, the weather was amazing the whole time, and I am secretly planning on how I can escape to an uninhabited small island out there so that I can live on the beach and avoid the rapid decay of American society. (Case in point: a U.S. Federal Judge was assasinated today, and a U.S. Congresswoman was nearly assasinated as well. The likely culprit has potential ties to political extremists.) When we made it home from the cruise, we were greeted by the brutal cold weather that DC offered up during the month of December. Over Christmas, we spent a few days in L.A., and a few more up in Minneapolis. It was nice to see all of our relatives. It was a good holiday season this year.

Here are my lists for the year:

Books Read in 2010
1. The Betrayed Profession, by Sol M. Linowitz. A good look at how the modern legal profession operates, and why a field that used to carry the utmost prestige in our country is now the punchline of many jokes. Short answer: the concern for justice was transformed over the span of a few decades into a drive for profit at all costs.
2. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren. This is a literary classic from the late 1940s, which describes the rise and fall of a fictitious populist governor of Louisiana, modeled loosely off of Huey P. Long. Quite possibly one of the best books I have ever read. Once you get past the highly fascinating political case study that the book presents on the surface, you realize that the real story involves the narrator, a young man whose entire life becomes intertwined with the political spectacle unfolding before him. I highly recommend this book.
3. The Fourth Turning, by Strauss and Howe. The gist of this book is that modern history tends to repeat common themes every 80-85 years, as characterized by 4 distinct generational attitudes that continually cycle through in the same order, much like the 4 seasons. Every 4th generation is marked by large national crisis of some sort. In the U.S., this can be seen with the Revolutionary War, followed about 80 years later by the Civil War, followed 80 years later by the Great Depression and WWII, followed 80 years later by our current economic crisis and war on terror. Except that this book was written in 1997, and yet it fascinatingly predicted that America would be struck by severe economic and foreign policy challenges around the year 2005 (give or take a few years). If you read the book and its predictions, it's incredibly eerie how much of it seems to be coming true.
4. The 4-Hour Body, by Timothy Ferriss. (See link up above) I love this book. There is a chapter that describes how to gain 30 lbs. of muscle in 4 weeks, with two short visits to the gym per week, and a very particular regimen of diet and supplements. I'm pretty much following it to a T, and after 4 days I have gained about 4 lbs. So I'm right on track. I'll keep you posted. It also talks about the most effective ways to cut weight and reduce bodyfat, get in shape for particular athletic events, and even learn how to binge eat for 24 hours straight and not gain a single ounce (that part is actually really cool). He's goes into the science behind a lot of it, and even provides links to various sites that explain things more in depth. I also highly recommend this book.

Movies Watched in Theaters
My wife and I saw a ton of movies this year. I gave a midyear recap on this blog post. It included the following:
1. Alice in Wonderland. 2 stars.
2. Date Night. 3 stars.
3. Babies. 3 stars.
4. Kick Ass. 3.5 stars.
5. Robin Hood. 2 stars.
6. Iron Man 2. 3 stars.
7. Get Him to the Greek. 3.5 stars.
8. Toy Story 3. 3.5 stars.
9. Twilight: Eclipse. 3 stars.

Since then, I've seen:
10. Despicable Me. 3 stars. I liked it, but not quite as much as Toy Story 3. Hence the .5 star reduction (my wife thinks I'm a scrooge when it comes to rating movies). But I still found it very entertaining. "It's so fluffy!!!"
11. Inception. 4 stars. Probably the best mainstream sci-fi film I've seen since The Matrix came out 11 years ago. Completely riveting, completely original, intensely thought-provoking. The brilliant special effects didn't steal the show -- they merely complemented an even more brilliant plot. Probably my 2nd favorite movie of the year (read on to find out about my favorite).
12. Salt. 2.5 stars. This Angelina Jolie spy thriller just didn't live up to the hype, in my opinion. The storyline was just too far-fetched to seem even remotely plausible, while this genre does best when there is a dose of reality or current events to keep us thinking. The escape scene was cool, but the whole "Russians are trying to take down our government" plot just seemed silly and outdated. This movie would have seemed much more relevant in the early 80s.
13. Dinner For Schmucks. 3 stars. Let me first say that I love Steve Carrell. He's hilarious. This comedy was pretty entertaining, as somehow I found a way to like both Carrell's character and the main character who pseudo-befriends him. Zach Galafianakis was just alright, and the guy who really stole the show was Jemaine Clement (who played the creepy/sexual artist). My favorite comedy for the year still goes to Get Him to the Greek.
14. The Social Network. 4 stars. My absolute favorite movie of the year. Loved every second of it. The lead roles played by Jessie Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake are both Oscar-worthy, and intense pace of the dialogue brilliantly parallels the rapidity with which Facebook exploded into the juggernaut that it is today. Even more important, the film provides an excellent look at the moral, social, and economic perils facing people as they attain success in the business world.
15. Unstoppable. 3 stars. True life story about a train carrying volatile chemical cargo that ends up speeding down a Pennsylvania track without a conductor. Two railroad employees attempt to go after it before disaster destroys an entire town. It delivers everything the commercials promised.
16. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. 3.5 stars. I love all things Potter, including this movie. I can't wait for the finale when it comes out later this year.
17. The Tourist. 3 stars. Critics didn't seem to favor this one, but my wife and I highly enjoyed it. It had something for everyone (namely Johnny Depp for the women, and Angelina Jolie for the men). It was a light-hearted thriller involving a case of mistaken identity (or was it?), set against the scenic backdrop of Venice. Sure, it was no Bourne Identity, but I liked it nonetheless.
18. Tron: Legacy (3D). 2.5 stars. The 3D was pretty cool, the story and acting just sort of mediocre. Worth seeing in 3D, but maybe not so much at home on DVD.
19. Black Swan. 3.5 stars. A very interesting look at the mental breakdown that accompanies someone as she reaches beyond her limits in order to attain success. I thought the last 10 seconds of the movie were kind of a letdown, but everything leading up to that moment was fascinating. Also, the media vastly over-hyped the extent of any "romantic" scenes in the movie. Artsy, and maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but I can see why most critics loved it.
(My top 5 picks, in order: The Social Network, Inception, Get Him to the Greek, Kick Ass, and Toy Story 3.)

TV Shows I record on TiVo
1. One Tree Hill
2. The Secret Life of the American Teenager
3. The Simpsons
4. The Office
5. Tosh.0
6. The Walking Dead
7. Modern Family

A few of these were new additions this year, as many of my former favorites came to an end (i.e. Lost). Tosh.0 is basically a Comedy Central mash-up of viral videos that sweep the internet, and it's hilarious. The Walking Dead is a series about a dystopian future after a zombie apocalypse, (part of me is so fascinated with the genre, that I sometimes zone out and plan in-depth what I would do if/when a zombie apocalypse strikes). Modern Family won the Emmy for best new comedy series, and definitely lives up to the hype. As you can see, I don't watch too much TV nowadays, as many of these shows run fewer than 12 new episodes per year. My wife TiVos a few others, but I probably wouldn't watch them if she didn't.

Podcasts
...are my new favorite obsession. Mainly because I get to listen to an iPod while I work. I'm including a list of my favorites, although I advise my readers to use discretion on listening to any of these. Language through the internet isn't censored nearly as well as it is on the radio/TV, and everyone has a different tolerance level. I'll put an asterisk (*) next to the ones that sometimes have language that wouldn't be allowed on the radio dial.

1. The Kevin & Bean Show on KROQ. This morning radio show in Southern California is becoming quite famous across the U.S., as more and more affiliate stations are picking it up. I catch the podcasts a day later. Hilarious, entertaining, and occasionally irreverent.
2. Thom Hartmann Radio Show. This AM radio broadcast covers political topics of the day, with a populist bent. If Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh seem too outlandish, excessive, and fringe for you, I strongly suggest you give Hartmann a try. He offers a refreshingly unique perspective in talk-radio, which is currently dominated by extremely right-wing conservatives. Rather than relying on emotion to push an agenda, this man hits you with a large dose of political and economic history that defies even his most intellectual of opponents.
3. Hardcore History, by Dan Carlin. I abso-frickin-lutely love this series. He releases a new podcast every 2 months or so, and each one is incredibly well-researched and fascinating. He has a great story-telling quality to his productions, and he brings up aspects of famous historical events that you may not have ever realized or considered. If you can stomach vivid descriptions of war history, I recommend listening to his 4 part series titled "Ghosts of the Ostfront" about the eastern front in WWII.
4. *We're Alive: A Story of Survival. Also known as The Zombie Podcast. This is a well-done studio production that details the story of survivors of a zombie apocalypse in Los Angeles. I'm halfway through it right now, and each 15 minute podcast leaves me on the edge of my seat, waiting for more. It is reminiscent of the old-time radio shows that pre-dated the modern TV era. The language is occasionally salty-as-a-sailor (but mine would be too if I was caught up in a zombie apocalypse).
5. *The Joe Rogan Experience. Yes, it's that Joe Rogan, the one who hosted Fear Factor. His podcasts typically last for over two hours, and he generally invites stand-up comics to shoot the breeze with him. Topics covered usually incude the stand-up comedy world, mixed-martial arts and UFC fighting, marijuana and psychadelic drug usage, and weird theories regarding ancient history and government conspiracies. I know what you're thinking -- none of that would have interested me either, until I started listening to the podcast. But I can see how it wouldn't appeal to everyone, particularly females.
6. *Hollywood Babble-on, featuring Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman. Smith is a somewhat famous film director, and Garman is featured on the Kevin & Bean Show listed above. They put out weekly podcasts recorded in front of a live audience, where they discuss current events in Hollywood and the film industry. Kind of irreverent at times, but downright hilarious. Probably appeals more to male listeners as well.

And there you have it. My year in review. Hopefully 2011 will be even better.

Resolutions

2010-12-31T16:14:00.002-05:00

The new year is about arrive, causing me to reflect on the previous one. I do owe my readers a recap of all of the significant events that transpired in my life during 2010, which will likely be my next blog. Those tend to take some time to put together, so I'll probably get to that later this weekend.

In the meantime, I have put together a mental list of all of the things I would like to accomplish in the coming year. It's been percolating in my brain for a while now. Like many of us, I try and set up a list of resolutions each January, hoping that I will follow through on at least some of them for longer than the typical 3-4 weeks. Alas, most of them get scrapped in relatively short order, either because I realize my goals weren't really that worthwhile, or they weren't realistic. Some I forge on with, only quitting after I succumb to the fatigue that besets me after performing whatever the prescribed task/deprivation is for the umpteenth time. It's this latter group that I find the most intriguing in retrospect. I believe this is because the flaw was never in my ability to work towards the goal, but rather in the definition of the goal itself.

We often structure our goals in a loose-ended fashion -- striving towards ideals such as "losing weight," "learning ___ language," or "quitting ___." I think a goal structured in this way merely sets us up for failure from the get-go, because these goals are somewhat difficult (if not impossible) to measure. Take the latter example: if I was an alcoholic and wanted to quit drinking, it might sound good to have a goal of "giving up drinking." But recovering alcoholics never phrase it this way. At AA meetings, they typically state their status as ___ days/months/years sober. I think that in order to have a more meaningful (and hence, more quantifiable) goal, we have to be able to put up milestones that are tangible. For the alcoholic, it could be as simple as abstaining for 100 days, and then re-imposing the same goal at the new starting point. For weight loss (or gain), it would be simply a bench mark of a certain weight by a certain day. For acquiring a new behavior, such as learning a new skill, it would involve breaking that skill down into quantifiable benchmarks that need to be met by a certain time. Once the main goal is constructed in this fashion, it becomes easier for us to lay out the steps necessary to bridge the gap between the current position and the ideal position to be achieved.

Following this logic, I have decided to set up my goals in a much more quantifiable manner this year. I have also decided to make them public (hence this blog post) in an effort to make myself accountable to a broader base of people. I believe that these are the two necessary components for achieving a goal. But I need your help, faithful readers. By announcing my goals, I need you all to periodically check in on me and ask me how my progress is coming. Do this frequently. If I don't hear from somebody at least once a week, I'm liable to fail at my goals. Which would really be like all of us failing, at that point. We're in this together. Help me achieve all of my wildest dreams. Drop me a facebook post to check in with me. It's ok; go ahead, don't be shy.

Here are my goals:

1. Buy and complete steps 1 - 5 of Rosetta Stone: Farsi. I want to do this by the end of July 2011. Apparently each step takes about 50 hours to get through, so this means that I need to do about 10 hours per week (but I learn quickly, so it might be only 7 hours per week for me). I'm doing this because I want to learn another language, Farsi is said to be one of the easier middle eastern languages to learn, and this would increase my chances of gaining certain government positions that I have been working towards. Ask me how far along I am in the Rosetta Stone lessons.

2. Start a podcast, and publish 2 podcasts per month. I want to have 11 done by my birthday (June 12). The podcast will be exclusively about unique missionary experiences I had while in Spain from 1999-2001. Instead of going for the typical religious/spiritual experiences, I want to focus on some of the more humorous and atypical events that happened to me. Don't get me wrong -- I think there is definitely a time and place for the spiritual aspect, but I just don't think it will pull in the listeners as well. I'm going for a different niche with this one. And trust me, I've got some interesting stories to tell. Ask me when my next podcast is coming out.

3. Gain 20 lbs. of muscle in 6 weeks, using the diet/exercise routine prescribed in my new favorite book, The 4-Hour Body, by Timothy Ferriss. The book outlines a radical re-think of many of the myths and stereotypes in the health and fitness world. His mantra seems to be "do whatever is the most efficient, and takes the least effort necessary for maximal gain." Apparently, as to diet and exercise, most people overthink things. They rely on excessive physical exertion and food deprivation to achieve their goals, rather than performing more subtle changes that will actually modify how the body works on its own. For my goal, I will perform certain exercises in a very simple and specific fashion, hitting the gym only about twice per week, and eating a protein rich diet that includes a small amount of herbal supplements. We'll see if it works. The book has many other goals that I want to try, but this one is first on my list. Ask me how much muscle I have gained.

4. Be able to do the splits. I still haven't decided what type of splits I want to do (legs to the side, or one in front/one in back), but I'll settle on that in the next few weeks. The overarching goal here is to become significantly more flexible, but I wanted something measurable to work towards. I intend to do about 10 minutes of stretching each day, and hopefully find the time to look up some internet tips on increasing flexibility. Ask me if I have been faithfully doing my daily stretching.

There you have it folks. If you keep pushing me, together we can achieve my wildest dreams. If you guys want to post some of your own goals, I would be more than happy to check in with you to push you on as well. In fact, I'm thinking of developing an iPhone app of some sort to aid people in accomplishing their resolutions. But it has to have a feature that makes people accountable to others; otherwise, it would be nothing more than a glorified sticky note on your computer, reminding you to perform some sort of task that you may no longer have the motivation to do.

Education is the only thing keeping us from the dark ages

2010-12-15T23:43:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted very many political blogs lately. I used to when I was back in law school, but then I got kind of tired with it and I went on a personal hiatus. That has changed. I have come full circle, as the national debt crisis has weighed very heavy upon my soul. It has become clear that we just can't continue to spend money at our current rate unless we find a way to take in more income. And there are basically only two options: either we pull in more money from taxation, or we cut spending.

However, if you go to the majority of the public and call for increased taxes, you'll get a huge backlash. Everybody has been conditioned to hate any mention of the word "tax." Along the same lines, it has become very popular for people to call for "cutting government programs." I have come out on Facebook a few times as of late, asking people to list the specific programs that should be cut (as well as quantification of the money that would be saved), and I have gotten very few responses. The few that I have gotten were pretty generic. With a debt that is around $13 trillion and growing, I would love to hear suggestions from my readers about the programs that we should cut, along with links as to how much our projected savings should be.

I ask for this because I honestly think that people view our national debt as a problem caused by benefits that are shelled out to others, while those complaining feel that they get nothing in return. My honest opinion is that this is a very juvenile attitude. Most of us have received a vast array of benefits throughout our lives. I have personally benefited from a quality public education (because I grew up in an area that refused to underfund the school system), a student loan system that made higher education possible for me, a mass transit system that allows me to bypass intense gridlock and outrageous parking fees downtown, functioning power and highway systems that I have used my entire life, a social security program that aided my family after my father's untimely death, a state pension that ensures my mother will be taken care in her retirement years after providing decades of service educating our youth, police forces that have kept me safe from crime and violence (the only place where they ever failed me was in Provo, Utah), and a host of other things. I may have squabbles about how these programs are implemented, but I don't want any of them to be taken away. I also realize that often when people say that a program is broken or has stopped working, they immediately want to throw out the baby with the bath water.

Take my car, for example. It's a '97 Mercury Sable. A good, reliable car with a solid safety record. I have enjoyed driving it. Every so often, however, I have to take it in for a tune-up, or a tire replacement, or even a transmission overhaul. None of these things come free, and some are quite expensive. But I also know that my car is worth having, and in order to keep it from falling apart I have to spend money to maintain it. I liken my car to a government program: if the program is solidly built and given a fair chance to work, and then does work, then it's probably a good program. But if you fail to fund it and maintain it, then it will fall apart, just as my car would. It would be disengenuous at that point to come in and claim that the program no longer worked; it only stopped working because we collectively failed to take care of it. The question is then: Why have we underfunded a once-functioning program? Which brings us back to the fact that people demand tax cuts, which are paid for through spending cuts, and yet those spending cuts better not affect programs that benefit them directly, and so on. It's a cycle that could eventually go on until we have reduced ourselves to medieval style feudalism, where a few wealthy people control everything, while the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves. History is full of great societies that have experienced a similar pattern.

But to put it more eloquently, here is Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, who I consider to be a national hero. This isn't his recent pseudo-fillibuster, but he states a lot of the same things. Please just listen, even if you think you'll disagree with everything he says. There's never any harm in educating yourself to a potentially opposing viewpoint. Education is the only thing keeping us from slipping back into the dark ages.

Thanksgiving Best/Worst List

2010-11-28T08:05:00.003-05:00

Thanksgiving Best (and occasionally Worst) List

Best:
1. Visiting a tropical climate
2. Sailing from Miami to the Bahamas
3. Eating delicious meals that I didn't have to cook
4. Lounging on a beach
5. Swimming laps in the ocean instead of the Bally's pool
6. Attending nightly shows, karaoke, and contests
7. Lounging in a hot tub
8. Not worrying about email or Facebook for several days
9. All the Diet Coke I could drink
10. Spending time with my lovely wife
11. Catching a glimpse of dolphins in the water next to our ship
12. Rick from the entertainment staff (and his awesome haircut)
13. Winning $35 at blackjack

Worst:
1. Losing back that $35 on my second trip to the blackjack tables
2. The jogging track being temporarily closed down every time I went to exercise
3. The price of shore excursions in Nassau ($165 to go to a water park? Seriously?!!)
4. The bar staff rolling their eyes each time we asked for another Diet Coke
5. The loud, obnoxious chick two rows ahead of us who went on to win Bingo.
6. The lack of hair conditioner in the cruise ship store (...but they had soap and shampoo...)
7. Forgetting my favorite gym shirt in our stateroom when we left
8. Having to leave a tropical paradise and come home to bleak DC weather

Here we are on the pier in Nassau:

It was a good Thanksgiving!

One Size Fits All....Doesn't

2010-11-21T16:31:00.004-05:00

Today I was sitting in a Sunday school class at church, and someone said something about Jesus starting his ministry when he was 30 years old, and how basically he had prepared for 30 years to do only 3 years of work, but yet it was the most important work anyone has ever done (at least in the eyes of Christians). Well, my mind works such that I tend to wander in and out of whatever lesson/meeting/discussion I happen to be attending, but I perked up for some reason when this point was made. I began to let my thoughts chase that remark down a Carroll-esque rabbit hole. And suddenly it hit me: I am 30 years old.

Jesus probably experienced a whole lot more personal growth than I did in his first 30 years.

There he was, providing for the salvation of man, teaching them everything necessary for their spiritual growth, all while being tormented and pursued across ancient Israel, only to be rejected by his own people and ultimately crucified. And here I am, driving around in my wife's new car, taking multiple vacations, sitting behind a cushy desk at a relatively easy job where I can listen to podcasts all day while I earn a moderately comfortable living, and yet I complain about things such as how the bad economy prevented me from walking straight from law school into a 6-figure salary job at a large law firm where I could pay off my student loans in three years. Talk about ungrateful.

But I also considered that Jesus didn't just sit around for 30 years. He was growing and learning, and probably went through some of the same universal experiences as the rest of us -- illness, accidents, heartbreak, sadness, frustration, fatigue, joy, humor, relaxation, accomplishment....you get the idea. Virtually all of the life lessons that he needed in order to undertake his ministry had come to him by age 30. It made me reflect on the life lessons that I had learned by the time I hit 30. As I ruminated over this in my mind, I recalled a song on my iPod that I listen to every once in a while, from a 90s grunge band called Jimmy's Chicken Shack. It's an obscure song by an obscure artist, but I think it really captures some of the lessons that (I hope) everyone learns by the time they wrap up their 20s. I like to think of it as sort of an extension of those "100 things you learned in kindergarten" posters that were popular a few years back. The song is probably a little heavy for many of my readers, so I decided to post the lyrics rather than merely adding the song to my little music player off to the right.

"When You Die, You're Dead" by Jimmy's Chicken Shack

Following the crowd provides security
Cities alienate people
Many of the things you want are worthless
If you try....congratulate yourself
Surviving can take a lot of energy
Everything's an integral of everything else
Almost no one finds their match
Strangers don't want to know you
Nature always wins

We all want the same things
You have chosen everything that happens to you
We are part of the land
People want to look nice
And loneliness is not contagious
Violence is passed through generations
Crowds create their own power
Everyone you meet is a mirror of yourself
Things left undone become harder
Progress takes time

Experience gives you options
The range of personalities -- endless
Most weirdos want to be
People are attached to what they can't have
Defense mechanisms are inherited
Power is passed to those near it
One size fits all....doesn't
Western man is too separated from nature
And people interests should come before business interests
You can only screw yourself
Self esteem is basic to success
And it will be a long time before safe is sex
Pain inside shows
Only certain types are religious
And many artists....aren't
You can have anything you want
A court of law is designed to intimidate
Stay in touch with your inner self

Why would you waste it?
Why do we waste it?

Living increases knowledge
They say living increases knowledge
...And when you die....you're dead.
-----------------

Personally, I don't necessarily agree with some of the assertions made in the song. And sadly, there are a few assertions that I wish I couldn't agree with, but life has taught me otherwise. There are also a few gems in there that nearly bring me to laughter. The song, in my opinion, is really intended to make you think about life. The fact that each phrase registers within me some sort of emotion or opinion makes me realize that, perhaps, I really have experienced a lot in my 30 years on this planet.

(*My personal favorite line: One size fits all....doesn't)

Not One, But Two Santa Clauses!

2010-11-18T22:56:00.003-05:00

Yes, Erica and I are visiting both sides of our family over the Christmas break. But that's not why this post is titled as it is. You see, rather than construct my own thoughts this time around, I want to reprint and direct all of my readers to a fascinating blog that sums up something that has affected them their entire lives, without them even knowing it. So without further ado, here is an explanation of the "Two Santa Claus Theory" by renowned author and commentator, Thom Hartmann:

*For the original blog post, click here.

This weekend [January 26, 2009], House Republican leader John Boehner played out the role of Jude Wanniski on NBC's "Meet The Press."

Odds are you've never heard of Jude, but without him Reagan never would have become a "successful" president, Republicans never would have taken control of the House or Senate, Bill Clinton never would have been impeached, and neither George Bush would have been president.
When Barry Goldwater went down to ignominious defeat in 1964, most Republicans felt doomed (among them the then-28-year-old Wanniski). Goldwater himself, although uncomfortable with the rising religious right within his own party and the calls for more intrusion in people's bedrooms, was a diehard fan of Herbert Hoover's economic worldview.

In Hoover's world (and virtually all the Republicans since reconstruction with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt), market fundamentalism was a virtual religion. Economists from Ludwig von Mises to Friedrich Hayek to Milton Friedman had preached that government could only make a mess of things economic, and the world of finance should be left to the Big Boys – the Masters of the Universe, as they sometimes called themselves – who ruled Wall Street and international finance.

Hoover enthusiastically followed the advice of his Treasury Secretary, multimillionaire Andrew Mellon, who said in 1931: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. Purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down... enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people." Thus, the Republican mantra was: "Lower taxes, reduce the size of government, and balance the budget."

The only problem with this ideology from the Hooverite perspective was that the Democrats always seemed like the bestowers of gifts, while the Republicans were seen by the American people as the stingy Scrooges, bent on making the lives of working people harder all the while making richer the very richest. This, Republican strategists since 1930 knew, was no way to win elections.

Which was why the most successful Republican of the 20th century up to that time, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had been quite happy with a top income tax rate on millionaires of 91 percent. As he wrote to his brother Edgar Eisenhower in a personal letter on November 8, 1954:

"[T]o attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything--even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon 'moderation' in government.

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt [you possibly know his background], a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Goldwater, however, rejected the "liberalism" of Eisenhower, Rockefeller, and other "moderates" within his own party. Extremism in defense of liberty was no vice, he famously told the 1964 nominating convention, and moderation was no virtue. And it doomed him and his party.

And so after Goldwater's defeat, the Republicans were again lost in the wilderness just as after Hoover's disastrous presidency. Even four years later when Richard Nixon beat LBJ in 1968, Nixon wasn't willing to embrace the economic conservatism of Goldwater and the economic true believers in the Republican Party. And Jerry Ford wasn't, in their opinions, much better. If Nixon and Ford believed in economic conservatism, they were afraid to practice it for fear of dooming their party to another forty years in the electoral wilderness.

By 1974, Jude Wanniski had had enough. The Democrats got to play Santa Claus when they passed out Social Security and Unemployment checks – both programs of the New Deal – as well as when their "big government" projects like roads, bridges, and highways were built giving a healthy union paycheck to construction workers. They kept raising taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for things, which didn't seem to have much effect at all on working people (wages were steadily going up, in fact), and that made them seem like a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class. Americans loved it. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections.

Everybody understood at the time that economies are driven by demand. People with good jobs have money in their pockets, and want to use it to buy things. The job of the business community is to either determine or drive that demand to their particular goods, and when they're successful at meeting the demand then factories get built, more people become employed to make more products, and those newly-employed people have a paycheck that further increases demand.

Wanniski decided to turn the classical world of economics – which had operated on this simple demand-driven equation for seven thousand years – on its head. In 1974 he invented a new phrase – "supply side economics" – and suggested that the reason economies grew wasn't because people had money and wanted to buy things with it but, instead, because things were available for sale, thus tantalizing people to part with their money. The more things there were, the faster the economy would grow.

At the same time, Arthur Laffer was taking that equation a step further. Not only was supply-side a rational concept, Laffer suggested, but as taxes went down, revenue to the government would go up!

Neither concept made any sense – and time has proven both to be colossal idiocies – but together they offered the Republican Party a way out of the wilderness.

Ronald Reagan was the first national Republican politician to suggest that he could cut taxes on rich people and businesses, that those tax cuts would cause them to take their surplus money and build factories or import large quantities of cheap stuff from low-labor countries, and that the more stuff there was supplying the economy the faster it would grow. George Herbert Walker Bush – like most Republicans of the time – was horrified. Ronald Reagan was suggesting "Voodoo Economics," said Bush in the primary campaign, and Wanniski's supply-side and Laffer's tax-cut theories would throw the nation into such deep debt that we'd ultimately crash into another Republican Great Depression.

But Wanniski had been doing his homework on how to sell supply-side economics. In 1976, he rolled out to the hard-right insiders in the Republican Party his "Two Santa Clauses" theory, which would enable the Republicans to take power in America for the next thirty years.
Democrats, he said, had been able to be "Santa Clauses" by giving people things from the largesse of the federal government. Republicans could do that, too – spending could actually increase. Plus, Republicans could be double Santa Clauses by cutting people's taxes! For working people it would only be a small token – a few hundred dollars a year on average – but would be heavily marketed. And for the rich it would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. The rich, in turn, would use that money to import or build more stuff to market, thus increasing supply and stimulating the economy. And that growth in the economy would mean that the people still paying taxes would pay more because they were earning more.

There was no way, Wanniski said, that the Democrats could ever win again. They'd have to be anti-Santas by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections.

When Reagan rolled out Supply Side Economics in the early 80s, dramatically cutting taxes while exploding (mostly military) spending, there was a moment when it seemed to Wanniski and Laffer that all was lost. The budget deficit exploded and the country fell into a deep recession – the worst since the Great Depression – and Republicans nationwide held their collective breath. But David Stockman came up with a great new theory about what was going on – they were "starving the beast" of government by running up such huge deficits that Democrats would never, ever in the future be able to talk again about national health care or improving Social Security – and this so pleased Alan Greenspan, the Fed Chairman, that he opened the spigots of the Fed, dropping interest rates and buying government bonds, producing a nice, healthy goose to the economy. Greenspan further counseled Reagan to dramatically increase taxes on people earning under $37,800 a year by increasing the Social Security (FICA/payroll) tax, and then let the government borrow those newfound hundreds of billions of dollars off-the-books to make the deficit look better than it was.

Reagan, Greenspan, Winniski, and Laffer took the federal budget deficit from under a trillion dollars in 1980 to almost three trillion by 1988, and back then a dollar could buy far more than it buys today. They and George HW Bush ran up more debt in eight years than every president in history, from George Washington to Jimmy Carter, combined. Surely this would both starve the beast and force the Democrats to make the politically suicidal move of becoming deficit hawks.
And that's just how it turned out. Bill Clinton, who had run on an FDR-like platform of a "new covenant" with the American people that would strengthen the institutions of the New Deal, strengthen labor, and institute a national health care system, found himself in a box. A few weeks before his inauguration, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin sat him down and told him the facts of life: he was going to have to raise taxes and cut the size of government. Clinton took their advice to heart, raised taxes, balanced the budget, and cut numerous programs, declaring an "end to welfare as we know it" and, in his second inaugural address, an "end to the era of big government." He was the anti-Santa Claus, and the result was an explosion of Republican wins across the country as Republican politicians campaigned on a platform of supply-side tax cuts and pork-rich spending increases.

