Category: culture
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American Citizenship
I really liked this Deseret News profile of a naturalized citizen. Airman 1st Class Elena Dulger’s face lights up the room when she talks about her first chance to participate in a democratic election. Dulger, 21, is taking her oath of citizenship today, seven years and one day after meeting her father at JFK International…
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Energy Optimist
Considering that our homes use much more energy than our cars – it’s always nice to see improvements in how we can generate or use energy. I was reminded of that when I saw two articles on better/cheaper ways to harness the power of the sun. One would generate power from energy gathered at windows…
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Patriotic Rivals
I really enjoyed Lyall pointing out the Op-Ed articles on patriotism from McCain and Obama yesterday. I think he was quite right to point out a major flaw in McCain’s statement that patriotism should come “before anything” but I don’t agree that without that flaw the editorial would have been perfect. I really liked McCain’s…
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A Real Solution
For all the political talk about what ails our society and how our “leaders” in Washington can fix it, I think that Peter Lovenheim has identified one real solution that can put everything back into perspective – recapturing the meaning of “neighbor.” He asks this very important question that I’d like to take a stab…
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Transit Oriented Development
The idea that we need more transit friendly ways to develop our urban and suburban areas is nto new to me. I have long believed it. The idea that government restrictions hinder as often as they help is also easy for me to accept. That’s why I was interested to read about the ways that…
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Overload
These last couple of days have been overwhelming. I can hardly keep up with everything I need to do – which is why I failed to post. I’m still trying to catch up so this is mostly a chance for me prove that I have not disappeared. It is also a chance for me to…
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Federalist No. 17
Prior to Federalist No. 17 I had never completely disagreed with any of the federalist papers. Unfortunately, in discussing the possibility of a national government becoming stronger than would be desirable, Alexander Hamilton completely missed on his guess that: It will always be far more easy for the State governments to encroach upon the national…
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Stability
As I have been exploring the issues of an ideal living environment I have come to the conclusion that there is a factor which I had not noticed before which can probably exist in almost any of the categories of places (large city, suburban, rural, etc.) which seems to have more influence over desirability of…
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Big Cities
Large cities (I mean those with populations exceeding half a million people) seem to be ideal from a commercial and industrial perspective with a large number of people in one area to supply a workforce and a large body of consumers. With the exception of businesses that require open space (ranching/farming for example) large cities…
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“Republican” Does Not Equal “Conservative”
I was excited to hear The Fall of Conservatism on Radio West and to read the article being discussed. All through the show there was a concern lurking in the back of my brain. When I finally identified it as the unfortunate interchanging of the movement called conservatism with the political party called republican I…