Please, Be Informed

Being more liberal in the LDS church is an interesting experience. Since moving here to Richmond I have had several discussions where others looked at me in shock as I tried to explain why I support Barack Obama and why John McCain and Sarah Palin frighten me. Don't worry, this post isn't about that - but the story of one of those occasions segues well into what I want to say. A few weeks ago I was at a party and one of the girls in my ward, saying she didn't know who she supported, asked me why I support Obama. As I explained my point of view to her a crowd of people surrounded me, and for over half an hour I stood in the middle of a circle of maybe ten people, discussing our differing opinions in an open and friendly way. Politics can be incredibly divisive, people have strong feelings and often react in a visceral manner to disagreements to some of their most deeply held beliefs, it makes it a difficult topic to discuss. That is why at the end of this discussion, I implored everybody not to vote for Barack Obama, but to make an informed decision when they vote. That's what this post is about.

Watching the presidential debate from last night, I noticed that there were multiple occasions when John McCain or Barack Obama would make an assertion about the other's policies, only for the other to respond by saying "that's not true" or something of the sort. Please, watch the debates, hear and understand where the candidates stand and watch their demeanor. But also, find out who is right when they openly disagree about the facts. Fortunately, in this information age we have open access to tons of facts. John McCain said several times last night that we can "look up the history" on websites like Citizens Against Government Waste and other websites. I want to make everybody aware of a non-partisan website called factcheck.org. Go there when you have a question about something that a candidate says and doesn't sound right, go there after major events like last nights events or the party conventions, and see how they analyze what the candidates have said. Unfortunately, politicians spin things - this is true on both sides. At times they outright lie or are misinformed, factcheck.org is a great place to see how the facts match up to the assertions made. Click here to find out what the situation really is on the issues that were debated last night.

The key to having a successful democracy is not just that the citizens get out and vote, but that they make an informed vote. It is not enough to vote based on party affiliation, personalities, or even on policy. We need to have a comprehensive understanding of what it is we're voting for. I don't ask that everybody be as intensive as I am, I get nearly obsessive about these issues - and although I have chosen my horse in this race I still seek to understand both sides as fully as possible. I own 4 out of the 5 books that John McCain has authored with Mark Salter, and both of the books that Barack Obama has authored. I own the book that Joe Biden wrote, and if Sarah Palin had written a book I would own that and read it. Sometimes candidates feel that only parts of their history are relevant, or only parts of their backgrounds are important to understanding their character. We each must decide how important each different factor is in the decisions we make but John McCain's association with the Savings and Loan Scandal and the Keating Five should be relevant, just as his time as a POW in Vietnam. Barack Obama's ties to radical political figures is relevant, but so is his work as a community organizer, a job that I feel is more important than some have said.

Finally, please inform yourselves not only about the presidential campaign but also about your local politics and other federal campaigns. If there is a senatorial campaign in your state this year, look into the senators and their positions - listen to what they have to say. Every two years your House Representatives run for reelection, know their positions and make an informed decision on election day. Democracy works best when we vote from a well informed foundation. If you want to be able to research how politicians vote and whether they're telling you the truth in their advertisements, speeches, and debates, please visit votesmart.org and factcheck.org. Fact check, again, is a site that fact checks the statements made by politicians and is great for the presidential campaign, and Project Vote Smart (votesmart.org) is a non-partisan compilation of voting records and ratings by various groups on people campaigning for positions across the US, from state legislative campaigns to presidential campaigns.

Finally, make sure you're registered to vote - registration deadline for some states is as early as October 6. Sites like Rock the Vote and JustVote.org can help you register if you're not sure what to do. Also, if anybody who reads this lives in Utah House District 59 (or knows people who do), please look into the campaign of Paul Thompson at electpaulthompson.com - He is as honest and good a man as I have ever met and as my mission president he helped me grow as much as anybody outside my family ever has. Look at his positions and tell your friends about him, running as a Democrat in Utah is a daunting task, but he is more than qualified for the job.

UPDATE: If you have 90 minutes and didn't see the 1st Debate you can watch it here or here.

Some Pictures

I've received a few messages from people who don't know what a lava-lava or sarong is. So I thought I'd post a few pictures from the dance and what we all were wearing.


Otherwise there hasn't been too much interesting going on lately. I've mostly just been busy with school and that takes up plenty of time.