Looking at the wreckage of the Democratic Party all around Clinton by 1999, Winniski wrote a gloating memo that said, in part: "We of course should be indebted to Art Laffer for all time for his Curve... But as the primary political theoretician of the supply-side camp, I began arguing for the 'Two Santa Claus Theory' in 1974. If the Democrats are going to play Santa Claus by promoting more spending, the Republicans can never beat them by promoting less spending. They have to promise tax cuts..."

Ed Crane, president of the Libertarian CATO Institute, noted in a memo that year: "When Jack Kemp, Newt Gingich, Vin Weber, Connie Mack and the rest discovered Jude Wanniski and Art Laffer, they thought they'd died and gone to heaven. In supply-side economics they found a philosophy that gave them a free pass out of the debate over the proper role of government. Just cut taxes and grow the economy: government will shrink as a percentage of GDP, even if you don't cut spending. That's why you rarely, if ever, heard Kemp or Gingrich call for spending cuts, much less the elimination of programs and departments."

George W. Bush embraced the Two Santa Claus Theory with gusto, ramming through huge tax cuts – particularly a cut to a maximum 15 percent income tax rate on people like himself who made their principle income from sitting around the pool waiting for their dividend or capital gains checks to arrive in the mail – and blowing out federal spending. Bush even out-spent Reagan, which nobody had ever thought would again be possible.

And it all seemed to be going so well, just as it did in the early 1920s when a series of three consecutive Republican presidents cut income taxes on the uber-rich from over 70 percent to under 30 percent. In 1929, pretty much everybody realized that instead of building factories with all that extra money, the rich had been pouring it into the stock market, inflating a bubble that – like an inexorable law of nature – would have to burst. But the people who remembered that lesson were mostly all dead by 2005, when Jude Wanniski died and George Gilder celebrated the Reagan/Bush supply-side-created bubble economies in a Wall Street Journal eulogy:

"...Jude's charismatic focus on the tax on capital gains redeemed the fiscal policies of four administrations. ... [T]he capital-gains tax has come erratically but inexorably down -- while the market capitalization of U.S. equities has risen from roughly a third of global market cap to close to half. These many trillions in new entrepreneurial wealth are a true warrant of the worth of his impact. Unbound by zero-sum economics, Jude forged the golden gift of a profound and passionate argument that the establishments of the mold must finally give way to the powers of the mind. He audaciously defied all the Buffetteers of the trade gap, the moldy figs of the Phillips Curve, the chic traders in money and principle, even the stultifying pillows of the Nobel Prize."

In reality, his tax cuts did what they have always done over the past 100 years – they initiated a bubble economy that would let the very rich skim the cream off the top just before the ceiling crashed in on working people.

The Republicans got what they wanted from Wanniski's work. They held power for thirty years, made themselves trillions of dollars, cut organized labor's representation in the workplace from around 25 percent when Reagan came into office to around 8 of the non-governmental workforce today, and left such a massive deficit that some misguided "conservative" Democrats are again clamoring to shoot Santa with working-class tax hikes and entitlement program cuts.
And now Boehner, McCain, Brooks, and the whole crowd are again clamoring to be recognized as the ones who will out-Santa Claus the Democrats. You'd think after all the damage they've done that David Gregory would have simply laughed Boehner off the program – much as the American people did to the Republicans in the last election – although Gregory is far too much a gentleman for that. Instead, he merely looked incredulous; it was enough.

The Two Santa Claus theory isn't dead, as we can see from today's Republican rhetoric. Hopefully, though, reality will continue to sink in with the American people and the massive fraud perpetrated by Wanniski, Reagan, Laffer, Graham, Bush(s), and all their "conservative" enablers will be seen for what it was and is. And the Obama administration can get about the business of repairing the damage and recovering the stolen assets of these cheap hustlers.

Check it out...

2010-11-14T20:28:00.002-05:00

This isn't a true blog this time. Life is not particularly busy -- in fact I had a week off of work not too long ago, and I will be taking off the week of Thanksgiving so that Erica and I can go on a 4 night cruise to the Bahamas. I just got my new passport in the mail, so we are ready for an adventure. For the last few years, we have just been mooching off of various Thanksgivings of people we know in the area, and we didn't want to pay for plane tickets to visit our families on the other side of the country for only 2-3 days, especially since we are doing just that for Christmas in another month. When we realized that cruises are cheap in November, and the weather is great in the Bahamas (80F each day!), we made up our minds to try something exciting for a change.

But that's neither here nor there. The point of this blog post is to guide you to a great little blog that I found yesterday. I have to add a disclaimer, however: you need to set aside at least a 5 hour block of time before you click on the following link. If you don't, you will either (a) miss your next class/meeting/date, (b) practically explode your bladder because you avoid going to the bathroom until the last possible moment, (c) come dangerously close to passing out because you fail to eat at least one meal, (d) suffer decreased levels of personal satisfaction due to a temporary neglect of personal relationships, or (e) some combination of the above.

Now that you have been fairly warned, I present to you this link. Enjoy!
(*Make sure you scroll down and look at the various blog entries to the right.)

A Few of My Favorite Podcasts

2010-10-12T22:02:00.004-04:00

It's been a while. Yet again. I've toyed with the idea of starting some regular blog features, in an effort to get myself writing again on a regular basis. Since late March, I have been working full time in the legal field, and I come home at the end of the day with little desire to create fresh prose. It's not that I don't have ideas or opinions to voice, or stories to tell; it's just that I am so busy with many other things.

For example: I was given a new responsibility at church a few months back. It occupies a lot of time, even during the week. Plus, it involves making phone calls and scheduling meetings, which is often hectic. Many of the people I need to contact are difficult to track down, so many calls and emails are often needed. Needless to say, any church position that includes the word "secretary" is not something one should aspire to.

I also switched work projects back in the beginning of September. Instead of working near the White House, I am now in a nifty little office over on the border of Foggy Bottom and Georgetown. I get a bit of a walk heading there from the metro stop, but I now exit two metro stops sooner than before, so my net commute in the morning stays about the same. Which, sadly, is still too long for my tastes. But the pay is slightly more, and the hours are slightly less. It's a win-win scenario, I guess. My new office doesn't have a free Diet Coke dispenser like my last office. I now have to pay 25 cents per can. But they do have a vending machine with bags of potato chips, which are also 25 cents. If you do the math, that's a daily quotient of 3 cans of Diet Coke and 1 bag of chips for a buck. Awesome. They also let me listen to my iPod while I get my legal document review groove thing on.

Rather than listen to an endless loop of rock and/or roll music for 8-10 hours a day, I try to spend the bulk of my time enriching my life (or perhaps just mindlessly entertaining myself) with podcasts of all shapes and sizes. After much listening and personal interweb research, I have compiled my list of favorite blogs. In no particular order:

1. LDS Broadcast Archives. I figured I would get the religious one out of the way first. I don't mean to be the cliche Mormon, but I've found this site to be a great place to go to for spiritual inspiration. Not only does it have conference talks, but it also has Young Adult broadcasts and more. I like to think of it this way: a podcast a day keeps Satan away.

2. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. Carlin has an interesting take on many historical topics. From what I've gathered, he takes hunches about sweeping themes throughout history, and does a lot of intense research on them. He then puts together podcasts that can range anywhere from 40 minutes to a 4-part series that clocks in at a total of over 6 hours. Every single podcast is fascinating, especially since Carlin makes you think about things from entirely new angles. My particular favorites include Ghosts of the Ostfront (about the eastern front of WWII), and Globalization Unto Death (about Magellan's circumnavigation). The podcasts are considered "hardcore" in that war and death tend to come up a lot in the stories, since they tend to be decisive moments in history.

3. Thom Hartmann political podcasts. Hartmann is a populist with a strong economic bent. His podcasts are not for everyone (particularly if you have been known to nod your head in agreement with Glenn Beck from time to time), but he does make you think about the role that corporations and finance play in United States politics. Be warned: he is not a big fan of Ronald Reagan (or Bill Clinton, for that matter). But his knowledge of economic trends and U.S. history is quite deep, and he will get you to ponder the relationship between politics and economics. Speaking of economics...

4. UC Berkeley Economics 113: American Economic History (Fall 2008). This link contains the recorded lectures from an entire semester of this economics class. (In fact, you can access many Berkeley pocasts for a variety of courses here. There are several semesters worth of archives. History and Poli Sci courses tend to be the easiest to follow.) I fell absolutely in love with this series of lectures. The first few classes move a bit slow, but things really heat up once he hits the Great Depression, which takes several lectures to get through. Professor DeLong is absolutely brilliant, and it was especially interesting to hear his take on our current crises, considering that he was speaking from fall of 2008, before most of our current economic situation had really solidified. A word of caution: the lectures are easier to follow if you have a basic understanding of economic terminology. A good litmus test would be whether or not you know what the term "opportunity cost" means, or what GDP stands for.

5. The Kevin & Bean Show on 106.7 KROQ FM Los Angeles. This morning show is quite famous in the LA area, and has been syndicated as of late in many markets throughout the U.S. It has been running for about two decades, and only gets funnier and more entertaining with age. The podcasts get put up each afternoon after the morning show has aired, with all of the commercials and songs cut out. They tend to interview music/sports/show business types on a regular basis, and they also talk to Dr. Drew and the guy from TMZ about once a week. It's pretty much a go-to podcast for pop culture, with a healthy dose of irreverent humor sprinkled in. Warning: it's not for everybody. If you can't get through a CW drama withouth getting uncomfortable and/or squeamish, then you probably should avoid this one. Some of their segments may discuss matters that would be lumped into the category of "adult themes" if the podcast were a PG-13 film. So keep that in mind.

And finally, I have a request for my blog readers: What are your favorite podcasts? Are there things out there that keep you entertained or enlightened? I would love to read your suggestions, as I tend to have lot of hours to kill each day while sitting in my work space and staring at my computer screen. (Well, it's actually two screens. The place is kind of cutting edge.) Let me know what I am missing out on.

Potato Kids

2010-08-22T13:38:00.002-04:00

My wife is obsessed with babies. She babysits frequently, and she has worked in many a daycare during her time. We also attend church with a number of families with newborns and toddlers. Basically, we come into contact with babies on a regular basis.

Some (most) babies are super cute. Even if they're crying or fussy, they just look adorable, and you can't help but stare and mutter things such as "awwww" or "ohhh, look at you!" I would say approximately 80% of all babies fall into this category. They tug at the heartstrings of virtually any woman who has ever had a maternal instinct. You instantly become jealous of the parents and their precious, adorable little child.

But some babies are "potato kids." They are the other 20%. They're just not that cute. They look like a big lump, with a funny shaped head and eyes that can't seem to focus on anything. They often drool all over the place, and just seem awkward. They generally have a big head and neck, while the rest of them is sort of a mishapen blob. They never seem to smile. They are potato kids. They look kind of like an overgrown potato. Whereas most babies cause you to react with an instant sort of affection, these kids make you wince just a little bit when you first see them. If you've seen a lot of babies in your day, you know what I'm talking about. Secretly, you feel a little bad for the parents, because one of the main joys in having a newborn is spending bonding time with this new, cuddly person.

Potatoes just don't seem that cuddly.

*For examples of potato kids, check out this link. Most of these kids are still cute, but some are definitely potatoes.

Dietary Update #2

2010-08-22T13:21:00.002-04:00

I have a confession. I took a hiatus from my diet.

Everything was going good through this last friday, but then saturday I just couldn't take it anymore. So I had pasta, and diet soda, and potato chips. Today I had more soda. I just got so tired of eating such a restricted diet, and I really didn't notice any major changes in how I felt. So I called it quits.

Well, sort of. I did make a few changes that I will continue to incorporate in my diet. For example, my snack of choice at work is now an apple and peanuts, instead of potato chips and chocolate. I feel good about that, and I can do it with no problem. I also realized that I could use a little more fiber in my diet, and some of the home-cooked meals that I have taken with me for lunch will become regular staples for me, such as lentil soup on rice. I am also more conscious of how many vegetables I am consuming with my evening meals, and how I can add more of them into the foods I cook. I also had my eyes opened to how satisfying certain healthier fast-food options are, like the BK Tendergrill Salad (BK has paid me no money to say that). But I just can't give up diet soda. Maybe I can drink it in more moderation, or just limit it to specific days of the week.

Really, the hardest part of my little experiment was that it takes time and energy to make healthy, natural meals/snacks. A lot of preparation time is needed. Sometimes it's just a lot easier to pop in a microwave meal for lunch, or grab a bag of chips instead of portioning out the right amount of cottage cheese into a small container, then rinsing off some veggies to eat it with. And if you want to save on time with the healthier foods, you often have to pay for it by spending extra money for the convenience (i.e. pre-cut veggies, individual portions for things like yogurt and cheese, prepared salads).

During the 2 weeks I ate this way, I think I dropped a couple of pounds. Whether this was due to better nutrition, or simply a modest reduction in calories, I do not know. My gut instinct (no pun intended) is that a diet such as this, paired with a good cardio program (perhaps 20-30 miles jogging per week), would be one of the best methods for slimming down that I could come up with. I could probably drop 8-10 lbs. of almost all fat in about 8 weeks if I did something like that. But I'm not doing any modeling anytime soon, and I would like to eat some chocolate after I finish my burger. So there it is.

Dietary Update

2010-08-15T13:29:00.002-04:00

By popular demand, I acquiesce to providing a weekly update of my new dietary adventure.

Those among you who have read my previous post know that I am currently abstaining from all non-natural foods. This includes anything that didn't grow directly from the earth, or anything that didn't consume such products before it was sacrificed for my nourishment. I'm hoping to see some sort of change in either my physique or energy levels, or perhaps just my overall well-being. So far, I've been at it for a week. Here are my observations:

My diet didn't really change all that much. I actually surprised myself with how healthy I had been eating for most of my adult life. The main things I had to cut out included the occasional fast food meal, which usually meant replacing a hamburger/hotdog with grilled chicken salad. I've cut out baked goods as well, which didn't really take up much of my diet. A big thing for me was getting rid of salty snacks and diet soda. Since I sit at a computer desk all day looking through documents, it was really easy for me to munch on tortilla chips and sip diet coke for several hours each day. But I usually compensated by filling a small ziplock bag with one serving of chips, and then slowly munched it over several hours so as not to consume too many empty calories. I did have the bad habit of consuming about 4 diet cokes each day, which I believe had a bigger effect on my muscles than on any potential weight gain. All of those foods got cut out. I also cut out tv dinners, which I previously consumed about 3 times a week (they are fast and easy). But my main meals naturally tended towards lean meats, vegetables, and either rice or pasta. I gave up pasta, since it is a processed food, but I kept rice, which basically grows out of the ground. My typical breakfast (oatmeal, banana, peanut butter on whole wheat bread) didn't really change at all.

Certain fast foods still fit in my diet. Many of the sandwiches at Subway are quite alright, as are most grilled chicken salads. A burrito bowl at Chipotle also works well, especially if I cut out the sour cream. I am learning to examine the menus where I go for the healthier, more natural options. Most places have at least something substantial that will work.

I've been making a lot of my own foods for lunch. I won't go into recipes here, but I will say that the slow cooker has been my best friend. Lentil soup is one my favorites, and goes well as a porridge over rice. I've done some slow cooker pork roast as well, which also goes well shredded over rice (with a touch of sweet ginger sauce). I now snack on cottage cheese and carrot sticks, plus the occasional apple. And it's water all the way. Really, giving up soda is hard. It's so tasy, and easy to justify since I only drink diet. But I'm happy to say that I have remained true to my goals for a whole week.

I have a hunch that I will slim down a little bit if I keep sticking with this diet. I'm not overweight by any means, so it's not like I have much to lose. But every guy dreams of having a nice six-pack, and I'm not quite there yet. As for energy levels, I haven't really noticed a change. I feel the same as always when I jog or lift weights. Sometimes I feel a little weak, but that's probably due to the reduced calories, and it goes away as soon as I get a protein-rich snack in me. About the only clear physical improvement I have noticed has to do with my colon, and I will say no more on that matter so as to spare my readers from something that they'd rather not know.

So there you have it. One week down, three to go.

Lately...

2010-08-09T22:14:00.002-04:00

Someone crashed into the back of my wife's parked car. It was parked by the curb, right in front of our place, in a quiet residential district. Some teenage girl in a big truck. She was speeding, and wasn't paying attention. I vote that we pass a law making it illegal for teenagers to drive. Who's with me?

My wife was out of town at the time, in Minnesota. I took the rental car that the insurance company gave us, and drove it out there to meet her and visit with her family. Apparently you really can drive from DC to Minneapolis in one day. If you leave before 6 a.m., and you consume large amounts of Pepsi Max (69 mg of caffeine per 12 oz. can), and you blast the AC so cold that it forces you to stay awake in a really frozen state when it's really late at night and you're driving through Wisconsin. And watch out for tornadoes.

Minnesota was great, Erica's family was great, and if the winds of fortune ever blow us that way, I wouldn't mind living there. *Disclaimer: I haven't ever been there during the winter.* The drive home took us two days instead of one, but at least we were able to pack all of our wedding gifts in the car. We had to leave them in MN after our reception last August, because we couldn't get them on the plane. So now we finally have all of our dishes, appliances, picture frames, etc. Hooray.

With one car totaled, we needed another one. So we bought a bright red Kia Soul. Let me tell you, this relatively inexpensive car is quite awesome. I think Erica is more in love with it than she is with me. I don't blame her. It's better looking, plays satellite radio (as opposed to me incessantly humming the song of the week, which is currently the Double Rainbow remix), and has that nice new car smell. I smell like wrinkled old clothes mixed with Pepsi Max. Our lives are now more complete.

Erica is now obsessed with the tv show One Tree Hill. It's been my favorite show since episode one, but I recently got her hooked through the miracle of Netflix. We've slowly been going through the early seasons so that we can catch her up by the season premiere this fall. We are halfway through season 3. Season 8 debuts in late September. You guys should all start watching. Don't be afraid of tv. Just give in and enjoy.

I suffered through a bout of runner's knee for the last two months. When I left Quantico at the beginning of March, I weighed 155 lbs. I was way stripped down, due to all of the intense physical activity/sleep deprivation/limited rations/PTSD-inducing mindgames. Weighing that little (for me) allowed me to be pretty light on my feet. So I ran a lot, even though I was recovering from a knee sprain. Then, in late May, I began to get really severe knee pain after every run. It would last for days. I couldn't figure out what it was, and I didn't feel as though I had overtrained. Then it finally dawned on me -- I had regained all of my body weight. I was 15 lbs. heavier, and my knees weren't ready for the extra weight. I had to lay off the running for a few months before my joints could catch up with my new physique. (I didn't get fat; I just finally got enough sleep and food, and I started lifting weights at the gym again. We didn't lift weights in Quantico -- just ammo cans filled with sand. And really heavy backpacks.) Now I can start to run again. Who needs another person for their Ragnar DC team this fall? I'm up for it. Seriously, let me know.

And finally, I am starting a new diet for the next month. I think I've been inspired by Ramadan or something. I have decided to eat nothing but natural foods for 4 weeks. No more soda, no processed snacks or chemical-sounding additives. Just food that came from the ground, or was sacrificed for the good of my stomach. Unprocessed meats and cheeses are ok, as are any form of fresh or frozen vegetables, fruit, beans, rice, eggs. Peanut butter is ok, but only because I buy the natural kind that only contains peanuts. Water and milk are now my beverages of choice. Oh, I am allowing salad dressing. Why am I doing this? Well, mainly curiosity. I just want to see if I will feel any better after 4 weeks. If so, then maybe I'll be turning over a new leaf. And if not, then I won't feel any more hesitation about downing large amounts of diet soda accompanied by pasta, finished off with ice cream samiches. Feel free to ask me about my diet experiment.

Anywho, that's what's been going on in my life lately...

Mid-Year Movie Menagerie!

2010-07-12T20:58:00.004-04:00

It's time for the beloved mid-year movie review!

Ok, so maybe it's a little bit past mid-year. But I need to get myself back into the blogging world a little more regularly, and my wife and I have seen a lot of movies this year. After I got back from Quantico in March, I got a job with a legal agency in DC. Steady work at a decent salary has finally put a fair amount of money in the piggy bank, and so we've been fortunate enough to enjoy our weekly date nights on an almost weekly basis. We love watching movies, and that love has coincided perfectly with the summer movie season.

Here is a typical friday (or sometimes saturday) night for us: head out to the Bally's in Rockville for a quick workout, followed by a dip in their large/generally clean hot tub, followed by dinner at some place nearby, culminating in a theatrical experience. The following is a list of the movies we've seen, and my short thoughts on each.

1. Alice in Wonderland. I give it 2 stars. This one should have had potential -- it had both Johnny Depp and Anne Hathaway in it (my wife's and my celebrity crushes, respectively), some pretty cool 3D effects, and Tim Burton's quirky touch. But the story just didn't pull me in. There is an inherent dark humor in this timeless tale that should have shined through perfectly in this most recent iteration, especially with Burton at the helm. But what should have been devilishly captivating was merely odd. And that was a disappointment. Plus, Hathaway just wasn't as sexy all white-washed like she was. (Interesting side note -- this film is the fifth highest grossing in history. Are you kidding me?!!)

2. Date Night. 3 stars. (I tend to be very stingy with my stars, but don't let that fool you into thinking I didn't really enjoy this one. 3 stars means I definitely enjoyed a film.) Starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey, how could you not end up in hysterics the whole way through? It was light-hearted fun, albeit the kind where there's a real possibility the main characters could end up dead. Marky Mark nearly steals the handful of scenes he is in. (And yes, ladies, he is shirtless in several scenes, for those of you who go for that sort of thing.)

3. Babies. 3 stars. From the moment we saw this movie in a preview, I knew that my wife would make me watch it with her. The whole thing chronicles 4 babies around the globe, from shortly after birth through their first steps. It's less of an anthropological case study, and more of a series of "awwww, how cute!" moments. We enjoyed it. My favorite was the Mongolian boy. (Although the American mother was too much of an annoying hippie, in my opinion.)

4. Kick Ass. 3.5 stars. I was excited about this movie from the moment I first saw the commercials back in March, and it did not disappoint. There was a bit too much bloodshed in this film for my wife, particularly at the hands of a 12 year-old girl. But I loved it. It was pure, comic-book action fun, with a dark-yet-oddly-lighthearted take on the genre. It reminded me somewhat of The Watchmen, except this film didn't try and push some deep message. Sometimes a comic book movie just shouldn't try to be something more than it really is.

5. Robin Hood. 2 stars. It should have been good. Could have been good, with the generally talented Russell Crowe. But it just very mediocre. Many of the action scenes were almost comical, when they should have been exciting and theatrical. Probably my biggest disappointment so far this year.

6. Iron Man 2. 3 stars. Not quite as good as the first, but still good. Robert Downey Jr. absolutely kills in this role, although I wasn't similarly captivated by Mickey Rourke's villain. On a side note, my wife and I watched this one at a late night showing in a small theatre at an empty mall, with only 4 other people in the theatre with us. It was kind of creepy, at least until the movie started and we forgot where we were.

7. Get Him to the Greek. 3.5 stars. I thought this one was even funnier than Date Night. The humor is definitely more adult, but if you can handle a healthy dose of irreverence, you will laugh. It chronicles the story of a faded British rocker brought to Los Angeles by a young music label whipping boy, so that the former can give a sort of "comeback" show. Along the way, the two both discover something about themselves. Jonah Hill and Russell Brand are great in their respective roles, but the real comedian here is P-Diddy, who absolutely kills it as an arrogant music mogul.

8. Toy Story 3. 3.5 stars. This one is just as good as I had hoped, and lives up to every bit of its raving reviews. A perfect end (or is it a transition) to the charming Pixar series we have all grown to love. Little kids may develop an irrational fear of lavender teddy bears after watching (don't say I didn't warn you). Also, don't bother with 3D for this one -- it doesn't really add much.

9. Twilight: Eclipse. 3 stars. Ok, so I've never read the books, and don't intend to. Yes, I realize I said the same thing about Harry Potter, and then ended up reading that whole series in like 12 days. But I'm serious this time. But I have been somewhat reluctantly pulled into viewing the movies, mainly due to the influence of pop-culture. The first two were just alright, and best summed up by the word "meh." But I actually enjoyed this one, perhaps because it's the first one I've watched on the big screen. Kristen Stewart is still a bad actress, and the sappy love story is really cheesy. But it did have some wicked awesome vampire/werewolf fight scenes, which the guy in me really liked. And the more sophisticated part of me thought the interchange between Edward and Jacob in the tent was actually pretty deep. (Side note: my wife has totally joined Team Jacob. I don't blame her.)

Movies I wanted to see but didn't have time/decided to wait for DVD: Greenberg, The Runaways, Hot Tub Time Machine, The A-Team, Cyrus.

Movies left to see this summer: Despicable Me, Inception, Salt, Dinner For Schmucks.

P.S. I finally saw Paul Blart: Mall Cop on Netflix about a month ago. Quite possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. Absolutely awful. Not funny in the slightest. It kind of makes me ashamed that so many of my LDS peers liked it so much.

The Big, Bad O-Course...

2010-06-29T22:24:00.003-04:00

Back when I made a brief run at being a JAG for the Marines, one of the several physical events that I had to master/endure was the Obstacle Course. Rather than describe it to you, I'll just let you watch the video yourself so you can see it with your own eyes:
*Not me in the video

I didn't quite do it as fast as this guy; my best time was 1:45. But that was enough to surpass the 2:00 qualifying mark to pass the event at Officer Candidate School. For the most part, each individual obstacle is not that physically difficult to overcome. The trick is to learn the proper technique. After that, it's purely a matter of endurance to get through it all. I was in really good shape at OCS, but I was in no way at the head of my platoon.

The final obstacle -- the rope climb -- is the hardest part for most people. Although a lot of "in shape" people could climb up it relying mainly on their arms, they would be using the wrong technique. The reason why the climb is at the end is because they don't want you to rely on your arms; most of the obstacles up until that point are there to tire out your upper body. As you jump up onto the rope, you have to wrap it around one leg and then use your opposite foot to pinch it over your first foot. This will lock you into place so that you won't slide back down. Your arms are basically there to keep you steady. From that point, it's just a matter of grabbing the rope tightly while you slide your feet up towards your chest, maintaining their locked position. Then "stand up" and repeat the process. Most of the work should come from your legs, which are naturally much stronger. (If you don't have on thick, sturdy boots, you're just going to slip down the rope, regardless of your technique. But Marines always have on thick boots for the O-Course.)

One of the hardest parts for me was the very first obstacle. It looks pretty simple: you just have to roll over that first high beam. But the technique takes a while to master, and you can waste precious seconds if you don't jump up to the bar with enough momentum to carry you over.

Another hard obstacle for me was the high log that comes just after the wall. For most taller men, they can practically jump over the thing with barely a hand plant off to the side to provide a little leverage. But us shorter gentlemen (I'm 5'8") have to take our highest running jump and combine it with a strong downward press of the arms just to boost our way up and over. I remember getting caught up on this obstacle during one of our practice runs about 2 weeks into our training, and getting thoroughly yelled at by our large staff sergeant. It kind of sucks getting told how worthless you are for something largely caused by your lack of tall genes (and I'm not kidding when I say that I was told I was worthless -- this was a common criticism doled out to nearly everyone who ever set foot in Officer Candidate School).

The same morning that I ran my qualifying time of 1:45 was also the morning that I went into my Captain's office and told him that I wanted to drop from the program. I had taken a trip to the medical station just before running the course, to have their physical trainers look over a nasty knee sprain that had been plaguing me for several weeks. I was told that I would need to stay off of me knee for at least 3 weeks to fully recover; however, since that would mean dropping from the program, they merely handed me a knee brace and told me to be careful. Up until that point, I had been praying about whether I should stay or go (my weak knee, combined with the fact that I was struggling in some leadership areas, had caused me to truly question if I had the desire to go on). Hearing the physical therapist tell me to just use a knee brace and be careful ended up being the answer that I needed to hear. When I rejoined the rest of the officer candidates on the physical fitness field, I ran the O-Course with my knee brace on just to prove to myself that I could qualify. When I descended from the rope at the very end, I immediately told the sergeant instructor who had been timing me that I wanted to drop from the program. The drop-out process actually takes a few days, so I ended up taking part in a few more days of events (including a 6-mile hike at 5 a.m. with a 50 lbs. pack on my back!) before I was finally released. You have to get interviewed by about 5 different people before they let you go, and most of them try and talk you into staying. Some will congratulate you for having gone that far (thanks for the inspirational words, First Sergeant), and some will tell you that you will regret your decision for the rest of your life (sorry, Sergeant Major, I'm still pretty content with the direction of my life). But then you get released, and off you go. I never felt more liberated in my life, including when I came home from missionary service in Spain. And now I'm happy with my current job and situation, and still excited about what my future may still hold.

But the O-Course is definitely an experience to remember. I highly recommend trying it someday, if you can find a military friend to escort you through it.

Silly Little Ovations Polygamists!

2010-06-28T22:13:00.002-04:00

My wife and I just got back from a nice vacation to California. We visited family, attended an incredible wedding by the beach, and even went on a cruise. I don't really have time to document it all right now, but I would like to tell you about an amusing thing that happened on our cruise.

