Blog Archives

What I learned about Christmas from a 50-year-old tape

12/19/2023

I gave my father a Bette Midler album for Christmas.
It’s worse than it sounds. The year was 1973. This was my 47-year-old Dad, a quality control engineer who was a leader of the Rotary Club, a product of the Depression and WWII, and who had raised serious concerns when I decided, earlier that year, to let my hair grow over my ears. I don’t think I had ever seen him load a record onto our family stereo console, unless my mother asked him to put on a classical or religious album.

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How will new filing deadlines affect the Legislature?

12/15/2023

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Winston Churchill said, “Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.”
True, but I can’t quite figure out what sort of business Utah lawmakers were up to nearly two years ago when they moved the deadline up for filing a declaration of candidacy for elected office.
Beginning next month, that declaration period will be from Jan. 2 to Jan. 8. This is thanks to SB170, which passed the Legislature in 2022 with little opposition (the vote was 27-0 in the Senate and 59-11 in the House, not counting absences).

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Is it better to appoint, rather than elect, an attorney general?

12/15/2023

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When Sean Reyes announced last week he wasn’t running for re-election as Utah’s attorney general, he did more than just open the seat to fierce political competition. He reignited an old debate over whether the state should continue electing people to that office.
Get ready. If this gains any traction, and if you’re a registered voter, this one could be on a ballot near you someday soon. Something this big would require a change in the state constitution, which ultimately would require a public vote.

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That day Norman Lear visited the Deseret News

12/8/2023

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If you remember Norman Lear at all, it probably is for shows such as “All in Family,” “The Jeffersons” or “Maude.”
Lear, the television writer, director and producer who died this week at 101, was legendary for getting audiences to confront uncomfortable topics with laughter while, in subtle ways, pushing the culture to face its own prejudices. He was fond of saying there was a spiritual quality to the sound of audiences laughing together.
But I remember him, instead, for the day he visited the Deseret News editorial board in November of 2001.

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We should still be worried about government spying on us

12/1/2023

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The American public has a short attention span, often fixating on a subject for a while, then moving on as if it has been solved.
Twenty-two years ago, I found myself on various shows, talking about shark attacks which, while dangerous, were suddenly capturing an almost obsessive amount of public attention. In reality, they were happening at a rate on par with a statistical average.
In 2016, clowns were the rage. They supposedly were doing evil from New Zealand to Utah. People were terrified. Then, just as quickly, the clowns seemed to disappear.
In 2014, people began to dump buckets of ice over their heads to raise money for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The stunt brought in a 187% increase in funding that year, which helped research tremendously, according to the ALS Foundation. But no one seems to be dropping buckets on their heads any more, even though the disease is still with us.

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How long will today's babies live?

12/1/2023

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Ah, the callow optimism of youth.
I hope I can be forgiven for the irrational exuberance that led me, at the dawning of the year 2000, to wonder if I, and many of my contemporaries, would be around to see the dawning of the year 2100, even if we had to do so from a rocking chair.
Now that life expectancy seems to have halted along its inexorable climb, I’m willing to admit that may not happen. Making it only halfway through the century would be an accomplishment.
In my defense, I was only 40 at the time. It all seemed so logical and I felt so energetic. As I wrote on Jan. 2, 2000, life expectancy in 1900 had been a mere 47 years. It had risen steadily through the 20th century and now was 76.9.

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What I learned about Christmas from a 50-year-old tape

How will new filing deadlines affect the Legislature?

Is it better to appoint, rather than elect, an attorney general?

That day Norman Lear visited the Deseret News

We should still be worried about government spying on us

How long will today's babies live?

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