So, let the useless political warfare begin...

The South Dakota Abortion ban has spawned arguments and stoked the fires on both sides:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060324/pl_nm/rights_abortion_dc

You can read my original comments about the ban here.

And so both extremes of the argument puff their chests and sharpen their sticks.

Can't there be a logical middle that does not promote sexual irresponsibility and promiscuity, yet preserves the rights to health and virtue?

I went skiing at Alta last Saturday. Alta had just finished getting 17" of fresh brand new Utah signature fluffy white powder, on top of the 8 inches prior to that, on top of the 160" base they already had. It was a banner ski day, I actually choked one time on some powder that flew up in my face while I was swooshing down a big steep barely tracked hill! I met a guy from New England (based on his unmistakable accent) who was about 50, he said he had skiied only 2 days like that his entire life. I thought to myself, "Ha, ha you poor sap, living on the East Coast! I had a dozen or more days like this before I was even 18 years old!"

Not that I think everybody on the East Coast should move out here, I'm just glad I don't live out there in that crowded rat experiment of Metropolis.

By the way, Alta has a bunch of new high speed quad lifts that cut their normal long lift lines down to about 25% of what they used to be, there is a new mid-mountain shelter that is really nice and serves the usual ski-resort food (dry burgers, dry chicken sandwiches, chili, soup, and plenty of french fries). Plus, the resort's ban against slowboarders, I mean snowdorkers, I mean... well, you get the idea, leaves the snow in excellent condition for much longer periods of time (nobody squeegeeing the soft snow off the hardpack as they skid down the hill sideways), and there were no random large packs of knuckledraggers camped out LAYING around so you can't see them behind knolls etc. Not that I spent a lot of time on the groomed runs anyway, but I do find it particularly irritating when I am trying to do a speed run and I come upon 3-4 groups of 7-10 people just lounging about in the middle of the run.

Marshmallow Gun

Last year at Lake Powell, I was in charge of the "theme" which means I come up with the general flow of activities OTHER than the obvious ones generally available at Lake Powell. I decided to do "Superfriends" and held a couple of events that I feel were very successful in their purpose (amusement and diversion). But the one I shall speak of today, is the captured weapons shipment from the Legion of Doom, the marshmallow guns. They have multiple supreme qualities that make them perfect for large outdoor activities:

• For about $20, you can buy enough materials to make 10 weapons including ammunition.
• Each weapon kit (including ammunition) fits in a single 1 gallon ziploc bag
• The ammunition is biodegradable
• The "interest" factor, crosses multiple generations, encompassing everybody from 3 yrs old up to grandpa types
• Injury is all but impossible (licking the marshmallows prior to loading should be prohibited prior to beginning, though not injurious, it can hurt)
• After everyone tires of the game, they all have a cheap but very unlikely to be thrown away takeaway
• The weapon re-disassembles easily and fits back into the 1 gallon ziploc bag

The list goes on...

Range: 40 feet

So here's the instructions:

Materials required (per weapon): 2x 1/2" PVC "T" fittings, 2x 1/2" 90 degree PVC "elbow" fittings, 2x 1/2" PVC end cap, Approximately 36" 1/2" PVC pipe, if kitting is desired: 1x gal ziploc bag, 1x 1 quart ziploc bag, 1/4x bag of small marshmallows (1 bag will outfit 4 guns quite well).

Preparation: Cut the 1/2" pipe as shown into: 1x 12" long, 1x 6" long, 5x 3" long. You may be able to get someone to cut these for you at the hardware store where you buy the materials, if they aren't busy and you aren't making too many. But if you are going to be cutting them yourself, plan on having something handy to remove the burrs that any standard sawing method will produce. Sand paper works good for the outer diameter, an exact-o knife or smaller fingers than I have works good for the inner diameter. YOU MUST REMOVE THE BURRS, OR MARSHMALLOWS MAY GET CAUGHT UP INSIDE THE WEAPON, CAUSING IT TO MISFIRE AND GET ALL GUNKED UP! Test the assembly to make sure you have done it correctly, the pieces will simply press together according to the photo above. (Yes, the gun will function in a simplified state, in fact all you really need is one long straight pipe, however the geometry presented here does in fact act as a series of compression chambers, boosting exit velocity by nearly double, compared to just a straight tube.

Execution: Place all the pieces and the baggie of ammunition in the large bag, if this is intended to be a surprise activity, you may want to conceal each kit in another opaque container, such as a paper grocery bag. Include a copy of the assembly diagram. Give everybody a kit and say "GO". For advanced puzzle solvers and adults, you may shake it up a bit and omit the assembly diagram and see what you get...you can also choose to either tell them or not tell them what it is supposed to turn into, make it a race, see how long it takes for the first person to start shooting other people, then see how long it takes for everyone else to get the idea and reconfigure their PVC sculpture into a weapon as well.