During the opening night show in the main auditorium, a comedian noticed that there was a large group of high school senior-aged kids sitting close to the stage. Probably about 8 of them. With maybe 2 adults in tow as chaperones. The comedian made a joke to the effect of "I see 8 kids and only 2 parents: you guys must be Mormons!" My wife and I were watching this interchange from our balcony seats. When the kids immediately stood up and began to scream, we knew that the comic had guessed correctly. It was pretty hilarious to watch.

But the comedian didn't stop there. He followed with "You kids all look about the same age, so I'm wondering where the other wives are." The kids kind of got quieter with that comment. The one mother that was there got really tense and started to frown a little. It was clear that that the joke had hit a nerve with many of them, although the rest of the crowd (including my wife and I) was laughing hysterically. Most of them were laughing at the joke; I was laughing at the reaction of my fellow LDS-ers.

Why do Mormon people get so offended at innocent jokes and comments? Clearly no one believed that these people were actually polygamists. This has been a trend that I've noticed in LDS culture throughout my life. My people tend to get overly offended at the slightest joke/negative comment/criticism of our religion. They tend to view it as a personal attack, originating directly from Satan himself. It's as if many of them fail to recognize that every peculiar and unique group will be subject to this type of response at some point in American society. I really don't think that little jokes and comments from people unfamiliar with our culture are really a form of slanderous attack. People just like to point out the weird and laugh about it. And LDS culture is extremely weird. We really need to be better about rolling with the punches and taking our fair lumps, along with every other unique and different religious group, ethnic group, or miscellaneous fill-in-the-blank. That's just life. Very few people are really trying to offend. I am reminded of the scene in The Single's Ward movie where the lead character's date gets offended when he starts making Mormon jokes at one of his stand-up shows. She is reduced to tears, while I was laughing hysterically. The jokes were actually kind of funny. If you can't laugh at yourself, then you have no true sense of humor (says Brian).

Anywho, it turns out that this little group of "polygamists" was actually some form of wannabe Glee-type song and dance group. Apparently they don't even do it through a school, but rather through an extra-curricular organization. They were called The Ovations, and were based out of Las Vegas (I think). And to be quite honest, they were not very good. A few of the singers had potential, but for the most part they were pretty lame. They even hogged almost an entire karaoke night in one of the ship's lounges, singing one lame slow/country song after another. So I almost felt a little glad that the comedian had "picked on them" just a little the previous night.

So the moral of the story is: don't get so offended when people poke fun at your religion. And don't join a lame song and dance group because you like Glee. And limit your karaoke singing to one song per person per night, at least if you're at the same place as me. It will be appreciated.

More posts about the rest of our vacation will follow at at time TBD.

An American Odyssey

2010-05-02T17:41:00.008-04:00

I ran another race. It was long. Here is the story:

Ever since I left OCS, I've been meaning to get back into running. I knew it would be good rehab for my sprained knee, and I really want to run a marathon this fall (and hopefully qualify for Boston). I began gradually back in March, just trying to get my distance legs back. OCS was really good for 5K style training, but it doesn't really condition you for covering distances much longer. The longest run I ever had there was probably about 4 miles. I think they did a 5-miler after I left. So I was in need of some distance work, but I was finding it hard to get motivated.

Then I came across some people looking for extra runners for a relay race from Gettysburg to DC. I'd done this before, with the Ragnar Relay Washington DC. I had a good experience, and was looking forward to running it again. So I decided that I might as well give this other relay a shot. At worst, I would end up really tired and sore. But there was also the possibility that it would kick off my marathon training, and gain me some new friends in the process. So I signed on to run with team "Hasta la Pasta" for the American Odyssey Relay.

For those unfamiliar with long distance relays, they work like this: teams of 12 divide into two vans, and run approximate 200 miles in turns. It typically takes around 30 hours, depending upon the speed of the runners. Everyone does 3 legs of varying difficulty, from about 3 miles up to 9. At the end, they give you a shiny medal. It's quite nice. Along the way, you get really sweaty and smelly, and you don't get much sleep. So it's pretty much the most fun you could ever hope to have.

Our team apparently had some drop outs with about 3 weeks until race day. That's when I joined the team. Although the race basically went through Maryland, the team was centered out of NY City. There were only 3 of us from DC. I was in Van #1, with my 4 new friends from NY: Keila (team captain, and runner 1 and 3 -- hardcore!), Patricia (runner 2), me (runner 4) Seth (runner 5), and Joey (runner 6). After a couple of weeks of training up, I packed my race bag (knee brace and all) and drove up to the starting line in Gettysburg with the other DC runners.

The weather was simply beautiful for our entire race. I ate a nice pre-race meal of eggs and potatoes at some joint in town, and then drove over to the starting line with the whole team to see our first runner off. Here we are just prior to our start time of 11 am:

My first leg began around 2 pm. It started on a scenic little bridge in the middle of nowhere, PA. It was an 8.3 mile doozy. The temp was somewhere between 75 and 80, and not a cloud in the sky. I set out following some old guy in a black t-shirt, and a middle-aged woman in a pink running skirt. I tried to maintain the same distance behind them, but the woman started to pull away after about 1 mile. She was too hardcore for me. But I kept pace behind the man, who was crusing at a fairly comfortable pace. My team was waiting for me somewhere around mile 3, just before the hills started. I grabbed a quick drink of water, and continued on my way. The hills started out rather innocently, but quickly got tough. The sun was sapping my energy, and I was starting to feel the dehydration. After another hydration stop with my team around mile 5, it soon turned into a matter of just refraining from walking as I climbed yet another hill. Fortunately, I was able to make a power-play and pass the old man as I was about 2 miles from the end. It was a good feeling. (In retrospect, I think he ran out of gas, rather than me passing him through my own efforts.) The last stretch was down some winding back roads, with no one ahead of me as far as the eye could see. I finally turned my last corner after running for a little over an hour, and could see the checkpoint about half a mile in the distance. I decided to kick things up a notch, just so my team would think that I was a bit more hardcore than I was. In reality, I was getting a tad bit dizzy from running so far in the afternoon sun. I drank about half a gallon in water/gatorade in the minutes following my run.

Our next runner, Seth, apparently got lost right after the start of his leg, and no one noticed. The course (which didn't always mark the path all that great) forgot to put up a sign at his first main intersection. So he ran about 1.5 miles in the wrong direction before realizing where he was. But he eventually corrected himself and finished his leg strong. Our van drove around like crazy trying to find him, and we were so relieved when we finally saw him on course about two miles from the checkpoint. He then passed off to Joey, who kept an 8 minute/mile pace while basically climbing 1,000 feet over his run. We kind of felt bad that we didn't have runner 7 ready when he got to the checkpoint (oops!). Here we are stretching while waiting for Joey to run by:

From there, we eventually headed to a nearby town for some grub. After passing by a bunch of chain fast-food joints, we stopped at a local pasta place whose name I have already forgotten. But I had some good tortellini with meat sauce. I learned from the Ragnar that you should fuel up as much as possible in between legs of the race -- there's nothing worse than feeling the blood sugar drop in the middle of a run. The pasta was well received.

Our next set of legs began somewhere just over the Maryland border. Keila was supposed to cover leg 13, but was too full from having just eaten (we hadn't expected the other van to be done so soon). So Bryce, from van 2, covered this leg for her. She still had leg 15 to run in a bit. Patricia was off on her second leg after Bryce covered his distance, and she wins the award for having run the creepiest leg of the race. Basically, she ran through winding roads in the middle of a forest, with no one around her. I think she got kind of freaked out by the end. Keila was next, and ran a fast pace (judging by how quickly she came in to do the hand-off). I took off on my second run sometime around 11 pm. It was a moderate 5.7 mile run, with a bit of a hill towards the beginning. Much of my run went through back roads. Cows were everywhere, and to amuse myself I began "moo-ing" at them as I ran by. (Yes, I have a twisted sense of humor.) Well, the cows had the last laugh, because one of them snorted back at me really loudly when I moo-ed, and it literally startled me so much that I jumped about two feet to my side. So much for teasing the livestock. The last two miles of my run seemed to drag on forever, mainly because I couldn't see anyone in front of me and I was scared that I had missed a turn sign at some point. But then a nice old man ran by me at a much faster speed, and so I followed him in to the checkpoint. Our next two runners set off, and I eventually settled into the backseat of our van to get some much needed shut-eye. I probably got in almost 3 hours worth.

At about 4 am we drove off to the next checkpoint, to meet up with van 2 so we could begin our final legs. Keila was starting to feel the fatigue, as she had already covered 3 legs, with two more to go. My final leg was initially supposed to be leg 28 (a 3.2-miler), but I decided to switch with Keila so could run a shorter distance and have a little more time in between her final two legs. I eventually started leg 27 at about 6:30 in the morning. It was a 6.9 mile run along the edge of the Potomac River, and completely flat. The weather was perfect and still, and it was one of the most picturesque and serene runs I have ever been on. I only encountered a few other runners the whole time, which also increased the beauty of my run. Also, I ran with my headphones in for the first time, and nothing enhances the moment like listening to Rancid's "And Out Come the Wolves" on an iPod. (Seriously though, the songs all have virtually the same tempo, which helps me maintain a sub-8 minute mile pace.) I gave this final leg nearly everything I had left, and got in at right around 55 minutes. I considered this a personal victory, as I had already covered two lengthy legs the day before. All in all, I covered 20.9 miles without walking. It felt pretty good.

Actually, it felt pretty tired at first. My legs were really feeling the soreness when I finished up. I was also starving, since my last meal had been the pasta from the night before. We drove off to the next checkpoint, where we watched the the hand-off between Keila and Seth. As we were walking back to our van from the checkpoint on the canal trail, we were held up by the longest and slowest train known to man (the parking lot was on the other side of some train tracks). We literally waited for 15 minutes as a huge train went by at about 3 miles/hour. At one point it stopped, and several daring individuals crossed over in between cars before the train started up again. Fortunately, the train passed through with enough time for us to get to the next checkpoint before Seth. Then Joey was off, and we were one checkpoint away from our van being entirely done. Here is a picture of me waiting for Joey to finish. I look like how I felt:

At this point, we had several hours to kill before the last runner from van 2 would finish. So we drove down to my place in McLean to make a pit-stop. All of my running friends got to meet my beautiful wife, who fortunately cleaned up the place a bit before we arrived. Our cat was a bit wary of these strangers at first, but we eventually coaxed him out of his shell enough so that everyone could pet him. My van-mates left to go meet up with some friends downtown, and I stayed at home to shower, brush teeth, and kiss my wife (in that order -- my mouth was feeling decidely unfresh by that point). After catching a brief lunch at Noodles in the Ballston Commons mall, and after my wife made a detour into Victoria's Secret for a quick purchase (it was a sweater -- although she has made some fun purchases of another variety there on prior occasions!), we made our way down to the waterfront area in SW DC to meet up with our team at the finish line. By this time I was so exhausted that I nearly fell asleep on a bench waiting for everyone to arrive. My wife dined on the never-ending supply of bagels that were set up in a booth. When our last runner came in, half of our team was still trying to find a parking spot. It turned into somewhat of an anti-climactic moment. Plus, I was still sitting on my bench as they ran by. But eventually everyone showed up, and we were able to take these pictures:

(Note how everyone is looking in different directions.)

And here's a nice shot of everyone smiling at the camera:

It was fun. Our team came in 6 out of 45 in the mixed division (go us!) with a time of 28:09. For an account from van 2, check out this blog.

Today's Funny Moment

2010-04-25T21:18:00.002-04:00

I need to compose blogs more often. But I guess I've been too busy (codeword for too lazy) lately. So in lieu of a real blog, here's a funny exchange that just took place between me and my wife:

Her: "Ooh! There's a fall mahjong tournament in Tyson's Corner!"

Me: *silence*

Me (in my mind): Did she just say there's a Farmer John tournament this fall? Why is she so excited about that? They do have decent sausages, but still... *pause* (Lightbulb goes on in head. Dots finally connect.) Oh, she said mahjong! That makes much more sense.

Me: *laughs hysterically* "I will explain why I'm laughing so hard in a moment. Then you'll understand." *more laughter* "I thought you said you were going to a Farmer John tournament. I couldn't figure out why you were so excited about breakfast sausage."

Her: *hysterical laughter*

It's fun moments like these that make marriage worthwhile. Also, there are other fun benefits too....*wink, wink, nudge nudge*...

...I was referring to having someone cook for me occasionally. What were you thinking of? (...and yes, that's nice too. My single friends should really consider settling down. For real.)

--The End--

P.S. Real blogs will be forthcoming. I ran a race. Hopefully I can cut and paste some pictures soon to prove it.

Time to Run Again

2010-04-06T22:42:00.002-04:00

So...

I'm running in another long distance race again. Two weeks from this Friday/Saturday. It's called the American Odyssey Relay Run Adventure. (Yeah, it's a mouthful). It goes from Gettysburg PA to Washington DC. Basically, it's an imitation of the Ragnar Relay that I ran in last fall. So it should be fun. I'm running it with a guy I barely knew from my old single's ward in DC, and a bunch of people from New York (apparently). We may need other runners still, so contact me if you (A) live in the DC area, (B) can run a fair distance without collapsing, (3) can get off work/school/being unemployed/sleeping away your troubles on April 23/24, and (E) you can chip in a decent chunk of change for various fees and van costs.

I am in so much better shape this time around than I was last fall. Back then, I did the Ragnar on a whim, with about 4 weeks of training to get me in shape. I did the whole thing at 9 minute/mile pace, and was really just satisfied that I never had to walk. Well, this time around I am looking good. My race mile time is down to around 7 minutes/mile. Going through several weeks of OCS will do that to you, even if you drop out early because of a bum knee. And this will just set off my distance training season. I intend to run my first marathon this fall. I have narrowed it down to three choices: Baltimore, Minneapolis, or the Marine Corps Marathon in DC. They are all around the same time. If anyone has any experience/advice with these, it would be greatly appreciated if you passed it along. My goal is not just to run and finish, but to actually qualify for Boston on my first try (lofty and idealistic!).

Also, I wouldn't mind doing the Ragnar again this fall either, if anyone out there is looking to get a team together in the DC area. I'm good for it, assuming nothing else comes up in the meantime.

P.S. Click here for a picture of me at OCS. I'm second from the left (in the glasses, er, I mean "portholes").

Hypothermia

2010-03-10T17:18:00.004-05:00

For a while I was in training for a job. This training got cut short last week due to my own choosing; however, it involved a bad knee sprain and a lot of prayer and consideration. Needless to say, I am back on the legal job market.

While undergoing this training, we were informed that we were not allowed to blog about our experiences. Since I am no longer in training, one could rationalize that I am now allowed to open up and let all of my readers in on the "behind-the-scenes" secrets of what I went through. But that wouldn't exactly be the most noble course of action.

So I will compromise and oblige my readers with an in-depth account of what it is like to be on the verge of hypothermia. This knowledge comes from my own first-hand experience during the final week of my training stint. I will try to be as vague as possible about the actual maneuvers that we were undergoing at the time, while at the same time being as descriptive as possible about the effects of the cold that we endured.

It was a cold and windy day. We were out in the country in Northern Virginia. The temperature was just shy of 30 degrees F. Most of the snow on the ground was melted, although there were modest pockets of dirty white that freckled the ground throughout the training site. We were all dressed in the same gear: helmet, button-down long-sleeve shirt, utility pants, boots, undergarments. Each of us carried a weapon as well. Our exercise consisted of crossing various obstacles, many of which involved crawling on our hands and knees, or sliding along on our backs. For several of these obstacles, we were partially submerged in a foot or two of water. There was ice forming on top of the water, and its temperature was probably somewhere below 40 degrees F. The entire training exercise was probably about 250 yards long, over half of it in the water.

Before commencing the course, my team of 4 waited in the cold air for about an hour. We were pacing back and forth just to keep warm. Everyone was anticipating the intense cold we were about to endure. When our time came, I sprang forward with eagerness to get through the next several minutes as quickly as possible, not desiring to suffer any more than was necessary. Everything went relatively well until I had to make my first trip into the freezing water.

I had to lay down on my back in water that was just high enough to submerge my pronated torso, and then push myself along underneath some wire dangling a few inches above the surface. The initial shock of the water knocked all of the wind out of me. I had never plunged so quickly into something so cold in my life. It took me about 10 seconds to catch my breath and remember what I had to do next. Although I knew that I would be fine, I had to calm down my body from the adrenaline burst that had just involuntarily rocked me from head to toe.

Once I had regained my focus, I slid along on my back through the frozen moat. Everything seemed to slow down as my internal temperature gradually dropped from its normal 98.6 degrees. Speed did not seem to matter so much for some reason. My mind seemed to think that remaining calm and focused was the appropriate course of action. Rushing through the exercise didn't factor into the equation. Upon later reflection, this was probably due to altered thinking brought on by the intense cold. Logically, the best thing to do in that situation would be to hurry through it as quickly as possible. Staying in water that cold for too long would literally send a person into hypothermia, and potentially kill him.

After the exercise on my back, I had to stumble over to another exercise that involved using teamwork to get through another shallow pond of water and underneath an obstacle. Once again, I seemed to be moving slower with each passing second. I was the last one on my team to get through everything. After that, we moved on to another obstacle that involved crawling face-down through yet more freezing water. This time, I had to repeatedly submerge myself in order to get underneath a web of obstacles. Each submersion seemed to knock all of the air and energy out of me. I came up breathless each time, even though I was underwater for less than 2 seconds per submersion. Everything in my brain seemed to tell me to slow down, catch my breath, and not to tense my body. This was in stark contrast to my observant instructors, who were yelling at me to hurry up from the sides of the course.

"Why can't they just leave me alone? This water is freezing, and I'm going to get through it whether they yell at me or not. I can't concentrate with them hovering over me!" It occurred to me later that they were telling me to hurry up because they could sense the bewildering effects of hypothermia starting to spread over me. I was slowing down, falling behind my team, and falling into a false sense of tranquility. Simply staying put in the water in a relaxed state was all my body seemed to want to do. I was slowly losing feeling in my limbs, which seemed to weigh me down as though they were turning into lead. The only sounds I could hear were those of my instructors (rapidly fading into the distance), and my own breathing. I was becoming lost inside my head, while my body was slowly shutting itself down.

Somehow, I managed to make it through the last few submersions and stumble up the muddy bank at the end of the moat. I was able to get back on my feet, even though I mentally had to force each thigh muscle to explode forward in order to walk, since I couldn't really feel my legs anymore. We finished off our exercise, which consisted of another minute of above-ground maneuvers as a team, and then made our way over to the side of the course where we had to dump any leftover ammunition we may have been holding. Once we were cleared, the medical staff looked us over. Essentially, they were checking to see if we were coherent or not. Fortunately, I was able to mumble something to the effect of "I'm ok, I'm ok." I remember asking about a canteen of mine which had fallen off during the exercise (it's not good to lose equipment). I was told to forget about it, and to start running with my team back to our living quarters. The run was about 2/3 of a mile long.

The point of us getting moving right away was two-fold: (1) We needed to get our heart rate up, which in turn would raise our core temperature, and (2) it was simply too cold for us to stay outside and recover; we needed to get inside a warm building and change into dry clothing ASAP. Although fully exhausted at this point, I do not remember feeling tired or winded at all during my run. We were clearly not moving fast, as my legs felt like jello the entire time. My hands were barely able to grip the equipment I was carrying, and my mouth was just warm enough to form words (although they may not have been fully understood by those running with me). Mentally, I felt like I was all there, but everything around me seemed to be a blur. I could tell that I was not physically improving as I jogged back; rather, I was just delaying the spiral into hypothermia that had begun the second I had submerged my body in that freezing water only minutes earlier. If I did not get back and warm myself up, I would eventually lose consciousness.

So I kept jogging. The only thoughts in my head were of stripping off my clothes and wrapping up in a warm towel or blanket. I knew from previous boy-scout training that I should not plunge myself into warm water, as the drastic increase in temperature would shock my heart more than it could handle. When I stepped inside our building, I found myself in a muddy stairwell, with one door separating me from my warm bed and clothing. Some of my peers who had already warmed up and changed over were waiting for me, ready to assist me in stripping off my freezing wet attire. Upon taking one look at my face, they seemed to get really concerned. "Are you ok? You need to get these clothes off fast!" They grabbed my lose gear, then helped me pull of my boots as I unlaced them as rapidly as I could. After expressing some concern that all of my things would get misplaced, they assurred me that they would look after everything for me. Finally, after taking too long to disrobe, they ushered me into the shower room, dressed in my pants/shirt/socks.

I was told NOT to get into the direct spray of the water at first. I was merely to stand in the area and let the warmth and steam gradually heat me up. As I did this, many people looked me in the eye and sincerely asked if I was ok. The questions seemed odd to me, as I was able to respond back in coherent sentences. Apparently, I had looked really bad and disoriented upon returning from the field. My group had been the last to return, and my peers had had the privilege of seeing many rounds of individuals file into the locker room to change and recover. I must have looked more worse for the wear than they had. After I began to feel my cheeks getting flushed and the sensation returning to my hands and feet, I ventured into the warm flowing water of the shower head. Never had anything felt so physically comforting to me. Gradually, I began stripping off what remaining clothing I had, until I was standing there naked, basking in the heat that was now coursing through my body once again. I must have stayed in that shower for nearly 45 minutes before finally venturing out to get dressed. It was only then that I found out that one of my peers had actually fallen into a hypothermic seizure, and had been rushed to the hospital. He ended up being ok, but he was apparently one of the few that had reacted to the cold even more severely than myself.

The main danger of hypothermia is that it affects your mind. Since your internal body temperature doesn't drop suddenly, the effects of hypothermia creep up on you such that they may catch you unaware. We have all felt extreme cold before, but it's very difficult to sense the threshold between feeling the bitter cold in our limbs, and the spiral of numbness and internal failure that signals the entrance into hypothermia. I knew in my mind that my hands and feet were going numb. This was something that, through experience, I felt I could overcome by remaining mentally tough. As long as I forced my hand and feet forward, so I thought, I would eventually get through the exercise and warm them back up again. But you don't have the same cues to let you know when your heart and core have dropped too low. As your internal temperature falls lower and lower, your thought processes slow down considerably. You don't think straight anymore, even though you think you are. You assume you can will your way through the situation, while it is clear to the outside world that you cannot. Eventually, your brain starts to tell you to go slower and slower. This is merely because it cannot function at the same capacity under the lower temperature. It's kind of like being drugged, since you feel better than you actual are. Another analogy would be that of a mentally-ill person: much like they are not aware that they have lost touch with reality, I was not aware of how far I had slipped under the effects of the intense cold.

Fortunately, I was able to make it through my situation with no permanent harm. In a weird way, I am actually really glad that I had that experienced. I know what my body's limits are, or at least I have a better understanding than I did before. I have been in cold situations before, but I have never felt what it was like to have my core temperature drop so low. On the one hand, it's scary to see what it's like when you start to lost control of your body. But on the other hand, it's enlightening to know how far you can push yourself before you get to that point. Who knows? Maybe that knowledge will come in handy someday, and perhaps save a life in the process.

One thing's for sure -- I never want to feel that cold again.

Reason #_ Why I Married My Wife Over Other Mormon Women

2010-03-09T08:51:00.002-05:00

When my wife needs it, she takes Midol. For you women out there, you know exactly what I'm talking about. For the men, let me just say that it's an OTC (over the counter drug) that relieves pain. Very specific pain. Pain you will never know as a man. Enough said.

My wife is a convert to all things Mormon. When she was getting acquainted with our church, she confided in me that some of the girls at church looked at her funny when she suggested they take some of her Midol to help with a very specific pain they were going through at the time. As in a "you shouldn't be taking that medication" type of funny look. My wife was perplexed.

Let me change gears right here. I need you to read verses 5-9 of this scripture link (D&C 89). Pay close attention to verse 9. It is the key.

Now, ask yourself: What constitutes a "hot drink"? Seriously, that's a rather vague term to the inexperienced lay reader. I can think of many beverages that are hot: coffee (in all it's various forms), tea (likewise), cocoa, mate, chicken broth, that can of soda I left in my car last summer, etc. Within the Mormon church, the phrase "hot drink" has been defined as coffee and tea. We don't drink them. But further still, we typically think of the forbidden teas as being of the black, Earl Grey variety, as well as some of the lesser green and white teas. But not herbal tea. The oft-stated assumption within the church is that we don't drink these beverages because they contain caffeine, which appears to be their common ingredient. However, this really is just an assumption.

There could be many reasons we don't drink these beverages. High on the list is the tendency towards addiction. Most people who drink coffee do so every single morning. They can't start their day right without it. And I could be wrong, but I believe tea may serve a similar purpose in other cultures. Additionally, these drinks tend to be served at a scalding hot temperature. This danger could also occur with cocoa and other hot drinks. I once burned my mouth so severely on hot cocoa I purchased at the mall in Salt Lake City (of all places!) that I couldn't taste anything for about 5 days. I like to think that God had included that cup of cocoa in his scriptural warning. Some hot drinks may also have the danger of causing ulcers and stomach cramps with frequent and heavy use. Three cups of java every morning is probably not good for the gut. The point is, we shouldn't necessarily assume that Mormons are advised not to consume these liquids merely because they contain caffeine; there could be a rich tapestry of reasons to avoid them. Simply put, D&C 89 never says "Don't consume caffeine or caffeinated foods/beverages."

So what does this have to do with Midol? Well, as you can see here, Midol contains a healthy kick of caffeine in each dose. This is done for its diuretic effect, which helps to flush fluids out of the system and combat bloating. Apparently, many Mormon women have performed the arbitrary mental gymnastics needed to conclude that Midol, with its caffeination, is included under the umbrella of what D&C 89 labels as a "hot drink," and is therefore a prohibited substance that they are not to partake of.

Midol is neither "hot" nor a "drink." Unless you mix it into your coffee or tea. (*Side note: Coca-Cola is also not a "hot drink." Perhaps some may consider it a "strong drink," but that is a debate for another day. Maybe we can discuss it over a nice cold can or two of said beverage.)

Midol is, however, a medicine that apparently works quite well. Many women swear by it. It alleviates symptoms and reduces comfort such that they are able to go on in their day and accomplish what they had intended. I dare say that it may even allow them to more readily feel spiritual promptings, because I know I feel them better when I am well than when I am sick or emotionally distraught. I have no problems with my wife taking it, and I personally find those Mormon women who avoid Midol for the aforementioned reasons to be rather ridiculous (and a tad bit ignorant). People within Mormon culture need to make sure that they study the original sources of scripture and ponder what they actually say, and then afterwards reflect on interpretations made by later prophets and authority figures within the church. Don't make assumptions that are broader than the revelations before you. Don't draw connections that may not necessarily be true. And by all means, don't use your exuberant mental gymnastics as a basis to look down your nose at other people. Don't do it. I'm just saying. This could be part of the reason why some Mormon people gag at the thought of living in Utah. In conclusion (to the women): It's ok to take Midol if you need it.

And there you have it--one reason why I married my wife over other Mormon women.

To Write An Independent Film

2010-01-06T21:36:00.004-05:00

Today I came up with a great concept for an indie film. Mind you, the following is not an actual plotline; it is just a basic progression that I intend to flesh-out someday into a rough movie script. Since I will be in Marine officer training for the next 11 months or so, I won't really be able to develop the plot at all (at least not in writing). But if I put my idea down here, hopefully I won't forget it later when I have some free time.

Be warned--this is not the idea for a cheesy, feel-good hugfest of a movie. Those have their place, but I find them quite boring. I prefer realism and deep-thinking in my media, and not mere "chicken soup for the soul" fare. Life is not one big happy bubble, and restricting mysef to media that does not explore the full range of emotion will leave me somewhat uncomfortable with difficult life situations. Don't take this to mean that I am advocating that you need to watch gritty, R-rated stuff in order to be prepared for life; merely that it is ok to watch a movie that makes you experience an emotion other than "happy."

That being said, here goes:

The movie starts with a horrific crime/act, perpetrated by a solitary individual. I'm not talking a mere liquor store hold-up, or even a bank robbery or drug deal. There will likely be a murder involved, and of a malicious or unnecessary nature. Something that leaves the viewer asking "what would cause a person to do that?" That is essentially the question that the movie poses. It will involve an exploration of a series of events, spanning several generations, the led up to that horrific act.

The story will then unfold in reverse chronological order from that point. Scenes from the perpetrator's childhood will be revealed, showing how the failures of his parents, as well as his own poor choices, led him down the wrong path. The story will jump back even further, showing how the parents themselves made poor choices earlier in their lives, which led them to be "bad" parents. The story will go back further still, to show the faulty upbringing of the parents, as influenced by the grandparents. The story will ultimately trace back to a grandfather, who at some point will have made a conscious choice to engage in an activity that started this whole chain of events. I am thinking it may involve alcoholism or something of that nature.

What the movie will try to do is get the viewer to consider whether nature or nurture led to the horrific event in the opening scene. At each key point in the movie, the character at issue will be presented with a choice between acting in accordance with how they have previously been "nurtured," or opting out through an alternative that may end the pattern of destructive behavior (think 1 Corinthians 10:13). The script won't try to force the viewer to decide either way, but rather leave it open-ended. The point will be to let the viewer understand that our influence extends beyond ourselves, and that we are all a little more responsible to each other than we realize. By moving backwards through time, the viewer gets to speculate about the possible events that have led up to each scene, which are in turn revealed in the subsequent scene. In that regard, it would be similar to the reverse-linear plotline in movies such as Memento. Hopefully the viewer will realize that we are all interconnected, imperfect, and closer to starting a cycle of behavior (whether bad or good) than we probably realize.

I welcome any thoughts or ideas about the type of script I am proposing. Obviously, this wouldn't be a blockbuster of a movie. Think more along the lines of an independent flick that debuts at Sundance. It would be gritty, and probably R-rated. *Side note: I had a psychology class as an undergrad at BYU that was meant to show us what conducting therapy sessions would be like. At some point during the semester, my professor commented that we should probably pursue a different career if we were uncomfortable dealing with the R-rated aspects of life, since that often encompasses the very situations that lead people towards counseling in the first place, and we had to get over our discomfort to bring about the greater good. It was probably the most profound statement I ever heard from a BYU professor. **Side note 2: I decided to attend law school after taking this class. Take that for what you will.

