A Curious Instrument

This is an essay I wrote a while back. The topic was divisive at the time (to say the least) and every time I bring it up, I usually lose a portion of my readers. The times since I wrote this have become far stranger and the terms seem even more archaic than they were five years ago. It is probably about time to alienate some folks. I just didn't want to do it too early and have readers think that this is my subject for the whole website . It is something I am happy to be passionate about, but certainly not the only thing. I wanted to get it said and frankly out of the way at this point, to reduce confusion about how I feel about such things. For those of you that will walk away, I accept your strident emotional and philosophical immaturity... Let's begin with the concept of "ideal" and how that relates to marriage, something most of us will involve ourselves in for most of our lives, if we have a desire to obtain a greater portion of joy and happiness in our lives...

"Cleave to your wife and no other." There is no better thing a man can do for his children than to devote himself to the love and care for their mother. Becoming a father is pathetically easy - irresponsible boys become such through mindless copulation. Being a good husband is a much heavier commitment - you have to get some girl to actually agree to this, over and over again, for the long term. It is easy to get the "love" of your dependent children - they have little choice in the matter. Does the young child easily turn their back on the hand that provides bed and bread? Mothering alone tend toward over-protection and smothering. Fathers alone tend toward distance and premature independence. The best results comes from a combination of both, applied as mother begins and father finishes. Being a good father requires devotion first to a sustaining love of your wife and then dedication to the preparation of your children for their future roles as husbands and ...

I am doing some adjunct teaching this year and I find myself with mixed feelings about it. I find myself falling into the trap of being an English teacher, as all of the work is written. I wrote this to the students today and I thought it might be interesting to others as well. As you are now working on your term papers, I feel the need to say a few things about research, source material, and doing things "right". Some of you seem to be opening up Google, typing in the title of your "research" and basically restating the "click-bait" pablum that passes for technology "journalism". These should not be passed off as business-grade research in anything to which you attach your name. I hope you have a little more regard for your productive output and how you look professionally. Internet "Best of...", "Ten Ways..", or "Twelve Tips..." articles, if read at all, should be the absolute beginning of your research effo...

Culturally, most Americans have a problem with the indolent - those who choose to live off the money made by others. These people are economically un-productive. I suppose these folks could say that they were born lazy and that they cannot be asked to behave differently, but I think the bulk of people in a vibrant culture rightly reject this. As societies, we expect people to strive to economically support themselves and contribute to the support of those who authentically cannot do so. Naturally, we think poorly of those who can do this but choose not to do so. We have not been replacing ourselves in most of the "Western" or "developed" world for a few decades now. North America continues to gain population through immigration, both legal and illegal. The tide of immigrants to Europe as refugees is the only way they keep their vaunted social programs viable, though you won't catch many politicians saying so. If it were up to native-born Westerners to keep our...

I wrote a few posts a few years back regarding the whole concept of hypochondriac profiteering (aka preventative medical care). It is a compelling subject simply because everyone has a story to tell about their own shellacking by the health industry. Allow me to offer up a personal example. Ever since we got married (nearly twenty fours years ago these days), my endurant wife has lived with the fear of my imminent death. Apparently, when I go to sleep, I stop breathing. I go for upwards of two minutes where my tongue seems to fall back into my air passage, closing it off, and it seems to take something of an act of Congress for mind and body to jar me awake enough to clear the blockage and get some oxygen back in the lungs. Come to find out that this is an incredibly common problem and the official name for it is "sleep apnea". My wife tells me that she got scared of my dying on our wedding night and has remained scared ever since, until she finally convinced me to ...

Children Thrive Best Under a Loving, Stable, and Devoted Marriage between their Natural Parents The lack of natural marriage, childbearing, and family-building is a root cause of a majority of societal ills. Our prisons are bursting with the products of broken homes who never accomplished proper human development. One cause of such problems is the practice of putting the caring for one's children ahead of devotion for one's spouse. This misplaced centrality leads to selfish divorces, un-launched and mal-developed adult children, and divided loyalties that retard everyone's needed progression. Societies cannot survive with so many under-developed and broken people as "respected" members. The relationship between a husband and wife is the supreme, enduring relationship as sanctioned and dictated by God himself. It is meant to last a lifetime and beyond. The marriage covenant is designed to complete men and women, drawing upon the innate talents and abilities of ...

As I promised in other blog posts about the ultimate Telestial , Terrestrial , or Celestial rewards that are available after Judgement , I am now going to provide my perspective on the time that we will spend between death and the judgement. As always, these are my thoughts and do not necessarily reflect the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints , where I spend my Sundays. Mormons call this time the "Spirit World", which is kinda strange since it describes more of a condition than a place. Christians have several names for it: "Heaven", "Hell", "Paradise", "Prison", "Limbo", "Purgatory". There are likely other names as well and scholars of the Judeo-Christian Bible use them all copiously to try to describe what is going to happen after we die. There is indeed a time between death and Judgement. How long this time lasts is quite dependent on the way you lived your life. I have come to call it...