One Year

I'm really glad that when I think of days that I consider the best days of my life my answer always starts with the day I received my endowment, the last day of my mission, and more recently, the day that I got married. It's just the type of thing that should come up first, no?

We haven't really done much for our anniversary because Amy's brothers were supposed to come into town and then didn't, and our last minute efforts at putting together an anniversary plan didn't pan out, so we've just kind of spent this weekend just hanging out. But it has been really fun reminiscing all weekend about the events dating one year ago this day.

That day wasn't "perfect." It would have been nice if the grass were a little greener around the temple (although Amy did a good job of making it look like it was pretty green, see above). Our DJ who was supposed to provide us a mic at the reception didn't realize that we had actually booked him for Friday the 18th and not Saturday the 19th. Both my dad and his wife, and my brother and mom, didn't realize that Utah is on MST and not PST, so they were late to our reception. And I'm pretty sure a few other things weren't just right, but the day really couldn't have been more perfect. We had such a great day having everyone that we love in one place, celebrating with us, and enjoying what is the most important the day of our lives.

And I really like the kind of couple we have become. I feel like we are just the right fit for each other. Sometimes it feels like the little things are what you notice the most.

(Song to our first dance)

Since we've been married, here are some of the things that I appreciate most about Amy:

• She's just so happy. I don't think I know anyone who is more happy than she is. And she's really expressive when she gets really excited and likes to attack me and jump on me. When she's snowboarding or wakeboarding, she literally has a smile on her face the entire time that she's participating in that activity. The other night I spied her in our bed reading a book and she just had a grin on her face for like 20 minutes straight. She just can't hide when she's happy, and it's also a feeling that she feels very frequently. 
• I love that she's so about doing things and having fun. I can suggest almost anything and she's just about always up for it. She's loves to go on trips, go to events, and just have fun. She's a total "yes" person. Always wants to say yes and rarely has a reason for not doing things. And on a related note...
• Not only do I feel like we have a lot of fun together, it seems like we have so much fun doing the same kinds of things. I'm so glad that she grew up with so many brothers because she just loves being active, going to sporting events, and just about anything else I can think of. We can go snowboarding together. She's actually the person that got me into canyoneering, and she just loves the outdoors. She loves a day on the lake. We even go golfing together in the summer time. We must have had golf for FHE at least 4 or 5 weeks last summer, and this one will be no different. She'll even indulge my near constant urge to want to go to concerts.
• She loves my people. And her people are equally wonderful. And now they're all just our people and there's nothing we love more than just spending time with everyone that we can. Two weekends ago we had a really fun cabin trip with my best friends, Dave and Caitlin, and then last weekend we spent one whole evening just sitting on couches just chatting with some of our other friends, went to a volleyball game the next night with our dear friends, Jessica and Andrew, and the next night we hung out with her brother and SIL, Scott and Elisha. I feel like we're always strapped for time to spend with the people around us, and I just love it. 

So those are just a few. It honestly has been the best year of my life. I wish marriage would have come sooner for us, but I'm glad that it came when it did. We have had such a good year and I look forward to many more to come.

Happy Anniversary, Amy! I love you!

Friiiiiiiday

I've been a little MIA lately. That's mostly because I'm in lockdown studying for the GMAT. It's a tricky one. All of our weekend plans have fallen through, and even our backup to our backup plans aren't working out, but I think it just means I need to hunker down and make sure I put in all the prep I can into this test. So that's what this weekend is looking like. But I will send you off with this song that I can't get enough of right now. Have a good one, y'all!


(They sneak a colorful word in there. You've been warned.)

Can you feel it?

It's in the air. Mostly the temperature of that air. It's spring. It's right around the corner. This winter has been incredibly mild, to be honest, but something about a few of those weeks in February actually did make it feel, albeit briefly, like winter. But since our most recent storm passed, it has warmed up considerably. The biggest clue to the imminent arrival of spring (besides the calendar)? I've been running outside. At night. And I love it.

Bring it on. Bring on the camping, the outdoor running, the troping, the free mini golf. Bring on the sun. Bring on a new season of fun water-related videos with the GoPro. Bring it all on.

...in about a week...I have some studying to do between now and then.

Spotlight Effect

Growing up, one of the things that I was most self-conscious about was the gap in my front teeth. It was never a big gap, but because all my other teeth are almost perfectly straight, I never needed to have braces so the gap never got closed. But, boy, was I still so very aware of it.

