About This Blog
A blog about my life, universe, etc. At any given time you might find something endlessly interesting or just me ruminating on something else, which no one (not even myself) finds interesting. That's the way blogs go, I suppose. Anyway, I was eleventh in line, and you weren't. Hah!

About Me
Name:
Sarah
Age:
26
Residence:
Columbus, OH
Religion:
LDS
Political Score:
5.00/-2.15
Job:
Temp @ JPMorgan Chase
College:
Ohio State University
Majors:
Political Science, International Studies
High School: Home Educated
Hobbies:
Reading, standing in line for things, writing, research
Resume:
HotJobs
Email:
lloannna@gmail.com

About My Family
My mom is a lawyer in Pickerington; my stepdad and dad are computer guys, and my stepmom (who works with my dad) is an engineer. My sisters are, in order of age, a photographer, an artist, and a person too young to have her own website. My brothers are, in order of age, living up north, and again, a person too young to have a website. At some point soon I'll be collecting links for my aunts, uncle, and cousins. ^_^

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(Please see the notes below the Comment Policy before sending me a message)
AIM:
lloannna
ICQ:
29395930
Yahoo:
lloannna

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Star Wars: Episode 3 Line (Hollywood)
My Star Wars Line page

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NaNoWriMo 2007:
My Novel: Cipere Lumen




NaNoWriMo 2006:
My Novel: The Manatee Conspiracy




NaNoWriMo 2005:
My Novel: Beyond the Cliffs of Kefira





NaNoWriMo 2004:
My Novel: sul Okyar tir taTz'ileea

 
So, it's been a while...   And honestly, I'm really a little too busy to be blogging, but I got a couple of comments in my email today, and I was taking a break from noveling or studying (I'm in Russian 104! I could very well graduate soon!) And I thought, hey, why not blog a bit.

Today I'm going to do something really easy: compare the April 2006 General Conference citation rankings to the Top 25 General Conference Overall Scripture Rankings I did earlier this year.

First, the top citations for the 2006 conference talks, reverse alphabetically arranged within each instance category (and with previous Top 25 General Conference Overall Rankings in parentheses):

4 Instances
D&C 58:42 (39)
D&C 115:5-6 (471)
1 Peter 2:9 (110)

3 Instances
Moses 1:39 (1)
D&C 59:9 (23)
D&C 13:1 (49)
BM Title Page (148)

2 Instances
Mosiah 18:9 (130)
Moses 7:62 (455)
JS History 1:17 (45)
Helaman 5:36 (N/A)
D&C 84:44 (267)
D&C 81:5 (193)
D&C 132:19 (179)
Alma 5:14 (80)
Alma 42:30 (N/A)
Alma 42:15 (425)
Alma 42:13 (N/A)
Alma 34:32-34(316)
Alma 34:16 (N/A)
Alma 12:32 (N/A)
Abraham 3:25 (176)
2 Nephi 9:45 (N/A)
2 Nephi 32:5 (425)
1 Corinthians 15:29 (43)
1 Corinthians 13:11 (N/A)

Next, we try to balance the two rankings -- since some of the scriptures cited more than once in 2006 weren't on the Top 100 lists by book, they didn't have a preexisting ranking. I arbitrarily set their ranking as 2,500 -- the lowest ranking from my previous all-time list was in the upper 600's. Then I divided the 2006 ranking (4 instances = 1, 2 instances = 3, etc.) by twice the all-time ranking ([2006]/[2*AllTime]). That way the best-ranked 2006 citations (given a rank of 1) which had the best all-time ranks (in this case, we're talking about D&C 58:42, obviously) would have the largest resulting score within its own citation group, but not (automatically) the highest score overall The top 25 for 2006 are, thusly:

