To Try a New Sword on a Chance Wayfarer

Good Reads/Random Cool Sites (1/18/2012)

2012-01-19T06:07:50-08:00

Ron Paul invokes Golden Rule, Republicans boo.
Romney straps worker to roof of campaign bus. (Why this is funny. And a pithy one-panel take on the same theme.)
"Dog whistling" is not done accidentally.
Rupert Murdoch meets the internet.
Murder is no longer one of the top 15 causes of death in America.
The Red Flags of Quackery.
The Mormon Church extols religious freedom while BYU expels students who convert from Mormonism.
Jerry Coyne deepens his discussion of the (non)existence of free will.
Google Translate whispers.
Vintage dinosaur art (I got this book back when I was around six years old. It was a favorite for a long time. My mom even made her own painting of one of the pictures [T. Rex vs. Triceratops] so I could hang it on my wall.)

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Return of the attack of the killer porns!

2012-01-17T12:47:00-08:00

The LDS (Mormon) church's attitude towards pornography worked well enough before the internet. Pornography was a Very Big Deal. It was Evil. It was also kind of rare and exotic. It took a certain amount of effort, and the risk of public exposure, to get it. You had to go somewhere and find it, and maybe someone you knew from church would see you buy that magazine or come out of that forbidden store. So porn was easy to avoid. It was easy for church members to feel set apart from "the filthy things of the world."

If Mormons did indulge, then the furtiveness, guilt, and shame that the church teaches would usually make them quickly throw away the porn. They'd feel sad and pray a lot, but since getting more porn required an effort, it was easy enough not to. "Repentance" was simple and easy.

But now porn is always available. If you have internet — if you live an ordinary life, in other words — porn is never more than a few seconds away. You can't throw your porn away anymore. There's always more. And, unless there's someone monitoring your computer use, there's little worry of getting caught. Those are important changes.

Because the furtiveness, guilt, and shame that the church teaches obviously prevents Mormons from casually enjoying porn, but it also prevents them from casually not enjoying it.

By that I mean that it's hard for Mormons to simply indulge once in awhile and feel a little guilty but not really worry about it. They've been taught that porn is a Very Big Deal and its Evil. So not only can they not think, "That was fun" and go on their way, they can't simply think "Oops!" and go on their way either.

Now they're faced with this Very Big Evil Deal, but they can't get away from it. Porn is always there waiting for them. And there's a whole culture of "porn addiction" surrounding them. There's no one there to tell them that it's actually pretty normal behavior, that pretty much everybody does it, and few people have a problem with it, so don't worry if you do it once in awhile. Everybody acts like it's a Horrible Sin and a Danger rather than a mild self-indulgence at worst, and no one believes that more than the poor wankers themselves.

And that's where some of them fall into a sort of porn death spiral. They feel guilty and ashamed, and what makes them feel a little better? Porn. But that makes them feel guilty and ashamed again. So they need more porn. More guilt and shame. More porn. A vicious circle results, and something very like addiction does occur.

And this is going to continue until the church finally comes to its senses and lightens up. I think the church's treatment of porn will eventually, after many years and a lot of suffering, come to resemble its treatment of youthful masturbation. It has to go from its current 1950s-Mark-E-Peterson-tie-your-hand-to-the-bedpost attitude to something more realistic. It has to treat porn the way it treats youthful masturbation: the church won't come out and say "Everybody does it, so its no big deal." But everybody does do it. So it's no big deal. That's how every sensible bishop treats it now. (I realize that there are probably plenty of not-sensible bishops out there, but the mainstream attitude now is that it's just not that big a deal.) The church has to realize that porn is no big deal either. Until it does, it's going to go on creating "porn addicts."

See also:
Attack of the killer porns!
Discussing potato chips with your son-in-law

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Good Reads/Random Cool Sites (1/16/2012)

2012-01-18T22:36:01-08:00

"Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did."

Everything that's wrong with American journalism summed up in one sentence: "I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about."

And a parody: Should Vanity Fair be a spelling vigilante?

How doctors die.

A medical study of the Haitian zombie.

More NCAA "justice."

Feel the Christian love.

When kangaroos attack.

A really nice photo essay/memoir involving Mormon missionaries.

Commercials are annoying.