I got into a regular habit of making sure my tongue was tucked firmly in behind my front teeth whenever I smiled so that it would hide the gap as much as possible. My first girlfriend after the mission even took some brownie one time and stuck it in her front teeth, laughed, and then said she was me. That got under my skin. And then at some point a few years ago I just kind of stopped thinking about it and it wasn't a big deal anymore. I'd notice it every now and then, but it didn't bother me in the same way.

Last year when Amy and I were sitting around looking at pictures, she asked me if I ever thought about getting that gap fixed. Thankfully, it wasn't in a suggestive-you-really-should-get-that-taken-care-of-kind-of-way, but really just wondering. The answer: Yes, a lot as a kid, some as a young adult, not really as an adult though. She mentioned someone else having a similar kind of thing and that it only took one visit to the dentist to get it taken care of.

So when I visited the dentist a month or so ago, he actually talked about how he would fix it with his dental assistant as if I weren't sitting in the chair with my ears fully functional, and that's when I decided I'd get it done. It really was such a quick visit.

The funny thing about it, however, is that no one else has noticed. I'm pretty sure it's not one of those things where they might have seen it and just not said anything. They just didn't seem to notice, and I say this because I actually pointed it out to two people after I had the work done and even when they stared at my two front teeth, it took them a few seconds to even realize what had been done.

Those kinds of things are funny. Those things that we worry so much about, other people hardly even notice. In psychology they call it the spotlight effect. What you think is a big deal to the whole world hardly ever gets any attention from anyone else because they're too busy worrying and wondering if you are noticing what it is that they are insecure about.

In some ways, I can really understand the value of cosmetic surgery. Sometimes there are disfigurements and things that change how people treat others, and those kinds of things are well within reason for getting fixed, at least in my judgment.

But then there are other things that you want fixed, but you even when the "problem" has been solved, you still find reasons to be insecure anyway. The problem isn't the supposed deformity, but your insecurity with it. If you haven't learned to deal with the insecurity, then fixing the deformity won't change the problem because you'll just find another thing to be insecure about.

I got the gap fixed, but wouldn't you know it, when I got home later that day, the next thing I noticed wasn't what a great job the dentist did in making it blend perfectly, but how my slightly chipped right front tooth feels more prominent because now the visible line of my top row of teeth no longer has a gap, but now it slants slightly upward on one side. Sometimes it's just too easy to focus on what's wrong instead of what's right.

Just musing is all.

Health Care Stuff

I read a couple of interesting articles this week. This one is about abortion. It's a little jarring just because of the way some people view the ethics of abortion. I guess jarring because of my morality, but knowing who reads this blog, you would probably agree with me. Here's the story. Excerpt:

They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.

“We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.”

As such they argued it was “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”.

The authors therefore concluded that “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”.  

And the other is an essay by Milton Friedman about How to Cure Health Care. What's really interesting in this one is how he talks about the origins of employer provided health care, and what the effects of that development were:

 The revival of the company store for medicine has less to do with logic than pure chance. It is a wonderful example of how one bad government policy leads to another. During World War II, the government financed much wartime spending by printing money while, at the same time, imposing wage and price controls. The resulting repressed inflation produced shortages of many goods and services, including labor. Firms competing to acquire labor at government-controlled wages started to offer medical care as a fringe benefit. That benefit proved particularly attractive to workers and spread rapidly.

Initially, employers did not report the value of the fringe benefit to the IRS as part of their workers’ wages. It took some time before the IRS realized what was going on. When it did, it issued regulations requiring employers to include the value of medical care as part of reported employees’ wages. By this time, workers had become accustomed to the tax exemption of that particular fringe benefit and made a big fuss. Congress responded by legislating that medical care provided by employers should be tax-exempt.

The tax exemption of employer-provided medical care has two different effects, both of which raise health costs. First, it leads employees to rely on their employer, rather than themselves, to make arrangements for medical care. Yet employees are likely to do a better job of monitoring medical care providers—because it is in their own interest—than is the employer or the insurance company or companies designated by the employer. Second, it leads employees to take a larger fraction of their total remuneration in the form of medical care than they would if spending on medical care had the same tax status as other expenditures.