1. Moses 1:39 (Pearl of Great Price) [Top 50]
2. Amos 3:7 (Old Testament) [Top 50]
3. Matthew 5:16 (New Testament) [Top 50]
4. D&C 59:9 (Doctrine & Covenants) [Top 50]
5. John 10:16 (New Testament) [Top 50]
6. 1 Corinthians 10:13 (New Testament)
7. John 3:5 (New Testament)
8. 1 Corinthians 15:29 (New Testament) [Top 50]
9. Joseph Smith History 1:17 (Pearl of Great Price) [Top 50]
10. Matthew 6:33 (New Testament)
11. D&C 13:1 (Doctrine & Covenants) [Top 50]
12. Alma 5:14 (Book of Mormon)
13. John 14:26 (New Testament)
14. Matthew 11:28-30 (New Testament)
15. Matthew 3:17 (New Testament)
16. D&C 58:42 (Doctrine & Covenants) [Top 50]
17. Matthew 25:21 (New Testament)
18. Ephesians 1:10 (New Testament)
19. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (New Testament)
20. Mosiah 18:9 (Book of Mormon)
21. Daniel 2:28 (Old Testament)
22. 1 Corinthians 2:9 (New Testament)
23. 1 Corinthians 11:11 (New Testament)
24. Luke 18:22 (New Testament)
25. Acts 3:19-21 (New Testament)


Note that this isn't the same as putting the 2006 citations in order by their all-time rankings (to illustrate that, I marked the 9 scriptures which appear on the Top 50 all-time ranking.) Note also that, if you thought this year was a bit heavier than normal on the New Testament, you're right:

Book of Mormon (2 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 16)
Doctrine & Covenants (3 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 10.33...)
Old Testament (2 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 11.5)
Pearl of Great Price (2 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 5)
New Testament (16 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 14.3125)

Now, you could argue that by folding in the all-time rankings, I'm essentially eliminating the true up-and-coming citations (especially considering that no scripture was cited more than 4 times in 2006, and not even the Pearl of Great Price all-time ranking goes down to just 4 citations.) On the other hand, this largely eliminates any bias from one speaker repeatedly citing the same scripture (with no one else following suit;) unless at least two or three other speakers have had the same impulse. Since I already provided the "more than two citations in 2006" list above, I've decided I'm not too worried about this problem. Similarly, I'm not using the pure citation rankings today -- I'm using the combo ranking, which takes into account placement on the Scripture Mastery lists (either the old one or the new one.) Again, the point is "stuff that would be really really good to study, especially in light of 2006 Conference citations" and not just "stuff that gets cited a lot," for which you can visit the BYU citation site and get the answer right away. ^_^

I am a little annoyed that my list isn't a perfect "all the 4-citation scriptures in General Conference Overall Rank Order" display, but again that would be easy to calculate from what I've put up there. I like this weighted list the best, since it points out that 3-citation, #1 overall-ranked Moses 1:39 beats 4-citation, 39th-ranked D&C 58:42, which pretty much meshes with what I'd guessed would be appropriate.

[final note: I was waiting for the October 2006 conference to show up on the BYU site before doing this, but it's November now and it still isn't there and hey, I wanted to put something on the blog already. I'll just redo this exercise whenever it shows up. ^_^ Also, be aware that there's a beta version of the scripture index -- but it doesn't seem to include any 2006 data at all, not even from just April, so I didn't bother with it today. When they add the 2006 data, I'll start messing with comparative Journal of Discourses and General Conference citation rankings; unsurprisingly, Moses 1:39 remains king of that contest, with the top rank in the JoD/GC combined ranking -- but shockingly, it drops off the Top 100 altogether if you just look at the JoD! Daniel 2:44, not cited at all in April 2006, and ranked 49th in the GC ranking, is #1 in the JoD ranking and second in the genuine all-time ranking.]