I went to Yahoo.com, typed in "show me something cool" and got this:
http://www.neave.com/imagination/

Make sure you have Java enabled and the latest Macrmedia Flash Player installed (if you don't, the above website will be very boring, but it will also have links to fix whichever of these deficiencies you have.

Nice hair dude! Some of you knew me in high school, I used to carry on a tradition called Wild Hair Thursday. Essentially, I just did my hair in multitudes of strange configurations, including The Rats Nest, Pee Wee Herman, Alfalfa (from The Little Rascals), and so forth, every Thursday. I never could decide exactly what the point was, mostly because it was fun and well, it isn't necessary to permanently disfigure your self to be different. I was rummaging through some old pictures and found one of the hair, hope you enjoy this as much as I did...

Say "NO" to condiment control! This is one of those irritating little problems that will never get any attention, no marching crowds, no picket lines, no Association for Free Distribution of Condiments at Fast Food Restaurants (AFDCFFR). But the problem exists and is disrupting milllions of lives every day. Some of the more stringent offenders in my path have been McDonald's, Carl's Junior, and Burger King. These are the restaurants (and not all franchises are guilty) which hide the condiments behind the counter, forcing you to wait in line (again) to ask for ketchup, etc. Ruminate on your own experiences and reflect whether or not the places which have allowed free access to the condiments (the best examples include Taco Bell, Apollo Burger, and Arby's) have not provided a more enjoyable culinary experience. I think you will discover I am right.

I propose therefore that whenever you discover one of these condiment hording establishments, that you vote with your dollar and refuse them your patronage, or at least give them a stern reprimand when you ask for the condiments at the counter.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Parenting...that is the name that my wife and I have given our philosophy and strategy for raising healthy, happy, obedient, resilient, imaginitive, etc. children. The name itself comes from the practice of serving chocolate chip cookies to the kids, and this theory really only works if you time it just right so that the cookies are coming out of the oven just as the kids are coming home from school. The real messages behind this action are that 1) Mom is home and waiting for the kids to get home; 2) Mom cares about the kids and shows it by demonstrating an act of love (the chocolate chip cookies are not integral to the theory, but a comforting act of love IS); 3) Mom is not so busy that the children's lives are unimportant by comparison; 4) Mom is happy in her role as "mom" and is fully complicit in the perpetuation of the "traditional" family role. These messages, we believe, go miles for establishing an important relationship with the children which will form that "traditional" deep trust all families should enjoy. That relationship is the foundation for all things that may come later, it allows further building and fortification of principles and expectations. If a parent has failed to develop this foundation, they have no right to ask their children to do anything, as they themselves have failed to comply with their end of the Parent-Child bargain.

Has anyone else noticed that all the candy bar commercials have been featuring big fat slobs lately? Just what exactly is that supposed to entice me to believe about the product?

Wise men have known for decades that spending money on advertising has a dramatic effect on the thoughts and buying habits of those who are exposed to that advertising, and denying this fact with respect to ANY kind of advertising is just foolish and naive.

That said, just whose minds exactly are advertisers trying to change? Most commercials I see on TV offend me beyond reason because they infer that I (the unsuspecting dolt at the receiving end of the transmission) will absorb any amount of ludicrousness or at least internalize it in my decision making process (believing or not believing the content is irrelevant, what matters is that it affects your memory an thought processes, which in turn convinces you to buy the product you have the most exposure to, when that buying decision arises), and that the actual content of the commercial is not as important as how absurd it is. The complaint I have against this tactic is that there may be legitimately superior products out there, but the sellers are incapable of telling you how or why because it must be assumed that what is said on a TV commercial will be met with great skepticism, so they have no choice but to be vague, illicit, and disturbing. I have even seen commercials wherein I had no idea which product or company to be outraged at, because the subject ofthe advertisment was so eclipsed by extraneous sensationalism.

It's time for advertising to stop being a thrill ride, and start being a product introduction.

Extremism seems to be the new tool of Satan, around the world and right here in America. I read the headline on Reuter's that South Dakota had banned most abortions and actually thought that things might be looking up, but then you read deeper:

BAN COVERS CASES OF RAPE, INCEST
The law bans abortion in almost all cases, punishing doctors who perform one with five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. It bans abortion even in cases where a woman is pregnant as a result of rape or incest, or if giving birth would damage the health of the mother.
It creates a narrow exemption in cases in which a physician's effort to save a pregnant woman's life results in the accidental death or injury of her fetus.