Employer financing of medical care has also caused the term insurance to acquire a rather different meaning in medicine than in most other contexts. We generally rely on insurance to protect us against events that are highly unlikely to occur but that involve large losses if they do occur—major catastrophes, not minor, regularly recurring expenses. We insure our houses against loss from fire, not against the cost of having to cut the lawn. We insure our cars against liability to others or major damage, not against having to pay for gasoline. Yet in medicine, it has become common to rely on insurance to pay for regular medical examinations and often for prescriptions.

If the tax exemption for employer-provided medical care and Medicare and Medicaid had never been enacted, the insurance market for medical care would probably have developed as other insurance markets have. The typical form of medical insurance would have been catastrophic insurance (i.e., insurance with a very high deductible)."

Just interesting, I thought. It's a common point in economics that Friedman makes in this article. Nobody is more conscious of how your money is spent than you are, so when that power is given to a third party, they are much more frivolous with those expenses than you would ever be.

So So Tuesday for Mitt

The Romney campaign continues in its usual manner - winning the races it should win, but without much exclamation, and unable to pull off any upsets. He is narrowly project as the winner in Ohio, which he absolutely needed, but couldn't pick up anything in the south. He greatly outspent his GOP counterparts, but can't create any real separation from his competition.

This worries me. Mostly for this reason: Democrats want this presidential election to be about anything but the economy. What have the headlines been for the last couple of weeks? Everything about contraception and how Republicans want to ban it. I know that's not actual the argument, but it's the spin they're putting on it, and it's working. Rush fell for it and made it an enormous issue, and now the heat is off the President for the time being.

Additionally, Santorum's most obvious strength is his passion, but that is mostly concerning social issues, and when it comes time for a national election, it's going to come out that this guy is probably way too socially conservative for the taste of many voters. You'd be surprised at how wonky some of his views are. And he is the viable Anti-Romney at the moment. I just don't like it. Mitt can't inspire, even when he has the institutional advantage and money over his competitors. Makes me nervous.

So we'll see. Gingrich may continue in the race, but he is no longer realistic as a possible candidate, and I'm afraid his votes will go to Santorum before they go to Romney.

Sundry News Items

Have you been following the stuff in the news about all of the uproar over health care stuff and it providing means for contraception? It's not just any contraception - it's preferred contraception. Planned Parenthood receives over $300 million a year, so I'm pretty sure that if someone wanted to get a condom, they could find it. But what's more interesting is the various reactions some people are having around the country. At one university (not sure which), the health care offered by the university does not provide for preferred contraception, and so one female student spoke at and talked about how it was her preference, and she believed it to be her advantage to attend that university, but she felt that she was choosing between an inferior education but superior health care options to what she was being offered by her current university. Can you believe that? Thankfully, one person/organization spoke out against those type of comments stating that self-control is actually the first choice that a person has and people are not so helpless that they can't best protect themselves by simply practicing some self-restraint.

Have you heard about the uproar in Afghanistan? The issue is over some burned Korans. I didn't know much of the details until I read this article by Andrew McCarthy. He is probably the most knowledgeable person about all things Middle East. So the issue is the burning of Korans, only the military didn't know that they were Korans. They were books being passed around by prisoners that contained coded messages to each other that had to do with with escape plans and such, so the soldiers took the books and burned them to prevent them from communicating to each other. McCarthy raises the right question: how is it an appropriate response for some people to riot and kill other people when someone did  something unintentionally wrong? And why isn't it also defiling the Koran to write in it and raise insurrection? Because it serves their purposes. I posted that brief item last week, but Islamists (different from Muslims) are wackos. They will be a thorn in our side for a long time. An excerpt:

The facts are that the Korans were seized at a jail because jihadists imprisoned there were using them not for prayer but to communicate incendiary messages. The soldiers dispatched to burn refuse from the jail were not the officials who had seized the books, had no idea they were burning Korans, and tried desperately to retrieve the books when the situation was brought to their attention.

Of course, these facts may not become widely known, because no one is supposed to mention the main significance of what has happened here. First, as usual, Muslims — not al-Qaeda terrorists, but ordinary, mainstream Muslims — are rioting and murdering over the burning (indeed, the inadvertent burning) of a book. Yes, it’s the Koran, but it’s a book all the same — and one that, moderate Muslims never tire of telling us, doesn’t really mean everything it says anyhow.