I forgot to do something...

Oh yeah! I haven't blogged in over a week. That's highly inappropriate, but bonus because of that is that you get to have two blog posts in a row with a hideous picture of me. Don't you feel so blessed? Well, I guess I have a whole week to get you caught up on, right? So let's get going!

Umm... what did I do this week? Oh, I have Internet in the house now, hence me blogging on a Sunday (because I would not be at school on a Sunday and that's the only place I had Internet before!) I am actually incredibly happy about that and finally got caught up on my Daily Show and Colbert Report. I never thought I'd say this but I'm glad they were off for a week when I didn't have Internet here, because I can't miss those shows! In other TV news, the season premiere of House was this week - and I'm excited for the new season.

We had a small ward temple trip this weekend and that was really nice. For lunch we went to a Kabob place in D.C. so I got to see my first little bit of the actual city. I'm definitely going to need to plan some time one of these weekends (probably several of these weekends) to go and check it all out.

School continues to go well and I am enjoying it. Although I am definitely not a big fan of my Mondays (my first class starts just after 8 and my last one ends just before 8).

Okay, onto the most exciting news - the Amazing Incredible Sadie Hawkins Dance Crashing Party of Funness. (Henceforth the AISHDCPF). So for the AISHDCPF my date and her roommate, Mindy, decided that it was lame to make the dance semi-formal and they weren't supposed to wear jeans and all that jazz, so they decided that since Lava Lavas are formal wear in some countries we would go that route. So, a group of about 6 of us were lavalavaed up ready for the good times to start at this dance thing the ward was trying to do. Once I got the bone properly put in my hair and Stephanie was loaded with a bat, and after we had all filled up on Arby's goodness we headed to the church gym. (Henceforth, the dance zone).

We triumphantly arrived at the Dance Zone and the AISHDCPF in full dance attire and commenced to get jiggy with it. Strangely, our arrival seemed to be the biggest moment of the evening that far, and at first I thought that we had stumbled upon some kind of middle school dance. Groups of people huddled together as dance music played, we quickly tried to fix this problem but just became a different huddle of people that was actually dancing - oh well, things started getting better after a while.

Later in the night, after loads of dancing goodness and impressing all with my incredible dancing abilities, we loaded 6 people into my car (it's only meant to seat 5, but since when do I care?) and went to get some ice cream. While eating our ice cream we found out all sorts of meanings for the word Mindy (apparently a Mindy is some sort of Wild Tyrannosaurus Rex Animalistic Woman with a deep voice that can commonly be found on New York City street corners and offers a specific type of service that you have to request by name). Now that you know that, you are ready to be entered into my secret society... contact me later with a code name.

Anyhow, the point of the story is that we all had a lot of fun, didn't get in too much trouble, and got to know each other a little bit better. (note: some day I will follow Julie's advice and let people talk about themselves instead of just talking about myself, unfortunately I am very conceited and love myself to death, as such I think everybody else must feel the same). Oh, random note: Sister Willis (one of the bishopric's wives) came up to me today at church and said "I need to know more about you after seeing your dancing on Friday night" and she even asked me where I learned to dance. Apparently she was unaware that I was clueless and merely did my best not to appear that way. Oh well. Good times! And that is today's blog post. I look forward to comments!

THIS WEEK'S PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Me, Asleep, On my bed! (aren't you excited? I'm just pretending to be asleep, by the way)

The things we don't realize

The other night I got a text message that I was definitely not expecting. My bishop from my last ward sent me a text message that said "I hope you're studying and not partying at this late hour. We all miss you. Keep the faith." Messages from back home have helped me recognize how much I meant to people. As I get a message from my mom or dad, or from my grandparents saying how they don't get to see me anymore, I realize that I mean as much to them as they do to me.

Perhaps it's one of my idiosyncrasies, but I think it is fairly common for all of us to see those who surround us and be grateful for their presence and influence in our lives without recognizing that we, too, are influences on their lives. Bishop Call helped me so much and was a great leader and friend while I was in Pleasant Grove, I miss him dearly. The thought had never really occurred to me that he would miss me. My grandparents opened their home to me and provided for everything I could possibly need and then some, they gave me a home while I was at school and did more for me than I could ever express. I know they love me, but for some reason I never thought that they could miss me like I miss them. In a strange way, moving away from all of my friends and family has been great for me, not only because I am meeting new friends but also because I'm better able to recognize how much the old ones really mean. I'm also beginning to see how much I mean to them, and that's a good feeling. I'm so glad that despite myself people like having me around, and were grateful for me.