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An actual internet conversation

2012-01-14T22:37:36-08:00

This actually happened.

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Earworm: Nellie the Elephant

2012-01-14T10:47:23-08:00

The only way to get rid of an earworm is to give it to someone else.

Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk
And said goodbye to the circus
Off she went with a trumpety-trump
Trump, trump, trump

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Thursday haiku: Checkout Girl 6

2012-01-12T05:00:00-08:00

After many months,
I see that she still works there.
And that I'm still old.

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Good Reads/Random Cool Sites (1/8/2012)

2012-01-08T19:06:49-08:00

An innocent man who was detained (and tortured, of course) at Guantánamo Bay for seven and a half years.

Another innocent man who was detained (and tortured, of course) at Guantánamo Bay for five years.

The evil of indefinite detention.

Why Americans don't care about civilians killed in its wars.

The myth of Japan's failure.

Trauma from leaving religion.

Salman Rushdie on his friend and defender Christopher Hitchens.

Yoga can be bad for you.

Oregon's football uniforms.

Cosplay in 1980.

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Posts I didn't write in 2011

2012-01-06T05:00:11-08:00

I actually start a lot of posts that I don't finish for one reason or another. Many of them I integrate with other, related, posts, but some I don't finish at all. These are some of their titles. If any of them sound interesting, maybe I'll finish them if you ask me nicely. ;)

Conversion and deconversion, part 1: conversion.
Conversion and deconversion, part 2: deconversion.
When Phoebe Cates was the sum of all that is desirable.
Religion and professional wrestling.
Connections, or, how it feels to be me.
Book review: The Girl Who Played with Fire.
I used to worry that too much critical thinking was bad for my kids.
How to fix America.
I really wanted to still like Joseph Smith.
If you have a racist friend...
The cruelty of Mormon monogamy.
Six years ago today, I realized that America is doomed.
What it was like to know God.
Book review: The Lew Archer mysteries.
My God, drunk or sober.
Return of the attack of the killer porns.
Book review: Red Sky at Morning.
"Why is that policeman so mean?"

Any of those sound like they're worth finishing?

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Good Reads/Random Cool Sites (1/5/2012) possibly NSFW/C/P

2012-01-05T21:52:52-08:00

(This post includes an image that may not be safe for work/children/prudes.)

Fourteen-year-old American citizen deported to Colombia.

"America’s Foreign Policy Community is now dropping the pro-freedom charade and talking openly (albeit euphemistically) about the need to oppose Arab democracy."

"[Ron] Paul is making one contribution to the foreign policy debate that could have enduring value. ...Paul routinely performs a simple thought experiment: He tries to imagine how the world looks to people other than Americans."

How psychopaths took over Wall Street.

Marvel lawyers argue IRL that mutants aren't human.

PayPal orders buyer to destroy vintage violin in order to receive a refund.

A heartwarming story of brotherly love.

The Banished Word list (does anyone still say "Thanks in advance"?)

What would you do with 250 copies of the Book of Mormon?

Question of the day: Is it objectification or is it art? Your answer will help me decide whether to buy this poster for my new house.)

Pink Floyd's "Back Catalogue"

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Thursday haiku: 21st century man

2012-01-05T05:00:04-08:00

Road rage seething, I
don't shoot the motherfucker,
I write poetry.

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The best of kuri 2011

2012-01-03T23:47:27-08:00

My favorite posts from 2011 include:

In which I discover infinite regress in a cake,

Discussing potato chips with your son-in-law,

Understanding Biblical parables: The Wheat and the Tares,

I, Nephi, zombie hunter,

Frodo Son of Drogo,

and

My greatest moment in sports.

On my blog during 2011, I also:

Explained why people can't help laughing when a Mormon says, "My underwear is sacred!"

Wrote some haiku,

Proposed a more reasonable approach to pornography for the Mormon Church,

Continued the Adventures of Leonard McCoy, Space Doctor, during which Bones, Kirk and Spock encountered Tony the Tiger and Tweety Bird,

Helped readers understand some Biblical parables,

Was comforted by Twitter after the Japanese earthquake,

Discussed some things that I liked about Mormon theology,

Considered what makes a person or a religion "decent,"

Was sexually tense,

Mourned an irrevocably damaged relationship,

Presented some favorite Bible quotes,

and

Pondered the mystery of... The White Tiger.

