Flip-Flopping

Hey Everyone,

Here's a blog post!

Today's blog post will be on flip-flopping.

Lately I've been going to the gym quite a lot. Originally I was going because I wanted to feel healthier, but as is the case with most things I do, I quickly lost perspective and became obsessive. Now I work out for at least 2 hours a day, and a good portion of that time is spent doing cardio.

The downside of doing cardio is that I don't have much to occupy my attention. And since I don't have much to occupy my attention, I spend most of my time staring ahead at whatever is on the TV in front of me.

Because of this, I know way more than I ever wanted to about the Kardashians, traffic jams, the latest infomercials, strange medical conditions that only show up on talk shows, and the Republican national debate.

I don't pay too much attention to the Republican debates, mostly 'cause I don't think the Republicans have a chance this election, but still, every once in a while I catch a zinger or two whipped back and forth and I get to thinking.

During the rare moments moments I've tuned in for I've noticed that one of the most popular topics to zing with zingers is Romney's inconsistent record. It's actually quite amazing. Some other candidate just throws out the epithet "flip-flopper" all willy-nilly like, and then all of the sudden everyone in the room gets quiet so as not to impede the resounding psychic "OH SNAP!" ringing in everyone's head.

Now, I'm not a big fan of Romney for my own reasons, but I really don't see why calling someone a flip-flopper is such a bad thing.

I can understand why at first glance FFing might scare the electorate. After all, if we put a person in office to represent us and they say they stand for certain things, wouldn't it be nice to know that they won't get into office, say "gotcha" and then do something completely different? Also, someone who sticks to their guns appears more level-headed and principled.

But the question I keep asking myself is "is the ability to stay of the same opinion a virtue?"

As far as I can tell, sticking to your guns and not changing your mind is only a virtue when you're right. There are a lot of times when it's good to flip-flop and overhaul your views. If you never overhaul your views, your're clearly not really learning anything (or you're always right...way to go!).

Maybe, just maybe, a politician admitting to a different view is a good thing. Changing one's mind isn't a bad thing in a leader, indecisiveness is-- the two are frequently confused. The difference between an indecisive person and a person who changes their mind is that an indecisive person struggles to make a decision, while a person who changes their mind does make a decision, but has the honesty and humility to change that decision if they happen to be wrong.

If you look at your own life I hope you can find a few times when you flip-flopped on an issue.

One common example is how kids frequently say, "I'll never be like my parents and make my kids do (insert some odious thing here) when I grow up." But as most of us know, it's often the case that when these kids grow up they better understand their parent's perspective, agree with their parents perspective, and then make their own kids kids do (insert previously inserted odious thing here).

I know a lot of the things that I thought were the coolest when I was in high school are ridiculous to me now. A lot of the things I found to be of absolute importance even a few years ago now seem like a waste of time.

We all evolve and change, and as we do our opinions should reflect this.

I think the real thing we need to judge someone for is not for changing their mind, but why they change their mind. If Romney changes his mind against what he really believes because of political expediency then fault him for it. If he changes his mind because he didn't think things through first time around then fault him for it. But if he changes his mind due to new information or greater maturity, then praise him for it.

Now, I'm not saying that all of Romney's changed views are due to greater wisdom or maturity. All I'm saying is don't fault him for changing, fault him for poor reasons for changing.

Also, keep in mind that in a representative democracy it's a bit silly to fault leaders for changing their minds. After all, if our leaders are supposed to listen to us, and if we change our minds, then it follows that they need to change if they are to act on our behalf. Of course, the founding fathers did set up a representative government to act as a buffer between the idiocy of mob rule and semi-permanent policy, but even taking that into account, our leaders still have a responsibility to listen to us, filter out the stupidity, and enact our occasional nugget of sanity.

I think it might be a mistake for a politician to have the same views upon entering office as they do when leaving. Their experience and the day to day exigencies of office should shape them and inform their decisions. Just like how people frequently change their declared majors after attending college for a while, or how most kids never make good on their declared intent of becoming an astronaut, we all learn and evolve, and usually this is a good thing.

