We're Not Waiting For Superman

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

How we educate has been top of mind ever since I watched the documentary Waiting for Superman a few months ago. Sure, shock-docs like this should always be questioned for accuracy and motive, but at the very least you will walk away from this movie motivated to do more for your own kids or for other kids.

Here is something I started doing with my two oldest at the end of the last school year. When I came across interesting articles online, and I thought the topic would also interest them, I would print the article out and assign it to them to read and summarize. I made sure the assigned articles were challenging enough to contain new words and concepts. If they went the extra mile and looked up the words they didn't know, I paid them a nominal amount of ten cents per word. For example, here are two articles I remember printing out for my ten-year old daughter to read. I think I paid her fifty cents.

The Trouble With Bright Girls, Huffington Post
Changes Schools Should Make to Better Serve Students: A Student's View, Huffington Post

My next idea - a multi-week unit introducing the world's great religions to kick off the school year. Let's all strive to be a little more educationally creative this year.

Wikipedia (Waiting for Superman): here
Kids-In-Mind (content review): here
Pay for Grades (Time Magazine): here
Image via Wikipedia

Guest Post: To Flourish or To Languish

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Have a post you think would be good on Modern Mormon Men? Both modern mormon men and modern mormon women can submit guest posts via email. In addition to your post, please include a post title and a paragraph of introduction (on yourself) to run above the post.

Dustin Peterson lives in Houston, Texas with his supermodel wife and three extroverted kids. His days are consumed at Rice University molding the malleable minds of college students and preaching the doctrine of leadership development. His work focuses on becoming more authentic and self-aware, leading more effectively, and helping people figure out what to do with their lives and careers. Dustin enjoys changing diapers, eating bacon, and tending to his fourth child, www.thenewtonapple.com, where he searches, ponders and writes about self-development and the art of leadership. You can contact him directly at thenewtonapple at gmail.com. Read Dustin's other guest posts here and here.

Let me give you a persuasive reason to study the scriptures and pray -- according to research, it may just be the difference between you flourishing or languishing in your life. Allow me to explain. I recently studied a principle called the Losada Line, which is named after the guy who created it through his research, Dr. Marcial Losada. As a social scientist, Losada studied high-performing individuals and teams to determine the factors that make some excel while others suffer. While conducting some research back in the 90's, Losada confirmed that individuals having a higher proportion of positive emotional experiences to negative ones, in the ratio of approximately 3:1, experience positive outcomes in life such as human flourishing (remember, that's the good one). Those who experience less than three positive emotional experiences for every one negative experience tend to languish (that's me most of the time).

Flourishing denotes "thriving in a vigorous state" while languishing equals "becoming slow and weak," perhaps even "wasting away and losing health and strength." The former state of being sounds pretty exhilarating -- I can see myself gliding into work with a grin on my grill, forgoing my morning ritual of ESPN.com and mindless web surfing, and working productively on things that may actually benefit humankind. The latter state sounds more like where I often find myself ... weak and slack, body deteriorating into a hunched mass of decrepitude, mind going numb after hours of listlessly hammering out spreadsheets (forgive me, people who enjoy spreadsheeting), and energy levels plummeting into outer darkness. So how do I get to a point of vigor, other than drinking a five-hour energy shot, and what do the age-old silver bullets of scripture study and prayer have to do with it? It's all in the 3-to-1 balance.

Endure to the End Zone

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by Scott Heffernan (bio)

National Parks

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by Clark (bio)



This video was taken a few hours north of where I'm living for the summer in Banff. If you haven't spent much time this summer in any of North America's national parks, its still not too late. Make the most of your summer and get outdoors for a bit. I promise you won't regret it.

If you want to see unicorns you should head to Banff ... there is proof if you click HERE.

Reserved Seating

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by DeanJ (bio)

The only time I get nervous walking into the chapel at church is when we are visiting a ward for a family or friends blessing/talk. The nervousness is caused by a very common activity no one talks about in church - Reserved Seating. I'm not talking about people laying out their jackets or purses to save a seat. I mean the families in your ward that sit in the same seat every week.

I can tell you where most people in my ward sit, and they can tell you where I sit. And it's a funny thing because you don't get an assigned seat in your bishop's interview. Just some families have their little groove. And when you walk into a different ward you are usually early because you needed the extra time to find the building or you knew it was going to be packed and wanted to get a seat. When you show up early to a different ward you notice two things.

