My Life

I watched a television series called Boy Meets World  when I was younger.  I've been catching some reruns here and there recently.  One character I had completely forgotten about was a bully, with his two cronies.  The cronies are sniveling yes men who do whatever the bully tells them to do.  Of course, these three are a caricature, but this phenomenon happens all the time in real life.  Seeing an example of it in a thread on Facebook this morning is what sparked this post. I was talking to my students the other day about race problems.  It's a topic I like to discuss with them, to get their perspective on the issues.  One of them mentioned white privilege.  I pointed out that one of the dangers of white privilege is that we white people don't feel  privileged--at least, not always.  More often than not, a privileged member of a society does not feel that ey is privileged, rather ey feels like a normal member of the society and th...

The Bible says "Do not judge, or you too will be judged." ( Matt 7:1 )  Of course, the logic is flawed, but in practice that is generally true--the more you judge people, the more they will judge you.  However, I think that sometimes we go too far when we say "don't judge me" or "don't judge other people".  I think the anti-judging culture is harmful.  I believe that judgment serves a good purpose in society, and that it is helpful. Judging others is a powerful tool.  It should be acknowledged and embraced, not dismissed.  When I first came out of the closet, I joined the bandwagon of people who said "don't judge me for being gay".  But there were times when I had to admit to myself that I was grateful for the input that people gave me.  Many of the people who voiced their opinions to me did so out of love and a desire to help.  It may not have been a pleasant thing for me to hear, but often things that we need to hear aren't pl...

I have come to realize that maintaining weight is the easiest thing to do, as far as weight is concerned.  To gain weight or to lose weight is more difficult.  There is one mathematical/biological reason for this.  The more your body weighs, the higher your basal metabolic rate is.  That is, the number of calories your body needs simply to live (not counting any movement that you actually do throughout the day) increases as you grow bigger and decreases as you grow smaller.  Thus, the number of calories needed to maintain weight correlates positively with body weight. How does this phenomenon affect weight change and goals of weight change?  Well, it makes it difficult to gain weight.  Why?  Because as you gain weight, you need to eat more calories to gain more weight.  Right now, to maintain my current weight, I need to eat roughly 2,500 calories.  When I was 285 pounds, I needed to eat roughly 3,000 calories.  So, if I'm trying ...

I've seen lots of criticism on what people should or shouldn't post on Facebook.  I've seen people complain about political and religious posts, about pictures of food, about exercise logs or weight logs.  I've seen people say that you shouldn't put anything negative on Facebook or that you shouldn't whine or complain.  You post too much.  You don't post enough.  I've seen people criticize nearly every type of Facebook post, including being critical of other people's Facebook posts. I enjoy the variety of posts that I see in my newsfeed.  I love seeing posts about the things that are going on in the personal lives of my family and friends, particularly those that I don't get to see in person on a regular basis.  I enjoy seeing photos of them doing fun things or their new haircut or whatever other exciting thing is going on in their lives. I enjoy seeing photos of the food that my friends eat.  Some of the photos are very delicious-looking, an...

I'm definitely an advocate of authenticity .  To some degree, we do have individual identity.  I think that people should feel a degree of freedom to voice their own opinions and do the things which make them happy. Gay people should feel comfortable dating someone of the same sex, including showing affection in public and getting married.  Someone with a proclivity for art or music or science should feel free to pursue a career in that field.  I believe that allowing for people to freely express themselves is a good thing.  However, I feel that one of the great lies of our modern individualistic society is "It doesn't matter what others think." We are social animals.  We have evolved the trait of forming social groups.  This has many advantages over being individualistic animals.  We can band together to protect each other from predators or to hunt prey together.  We can specialize and have different individuals perform different tasks to ...

A very special woman passed away the other day.  She was a close friend.  Karen and I got to know her several years ago when she was taking lessons from the LDS missionaries.  She fell in love with both of us (but mostly with Karen, which is perfectly understandable).  She was devastated when Karen died, but she always wanted to remain friends with me.  She loved me like one of her own sons.  She was happy to meet Conrad when he moved in with me and became a part of my life.  She was always very friendly, loving, and accepting. She was important to me because I was important to her.  She was always so happy to see me or hear from me.  I loved dropping by and bringing her meals or just chatting and watching television with her.  I feel like I was closer to her than any of my other Knoxville friends.  She was special.  She was kind and compassionate. I got a phone call from her cell phone the other day, and answered it very ...

I've noticed that it seems very common for people to make statements similar to "You don't know me."  In fact, there's a running joke with one of my friends where whenever a slightly judgmental comment is made, one of us will say "You don't know my life." I think there are many reasons people say this.  Sometimes it is true and the person being accused of the ignorance is truly ignorant and simply doesn't understand where the other person is coming from.  That's a discussion for a different day.  Today I'd like to talk about (from my own observations and reflections) when and why this phrase is used erroneously. I blogged in the past about some of my ideas on why I think that people are less civil on the Internet than they are in person.  I think that understanding that concept will help with this one.  As social animals, we have a biological drive to form social bonds with other humans.  We try to "win people over", so to ...