I'd Rather Be Deriving

Recently, I read an article called "Against Marriage" by Clare Chambers, which details the author's view about marriage being an out-dated and discriminatory notion of the state.

I found the idea about relationship contracts to be intriguing and hope that it continues to be explored. The part of me that is much more satisfied with a Trust than a Will or an Incorporation than a Sole-Proprietorship is mildly excited to go and write up a "relationship contract" of my own. (Just call me "White and Nerdy").

And while I take issue a bit with her title (it appears to me that "Against State-Recognized Marriage" is a bit more accurate, if not as clickable), I am in agreement with her about the inequality caused by rigid and legally anemic semantics imposed upon a pluralistic society.

That said, I believe there is a point to be made about marriage itself which transcends Ms. Chambers's arguments about any state's existing or future relationsh…

The following is an address I gave in my congregation today. I will come back through and add my references shortly. Enjoy!

"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good... and the evening and the morning were the first day." (Not bad for a Monday, eh?)

This famous verse of scripture does not simply evoke the wonder that we all feel when we stand on the precipice of unchartered territory. It also quietly stands as a witness to God's power, dominion, creativity, Priesthood, devotion, and faith in and for His plan and in and for His children. It typically takes a great deal of energy to take effectively nothing and create something out of it or to bring chaos to order, and the creation of the Universe was no exception. :)

God's first creative act in our temporal continuum which, according to scientists, expands to 48.5 billion light-years in any direction, defies comprehension.  It has nevertheless been pondered by the …

A couple of weeks ago, I observed that the dishes had been piling up more than usual for the past while (Dad isn't always the most observant, so who really knows how long this had been happening? Mom probably knows, but doesn't blog, and so the point remains shrouded in mystery). What typically happens in our home is that, using our divided sink, we rinse off dirty dishes in the right-hand sink, and then place them either in the dishwasher if there is room or into the left-hand sink if not. Needless to say, this day the right-hand sink was full to overflowing with dirty dishes all over the counter for lack of space. This, of course, is my children's thought process with regard to where they play in the house as well. "Why are you guys playing with toys in the family room?" "Cuz the play room is too dirty." "Ah, thank you, that clears things up."

I digress, though. In our family, we have a weekly family meeting--every Sunday at 2pm, at least f…

I've spent the last three weeks listening to and reading about the 9 Republican candidates for Senate Seat 10. I am going to list them in the order that I currently prefer them, last to first:

#9 Susan Pulsipher - Depth without breadth. Susan has been serving as the President of Jordan School District for the last five years and during that time has done a lot of good. When the subject is education, she brings a great deal of hindsight and understands the pain points of educators and parents alike. You know what that means for me? That she should keep doing that at least until her term is over. Keep up the good work, Susan!

I won't be voting for her for Senate Seat 10 because she does not have any coverage in really any of the other issues. Her most common statement to me when I asked her questions was "I'd have to research that issue more before making a comment."

#8 Hon. Rich Cunningham - More of the same. Rich has several endorsements from heavy hitters in the p…

A few days ago, on a whim, I decided to seek out an old teacher of mine, Mrs. Roberts.

Mrs. Roberts was one of my teachers during the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. At that time in my elementary school, we had a pull-out program for accelerated learning. The full-time teacher would recommend a few students from her class and a couple of times a week, Mrs. Roberts would come collect those students and we would attend a class together with her.

This class was the highlight of my week. For better or worse, school always came easily for me--the first time I hit a real challenge was when I jumped from a Geometry in 1994-95 to Calculus in 1995-96 when I was 14. In this class, though, Mrs. Roberts had a way of getting me to think bigger about learning, education, and achievement.

I remember most of the class being about experiments. One time, she gave us each a washer on a string. She had us hold the string at the loose end between our thumb and pointer finger high enough in the air that the wash…

Somebody asked me a question about my Tooth Fairy post the other day that got me thinking. How many baby teeth are lost every day in Utah?

I began with Googling. Surely someone else has thought of this and run some numbers, right? Lo, there is a tooth fairy site that claims that the Tooth Fairy collects 300,000 teeth per night.

That's a lot; however, when I ran the numbers, it started to seem awfully low.

Let's assume that the Tooth Fairy collects all baby teeth regardless of quality and we assume that all children lose all their baby teeth. The world population of children sits at 2.2 billion, with 74.2 million of them in the United States. Of those, approximately 896,961 of them are in Utah. This means that somewhere around .04077% of the world's children are in Utah.

If we assume that kids in Utah lose teeth at the same rate as all other children in the world and that each day in the year is just as likely as the rest to lose a tooth, then we have that of the alleged …