1 - You have your pick of the seats. You can sit anywhere! And in a weird role playing game you can see what it feels like to sit in the Brown's family isle or the Smith's family corner! You can be any of these families and they will never know. You can sit up front and center like a good sunbeam. You can sit in a side isle casually. You can sit in the back on the folding chairs like a good guest.

2 - You become painfully aware as every person walks by. You try to casually look at their face to see if you have taken their assigned seating.

Have you ever had anyone take your reserved seat? It throws off your next 75 minutes. Your kids were used to sitting on the pew. Now they are stuck in the folding chairs that tip back way to easy. Suddenly all the speakers seem foreign when viewed from the left side of the room. The kids think they are on vacation and are getting acquainted with all the new people around them. And all these new people your kids are staring at? They are wondering why you are sitting in their section and what have you done with the Jones's?

And you can't do anything about it. If you are in their seat they aren't going to ask you to move. They will just stare at the back of your mean seat-stealing-head all meeting. And now you feel like a jerk. You know why you feel like a jerk? Because deep down you know that you have broken the reserved seat rule. And the only reason you know you broke it is because you have your own little reserved seats back at your ward. That some family is in right now pretending to be you.

What's the Money Line?

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by Saint Mark (bio)

The other day as I was driving with my aunt, cousin and sons, ages six and four, in the car, my cousin shared a lascivious tale. She was walking through a Las Vegas hotel on her way home from a gathering of friends and an older man approached her. After speaking to her and finding out her age (he thought she was older than twenty-one and she told him flat out that she was seventeen), he propositioned her to come up to his room. She said no. He then offered $1,500 if she did. She again replied no. He continued and finally after an offer of $3,000 and my cousin's final rejection, he walked away. All of us adults in the car, understanding the implications, uttered shock at the audacity and shamelessness of the man who tried to get my sweet cousin to go up to his room. Then, without skipping a beat, my older boy unabashedly stated from his car seat, "For $3,000 I would have gone to his room!"

Now, this story has many avenues I could travel down, but the one I want to address is my son's intense "like" of money. I put like in quotations because I am pretty sure it isn't just like but more likely love. But that's what I want to discuss. Does he love money or does he just have a very (un)healthy "like" of money?

Whichever it is, I'm sure I'm culpable for fostering his attraction to "all that glitters." If anything, it might be genetic. When I was growing up, Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties was one of my role models. I tried to emulate his uncanny ability to guess coin types just from its sound when it was dropped on a table. Moreover, I confess that I was a little like Linus from Peanuts. But, I didn't carry a blanket around or a stuffed animal named Pumpkin. No, I toted a blue safe decked out with a dial combination lock. I also have money radar. After you have dropped or lost money on a snowy, windy day that blows forever away from your pockets, I am the one who will probably find it. For example, over three consecutive winter days I found $16 lying in the middle of the road in front of Georgetown University. Another day, I found a twenty dollar bill blithely stirring in a zephyr in a grocery store parking lot. I have a lot more stories but you get the picture: it may be genetic.

Mormon Doppelgängers 5: Brett Merritt & Kevin Costner

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by Scott Heffernan (bio)

See all Doppelgängers here.

This time around I decided to feature our own brettmerritt. He bares an uncanny resemblance to Ray Kinsella himself—Mr. Kevin Costner.

I should point out that I’ve never actually met Brett Merritt. We’ve only conversed a limited number of times through email. Nor did I warn him or get his permission to do this post. Please pray that he will not be offended. My hope is that he will be flattered and delighted and jump for joy. I also hope that Brett is not angry in regards to the picture I chose. I looked for one in a steamy swimming pool, but the only one I could find like that was too small.

I’ve never met Kevin Costner either. The times I’ve tried to converse with him through email, he has been unresponsive. Both of them seem like good guys though.

Both men are actors. Of the two, I’ve only seen Mr. Costner act, but I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that Brett is the better actor. For proof click here. To my knowledge Brett has never won a Razzie Award (or 6). Brett is also a talented and accomplished writer (even outside of this blog!). In May 1998 Brett Merritt was voted most erotic male by the readers of German magazine Amica. Wait. That was Kevin Costner.

Brett gets an honorable mention doppelgänger in the form of Tim Robbins. Although not identical, there does seem to be a resemblance. Maybe they are cousins. Suddenly I’m in the mood to go watch Bull Durham. Who’s with me?

Kevin Costner’s favorite baseball team is the St. Louis Cardinals.
Tim Robbins’ is the New York Mets.
What's yours, Brett Merritt? What is yours?