Reflections on 2009

2009-12-31T20:37:00.002-05:00

Another year has come and gone, and it is time to display my stats so that my readers can judge for themselves as to whether or not 2009 was a success for me. As it stands, I end the year having graduated Georgetown Law, passed the DC Bar Exam, GOT MARRIED!, and finally landed a pretty good job as a U.S. Marine JAG officer, which will start early next year (pending my successful completion of OCS and subsequent training). You can even compare this year to last year, if you so choose.

Courses taken at Georgetown Law:
1. Harrison Institute Public Policy Clinic
2. Law and Regulation of Drugs, Biologics, and Devices
3. International Law
4. Legal Research Skills for Practice
*Favorite course: International Law. But really, I just wanted to graduate. A big disappointment was the clinic, which is a topic for another blog. (Basically, I was given no work for 3/4 of a semester, then got chewed out by my advisor for "losing interest." In my opinion, she should probably lose her job for failing to provide adequate opportunities for her students to do public policy work. 2 of the 7 students in our team even had to go around town and find their own work because the clinic failed to provide opportunities. Georgetown Law does NOT deserve its #1 ranking for law school clinics.)

Movies watched at theatres:
1. Watchmen (2.5 stars)
2. Adventureland (3 stars)
3. Star Trek (3.5 stars)
4. Terminator Salvation (2.5 stars)
5. Angels & Demons (1.5 stars)
6. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2 stars)
7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2.5 stars)
8. Zombieland (3.5 stars)
9. Bruno (1.5 stars)
10. Taken (3 stars)

*Observations: Star Trek was the best of the bunch. But I was definitely surprised by Zombieland, which was a very clever and hilarious take and the zombie movie genre. Adventureland was also quite good as sort of a coming-of-age movie. Taken wins the award for the movie that delivered exactly what was promised in the commercials.

Movies from 2009 I only saw on DVD:
1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (not as bad as everyone said)
2. The Hangover (Hilarious!)
3. 17 Again (saw this one on a plane flight)
4. The Proposal (...lookin' good, Sandra Bullock)
5. He's Just Not that Into You (wife made me watch this one)
6. Confessions of a Shopaholic (made me glad my wife doesn't have credit cards)
7. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (watching it right now)
8. My Sister's Keeper (interesting, thoughtful, and strange)
9. Bride Wars (I'll watch anything with Anne Hathaway)
10. Julie & Julia (props to any movie that makes my wife interested in cooking)
11. Sunshine Cleaning (great movie nobody's heard of)
*Wow, I watched a lot of movies this year.

Shows recorded on TiVo:
1. One Tree Hill
2. 24
3. Wipeout (hilarious!)
4. The Office
5. The Simpsons
6. Gossip Girl
7. V (has potential, but too soon to tell)
8. Flash Forward (starting to go downhill quickly)
9. Mad Men (good, but not as good as the hype)
10. So You Think You Can Dance
11. Secret Life of the American Teenager (my wife got me hooked)
12. Lost
*Shows I stopped watching in 2009: Grey's Anatomy (it just started to suck), House (storylines are too formulaic), Heroes (due to TiVo scheduling conflicts, but I still watch it on Hulu). I am also starting to tire of Gossip Girl, so we'll see how that goes next year. And I don't get HBO, but I do keep up on Big Love because I find it to be a nice little satire on life in Utah.

Books read in 2009, not including textbook or scripture:
1. Watership Down
2. Home Workout Bible
3. Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis
4. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
5. The Company
*This was an eclectic mix. Watership Down is a delightful classic that everyone should read once. The workout book is a must-have for anyone who intends to ever lift weights. Critical is a simple, quick read. It's good for people who don't know how the U.S. health system works, but want to get a basic primer. I've done so much research on the topic that the book didn't really tell me anything I haven't heard before, but it was good nonetheless. The Israel Lobby is a good read for anyone who has ever wondered why the U.S. seems to always support Israel, no matter what. The Company is a piece of historical fiction about the CIA, and it is really good (but long).

States I set foot in during 2009:
1. Maryland
2. Virginia
3. D.C. (technically not a state)
4. California
5. Florida
6. Minnesota
7. Wisconsin (just the airport)
8. Illinois (just the airport)

Cruises: 1 (Key West and Cozumel)
Bar Exams passed: 1 (out of 1)
Flatscreen TVs purchased: 1 (42 in.)
Long Distance races competed in: 1 (Ragnar Relay Washington DC)
New Pets acquired: 1
Running shoes purchased: 1
Weddings attended: 2 (one for me, one for my sis)

All in all, a decent year. 2010 is also looking very hopeful.

My Morning

2009-12-14T10:13:00.002-05:00

Ever had one of those days where you knew you should have stayed in bed longer?

Here is how my morning has gone so far. First, a little background information so that the following narrative will make sense. I live in a basement apartment in the nice little suburb of McLean, VA. Our landlord lives upstairs, and he's a pretty decent guy who keeps to himself for the most part. I don't mind him. Lately, he has decided to rebuild a little car-port on the side of the house by the entrance to the basement. This involved jack-hammering away the concrete, as wells as a bunch of other construction that hasn't been completed yet. I have a strong suspicion that, by the time it is all completed, everything will look much the same as it did before. Until then, he has placed in stepping stones so that we won't have to trudge through the mud and gravel as we enter and exit.

Shortly after he had torn up the concrete outside, the weather turned sour. We had a big snowstorm a week ago, and we have had about 5 different days of rain. Since there are big holes in the ground outside our door, water collects in these holes. At times, he has attempted to keep them covered with a tarp, but puddles still form. His solution (since I am assuming that the puddles will damage his construction efforts) is to put some sort of suction drainage device attached to a long hose in the puddle. The hose stops at the edge of his front lawn, and dumps water onto the sidewalk to flow into the gutter.

A few other things: we have to park our cars on the street, since the driveway is all torn apart. It has also been dipping below freezing on many nights. My wife is from Minnesota, and is thereby well-acquainted with freezing conditions and proper procedures to counteract them. Also, last night there was an intense amount of fog in the area, which left considerable condensation on all of the cars. Remember all of these things. You will be quizzed later (not really, but it will help make sense of the story).

Our alarm goes off at 8 in the morning. Erica needs to leave by 8:30 so she can drive to work by 9. I am currently a stay-at-home husband, so I get to hang out at home and do chores. I'm not a lazy bum, mind you; I have been accepted into officer training for the Marine Corps JAG in January. Until then, not much to do other than exercise and stay fit. So I get up when Erica does, make her a quick breakfast, say a family prayer, and generally read materials of a religious nature for a while after she goes.

This morning, she got out the door on time. I was busy in the kitchen pouring my cereal, when I heard her key at the door, attempting to re-enter. She comes in and tells me that her car windows are covered in ice, and she has to clear it off before she can drive off. She says she needs my help dumping hot water on the windows to melt the ice. She proceeds to grab two cups of lukewarm tap water (about 12 oz. each) and wants me to follow her outside. I stop her at the door. I point out that (1) the water is not nearly warm enough, since the tap can get quite hot if we let it run for about 10 seconds, and (2) instead of using two modest cups, why not use the big 2 liter jug that is sitting right by the sink? She mumbles something about not having enough time and not wanting to be late for work. She has mumbled this line before on many occasions, and by now I just choose to ignore it. My previous bosses have never yelled at me for being an extra two minutes late to work. Also, she is obsessed with being on time to things.

So we head out the door, and walk towards her car on the street. It is hovering just around freezing outside, but I am holding a warm jug of water, so I am content. I have on my pair of slip-on Converse shoes, which should be sufficient covering to walk a total of 50 feet. My wife, who weighs about half of what I weigh, hits the edge of the driveway, turns right down the sidewalk, and heads toward her car without so much as skipping a beat. As I hit the edge of the driveway and turn right, the water draining from the hose at the edge of the lawn has left a thin layer of black ice, and I unfortunately step directly onto it.

(Body flies up in the air, feet momentarily further from ground than head. Body crashes down hard on its side. Wind is completely knocked out of body. Moderate pain. Body utters some unmentionable words containing 4 letters.)

After carefully rising to my feet and stretching a little bit to make sure I haven't cracked a rib or two, I mention to my wife that I am ok. I just got the wind knocked out of me, no big deal. We grab the half-spilled jug of water from the ground and head to her car, being careful to avoid any black ice along the way. I can only assume that my wife, because of her small stature, was able to walk over the ice without so much as reduced foot traction. Perhaps she can also walk over water (like those speedy little lizards you sometimes see on Animal Planet, but not like that bearded religious dude).

When we arrive at her car, I notice that the "ice" that has totally covered her windows is actually 1 mm of frost. Definitely not ice. We dump the hot water on the frost, and it melts off instantly. I ask my wife why she didn't get a windshield scraper and just scratch off the frost really quickly, instead of going through all of the trouble to go back inside, get my help, fill up containers of hot water, walk back outside, and then dump them on her windows. Her reply: "I didn't have time. It takes a while to scrape off the ice."

By now I am beginning to have doubts that she is really from Minnesota like she says she is. I know for a fact that the tiny amount of frost on her windows would have taken me about 30 seconds to scratch off with one of those ice scraper things. The heater in her car would have done the rest of the job within about 3 blocks of driving. I am too tired and sore at this point to explain to her that it took her 3 minutes to go inside and grab hot water to do something that would have taken her 30 seconds to do with a scraper. Also, "there's no time" loses its meaning when you actually do something that takes more time. Also, when a person from MN says to me that there is ice on her windows, I instantly think that there is a solid sheet of 1/2 inch thick frozen water covering her car. If that were the case, dumping hot water on everything would be the best possible solution.

So we get her car all set, kiss goodbye, and off she goes. I turn around and walk towards the house, being extra careful not to slip on any more black ice. I realize that my side and back are starting to get more and more sore, and that I really just want to sit down. No ribs were cracked, and no muscles were pulled or discs slipped, but I believe that there is a large bruise in the middle of the right-hand side of my back. I expect to be back at full capacity by Wednesday at the latest. Until then, I intend to remain sedentary.

This was my morning. Such is life. And beware of black ice.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-09T20:33:00.002-05:00

I posted a new song playlist off to the right. It's full of yuletide carols and other Christmas-themed merriment. I hope you find it enjoyable.

In other news, the mrs. and I have decorated our humble little basement apartment in preparation for the holidays. I had a tight budget, and so we wanted to stretch every dollar as much as possible. I ended up with a 3-foot synthetic Christmas tree with lights ($20), package of ball-shaped tree ornaments ($3), 50 feet of indoor Christmas lights ($9), and two strands of red and silver garland ($2). Grand total: $34. With the small size of our apartment, it worked out quite nicely. Hopefully I'll find full time employment by the new year, otherwise our small apartment may end up being a tent under the bridge.

Which lead me to my next topic: my job search. For those of you who don't know, I graduated from Georgetown Law last May, and pass the District of Columbia Bar Examination for July 2009. Since then, it's been a continous struggle to find that first job as a lawyer. One of the side effects of the recent recession is that the legal market (along with the business sector) got decimated. Many attorneys who had been practicing for several years were laid-off, and law firms basically put a freeze on hiring. Government agencies are some of the few places in the area that still have hiring needs, but even they decided that they would rather fill their slots with experienced attorneys rather than new hires. Many law school grads have converted back to employment suitable for the undergraduate degrees. Others have signed on with legal temp agencies, where you can actually make about $35/hour when assignments do come up. In theory, you could make around $60-70K per year this way if you could get steady work most of the time. The problem is that there are so many lawyers for the spots that it's hard to get in unless you have experience with the exact issue that they need someone for. But it can still be a way to make ends meet, at least until an actual attorney position opens up.

I'm currently on the list at many legal temp agencies, and I pretty much get a reply email every week telling me that they are not staffing anything right now, and that I should check back later. Many have promised that assignments will start to open up in the new year. I remain hopeful, yet skeptical. In the meantime, I have pursued alternative legal careers. At the top of that list is a position with the military JAG program (Judge Advocate General). A JAG officer is basically a lawyer assigned to help out military men and bases. They typically serve stateside, but can also be stationed at military bases overseas, even in designated war zones. Each branch of service has a separate JAG program, with unique entrance and training requirements.

The branch that I am in the running for is the Marine JAG program. I have been working with a recruiting office out of College Park, MD, for about 2 months now. The Marine training program is by far the most intense of all of the service branches. As a Marine JAG, you are considered an unrestricted line officer. What that means is that you receive the same combat training as any other commissioned Marine officer. It is not an easy process. Candidates for officer training programs must be college graduates with a clean background check, as well as excellent physical fitness levels.

Heavy emphasis on the physical fitness. The Marines have a standard test that they use to assess fitness: it consists of (1) as many consecutive pullups as you can do at one time, (2) as many crunches as you can do in 2 minutes, and (3) a 3 mile run. Lengthy descriptions of the events and scoring standards can be found here. My current best score is a 248 out of 300, which I am quiet proud of. In order to even qualify for consideration as a Marine officer, you must score above a 240. In my last test, I did 14 pullups, 97 crunches, and ran 3 miles in 21:08. I think as of today I could probably hit 15 pullups, 100 crunches, and <20:50. That would equate to a 258. The average entering officer can do about 275 on the test. I think (hope) that the average is a little lower for the JAG candidates, due to their generally increased age.

Luckily for me, I have always maintained myself in pretty decent shape. I was an avid gym-rat until I graduated law school (and lost my free gym privileges), and I have gone through several bouts of jogging frenzy over the years. Recently, I trained up for a distance running race that I blogged about a while back. Just after that race, I came across an ad for the Marine JAG program. Since the jogging base had been established, and the pullups and situps were at decent levels, I decided to make a go of it. This has amounted to a pretty intense personal training program. I do pullups 3-5 days per week, usually around 50 per session, sometimes with weight in a backpack. I do crunches most days, usually several sets of about 50 each. And I have a really strict running program. For a while, I followed the first 6 weeks of this routine pretty closely. About two weeks ago, I switched over to this training routine (if I don't make it into the Marines, I intend to run the National Marathon next March). It has worked. I shaved 4 minutes off of my 3 mile time in about 2 months. I have also slimmed down by almost 10 lbs., which has caused my wife to express great appreciation (wink, wink).

Anywho, after passing the physical fitness standards and getting accepted into the program, Marine officers are put through a 10 week boot camp called Officer Candidate School. It's basically 10 weeks of grueling activities and leadership training, where they attempt to weed out the people who can't handle it and don't want to be there. Think about it -- would you want the leaders of your U.S. Marines, the finest branch of military there is in the world, to be unable to suffer through 10 weeks of hellacious training? And since JAG officers in the Marines have to receive the same training as other officers, they get put through the wringer too.

If you survive the 10 weeks of OCS, then you report to 6 months of tactical training at a place called The Basic School (TBS). Here, it's generally a M-F military academy, with lots of live-fire and training exercises, as well as a ton of classroom work. There might be occasional weekend work, such as during extended training exercises, or extra practice on areas where an officer is lacking. By the end of the 6 months, every Marine officer is supposed to be able to lead a platoon of roughly 50 men into battle. Pretty hardcore. And many of the officers, such as the JAGs, will likely never have to lead anyone in battle. Nevertheless, it provides excellent leadership training that will come in handy in almost any professional field.

After the 6 months at TBS, the JAG officers will head to the Naval Justice School in Rhode Island for an additional 10 weeks of military law training. They will basically learn the court martial process from start to finish, as well as take refreshers in many other areas of law common to the JAG experience. Then they will get assigned to their first post, where they will have to complete at least three more years of active duty JAG service before they can rejoin the civilian work force. Notable Marine stations are at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, Camp Pendleton in California, and Quantico in Virginia. There's also a base in Oahu, which is where my wife would like me to end up at. It does sound very tempting.

I should hear back from the Marine JAG program within a week or so. If I'm not accepted, then it's back to the drawing board as far as jobs are concerned. I'll probably keep hunting for work here in DC, and hopefully temp jobs will tide me over in the meantime. I've toyed with the idea of applying to the local police academy, since a combination of law degree, law enforcement training, and Spanish speaking skills may make me a good candidate to join the FBI as a special agent once my initial commitment with the police force is done. Really, it's all about setting myself up for a lengthy and stable career, and this recent economic meltdown has shed light on just how volatile the legal industry is. As much as many die-hard free market supporters like to bad mouth government employment, those jobs tend to provide a stable infrastructure to our workforce that is vital for a lot of industries. Without government work to turn to, many well-qualified lawyers would be forced out of the profession right now, never to return. This may hold true with other fields as well. I wouldn't want the government to take over whole industries and bring us into a socialistic order, but I do believe a balance can be achieved that will provide great stability to our labor market. When that balance is upset, it tends to make the extremes more extreme. Which translates to years of feast, and years of famine. A while back we were riding high on a feast; now we collectively suffering through famine. It is not lost on me that graduates from my law school were earning starting salaries of $125K+ the year before I enrolled, with a 95% employment rate upon graduation. With numbers like that, I had to be a fool to pass up that opportunity. Sufficeth to say, my graduating class didn't see anything near those numbers. Doh!

Now I'm just trying to make sense of it all, and figure out my next move. My wife and I still have a life to live together, and I need an outlet for all of my training and skills. I don't want to be rich -- I just want us to be secure. So at this holiday season, I just urge everyone to think of the Savior, and reflect on the many blessings you have in your lives. If this economic meltdown has not affected you too bad, give thanks to the God that created you. I know I am thankful right now for what I do have, and it's a loving wife, supportive family, and good health. My car still runs, and there is food in the fridge. And don't forget Mr. Jibbles!

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Recipe for a best-selling novel

2009-11-22T21:55:00.009-05:00

Lately I have been thinking of alternative ways to become a millionaire, since my former plan of becoming a partner at a large law firm seems to have fizzled with the economy. Plus, being a partner would have burned me out rather quickly.

I remember that I wanted to be a writer when I was in middle school. I read quite often for leisure, generally at a level considerably above that of my peers. I even set out to write my own book when I was about 12. I actually got through about 6 hand-written pages before I got sidetracked. (In retrospect, the plot was heavily plagiarized from the movie Batman). After this, my writing skills remained dormant throughout high school and most of college, only popping up as necessary to complete various scholastic assignments.

Then, in my final year at BYU, I finally signed up for the requisite 3rd-year writing course. Rather than taking something boring like Technical Writing or Writing for the Social Sciences (as did many of my psych-major classmates), I opted to enroll in a persuasive writing course. This turned out to be one of the most beneficial classes that I have ever taken, and probably prepared me more for law school than anything else I did in college. The class engaged in weekly online debates about a variety of political and social issues, often exposing widely varying viewpoints. By nature of my political beliefs, I guess I was the de-facto "liberal" of the group. (Another girl claimed to be "more left-leaning than most," but in reality she was just a Republican with a tendency towards tree-hugging).

I completed this course in fall of 2004, completely enamored with the art of persuasive writing. Over the ensuing months and years, I had almost 2 dozen Letters to the Editor published in BYU's student newspaper, The Daily Universe. I found that there was a certain art to getting published, since the paper typically allowed only 2 articles or so on any given topic. You either had to be the first to write in with something compelling to say about a new topic, or you had to be the best of a myriad of responses to a previous letter. Lots of editing also went into making each potential letter under the usual limit of 250 words or less. Also, I had a pseudonym for several of my letters (Janet Smith), which was somehow mildly empowering. Not sure why.

Then came law school, and I was back to focusing entirely on school assignments. There was not a whole lot of writing in law school outside of a specific first year course, but in a typical week I read between 100-200 pages of text. And it was almost always judicial opinions and discussion, the dryest sort of reading there is. By the time I hit my second year, I was so sick of reading because I "had to" that I made a conscious choice to always have a book on hand to read solely because I "wanted to."

This initially led me to read the beloved Harry Potter series. I read all 7 books within a matter of 14 days. I was hooked by page 15 of the first book. Maybe it helped that I had already seen all of the movies up until that point, but I really got lost in the wizard world for that short time. In fact, I kind of liked having a face to put with all of the main characters. It's always annoying when the movie is made after I have read the book, and the characters look nothing like I had pictured in my mind. What can I say -- maybe I don't like over-taxing my imagination.

Many books have have been read since Harry Potter, although none really lived up to my enjoyment of that series. Currently, I am about to finish a 900-page opus called The Company, a bit of historical fiction involving the CIA throughout the entire Cold War. I figured it was kind of fitting, since I now live about 3 miles away from CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. It's a really good book, if you are into spy novels. I noticed that the Harry Potter craze seems to have died down since the final book was published a few years back, and has been replaced by the latest trend: vampires; specifically, the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. I have not read these books, nor do I believe that I ever will. But it's hard to ignore the impact they've had on pop culture. Young people are obsessed with pseudo-vampire culture. Similar fictional works have now sprung up, such as True Blood on HBO (although based on a series of novels pre-dating Twilight), a recent tv show on the CW whose name escapes me at the moment, and assorted other vampire movies and such.

The phenomenal success of both Harry Potter and Twilight led me to reflect on whether there was some sort of pattern to writing a best-selling novel. Obviously, a person first has to know how to write well, and have a creative imagination. (I use "write well" in a very loose sense, considering Meyer's work). They have to be able to string together a coherent plot, and have the stamina to get through at least a few hundred pages of fiction. These are just general pre-requisites to writing a novel. But to write a best-seller, I have noticed that there are several things in common. Here is a list:

1. The story involves teenagers/young adults. This is preferable because readers of all ages will be able to relate. Whereas adults can relate to the experiences of youth by reminiscing about the past, young people will not be able to completely relate to a story involving a bunch of middle aged people. Also, teenagers tend to be the most obsessive about pop culture trends, so you want to appeal to them in order to maximize your success.

2. There has to be some sort of supernatural element to the story, such as magic (Harry Potter), or vampires (Twilight). Not only does this allow for greater flexibility in creating a storyline, but it also creates a unique subculture that can be embraced by potential hardcore fans. They can pretend to "live" the fantasy in real life.

3. There has to be some level of romance among the lead characters. It probably shouldn't be the main element of the novel, but it should be fairly prominent. Nearly everyone can relate to falling in love. It just can't overshadow the supernatural element, otherwise it turns into a romance novel (and those are kind of trashy).

4. The lead character has to go through some sort of transformation, both in terms of going from child to adult, as well as a supernatural progression.

5. The supernatural element has to have opposing sides, such as good and bad wizards or vampire clans. This allows the reader to see that the supernatural element can be potentially dangerous, which can be kind of exciting.

6. The fantasy/supernatural world has to co-exist with the real world. Often, this means that steps are taken to conceal the supernatural from the majority of humans. This somehow makes the story more exciting to readers, because it is easier to pull them in if they can imagine the story happening to themselves.

I could probably come up with more points, but to do that I would have to actually read the Twilight series, and I'm simply not going to allow that to happen. But it does lead me to speculate on the subject matter of the next big novel phenomenon. What do you guys think it could be? So far, we've had wizards and vampires. Maybe it could involve super powers, such as those encountered by people in the tv series Heroes. Even though comic books/graphic novels have been popular for decades, I wonder if they could translate well to a straight novel format. Another potential subject could be extraterrestrials. Not the little green men/E.T. types, but perhaps people from different planets who look and act just like humans, thereby allowing them to assimilate into our culture. A third subject could be angels/heavenly beings that interact with humans, although I think adopting too much of a strong religious undertone might start to make a novel overly preachy.

Now I just have to pick an option and start writing. I'll let you know once I've achieved millionaire status.

I ran, then ran some more

2009-10-14T17:45:00.008-04:00

As alluded to in an earlier post, I recently ran the Ragnar Relay through Maryland and Washington DC. The race consisted of thirty six separate running legs, covered over a day and a half by a team of 12 runners. The twelve racers would stay in the same order, so that each person could get as much rest as possible in between their individual legs. This was a huge event, with check points set up where each leg ended and the next began. There must have been at least 100 teams or so that competed. My team wasn't necessarily trying to win the competition. Rather, I think we were just hoping to finish without giving up.

Our team chose the name of "We Wish We Were Kenyan." We were anything but. We rented two large 15-passenger vans, which proved to be just enough space for two groups of six runners each. The first van would arrive at the start of the race, and the 6 of us would run in order until trading off with van 2 when it came time for runner 7.

Anywho, I was selected to be runner #1. This meant that I had to be ready to set out on foot from Cumberland, MD at 8:30 a.m. sharp on a friday morning. Unfortunately, Cumberland is about 150 miles from DC, and so we had to wake up before the crack of dawn to drive out there in time for the start. (Van 2 had the luxury of waiting until noon to meet up, then drive out to the spot where runner 7 would take over). My morning began at 4 a.m., when I woke up to get some food and water in me, then take the last shower I would have for about 36 hours. I had to drive from my place in McLean, VA to our meeting place in Silver Spring, MD. I had planned it taking me 30 minutes to get there. It did. Too bad I left 10 minutes later than I had hoped, because I arrived at our meeting place at 5:10. But it was all good, because our vans didn't get there until 5:15.

We loaded up right away, and I was all prepared to lay down on one of the van benches and get a few hours of sleep before the race. This was not to be, as I discovered that only 3 of the 6 of us were eligible to drive the van (due to age and license requirements). That meant that I had to drive us halfway to Cumberland. And so I did. Driving a large van is not my most favorite thing at 6 a.m., and I was grateful when I was finally relieved of my duties. The final 45 minutes or so I spent listening to rock music on my wife's iPod, which she conveniently let me borrow for the trip. (I don't like listening to music while running, but I use music to get me psyched up before a big run. I'm weird like that.)

This year's race started in a different location than last year's, and so we got a little mixed up and arrived at the starting line about 5 minutes before the scheduled 8:30 start. I had to run over to the check-in table and get my running number. Then I had to use the restroom and stretch my legs. It turns out that 5 minutes wasn't enough time to get all of this done. My stretching was slightly compromised as a result. Since I opted not to stretch by the starting line, I was not around to wave "Hi" to the crowd when our team name was announced. I distinctly remember the announcer saying: "And the next team is team We Wish We Were Kenyan. Do we have the runner for team We Wish We Were Kenyan? No? Well....maybe we should change your name to we wish you were here. (crowd laughter)" I heard the announcer count down to the beginning of the race right as I was in the middle of stretching near some picnic tables, about 100 yards from the starting line. So as the announcer shouted "Go!" I started running from where I had been stretching, through the starting line, and up to the back of the pack.

The first leg was completely flat. We pretty much followed a dirt path that ran right along a small creek which (I believe) eventually turns into/feeds into the Potomac River. The weather was great for running, approximately 60 degrees and slightly overcast. Because everyone was together at the start, I ran slightly faster than I would have otherwise. Being bunched together made me want to stay with the middle of the pack. I probably averaged about 8:45 for each of the miles in my 6.2 mile run. I was fresh, I was excited, and after the pack started to break up I made it my goal to gradually overtake the runner in front of me, at which point I would repeat my strategy with the next runner in my field of vision. This worked for a while, until a pack of 3 runners came from out of nowhere and zipped by me. With my ego sufficiently deflated, I resigned myself to sticking with a good solid pace and ignored all efforts to overtake the runners in front of me.

The major frustration that I encountered on this run was that it was impossible for me to figure out how far I had gone. While training in my neighborhood, it was very easy to know how far I had gone, and how far I had left to go. I have virtually all of the streets around me memorized through countless miles of jogging. But on an unmarked trail with almost no room for spectators, it became really hard to guage how far I had gone and how far I had left. The scenery didn't really change at all, and so I had no way of determining my distance based upon landmarks that I had memorized from the map in our van. Usually I like to readjust my pace at about the halfway mark, just to make sure I am maximizing my energy on the run. Since that wasn't possible, I just kept going at a steady pace and decided to dig in when I could finally hear the crowds cheering at the runner exchange point. This happened when I was about a quarter mile from the end. So my team got to see me racing up to the exchange, unaware that I had been just steadily plodding along until I was slightly out of their visual range.

Pass the baton (slap bracelet in this case) to Steve, a.k.a. the only guy on our team with any hope of ever qualifying for the Boston Marathon. My running time for 6.2 miles: about 54 minutes. Not too shabby.

I took about 10 minutes to unwind after my first run, going through my post-race routine: catch my breath, let pulse return to normal, walk around a bit, remove sweaty+smelly shirt, pour water over my head and torso, wipe off water/sweat with a towel, put on clean shirt for next portion of the race, then drink lots of water and gatorade. After that, we got in the van and headed to the next checkpoint. I ate one of the chicken salad sandwiches that I had brought with me.

A lot of stuff happened over the next few hours. We drove to every checkpoint and traded off runners, most of them running at least 5 miles. Runner 5 (Jana) had a killer 8.something mile run that basically went up a 1,000 foot hill the whole way, which kind of wiped her out due to some injuries she had sustained a few weeks prior to the race. So some of our other runners opted to jump out and run some of her leg for her. Way to go, Team! We eventually traded off with Van 2 at about 4 or so in the afternoon, after which I drove us to a quaint little diner for some grub. No salad for Brian. I had a steak and cheese sandwich with some fries. Good stuff, and the last real meal I would eat until my final leg was over. We camped out at the end of leg 12 and waited for several hours for the other van to complete their legs. I finally began my 2nd run sometime around 9 p.m.

This one was a quick 4.1 mile run. The first half went gradually uphill, and the second half went gradually downhill. I was psyched and ready to go after spending several hours in a giant parking lot listening to music and stretching my legs, so I practically took off in a sprint when I was handed our team's slap bracelet. It was nice and dark, and I was running along two main roads in some small town in central Maryland. There weren't too many runners around me on my run, as the teams had gradually gotten more and more spread out throughout the day. I pushed myself as hard as I could, and only two things annoyed me during my run: some kids who sat in the shadows on their front lawn and shouted at me as I ran by (startling the heck out of me!), and the lack of a shoulder on the road during the last mile or so. I probably completed my run in about 32 minutes flat, which was really pushing it for me. Hand the baton to Steve again. Repeat personal post-race procedures.

