PIIGs Crisis Made Easy

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/23/sunday-review/an-overview-of-the-euro-crisis.html

Cool article about the Utes! Go Utes!

http://espn.go.com/blog/pac12/post/_/id/27577/pac-12-announcement-give-utah-a-break

How do you know when your baby is hungry?

Our Little Guy Doing His Exercises

Some Challenges of Today's Church

I just listened to Clayton Christensen give a great speech on why we can’t create jobs in America. It dealt with some deep rooted paradigms in our business culture. He also gave three concerns he has with the current direction of the church to which I belong. I’d like to give a summary of those three concerns before I forget them. Maybe you’ll enjoy his perspectives as much as I did.

1. The church gives too much emphasis on the number of baptisms. Clayton suggested that instead of baptisms, the church should focus on church attendance. I couldn’t agree more. I had a very good friend who fell in love with a girl and she wouldn’t marry him because he wasn’t a returned missionary. My friend is the best Mormon that I know and is currently serving in his bishopric. Girls who are dating guys should look at if that guy is doing his home teaching rather than if he served a mission several years ago. What have you done for me lately? I think that is what the Lord is going to ask us and it is something we should ask of our members too.

2. Clayton put it this way, “Parents outsource too much”. A generation or two ago, children worked in the house, helping to make bread and can food and put oil in the furnace. Not only did they have to work hard, but they had to work hard for their parents. Today, much of the manual labor in running a home has been simplified and automated through modern conveniences. With our extra time, parents are now running their children around to different activities thinking that they are creating well rounded adults to serve. In reality, they are just working for their kids and their education isn’t as valuable as good hard work.

3. The Church’s capital is its members. And the Church’s capital is migratory. The members of the church make the mistake of looking for the “best” ward when they move to a new neighborhood. This is a mistake, because moving to the “best” ward often means moving to a ward with an abundance of capable people and the amount of service that any given individual has to perform is diminished. In contrast, they should look for a ward that needs good people so that they can give the amount of sacrifice and service that they need to give to grow and improve and help others.

Anyway, I thought they were great insights into the current affairs of the church and the challenges it is facing in today’s world. I hope they are as insightful to you as they were to me.

NBA Lockout

Here is a great article about the NBA lockout. Bill has some great ideas on how to fix the league.

Explain That

The other day I volunteered at the local cannery. I spent the morning watching countless open cans of chile pass in front of me on a conveyor belt. My job was to watch the level of chile in the cans to make sure they were filled to the correct level. I didn't eat any of the chili. I haven't eaten chili for months and probably won't eat any chili for a while after staring at it for a few hours that morning. Yet, that night I had gas that was laced with the pungent aroma of chili. How is that possible? Did my body actually absorb the aroma of chili from the air? Did thinking about and watching chili for a full morning transfer the smell to my GI track? Weird!