current events

Uvalde: At a Loss

I have no idea what else to say at this point that I haven’t said before. Years ago, I started posting and reposting the same blog entry each time there was another mass shooting. That entry details the path I took to end up as opposed to guns as I am now. But I can’t just post the same entry again today. I didn’t post it last week, when the shooting in Buffalo happened. It doesn’t do any good, so why bother? I don’t understand the mindset of people who, upon hearing that 19 fourth graders were murdered in their

Religious Freedom Under Attack?

We had an interesting lesson in church on Sunday, and it’s been banging around inside my head since then, so I wanted to explore it a bit more here on digital paper. It stemmed from a talk given this past General Conference, arguing that religious freedom is under assault. I’d read the talk ahead of the lesson, and I’d listened to it back when it was given live in April. At the time, I didn’t think that much of it one way or the other. As I said in our meeting Sunday, “I’m in favor of religious freedom,” and that

You Don’t Know Celebrities

In the aftermath of Will Smith’s infamous slap, I’ve heard and read remarks that basically boil down to, “I just didn’t think Will Smith of all people would do that. He’s such a nice guy.” I’ve blogged about this before (five years ago, when Joss Whedon turned out to be far from a shining example of awesome), but it bears repeating: unless you’ve spent significant time around someone, you don’t know them. (And honestly, even if you *have* spent significant time around someone, you still don’t necessarily know them.) In the case of celebrities, all you really know is the

Where’s the Outrage?

I’m more than a little puzzled by the significant lack of any sort of real response on social media today. I woke up to the headlines of Russia rolling into Ukraine, and I’ve been reading the updates as the day has unfolded: attacks on sites across Ukraine, military coming in on three sides of the country, planes and helicopters being shot down, missile strikes being videoed. A couple of my friends have posted something about these events on Facebook, but by and large my feed is filled with the same memes and chatter that they’re filled with every day. On

Stop Trying to Ban Books

Maybe it’s because I’m a librarian, but I’ve always had this general feel that there’s a consensus that book burning is a bad thing. At least, I’ve never heard anyone speak favorably of it, and whenever it’s come up in a conversation, it’s been used as an example of What Not To Do. This is likely because it’s fairly intrinsically tied to efforts by the Nazis, and most people still believe Nazis were Not Good. However, it appears more and more people seem to believe banning books is not only not that bad, but actually pretty good. I’ve been following