Ormond

Here is the link to today's column: https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/cleveland-evans-lord-of-the-rings-actor-raises-elijahs-popularity/article_efe70d58-ba1d-11ee-b325-cbb7f61263fc.html Recently popularity figures found on behindthename.com show that the huge recent popularity of Elijah in the United States has started to lead to increased usage in other English-speaking countries and even France.

Trump feels threatened by anyone who opposes him in any way, and the fact that Haley is a woman of South Asian ancestry makes him even more likely to attack her when she refuses to suspend her campaign and endorse him. I really wonder why I still keep seeing speculation in the media that Haley will be Trump's VP pick. It might be a traditionally politically smart move for him to make, but why does anyone think that at this point in his life Trump can overcome his basic tendency to hate anyone who has opposed him in order to make such a "smart" political move?

Well-known movie director Norman Jewison has died at age 97: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/norman-jewison-director-in-heat-night-dead-97-2024-01-22/ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/22/movies/norman-jewison-dead.html https://people.com/norman-jewison-dead-moonstruck-director-was-97-8547514

The young man who runs the "Let's Talk Elections" channel on YouTube, who has seemed to me to usually know what he is talking about, has a recent video where he says that recent polls of New Hampshire voters show them saying they would vote for Biden over Trump in a general election at almost exactly the same % points they actually did in 2020. His argument is that New Hampshire voters start paying close attention to the election cycle earlier than those in other states do, and so he thinks this predicts that voters nationally will end up back at about the same place next November they were in 2020. Since that election was so close, it's still a worrisome prospect, but less dire than a lot of national Biden vs. Trump polls right now are predicting.

Though I know there have on occasion been astrologers who have tried to postulate that some sort of gravitational or other physical forces are involved in their field, most of my friends who've really been into astrology do not think the planets and their positions have a direct causative effect. They rather have a spiritual belief that everything in the universe is connected on a non-material plane, and what they are doing is just finding correlations between the positions of the planets and what goes on in human lives, which are caused by this underlying spiritual connection. Of course newspaper astrology columns, purporting to give a couple of sentences about one twelfth of all humanity at a time, usually aren't even making any scientifically "falsifiable" statements but just state general advice which doesn't have any real predictive content. Statements like "Rely on your team, tribe, and community" or "Nurture youself. Broaden your exploration." are so vague as to be practically meaningless.

Peter Schickele, who satirized classical music as "P.D.Q. Bach", has died at age 88. Though it's been several years since I listened to his work, I always thought this man was seriously funny. https://www.classicfm.com/composers/beethoven/pdq-bach-peter-schickele-sports-parody/

Science fiction author Tom Purdom died January 14 at age 87: https://locusmag.com/2024/01/tom-purdom-1936-2024/ His first novel, I Want The Stars, was published in 1964 and was one of the first science fiction novels to feature a protagonist who was not White. It was republished in 2020. https://journeypress.com/titles/i-want-the-stars/

By a vote of members of the society -- if you read the article you will see that this is a vote on names which are significant in terms of culture and/or onomastics during the past year, and only one of the subcategories (Personal Names) could possibly have a "recently popular baby name" as the winner.

My theory would be that in this case correlation doesn't mean causation in either direction, but that a poorly educated population is the underlying factor that leads to both poor health and susceptibility to right-wing populism. P.S. And it looks like that according to Wikipedia's page on personal educational attainment by states, that Utah is the "red" state with the highest % of adults over 25 who have bachelor's degrees.

As someone who until recently was a psychology professor, I will just say that much of the more sexist and unsupportable statements of "evolutionary psychology" have been made by popularized books and articles written by people who are actually not researchers in the field, and many of those who are academic researchers have been embarrassed or appalled by them.

I'm sorry, but you made your statement after you quoted fionwe's following statement: So I think I was reasonable in assuming you were referring to any deviation from "first past the post" such as ranked choice voting or "jungle primarires." I don't agree with letting people vote in more than one party's primary -- partly because "party membership" is nearly meaningless in the USA. There are states like Michigan which don't even have voter registration by party and where you just tell the election worker what ballot you want when you show up for the election. In states that do have party registration, though you may have to register in advance and so do a minor amount of personal planning to vote in a primary, registering with a party just involves declaring which party you prefer. Parties themselves have absolutely no control over who registers with them. Theoretically, Trump could switch his registration to Democrat or Green tomorrow and AOC could switch her registration to Republican or Libertarian tomorrow and the parties would have absolutely no way to prevent that. You cannot be "expelled" from membership in a political party in the USA. If one is elected to a legislature, there might be the possibility of being expelled from the party caucus within the legislature, but one would still be registered with that party and would have the right to run in the next primary election for that party. What other organizations are there in the USA besides political parties where the governing bodies of the organization have absolutely no control over who is a member in this way?

This has already happened in California, Alaska, Maine, and Louisiana, at least for some elections, and has been the case for decades for the state legislature and some more local offices in Nebraska. So to so it has 0% chance is already disproven.

Yes, Sweden's restrictions do seem to be a bit more stringent than those in the USA now. In the USA the gender of one's sexual partners is no longer an issue. From the Red Cross site here are the sex behavior restrictions: Under the FDA’s individual donor assessment guidance, there are no eligibility criteria related to men who have sex with men. Any individual, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, who has had new or multiple sexual partners in the last three months, and also had anal sex in that timeframe, will be asked to wait three months to donate blood from last anal sex contact. Individuals who have had anal sex in the last three months may be eligible to donate as long as they did not have sex with someone new or with multiple partners during that timeframe. Also, I have never been told that if I develop cold systems the day after donating I should call them about it. We do now get emails telling us where in the USA our donation has been used, which does turn out to really help motivate people to donate again.

