Bio

Farm boy. Attorney. Five children, eight grandchildren (God's gift to grandparents).  Lifelong Mormon.

Heroes:  C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton.

Love golf (much more than it loves me). Avid reader.  Recently e-published a book on Mormon culture.


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tabula rasa
Name:
tabula rasa
Hometown:
Salt Lake City
Joined:
Jun 9, 2010

Recent Comments

tabula rasa

Here's a relatively modern invention that has had a profound positive effect on mankind: eyeglasses.  At about age 15, I had to get glasses for nearsightedness.  I'm now of a certain age and have bifocals.

Were it not for these inventions, I would have viewed life for over forty years as though I were in fog.  They seem so simple, but they've dramatically improved people's lives.

tabula rasa

AUMom: 

Tomorrow, AUDad and AUDaughter will join the family trek of seven cemeteries for Decoration Day. A quaint custom, still practiced in small towns, is the cleaning of the cemeteries where your dear departed are buried.

I prefer real books to ebooks. I like the heft of a book. Feeling seems to give it weight as well as importance. I realize this is a personal preference. 

Ditto to both.  My parents always called it Decoration Day.  We still visit four different cemeteries.

I own a Kindle and use it, but--if we're talking about a book that's more than just mind candy--I like real books.  Kindles are good when you travel (so you don't have to take your whole library).

Re: Courage

tabula rasa

Real courage takes place all the time in houses on your street. We don't know about it because courageous people don't complain.

I've said this many times on Ricochet, but my Dad spent 64 years with a shattered arm caused by German shrapnel.  Not once did he ever complain. When I hear myself whining about something, my Dad's image often crosses my mind, and I usually stop, feeling a bit of shame.

Edited 17 hours ago
tabula rasa

Mrs. Tabula is a Mary Ann kind of person:  loves kids and grandkids; she's pretty, but unpretentious; she's the adult in the room; and, best of all, she puts up with me.

tabula rasa
Amy Schley: On the subject of lesser known composers and works, I really like Bederic Smetana's Ma Vlast pieces.

They're very, very good.  Second the motion.

tabula rasa

Beowulf Guy: 

Finally, is there a particular piece of classical music that you know deserves to be better known, but is not? · · May 16, 2013 at 3:50am

The symphonies of the American composer Howard Hanson, a native of Wahoo, Iowa.  He bucked the trend to atonal music.  You can hum his tunes--they're beautiful.

I have a great love for anything by the British composer Ralph (pronounced "Rafe") Vaughan-Williams.  He's not an unknown, but his whole range of works (symphonies, chorale pieces, operas, ballets) deserve a much wider audience.

tabula rasa

My favorite bureaucracy quotes:

“The younger generation of today has grown up in a world in which in school and press the spirit of commercial enterprise has been represented as disreputable and the making of profit immoral, where to employ a hundred people is represented as exploitation but to command the same number as honorable.”  [Friedrich  Hayek]

"These corrupt bureaucracies are contemptuous of the people, in whose name they so piously speak." [Richard Weaver] 

 “Where administration is light and bureaucracy small, bureaucratic honesty is an incomparable virtue; but where these are heavy and large, as in all European states, . . . they burden and obstruct the inventive and energetic.  Where bureaucrats are honest, no one can cut through their Laocoonian coils:  their procedures, no matter how onerous, antiquated, or bloody-minded, must be endured patiently.  Such bureaucrats can neither be hurried in their deliberations nor made to see common sense.  Indeed, the very absurdity or pedantry of these deliberations is for them the guarantee of their own fairmindedness, impartiality, and disinterest.  To treat all people with equal contempt and indifference is the bureaucrat’s idea of equity.”  [Theodore Dalrymple]

Edited 22 hours ago
tabula rasa
I'malogger: Actually many years ago Jonnie Carson made a joke about a shortage of TP and the stores ran out with the resulting "panic"buying. He had to say several times that it was a joke. I remember the empty shelves, of course no one ran out of TP for a few months after that! It was a perfict example of panic buying not unlike the current ammo shortage! · 9 hours ago

A good reason to store corn cobs.  Be prepared for the rare market failure.

tabula rasa
I'malogger: Actually many years ago Jonnie Carson made a joke about a shortage of TP and the stores ran out with the resulting "panic"buying. He had to say several times that it was a joke. I remember the empty shelves, of course no one ran out of TP for a few months after that! It was a perfict example of panic buying not unlike the current ammo shortage! · 9 hours ago

A good reason to store corn cobs.  Be prepared for the rare market failure.

tabula rasa

These relationships among highly professional people would never cause a problem:  each knows that his or her highest duty is to shill for Obama.  And they do it well. 

tabula rasa

Frozen Chosen: You know you're in a socialist country when ________________."

...you elect Barak friggin' Obama to a second term · 4 hours ago

I thought his middle name was Hussein.  

tabula rasa

James Lileks: Thanks, Tabula - that line just popped out while I was figuring out what to say this week. Turns out that was it. 

But of course, they wanted 932 more words, so. · 9 minutes ago

The other 932 were excellent too.

tabula rasa

My wife and I are friends with a couple.  She is a rabid liberal who deeply loves Obama.  I suspect he's actually a conservative but is unwilling to face her wrath, so he says little.

I don't talk politics with her (on other subjects, she's perfectly normal), except that whenever I see her name on the Caller ID of the family phone, I answer "Dick Cheney residence. Dick speaking." After she splutters for 10-20 seconds, I go get Mrs. Tabula.

When Obama was elected, she made her husband take her to Washington for Obama's inauguration.  After she came back she insisted on telling us at length just how deeply spiritual the experience was for her. (I think it was just the cold).  Her description of him is roughly equivalent to how I could imagine myself describing the Second Coming.  She saw (and still sees) Obama as god-like.  

It was this description of her rapture that taught me that this whole "cult of personality" thing is very real for some people.  It was very, very creepy.  And kind of crazy.

I'm a Reagan fan, but he wasn't a god.

Edited on May 16, 2013 at 11:22pm
tabula rasa
Crow's Nest: I'm told the East German government, faced with a similar situation, called it the Shitegeist. · 14 minutes ago

Classic.

tabula rasa
kohana: You know you're in a socialist country when you need a Sear's Catalog for..., oh, wait.... · 5 minutes ago

We were partial to the Montgomery Ward's catalog.  It was the Charmin of catalogs.

Edited on May 16, 2013 at 8:07pm
tabula rasa

Troy:  Dan Foster at NRO addressed this same report at the Corner.  Your report is more detailed, but his headline beats yours hands down:

"Study: Dan Foster Types More Likely to Be Conservatives"

It's not too late to change your headline.

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