How was your year?

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Books I read during 2011

2012-01-05T09:34:05-08:00

These are the 85 books I read during 2011.

Ratings:
**** Highly recommended
*** Recommended
** Meh
* Don't bother

85. Graceling, Kristin Cashore ****

84. Enemy Lines I: Rebel Dream (Star Wars: The New Jedi Order), Aaron Allston **

83. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Steven Pinker ****

82. The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick ****

81. The Walking Dead, Vol. 13: Too Far Gone, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

80. The Walking Dead, Vol. 12: Life among Them, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

79. The Walking Dead, Vol. 11: Fear The Hunters, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

78. The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

77. The Walking Dead, Vol. 9: Here We Remain, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

76. The Walking Dead, Vol. 8: Made to Suffer, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

75. The Walking Dead, Vol. 7: The Calm Before, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

74. The Walking Dead, Vol. 6: This Sorrowful Life, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

73. The Walking Dead, Vol. 5: The Best Defense, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

72. The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories, Rudyard Kipling ***

71. Bossypants, Tina Fey ***

70. The Walking Dead, Vol. 4: The Heart's Desire, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

69. The Walking Dead, Vol. 3: Safety Behind Bars, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

68. The Walking Dead, Vol. 2: Miles Behind Us, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

67. The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye, Robert Kirkman, et al. ****

66. The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle ****

65. Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You A Better Friend to Your Pet, John Bradshaw ****

64. Life Itself: A Memoir, Roger Ebert ****

63. 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports, Kostya Kennedy **

62. Contagious, Scott Sigler ****

61. Infected, Scott Sigler ****

60. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand ****

59. The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman ****

58. The Subtle Knife, Philip Pullman ****

57. The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman ****

56. Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody ****

55. Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins ***

54. The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard ***

53. Slugging It Out in Japan: An American Major Leaguer in the Tokyo Outfield, Warren Cromartie with Robert Whiting ***

52. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens ****

51. A Dance with Dragons, George R. R. Martin ****

50. Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins ***

49. A Feast for Crows, George R. R. Martin ***

48. The Samurai Way of Baseball: The Impact of Ichiro and the New Wave from Japan, Robert Whiting ***

47. A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin ****

46. The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America, Hannah Nordhaus ***

45. The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear, Seth Mnookin ***

44. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan ****

43. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, F. Scott Fitzgerald, et al. ***

42. SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper, Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin ***

41. A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition, Ernest Hemingway ****

40. The Wolfling, Sterling North ****

39. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins ***

38. The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly ***

37. Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, Marcus Luttrell ***

36. A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin ****

35. A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin ****

34. Life, Keith Richards ****

33. The Help, Kathryn Stockett ****

32. An Exclusive Love, Johanna Adorján ****

31. Comeback, Richard Stark ****

30. Firebreak, Richard Stark ****

29. Lemons Never Lie, Richard Stark ***

28. All Things Wise and Wonderful, James Herriot ***

27. God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, Adam Nicolson ***

26. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson ****

25. The Science of Battlestar Galactica, Patrick Di Justo and Kevin Grazier ***

24. The Memory Chalet, Tony Judt, ****

23. Flashfire, Richard Stark ****

22. Backflash, Richard Stark ***

21. True Grit, Charles Portis ****

20. The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch, Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean ****

19. Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know, Alexandra Horowitz ***

18. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas ****

17. The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us, Sheril Kirshenbaum ***

16. Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1, Mark Twain ****

15. My Life As a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, Bonnie Nardi **

14. Joan Jett, Todd Oldham *** (review)

13. Ivanhoe, Walter Scott ****

12. Blindsided: Surviving a Grizzly Attack and Still Loving the Great Bear, Jim Cole with Tim Vandehey **

11. Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart ****

10. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, Atul Gawande ***

9. The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, Thomas Larson ***

8. Moon Knight, Vol. 1: The Bottom, Charlie Huston ***

7. The Elephant to Hollywood, Michael Caine ***

6. Sleepless, Charlie Huston ***

5. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann ****

4. My Dog Tulip, J. R. Ackerley ****

3. Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, Chelsea Handler ***

2. The Natural History of Unicorns, Chris Lavers ***

1. Children of Dune, Frank Herbert ****

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Good Reads/Random Cool Sites (1/1/2012)