So, I guess my main point here is I'm tired of all this talk about flip-flopping. Let's focus on what the changes were and why those changes were made. Let's not get lost on the simple fact that a change was made.

When we vote for someone I think we should judge them by how their stated positions reflect our own values, but I think we should also look deeper at how that person arrived at their stated positions. This is how you can see beyond the political platform to the person underneath. A person's ability to reason and to reason well from the information at hand is the best measure of their political fitness.

It really is a shame most reasonable people avoid politics.

What a Logician's New Year's Goals May Look Like

Here is what a logican's new year's goals may look like. Those chaps love self-reference.

List of New Year's Goal(s):

1) Make a new list of new year's goal(s).

Done!

Trip

Well, I figured I better write something because my last post is entitled "recent thoughts" and after about 2 weeks or so that title went from descriptive to dishonest.

I've been pretty busy lately. I turned 29, went to the San Diego Zoo, traveled across the country to Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island...and I visited the famous places at each of those locations.

I'm actually preparing right now for a meeting with someone at the Harvard Graduate school. I have an appointment to talk to one of their admissions counselors. It seems like, should I choose to attend, it would be relatively easy to get into the program. I looked over the admissions averages and I'm way above the norm in just about every area.

Of course, that is no guarantee. Depending on the needs of the program, the applicant pool, and many intangible preferences of the admissions committee, I might not get in. But, all things considered, the odds are in my favor should I choose to go.

One very beneficial thing about this trip is that it has given me the chance to look at the law schools around here that I'd be attending if I decide to become a lawyer. It has been very helpful to walk the campuses and see the people in the different programs. It has taken the idea of law school from some vague idea and made it concrete. I now feel like I have at least a vague notion of what my life would be like should I choose that path.

As of now, I think the idea is still shelved. I have a few options that I think fit me better and I'm going to give them a shot. If, in a few years, I don't think I made the right choice I can always redirect my career then. And If I do redirect my career I'll have the added experience of working in business to complement my resume.

The funny thing about this trip is that probably one of the most memorable things I've seen happened just a few miles from my friends apartment...and the event itself was really mundane. What I saw was a couple playing frisbee. But it wasn't just any game of frisbee. It was the worst game of frisbee every played.

Let me paint the picture for you.

Both frisbee participants were tiny people. I would give their nationality, but that would make me sound racist. All you need to know is that they were small, physically uncoordinated, and wearing bright clothing better suited for an anime character. Well, now I think I might have outed their nationality, but hey, I tried.

Anyway, moving on. So, they were playing frisbee. And what a game of frisbee. The guy would stand there legs very far apart with his hands up in front of him like pincers. He would open and close his hands in anticipation. The girl he was playing with would psych herself up with a few hesitant fake throws. When she finally summoned her courage she'd toss the frisbee....horribly. It would veer any direction but straight. But luckily, the little man was ready. He'd burst into frenetic action and hustle like crazy to make sure that frisbee didn't touch the ground....only problem was he wasn't very fast. For all his energy, he never bent his knees. So, he'd wobble from side to side like a midget on stilts...or like Forrest Gump when he had those metal braces on his legs, and by the time he reached the frisbee it was already comfortably resting on the grass.

The sweet thing was his lady didn't care. She would cheer on his vigorous hobbling with similar enthusiasm.

The whole picture was very strange. It was very uncanny valley. They were doing something mundane, but in such a strange and horribly inept way that it looked foreign. It's like they were trying to get used to gravity, or like they were the inept creation a novice cartoonist.

I video taped part of their exchange. When I pull it off my phone I'll post it here.

Well, I better get going. Hope you all have a great day.

Recent Thoughts

Here are three things I've thought about recently:

1) They should make an app that takes pictures of Jelly Bellies, scans them, and then tells you the flavor. I really like most Jelly Bellies, but I can never tell what I'm going to get when I bite into one. Also, I can't really use complimentary flavors when I am eating them blindly. I eat watermelon, then cherry, and I'm going strong on a fruit theme....and then BAM! Coffee flavor!