We cycled our runners through until we traded off with van 2 at some large protestant church. Free hot chocolate was enjoyed by many. I drove us to another church about 30 miles away, where we set up camp and waited for van 2 to complete their second legs. We arrived at around 2 a.m. I think everyone else in my van was able to get a few hours of sleep. I dozed in and out for about 3 hours, but never really got any deep sleep from my reclined front seat in the van. At about 5 a.m. I decided to get out and walk around a bit, stretch my legs, and brush my teeth. The temperature had dropped more than expected, and was hovering right around 55 degrees or so. I opted to run my last leg in a long sleeve T so that I wouldn't be too cold. Since this was still a night run, I had to wear a reflective vest and headlight for safety. Unfortunately, these items were with van 2, so I had to find them and get the gear before I could start my next leg. I was still putting on my vest when our runner came into the checkpoint, which means we lost about 20 seconds as I prepped myself for my final leg. When I finally set out, it was cold, dark, and there were no visible runners up ahead of me. This meant that I would have to trust that the path would be clearly marked so that I wouldn't make a wrong turn and end up in the middle of nowhere.

Since my final leg was 7.9 miles, I opted to take a slow and steady pace to make sure that I didn't get tired out before the end. On paper, the run was shown to have a series of rolling hills. In reality, the hills were much longer and taller than I had expected. After running through a mile of small town and another mile of deserted corn fields (which all of the girls had agreed were creepy and scary, and which I found to be calm and serene), I came to a 6 miles stretch of highway where the hills just seemed to go on and on. It was hard for me to guage distance after a while, because it was just one big hill after another. Up and down, up and down. There were very few runners around me at this point, and the dawn was slowly breaking off in the east. I enjoyed the calm serenity of it all, although it felt like my run just kept going on forever. About a mile from the end I passed Carl, a runner from another team consisting of members of my former single's congregation. I don't think he recognized me as I went by. About a half mile from the end, I came up over the crest of the penultimate hill, and saw the checkpoint up ahead. At this point I decided to really dig in, since this would be my last chance to leave my mark on the race. After handing off the baton to Steve, I motioned to my team that I was done. And I truly was. I was tired, sweaty, and hungry. At this point, I probably didn't care to even greet my team at the finish line, and would have been content to just head home and shower/eat/sleep. My 7.9 mile race time was approximately 75 minutes.

Steve had a 9 mile run, which we labeled as "the run that went forever." Ok, maybe that's just what I labeled it. We continued on, with the remaining runners each covering less than 5 miles for their final legs. The last runner in our van finished at about 10:30, at which point we drove back to our cars and each went our separate ways. I headed home to McLean for a shower and Chipotle lunch feast (chicken fajita burrito + hot sauce, tomatoes, sour cream, corn, cheese, and lettuce = yum). I knew that if I fell asleep I wouldn't make it down to RFK stadium in time for our team's finish, so I watched a little TV and rested my legs on the couch. In the late afternoon I took the metro down to the stadium, where tents and music and food was set up by the finish line. I was fortunate that I brough my umbrella, as it started to drizzle as I waited out there for my team to finally show up.

And they did. We crossed the finish line as a group sometime after 5 p.m.

Thought Provoking Questions

2009-09-30T22:40:00.004-04:00

I was originally intending for this blog to be about the race that I ran this past weekend, but decided at the last minute to make it about something different. Don't worry though--I will soon fill you in on all of my running pursuits.

Have you ever had someone pose you a question that changed your life? What I mean by that is: the question causes you to think about or consider something you had never contemplated before, or it causes you to see something from a totally different perspective or in a totally new light. These questions often come unexpectedly and catch you off guard. And your life is never the same again.

This happened to me when I was about 13. I can't remember where I was or what I was doing, but I do remember that I was with my father, and we were having a somewhat rare conversation for us. Rare because it was deep, rather than a superficial conversation about sports or school activities. It was just the two of us, and after chit-chatting for a bit he looked me in the eye and asked me: "What are you passionate about?"

Huh. What was I passionate about? I had never considered it before. My father went on to explain that his passion from youth had been baseball. He loved the game, and had followed all of the great players back from the 50s and 60s. Although he had never been a star varsity player, he had played all during high school as sort of a 2nd or 3rd string athlete. He went on to college for a bit, where he started writing sports articles for the school newspaper (I believe he was at Boise State). Eventually his articles got noticed by Sports Illustrated, which offered him a position as a writer. He thought about it for a while, but turned it down due to a number factors, the most prominent being his decision to finally serve as an LDS missionary at age 21. Even though he didn't get back into writing after his two years of service, his love of the sport continued on, eventually leading him to coach several years of little league baseball teams that I had played on in my youth.

Basically, pursuing his passion had led to a life full of rich experiences. No, he didn't end up in the major leagues, but his life was blessed and enriched. And here he was, asking me what I was passionate about. Unfortunately, I didn't have a clue.

Sure, I had friends that I enjoyed hanging out with. I liked (not loved) playing sports, video games were a staple of my daily routine, and I was in the school jazz band playing trumpet. But I wasn't really obsessed about any of those things. I just sort of went with the flow and had fun in the moment. I got excellent grades at school, and I had a small group of close friends. I had never bothered to consider that I needed something more. Yet here I was, confronted with the question. And it kind of bothered me that I didn't have an answer.

It took me another year or so to finally figure out my answer. As a new high school freshman and marching band member, I had to practice in the school band room during first period every day. Our band was pretty lousy, and none of us took the experience very seriously, despite a number of talented musicians. It didn't help that our teacher was suffering from lupus, and was absent almost 2 days every week. With so much downtime, we naturally turned to entertaining ourselves in ways unrelated to marching band music. One member of the drumline, a sophomore, would pull out the school's electric guitar from a small practice room in the back and jam along to a small crowd. He mainly played the latest grunge and punk hits from the mid-90s radio, and did a pretty good job.

I became mesmerized with the guitar. It was just so cool, and music suddenly seemed so much more alive for me. The trumpet had been the instrument I played to hang out with friends and be in the band; the guitar was the instrument I wanted to express my soul with. I went home and found my mother's old acoustic guitar, and leared all of the basic open-ended chords. I would strum for hours, blistering my fingers in the process. Eventually my tips got tough and leathery, and it no longer hurt to play for longer than 5 minutes. I spent hours listening to all of the rock songs on the local radio, analyzing the solos and chord progressions with an eager ear. I bought a book of guitar music for the Green Day Dookie album, and quickly learned all of the songs. In retrospect, it was a good choice because of its simplicity and rhythmical strumming. Soon after, I started writing my own songs. Many of them dealt with silly teenage topics like angst or moodiness, with the occasional goofball topic thrown in. (I once wrote a song about the cereal Trix. The chorus went: Trix are for rabbits and not for kids/I love the fruity flavors, I eat them all the time.)

I wasn't just content to write my own songs in my bedroom. I wanted to be in an actual rock band. So I saved up my money and bought a cheap Samick electric guitar and tiny Peavey amplifier (complete with grungy distortion effects). One of my closest friends bought a bass guitar and amp, and we were on our way to being rock gods. We searched high and low for a good drummer, but our school only had about 3, and they were already members of other bands. My garage band pursuits eventually brought me to another friend, Paul, who was also getting pretty good on guitar. Jam sessions were held in garages on almost a daily basis, and we had a lot of fun. Eventually I upgraded both my guitar and amplifier, settling on a bright red Peavey Vandenberg guitar that I still own (that model is quite a beast for the modest price, originally designed and used by a former guitarist of 80s metal band Whitesnake).

Our humble garage band settled on the name of "Graveyard For Lunatics," but we never went anywhere. We only played one house party, during a brief one month period when we had a drummer (who was like 10 years older than us and kind of a moron/flake). By senior year, we had gone on somewhat of a hiatus, opting to jointly purchase a used drumset and take up the drum duties ourselves. Apparently I was the best/most enthusiastic about drumming, and so we decided to write some new material that had sort of a System of a Down-but-not-nearly-as-good sound. Our only two songs were called: Fight to the Death, and You Are Fat. We also did a cover of Feel the Pain by Dinosaur Jr. We played one show during lunchtime at our high school, which evoked too much of a disturbance and led to the administration outlawing all future lunchtime concerts by student rock bands. (Cool! Ruined it for future generations!)

I left for BYU in fall of '98, where I was optimistic that I would find a group of musicians with which to make a fresh start. A few weeks into the semester, I was hanging out in the lobby of Budge Hall (where I lived) and down came this guy with a bass guitar who started jamming with some other guys on acoustic guitar. I sat in my chair, watching from a distance, trying to get a feel for how much talent was there. After several minutes, another guy came along and said that he had a drumset and wanted to jam too. It turned out that the drumset was electric, which was great for volume control. He brought that down, and a nice jam session started to emerge. Finally, when convinced that these guys were definitely at my level, I grabbed my electric guitar and joined in.

And thus The Kung-Fu Suckas/My Own Best Friend was born. We started as a trio for that semester, jamming in the basement of Budge Hall on a weekly basis and writing some new material. I sang and played guitar, Chris was on the bass, and Greg was on drums. We played a few shows, did some covers of Weezer and Blink 182 songs, and had lots of fun. Mark was brought on to play rhythm guitar during Winter semester, which turned out to be a very good move, as he made up for his initial lack of technical skill with an exceptional feel for the music and style. And he got a lot better really quickly. There were more shows that semester, a paid gig opening for the hottest ska band in Utah at the time, and a 2nd place showing in an annual freshman Battle of the Bands contest.

We each left on 2 year LDS missions, and the band reformed when we all got back to school. I had written several new songs, and our style took a more serious turn away from the light-hearted songs we had performed as freshman. More cover songs were added to our repertoire as well, notably My Own Worst Enemy by Lit and Bulls on Parade by Rage Against the Machine. We competed in the annual BYU Battle of the Bands in back-to-back years, coming in 3rd place in our first showing. We recorded our own album in 2002 (technically our 2nd, but the 1st didn't count), and played a variety of lesser campus gigs and apartment lobby parties. Eventually things ran their course, as marriages and graduations gained higher priority. Chris left for NY in late '03, and Andrew was brought in to replace him the next year on bass. Our final show was in January of '04, when we played a short set during and after a men's volleyball match in the Smith Fieldhouse at BYU.

My guitar playing kind of tapered off after that point. Without a band to back me up, I had no goal to spur me on. I occasionally played an acoustic song or two at talent shows and parties, and more rarely for significant others. The last time I performed was during a house show sometime in spring of '08, and that was on a last minute whim. Now I'm lucky if I pull my guitar out once a month to play. It's not that the love is gone, but that other pursuits have taken precedence. For quite a while I was really focused on weightlifting, and lately distance running has emerged as my hobby of choice.

But I would consider the guitar/rock music to be the things I have been the most passionate about in life. I learned that having a passion and working towards it, however unsuccessful the endeavor may be, gives you a sense of purpose and satisfaction with life. You test your limits and figure out what makes you tick. You gain confidence from having a talent that you are really good at, especially knowing that it was countless hours of practice and effort that helped to hone that talent. And being good at one thing inspires you to become good at other things. If I can become an excellent guitar player, what stops me from learning how to be an excellent chef, or athlete, or even lawyer (fingers crossed). I learned that discovering the passion within is what helps us drive forward in life and achieve greatness.

Thanks, Dad, for suggesting that I should figure out my passion(s) in life. My life has truly been blessed, through the talents, friendships, and experiences that have resulted. And it all came from one thought provoking question at the right moment.

Run, then run some more. (A prelude)

2009-09-23T14:37:00.002-04:00

I ran cross country in high school. I never made varsity, because I was what you would call "not that fast." Also, on the days we got to work out in the weight room, I was busy doing bench presses and bicep curls, instead of toning my legs like I was supposed to. Consequently, I gained weight from muscle mass, but my legs did not get any stronger. I generally only improved my race times by about 2 minutes over the course of the season, with a pace of about 7:15/mile. Great for a jog, but not for a race. Most of the varsity girls could easily beat me. Also, my coach ended up going to jail for having an affair with a 16 year old student. Shows how dedicated he was to making me a better runner.

I graduated back in '98. I'm starting to approach middle age. I am no longer the young buck that I used to be. While my devotion in the gym has remained fairly steady over the years, I have not been so steadfast with my cardio routines. I tend to go jogging about 3-4 times over the course of a month, and then quit for the next 5. Rinse, lather, and repeat. The few times when I've buckled down and gotten serious about running, I ended up with a foot or muscle injury (or ulcer!) that sidelined me long enough to lose my enthusiasm for the activity.

So I decided on another whim to start jogging again shortly after I got married in early August. I was going out 6 days a week, and got up to a distance of about 2-3 miles a day. Nothing too extreme by any means. I just wanted to get my heart back in shape, and maybe set up a baseline in case the FBI finally calls me in for a final round of testing and physical fitness exams. Well, about 3 1/2 weeks ago I noticed an online message from a group of people in my former congregation, looking for an additional person to run on their team in the upcoming Ragnar Relay. I was tempted into responding, just because all of the people I have known who have run the relay seemed really pleased with the experience. But I wasn't sure if I was up to the challenge, especially with such a short amount of time within which to train. So I decided that I would head out jogging the next morning, and if I could complete at least 5 miles without walking, then I would sign on.

Lo and behold, I completed a 5.3 mile loop the following day. And I wasn't even wiped out by the end. So I contacted the team leader, and thus began my crash-course in long distance race training. Approximately 3 weeks have gone by, and I have trained up to a 10 mile run. A typical week for me lately has consisted of: M-4 miles, T-4 miles, W-6 miles, Th-5 miles, F-rest, Sat-8-10 miles, (Sun-rest). I've lost about 5 lbs. along the way, and I feel a lot more energetic. Unexpected blessings.

The actual race is this Friday/Saturday, and each runner has to complete three legs. I run the very first leg of the entire race, which is 8.8 miles long and follows along the Potomac River just outside of Cumberland, Maryland. Then I will basically sit around in a van while we follow the rest of our runners around over the course of the next 10 hours or so, until it is my turn again. At which point I will run my second leg. Repeat the entire process again, and then I will run my third leg sometime in the wee morning hours on Saturday. Add it all up, and I will complete over 18 miles of running by the time I'm through. My goal is not just to finish, but maintain a pace of about 9 minutes/mile the whole way through. I think I can do it.

I'll check back in a few days when the race is over, to let you know how it went. Wish me luck.

The 300 Workout Kicked My Butt

2009-09-14T17:44:00.002-04:00

As previously mentioned, I have been doing a training crash-course for the Ragnar Relay in less than 2 weeks. Lots of jogging, and one day a week I do some speed work (sets of half-mile quick runs with rest in between). It has greatly improved my physical condition. But I didn't want to lose my respectable upper torso muscles, so I've been trying to find ways to keep those biceps while also getting a decent cardio boost.

Today I came across something online called the 300 Workout. It was used by much of the cast of the 2006 blockbuster "300" about ancient Spartan soldiers who fight a bunch of people. Never saw it, but I remember that the guys from the movie trailers were pretty ripped (some of this may have been due to special effects and ab-paint). So I decided to give the workout a try. And yes, I realize I'm about 2.5 years behind the times on this one.

The basic premise of the routine is that you have to do 50 repetitions of 6 different exercises, as quickly as possible. You go through the routine in the following sequence, and only rest when you have to. Some of the cast of the film were able to do everything sub-20 minutes. (The article above gives explanations and film clips for each of the exercises, so I'm not going to describe them too much.)

1. 25 pull-ups
2. 50 deadlifts with 135 lbs. barbell
3. 50 pushups
4. 50 jumps on a 24 inch tall box/chair
5. 50 "floor wipers" (an ab/chest exercise, see the link above)
6. 50 single arm clean-and-presses with 36 lbs. Kettlebell (I used a 35 lbs. dumbell)
7. 25 more pull-ups

It looks pretty simple, but I found that it was extremely difficult to finish. The workout is designed for someone who is already in really good physical condition, and it will build your muscle strength, endurance, and even burn fat. I thought I was in great shape before this workout, expecting to complete it in 25-30 minutes. That didn't happen.

I got through the first 3 sets in maybe 11 minutes or so, which I thought would put me on a good track to complete everything in time. But then fatigue set in. My heart was beating a mile-a-minute when it came to the jumps, and I had to break it up into about 4 different chunks so that I wouldn't pass out! The floor wipers were a lot tougher than they looked--not on my abs, but on my chest (you hold a 135 lbs. barbell straight up over your chest, arms locked, and then do leg raises into each of your arms). It takes a lot of strength to keep that barbell pressed above you! The clean and presses wouldn't have been so hard, but I was exhausted by that point and had to take many a breather, even though it was technically only 25 presses per arm. The final set of pull-ups just about killed me, and I had to do it in sets of 6 or so while gasping for air.

Word to the wise: if any of you are crazy enough to attempt this workout, don't do it on anything close to an empty stomach. You will pass out, or perhaps vomit. I felt like doing both when I was done, but got better once I put a hamburger and some orange juice in my system. Ironically, I think I may try this thing again in about 4 days, and see if I can beat my time of 43 minutes.

But don't expect to see me in the "300" sequel.

Chicken Salad to die for!

2009-09-12T13:37:00.003-04:00

About a year ago Erica and I discovered a quaint little Peruvian restaurant just north of Rockville MD. It was good food, although most of the items were pretty standard: cuts of beef and pork, rice, plantains, ceviche, etc. But they had one appetizer that really stood out--avocado stuffed with chicken salad. It was divine. It made my mouth tingle with warm fuzzy feelings. And we have been back a number of times just to eat that dish.

So this week I decided to make avocado with chicken salad as a surprise lunch for Erica. The thing was, I had no idea how to make it. Being the resourceful young lad that I am, I scoured the internet (or "the internets" as I call it) for a good recipe. Unfortunately, most of them called for ingredients that I didn't have on hand, such as celery or various fresh spices. Improvisation was therefore needed. Taking stock of everything I had in my pantry, I quickly combined bits and pieces of several promising recipes to create what I refer to as:

Brian's Delicious Chicken Salad

Ingredients:
2 cups poached white meat chicken (shredded)
Green Pepper
Onion (yellow or red)
Raisins
Walnuts (chopped)
Mayo
Sour Cream
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. You must poach the chicken. Some of you may not be familiar with this process. Basically, poaching means cooking something in a liquid that is not quite boiling. You know how the water starts to get really shimmery as you heat it up towards boiling? Well, if you can hold it at that heat, it will be prime for poaching. For chicken, you want to either poach it in chicken stock, or water with a liberal amount of salt (I opted for the latter). Poach large chunks of chicken for 20 minutes, then cool on a plate in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

2. While the chicken is in the fridge, dice up about a half cup of pepper. I used green, but red might tast nice as well. Put the pepper in a mixing bowl.

3. Do the same thing with the onion. Dice up a half cup, put it in the bowl.

4. Add a small handful of raisins. Make sure they aren't clumped together.

5. Chop up some walnuts. Cashews might work just as well, or maybe almonds. Improvisation is the name of the game. You need about 2-3 tbsp worth. Add it to the bowl.

6. Remove the chicken, and chop it into little bits. You want it basically shredded to the consistency of tuna coming out of a can. Add about 2-3 cups of this to the bowl.

7. Now add 2/3 cup of mayo.

8. Followed by a large dollop of sour cream.

9. Sprinkle in some salt and pepper. I like it heavy on the salt, light on the pepper.

10. Stir it up, little darling, stir it up! (credit lyrics to Bob Marley)

You can put this in a sandwich, eat it over rice, or just scoop it plain right from the bowl. But for an added treat, you should serve it in an avocado half. Just find a ripe avocado, cut it lengthwise, peel each half, remove the seed, and place chicken salad on top. It is heaven.

I expect you all to try this recipe sometime soon, and tell me what you think. My one rule is that you have fun with it, and improvise if there is an additional ingredient that tickles your fancy.

Mr. Jibbles

2009-09-10T14:40:00.003-04:00

With this first sentence I would like to not only gloss over the fact that I have neglected my blog for well over a month, but that in the meantime I also passed several major life milestones: taking the DC bar exam, getting married, cruising to Mexico (ok, maybe that last one doesn't quite fit into the "milestone" category).

My wife and I now live in a small basement apartment in Northern Virginia. It's a really nice neighborhood, which I have explored extensively while taking my daily jog in preparation for running the upcoming Ragnar Relay. Sidenote: I am up to about 7.5 miles per session, and I have also lost about 5 lbs. since starting my training a few weeks back.

One of my favorite new things is my wife's cat, Houdini. He's a charcoal gray persian, and is just one mellow little dude. We have become great friends, probably because I'm around to fill his food bowl, and I pet him if he sits next to me on the couch. My wife often calls him "Lovebug" when she wants to cuddle with him. I found that name to be disconcertingly un-masculine for a boy cat, so I decided to give him a much more manly nickname. My first choice was "Dudemeister." It seemed like a good option, considering his chill demeanor and my general appreciation of the film The Big Lebowski. Unfortunately, he just did not take well to the new moniker. He was very unresponsive whenever I called after him, and it eventually became clear that he was simply not going to be the Dudemeister I had hoped for.

After that I just couldn't think of any good masculine nicknames. Nothing seemed appropriate. Then, one fateful day, I happened to be cooking some food in my cramped little kitchen. Houdini had entered the room to inspect his food dish on the floor. I looked down at him for a moment, and then blurted out "Well hello there, Mr.... Jibbles." And he looked back up at me. Huzzah! I had found him a somewhat masculine nickname that he actually responded to. (I have no idea where "Mr. Jibbles" came from. It just sort of popped out of my mouth when I was lost for words. But now it just seems to fit.)

So now me and Mr. Jibbles/Houdini are the best of friends. And yes, I realize that this makes two back-2-back blogs with a pet theme. Just deal with it. You probably like the change of pace from the quasi-political rants and raves that general spill forth from my blog.

Me and the Kaiser

2009-07-12T22:07:00.002-04:00

One day, I will land a decent job, pay off my student loans, and finally purchase a place of my own. Probably have some kids, upgrade my car, and maybe even buy that drum set I've been craving all of these years.

At that point, you might think all that I have left to do is ride out that crazy journey called "life." However, there is still one more dream that I need to accomplish during my mortal existence: I want to buy two dogs. Not just any two dogs, but specifically a pug and a dachsund. More specifically, the pug will be named Kaiser Wilhelm and the dachsund will be named Arnold. Willie and Arnie. Adventures will ensue.

This has been my dream for as long as I can remember. I don't know why. But it will happen, someday.

Oh yes, it will happen.

Thank you for letting me share my dream with you.

5 Most Influential Books

2009-07-03T13:38:00.003-04:00

I decided that I would tell you guys about the 5 books that have most influenced my life over the years. I've posted links to the books below, along with a description of how they have influenced me. I hope that everyone can name off at least a few books that have shaped their concept of the world, because part of living is acquiring information and being able to use it to empower our own lives, as well as the lives of others. I'd be curious to know what some of the most influential books have been in your lives (yes, you!).

In no particular order:

1. The Book of Mormon. This one is a no-brainer. One of the foundational books of my religion, and probably the book that I have read through the most times in my life (I stopped counting somewhere around 15 times). Since most of my readers are faithful Mormons, I don't really need to elaborate on how beautiful and spiritually enlightening this book is. I will say that my favorite chapters are Mosiah 1-5. They have had a particularly strong effect on me, and have influenced me not only in ways spiritual, but also temporal and political as well. Several years back I read these verses at a time in my life when I was begin to gain an interest in politics, and as I read I received spiritual confirmation that I should be a registered Democrat. I don't take that to mean that all Mormons should do likewise (quite the contrary--I hope that many have received confirmation that they should be Republican). I realized at the time that my life experiences had shaped me in a certain direction, and that God had intended me to have certain views, knowing that I would be an influence on others in that direction. It was kind of like I had finally put together the last piece of a puzzle, and I could see the big picture. It was a reassuring experience.

2. Elements of Style. I read this book during a Persuasive Writing course in my final year at BYU. I had thought I was a good writer before taking this class, but this book really opened my eyes. I realized that the point of writing is to effectively communicate, and although rules should be learned, they could be disregarded at times as needed to get the ultimate point across. It completely empowered me as a writer. Writing was no longer some template exercise in conformity, but a chance to let my individual style shine through to get my ideas across.
--If it hadn't been for this book, I never would have started this blog.--

3. Flanagan's Run. This is a fictional book about a foot-race across the U.S. during the Great Depression (the one from the 1930s--not the one taking place right now. Yeah, that's right, I'm officially declaring our current economic state the Second Great Depression). It has a cast of endearing characters, each with his/her own unique back-story and reason for running. I first read it at my English teacher's suggestion during the 6th grade, and was completely mesmerized. When I started high school a few years later, I was naturally drawn to the cross country team. Jogging has been a part of my life in some form or another ever since. While I currently could probably only go about 5 miles without stopping to walk, there was a time in my life when I could run 10 miles, shower, and immediately head out for an evening with my friends without being any worse for the wear. I was directly influenced by this book, and how glamourous it made the running world seem. It is a must read for anyone who has ever run a long distance race.

4. The Two Income Trap. This book describes the reasons why families need to live off of one income, instead of two. It really hits home the common sense conclusion that unemployment and tragedy strike more often than not, and that a family accustomed to living off of one income will weather a storm much better than one which has built up a life based upon two incomes. If one spouse can no longer earn an income, at least the other one can step in to make up the difference. But if the family's obligations are built upon two incomes, then there is no way to bridge the gap once one spouse loses his/her job. I read this book in about two days, after suggestion from my Mother some years back. It has influenced my personal financial views more than anything else I have read. Very good common sense advice for all families, and a must read for anyone just starting to make her way in the world. Plus, it kind of vibes well with LDS theology about family and parental responsibilities.

5. Nutrition: Concepts and Controversies. This was the textbook for a BYU course I took during 2002 called Food Science and Nutrition 100. I learned tons about nutrition from this book and this course. It has really shaped how I view food and its relationship with my body. I have always been interested in exercise and weight training, and the knowledge I gained from this book really helped me focus my goals and see how nutrition is just another aspect of the equation when it comes to being fit and healthy. It was a fairly challenging course (and it was 90% female since it was a nursing pre-requisite, which kept me interested).

Honorable Mentions: The Home Workout Bible (I debated as to whether I should put this book as number 5 in place of the Nutrition book, but since I only came across this one last Christmas it defaults out of the top 5), the entire Harry Potter series (not really influential, but truly a beautifully crafted and entertaining story from start to finish), a book of Green Day: Dookie Guitar Tabs (from which I initially taught myself to play rhythm guitar, thus embarking me on a decade of garage band adventures), To Kill a Mockingbird (I can only hope to someday be half the father that Atticus Finch was), and almost all of the Choose Your Own Adventure series (who didn't love these during elementary school? I would sometimes cheat by starting from the end and tracing my way back to the start).

*Noticeably absent: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. So many people cite this book as one of the most influential books they have ever read, that I feel it necessary to state that I was not similarly enamored with it. My main beef is that I completely reject Rand's views and moral outlook. I can see how a lot of the book's personal lessons about hard work and responsibility can shape a person for the better; however, these lessons were already so ingrained in American culture that I didn't need to read 1,000+ pages of propoganda to have the message sink in. Additionally, a study of Rand and her exodus from a communist childhood is really telling as to why she speaks so harshly against any form of government outside of a police force and military. She even argues against individuals helping others who are in need, since this may lead to the degredation of the human soul through "mooching." I'm not so sure that Jesus would agree, but then Rand was extremely anti-religion (apparently she couldn't leave behind every influence of communism from her childhood). I have found that most of the people who love this book were duped into believing that Rand had a wise view of mankind. Sorry: I was not similarly duped--"The emperor has no clothes!" (A subtle literary allusion for all of you).

So what are your favorite/most influential books? I'm curious to know.

Totally 80s! Radical!

2009-06-23T12:57:00.002-04:00

So, I previously alluded to my lack of time for blogging. However, I feel that I owe my loyal readers something for their patience.

That thing is now my 80s music playlist, located off to the right. It has a little bit of everything: hair metal, new wave, and classic rock. Lots of pop-music footnotes and one-hit wonders.

Enjoy!

Dear Blog:

2009-06-14T22:50:00.002-04:00

...I have been neglecting you lately. Life has been hectic, and my time has been spent elsewhere. You see, I am simultaneously studying for the bar exam, planning a wedding, searching for a job, and taking various government employment tests, while also planning a move across town. Plus, in order to maintain my sanity, I have been going to the gym on occasion, as well as watching a little bit of TV.

At some point I will return to you with open arms. We shall be reunited. Just remain patient and faithful.

Yours truly,

--Brian--

Things I Learned From Law School

2009-05-12T23:37:00.004-04:00

So, it's all over. Finished up my last test on saturday, and then had a closeout meeting for my clinic on monday. Now I just have to show up and accept my diploma. It's kind of a surreal experience. Just one bar exam stands between me and the conferral of lawyer-dom. Crazy. Ten years ago I never would have guessed I would be in this situation.

I learned some things along the way. I learned how to think more critically about the world. I have become more perceptive at analyzing people's motivations, and finding the hidden currents in what is being spoken. Big issues have gained many more facets. I hardly think of anything as having just two sides to it anymore; most "choices" should involve more than two options, and should generally include a "none of the above" bubble to fill in (or sometimes an "all of the above" bubble).