The Jehovah's Witnesses are going through some major upheavals right now, and the national board that controls them has even decided to make some changes recently. I have run across several YouTube videos about the fact that the rule against beards which the Witnesses had has recently been scrapped. That might seem like a minor issue, but it seems to be a big deal for a lot of former JW's out there that even that rule has been changed. Any change where individual Witnesses are trusted with making a personal choice where they weren't before seems to be a big victory for some people who have been part of that group.

I am very sorry you have had that experience. In my personal case both LDS and JW missionaries have quickly accepted "no" for an answer. I think I have read that Mormon missionaries are directed now to especially concentrate on younger people, which is a demographic I do not fit.

I have linked below to a video about the nationwide blood shortage in the USA that the Red Cross has declared. 40% fewer people are giving blood than did a few years ago. Some of this is because blood drives have usually been held in the USA in workplaces and churches, and since the pandemic with many people working from home and church attendance down, there just aren't as many people who are regularly in spaces where they can personally be asked to give blood. I have been giving regularly since they got rid of their complete restrictions on gay men giving a few years ago. If you are over 17, there is no age restriction -- I know a woman who gave blood a couple of years ago at age 100. It is even more important, though, to consider giving if you are still in your 20s or 30s to get yourself into the habit of doing it. Now it is true that once you get into the Red Cross data system you will get lots of calls and/or emails about donating, precisely because they are desperate these days. But there are very few other things people who don't work directly in health care can do where you know you are helping to save someone's life and/or health by doing it. So -- have you ever given blood? If you are not in the United States, how does blood donation work in your own country, and is there a present shortage in your nation? Here is the video news clip:

If you are still going to have separate primaries, I certainly do NOT think people should be able to vote in more than one. It sort of defeats the purpose of having parties at all. Rather than allowing people to vote in more than one primary, it would be better to have so-called "jungle primaries" as they now do in California, Alaska, and (I think) Louisiana, where in the "primary" all candidates from any party are on the ballot and the general election is a run-off between the top two in the "primary" no matter what their party affiliations are. However, I'm not sure this really has made candidates in those states more "moderate" than they otherwise would be, though the change to this system in California and Alaska is so recent there wouldn't be good data on that yet.

I would assume that the persecution of Baha'i in Iran is because it grew out of Islam in Iran and so is considered a "heresy" there. Humans unfortunately are always more disturbed by someone who used to be part of their group who abandons it than they are by those who were never part of their group to begin with. Being a "traitor" is more condemned than just being an "enemy." One sees this in politics as well as in religion. I think in the United States that Latter-day Saints (Mormons) were especially persecuted back in the 19th century because of that phenomenon.

Here's today's column, my annual report on The American Name Society's Name of the Year vote: https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/barbie-gaza-chosen-as-joint-names-of-the-year-in-2023/article_408f8ea2-b00e-11ee-bdee-87e76b6a4167.html

We are having our second big snow storm in a week here in Omaha and almost everything is closed. Plus it is supposed to be getting super-frigid starting tomorrow, with a high temperature on Sunday of -9 degrees F (and that is the basic temperature, NOT the wind chill), so my church's services and lots of other things have also already been cancelled for Sunday. I do think people have gotten more scared of bad winter weather now than they were years ago. I don't remember things being cancelled just because of below zero temperatures (without major snowfall) until recently.

I think monotheism vs. polytheism is too simplistic a contrast. There are many varieties of each, plus intermediate possibilities, two of which are called henotheism (where someone believes in the existence of multiple gods but only worships one of them, while believing it is valid for other people to worship different gods) and monolatry, where one both only worships one god and believes that their god is the only one that any person should worship. I think there are many passages in the Hebrew scriptures themselves which imply that originally the Hebrew conception was more monolatry than pure monotheism, where one thinks only one God has any real existence. I think in terms of the effects of deistic beliefs on society that the important question isn't whether one is montheistic, polytheistic, or something in between, but what is one's conception of the moral or ethical implications of the god(s) one worships. As a modern liberal Protestant I think any theism whose god(s) promote love, justice, and equality for all persons is mentally and spiritually healthy. I think often the most problematic beliefs are the dualistic theistic beliefs, as in some forms of Zoroastrianism, where there are basically just two gods, one good and one evil, who are in constant conflict with each other. I think many right-wing Christians at different points in history have elevated the idea of Satan to a point where he is almost such a co-equal "god of evil". I think that belief system much more easily leads to a demonization of those who are different from oneself by assigning everything in the world, including other humans, to be either on the side of the "good God" of the side of the "devil", and that to me seems to lead to more hatred and persecution of those different from oneself than either pure monotheism or polytheism.

Here is Locus's obituary for Terry Bisson: https://locusmag.com/2024/01/terry-bisson-1942-2024/

MAGA persons who are influenced by Q-Anon think she and her fans are being "weaponized" by the Biden administration and Deep State. https://www.wired.com/story/taylor-swift-psyop-conspiracy-theory-person-of-the-year/

British actress Glynis Johns has died at age 100. https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/04/entertainment/glynis-johns-dead/index.html All the news reports are first emphasizing her role as Mrs. Banks in Disney's Mary Poppins, and her helping to popularize the song "Send in the Clowns." However, the film that originally made her a star in the UK, 1948's fantasy film Miranda, where she played a mermaid, brought Miranda back as a baby name in the USA when it was shown on American TV in the 1950s. So her original image was as a beautiful sex symbol, not the middle-aged suffragist of Poppins: https://omaha.com/lifestyles/admired-miranda-popularity-flows-with-the-tides/article_aa30a606-f7d3-11ec-8114-3bcdbe971155.html

Here is the link to today's column: https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/cleveland-evans-medieval-name-soars-from-modern-media-exposure/article_61e30aee-a3fb-11ee-970d-8f483eec512c.html Hope everyone has a great new year!