Labels: analysis, book of mormon, church, reading, scriptures

posted by Sarah at 3:37 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Superman!   I'm not really reading spoilers or reviews yet, since I haven't seen Superman Returns, but my sisters and I rented Superman I and II and had a mini marathon tonight because a) I, for one, hadn't really seen Superman I all the way through, b) I, for one, had completely mixed up elements of Superman II and Battlestar 1980 [don't ask], and c) all three of us were completely unsure as to the actual storylines present in those two movies. Though all three of us remembered Lois dying, none of us could say for certain which movie it was in, one was sure it was in II or III, and another had only ever heard of it.

Anyway, I have officially revised my expectations for Superman Returns downward thusly:

1. I hope that when the audience cheers at the end of the movie, the Laws of Physics will not be weeping in the corner like an abused child.
2. I hope that under no circumstances does Superman or Clark Kent even hint at including any of the following items in his Fortress of Solitude: a bird of paradise freshly gathered from some tropical island, a kitchen, a bottle of champagne, or a bed, with or without shiny silver comforters.
3. I hope that the flying and super fast running doesn't look completely horrible.
4. I hope that at least some of the dialogue is as clever as the clever bits of Superman I.
5. I hope that the first fifteen minutes of the movie don't consist of a montage of moments from Superman I, carefully choreographed to eliminate any sign of Marlon Brando as well as any scenes that will be, of necessity, duplicated in this film.

If I can get those five things, I'll be happy.

(I haven't been blogging much because I've been working, getting ready to start my (hopefully) final undergrad class in September, and posting a lot at LiningUp.Net. I've also been collecting really nice comments on my comments on other peoples' blogs, and trying to come up with a good guest post topic for Millenial Star. So, yeah.)

Labels: culture, movies, reviews, superman

posted by Sarah at 2:30 PM. | 3 comments |

 
Belay my last...   I knew there was something odd about the Old Testament not having any instances in the top 25 -- now I know why. For some reason, the top 4 Old Testament scriptures didn't get their citations included in my Excel spreadsheet (I think it was a copy & paste error -- I've fixed it now.) Moreover, I realized that I gave the Articles of Faith short shrift; the reason the Scripture Mastery scriptures are given a boost is because Latter-day Saints are expected to memorize them; accordingly, I now give the Articles of Faith the same bonus that they would have had if they were on a single Scripture Mastery list. And, oddly, one entry (D&C 13:1) was given a lot more points than it should have (it went down to 49th, with 166 points, when I copy & pasted the new scoring formula; since I pasted over the old formula, I don't know what was wrong with it.) So, the correct Top 25 (plus the extras, from the original list, that were moved out of the Top 25) are:

Scripture -- Volume -- Score/Rank
Moses 1:39 -- Pearl of Great Price -- 1350/1
2 Nephi 2:25 -- Book of Mormon -- 505/2
Romans 1:16 -- New Testament -- 460/3
D&C 14:7 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 435/4
John 17:3 -- New Testament -- 424/5
Mosiah 3:19 -- Book of Mormon -- 415/6
1 Nephi 3:7 -- Book of Mormon -- 405/7
Amos 3:7 -- Old Testament -- 390/8
Moroni 10:4-5 -- Book of Mormon -- 380/9
Joshua 24:15 -- Old Testament -- 350/10
John 14:15 -- New Testament -- 345/11
A of F 1:13 -- Pearl of Great Price -- 340/12
Matthew 5:16 -- New Testament -- 335/13
Alma 41:10 -- Book of Mormon -- 325/14
D&C 82:10 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 320/15
D&C 130:20-21 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 305/16
John 7:17 -- New Testament -- 295/17
2 Nephi 31:20 -- Book of Mormon -- 285/18
Moroni 10:4 -- Book of Mormon -- 280/19
1 Corinthians 15:22 -- New Testament -- 280/19
D&C 1:38 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 275/21
Revelation 14:6 -- New Testament -- 275/21
2 Nephi 2:27 -- Book of Mormon -- 260/23
D&C 59:9 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 260/23
D&C 84:38 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 240/25
Matthew 25:40 -- New Testament -- 253/26
James 1:5 -- New Testament -- 244/27
[...]
D&C 13:1 -- D&C 13:1 -- 166/49


(the scores are slightly higher now, as I changed the formula slightly, to give all the Scripture Mastery scriptures which didn't appear in the Top 100 citations lists a score; this also affected some of the rankings, but all of the original Top 25 are up there.)