There was a cliche saying repeated non-stop in the first several months of law school: you have to learn to think like a lawyer. It's a change that's supposed to happen gradually, and will become noticeable at a certain point as one learns to see the pros and cons of each position in a dispute. I was actually told by a few people that I thought like a lawyer before I even finished my undergrad. Because of this, I may have had an attitude of arrogance as a first-year law student, thinking that I was already near-perfect in analyzing the opposing sides to any argument. While I'll admit that I was naturally better at it than most people, my skills were sharpened considerably through my education. It's now to the point where I will try and bring up the counter-argument to almost any idea or issue that I hear. I don't consciously do it--it just sort of comes into my mind. I think that was the switch that had to develop in my mind for me to "think like a lawyer." I think it was a good thing (albeit a somewhat annoying thing at times, at least for certain people).

But my lessons learned don't exclusively apply to future application in my own life. I also learned things about law school that I wished I had known beforehand, which I will now impart to all of my readers (and I won't even charge $300/hour for the advice!). Up until law school, I had always been one of the best students. Name a class, and I was likely receiving a grade in the top 20% of all students there. I did the honors track all through high school, and easily maintained an academic scholarship through 4 years at BYU. I always knew how much to study so I could get that A or B+.

I soon found out that law school doesn't work that way. Previously, I had always been in competition with just myself. The only thing standing in my way was my own intellect. If I wanted to achieve a certain level, I simply had to try hard enough to gain the requisite knowledge/skills to be at that level. It didn't matter whether anyone else achieved the same thing--blowing out someone else's candle would in no way make mine burn brighter, so to speak. Grades were simply a matter of how smart or talented I was. Grades in law school, however, measure something different: how hard you are willing to work compared to a small group of people who are all as smart and talented as you are....which is quite a brutal scenario, if you really think about it.

At most law schools, your undergrad grades and LSAT score will generally be within a certain range. This range will depend on the prestige of the school, and the more competitive schools will have a higher range. For example, Harvard (one of the very best law schools) will have students with an undergrad GPA range between 3.74 and 3.97, and LSAT scores at roughly the 98-99.9 percentile. Basically, people that are too smart for their own good. Georgetown isn't quite as high, but it is definitely up there. I believe our incoming GPA range would be around 3.6-3.85, and LSAT range between 95-98 percentiles. In other words, everyone at my school is roughly as smart as everyone else. Unfortunately, the administration simply won't give everyone an A, even though many of my professors have admitted that they would have given 80% of their students an A if they could have. So in order to get a spectrum of scores, they are forced to pit classmates against each other. Tests are limited exclusively to final exams, and the professors will generally rank them according to pre-set criteria, instead of individually evaluating the effectiveness and depth of each exam. A student could give complete and intelligent answers to each question, but still receive one of the lowest grades in the class if most of his classmates went above and beyond him/her. Essentially, you are only being graded on whether or not you will do more than someone else, considering that you all have the same general level of intelligence.

This method has pros and cons. For one, it does distinguish the students who are simply willing to do more. A large law firm might require a consistent workload of 70+ hours/week, for months on end. They justify this load with starting salaries of $160K plus bonuses, with significant pay increases each year thereafter. These firms probably want to hire students who have shown that they will devote at least 70 hours per week to legal studies. (I should note that, prior to the economic downturn, that many young lawyers and graduates from top law schools were joining a movement to work reduced hours for a lower annual salary. They basically cited quality of life as their reason. I'm beginning to see that they understood the bigger picture of the whole situation.) Another pro is that lawyers must realize that their future success will depend more on how they say something, than on what they have to say. Students who can organize and write their exams more focused and concisely will probably adapt quicker in the professional arena. But the major con is that the method doesn't necessarily test a student's proficiency in the subject material. For many students, it's disheartening to receive a B or B+ after countless hours of study and a near memorization of the underlying legal principles at issue. Another con is that the grading truly is subjective. A teacher can have a "hang-up" on a key issue of the law, and may be looking for a student to reflect back his own slightly biased view of the world. Humans have a natural tendency to seek out information that confirms their own beliefs, and law school professors are definitely no exception.

Really, this whole process took an emotional toll on me that will take me some time to unwind from. It's hard to go from an environment where you can depend on your own intellectual abilities to get you ahead, and where you can gauge when you've gained a highly-functioning level of ability in a particular area or task, to an environment where your worth is solely based on how good you look compared to the next guy. (In a way, I feel it's the exact opposite of how God evaluates us.) Based on the established law school curve, the odds of getting a mediocre test score are quite high, which has the tendency of deflating a student's sense of self worth. Sometimes, you can find yourself believing that you are incapable of true success, because of the learned helplessness of not achieving high marks despite your best efforts. After some self reflection over the past few days, I had to remind myself that I am intelligent and talented in many regards, which I have proven to myself throughout my life. I tried harder than I ever had before in law school, and although my final GPA will be about 0.45 lower than what my final undergrad GPA was (which was a good deal lower than my high school GPA of 4.1), I weathered the storm and made it to graduation. I would rather have mediocre grades at a top law school, than have top grades at a mediocre law school. I would rather be just another fish in the ocean, than a big fish in a small pond. I would rather look back and know that I competed against some extremely talented and intelligent people, than feel as though I breezed by a group of lesser minds.

Because now I can say that I held my own, and I was just as good as they were. That's the one thing that I am most grateful to have learned at Georgetown Law.

*For more info about law school, try this link.

Good Brian vs. Evil Brian

2009-04-27T13:43:00.002-04:00

I face a struggle every day. It's a struggle between two individuals: "Good Brian" and "Evil Brian." Many battles have been fought, and victories have racked up on both sides. Every time Good Brian wins, I silently cheer and pat myself on the back. Conversely, when Evil Brian wins, I often shrug my shoulders, resolve to do better, and move on with life. Perhaps a few examples will illustrate what I go through:

Situation 1: About a week ago, I was exiting the metro at Judiciary Square. A rather large woman was walking towards the entrance of an office building, carrying a large store-bought cake in her hands. Evil Brian noticed this, and began to wonder just how funny it would be to walk up and "accidentally" bump the cake out of her hands, and then run off laughing. Evil Brian was feeling rather stressed with school work this day, and would have found this absolutely hilarious. But Good Brian then pointed out the fact that it's just unacceptable to do something like that. It would ruin that poor lady's day. And people wouldn't have a very high opinion of me.
--Result: Good Brian won. The cake was spared an untimely death.

Situation 2: I got off the metro the other day, after spending several hours on campus. As I began to walk towards my residence, I contemplated the studying and work that I still needed to get done. Good Brian pointed out that I should go home, rest for about 15 minutes while checking my email, then get my work done. This would save time in the long run, because I wouldn't be procrastinating work until later. But then Evil Brian noticed that it was hot, and there was a nice 7-Eleven just across the street, with a tasty Super Big Gulp calling my name. 44 ounces of caffeinated Diet Coke would flood my system, and cause me to ignore my work and flip through random tv stations while simultaneously surfing the web and preparing unhealthy snack foods. The battle raged for about 10 seconds. Then the light changed, and I was given the green to cross over towards the 7-Eleven. Uh oh. Here I go...
--Result: Evil Brian won. A diet-Coke induced lazy-fest led to at least 2 unproductive hours of lying on the couch.

Situation 3: About a week ago, I met with my clinic adviser to discuss a project I had been working on. At the start of the project (about 4 weeks ago), two legal questions were presented that needed to be answered. One of the questions was given significant priority, and I was told that there probably wouldn't be time to fully research the other. Therefore, a good memo was expected on the first, and perhaps a small fact sheet on the other. Well, at the most recent meeting, upon finding that I was basically done with my first memo (due to significant hustle on my part), my adviser launched into the expectation that I would now produce a full memo on the second question. This would eat significantly into my final exam prep time. Evil Brian wanted to storm out of the meeting, knowing that this second memo would be extremely difficult and time-consuming. He wanted to scream in frustration right then and there. He wanted to point out that he was being pseudo-punished for having done a better than expected job on his first memo. However, Good Brian realized that his grades were hanging in the balance of his adviser's hand. He must remain professional and dignified. He must keep his cool and accept his fate.
--Result: Good Brian won. Now my finals period is approximately 30% suckier.

Situation 4: I have been trying to improve my diet over the last few weeks, concurrent with a modified exercise program that has been adding more cardio and circuit training. So I have been making healthier meal options, and choosing to eat out a lot less. On Saturday, I had defrosted some chicken in my refrigerator to make a nice chicken and lentil stew, complete with several vegetables. A tasty dish. But Evil Brian didn't feel like cooking when lunch time came around. Evil Brian really wanted a Chipotle burrito. Evil Brian was just licking his lips. And Chipotle was only a half-mile drive away. Grumbling noises were coming from his stomach.
--Result: Evil Brian won. Approx. 1200 calories of Mexican food goodness flooded his system, followed by slight indigestion a few hours later as the hot sauce attacked his stomach and intestines.

Situation 5: Later that same day, I realized that I needed to get a start on my outlines for my upcoming law school exams. Although I have a week until the first exam, I wanted to get the groundwork completed so that I wouldn't be scrambling at the last minute. Good Brian decided that a Saturday evening would be an acceptable time to do this. He picked up his computer, and opened a Word document. But Evil Brian decided to check his TiVo to see what had been recorded recently. There was The Fast and the Furious, as well as an edited for tv version of The Departed. Both excellent film choices for a bored man in his 20s. Good Brian and Evil Brian began to wage a fierce battle against each other. This raged for several minutes.
--Result: A truce was forged. Good Brian was allowed to continue with the early stages of his outlines. However, Evil Brian was given the go-ahead to start watching his movies. Although neither party was able to fully devote himself to his preferred activity, both were still appeased and a peaceful existence was achieved.

I could probably go on and on, but I think you get the idea. Considering the modest amount of success I have had so far in life, I think Good Brian is slighly ahead in the battle count. But Evil Brian refuses to go away, leading to the conclusion that this war is far from over.

This is my brain. This is my brain on life.

2009-04-14T22:39:00.004-04:00

10:45, watching tv, or is it TiVo?
Tomorrow's a short day, yet still a long day,
(Ironically) I feel like I'm done:
The Commission won't get any more out of me,
As if they really needed me in the first place.

Rain today, tomorrow, but
More like a wet mist floating in the air;
Leaves a sticky film over my car
Mixed with oil dripped-down from branches overhead.
Crazy woman, or maybe man(?)
Stuck behind the line as
The green burns a hole into the impatient recess
Of my poor brain. To the store.
Later I eat my own pasta creation,
Debate with the angel/devil on my shoulder
Forgone pursuits at culinary school.

Tomorrow:
1. I will exit the basement,
Step into the mud, then I'm off again,
Zombie-slave to the system
Though I started out fresh:
Full of confidence and expectation.
2. Sit for 1.5 hours, like
So much sound drifting in and out like
Noise that matters but I don't care like
A foreign language I chose to forget.
3. Feel the burn;
I have to pass the exam.
Poppa's gotta bring home the bacon somehow,
Might as well play to my strength.
4. Eat.
(repeat as needed)
5. Cryptic messages,
Inside jokes and tiny realizations.
I love you my love:
Don't let the light at the end of the tunnel
Grow dim.
6. The Commission comes back for more.
I will put up a fight,
Checking messages, distracting my senses,
But I will not end that match victorious.
7. Stretch my neck
And the $4,000 pain that lies therein.
A daily struggle which
Blurs out all memories of
A life I used to know.
8. Finally, I succumb.
Burned-out, bleary-eyed,
Turn on that glowing rectangle which
Calms my mind.
9. Sleep greets me
Cold and dark.
I prefer it that way.

Now:
My day is over.
I'm still waiting for my life to start.
But I'm not alone:
An old Office is there, if needed.
Perhaps I'll pass--save it for breakfast.

This is my brain.
This is my brain on life.
No further questions.

Lying on the Beach. Ahh...

2009-04-04T10:08:00.002-04:00

You guys may think I'm weird, but I recently came across one of my new favorite websites. It provides ambient background noise (white noise) through your computer, in a variety of soothing sounds. Check it out--it will have you hooked. I now do all of my studying with a pair of headphones hooked in, and soothing background noise to keep me focused. You can also hook your computer up to a home theatre system if you have a cheap adapter (available at Radio Shack), and then crank up the volume to pretend as though you are somewhere else.

My favorite setting is approx. 30% thunder, 50% rain, and 50% ocean. I usually pan the thunder and ocean off to opposite sides. The overall effect makes me feel like I'm on a tropical beach, listening to a storm off in the distance.

I really want to go on a vacation to a tropical place. And perhaps stay there indefinitely.

Maybe after I finish law school.

Response to Facebook

2009-04-01T21:40:00.002-04:00

Read my facebook wall. Then this blog will make sense. (If you haven't added me as a facebook friend, I don't discriminate.)

1. Concerning the accusations floating around about Rep. Barney Frank and the current economic crisis, follow this link.

2. Concerning whether or not WWII actually got us out of the Great Depression, follow this link. (Warning, it is long and technical, but worth the read.) I have always felt, and the article has only strengthened, my belief that it was a combination of both a wartime economy and certain New Deal programs that eventually lifted us to prosperity after the war had ended. The war provided a huge government stimulus that renewed faith in the economy, while certain New Deal building projects and social safety nets provided the infrastructure that continued us on the path of economic stability for decades.

3. Some economists actually blame the New Deal for prolonging the Great Depression, as you can read in this link. A careful inspection of the article will reveal, however, that it was only certain types of New Deal programs that were to blame, namely lax anti-trust enforcement and artificially-raised wages. I wouldn't have been in favor of either of those things myself. But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater--much of our national highway and parks systems were built through New Deal public works projects, and the foundations were laid to ensure that our senior citizens would not be left in poverty or without medical care (what private insurer would sell a policy to a retired, elderly person?), or that our money wouldn't be lost if our bank happened to go under (FDIC).

4. The political party that has the momentum will almost always get the majority of campaign contributions from big business, because business likes to hedge its bets. It's the financially prudent thing to do. Democrats currently have the momentum (at least they have for the last two sets of elections), and so they got more money. And key players who hold key committee positions in Congress will get even more of that money. I think this link sums it up quite nicely, although it's rather intuitive if you think about it. I mean, that's how I would contribute, if I were running a large corporation.

5. Simply put, the housing bubble was created by getting people into homes by giving them loans that they couldn't afford. Even more simply put, it was created by people being allowed to buy homes they couldn't afford. This had the side-effect of causing everyone's home values to go up way to quick, which created an incentive for a lot of people to try and make major money off of the market, which....led us to the situation we have now. (Wah-wah, a la Debbie Downer). Both parties have been to blame for this. Compare this link with this link. I have always said, even before the housing bubble burst, that people don't deserve to live in homes they can't pay for. You know something is wrong when 95% of the people in California can't afford the 50 percentile home price. Although I didn't know what it would be like when it happened, I have felt for years that the skyrocketing prices in the housing market were going collapse on themselves at some point. Sadly, this is one of the few occasions where I am not happy to be right.

I just want pragmatic solutions (i.e. regulations) to prevent these problems from happening in the future. And I would like politicians from both parties to develop some common sense.

The Home Workout Bible

2009-03-29T22:31:00.002-04:00

I've always sort of been a fitness junkie. Ever since the 7th grade, when some bigger kid in the 8th grade decided to start bullying me for no reason (or at least no reason I could discern). So, I started lifting weights so that I stood a better chance of defending myself. Eventually the bully moved on to other pursuits, or perhaps he got suspended. But my physical fitness kick stayed with me. This eventually expanded to a greater nutritional awareness as well. In high school, I finally had access to the school gym, which increased my exercise capabilities. In college, I used the BYU gym for a while (its gym is surprisingly crappy), and then got a membership to 24 Hour Fitness. When I later moved back to California, I enrolled at Bally Total Fitness. And now I have access to the state-of-the-art gym at G-town Law. Generally, I have maintained a steady workout routine, and I follow a few simple dietary rules (a solid source of protein at every meal, and about a gallon of water each day).

But there have been some lapses in my fitness routine. Notably, things such as Christmas break and major illnesses tend to throw a kink in my plans. For example, I suffered through salmonella poisoning in July 2007, and lost about 8 lbs. in one week. It took me a few months to recover my former strength. And I always get bogged down during finals, which eats away at my gym time. Christmas breaks are especially bad, because I get about 10 days of finals, followed by 2-3 weeks of no gym.

That's exactly what happened this last year. I probably went about 4 weeks without a good, solid workout. Plus, I ate about 20 donuts over the break. My weight stayed the same, but I probably replaced about 4 lbs. of muscle with 4 lbs. of fat. Not ideal. I could feel my arteries clogging, and I was starting to get winded with just simple body movements (not really....ok, maybe just a little bit). So I was understandably excited to get back into the gym upon my glorious return to DC.

For Christmas, someone gave me a gift certificate to Borders Books. So I went browsing through the local store to see what I could find. And tucked away in a bargain bin was the best $4 purchase I may have ever made: The Men's Health Home Workout Bible.

This book has literally changed my life. It basically took everything I knew about fitness, and multiplied it to the Nth degree. It has basically every weightlifting exercise known to man, with diagrams and charts to help you follow along. It discusses all types of fitness machines, the basics of proper rest and nutrition, and even has various workout routines tailored to specific goals. For example: you use different workout routines to increase muscle size, as opposed to muscle strength. There are also sport-specific training routines, and even a fat-loss routine.

So, I came back from Christmas with a very focused fitness plan. I spent the first 6 weeks following a strength-training routine similar to the type used by those guys in strong-man competitions. And it worked! I went from barely benching 215 lbs. to being able to bench 5 sets of 5 reps at 225 lbs. There were gains in a lot of other exercises as well. After 6 weeks, I switched to a muscle building routine for an additional 6 weeks. My strength gains were modest during this time, but my weight shot up from 173 lbs. to 180. Once again, the program delivered what it promised.

Now I have entered phase 3 of my personal routine: the fat-loss workout. I will be following this for the next three months. I'm planning on dropping about 6 lbs., or about a pound per week. This will hopefully be fat loss, which will allow me to retain my lean muscle mass. This is the routine that I will be following:

(This series is to be performed with minimal rest in between the different exercises. You go through the series in order, and then repeat. Do three days a week, every other day.)
1. Squats, 8-10 reps
2. Pullups, 8-10
3. Barbell Step-ups, 10-12 per leg
4. Incline Dumbbell presses, 6-8 reps
5. Split Leg Squats w/pulley, 8-10 reps
6. Dumbbell Rows, 8-10 reps
7. Crunches with weight on your chest, 10-12 reps
8. Military Press, 6-8 reps
9. Romanian Deadlifts, 8-10 reps
10. Dips w/weight, 6-8 reps
11. 2-3 minutes of light cardio on a bike or treadmill.

I'm excited to get started. With all of the other things going on right now (classes, law school clinic assignments, post-grad job search, bar-exam preparation, wedding plans, housing search, maintaining personal hygiene standards, etc.), my fitness routine is one of the highlights that keeps me going.

Oh yeah, after the ward 5K run on saturday, I'm going to incorporate jogging on my off-days, with total rest on Sunday (gotta respect that 4th commandment). Excelsior!

If any of you need workout/nutrition tips, I give free consults.

Best Films of All Time

2009-03-26T10:25:00.004-04:00

I sort of created this quiz as an adaptation of a book quiz I read a while back. I couldn't really fill out the book quiz, because I just haven't done enough reading over the last few years (although I'm starting to change that with my policy of having a "metro book;" meaning that I always have a book with me to read whenever I ride the metro). But I love movies, so this quiz seemed more apropos.

By simply looking at this page, you have to fill out as many questions as you can in the comments section. If you get stumped, just leave the question blank. I know you all love movies.

1. What director do you own the most movies by? It's a tie between Peter Jackson (LOTR trilogy) and Larry Wachowski (Matrix trilogy). I guess Jackson wins because his movies are longer.

2. What movie have you watched the most times in your life? The Matrix. At least 30 times. At one point I could recite half of the lines in the movie just before they were said onscreen. This annoyed a lot of people.

3. What fictional movie character are you secretly in love with? Don't know if I really have one, although if they ever made a Veronica Mars movie, then she would be the clear winner.

4. What was your favorite movie when you were ten years old? Probably Flight of the Navigator.

5. What's the worst movie you've seen in the past year? The latest Indiana Jones film.

6. What's the best movie you've seen in the past year? I'll go with The Dark Knight

7. If you could force everyone you know to watch one movie, what would it be? Probably a documentary, either Supersize Me or Sicko. Or About A Boy, which is a really clever film that a lot of people have never seen.

8. What book would you most like to see made into a movie? I'd love to see a modern remake of "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

9. What is the most childish comedy that you find funny? Dumb and Dumber. Hahahahaha!

10. What movie has the most well-crafted plot you've ever seen? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Hands down.

11. What is your favorite movie? Ironically, it's a toss-up between It's a Wonderful Life, and the Matrix trilogy. About A Boy and Eternal Sunshine get honorable mentions. And Zoolander is the funniest film I've ever seen.

12. What is the one movie that you're embarrassed to admit that everyone has seen but you? I have never actually watched Titanic all the way through.

13. Favorite comedy? Zoolander

14. Favorite action film? The Matrix Reloaded

15. Favorite musical? Westside Story

16. Favorite documentary? Supersize Me

17. Favorite foreign film? Abre Los Ojos (Spain, 1997)

18. Favorite director? Usually Spielberg

19. What movie would you want with you on a deserted island (assuming you had a way to watch it)? Cast Away. It's enjoyable, and it would give me hope. And maybe a few pointers.

20. What was the last movie you saw in a theatre? The Watchmen. Not for the faint of heart.

21. Star Wars or Lord of the Rings? LOTR

22. Kubrick or Tarentino? Hmmm... I'm gonna go with Kubrick on this one. But I did like Kill Bill.

23. Musicals, or adaptations of Jane Austen novels? Definitely musicals.

24. Rocky or The Karate Kid? This is a tough one. Gonna go with Rocky, because the point was to give it your all, even if you don't win. Karate Kid just wouldn't have been as good if Daniel had lost at the end.

25. Home Alone or A Christmas Story? Another tough one. Let's go with Home Alone. For years after watching this movie, I secretly wanted to fend off burglars in my home.

My New Favorite Commercial

2009-03-20T18:46:00.001-04:00

This commercial has been playing in my head for the last three days. It makes me smile every time I watch it.

Give me back that Filet O'Fish
Give me that fish...

Temples, Mormons, Big Love, Controversy....sigh

2009-03-19T00:32:00.003-04:00

For any of you non-Mormon readers who may have stumbled across this blog, rest assured that there is a huge controversy in the Mormon world regarding the recent episode of Big Love which showed sacred Mormon temple practices. You may have wondered what the big deal was--to you it probably just seemed like some strange rituals that took up about a minute of story time. You may not have even been aware that there was really a controversy at all. You may have thought it was just another random, weird event on a show that's been full of random, weird events. And if so, then you probably stopped thinking about it within a few hours after you watched the episode, because it really didn't mean anything to you. To you there was no controversy; it was just another episode of a TV show.

The reason that it's so controversial within the Mormon community is a little bit complex. You see, most of them have never even watched Big Love. They have no clue what the show is about, other than that it portrays polygamists who are somehow connected with the Mormon church, and that a particular episode aired sacred rituals which were meant to be kept private. To them, it's controversial precisely because they have never seen the show. They can't relate what was aired to what has been developing in the plotline of the series--they can only relate their private temple experience to how they fear the public will perceive those experiences.

That being said, I feel that both Mormons and non-Mormons can achieve a better understanding of the matter if I explain a few things:

1. For starters, this show centers around a polygamist family that--although it has ties to the Mormon community--is clearly not Mormon. The show has involved numerous encounters between the polygamist family and their neighbors, civic leaders, law enforcement and others, where it is clear that they want to conceal their polygamist lifestyle from the Mormon church and the general public. Everyone who has watched more than a few episodes should be able to understand this. Bill and his three wives are clearly not Mormons, even though their beliefs spring from some common roots with Mormonism. The people who don't watch the show (i.e. the bulk of the Mormon community) tend to have erroneous assumptions about what goes on. This is fine, just don't complain about something unless you actually know what that *something* is.

2. Most of the show involves interactions between a group of traditional polygamists that live on a compound in a rural area (a group similar to the FLDS church), and the protaganists, who live in three adjacent houses in a suburban Utah community. Bill is the father. He was kicked off the compound as a teenager, eventually attended BYU and joined the Mormon church, and married Barb, who was raised in a Mormon home. Prior to the start of the series, Barb fell ill with cancer and almost died. A woman from the compound helped Bill care for Barb, and eventually Bill decided to bring her into the family and resort back to the polygamist ways he was brought up in. Later, a third wife was brought in as well, although she came from a non-Mormon background as the child of an unfit, single mother. By the start of the series, Bill has had children with all three women. Each wife lives in a separate house, and Bill takes turns spending time with each of them. He is also the owner and CEO of a chain of home supply stores.

3. The thrust of the show is dedicated to severe animosity between the FLDS-style polygamists, and Bill's family. Interaction with the Mormon church is very minimal in the show, and typically involves extended family members or their neighbors. I have generally found the portrayal of the Utah suburban culture to be spot-on. If you want to know what it's like to live in Utah, just pay attention to all of the secondary/minor characters. If you aren't offended by watching a show involving polygamy, then there really wasn't anything offensive about the show until the recent episode involving sacred temple ceremonies. I remember internet petitions circulating around the Mormon community before Big Love ever aired, urging people to contact HBO in an attempt to prevent the show from happening. Once I finally saw the show, I realized how benign it was compared to seemingly *tame* shows such as Friends. If Big Love was worthy of some letters to the network, then surely Friends should have resulted in car bombings! But it didn't, which showed to me that members of the Mormon community were probably just acting out of ignorance and fear. While most of the rest of the world just shrugged its shoulders.

4. However, recent episodes have increased the presence of the Mormon church in the plotlines. This is where things start to get tricky. Mormon people get very defensive about how they are portrayed in the media; hence, any portrayal of their religion that does not garner the approval of the governing body of the church will often be labeled as some form of anti-mormon opposition. In other words, they will view it as the work of Satan. Therefore, when an episode deals with such important topics as temple ceremonies and excommunication proceedings, Mormons will quickly be offended. This will happen despite any attempt by the network to make the events as accurate and respectful as possible. HBO should have seen this one coming from a mile away.

5. Unfortunately, HBO made a crucial mistake in judgment. Their scope was too small with the episode in question. They did tons of research into the actual ceremonies, as evident by the accurate clothing, backdrops, and language used. But the accuracy stopped there. Many errors were presented. For example:
A) Barb decides to return to the temple when she learns that she will be subject to a church disciplinary proceeding to excommunicate her. (Although she had turned from Mormonism to polygamy several years prior, the church had apparently done nothing until now?) However, this would make no sense to a Mormon. People who turn from the church do not suddenly get the urge to go back to the temple; it's probably the last place they would want to be, because they would feel extremely uncomfortable being there.
B) In order to get in, Barb has to "borrow" a temple recommend (entrance card) from either her mother or sister, both of whom are still active Mormons. An active Mormon would never let someone borrow their recommend. Doing so would place their own church membership in jeopardy, because it is considered such a sacred thing.
C) When Barb is inside the temple, she meets up with her mother and sister... Huh? Didn't she have to borrow one of their recommends to get in? So how can they both be there as well? Someone at HBO clearly wasn't doing their homework here.
D) Bits and pieces of temple ceremonies were accurately mimicked. These are considered to be extremely sacred rituals to Mormons. Showing them to the world is about as blasphemous as publishing a picture of Mohammed would be to Muslims. But people outside of my faith won't understand the significance of them, so I'm not worried about their reactions. The sin of revealing these sacred rituals to the world belongs on the head of those former Mormons who advised the writers of the show. However, the question must then be asked of HBO: was showing the rituals necessary to advance the plotline? No, it wasn't. In fact, the whole scene involving the temple was irrelevant. Showing the actual rituals did nothing to advance the plot, and it was completely in bad taste. Despite protestations from the producers that they were trying be as respectful as possible, they should have known that it was the ultimate in disrespect to show something so sacred for the sake of a superfluous scene in the show.

HBO could have done a number of things to retain the scene, while at the same time limiting the offending material. For example, certain key parts of rituals could have been deleted altogether. Or there could have simply been a musical montage, focusing on the emotions of Barb's face, with any actions and rituals being subdued in the background. (The point of the scene was about the emotions that Barb was struggling with relative to her prior involvement with Mormonism, and not about the sacred rituals she was performing.) The montage could have faded into the final scene, where Barb encountered her mother and sister in a place known as the "celestial" room. Or, they could have merely shown Barb entering a temple, then cut to a later scene where she discusses the experience with her mother and sister. This conversation could have advanced the plot in much the same way as the scene in the celestial room.

But, setting aside all of my complaints about this particular episode, I will not begin a boycott of the series any time soon. For one thing, I'm not a paying HBO customer. I catch my episodes for free off of Megavideo.com. More importantly, however, I don't think the show does any real harm to my religion. It does not shake my faith, and it does not harm the efforts of my church. In fact, a case may be made that the existence of this show actually helps the church. The Mormon community is generally portrayed as happy and family-oriented, which may lead some people to investigate more into our lifestyle. A generally accurate representation of our peculiar beliefs and activities may lead many people to investigate the religion out of curiosity. And some people may even be moved to visit Utah and the church historical sites that have been filmed in the show. I would consider any of these outcomes to outweigh the bad that was present in last Sunday's episode.

To the producers of HBO: do a better job on your homework next time. And don't show something controversial for the mere sake of showing it--make sure that it is truly necessary for the plotline.

To the Mormon community: many of you need to revisit that old sunday school lesson about not being easily offended.

To those who are now curious about Big Love: Watch the show. Start from episode 1, season 1. You'll probably be hooked before you know it. The show could be described as 24 meets polygamy--it's that good! Except take away 99% of the guns and violence. And nix any plots to kill off high-ranking officials, or cause mass destruction. And the show doesn't cover just a 24 hour period. Ok, so maybe it's nothing like 24 at all. But you'll probably enjoy it all the same.