I had a meeting with my bishop last night. When I went in to talk to him, he said "I've met you, we talked for quite a while on Saturday" and I just smiled and nodded and we talked about Daniel, the executive secretary for a bit. You see, Daniel wants the bishop to meet all the members of the ward and so he sets up these appointments for "get to know you" meetings with the bishop, but it confuses the bishop because sometimes he has these meetings with members of the ward who he knows quite well. It was good to chat with him for a while and get his perspective on things, he was a practicing attorney for quite a while before he decided to change careers, but he knows what the law school experience is like so that's nice to have. School continues to go well and we finally got the first part to getting Internet set up at our house ready to go and my car is finally fixed! Big accomplishments, now I just have to try and get reimbursed for some of my car rentals - that should be fun, but the biggest headaches are out of the way.

Oh, and since I haven't done it yet this week - here's what I look like now, so you don't forget! Ha ha.

Settling In

So, I'm starting to get much more settled here. People are learning my name, I'm learning their names, it's really quite nice. And I even got to meet the bishop of my ward, so that's always a good thing. I wonder now, what am I going to write about to keep people up to date on what I'm doing? School's going well, law school's not that bad. I've got a lot of stuff to do but it's not overwhelming and I'm making a lot of good friends.

This weekend there was a birthday party for one of the members of my ward and it was nice to be able to gather and have fun with a lot of people and get to know them better. Unfortunately, it was my least favorite kind of party (sorry Evan) the kind where it's not really anything planned, just a bunch of food and a bunch of people. I like to do stuff! Saturday night the ward had a fun activity where people baked cookies and we got to judge them and then we watched the movie Enchanted. I had a couple of people ask me if I was on the activities committee because I was running some of the stuff, I just laughed and told them that I still hadn't met the bishop, how would I have a calling?

Oh, Saturday was also my first experience of a tropical storm, pretty much it was a lot of rain as Hannah came in, and as my roommate Jason said "you just hunker down and watch a lot of movies." It was neat, I'm not used to the warm rains that it brought, or that much rain at all. Guess that's what I get for coming from the high mountain desert.

My adventures with getting the air conditioning fixed in my car are continuing. The inspector called the repair shop today to say that he'd be there, so finally I'll get my second inspection and they can order parts. Sadly, he will be the 5th person to verify the exact same problem on my car, it's ridiculous! Right now I'm driving a sweet Chevy Aveo that can't lock on the driver's side door. Glad I don't have anything valuable in it! I guess I don't have much more to say right now, sorry this post was kind of boring.

Life and Love

The other day I decided that I was tired of studying and would try and better organize my pictures on my computer. For a while I worked pretty consistently at scanning a bunch of old pictures and getting pictures into an electronic format, so I have quite a few on the computer. Well, for some reason I decided to see what pictures I had in the trash section of iPhoto and found out that iPhoto just leaves pictures in its trash until you tell it to delete them for good. This means that in my trash I had a whole assortment of old pictures from when Tiffany and I were dating, and a few from when Emilee and I were together (we never took very many pictures).

As I looked at the pictures, old memories came back to me and I remembered what it was like to be in love. It's funny, for so long seeing pictures like that just kind of made me sick to my stomach, now they bring back fond memories instead of pain. I'm glad for that, I'm glad I can think back to those times as the incredibly happy times they were instead of looking back with regret that things didn't work out differently. I loved those girls so much and now I'm just happy that they've found their companions.

Unfortunately, at the same time as I'm able to remember what it was like to be in love and to have that kind of companionship, it makes me yearn all the more to have something like that again. Thinking of my time with Tiffany invariably leads me to think of my dear friends Jimmy and Hillary. Jimmy was in many ways the reason Tiffany and I ever dated at all, and he and Hillary dated at the same time as we did. I remember having conversations with Jimmy late at night as he would talk to me about how he thought he was falling in love with Hillary and how he really didn't want to do that. Funny, how those who aren't really seeking love find it so much easier! The thing I noticed in all those conversations with Jimmy and in later conversations with other close friends is that many people are so afraid of getting hurt that they never really pursue something they truly desire. They're hesitant about putting themselves out on the line.