This is a catastrophe! A fine example of mixing some good with some evil to make the entire concoction an innocuous seeming poison. The killing of innocent babies is really bad, but the taking of woman's virtue is worse, and this law flatly disallows any rectification of that original destruction of innocence. Specifically, rape and incest are among the vilest of crimes, they remove the innocence and virtue of the victim, and though the past cannot be undone, the ability of a woman to abort a pregnancy resulting from those vile crimes, at least gives her a chance to make it so the crime has no physical repercussions to her. The people of South Dakota have taken away even that last bastion of hope for an already severely disparaged woman. I for one, as a husband and father, would utterly refuse to care for a child that was the result of a rape crime where my wife was the victim. What if the psychological defect that allowed the perpetrator to commit the crime is a genetic disorder? What if it magnifies itself in the next generation? It is our responsibility to society to prevent such ilk from entering our society.

Furthermore, if my wife were to die during the birth of a child, that child, and all the others we already have, would undeniably have greatly disadvantaged lives, with no mother and a severely embittered father. Excluding the ability to make a choice between the life of the mother and the life of the stranger (the baby), is a mistake that will only lead to real suffering.

Let me be clear, I am generically opposed to abortion at any stage of pregnancy. However, I believe (and the only religion on the planet to be led by a current Prophet of God agrees with me, see excerpt below) that exceptions must be made in cases of rape, incest, and mortal peril to the mother. I am convinced that the exclusion of these exceptions is just another means that Satan will use to cause as much suffering to the human race as possible.

“Every woman has, within the limits of nature, the right to choose what will or will not happen to her body. Every woman has, at the same time, the responsibility for the way she uses her body. If by her choice she behaves in such a way that a human fetus is conceived, she has not only the right to but also the responsibility for that fetus. If it is an unwanted pregnancy, she is not justified in ending it with the claim that it interferes with her right to choose. She herself chose what would happen to her body by risking pregnancy. She had her choice. If she has no better reason, her conscience should tell her that abortion would be a highly irresponsible choice.
“What constitutes a good reason? Since a human fetus has intrinsic and infinite human value, the only good reason for an abortion would be the violation or deprivation of or the threat to the woman’s right to choose what will or will not happen to her body. Social, educational, financial, and personal considerations alone do not outweigh the value of the life that is in the fetus. These considerations by themselves may properly lead to the decision to place the baby for adoption after its birth, but not to end its existence in utero.

“The woman’s right to choose what will or will not happen to her body is obviously violated by rape or incest. When conception results in such a case, the woman has the moral as well as the legal right to an abortion because the condition of pregnancy is the result of someone else’s irresponsibility, not hers. She does not have to take responsibility for it. To force her by law to carry the fetus to term would be a further violation of her right. She also has the right to refuse an abortion. This would give her the right to the fetus and also the responsibility for it. She could later relinquish this right and this responsibility through the process of placing the baby for adoption after it is born. Whichever way is a responsible choice.”

The man who wrote those words also applied the same reasoning to the other exceptions allowed by our doctrine—life of the mother and a baby that will not survive birth.
-Dallin H. Oaks, “Weightier Matters,” Ensign, Jan. 2001, 13

There is something really enlivening about flying over the handlebars of a bicycle and using the local rocks and your shoulder as an energy dissipation system to shunt off that 5500 Joules of kinetic energy I was pushing around. I went to Moab, UT last weekend and rode the famous Slickrock Trail (again, I have rode that trail about a dozen or more times). And I never grow tired of it, if the trail itself gets boring, you can always just explore the multitudes of whoops and whorls that have been petrified in sand stone for mountain bikers to play on. Moab is like my own personal Disneyland, and instead of $50/person to wait an hour in each line for a 3.5 minute thrill...you can pay a maximum (you could actually go free if you really wanted to) of $6/vehicle for 3 days to not wait in any lines and get 3.5-4 HOURS of thrill PER RIDE. The Porcupine Rim Trail is of course lots of fun if you can set up a shuttle (who wants to ride up 26 miles?!). Gemini Bridges USED to be fun, but they graded the whole damn trail so cadillacs and fiats could drive up to the bridges, so that really sucks beyond measure, who voted to spend money on that?! I hope they drove their stupid Lincoln up there then fell off and 1000 feet down into the canyon.

Does anyone else know any really exciting BIKE trails in Moab? Preferably something like Slickrock that loops back around and has some swoopy bobsled style terrain.

The University of Virginia Sociology Department has recently completed and published a study outlining the "most important" factors of marital happiness, you can can read the entire report.