For more information, try this link.

Lets All Go Shopping!

2009-03-14T21:20:00.003-04:00

Have any of you stopped to consider that scrimping and saving right now will only make the economic situation worse? Whenever the economy starts to hurt and people start to get laid off, everybody and their brother goes off on a rant about how we need to be more frugal and save for a rainy day. But perhaps this is actually the opposite of what we should be doing.

I recognize that some of you may have lost your jobs, or are in danger of losing your jobs if the economy continues to decline further. The following advice doesn't apply to you. But I would be willing to bet that a lot of Americans are in no danger of losing their jobs--consider the health care sector, or education, or similar industries that are traditionally recession-resistant. For these folks, saving for a rainy day is the last thing they should be doing. It would be better for everyone if they would spend: get that new flat-screen, or car, or even remodel the kitchen how they've always wanted it. And this wouldn't just better for all of us in some *collective* sense. Prices on a lot of goods are coming down, due to the recession. It makes financial sense to purchase now, if you have the means. (But you can still pat yourself on the back as your increased consumerism helps spur this economy back into shape.)

I guess I just get annoyed when I hear financially stable people talk about how we all need to tighten our belts right now until the financial crisis passes. That advice should be limited to only those people who are experiencing financial difficulties. The rest of us should be out bargain-hunting.

New Music: Brian gets ethical

2009-03-05T12:58:00.002-05:00

I've been busy lately. With school. Lots of stuff going on. In fact, I take the MPRE (the first of the bar exams) this saturday. It's a test about professional ethics for lawyers. I decided that I needed some music to help me get into a more ethical mood, so I've compiled some playlists of some of my favorite songs from years gone by. They are both available here on my blog, and are quite extensive. If you feel that I have left off some important songs, feel free to let me know. Typically, only rock songs were included. Not that there weren't some great pop, hip-hop, or country songs from those time periods; it's just that I didn't include them if they didn't make a big impression on me.

Making these playlists seemed like the ethical thing to do, considering my upcoming test. Enjoy!

Momentum: A Stimulating Tale

2009-02-15T22:47:00.000-05:00

A lot of people have chimed in on the stimulus package that will likely be signed into law on monday. Most of the blogs I have read have been highly critical, and they do raise some good points. There will be a lot of spending on unnecessary projects. Some projects are being given way more money than they need. And it will create massive debt that must be paid off eventually. All things to keep in mind.

But I feel that those points miss the big picture. With a stimulus package, there will be spending. To quote our new President: "What do you think a stimulus package is?" There can be arguments over how the money should be spent, and who it should go to, and how much should be spent. But to stimulate the economy, there will need to be spending. If we rely exclusively on tax cuts, we will only be repeating the band-aid that we had in place for the last 5-6 years. Although tax cuts should definitely be part of the package, they should not be the whole package.

People defaulted on their mortgages. Banks lost money as a result, and many went out of business. The rest tightened their lending, for fear of losing money in a similar fashion. Businesses weren't able to secure the loans they need, and many of them are going out of business as well. People are getting laid off, which means that they can no longer afford to buy things. As people stop buying things, businesses lose profit. When profit goes down, businesses lay people off. More people layed off means less people to buy goods and services from businesses. With businesses getting a bad return on their investments, they default to the banks, who in turn lose more money. The whole thing is a big, convoluted cycle. And it's spiraling downward. It will continue to gather momentum for quite some time, thereby escalating the negative effects that we have here. In a stripped-down, simplistic fashion, I have just described to you macro-econ 101.

To reverse this downward spiral, there needs to be a stimulus. We have to get the momentum going in the other direction. You and I can't do it. Even if we got a million people to sign a petition, pleding our support, we couldn't do it. Unfortunately (in some people's eyes), the government is probably the only entity that can step in. And it will basically work like this: money is spent to create jobs. Hopefully the jobs will provide something beneficial (the term "beneficial" always having the vice of being debatable). People get hired for said jobs. People then spend the money that they get paid. As more goods and services are purchased, employers grow their businesses to keep up with demand. This creates jobs. As the government sponsored jobs start to wind down (most of them being of a limited duration), they are replaced by the new jobs created in the private sector. Thus, there is a subtle shift of employment, and now we have the momentum swinging in an upward fashion. The economy, eventually, rights itself again. With increased employment comes increased tax revenues, which will hopefully pay off the funds used to provide for the stimulus in the first place.

Without a stimulus, there can be no way to get the momentum swinging back the way we want it to. We tried going the tax cut route for a while. In my opinion, all it did was slow the downward spiral for a time. For every economist that will tell you demand-side economics doesn't work, you can find equal amounts that will say the same about supply-side economics. Perhaps each theory has a time and place. I'm willing to give demand-side its turn, mainly because I don't view either method as being either good or evil. I just want a method that works here and now, and not a continuation of a method that clearly wasn't working for the here and now.

Have any of you ever noticed that the people who believe strongly that economics is divided into "good" and "evil" often reduce their argument to some sort of "principle" or slogan? For example, think about the last time you heard someone say "it just comes down to the fact that every person has the right to have (fill in the blank)," or "it's just wrong to take people's money and give it to others who haven't worked for it." Personally, I see some truth in both statements. And ironically, I've often heard both statements uttered in relation to the same issue. The problem comes when the statement is the underlying defense of a person's economic position. It means that the argument comes down to an emotion, and not data or logic. Usually a smoke screen will be set up first, by quoting a few statistics or pointing to a time in history when things were going well. But as soon as flaws in the stats come up, or intervening variable pointed out, the fall-back position is one of the two statements listed above. Emotion. The principle just *feels* right. I'm ok with that line of thought with regards to my Savior, Jesus Christ. I'm not ok with that line of thought when it concerns the intricate balance of a national economic policy.

There needs to be a stimulus. The government needs to get our economic momentum spiraling upward again. I fail to see how that can be achieved without some sort of spending. I really haven't heard any alternatives that seem more credible, especially considering the policies of the last 8 years. Complaints as to the how, where, and who are all valid. But it seems to me as though most of the people making those complaints really have the underlying position of "we shouldn't even do this at all." I just can't comprehend that attitude, in the face of everything that's happening.
_____________
*This website has some interesting information about the national debt over the last several decades, if you want to compare the effects of presidential and congressional economic policies during that time. (Keep in mind that the numbers aren't injusted for inflation, and a more accurate analysis would actually compare the debt to % of GDP. But the trends speak for themselves.)

I have an additional blog

2009-02-12T23:29:00.000-05:00

I started another blog. It is devoted entirely to music. It's called "First Song In My Head Today." The link is somewhere off to the right. Basically, the blog title says it all. Every day I will post the first song that pops into my head in the morning, and then put that song in a corresponding playlist. That way you can get a glimpse into what goes on inside my crazy, mixed-up head every morning. Hopefully the Slayer and Megadeth songs will be kept to a minimum.

Just kidding. I don't actually know any Slayer or Megadeth songs. But I do know lots of Metallica.

Enjoy.

Movie Review: Taken

2009-02-08T16:25:00.000-05:00

So one of my goals for this year is to watch more movies in theatres (I prefer the British spelling of the word 'theatre'). As I recalled all of the movies that I had seen in theatres last year, it was a surprisingly small amount. It was a sad realization, because I consider myself a bit of a movie snob, so you would think that I would make it a point to go out and constantly refine my tastes. I guess I was just really busy last year.

I don't have any particular genre of movie that I prefer, although there's a few that I generally stay away from (i.e. horror, or movies about "gay cowboys eatin' pudding"--to quote Cartman from Southpark). Basically, if a movie is well done and delivers what it promises, I will consider it a good film. Different movies will give me different expectations. For example, if commercials show a movie as having Mike Myers and a bunch of random gags, it better darn well be funny. Otherwise, I'll feel like I was cheated. If a movie stars my governor, and has lots of explosions and/or cyborgs and/or aliens, then it better be the greatest action thrill-ride of my life. Otherwise, I'll be disappointed. A movie doesn't have to get nominated for best picture or make the AFI Top 100 list for me to consider it good--it just has to live up to my expectations. Bonus points if it does have an overly deep or intricate story, or brilliant acting.

Taken completely lived up to every expectation I had (and then some). The commercials made it seem as though a father with some sort of special forces training becomes aware when his daughter is abducted by strange men as she is traveling in Europe, and then he goes on a rampage to get her back. That is exactly what the movie was, in one sentence. Sure, the plot was very simple, and you didn't get a whole lot of time for the type of character development that you got in the last two Batman or James Bond movies. But you weren't expecting to get that, so it didn't leave you disappointed. The main character (played by Liam Neeson) didn't have to resort to exceptional feats of strength or space-age gadgets to find his daughter. He got kicked around a little, and had a few minor injuries, but it wasn't like the end of MI:2 where Tom Cruise gets beat down on the beach for 20 minutes without even losing a step. All Neeson's character needed was a high-level of self defense training, and a decent handgun. He used his intelligence and connections just as much as his muscle. That's what made his character seem real to me, and not some sort of hulked-out caricature.

To use an analogy: if I had been expecting filet mignon for dinner, I would have been upset when I received grilled chicken. But if I had been expecting grilled chicken, I would have been happy that it was some really good grilled chicken.

I haven't gone terribly deeply into the details of the film, so as not to spoil the plot for any of you that intend to see it (which I highly recommend, if you like suspenseful action films). Sufficeth to say, the movie involves themes of human traficking and forced prostitution, although it never gets graphic about it. It just makes you accutely aware of its existence, particularly outside of the U.S. Anyone who is knowledgeable on the topic will tell you that it's a huge problem in the world, but is often ignored here at home because it hasn't yet become a huge issue here. If any of my readers are female, and plan on traveling abroad anytime soon without multiple male chaperones, I urge you to see this movie. It will cause you to really think about your safety with regards to the seemingly benign choices you sometimes make. The world can be a dangerous place, and playing ignorant and avoiding serious issues because the mere thought of them doesn't seem "uplifting" is a foolish thing to do.

Besides, the movie just plain rocks. Even the old guy who took my ticket agreed. I give it 3.5 stars.

Would You Rather...

2009-02-04T14:21:00.001-05:00

By virtue of stumbling upon this blog, you must respond to the following choices in the comments section. Each choice is between two options, and they are generally of a difficult nature. Your answers will provide insight into your soul. Or something like that. But you have to respond, because otherwise it's no fun.

Would you rather...

1. Know exactly when you're going to die, OR exactly how?
(I would rather know exactly how. If I knew when, I would end up procrastinating so many things.)

2. Be financially set for life--but never be able to travel outside the U.S., OR be financially set for life--but never be able to set foot back inside the U.S?
(Tough call. Although I would like to travel more, my family is here. Presumably I could pay for their tickets to come and visit me somewhere. But I guess there's enough unexplored territory for me within the U.S. that I would stay here, especially since it includes Alaska and Hawaii.)

3. Never get to watch TV shows again (including on the internet or DVD), OR never get to watch another movie again (including internet/DVD)?
(There are a lot of good movies out there. But I spend more time watching TV shows, comparatively. So gotta stick with TV.)

4. Be the sole survivor of a plane crash or shipwreck on a deserted island--with no hope of ever being rescued, OR be one of the people who dies in said crash/shipwreck?
(Be the survivor. I handle solitude pretty well. Although eventually I probably would get sick and die a slow, painful death. Hmmm. But on the other hand, Castaway is one of my favorite movies. So I'll go survivor, final answer.)

5. Give up the internet for a week, OR give up your car for a month.
(I can't go without the internet, even if I didn't have school assignments.)

6. Have a demanding job that you really don't like--but will earn you more money than you could ever want within 15 years, OR work at a job you absolutely love for the rest of your life--and have to live paycheck-to-paycheck?
(I would go with the demanding job. If I could tough it out for 15 years, then I would be free to do what I wanted after that, presumably to do the things that I love. Plus, my family might appreciate that route more and more as they get older. When I have a family.)

7. Be absolutely brilliant--but very average looking, OR be absolutely gorgeous--but only have average intelligence?
(Be brilliant. It will get me farther in life. But if I was a female, I would answer the other way, which is probably a sad commentary on the role of gender in our culture.)

8. Live in an inner-city apartment for the rest of your life, OR live in the country at least 1/2 mile away from your nearest neighbor for the rest of your life?
(I'm going country. For living, that is. But not for music. I like having distance between me and my neighbors. Plus, I could crank up my guitar amp as loud as I want.)

9. Never get to eat ice cream ever again--but always stay slim and fit, OR eat ice cream whenever you want--but gradually gain weight until you are a fat old person, regardless of how much you exercise?
(I think I could give up ice cream. So long as I can keep burritos, double-doubles, and donuts.)

10. Lose your passport/wallet/money/all identification while traveling overseas, OR have your computer crash just before finals or a big presentation?
(Have my computer crash. I tend to keep a backup copy of most things on memory sticks. Plus, I think I would totally panic if I lost all that stuff in another country. And it would ruin my vacation.)

Ok, now it's your turn!

25 Things. Boo-ya-kah!!!

2009-01-30T10:12:00.000-05:00

So, a couple different friends of mine have recently posted this thingy where you have to list 25 random facts about you, and I was theoretically tagged in both of them, so I decided I would follow through and make my own list. I won't tag 25 people, however. I'll explain why later. But if anyone else wants to make their own list, I won't stop you. It's your call to make. Hey--it's 2009, a black man is in the Oval Office, and Jack is back. We've come a long way, America.

1. I think any internet list, message, warning, funny video, or anything else where you are supposed to send it on to more people is gay. I'll read it or send it if I feel like it, and I may even enjoy it, but I still think the fact that it is supposed to be perpetuated is gay.

2. I am normally pretty PC, but I still use the term "gay" to mean something slightly irritating or dumb. No offense to homosexual people. It really has nothing to do with you. Although I think being homosexual is gay (pun intended).

3. I am a PC. Not a Mac. I would go on the commercials if I was famous.

4. TiVo has changed my life so drastically that I can't even remember what life was like without it. The frustrating thing now is that I want to have the rewind button for other things, such as radio broadcasts, lectures at school, or even conversations that I'm not completely engaged in.

5. I love to cook. It's a corollary of the fact that I love to eat. But I really hate it when people are anal about following recipes exactly. I view a recipe as more of a "guideline," and if you make reference to the fact that you *have to* follow it, I will think that you are uncreative and boring. Especially if I know that you are already a confident cook.

6. Here is a list of alternative careers that I often think would be much more fun than being the future lawyer that I am training to be (yet still within my grasp): Chef, personal trainer, therapist, politician, hairstylist, fashion guru, studio guitarist, venture capitalist. Ok, so I would need additional training for all of them, but I know I could be good at all of them.

7. I think that people who say they are very interested in politics really mean to say that they think they are always right.

8. I am very interested in politics.

9. I am a registered Democrat, and I am also a *registered* Mormon. Totally not a contradiction (the majority will of Utah be damned!) I also think that many people say they are either liberal or conservative, but they get it wrong. It usually sticks out from their personality, and I often feel like going up to people and pointing out that they're not what they think they are, and that they need to re-examine the issues instead of going with the flow. This happens all the time in Mormon culture. It's kind of like when you know a guy at church, and he dresses really well, and never dates, yet always hangs out with a group of girls and talks fashion and relationships with them, and he would rather watch Friends than Seinfeld, and he's into musicals and Jane Austen novels, and you want to run up to him and scream: "Dude--you're gay! You probably don't know it, but you are! Just accept it." Yeah....it's kind of like that.

10. I own several movies that I have never actually watched. Well, not the movie itself. Just that particular DVD that I bought. I just like having them in my collection. In fact, a sure-fire way to keep me from ever watching a movie again is to buy it for me. A few months back, Napoleon Dynamite was on Comedy Central. I watched it, by myself. Hilarious. It was the first time I had watched it in like 3 years. *I own the movie! It's funny how that works.

11. I procrastinate like it's nobody's business. Truth be told, it is nobody's business. 'Cuz I almost always get things done on time. This current post is a form of procrastination for me.

12. I eat a protein shake almost every day, for breakfast. I also eat a banana, and either oatmeal or raisin bran for breakfast as well. And if I have 'em, a donut or two. And I can guarantee that within 4 hours I will be starving again. Breakfast is truly the most important meal of the day.

13. If you don't take your dish to the sink when you are done, and rinse it off, I will judge you for it. And the judgment will be a harsh one.

14. If you stand on the escalator instead of walking up, and you don't appear to be either elderly or injured in some way, I instantly write you off as being lazy. The same goes for people who will circle the parking lot waiting for a front space to open up, instead of parking 12 cars down the line and walking a few extra feet. It's especially ironic if it's in the parking lot of a gym.

15. I don't own an IPod, or any other sort of MP3 player. Yet I love music, particular of the hard rock variety.

16. When Soundgarden broke up back in the late 90s, I held a memorial for them in my bedroom for an entire weekend, by listening to their music over and over again. If I could make my voice sound like anyone, it would be Chris Cornell. (or maybe Bon Jovi)

17. Hey Amanda: Guess what? I saw La Oreja de Van Gogh live, in concert, back when I was in Spain. It was against the rules, but the opportunity just sort of came up. And the concert rocked!

18. I eat fast food at least 5 times a week. And I'm in great shape, and have great health. I don't even do cardio! How is that possible, you may ask? Well, I go to the gym and lift weights at least 4 days a week, and if I go to school (also 4 days/week), I have to walk a total of 2 miles just to get to and from the metro. Hence, my ability to consume burgers and burritos at a steady rate. And monster breakfasts (see previous #).

19. If I don't consistently consume at least 100 grams of protein per day, I will start to lose weight. I also think it's ridiculous when [mainly women] will cook a meal without any major protein source (like, say, a vegetable soup, with breadsticks and a salad. Or pasta with nothing more than a meatless sauce). Because you might as well just eat a bowl of ice cream and a vitamin pill--it's basically the same for your body. Just a bunch of starch. Starch that will work it's way to your hips. Protein is what will keep you lean.

20. I used to be able to run 10 miles a day without even getting sore. Back in high school, when I ran cross country. I wish I could do that now. I think I could push myself to 3.5 miles if I had to, with moderate soreness over the following 3 days. Perhaps I'll just walk to the metro instead, and call it even.

21. I think people totally under-utilize the long dash in modern writing. Hey--it's fun to use! And it makes your writting more stylistic. Also, I think it's totally ok to use "and" as the beginning word of a sentence. Additionally, using a preposition at the end of a sentence is totally where it's at. People still understand you, and it makes your writing sound more natural, as though you are speaking to someone. Most of the *rules* of modern English were developed in Great Britain over 100 years ago, and they aren't the hard-and-fast rules that people take them to be. If you follow all of them, you'll just end up sounding stuffy and awkward.

22. Playing Guitar Hero is almost as much fun as playing guitar in a real rock band, in front of a crowd of thousands of people. I know--I've done both. The only catch is that you have to be good.

23. I often feel like I am the smartest guy in the room. Well, maybe not the smartest. But perhaps the one with the most self-confidence in his intellect. Kind of like the cocky guy on the basketball court who wants to take the last shot of the game, because he knows he can make it. But in an intellectual sort of way. It's because I'm an INTJ. That's how we are. Law school, however, has made great strides in humbling me in this arena. But I still quite often take my extreme intellectual confidence for granted, and wonder why other people aren't the same way.

24. My favorite job ever involved cooking large amounts of chicken and rice in a large, sweaty kitchen. Not for the work I actually did, and definitely not for the pay. It was really all about the multiple amazing co-workers I had. I think the key to job satisfaction is the people you work with.

25. I typically drink at least a gallon of water per day. It's good fer what ails ya. 9 out of 10 doctors agree. I think it is a habit that came as a by-product of regularly donating plasma during my undergrad years. If I didn't drink enough water before-hand, I would pass out once it was all over. Even though I don't donate any more (can't actually--had a false positive for Hep C), the water drinking has stayed with me.

So there you have it. We are now tight (like unto a dish).

So--How 'bout this crazy new thing called Guitar Hero?

2009-01-24T14:59:00.000-05:00

I've recently jumped on the bandwagon for Guitar Hero (and it's bastard step-sibling, Rockband). Wow. Now instead of wasting all of my time watching TiVo and checking my email, I now get to waste my time pretending to be a rockstar from the comfort of my living room.

However, as an accomplished guitarist, I must point out a few flaws that I've noticed in the way the game is designed:
1. On a normal guitar, in order to hold a sustained note, you only have to press down on the strings with your fret hand. Your pick hand only has to strum once. However, on Guitar Hero, you have to hold the "pick bar" down for a sustained note. This increases the difficulty level of the game, is counter-intuitive for real guitarists, and makes use of the whammy bar a bit of a hassle.
2. The whammy bar. They hardly ever get used by a real guitarist. Generally, you are going for a really specific effect that requires you to alter the pitch of your note. You see, a whammy bar causes the strings to become either more slack or more taught (depending on whether you press down or pull up), thereby lowering or raising the pitch. This is different from giving a note vibrato, which is what happens when you shake your fret fingers slightly while holding a sustained note. In Guitar Hero, the whammy bar is generally used where vibrato would be called for in a song, and not where a whammy bar would actually be used. This is also kind of annoying and counter-intuitive.
3. The game needs to account better for "hammer-ons," "pull-offs," and "slides." A hammer-on is where a player strums one note, and while the string vibrates, slams another finger down on a fret that is higher up on the neck of the guitar. The second note does not need to be strummed, hence it is hammered instead of picked. A pull-off is like a hammer-on, but in reverse. Instead of slamming a finger on the string further up the neck, you pull off a finger to one placed further behind it, thereby lengthening the vibrating string. A slide is where you literally slide your pressed-down finger either up or down a string while it is vibrating. Although the game's music quite frequently uses guitar solos and lead lines containing these techniques, the game does not really do a good job of incorporating that into game play.
4. Instead of using a guitar/bass set-up, I think more of the songs should utilize a lead guitar/rhythm guitar set-up. Playing the bass is just no fun on Guitar Hero, and quite often you can't hear it all that well. No one wants to play bass, when given the option of playing guitar. Guitar is just cooler. (No offense to my friend Chris.)
5. Could we get some Bon Jovi songs? Is that too much to ask? (maybe there are some in a different version of the game--I just haven't checked yet.)

I've pretty much mastered the medium level of the game, and am now experimenting with the difficult level. The name fits. I am growing more nostalgic for the days when I used to be a lead guitarist in a rock band. I would post a link to some film footage from one of our concerts, but you have to be logged in to Facebook to see it. So feel free to check it out over there. If you are not my friend yet on Facebook, that's your fault. I'm not very discriminating, and respond affirmatively to almost any friend request I receive. But whatever, it's your call.

Other good news: I have been on a new weight training program since returning from the holidays. Power lifting, meant to create big gains in both strength and muscle. The results so far are that I have grown significantly stronger, and I have put on about 6 lbs. (for all of the ladies out there who think that working out should lead to weight reduction, I say--welcome to free weights! Muscle tone is beautiful, and massively boosts metabolism.) I am seriously considering dropping out of law school to become a personal trainer. I could be a really good one. But being a lawyer pays better, so I guess I'll stick with that.

cheers.

Econ 101: The World According to Brian

2009-01-19T15:09:00.001-05:00

Much of my knowledge about economics came from an unlikely source: baseball cards.

Baseball cards are the ultimate primer in the laws of supply and demand. The more popular a card is, the more people demand it, and therefore the greater its cost. Likewise, if a card is rare, the lesser supply will drive up the price for those who wish to purchase it. From these general principles one can extrapolate much of modern economic theory. It gets more complicated from here, but the basics are covered.

I remember that there used to be magazines published every month or so that would list the price of virtually every baseball card there was. Sort of a Blue Book value, but for baseball cards. I was always thrilled to look through and find the values of the cards I owned, mentally creating a tally of how much money I had made through my baseball card "investments." As a ten year old, it was always exciting to find that a card you had bought in a two dollar pack had skyrocketed to 7 or 8 dollars in value. I was gonna be rich!

But that's not how it worked out. I probably spent over $100 on cards between the ages of 8 and 12. If I had totaled up their worth according to the value books, they probably would have been "worth" about $500 by the time I was 16. But just because a book says that's what they're worth, doesn't make it so. In reality, the cards were only worth what someone was willing to pay for them. And as a young teenager, I wasn't really connected with any high end purchasers of baseball cards. I was basically sitting on a pile of nearly worthless cardboard, which was gathering dust in my closet.

I eventually sold my entire collection of baseball cards for $15. (If I was a stockbroker, I probably would have gone to jail over that one.)

Where am I going with all of this? Well, about a year ago I was sitting in church, and someone was talking about how she had been praying really hard for her brother and his wife to sell their house, since they needed to move. She kept saying that their home was worth a certain amount, but they couldn't find any buyers willing to pay that price. So they had been praying to find a buyer willing to pay them what their home was worth.

--If you can't find a buyer for your home at a certain price, then your home probably isn't worth that price. Think of it as a more glorified baseball card, if it makes the logic become any more apparent to you. A book won't tell you what your home is worth. An appraiser can't really tell you what your home is worth. Neither can the sales of homes in your area tell you what they are worth. The only one who can tell you what your home is worth is the person who purchases it. End of story.

I think a lot of our current economic crisis came as a result of false expectations. Houses increased in value at almost an unprecedented rate during the late 90s and the first few years of this decade. My mother bought her current home for approximately $350K in 1999, and it was probably worth over $700K by 2006. Nothing had changed about the house. Nothing really changed in the neighborhood. The schools remained same as they ever were. Oil had not been found in the local hills. There was no gold discovered in the soil of our lawn. What had changed, however, was both the demand for homes in our area, and the availability of loans to purchase those homes. As loans became easier to come by, more people could purchase, thereby increasing demand, which drove up the value of the home, which made the current owners very happy, which in turn made them more likely to support de-regulation of the banking and loan industry, thereby causing the spiral to continue upward.

I remember hearing a few years back that the average price of a home in California could only truly be afforded by people who were at the 95th percentile for income in the state. It all happened over the space of less than a decade. But I believe a lot of it was fabricated, with the greedy eyes of banking executives flashing dollar signs. It was irresponsible. And after the damage had been done, and the golden parachutes loaded on their backs, they retreated from the mess they had made and watched as billions of people worldwide saw their dreams come crashing down. I don't think this is a political issue, nor do I feel that either major party is exclusively at fault. I do think this was a moral issue. Quite often, in a religious setting, we discuss how peope are personally accountable for being self-sufficient. We place a big emphasis on living within our means, and doing our best with what we have. We also tend to speak out against government excess, as though government is often the enemy. But the only enemy here is irresponsibility. In a religion with a high percentage of businessmen and women, I wish we would more often discuss corporate responsibility, in addition to focusing on individual and government accountability. That's just my two cents on the matter.

I've just been watching film clips of President-elect Obama on TV. Some of my LDS peers have jokingly made reference to the fact that he is a naive smooth-talker, or that he will soon usher a new era of socialism in America, or that he isn't qualified for the job. I often wonder if my peers have actually listened to the man speak, at least beyond more than a few hand-picked clips broadcast on Fox News or talk radio. I remember the first time I heard Obama speak: it was during the Democratic Party nomination convention for Sen. Kerry, back in '04. There was a lot of buzz around Obama, who was a relative newcomer on the scene. His speech, at the time, was probably my favorite of the convention. I knew right then that there was something special about the man. Some politicians are good at leading, some are good at decision-making, and some are good at playing the political game. But I've found that it's rare to discover a politician who actually understands what the average American is experiencing. I could tell back in '04 that Obama understood. I know W didn't. I don't really think that Clinton did, and before that I was too young to notice. To be a truly great leader, I think you have to understand the people you govern. Whether or not you buy into Obama's politics, at least I know that he understands what my fellow citizens are going through. I didn't really feel this with any of the other candidates for president from either party. Hillary didn't have it, which is why she kind of scared me. McCain gave me that impression 4 years ago, but I didn't feel it this time around. Even Romney, much adored by the LDS community, didn't give me the impression that he understood the situation of the average American. He flip-flopped more than Kerry, and seemed content to ignore realities in order to govern by a set of personal principles that he probably devised while sitting in an Econ-110 class back during his BYU days. They may have worked well as a high-stakes businessman, but history hasn't proven that they will work for the leader of the free world. That's why he made me nervous

But really, I'm just excited to have a presidential administration that doesn't include either a Bush or Clinton. I haven't experienced that since the morning hours of January 20, 1981, when I was only a few months old. And I'm excited.

On an unrelated note, yesterday I experimented in the kitchen while making burritos. And I came up with a rather tasty concoction: Chicken and Potato Burritos.

1. Pan fry some chicken breast in a touch of olive oil, on medium-low heat. Add a tbs. of water to the pan, and cover it. Let the chicken cook all the way through, then take it out and chop it up. You might want to add salt and pepper while cooking it.
2. While the chicken is cooking, add some chopped up potato to the pan. Stir it occasionally, and keep it in the pan until it gets soft. Then remove and set aside.
3. In a separate pan, sautee some slices of green pepper and onion. Remove from heat once it gets soft.
4. Take a burrito-sized tortilla and heat it up. Then take some mashed up avocado and spread a strip of it down the middle of the tortilla.
5. Place some chicken on top of that.
6. Cover the chicken in the potatoes and pepper/onion mixture.
7. Top this with some heated black beans.
8. Then add some sour cream on top, with salt and pepper to taste. Hot sauce is optional, as is cheese.
9. Fold your burrito (if you've ever paid attention while in line at Chipotle, you shoud know the correct procedure for doing this).
10. Open mouth, insert burrito, and enjoy.

--Happy eating!!--

2008: A Recap

2009-01-10T02:03:00.000-05:00

Here are lists of things that were part of my life in 2008.

