Tom Stringham

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@realTannerMeade @ITalkOfChrist I knew a lady who had been a member for a few years and was very surprised one day to learn that most members don’t shop on Sundays. The idea had never occurred to her. In principle she could have derived it from “don’t make others work” but on the other hand, just teach it!

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@realTannerMeade @ITalkOfChrist Elder Christofferson taught a lot of specifics today, but also tied back to a key principle of loving your neighbor. Very useful teaching. But just teaching “love your neighbor” without context won’t do it—virtually no kid is going to derive “don’t bet on sports” from that.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@ITalkOfChrist @realTannerMeade If they had written the new FTSOY then taken a look at the rise of online gambling, WoW issues, etc., and smashed it before sending it out for four years then I guess that would be a good comparison.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@ITalkOfChrist @realTannerMeade This general idea crops up all the time. What if instead of teaching times tables we let kids reason it out and explore. What if instead of drilling phonics, what if instead of learning names and dates, etc. etc. and it never works except for very few exceptional kids.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@ITalkOfChrist @realTannerMeade Right. And that was a bad idea at the time, and has proven itself since to have been a bad idea. Giving teenagers plain, practical advice and a set of shared standards doesn’t make them robots and doesn’t somehow prevent also teaching the underlying principles.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@realTannerMeade @ITalkOfChrist Maybe they were playing five-dimensional chess by taking the language out, but I think it’s more likely that Elder Uchtdorf’s idea that the youth should derive their own standards from first principles was just a bad idea.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@realTannerMeade @ITalkOfChrist Makes one wonder about the wisdom of removing all references to gambling from the FTSOY guide in 2022.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@jkimballcook @shalkie @sorrogrande I wasn’t totally sure; they did take all mentions of gambling out of FTSOY in 2022. Glad to know now.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

I think a lot of stuff is like this. Maybe most of us could handle alcohol just fine. But a lot of our members would become alcoholics and that would lead to a lot of suffering for them and their families. Just not worth it.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

Pres. Christofferson spoke to people who manage to gamble without doing it compulsively or to great harm. He asked them consider how their example affects others. Something that has a minor effect on you could be more costly to others if they “take license from your example.”

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@StatisticUrban *get people to your golf courses an hour earlier (sorry to be pedantic)

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@Andrea_Migone @jbsteinberg I was responding to your suggesting that gate prices don’t affect retail prices.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@Andrea_Migone @jbsteinberg Yeah but retailers don’t have complete market power, if the price they paid for eggs fell some of that fall would inevitably get passed to consumers.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@Andrea_Migone @jbsteinberg If a farm goes bust because its costs are too high, a better-run farm gets its quota. Sounds good to me.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@tracewoodgrains A refinement everyone will find agreeable: do that by defining it as not sex (a very recent shortening of “sexual intercourse”, i.e. the intercourse characteristic of the sexes)

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@jbsteinberg Why the carveout for agricultural TFWs? In the 50s Americans ate a lot of canned fruits and veggies because fresh produce was expensive, was it so bad? Seems weird to bring in an underclass of workers every year so we can enjoy cheap fresh produce.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@ryanburge @cremieuxrecueil We drive a lot of evangelicals nuts because we reject the creeds/historic orthodoxy and they can’t explain why that’s bad, because their self-concept is “we just believe in the Bible”

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@GordonMonson Oh hey look I can use this again

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@GordonMonson Another variation on your “the church needs to assimilate to mainstream American culture” theme

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@andrew_leach @JamesPort66 Important and surprising if true (he has proposed reforming the system and argued it is unfair in this exact context)--I can't find these numbers. Let me know if you have them.

[Tom Stringham @TomStringham]

@andrew_leach @JamesPort66 Sure, but the point here is always that if it were marked to market (for all provinces), Quebec would lose a substantial amount of its equalization, because it exploits the formula to an extent that AB, in particular, does not (and has little incentive to).