I included the volume information for any non-members who might be stopping by. The correct numbers for the volumes (for the Top 25 only) are:

Book of Mormon -- 8
New Testament -- 7
Doctrine & Covenants -- 6
Old Testament -- 2
Pearl of Great Price -- 2 (incl. Article of Faith)

We're still not big on the Old Testament, clearly. And if you don't count the Articles of Faith or Joseph Smith History, just Moses 1:39 and Abraham 3:22-23 have scores higher than the mean.

Speaking of which, I have a total of 620 scripture references (obviously, there are some duplicates: Moroni 10:4 and Moroni 10:4-5 each independently rank in the Top 20,) and the mean score is 50.7 -- there are 137 references that have scores of 51+. I'm thinking seriously of adding the hymnal references in -- though I think I'll make two separate scores and ranks if I add the hymnal, because only about half of my current Top 25 are officially referenced by any hymn at all (I should point out that each hymn only has 2 scripture references; that plus the similarity in wording/content between various specific scriptures probably accounts for a lot of the scriptures that seem to have been overlooked.)

Incidentally, we had our Stake Conference today. The highest-ranked scripture that was specifically cited by any speaker was Moroni 10:4-5. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was cited by our visiting General Authority. Interestingly, he's only spoken at General Conference four times, and didn't cite Moroni 10:4-5 any of those times; I looked at the list of scriptures he's cited in his General Conference addresses, and he doesn't seem to go for the really popular scriptures much; he's cited 27 scriptures, but only 7 of them have scores on my sheet (remember, there are lot of scriptures with multiple citations that aren't on my ranking,) and only 2 of his cited scriptures have scores above the mean on my list: Mosiah 3:19 (ranked 6th) was cited in 2001, and Moses 1:39 was cited in 1994. He's only cited one scripture twice: Moses 1:10 (1989 and 2001;) -- that's ranked 438th on my list, with 12 citations. The other speakers at General Conference who've cited it more than once were Harold B. Lee (4 times,) and Neal A. Maxwell (2 times.)

I'm definitely researching the next General Authority I see speaking, ahead of time. It's like Conference Bingo, only more nerdy!

Labels: analysis, book of mormon, church, LDS, mormon, religion, scriptures, statistics

posted by Sarah at 4:41 PM. | 4 comments |

 
A Unified Theory of LDS Scripture Ranking   [edit: see the next post up; I've had to correct the rankings somewhat -- the Old Testament benefits, while poor Doctrine & Covenants 13:1 is demoted substantially]

I ran across, finally, the list of the original 160 Scripture Mastery scriptures (they reduced it to 100 before I even joined the Church) and thought, hey, why not incorporate this into my list of important LDS scriptures?

These are the 25 most important scriptures, in order, taking into account whether or not they were on the old list, whether or not they are on the current list, their ranking on the BYU index of conference citations, and whether or not I'd run into more than one citation of them as "really important missionary scriptures." That last is totally random, but I wanted some kind of folklorey component, and that was the easiest one to find. I added together the yes/no questions (old, new, recommended), multiplied them by the total number of citations in General Conference, and then added the total number of citations in General Conference (the formula is: "((2*C2*J2)+J2)"), then sorted them with the highest scores on top.