Courses taken at Georgetown Law:
1. Trademarks and Unfair Competition Law
2. Constitutional Law 2
3. Criminal Law
4. Law & Psychiatry Seminar
5. Medical Law Seminar
6. Harrison Institute Public Policy Clinic (health law team)
7. Professional Responsibility
8. National Security Law
9. Law & Measures Against International Terrorism
*Favorite course: the clinic

Movies watched at theatres:
1. The Dark Knight
2. Iron Man
3. Quantum of Solace
4. WALL-E
5. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
6. Indiana Jones and the crappy movie that shouldn't have been made
*Wow, I didn't get to the theatre as much as usual. Favorite movie: the one with Batman. But a close second was actually Nick & Norah.

Shows on my TiVo recording list:
1. The Simpsons
2. Heroes
3. 24 (although it never happened--thank you, writer's strike!)
4. One Tree Hill
5. Prison Break
6. House
7. The Office
8. Grey's Anatomy (this show gets worse at an exponential rate)
9. Gossip Girl
10. Lost
11. SYTYCD
12. Beauty & the Geek
13. Southpark
14. American Gladiators
*Favorite show: One Tree Hill, The Office (tie). *Shows added this year: American Gladiators. *Shows removed from list this year: What Not to Wear. *Show most likely to be removed from list in 2009: Grey's Craptastrophe.

Books read in 2008 (not including textbook or scripture):
1. Atlas Shrugged (*note the two different links)
2. All Harry Potter books (technically I started in the last few days of '07)
3. State of Fear (M. Crichton)
4. The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway)
5. The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
6. Deception Point (D. Brown)
7. Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
8. Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut)
9. An Abundant Life: the Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown
10. Gravity's Rainbow (T. Pynchon) *did not finish
11. Cracking the Code (T. Hartmann) *will finish, time permitting
12. My Struggle (A.H.) *did not finish, read for historical understanding only
*Favorite: all things Potter. *Worst: Gravity's suck-bow. *Biggest disappointment: Atlas Shrugged and no one cared, complete with endless political hoo-hah that only an idiot would truly believe (I really don't care for Ms. Rand--not in the slightest).

Books already on my list for 2009:
1. Watership Down (Adams) *one of my all-time fav's.
2. Home Workout Bible (Men's Health). *already read--it will change my life
3. Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis (T. Daschle)
4. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Mearsheimer & Walt) *I am not an anti-semite.
5. Vision and Valor (Hugh B. Brown)

States I set foot in during 2008:
1. Maryland
2. Virginia
3. D.C. (technically not a state)
4. California
5. Utah
6. Colorado (airport)
7. Texas (airport)
8. Arizona
*Roadtrips longer than 100 miles: 1 (Claremont to Phoenix and back)

Number of In-N-Out double-doubles consumed in 2008: approx. 4
Number of Conference sessions attended in person: 3
Number of Beto's California burritos consumed: 2

It was a satisfying year.

Puertollano desde el aire

2008-12-29T01:05:00.001-05:00

I spent almost a year of my life in this Spanish city. I've hiked up to the Miner statue, and I've been inside that Catholic church on a number of occasions. It's an awesome little place, and it will always feel like a second home to me. So many memories. Just thought I would share that with all of you.

A 4th of July story to ring in the holidays!

2008-12-17T14:52:00.000-05:00

Last night I was telling a story to Erica about my late father. It's a funny story (in retrospect, although while it was happening I was horribly mortified). Since I have previously posted about my father, I figured I should give you guys a story so you can get an idea of what he was like in his most playful moments.

My Father: The Unwitting Prop-Comedian
**A One-Act Play**

The Scene: 4th of July parade, 1998
The Actors: Myself (the narrator), my father, my mother, and three younger sisters
Location: downtown La Verne, California, sitting in lawnchairs on the curb of D Street
Necessary Items: a Supersoaker 2000

I had recently graduated high school in June 1998, and am basically biding my time until leaving for BYU in the fall. (Technically I was working about 35 hrs/week at Raging Waters San Dimas, a local water park.) My brother is an up-and-coming junior at the local high school, and had recently been promoted to drum major in the marching band. He will be making his debut performance as the drum major during the local 4th of July parade, and my father has decided it will be funny to drench him with water as he comes marching by at the head of the band. Since my brother is a big kid, and it is rather hot that day, we figure it will all be in good fun.

Normal men, when faced with a solitary objective such as squirting water on a teenage boy, are able to restrain themselves from mischief until it comes time to act. My father, however, is not a normal man. By picking up such a behemoth of a squirtgun, he reverts back to his 8-yr old self. Suddently everything is a moving target, just begging to be drenched. All sense of reason and decency go out the window. I can tell by the way he is gently pumping air into the chamber--and by the crazy gleam in his eye--that it takes all of his energy just to keep from soaking everyone within a 50-foot radius of him. And I worry that this energy will run out before my brother can pass by and give him an outlet for his mischief.

Several minutes into the parade, our grand marshal comes riding by in the back of a convertible. He is perched over the rear seat, with his two teenage kids on either side. Somehow, our town has been able to secure the actor Harry Anderson as the grand marshal this year. (I'm still not sure what his particular connection was to our town, although his presence definitely makes this story funnier.) I know that my father has hit his limit of self-restraint. He pumps the water gun completely full of air, and proceeds to take aim at the back of the convertible. No one seems to notice, as they are all fixated on our (semi)famous grand marshal politely waving to the crowd.

--(a long stream of water jumps out from the side of the road, painting a wet stripe across the three inhabitants of the convertible's back seat)

The jaws drop on everyone in the vicinity. Stunned silence fills the air. Our young narrator sinks low in his seat, pulling his hat down to shade his embarrassed face from the crowd. Harry Anderson slowly looks down at his drenched clothing, obviously shocked. Slowly, eyes dart towards my father on the side of the road. Harry narrows his eyes, gives a cold look at my father, and mouths some words that I decline to print, for the sake of my more-sensitive readers.

My father, bless his heart, is quietly chuckling to himself....as he pumps more air into the super soaker!

Off in the distance, I can hear people muttering phrases such as "who is that jerk" and "what kind of grown man does that?" What these people are not aware of is that my father can't hear very well, nor is his long-range vision all that great without his glasses (which he hardly ever wears). He can't hear all of the negative comments he is receiving. Also, he interprets the cool glances and shaking fists as merely waving hands and amusement. Rather than being embarrassed by his own behavior, he becomes encouraged by what he interprets as crowd support for his actions. And thus the seeds for similar future events are sown.

A few minutes later, with occasional glances still darting towards my father from the crowd, arrives a flatbed truck filled with local children, smiling and waving miniature American flags.

--Important facts to consider at this point:
1. Average age of the children: approximately 5
2. My father's age: just shy of 51
3. Specific instructions for super soaker 2000: "Do not spray directly at eyes or face, as serious injury or blindness may occur."

In retrospect, perhaps we should have made sure dad had read the warning label before using the soaker. Too late for that now. We can only hope that common sense prevails. Unfortunately, "common sense" is all-too-often a misnomer. Let me continue with the story.

The truck pulls even with us in the street, and it's clear that some of the little kids have hand-held squirt guns (the type that safely shoot about 5 drops with each trigger pull). They are shooting in the direction of the crowd, although very little water makes it as far as the curb. My father takes this as a sign that these young children are propositioning an all-out water combat. Accordingly, he levels a line of water down the side of the truck, hitting nearly every child across the upper chest. A few stagger backwards into the truck bed. Others begin to cry. Most are in shock--they have no clue what just happened to them. One second they were politely waving to their parents and enjoying their big moment as proud parade participants; the next second they were completely drenched with water. My father, much like before, is chuckling to himself and re-pumping his gun. Due to his poor hearing and vision, he believes that the kids are laughing and waving at him.

People are visibly angry with my father. He has now gone from "the idiot who soaked our grand marshal" to "the total jerk who made a bunch of little kids cry." A couple of parents walking alongside the truck tell the kids not to worry--they will get revenge for them. They grab cups full of water, run towards my dad, and fling it on him. My dad mistakenly takes this as a sign that they want to play along, and proceeds to drench these parents as well. Sigh. Our young narrator sinks even lower into his chair, pulling his hat down even further over his face, and consoles himself with the fact that he gets to flee town in less than two months.

Minutes later, in what turns out to be the anti-climactic moment of the play, my younger brother comes marching through with the band. He notices my father and the super soaker just in time, and takes off sprinting towards the opposite side of the road as the trigger is pulled. The blast of water barely grazes his leg.

**End of Play**

After this incident was over, I was completely embarrassed. I didn't look anyone in the eye as we walked back towards our mini-van, making sure to stay several feet from my father in the hope that people might assume we weren't in the same group. Later that day, I recounted the story to several of my friends, who completely changed my outlook on the experience. They practically came to tears from laughing so hard. Apparently, a grown man who drills the grand marshal and several little kids with a high-powered water gun, and then proceeds to obliviously laugh about it, is hilarious to teenage boys. As I think about it, it's hilarious to 20-something year old men/boys as well.

Isn't it ironic how some of life's most embarrassing moments turn out to be the most humorous as time goes by?

**End of Blog**

I'm an INTJ

2008-12-12T15:18:00.001-05:00

I took this personality quiz a couple of years ago, but a friend of mine recently took it yesterday. It was developed by Myers-Briggs and based off of theories of Carl Jung. So that makes it fully legit (sarcasm). However, I know that the results were very accurate for me, so the test may be on to something. Basically, it divides people into sixteen different personality types, based upon how they interact with the world in a set of 4 dichotomous criteria. You guys should all take the quiz (5 minutes in length) and then leave a comment telling me what you are. Because I command you to do it... Seriously though, it's quite interesting. Here are my results:

The Free Thinker (a.k.a. The Scientist, or The Mastermind)

Independent, original, analytical, and determined. Have an exceptional ability to turn theories into solid plans of action. Highly value knowledge, competence, and structure. Driven to derive meaning from their visions. Long-range thinkers. Have very high standards for their performance, and the performance of others. Natural leaders, but will follow if they trust existing leaders.

As an INTJ, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you take things in primarily via your intuition. Your secondary mode is external, where you deal with things rationally and logically. INTJs live in the world of ideas and strategic planning. They value intelligence, knowledge, and competence, and typically have high standards in these regards, which they continuously strive to fulfill. To a somewhat lesser extent, they have similar expectations of others.

With Introverted Intuition dominating their personality, INTJs focus their energy on observing the world, and generating ideas and possibilities. Their mind constantly gathers information and makes associations about it. They are tremendously insightful and usually are very quick to understand new ideas. However, their primary interest is not understanding a concept, but rather applying that concept in a useful way. Unlike the INTP, they do not follow an idea as far as they possibly can, seeking only to understand it fully. INTJs are driven to come to conclusions about ideas. Their need for closure and organization usually requires that they take some action.

INTJ's tremendous value and need for systems and organization, combined with their natural insightfulness, makes them excellent scientists. An INTJ scientist gives a gift to society by putting their ideas into a useful form for others to follow. It is not easy for the INTJ to express their internal images, insights, and abstractions. The internal form of the INTJ's thoughts and concepts is highly individualized, and is not readily translatable into a form that others will understand. However, the INTJ is driven to translate their ideas into a plan or system that is usually readily explainable, rather than to do a direct translation of their thoughts. They usually don't see the value of a direct transaction, and will also have difficulty expressing their ideas, which are non-linear. However, their extreme respect of knowledge and intelligence will motivate them to explain themselves to another person who they feel is deserving of the effort.

INTJs are natural leaders, although they usually choose to remain in the background until they see a real need to take over the lead. When they are in leadership roles, they are quite effective, because they are able to objectively see the reality of a situation, and are adaptable enough to change things which aren't working well. They are the supreme strategists - always scanning available ideas and concepts and weighing them against their current strategy, to plan for every conceivable contingency.

INTJs spend a lot of time inside their own minds, and may have little interest in the other people's thoughts or feelings. Unless their Feeling side is developed, they may have problems giving other people the level of intimacy that is needed. Unless their Sensing side is developed, they may have a tendency to ignore details which are necessary for implementing their ideas.

The INTJ's interest in dealing with the world is to make decisions, express judgments, and put everything that they encounter into an understandable and rational system. Consequently, they are quick to express judgments. Often they have very evolved intuitions, and are convinced that they are right about things. Unless they complement their intuitive understanding with a well-developed ability to express their insights, they may find themselves frequently misunderstood. In these cases, INTJs tend to blame misunderstandings on the limitations of the other party, rather than on their own difficulty in expressing themselves. This tendency may cause the INTJ to dismiss others input too quickly, and to become generally arrogant and elitist.

INTJs are ambitious, self-confident, deliberate, long-range thinkers. Many INTJs end up in engineering or scientific pursuits, although some find enough challenge within the business world in areas which involve organizing and strategic planning. They dislike messiness and inefficiency, and anything that is muddled or unclear. They value clarity and efficiency, and will put enormous amounts of energy and time into consolidating their insights into structured patterns.

Other people may have a difficult time understanding an INTJ. They may see them as aloof and reserved. Indeed, the INTJ is not overly demonstrative of their affections, and is likely to not give as much praise or positive support as others may need or desire. That doesn't mean that he or she doesn't truly have affection or regard for others, they simply do not typically feel the need to express it. Others may falsely perceive the INTJ as being rigid and set in their ways. Nothing could be further from the truth, because the INTJ is committed to always finding the objective best strategy to implement their ideas. The INTJ is usually quite open to hearing an alternative way of doing something.

INTJs have a tremendous amount of ability to accomplish great things. They have insight into the Big Picture, and are driven to synthesize their concepts into solid plans of action. Their reasoning skills gives them the means to accomplish that. INTJs are most always highly competent people, and will not have a problem meeting their career or education goals. They have the capability to make great strides in these arenas. On a personal level, the INTJ who practices tolerances and puts effort into effectively communicating their insights to others has everything in his or her power to lead a rich and rewarding life.

Famous INTJ presidents: Thomas Jefferson, Dwight Eisenhower, Ulysses S. Grant, Calvin Coolidge, Chester A. Arthur, James K. Polk, and Woodrow Wilson.

Other Famous INTJs: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, John Maynard Keynes, Stephen Hawking, Rudy Giuliani, Colin Powell, Chevy Chase, Stanley Kubrick, and Sir Isaac Newton. And Ayn Rand (unfortunately).

Famous Fictional INTJs: Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter, Sherlock Holmes, the Godfather, Batman, Gandalf the Gray, Willy Wonka, Mr. Burns, and Jigsaw. (*Why are so many of the diabolical? Even the heroes are very tortured.)

Observations About INTJs

--We’re smart.
37% of INTJs have IQ’s that place us in the top 2% of the general population. We are visionaries, strategic (and compulsive) planners, big-picture thinkers, complex problem solvers, adept decision makers, conceptualists, theorists, and pattern recognizers – in short, we are “masterminds” [insert evil mastermind laugh here].

--We don’t do "feelings."
We use critical thinking, reason, and logic. We have a tough time with people who make decisions based on emotions, and we can often come across as blunt and cold because we ignore the feelings of others. But on the plus side, we take criticism well since we have no feelings to hurt.

--We live inside our heads.
We frequently zone out. We get lost in thought and spend much of our time inside our heads. If our immediate reality becomes boring, we will retreat into our minds, and you might have to shout our names repeatedly to get our attention so we will come out again. And no, sorry, but you can’t come into our heads with us. You wouldn’t last five minutes there. You’d be driven insane by the nonstop cacophony of overlapping voices madly free-associating from one idea to the next.

--We are self-confident.
No type is more self-confident than the INTJ. We have a very keen awareness of our own knowledge and abilities, and – more importantly – of the limits of our knowledge and abilities. Consequently we can come across as arrogant sometimes. This is your problem to deal with, not ours, since it is a problem of erroneous perception (yours).

--We are aloof.
Because we are somewhat detached from reality, because we are introverted (we find interacting with people to be tiring and tiresome), because we are very private, and because we are impassive, we tend to come across as rather reserved and aloof. Okay, we actually are reserved and aloof.

So there you have it. Now you know everything you need to know about me. Fascinating, I bet. The scary part is that almost everything in the description is spot-on accurate for me. And my favorite part is that we represent such a small percentage of the population, but a good portion of us are considered to be some of the smartest people out there. Not that I want to be arrogant about it. I'll shut up now.

Do you think my personality fits? What personality are you guys?

*For more information, try this link.

Lazy vs. Dumb

2008-12-07T22:24:00.000-05:00

I'm taking finals this week, so I can't really blog much. But I feel like I need to give you guys something, so this blog is a compromise. It's a comparison of things that make you lazy versus things that make you dumb. It should give you insight into my sense of humor, which can be a little strange at times.

Being lazy vs Being dumb

1. Being a super-senior in college, vs. being a super-senior in high school.
2. Forgetting to do your homework but still doing alright on the test, vs. forgetting to take the test.
3. Putting a can of soda in the freezer to quickly cool it down, vs. leaving that same can in the freezer for too long, then attempting to quickly thaw it out in the microwave.
4. Going to McDonald’s one morning because you don’t feel like cooking breakfast, vs. going to McDonald’s every morning because you don’t feel like cooking breakfast.
5. Taking your car because you don’t feel like walking to the metro, vs. stealing your neighbor’s car because you don’t feel like walking to the metro.
6. Taking the elevator when you could walk up the stairs, vs. walking up the stairs when there is a perfectly good elevator.
7. Getting all of your news from one source (i.e. The National Review, MSNBC, Fox News, The New Republic), vs. truly believing all of the news from any one of those sources.
9. Investing entirely in gold instead of developing a stock portfolio, vs. investing entirely in gold that your crazy uncle claims to have found while camping in the mountains.
10. Playing video games on your couch instead of exercising, vs. playing video games on your couch and believing that you are exercising.
11. Reading the Cliff’s Notes instead of the actual book, vs. wondering how this guy named Cliff knows so much about so many books.
12. Wearing a hat instead of combing your hair, vs. wearing sandals all winter because you’re “from California, bro.”
13. Re-setting the alarm for a half hour later because you know you’re gonna sleep in, vs. keeping the alarm at the same time and hitting the snooze repeatedly.

If you guys have any additions, feel free to post them in the comments. Happy Christmas!

Healthiest Thanksgiving Ever!

2008-11-28T11:15:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving gets a bad rap. People look forward to it as a day where they can indulge in sinful gluttony at the expense of their waistline. Then, after it's all over, they moan about how they need to treat their body better, and they resolve to get back into shape (although many people hold off until January 1 to decide this). But Thanksgiving dinner is not really unhealthy. In fact, it's quiet nutrient-rich. It's loaded with lean meats and vegetables. It's really the overeating that does you in. Even Lean Cuisine dinners are bad for you, if you eat 5 at once. I've included the links below to show you that, if eaten in moderation, a typical thanksgiving meal can be quite good for you.

White meat turkey: look on the chart for breast w/o skin. The serving represented there is probably about half of what a normal person eats on Thanksgiving. Loads of protein, and minimal fat.

Sweet potatoes: they are loaded with a wide assortment of vitamins and minerals, particularly vitamin A. They also have a good amount of fiber, which will help your body process all of the other food you eat. The amount listed here is a cup, which seems like a typical serving.

Green beans: Athough you probably eat them in a casserole with cream of mushroom soup and fried onions, the information listed here is just for the beans. They are loaded with vitamins A + C, and fiber, and the beans themselves are very low in calories. A typical serving is one cup.

Carrots: Some people eat carrots, although often softened and cooked in butter and other decadent ingredients. But the actual carrots are quite good for you. A one cup serving comes loaded with Vitamin A (beta carotene) K & C, and fiber.

Pumpkin Pie: make sure you change the serving size in the link to "one piece." Although there is a lot of sugar and a fair amount of fat in a piece of pie, you also get lots of nutrients like Vitamin A and a few others. Pumpkin, alone, is a very healthy food.

Mashed Potatoes: A typical half-cup serving comes with lots of Vitamin C and fiber. Although many people add lots of butter and gravy to enhance the flavor, they are quite good with just a touch of salt or non-fat sour cream.

There are, however, certain foods that you should avoid or limit during the holidays. They have a lot of calories, and don't provide much nutrition. These include cranberry sauce, gravies and creams, butter, bread products other than whole grains, stuffing, and sugary/fattening drinks like eggnog, cider, and hot cocoa. The trick is balance and moderation. Load yourself up on the veggies and lean meats, and then you won't feel like having an extra roll or cup of 'nog. You can escape the holidays with only minimal weight gain, and with all of the extra vitamins and fiber you might actually be healthier on the inside.

And if you happen to go overboard at a given meal and consume an extra 500-1,000 calories, there's always exercise (the calorie calculator in the link is quite helpful). An hour of moderate jogging can burn over 600 calories.

Here's to a healthy holiday season! Happy Thanksgiving--and sorry for not getting you guys this info before yesterday.

Hugh B. Brown - A Real American Hero

2008-11-25T11:15:00.000-05:00

Lately, I have been reading from a book titled "An Abundant Life: The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown." It's a collection of his various thoughts about his life in the LDS church. Elder Brown was called as an Apostle in 1958, and in a little over three years was called to be second counselor in the First Presidency of the Church. He later became first counselor. He died in 1975.

Elder Brown was an ardent Democrat, and even ran for office as such before being called as an Apostle. He was also a successful lawyer in the Salt Lake area. Being a lawyer-in-training myself, I can vouch for the notion that--of all professions--lawyers have the greatest training in matters of Constitutional concerns. Just as a doctor would be accepted as an expert on the human body, a lawyer is an expert on the Constitution and the law. Although there have been many prominent lawyers in the LDS church who have been notable Republicans, Elder Brown rose as high as any of them.

For those of you who aren't aware, I am a staunch Democrat. While attending BYU, I used to wonder if maybe I was just a centrist who felt like he had to identify himself as a Democrat in order to separate from the extreme right-wing views of the Provo community. I was told that I might actually discover I was a moderate Republican once I moved to Washington DC. Alas, I discovered the opposite to be true--the more I studied the law and the Constitution, the more I felt strongly aligned with the Democratic party.

I don't always follow party lines lock-step, however. I voted yes on California's recent Prop 8, although my church's position and my own moral beliefs weren't actually the deciding factor for my vote (but that is a subject for another blog, which will probably never be written). I respect the right of my church to speak out on issues that it considers important, but I wonder if sometimes conflicting messages are being sent to church members. It is one thing to declare political neutrality, but it is another thing to coincide statements about a particular social issue with an upcoming vote and election. It is fine to remind people about the church's beliefs on certain issues so that they live their lives in accordance with the gospel, but when you remind them so close to a vote, it can come across as an attempt to influence their vote in a particular way. That is just my opinion. The LDS church is an international church, with more non-American members than American. Many countries have decided to allow same-sex marriages during the last decade or so. But we never hear about the steps the church has taken to fight these moral issues in those countries. To me, this signifies that there is perhaps too much of a focus on American politics, and not enough focus on the underlying moral issues. Once again, this is just my opinion, but it is part of the reason why a lot of people roll their eyes when we speak about how the LDS church is politically neutral.

Elder Brown has a variety of passages in his memoirs that I find rather intriguing, and perhaps enlightening on matters related to the intersection of religion and politics. They are a refreshing balance to some of the all-too-often quoted political speeches, (not to be confused with religious discourses) given by other notable leaders, such as Ezra Taft Benson. Included below are some of my favorite sections.

"We Mormons have been blessed with much knowledge by revelation from God which, in some part, the world lacks. But there is an incomprehensibly greater part of truth yet to be discovered. Revealed insights should leave us stricken with the knowledge of how little we really know. It should never lead to an emotional arraogance based upon a false assumption that we somehow have all the answers--that we in fact have a corner on truth. For we do not."

--Quite often LDS church members assume that everything true in this life must come from our church. I have always thought this was a shallow way of thinking, because God loves and inspires all of his children, LDS or otherwise.

"I admire men and women who have developed the questing spirit, who are unafraid of new ideas as stepping stones to progress. We should, of course, respect the opinions of others, but we should also be unafraid to dissent--if we are informed. Thoughts and expressions compete in the marketplace of thought, and in that competition truth emerges triumphant. Only error fears freedom of expression.

"Both science and religion beget humility. Scientists and teachers of religion disagree among themselves on theological and other subjects. Even in our own church men and women take issue with one another and contend for their own interpretations. This free exchange of ideas is not to be deplored as long as men and women remain humble and teachable. Neither fear of consequence or any kind of coercion should ever be used to secure uniformity of thought in the church. People should express their problems and opinions and be unafraid to think without fear of ill consequences."

--I think one of the best things our church can do is to encourage, and not stifle, diversity of thought, particularly in matters of political concern. Greater diversity of thought means greater capacity for the church--as a whole--to receive more revealed truth. God can only reveal unto us those things we are ready to receive.

"Another of the chief problems the brethren have to confront is what action, if any, should be taken on political questions that arise from time to time. It has been definitely established that this is a two-party church, that membership in either party does not affect one's standing in the church. For the church to take a position on a political issue is a dangerous thing because of the fact that we sustain the two-party system. I think there has been and is now too much of a tendency to cater to the wishes and decisions of one party as against the other. This must be changed.

"The degree of one's aversion to Communism, for example, may not always be measured by the noise he or she makes in going about and calling everyone a communist who disagrees with his or her personal political bias. To accuse unjustifiably those who hold office of being soft on Communism is to undermine our form of government. Chapels and meeting houses should never be made available to those who seek political advantage or financial gain under the guise of fighting Communism. We must beware of groups which attack the integrity and impugn the motives of some of our greatest patriots. None of us should ever be deceived into accepting un-American and un-democratic philosophies because they bear some anti-Communist banners."

--Oh, snap! Elder Brown is calling out the former Secretary of Agriculture on this one! But seriously, think about our current political climate and the fuss that is made about the candidates' positions on terrorism. Do you really think any of them consider it an unimportant issue? (And for those of you who said yes, please pull your head out of the sand. Thank you.)

"With respect to people feeling that whatever the brethren say is gospel, this tends to undermine the proposition of freedom of speech and thought. As members of the church we are bound to sustain and support the brethren in the positions they occupy so long as their conduct entitles them to that. But we also have only to defend those doctrines of the church contained in the four standard works--the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. Anyting beyond that by anyone is his or her own opinion and not scripture. Although there are certain statements that whatever the brethren say becomes the word of God, this is a dangerous practice to apply to all leaders and all cases. The only way I know of by which the teachings of any person or group may become binding upon the church is if the teachings have been reviewed by all the brethren, sumitted to the highest councils of the church, and then approved by the whole body of the church."

--This one touches on one of my biggest pet-peeves in the church. There is a pathway for something to become official church doctrine. The mere fact that someone publicly says something, no matter how important that person is, does not make it the binding will of the Lord, unless it has gone through the process described above. This is why I do not feel the slightest bit guilty drinking Coca-Cola, watching TV, eating meat in times of plenty, speaking in "tu" as a missionary in Spain, and kissing before marriage. And voting democrat. (Although I might feel guilty if I did all of the above at the same time.)

"If I go to a stake and find a stake president who does not use his counselors but who insists on having his own way in everything and if I can not get him to reform, I release him, because the whole genius of Mormonism is cooperative action. Every man in a position of trust and authority in the church should treat his position with great care and realize that he is, after all, simply an agent--one of many--and that his personal conduct should warrant the same kind of disciplinary action that would be imposed on those working under him."

--I included this one for a friend of mine, who has recently had trouble working with an overbearing committee leader at church. Keep voicing your opinion, even if your leader shoots you down every time and insists on doing things her own way.

And please, all of my readers, find a copy of Hugh B. Browns memoirs and read it. It will really help to balance your religious education, and perhaps open up new avenues of thought and revelation for you.

My Poor Car

2008-11-23T16:10:00.000-05:00

My car died.

I think it's the battery, because I've driven this thing over 70K miles (it's at 126K right now), and never changed the battery. I've also never replaced the headlights, which have grown progressively dim over the last few years. Headlights, unlike normal indoor light bulbs, don't just stop working suddenly. They slowly die. Additionally, my car has been getting extremely sluggish lately, and there is a ticking sound whenever I turn on the fan/air. Basically, my car is on it's last leg. I have to call a tow truck tomorrow morning and have it taken in to the shop. Hopefully, considering that it will likely be just a hodge-podge of low level repairs and maintenance, I can drive out of there less than $500 poorer. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Me and my car have had some good times over the years. There were countless trips from SoCal to Utah, a trip to Sac-town, and even a final trek across North America in 3.5 days. Not to mention the three transmissions I've had. We have a love/hate relationship. But it's more love than hate. I love that there is tons of room in the back seat (even though I'm never back there). I love that there are hardly any blind spots. I love that the steering is quite smooth. I love that it was considered one of the safest cars of its year ('97). I love the massive trunk space. I love the roomy front area by the driver's seat. I love my little flip console and cup holders. I love that I can get up to at least 110 mph (uhhh....not that I've done that....that I recall...). And I love the memories. I've driven a number of rental cars as of late, and none of them had me as satisfied as the Sable.

But I hate that my transmissions blow out frequently. I hate that it only gets about 20 mpg/city. I hate that it takes a good 2 minutes before either the AC or the heat kick in. I hate that it has a horrible turning radius, especially when trying to fit into tight parking spots. I hate that the tape deck is completely destroyed (although I can only blame myself for that). I hate that I get very poor acceleration in low gears or going uphill. I hate that birds seem to think it's an especially attractive target (for you-know-what).

By and large, it was probably one of the best purchases I've ever made. With the possible exception of my electric guitar, although that's a subject for a different blog. Someday I'll post pictures of both of them. But not today. Let's just hope that my good friends at the auto-shop can work their magic and get me rolling again. I've been a pedestrian for the last week, and it's just not the lifestyle for me. That's why I moved out of the city and into the suburbs.

I may purchase a new car soon. And by that, I mean a newer used car. Hopefully in the $6500-10,000 range. Something with decent gas mileage and not too cramped. Any recommendations?