2012-01-01T22:46:03-08:00

This is kind of eerie: "Above all, [Romney] looked like a President. Handsome, silver-haired, robust, masculine, smiling or stern, he seemed cast for the part by Hollywood's Central Casting. Correspondents who liked him called him 'Mr. Straight Arrow;' those whose flesh crawled at his pieties called him 'Mr. Square,' or worse... He would make a forthright statement one day, then, like a man making up his mind in public, contradict it or modify it on another." -- That's a description of George Romney, not Mitt, from 1969.

Alleged Yeti's finger undergoes DNA analysis.

Why there are fewer tornadoes on weekends.

Ebert ponders his mortality.

I don't like this fad: Has pubic hair in America gone extinct?

The Old Testament, the New Testament, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon as movies and fan fiction.

There's nothing on the internet that jerks won't spoil.

You can get a smart-phone controlled pilotless drone for under $300.

What Cee Lo should have sung.

I think there are people who would actually text back in that situation.

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Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T00:08:03-08:00

Happy New Year, users of the Gregorian calendar!

Happy 11th day after winter solstice, everyone else!

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Good Reads/Random Cool Sites (12/29/2011)

2011-12-29T23:02:38-08:00

Wall Street has destroyed the wonder that was America.

Israel's Rosa Parks.

Great Moments in Religion: Mitt Romney is a dangerous homosexualist, say Rabbis.

Great Moments in Religion 2: Rival priests attack each other with brooms while cleaning the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Great Moments in Religion 3: Saudis behead woman for witchcraft.

The fat trap.

Man who apparently hasn't been near a vagina since the day he was born really doesn't like them.

Spoiled people on Twitter who didn't get what they wanted for Christmas.

The internet can be a punishing place for douchebags, as one douchebag has found out.

Where did all the nothing go?

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Thursday haiku: machismo

2011-12-29T07:17:28-08:00

Easy in your big-ass
truck to flip off a Honda
Try it to my face

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The mystery of... The White Tiger

2011-12-28T22:59:57-08:00

I'm getting ready to move in about three weeks (because I'm buying a house; you'd know this if you friended me on Facebook), and I decided to go through my clothes and donate or throw away everything I don't want anymore.

Imagine my surprise when, digging through my closet, I found a shirt I didn't even remember owning. And not just any shirt. No this one is special. This one is... The White Tiger. (Note: whenever you see an ellipsis, pause dramatically so you can get the full effect of saying... The White Tiger.)

... The White Tiger

How did this shirt get into my closet? I don't know. I would remember it if I'd bought it. No one in my immediate family remembers it either. It's as if it crept into my closet on its own, stealthily, keeping to the shadows, so when I least expected it, it could spring out like... The White Tiger.

Of course, that's absurd. Even a shirt as awesome as... The White Tiger couldn't do that. (Or could it?) What I really think happened is that someone (maybe my Mom?) gave it to me years ago, and I, not recognizing its awesomeness at first glance, stuffed it in the back of the closet and forgot about it. And there it lurked, hidden in the shadows, imprisoned, lost to memory and even legend, until one day I delved too deep and released it, and it broke free like a Terror of the Ancient World, like a Balrog of Morgoth, like... The White Tiger.

My life hasn't been the same since I rediscovered this shirt. I wear it every day now. And I find myself moving with a new confidence. I stride through my day now with a look of fierce determination, as if I were a Big Cat prowling the rocky shore of a river, as if I were... The White Tiger.

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Good Reads/Random Cool Sites (12/26/2011)

2011-12-26T23:53:50-08:00

Navigating love and autism.

Kicked out at Christmas.

What could possibly go wrong? Police test riot laser that temporarily blinds people.

My summer at an Indian call center.

Ebert's best documentaries of 2011.

Christopher Hitches's "Bah, humbug."

What do Jews do on Christmas?

Why North Koreans cried for Kim Jong Il.

Negotiating Mormon identity -- in an airport.

JELL-O for salads!