Moses 1:39 -- 1330 -- 1
2 Nephi 2:25 -- 485 -- 2
Romans 1:16 -- 440 -- 3
D&C 14:7 -- 415 -- 4
John 17:3 -- 414 -- 5
Mosiah 3:19 -- 395 -- 6
1 Nephi 3:7 -- 385 -- 7
Moroni 10:4-5 -- 350 -- 8
John 14:15 -- 325 -- 9
Matthew 5:16 -- 315 -- 10
Alma 41:10 -- 305 -- 11
D&C 82:10 -- 300 -- 12
D&C 130:20-21 -- 285 -- 13
John 7:17 -- 275 -- 14
2 Nephi 31:20 -- 265 -- 15
D&C 13:1 -- 260 -- 16
Moroni 10:4 -- 260 -- 16
1 Corinthians 15:22 -- 260 -- 18
Revelation 14:6 -- 255 -- 19
D&C 1:38 -- 255 -- 19
Matthew 25:40 -- 243 -- 21
2 Nephi 2:27 -- 240 -- 22
D&C 59:9 -- 240 -- 22
James 1:5 -- 234 -- 24
D&C 84:38 -- 220 -- 25

(the list gets less useful the further down you go, because the citation index is biased in favor of shorter books -- the top 100 Pearl of Great Price citations gets you down to just five citations each, whereas the top 100 Old Testament citations only goes down to 8 citations, and the heavily cited Book of Mormon only to 12.)

As you can see, the one thing that keeps recurring is that Moses 1:39 is a LOT more important than any other scripture out there. Which makes me once again say that the March Madness showdown (which I can't even find anymore, but rest assured, " For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" did NOT win -- I don't think it was even running!) was totally off-kilter and wrong.

Interestingly, these are the scores for the different books (across all my rankings):

Old Testament: 3211 (0)
Pearl of Great Price: 3285 (1)
Book of Mormon: 6145 (8)
Doctrine & Covenants: 6295 (7)
New Testament: 7653 (9)

I'm surprised by that. The numbers in parentheses are the instances of each in the Top 25 -- that surprises me rather less. I knew that a lot of our really basic doctrines are expressed mainly in the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenenants, and New Testament. I just hadn't realized how much we rely on them (verses the Pearl of Great Price and particularly the Old Testament) on even the smaller or more unusual stuff. The top Old Testament scripture is, ironically, #26 on my main ranking -- Isaiah 29:14, with a score of 210. LDS readers shouldn't be surprised that Malachi 4:5-6 is right behind it, at #29, with a score of 195.

In case you're curious as to how the Scripture Mastery and recommendation bonuses impacted the rankings, the top 25 in my version are 1st, 6th, 8th, 11th, 3rd, 15th, 18th, 54th, 23rd, 24th, 28th, 29th, 35th, 36th, 41st, 46th, 46th, 46th, 50th, 50th, 13th, 63rd, 63rd, 17th, and 78th in pure citation order, respectively -- there are a LOT of ties, since that ranking is just based on how many times they've been cited; my rankings have a lot fewer ties, thank goodness. The reason that, say, Daniel 2:44 (#1 in Old Testament citations, 46th in overall citations) ranks lower than the Isaiah and Malachi scriptures is because it's only on the current Scripture Mastery list -- the Isaiah and Malachi scriptures are on both.

In case it's not obvious, I'll point out now that this system is not very sensitive to changes over time -- I gave the most weight to the continually popular (as evidenced by the citation index, from 1942 to the present) and that which both the CES of 1986 and the CES of today, and in a very few cases, returned missionaries of today, thought most helpful. I thought about giving a bonus to, say, everything that President Hinckley has cited personally, but decided against it.

I may or may not add in the hymnal and children's songbook references. It'd be a lot of data entry, so I'm already biased against it, and I'm not sure how much overlap there would be with the other two lists (the biggest victims in my scheme are the Scripture Mastery scriptures that aren't on the Top 100 of any of the five citation indices -- they all have scores of 0.) It'd be a fun experiment, anyway. I have a strong suspicion that the overall winner, Moses 1:39, can't be unseated under any responsible method of calculation.

