Cerebrate Good Times

I used to watch football a lot when I was in high school. (This is American football I'm talking about, of course.) I enjoyed the strategy and the brute force involved. I loved the Miami Dolphins and Dan Marino, who of course never won a Superbowl. (This was in line with my Utah Jazz fandom and the Stockton/Malone finals teams that could never get past Michael Jordan.) After my mission I never managed to get back into it. I went to BYU and occasionally watched their games, but it never became rabid fandom. These day I really dislike football. I hate what it does the the players' health, I hate the culture of violence and the enmity between rival teams, and I hate that we are so focused on it rather than dealing with more important things in our country (notwithstanding the protests during the national anthem, which I wholeheartedly support) . The whole idea of putting your team's flag in your yard or whatever is just weird to me. I mean, I like pasta, but I don't put ...

I don't normally get political on here, for three reasons. 1. It's boring. 2. I lack the patience to truly think through all the nuances of a well-reasoned debate. 3. I'm not sure anyone was ever convinced to change their views based on something presented by another person. (Prove me wrong!) But here we go. I'll try to keep it brief. My political background: I grew up in a white, Republican household in Utah. Not surprisingly, I inherited values considered conservative: traditional families, limiting governmental power, all that. My first job out of college was working with a company that lists strongly to the Tea Party side of things. When Obama was elected I genuinely thought it was a disaster. Then I left the company and started having more conversations with people. And I'm confused about these two ideas. 1. Conservatives in this country tend to identify themselves as  Christian. 2. They don't espouse the ideals that I think Jesus himself would a...

I have an intense dislike of negative news stories. I usually skim the headlines in the morning, so I’m not  wholly ignorant of what’s going on in the world, but I don't read articles discussing situations like infanticide. But most people seem to find them normal, valid conversation topics, and I imagine a smaller portion of that group is fascinated by the details (probably the same people who watch shows like Hoarders). This has just come up for me in the last few years, since I became a parent, so I imagine it has something to do with that. What I want to know is whether it’s unhealthy of me or not. I’m not trying to pretend these things don’t exist. I am certainly aware of the terrible things happening in the world, and our responsibility as individuals to make a difference where we can, but I see no value in discussing the specifics of X person doing Y thing to someone, especially when a child is suffering. It won’t make me a better person to hear it, and I doubt it will gi...

I recently had an idea for a website for parents. The idea behind it is that there are all kinds of things going on with kids that parents might not have a clue even exist, so how could they ask their kids about them? So my friend Todd helped me set up the site www.kidsavvy.org to serve this purpose. It's still under construction, and there isn't much content on there yet, but we hope to expand quickly. I'd appreciate it if you'd pass the word along to parents so we can start to collect more information that may be helpful.

My friend Todd sent me a link to an article about our behavior being influenced by evolutionary factors, such as why men are attracted to women who have certain characteristics. I also saw a t.v. program the other day which reported research that determined certain genes which cause obesity. According to this research, people have a weight range determined by certain genes, and it would be nearly impossible to maintain a weight outside of that range. I don’t dispute the facts presented by this kind of research. It certainly seems likely that many aspects of behavior and appearance are predetermined. Or, rather, there is a predisposition to look and act a certain way. What is important is the gap between potentiality and reality. The thing that separates us from the animals is not our ability to use tools or speak French. It’s our ability to reason. (By the way, there is also research purporting to prove that free will does not exist, but we rationalize our actions after the fact. T...

We are all aware that some "other people" are occasionally scammed successfully by someone over the internet. Fortunately, most people are now jaded enough to smell spam and phishing from a mile away. There is, however, another aspect to internet security that I think we should pay more attention to. Many people I know post photos on various websites. The idea is to enable friends and family members to download them and print or develop them. I posted a couple photos on one of those sites before realizing that I don't want any bozo off the street to see my personal pics. Plus, different friends use different sites for the same purpose, so eventually you might have to use half a dozen such sites. This applies to more than family pictures. How many websites have you purchased items from using a credit card? We commonly use sites such as Ebay and Amazon, but I have made purchases from a number of other online stores. They not only have my credit card number, but my address ...

Last night PBS aired the first half of the documentary called "The Mormons." I was looking forward to an even-handed representation of the Church's doctrines and history. What I saw instead was a host of people, many of whom were not LDS or who have left the Church, telling what they thought was wrong with it. There were numerous reported "facts" which were not supported by evidence from any primary source, such as the idea that Joseph Smith spent an inordinate amount of time hunting for treasure. Of the two hours, the entire second hour was spent discussing the Mountain Meadow Massacre and polygamy. To their credit, there were a few statements by actual church authorities. Specifically, there was video shown of a General Conference address by President Hinckley stating in no uncertian terms that we do not practice polygamy. There was also a brief statement by Elder Oaks discussing the Mountian Meadow Massacre. The bulk of the interviews shown, however, were of ...

Obviously the two-party system has some serious problems. No wonder it's been boiling down to a "lesser of two evils" mentality when it comes time to vote. Political parties are just a convenient way of keeping ourselves from having to think or actually study the issues. So here's my idea of how the preidential campaign would be conducted. Anyone is allowed to run and is given a certain allotment of money with which to campaign. They must detail every penny of the money that they spend and will be subject to audits. If anyone is found guilty of misappropriation, they will be disqualified and subject to prosecution. Following preliminary campaigning for a set period of time, maybe 6 months or so, an independently-conducted poll (whose members must remain unknown to the candidates) will determine the top 5 candidates, who are then given an additional sum of money and subjected again to the same restrictions. Current technology is sufficient to allow electronic voting an...

I recently joined an online community (helium.com) which allows the members to submit articles on various subjects. It is possible to earn small (and I mean small) amounts of money based on the site sharing a portion of advertising dollars. The more people read my postings, the more money I get, at least in theory. Here is an article I just submitted about smoking, duplicated here for your reading enjoyment. The article title is "The Smoking Debate: Free Choice or Not." If you go to the site and search for that title you can see all the submitted articles. If you do a search for "Joel Hiller," you will see some of my articles (I'm not sure why they don't all appear; it may simply take several days). In theory, we have the right to choose what we will do to our bodies, whether it be piercing, smoking, or growing a mullet. Tobacco companies also have the right to make whatever products they want, provided they do not attempt to sell them to young people, whos...