Muslim leaders and their leftist apologists are also forever lecturing the United States about “proportionality” in our war-fighting. Yet when it comes to Muslim proportionality, Americans are supposed to shrug meekly and accept the “you burn books, we kill people” law of the jungle. Disgustingly, the Times would inure us to this moral equivalence by rationalizing that “Afghans are fiercely protective of their Islamic faith.” Well then, I guess that makes it all right, huh?

Then there’s the second not-to-be-uttered truth: Defiling the Koran becomes an issue for Muslims only when it has been done by non-Muslims. Observe that the unintentional burning would not have occurred if these “fiercely protective of their Islamic faith” Afghans had not defiled the Korans in the first place. They were Muslim prisoners who annotated the “holy” pages with what a U.S. military official described as “extremist inscriptions” in covert messages sent back and forth, just as the jihadists held at Gitmo have been known to do (notwithstanding that Muslim prisoners get their Korans courtesy of the American taxpayers they construe the book to justify killing).

Mitt won Michigan and Arizona yesterday. Good for him. I'm still hesitant about him, mostly because he just doesn't seem to inspire the base, so I'm afraid of how he'll fare in a general election. It may be the Obama is so vulnerable that almost anyone can beat him, but I feel like I'm rooting for a dark horse to come up at the GOP National Convention. I like him the most of what's out there, but there's a part of me that feels like there may still be someone better than him that hasn't been made available yet. We'll see next week with Super Tuesday.

Last, this article by Jeff Jacoby about LDS proxy baptism for Jews. Jacoby is one writer whose views I completely line up with, and this piece is no different.  An excerpt:

So now there’s a whole new commotion, with some prominent Jewish voices once again loudly expressing indignation.

“Holocaust victims were killed solely because they were Jews,’’ fumes Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “And here comes the Mormon Church taking away their Jewishness. It’s like killing them twice.’’ The Simon Wiesenthal Center, pronouncing itself “outraged,’’ declares that the latest proxy baptisms “make a mockery’’ of Jewish-Mormon relations. Wiesel himself insists that Mitt Romney, as “the most famous and important Mormon in the country,’’ has a moral obligation to tell his church: “Stop it.’’

But if anyone should be told to “stop it,’’ it’s men like Foxman and Wiesel, whose reactions to this issue have been unworthy and unfair.

For one thing, the Mormon Church promptly apologized for the listing of Anne Frank and the others, and firmly reiterated its policy: “Proxy baptisms of Holocaust victims are strictly prohibited.’’ Leaping to take offense at something the church has unequivocally repudiated is cheap grandstanding.

More odious by far is the accusation that a posthumous “baptism’’ to which no Jew attaches any credence is tantamount to a second genocide (“It’s like killing them twice’’). What an ugly slander. Even to the most zealous Mormon, proxy baptism is simply the offering of a choice — it gives non-Mormons in the afterlife a chance to accept the gospel, should they wish to. You don’t have to buy the theology — I certainly don’t — to recognize that its message is benign.

As a Jew, I am less interested in what other religions teach about the fate of Jews in the next world than in how they affect the fate of Jews in this world. Rafael Medoff, a scholar of America’s response to the Holocaust, notes that Mormon leaders were outspoken supporters of efforts to rescue Jews from Nazi Europe at a time when many mainstream Christians were silent. For example, Utah Senator William King — among the most renowned Mormons of his day — strongly backed legislation that could have saved Anne Frank and her family.

Outraged by proxy baptisms? Count me out. As my stunted family tree attests, the Jewish people have very real, very dangerous enemies. Mormons undergoing peaceful rituals in their own temples aren’t on the list. 

While listening to some interviews last year at the COB, one rabbi expressed a similar point of view. He stated that if he were to get outraged by proxy baptism then that would mean he was giving credence to a belief in a religion that he doesn't subscribe to. Makes sense, right? He felt that all the outrage came less from practicing Jews and more from the liberal ones. Thought that was interesting though.

Random Things

Was reading this morning and I thought this excerpt was interesting, especially the part at the end:

You know Bernard Lewis, the historian who is the dean of Middle East scholars, and a friend of National Review, and an NR cruiser. But did you know that he was leading a plot to divide Egypt into four separate states? Oh, yes. MEMRI -- the invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute -- has the story, here.