Labels: analysis, book of mormon, church, LDS, mormon, religion, scriptures, statistics

posted by Sarah at 3:44 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Sackcloth, ashes, etc., and so forth...   Well, OSU, UCLA, a bunch of random sites with instant self-test mechanisms, and I are all really, really sure that I'm comfortable with the first two quarters of college Russian. It's the fourth quarter that we're in conflict over -- and of course, OSU wins.

So I've got to take one more class before I can graduate. And lo, and behold, the next time it's offered as a classroom experience is... next Fall. And so we must turn to the Individualized Instruction Program, that bastion of C- marks and "hey, why don't I just move to California and take the class at UCLA" inspiration. But the problems I've been ranting about to the Office of Information Technology since January still haven't been fixed; they've finally actually looked (yes, they said they looked back then -- hah!) and it turns out there are "database errors" and... the registration deadline is midnight tonight, and it took so long to actually determine why I couldn't register that of course, everyone had gone home by the time I was informed that the only solution is for an adviser in my college to manually register me. Argh.

But the good news is that I'm an Ohio resident for tuition purposes (see, just being here for years doesn't make you a resident.) Not that I can pay any tuition until I'm registered, of course. Argh, again.

If I can't register this term at all, I'm thinking of trying to arrange for my stuff in California to make its way here. I'm paying a not minor sum (for me) in monthly fees for the rental space, and all of my Russian textbooks are there; I think the gas for the round trip might actually cost less than replacing the books I need to finish the class. Plus the savings on that monthly fee. We'll see.

Labels: Ohio State, OSU, Russian, school

posted by Sarah at 5:56 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Why a wall is a stupid idea...   Fences may make good neighbors, but a wall across our Mexican border would probably bankrupt us, if we actually did it well enough to keep people from crossing it. Join me in a pointless attempt to avoid studying for my Russian exam; I was just reading some blogs, and then this post on Millenial Star got me typing and now look where I am:

Assuming we can't build a wall so strong and so tall as to keep people out -- we'd have to put an absolutely ridiculous amount of manpower into patrolling it. We have 8,500 people living at Guantanamo Bay -- 2,000 civilian family members and 6,500 sailors, Marines, airmen, coasties and civilian staff. Their guards -- and there are hundreds of them -- are staring across a relatively small fence (in terms of total length: 29 kilometers), guarding it twenty-four hours a day:

A map of Guantanamo Bay.

The only reason that we didn't (before 2004, when we turned over patrolling to the South Korean military -- 600,000 strong, primarily focused on defense against North Korea, with which they share a 151-mile long border) have the majority of the 40,000 or so US troops in South Korea patrolling that border is because we'd been down to just two observation points for years; to adequately guard the whole border would take far more people, and that's to defend against a presumed invasion, involving large military vehicles you can see from a satellite. Not small groups of people crossing a desert border, which really would require essentially line-of-site observation 24 hours a day.

Say we had patrols with one or maybe two men stationed 20 yards apart (line of sight, roughly,) with "observation stations" ala North Korea every 40 kilometers (25 miles), all along a fence with Mexico (remembering that our border with Mexico is 3,141 kilometers long, or 108 times the size of that border with Cuba,) and we won't be able to rely on their soldiers shooting anyone who tries to cross (like we can with Cuba).) Assume 8 hour patrols, and two support/administrative types for every guy who's patrolling:

-- 40 kilometers/20 yard patrols: 2188 patrol sections per station.
-- 3 shifts per section: 6564 patrolling personnel per working day.
-- Giving everyone two days off out of every seven: 9190 patrolling personnel per station.
-- Giving each patrolling individual 2 support staff types (including doctors, kitchen patrol, prison guards, DHS immigration officials...): 27,570 personnel per station.
-- A station every 40 kilometers for 3141 kilometers: 79 stations.
79 stations times 27,570 personnel: 2,178,030 personnel.