When Emilee and I broke up the first time I thanked her for breaking my heart. She laughed nervously and asked what on earth I was talking about. That experience of heartbreak was one of the most valuable experiences of my life and taught me more about myself and my emotions than I could have expected. And while I'm not so certain that I gained the same value from subsequent heartbreaks, I can say this - I'm glad I keep jumping and hope I have the courage to jump again. When I think about the dating life I compare it to a young bird learning to fly for the first time - at some point the bird has to jump from a great height and risk crashing to the ground and getting seriously hurt. To many it may not seem worth the risk, but the thing is if the bird doesn't fall then it flies. And the flight is worth all the other risks inherent in jumping, if I've learned one thing it is that no matter how bad heartbreak hurts, it will never hurt as much as being in love pleases.

So, just some random thoughts on the topic. Since we're on the topic I would remind everybody that I've only been here a few weeks, old pictures spurred this post and nothing else! Now for the requisite, this is what I look like this week picture.

Law School Personal Statement

I thought I'd give you some more of my writing to read. Aren't you so excited? I'm going to blog about this weekend later today or tomorrow for those who want an update. But for now, here is my personal statement for law school. When you apply to law school you are asked to send in a personal statement because they don't interview candidates, you get two pages to write just about anything you want to try and convince them that you're a better candidate than somebody else. This is what I wrote:


I can still remember the day when I decided that I wanted to know everything. It was the same day I decided I was going to change the world. On a cold in November 2002, I walked down an empty street in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. I was working there as a missionary for my church and as I headed to my next appointment, I thought about my future. I thought about the plans I had made. I was going to study computer science. After all, I had already held several jobs as a computer technician and I was good at it. But I realized then, as I walked down that street, that I would not find fulfillment in that field. I needed to improve the world, to directly benefit the lives of others. As a missionary, I primarily did two things: learn and help people. And walking down that empty street, I realized that was all I really wanted to do. I realized that by doing those two things to the best of my ability, I would find fulfillment; I could change the world for the better.
Experience has taught me that knowledge truly is power. Even the most trivial knowledge can influence others and enhance relationships. I’ve made many friends simply by referring to some obscure movie or TV show. While trivial knowledge can be power, I recognized greater power in practical knowledge. As a missionary, I learned to speak both Spanish and Portuguese. Subsequently, I have also learned to speak Russian. I hadn’t realized how much I was missing until I learned a foreign language. Speaking a foreign language does so much more than allow communication, it opens doors to parts of the world you don’t even know are there. As I saw the influence language could have, I decided to pursue the study of linguistics.
While studying linguistics, I learned a great deal and saw the power of practical knowledge but something was lacking. Luckily for me, I also took a course in the history of philosophy and there found an even more powerful form of knowledge. I began to learn how to think. Knowledge is most powerful when we know how to apply it, when we know how to think. For a time I pursued a double major in philosophy and linguistics but I soon realized that philosophy was where my heart lie. While most of my friends and family don’t understand what I study, the lessons I have learned from philosophy have provided me with knowledge that helps me change the world.
Many people think that changing the world is a lofty goal. I disagree, I think we change the world merely by our presence in it. We can’t help but change the world; the real question is how we change it. We often think that it takes some great thing to influence our world, but the small things are what make the difference. No newspapers reported when my teenaged sister gave her baby up for adoption because she could not provide a home for her. But she changed the world for a young couple who couldn’t have children, and for that baby girl. No cameras have been present when teachers and professors have stopped to teach me, nor when they have taken the time to stress the importance of learning. But those men and women have changed my life and my world. They have changed the lives and worlds of many others, and will continue to do so. As I pursue a career, I hope to do those small things that will truly improve the world.
I want to know everything and I want to change the world. The first, I will never accomplish. The second, I have already done and will continue to do without even trying. The trick is to get as close to the first as possible, and to make sure that I do the second in such a way that it makes the world a better place. Helping and learning, that’s all I really want to do in life. Fortunately, they work well together. As long as I take the power that comes with learning and use it properly, I can help other people. I have pursued these two goals since that day in November of 2002, and I will continue to pursue them. Right now, I’m taking the next step in that pursuit.