It is not only the Muslim Brothers who are peddling this lunacy: It’s the official Egyptian press. Lewis is the “Jewish-Zionist Orientalist,” alternatively “the Zionist conspirator historian” -- etc.

I have said it for decades, ever since being exposed to the Arab world while in high school: The region will never, ever progress until the fever breaks -- until the culture of the lie, the culture of nutty paranoia, dies or weakens. More than poverty or anything else, it’s lunacy and lies that hold the Arab world back.

Many Arabs will tell you this, when they think it’s safe to do so.

Quick story -- a repeat: On 9/11 or 9/12, I received an e-mail from an Egyptian acquaintance, who lectured at the university in Alexandria. Very well-educated, Westernized woman. She said (in essence), “I hope you’re okay. And please know it couldn’t have been Arabs who did this -- it must have been the Jews.”

If she could do no better than that -- what hope was there for the man who emptied her trash at the university?

The same writer, Jay Nordlinger, had an interview with the New Mexico Governor, Susana Martinez. She's doing great things down there, but in reference to some reforms she's trying to bring about in education in her state, he quotes George W. Bush, when talking about advancing kids in school for social promotion, he called that the "soft bigotry of low expectations." I actually had an experience not unrelated to that with my work in the internship office. I can't believe some students have made it almost all the way through college.

Today is George Washington's actual birthday. Incredible man. I don't know a whole lot about him, but I have heard, I'm always amazed by. Anyway, here's a pretty famous letter he wrote to a group of Jews who had warmly greeted him. In it is a very famous affirmation of religious freedom.

Gentlemen.

While I receive, with much satisfaction, your Address replete with expressions of affection and esteem; I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you, that I shall always retain a grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced in my visit to Newport, [1] from all classes of Citizens.

The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet, from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security. If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and a happy people.

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

Go: Washington

And then one last thing from John Stuart Mill. You might hear a lot about people, maybe just politicians, that what we need to bolster the economy is more consumption. Mill touched on this topic long ago, and he's pretty compelling:

Among the mistakes which were most pernicious in their direct consequences, and tended in the greatest degree to prevent a just conception of the objects of the science, or of the test to be applied to the solution of the questions which it presents, was the immense importance attached to consumption. The great end of legislation in matters of national wealth, according to the prevalent opinion, was to create consumers. A great and rapid consumption was what the producers, of all classes and denominations, wanted, to enrich themselves and the country. This object, under the varying names of an extensive demand, a brisk circulation, a great expenditure of money, and sometimes totidem verbis a large consumption, was conceived to be the great condition of prosperity.

It is not necessary, in the present state of the science, to contest this doctrine in the most flagrantly absurd of its forms or of its applications. The utility of a large government expenditure, for the purpose of encouraging industry, is no longer maintained. Taxes are not now esteemed to be “like the dews of heaven, which return again in prolific showers.” It is no longer supposed that you benefit the producer by taking his money, provided you give it to him again in exchange for his goods. There is nothing which impresses a person of reflection with a stronger sense of the shallowness of the political reasonings of the last two centuries, than the general reception so long given to a doctrine which, if it proves anything, proves that the more you take from the pockets of the people to spend on your own pleasures, the richer they grow; that the man who steals money out of a shop, provided he expends it all again at the same shop, is a benefactor to the tradesman whom he robs, and that the same operation, repeated sufficiently often, would make the tradesman’s fortune.

In opposition to these palpable absurdities, it was triumphantly established by political economists, that consumption never needs encouragement. All which is produced is already consumed, either for the purpose of reproduction or of enjoyment. The person who saves his income is no less a consumer than he who spends it: he consumes it in a different way; it supplies food and clothing to be consumed, tools and materials to be used, by productive labourers. Consumption, therefore, already takes place to the greatest extent which the amount of production admits of; but, of the two kinds of consumption, reproductive and unproductive, the former alone adds to the national wealth, the latter impairs it. What is consumed for mere enjoyment, is gone; what is consumed for reproduction, leaves commodities of equal value, commonly with the addition of a profit. The usual effect of the attempts of government to encourage consumption, is merely to prevent saving; that is, to promote unproductive consumption at the expense of reproductive, and diminish the national wealth by the very means which were intended to increase it.

What a country wants to make it richer, is never consumption, but production.

 Anyway, just thought all of that was pretty interesting.