That's almost exactly the size of today's active and reserve military (1.4 million active, 860,000 reserve,) and I think we'd still get a lot of people sneaking past these patrols. Oh, and it's about the same size as the only active military with more personnel than ours (China,) and the size of the next two down (India and Russia) put together. It'd require nearly 1% of the total population of the United States to manage, and we'd still have another half a percentage point doing other military/defense work outside of this border defense force, and the borders with Canada (continental and Alaskan: 8,893 km.) Assuming 3 year terms of service, that the majority of those patrolling won't be in the military right now, and an average increase in the number of military-age citizens of 4 million annually, that puts us into a situation where more than one out of every six people (18%) turning 18 is enlisting in the border patrol.

If you give us two guys walking together, 20 yards from the next one down, we're up to 1,452,020 men who spend every single day of their work week walking along that border. That's the size of the entire active duty military in the US right now. 30% patrolling is a relatively generous estimate, based on how the US Border Patrol works today, and how the military services work -- the Marine Corps is the only one above the 30% infantry range, with something like 65%; the larger the task and the more complete its operational discretion, the larger the support staff required. The US Army has five clearly combat-related areas: infantry, armor, cannon field artillery, short-range air defense artillery, and special forces. They make up about a third of the total Army force.

As to why I think so many patrolmen would be necessary:

Anything short of line of sight patrolling is going to be very difficult to manage, just because you're going to have to start blowing people up from a distance or trying to track them while they're still on the Mexican side (or, if you're in one of the really rural areas on both sides of the border, put your trust in being able to track and catch up to AND catch them before they reach safety, defined primarily in terms of a city or other population center, where they can blend in. Unless you don't care how many people you let through, in which case why expand beyond the 11,300-man Border Patrol present today (we've got a proposal out there to add 10,000 border patrol agents, 1000 investigators, and 1250 port inspectors, which would shift the balance of the Border Patrol significantly.) You also need to consider the availablity of other patrollmen to show up and support anyone in difficulty; 20 yards is less than a minute's run. You can probably do strict vehicular patrols at a greater distance, but that would put them on the wrong side of the wall (either on the side with all the immigrants, or cut off from the immigrants -- there's no driving on the wall itself; even the Great Wall of China isn't big enough to really do that.) Also, that'll increase the number of people sneaking through.


Oh, and way before we've reached the point where we've got a population the size of the entire public school enrollment of the Los Angeles Unified School District patrolling the Mexican border, people will have started coming in along the coasts, or taking boats/planes to Canada. A grand total of 12,034 km of land boundaries and 19,924 km of coastline to watch, then...

(this reminds me of playing "Age of Empires"... at a certain point, it becomes so difficult and expensive to win using a military defense strategy that you have to become powerful economically to win; the computer opponents leave their populations behind everyone else technologically, and resort to a campaign of attrition against the entire world, trying to goad you into building a wall around your island to keep them out -- they will always break through the walls eventually, so you've got to either have a ton of allies to join you in an assault against their territory, or succeed so much economically that the computer opponent decides to resign.)

Someone brought up the IDF security fence:
As far as Israel is concerned, they have a) a border of 365 km (about 1/9th the size of our border with Mexico) that they want to fence in, and b) universal conscription with three-year terms of service for combat personnel (which, essentially is the group doing the patrolling: those called up choose either the IDF or the Border Police) Every healthy man between 18 and 43 is officially in the IDF and can be called up at any time for active duty. Also, they're dealing with an environment sufficiently hostile that sticking to the roads is the only sensible option for the overwhelming majority of travelers, and a population of terrorists who want to blow them up living next door. Moreover:

"During 1950-66, Israel spent an average of 9% of its GDP on defense. Defense expenditures increased dramatically after both the 1967 and 1973 wars. In 1996, the military budget reached 10.6% of GDP and represented about 21.5% of the total 1996 budget."

(anyone who can get a tourist visa to Israel and a letter of good character from their local police station -- and, presumably, can speak Hebrew -- can volunteer to serve on a Border Police guard patrol, or at a checkpoint. That sounds like fun!)