I think there is probably an optimal order to eating Jelly Bellies...with each flavor building off the last in an orderly and increasingly delicious way...but right now this is just conjecture. If someone has given this some thought let me know.

And all you computer programmers get on this app, please. I think the Google goggles app would be a good framework to build from.

2) Easter egg hunts are a microcosm of capitalism. When the hunt starts you have to rely on your wits, creativity, and speed for success... and you have to pit these virtues against your competitors. Success is for the person who wants and works the hardest, and who has the skills to make their ambitions real.

But, sadly, there is a downside to the thrill of competition: Some people won't get as many eggs. These unfortunate souls sit sadly on the sidelines...in some corner with their sad, solitary Cadbury egg. They sit there wondering why they can't compete, and with nothing more than empty calories to console them.

This past Easter we had a predetermined amount of eggs for each family member. Everyone benefited the same from their search, regardless of effort. This meant everyone wandered aimlessly around the house without any drive or excitement. This is bad. This is what happens when big government (in this case my parents...sorry Mom and Dad) step in and kill the drive to excel by rewarding mediocrity.

There is no easy Easter egg distribution solution. The invisible hand favors the fastest and most aggressive Easter egg hunters, and it gives the invisible finger to the slow and the passive. Perhaps a combination of free market eggs and control? Maybe if we had an egg threshold and upon reaching that high threshold you paid a tax on your future findings, or perhaps a flat tax for everyone to be distributed to the neediest amongst us, or perhaps everyone gets a certain amount of eggs assigned to them, but then there's another class of egg that is a free agent and the property of whomever finds it first.

Who knows. All I know the matter is this: I know how I'll teach my children about capitalism.

3) Yesterday in church some guy gave a testimony that was easily 10 minutes. During the first few seconds of his testimony he grabbed the pulpit with both hands, and sorta just perched there. You could tell from his posture that he intended to be there for some time.

Within moments he had his scriptures out and he was giving a talk on authority. The man had long hair and was unshaven so he quickly addressed that and said this gem: "White shirts are connected to the priesthood, long hair to connected to culture, and this varies from season to season."

That's a poetic way of saying I'm not cutting my hair and I'm waiting till it's cool again.

I really love his line about white shirts. I'm gonna have to remember that one.

He also said, "The quorum of the 70 is half a prophet." I took this to mean that a prophet is a unit of measurement. The prophet, according to this fellow, is twice a 70...or 140. So, a prophet is equal to 1 prophet (the unit), which is equal to 140. If the quorum of the 12 is equal to 1 prophet that puts them at about 11.66 (repeating) each.

Maybe I'm taking him too literally.

Anyway, that guy was full of funny things. Maybe I'll mention more of the notes I took on his testimony/talk later.

*****

Well, that's all I'm thinking on right now. Hope you all have a great day.

Website and Apology

Hello,

I was directed to this today. This blog is very helpful.

I refer you to this blog with an apology for all the times I have provided evidence for her arguments.

http://philosiology.blogspot.com/

I'm Lame

Okay, so today I finally sent in my federal tax return.

When I got to the point where I was going through the pre-mailing checklist I noticed that it clearly said to "attach" the W2 form to the other documentation.

(Going to change tense now for narrative effect)

Ever obedient, I realize simply mailing the documents together is not an option and I begin searching for some means of securing the W2 to my 1040 paperwork.

My first thought is to use a stapler, but I figure that the men in suits will probably separate the documents, and removing staples causes tearing. So, being the considerate guy I am, I decide that a paper clip is the way to go.

I look everywhere, but there are no paper clips to be found.

At this point the stapler seems attractive.

I get the stapler.... it's out of staples. That won't work.

I look around the room in frustration and my eyes finally rest upon a bobby pin lying on the ground. I figure that's just about as good as a paper clip so I attach my W2 to the tax return with a hair accessory.