But I just wanted to include the summary bullets here, my comments are in red:

1. The most important determinant of women’s marital happiness is the emotional engagement of their husbands. Most research on American marriages has focused on the division of housework and paid work — who does what inside and outside the home. The new study, by contrast, shows wives care most about how affectionate and understanding their husbands are, and how much quality time they spend with their husbands. Emotional engagement comes from commitment (see commitment point below). But I have heard my wife express multitudes of times how much she loves the fact that I give her plenty of emotional support and feedback, making me "the best husband in the world" in her words.
   
2. Wilcox and Nock found that women are happiest in their marriages when their husbands earn 68 percent or more of the couple’s income. Likewise, women who do not work outside the home report happier marriages, and spend more quality time with their husbands. Let's pretend for example that we believe in evolution of humankind, males and females would have started out pretty much physically the same, or similar statures, like most cats, but for whatever reason, the males were more adventurous, they liked going out and finding things to kill to eat, they enjoyed the adrenaline, the excitement, the danger of the hunt and exploration was what brought satisfaction to the male psyche. After a few generations, it is not difficult to understand why our current physical statures emerged, the large, bulky musculature of males provided speed and power for killing food, the psychological ability to focus on a single issue and pursue it to finality, perfect for spotting a prey candidate and shutting out all other distractions and bringing down the meat. The soft, smooth, curvy features of females more adapted to bearing & nurturing children and engaging in less adventurous activities such as tending the fire & processing the daily meals, the psychological ability to scan a field and determine the best places to gather berries, grains, and other plant-based foods. Even if you don't believe in evolution, these same concepts are true, the only difference is that humankind appeared on earth with these physical and phsycological traits already fully intact, and the "traditional" family roles were created naturally as humans experienced the world around them. Finally, women who have more traditional attitudes — who believe, for instance, that women should take the lead in taking care of the home and family, and that men should take the lead in earning — are happier in their marriages, report more affection and understanding from their husbands, and spend more quality time with their husbands. The physical results of the evolution scenario are no longer necessary, but the original psychology that drove them into existence still exists, men prefer adventure and conquer, and are very good at pursuing individual tasks to completion; women prefer security, calm home-building activities and are exceptional at scanning the big picture and seeing the important pieces inside it.
   
3. Commitment also matters. Women who share with their husbands a strong commitment to lifelong marriage — who, for instance, think that marriage is a “lifetime relationship and should never be ended except under extreme circumstances” — are much more likely to report that they are happy in their marriages, and that they are happy with the affection and understanding they receive from their husbands, compared to women who do not have such a commitment to marriage. Shared commitment seems to generate mutual trust and higher levels of emotional investment on the part of husbands — both factors which promote marital happiness among women. Affection, closeness, and a strong sense of "team spirit" are the natural results of commitment. Take a company of soldiers for example, if they commit to each other (the whole company), they form a bond through hard work, loss, and close calls that remains unbroken even after decades of little or no contact. Hopefully, a family commitment never has to go through life threatening challenges, but as a husband-wife team work together to overcome the natural decay of the universe and build their life together using each other's strengths, that same bond will form.
   
4. Fairness does matter in shaping the quality and character of women’s marriages. Married women are happier in their marriages when they think housework is divided fairly and they perceive their marriage to be equitable. They also spend more quality time with their husbands when they think housework is divided fairly. But their perceptions of fairness in this area are not consistently related to a 50-50 division of housework. Almost two-thirds of married women report that they are happy with the division of housework; but most of these women also do the majority of chores around the home. Either because they have a traditional mindset or because they think their husband is making important contributions as a provider or as a father, they view an unequal division of chores around the home as fair. It is important to emphasize that "fairly" and "equally" are not the same thing in this case. Woman are not lazy, they do not wish to do exactly half of all the housework, then lie around waiting for the husband to come home from work and do his half. Women, like men, are happiest when they are anxiously engaged in doing good things. How much a woman is able to accomplish each day varies widely from woman to woman and is affected heavily by circumstances. Again, the traditional roles of housework have proven to me and my wife to be a conduit of happiness, the wife generally does the cleaning, cooking, and laundry because her threshold or minimum expectations for those are much higher than the husbands, likewise the man's ability to do "handyman" type work and yard work exceeds that of the woman's because of his threshold for the results. However, my wife and I have found that these roles do not imply exclusivity either, if I am lying around and there is some laundry to be done, I help out, and if there is handy-work or lawn care to be done and my wife has extra time, she helps me. We help each other at every opportunity, there is no "that's not my job" that is garbage, true unity in marriage comes from serving each other, and doing each other's job when possible, is the easiest and most effective form of service in the world.