[I got everything here from the CIA, the IDF/Border Police website, and WikiPedia... it's a crummy bit of blogging not to link, but then again this was a two minute comment on someone else's post not very long ago; if anyone wants I can hunt the links down again.]

Labels: analysis, border, Mexico, politics

posted by Sarah at 9:30 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Notes from the mission field...   Okay, so I needed a title and there it is. I mostly just wanted to share with the world that I've decided to be evil this week -- we're doing the Abraham and Isaac story, you see. God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, they go up the mountain, Abraham ties his son up, lifts his arm to complete the ritual... and you know the rest of the story. Except, I bet most of my students (7/8 years old) won't know it, at least not for sure. And I'm not going to tell them. Mwahahahahaha!!

I will, of course, be providing them with the necessary reference to find out the answer for themselves. I just think it'll have more impact if they have to look it up on their own time. Anything to get them to read their scriptures, right? ^_^

Labels: church, LDS, mormon, Primary, religion, scriptures, Sunday school, teaching

posted by Sarah at 1:13 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Sure, why not?   I'll sign onto this one. The Abramoff situation is appalling, especially considering the kind of effort that ordinary people put into getting these politicos elected. For crying out loud, I handed out signs for one of those congressmen -- and I was just a kid at the time. Anyway, none of the other candidates for majority leader are looking too great; at least this one is behind something I can support.

Labels: Abramoff, congress, politics

posted by Sarah at 11:48 PM. | 0 comments |

 
Note to the Blogosphere:   This is how you ought to be handling your coverage of Ariel Sharon's condition. I'll give you three guesses as to why the latter half of this is tacky, opportunistic, rude, and frankly disgusting. And the first two guesses don't count. A man is dying, for crying out loud. We could well be staring down a return to the worst of the last twenty years in terms of Israeli-Palestinian relations. This is not a time to be tooting your own horns. You'd decry that kind of treatment from the main stream media you're so thrilled to be "better" than -- you ought to remember own obligations as well. Ugh.

Labels: Ariel Sharon, blogosphere, international affairs, Israel, Peace Process, politics

posted by Sarah at 9:40 AM. | 0 comments |

 
I love the Old Testament   And also the Pearl of Great Price. Seriously, I'm digging teaching the actual scriptures so much, it's not even funny...



That's this week's lesson. Soooooo much fun! We don't have nearly enough space in the classroom to put up a full size cut-out style version the way I did last week with the Plan of Salvation, but I almost like the mini sized one better.

Unfortunately, now I'm reeeeeally wishing there was a Sharing Time bullet for something along the lines of "Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ Promised Us Our Agency" -- because this jail theme is seriously groovy. I can see it now, dressing up half the class in stripes and handcuffs. ^___^

[Tags: Mormon, LDS Church, Bible, Church, Religion]

Labels: bible, church, LDS, mormon, religion, scriptures, Sunday school, teaching

posted by Sarah at 1:02 AM. | 0 comments |

 
Ariel Sharon   Roundup at Mere Rhetoric.

Go read the whole thing.

First what we do know: First, Ariel Sharon's political career is over. He will not recover fully from this operation, but even a miracle will not allow him to either run for or to execute the duties of an office.

Sharon was not the only Israeli alive capable of negotiating the diplomatic and military situation that Israel finds itself in - he was the only one capable of handling the political crises that he put Israel into and that he intended to lead Israel out of. What will happen to the politicians who left careers in other parties to join him - planning to ride his popularity until Kadima could grow roots - is anyone's guess.

In other words, it doesn't look good. At all.

Oh, and the Palestinians are in the streets, celebrating. Because Sharon was the only Israeli who ever gave them what they asked for -- land for peace.

(now, go back and click that link at the top of this post, and read the whole thing!)

Labels: Ariel Sharon, international affairs, Israel, Peace Process, politics

posted by Sarah at 8:31 AM. | 0 comments |