I address the envelope and am about to mail the return when I notice that the bobby clip's tips angle outward (for ease in gathering hair together). Just as a test, I push on the envelope where the angled tips are and they start to push through.

Frustrated, I stare at the envelope. I'm loath to open it since it's already sealed, but I also don't want punctures in the letter I've worked so hard to prepare....so I peel back the flap of the envelope and assess the situation.

I decide to modify the bobby pin.

I get my toolbox,find my diagonals, and cut the tips off the bobby pin.

Now I have a very strange and femininely colored bobby pin (my bobby pin is hot pink) about an inch and a half long attaching my return to my W2.

It looks sorta cute.

I figure this will work and I place the whole package back in the envelope.

Unfortunately, due to my reopening the letter, the sticky film on the envelope is now ruined.

I decide I better tape the letter closed.

Sadly, I can't find any clear tape. The best I can find is some packaging tape on an industrial-size roller.

I use the blade attached to the roller to cut off a piece of tape about 4 inches long. But, the blade cuts unevenly.

This bothers me.

I try to find some scissors to straighten the edge....but no scissors are to be found.

I look around for a while. I see a butcher's knife. I use this to chop off the tape and place it on my envelope. I smile wryly at the thought of how silly I must look chopping a small piece of tape with a huge butcher's knife.

I finally mail my return.

I know there are over 100 million people filing this year, but I doubt any of them struggled to attach their W2s to their 1040s as much as I did.

It's the little things that make us feel special.

The Little Prince

I just made a roadtrip to Utah with my dad last weekend to pick up the rest of my stuff. All I had left in Utah were books and a few awkwardly shaped objects that wouldn't fit in my little car. I only spent one full day in Provo and that day was mostly packing.

The drive was far more pleasant than usual. This is because I usually make the drive alone, but this time I had my dad with me. We talked about many things: electrical ground wires, airplane wings, religion, and stimulus money just to name a few. So, while I hate long drives, this one was fun and entertaining.

While we were driving together I read The Little Prince for the first time. This book is billed as a kid's book, and it is certainly written like a kid's book, but it is so much more than that. It's a very special book. Every page is loaded with the unfettered clarity of a child's thoughts, with the clean grasp of foundational principles that children enjoy, but often give up as a rite of passage into adulthood....and as I was leaving Provo, I needed to be reminded of some of the basics. About the value of love and friendship, and even loss, and how they are all intertwined. The Little Prince is about all of this, and it was the perfect book to read while my heart was heavy with memories of Provo.

So, I decided I better share that book here on my blog. Only parts of it of course, but enough for you to see why the book is so powerful; I'll limit my post to parts of the book that deal with love and friendship.

Before I begin, here's a little context for the passages I'll share:

The story is about a pilot who is stranded in the desert. He meets a boy there known as "The little prince." The little prince lives on an asteroid. The asteroid is so small it's barely bigger than him. He has a flower on that asteroid. That flower thinks highly of itself and demands a lot of him, and he eventually leaves the flower and the asteroid in search of adventure. He visits many other planets during his adventures, and eventually ends up on earth, where he meets the pilot that wrote the book. His interactions with various people and his retelling of those interactions to the pilot make up (at least most of) the book.

So here we go. Oh, and just so you know, I'll mark all my interjections with an asterisk to avoid confusion.

As the boy leaves the asteroid this is his goodbye to the flower....

"Goodbye" he said to the flower.

But she did not answer him.

"Goodbye," he repeated.

The flower coughed, but not because she had a cold.

"I've been silly" she told him at last. "I ask your forgiveness. Try to be happy."

He was surprised that there were no reproaches. He stood there, quite bewildered, holding the glass bell in midair. He failed to understand this calm sweetness.

"Of course I love you, " the flower told him. It was my fault you never knew. It doesn't matter. But you were just as silly as I was. Try to be happy...Then she added"Don't hang around like this; it's irritating. You made up your mind to leave. Now go." For she didn't want him to see her crying. She was such a proud flower...

