My Life

He knows his way in the dark Mine is the way of the Lord And those who follow the path of the righteous Shall have their reward This is an excerpt from the song "Stars" from the musical Les Misérables.   It is the inspector Javert singing about Jean Valjean, whom he has been chasing ever since he broke his parole.  Valjean robbed a house, and due to a series of attempted escapes, ended serving nearly 20 years in prison before he was offered parole.  He broke parole and became a very successful businessman and mayor of a town. Each man felt that what he was doing was good.  Javert felt that his duty to the law was righteous, and that anyone who broke the law was wicked.  Valjean felt that he was doing the right thing by providing food for his starving family, even if that meant steal from someone else.  He also felt he was doing the right thing by being a benevolent and respected mayor. While this is fictional, it teaches many lessons about life. ...

Owning a dog has been very educational for me.  I have learned a lot about myself and about dogs simply by observing the dog that we own.  I have shared some of these thoughts before, and now I shall share some more. One of the many things I have thought about is the morals that our dog seems to exhibit.  Many people will say that animals act on instinct or that they do not have a moral code.  I strongly disagree.  Observing Konan, and all of the animals in the YouTube videos that Conrad watches, I know that animals are intelligent and that they feel empathy just the same as we do, and that their conduct is dictated in large part by their empathies. To illustrate what I mean by this, let me give some examples.  Konan bites us.  But when he does, they are play bites.  He is not biting with his full strength.  He would easily break our skin if he did, and possibly even break some bones as well.  But he does not.  He has only bro...

I happened across this article today.  I do recommend reading it.  It is a gay man's experience in coming to terms with his sexuality--saving himself from the brink of suicide--and finding love.  The title says it is part 4 of 8.  I have not read any of the others in the series, but I just might. What I wish to address in particular about his article are his comments about sex itself.  He mentions that he has always believed in abstinence until lifelong monogamy.  Then he mentions that when he has voiced this opinion to other people in the LGBT community, he has made enemies doing so.  This is the thing that I wish to speak about. I have talked before about sex, and I shall probably talk of it often in the future.  I think that it needs to be discussed more openly and frankly in our society.  I think that the shame that is often associated with even mentioning sex is very harmful, particularly to young people just coming to terms with ne...

Dear students, I want to share with you how much math has blessed my life.  There was a time when I was lost, my car broke down, and I was miles away from any kind of civilization.  I didn't have a cell phone.  I wasn't sure what I would do or how I would get out of such an awful situation.  But then I remembered something my math teacher taught me when I was in elementary school.  She said that with math, all things are possible.  So, I got out my straight edge and compass and I performed calculation after calculation.  After a while, my car started working again and I found my way back home. I know that math is true.  I know that Pythagoras was a true mathematician.  I know that Carl Friedrich Gauss died for my mathematical errors.  I know that the sum of the squares of the legs of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse.  And this knowledge has brought me such comfort in life.  I am truly blessed to know ...

Yesterday is a day that will go down in history.  It will be a very famous day in the story of the gay rights movement.  The Supreme Court handed down two opinions on two high-profile cases.  One was about the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law which defined marriage as heterosexual-only even in cases where individual states recognized gay marriages.  The other was about Proposition 8, which was an amendment to the California State Constitution which also defined marriage as heterosexual-only.  Both decisions from the Court were favorable to marriage equality. The decision on the Prop 8 case was, honestly, a non-decision.  The Court said that it did not have jurisdiction to decide the case because the people defending the proposition didn't have the right to do so.  So, they did not give a ruling on whether Prop 8 was constitutional or not.  However, their ruling did have the effect of overturning Prop 8 because it meant that the original de...

The Bible says that you shouldn't sound a trumpet when you do good deeds--that you shouldn't brag about the good things that you do.  I agree that there is wisdom in not coming across as condescending when performing good deeds.  I think it can be annoying when people continually boast of how good they are and the wonderful things that they do with their lives.  But I think it is foolish to try to do all charity in secret. I often talk about the things that I do to help out other people.  I have blogged about charities that I feel good about donating to.  I post about volunteering my time and donating my money to charitable institutions.  I don't mean to brag in doing this.  I mean to raise awareness.  I think that people do not think about it nearly as much as they should, and that donations to charity are far more sparse than they should be.  I hope that in speaking of the acts that I do, I can help motivate other people to give more libe...

It's been a while since I've listened to church dogma.  Almost two years.  Yes, I've had a few family members email me things like "We're praying for you" and stuff like that, but nothing really all that intense.  Nothing like a Sunday School lesson. The sister missionaries in my ward have been coming over lately.  They dropped by around the time Conrad had his name removed from the church's records and have come over multiple times since we had a (female) roommate move in with us. The last time they came, which was a few days ago, and today when they came, I couldn't help but realize how much my attitude toward religious teachings has changed.  At this point in time, it seems no more to me than utter and complete nonsense.  And it leaves me baffled.  I look at these two women, and they are intelligent and respectable women.  They are clearly sane and are well-adjusted to society. And yet the things that come out of their mouths are so utterly...