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Trashenfreude

2011-12-26T18:33:26-08:00

I made up a new word today:

Trashenfreude (noun): The feeling of being virtuous that a suburban dweller experiences after trash day when he has put his trash cans away and notices that his neighbors haven't yet.

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Covers that you might not have known are covers: "Mack the Knife"

2011-12-03T23:43:20-08:00

"Mack the Knife/Die Moritat von Mackie Messer"

Familiar version: Bobby Darin (1959)
Original version: Bertolt Brecht (1929)
Bonus version: Sting (c. 1995?)

I was taught from a young age to dislike Bobby Darin's American version of "Mack the Knife." See, my mother was German, and she grew up with the original version, "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer." And she absolutely hated the American version.

It's not hard to understand, really. Mackie Messer, according to the original German song, is a terrible person. He murders numerous rich men for their money, stabs a woman to death, burns down a building with seven children and an old man inside, and rapes an "underage widow," But nobody can prove anything.

Mack the Knife, on the other hand, kills three men or so, but he's a charming kind of guy -- the women line up to date him, not to be murdered by him. And the song is so lively and up-tempo. As my mom used to say, Bobby Darin took all the darkness and menace out of what was originally a very dark and menacing song. But it was a number one hit for him.

So here's Darin, Bertolt Brecht, and, just for the hell of it, Sting (in German).

Bobby Darin

Bertold Brecht

Sting. (No idea when it's from, but from Sting's apparent age I'd guess some time in the '90s.) I threw this in just for fun. It's in the style of the original, not the American version. Sting's German sounds pretty good to me, but that's pretty much what I sound like when I try to speak it, so maybe we both suck.

Lots of times, the most familiar version of a song isn't the original version. I write about some of these "covers that you might not have known are covers" on occasional Saturdays.

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Good Reads/Random Cool Sites (12/1/2011)

2011-12-02T08:26:13-08:00

The middle class is the real job creator.

Insanity: six-year-old boy charged with felony sexual assault for playing doctor with 5-year-old girl.

Alabama to revise ~~anti-Mexican law~~ immigration law after it accidentally snares rich white guy.

The cognitive benefits of chewing gum.

Record companies to abandon CD format by the end of 2012?

It's hard out there for a non-Mormon at BYU.

The 1948 Buick Streamliner.

Texts from a 17-year-old white boy who thinks he's a Crip.

What people really learn from group projects.

A thrilling tale of forbidden love.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T09:53:06-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans and resident aliens!

Happy Thursday, everyone else on this side of the International Dateline!

Happy Friday, the rest of you lot!

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Good Reads/Random Cool Sites (11/21/2011)

2011-11-21T22:00:30-08:00

Now with more pepper spray!

Bullies drive Penn State victim from his high school.

Boring cruel romantics.

People who watch Fox News know less about current events than people who watch no news at all.

Europe bans x-ray body scanners from airports.

What revolution looks like.

"A fresh look at Egyptian riot cops today reminds me how much we do things bigger and better in America."

The UC Davis chancellor's Walk of Shame and why I walked the UC Davis chancellor to her car.

Occupy Design.

Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop has become a meme. He has his own WordPress and Tumblr too.

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Good Reads/Random Cool Sites (11/17/2011)

2011-11-17T22:09:00-08:00

Anti-gay-marriage group NOM can't convince courts that people saying mean things about them equals "threats, harassment, and reprisals."

Washington DC reboot.

Has the Mormon church truly left its race problems behind?

Antarctic mountains explained.

The female orgasm in brain scans.

How to price ebooks.

The Supreme Court of Assholedom: The People vs. Steve Jobs.

It's a pretty photo, but $4.3 million?

Electric-blue lobster rescued.

If only it were always this easy.

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Good Reads/Random Cool Sites (11/15/2011)

2011-11-15T23:38:56-08:00

The brutal truth about Penn State.

Daddy put you in the top 1%.

World's Greatest Medical System: scorpion antivenin treatment that costs $500 in Mexico costs $62,000 in the USA.

Why Johnny can't search.

A message from God.

Rebecca Coriam: Lost at sea.

One might well surmise from his brilliantly brutal work that comic book genius Frank Miller is kind of a fascist dickwad. One would be right.

How the Yanks cocked up the cocker spaniel.

Coon-suit riot.

Women struggling to drink water.

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