Outside of Utah, news sites are reporting a mass resignation from the LDS church that was held in downtown Salt Lake City today (the link is one version of a widely disseminated Reuters piece).
Inside Utah, there’s an odder perspective. Both major newspapers in the state are owned by the same company, which is in turn owned by the LDS church.
The Deseret News is traditionally the newspaper of Mormon faithful. The Salt Lake Tribune has traditionally been less positively disposed towards the church.
The Trib was going broke a few years ago, and was bought by the Deseret News. At the time, some people worried if Utah was losing a voice independent of the dominant culture.
Tonight, the Deseret News contains zero coverage of the mass resignation (at least that I can find).
Around 1997-9, I actually had to consciously memorize this feature because it was so wrong: red is the color of the political left everywhere in the world, except the U.S.
It turns out, that while those color choices have been around for decades, they weren’t used consistently until 2000.
Is my memory wrong? No. I learned from a map posted on the 3rd floor of the Long Library at the University of New Orleans showing the 1996 election results. It struck me because it was the first I’d ever seen with county level data, showing the stark geographic dominance of Republicans:
That’s the title, and theme, of an article from the religion section of our local paper (sorry, there is no better digital copy than this available).
That catchy phrase made me laugh. It’s quoting a local pastor from The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, so it’s probably intended as a backhand to the local Mormon majority.
"We're an ancient representation of Christianity," he says. "We don't like innovations. For us, if it's new, it's not true.
Obviously, that’s a theological statement. But, vaguely insulting or not, what made me laugh is that I think the sentiment is a great expression of an important part of the belief structure of a lot of people, from a of different religious persuasions: a proclivity towards conservation of ideas as a form of social conservatism.
Unlike most other colleges, business schools actually make a point of talking about ethics and morals, rather than just baldly assuming that students understand them.
It isn’t often that I get to talk about them in macroeconomics, but here is a golden opportunity.
Which leads me to legacy media coverage of the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan. I assert that it may be moral to be concerned about this, but it is unethical for the legacy media to make it even a secondary focus of their concern. This suggests that it may be immoral to be personally swayed by their coverage.
The issue here is that the legacy media coverage is tantamount to equating a potential disaster with an actual one.
A real disaster had happened. Excessive focus on a potential disaster at that time is ethically wrong.
Obviously, I was really “sticking my head through the noose” on this one.
A year later, here’s what we know.
One government survey of 10,468 people from three towns at high risk—Namie, Iitate and Kawamata—was released in late February. Among them, 58% are estimated to have received less than one millisievert of exposure, and 95% less than five millisieverts. Just 23 people, including 13 nuclear workers, were assumed to have been subjected to more than 15 millisieverts.
By comparison, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Americans are exposed, on average, to three millisieverts of radiation per year from natural and man-made sources. Japanese safety rules allow a nuclear worker up to 100 millisieverts a year …
Last time I checked, the 20K people who died in the tsunami are still dead.
Regarding the daredevil parachute jump from 70,000 feet, this was said:
With air temperatures of -70 F degrees, his very blood would boil if exposed to the air.
Ummm … blood doesn’t boil when it gets cold. Blood boils from a combination of higher temperatures and/or lower pressures. It is the low pressure at that altitude that would boil blood.
… On ITunes, “ Wrecking Ball” is the number 11 album, well behind ubiquitous number 1 seller Adele and her “21″ album. And there are nine other albums between by Adele again and even the Monkees. On Amazon.com, “Wrecking Ball: Special Edition” logs in at number 95 on the MP3 download chart. Yet, on Amazon’s chart of physical sales, the album is number 1, right behind Adele [sic]. …
That’s an unedited quote, so the incoherence is on the part of the author, and it continues here:
… Physical CDs are still in high demand for people 40 and older. They want the CD package in their hands–a souvenir, evidence of something they’ve purchased, an addition to a collection of past CDs of their favorite artists. Also, they still don’t really get the technical part of downloading music. Funny, huh? But it’s true. They know how to order it online, but they’re just comfortable — even on the over-hyped ITunes–pressing “download.” [sic] Interesting. …
Let me offer an alternative view, as a 47 year old whose downloading habits would put a teenager to shame.
First I’ll show my age. Do you remember this scene from Fried Green Tomatoes?
The "I'm older and and I have more insurance" line is my point.
The buying decision for me looks like this. On Amazon, the physical CD is $12.99 and so is the MP3 download.* But, I’m older and I have Amazon Prime. I get free second day shipping. If I can wait that long, I get the CD in the jewel box with the artwork and the liner notes: so now I have a DRM free, permanent backup,† from which I can make my own MP3s that are higher quality than I can download. I can even rip and compress the CD into a lossless FLAC file if I want (since I’m older and I have more hard drive space, and older and pay for a faster connection to the cloud).
FWIW: I’m still not sure that I’d buy the new Springsteen; the wife is the bigger fan‡ and more likely to make that commitment. She’d say that’s because she’s hipper than me, but I know it’s because we keep the CDs downstairs and she doesn’t like the bother. Now, that’s a real reason 40-somethings do download: our houses are too big and the CDs can’t be kept everywhere.
* Oh … and to the dumb kid who did the research for the old fogie who wrote the pandering Forbes article, the MP3’s you get from Amazon are better quality than iTunes, usually a bit cheaper, and have less in the way of DRM nonsense. Oh … and they play in anything … instead of being wedded to that piece of crap iTunes player.
† Us old fogies also know, that while burning was great while it lasted, the permanence of home-brewed CDs left a lot to be desired compared to the permanence of factory manufactured CDs, and that it was disposable CD players with 1 laser and a bunch of mirrors instead of more than one laser that obscured this point.
‡ Would you believe we actually had this argument about 6 months ago? I lost.
With the development of internet technology, work at home jobs are increasing in the market. Also setting up small business online with ones own bank savings can provide excellent work at home opportunities. Apart from savings, banks offer0 credit card to cater to short term finance needs. Partial tax payments like tax credits are also available to promote online businesses. Market now offers several alternatives to traditional credit card debt which are helpful to work at home businesses.
Newsback News discussion community. The forum and news website made especially so that users can comment about current events and talk about the news with other people.