*Then the boy says later about the flower:

In those days I didn't understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should have never run away! I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contradictory! But I was too young to know how to love her.

*From this interchange the book sets up a very valuable lesson on love and friendship. The instruction necessary to appreciate the boy's relationship with the flower comes from his meeting a fox.

The story goes like this:

"I'm a fox," the fox said.

"Come and play with me" the little prince proposed. "I'm feeling so sad."

"I can't play with you," the fox said. I'm not tamed.

"What does tamed mean."

"It's something that has been too often neglected. It means, 'to create ties.'..."

"'To create ties'?"

"That's right," the fox said. For me you're only a little boy just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you have no need of me, either. For you I'm only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we'll need each other. You'll be the only boy in the world for me. I'll be the only fox in the world for you..."

"I'm beginning to understand," the little prince said. "There's a flower...I think she's tamed me..."

"Possibly," the fox said. "Anyway, I'm rather bored. But if you tame me, my life will be filled with sunshine. I'll know the sound of footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Other footsteps send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music. And then, look! You see the wheat fields over there? I don't eat bread. For me wheat is of no use whatever. Wheat fields say nothing to me. Which is sad. But you have hair the color of gold. So it will be wonderful, once you've tamed me! The wheat, which is golden, will remind me of you. And I'll love the sound of the wind in the wheat..."

"Please...tame me!" he said.

"What do I have to do?" asked the little prince.

"You have to be very patient," the fox answered. "First you'll sit down a little ways away from me, over there, in the grass. I'll watch you out of the corner of my eye, and you won't say anything. Language is the source of misunderstandings. But day by day, you'll be able to sit closer..."

The next day the little prince returned.

"It would have been better to return at the same time," the fox said. "For instance, if you come at four in the afternoon, I'll begin to be happy by three. The closer it gets to four, the happier I'll feel. By four I'll be all excited and worried; I'll discover what it costs to be happy! But if you come at any old time, I'll never know when I should prepare my heart. There must be rites."

That was how the little prince tamed the fox. And when the time to leave was near:

"Ah!" the fox said. "I shall weep."

"It's your own fault, "the little prince said. "I never wanted to do you any harm, but you insisted that I tame you..."

"Yes, of course," the fox said.

"But you're going to weep!" said the little prince.

"Yes, of course," the fox said.

"Then you get nothing out of it?"

"I get something," the fox said, "because of the color of the wheat."

*After all this the little prince learns what gives things value. On his journey he saw many flowers like his (the flower on his planet that he thought was one of a kind was a rose). This made him doubt that his rose was special. But after he tamed the fox, he knew better. So he finds a patch of roses and tells them:

"You're not at all like my rose. You're nothing at all yet," he told them. "No one has tamed you and you haven't tamed anyone. You're the way my fox was. He was just a fox like a hundred thousand others. But I've made him my friend, and now he's the only fox in all the world." You're lovely, but you're empty," he went on. "One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think you my rose looked just like you. But my rose is all her own, is more important than all you together, since she's the one I've watered. She's the one I put under a glass. She's the one I sheltered behind a screen. Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose."

*Then the prince returns to the fox, and the fox drives the whole lesson home by saying,"Anything essential is invisible to the eyes, it's the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important, people have forgotten this truth, but you musn't forget it. You become responsible forever for what you've tamed. You're responsible for your rose."

***********

I don't know, I think that's a really precise and beautiful way of explaining what we all mean to each other. How and why we value people. How love works. Why it's possible to be married to just one person when there are so many countless possibilities promising better compatibility or options. It all comes down to working for them and giving yourself, to being tamed by them. By doing this you become responsible for them and they for you.

It's so simple when it's written down in a child's book.

Of course I recommend reading the entire book. It's very short. But if you read it with the right attitude it will teach you a lot.

Anyway, I better go. I hope you all have a great day.