Integrity isn't always pretty

I mentioned the other day that I've been reading Rough Stone Rolling, a biography of Joseph Smith, the Latter-day Saint (Mormon) prophet. In finishing it today, I came across an exceptional quote from Joseph's journal that sums up my own feelings:

I love that man better who swears a stream as long as my arm and [is attentive to] administering to the poor and dividing his substance, than the long smoothed faced hypocrites. (485)

I remember meeting a homeless man in my first city (Forbach, France) as a missionary. I could hardly understand much in those first few months, but I understood this man as he vilely profaned God. Walking away with my companion, Elder Claghorn, I remember remarking, "At least he's honest."

I actually didn't mean that tongue-in-cheek, either. I respect integrity, regardless of whether it leads someone to do good things or bad things. It's the honesty of purpose that matters, and that can turn a Saul into a Paul. A sincere-but-misguided person can be persuaded to change. A deceptive person cannot or, rather, will not.

Two of my neighbors will soon be leaving to serve LDS church missions to Rome, Italy, and Sao Paulo, Brazil. When I first met them they looked like Charles Manson, as my brother pointed out when he attended church with us. I saw that, but I was fortunate to spend time with them and see more. These boys, and indeed their entire family, were absolutely authentic.

The family rarely went to church, and didn't apologize about it. They didn't seem to care what others thought of them. I respected that, and didn't care if they didn't go to church. I became friends with them because I loved their lack of superficiality.

Over the space of five years, they have changed, but not in their essential integrity. They continue to do what they believe, and no more. My hope is that as they serve they will come to understand and believe more, and hence do more. I will miss them. They've become brothers to me.

Now if we could just have more integrity in our politicians (presidential aspirants, Congress, etc.). Maybe some day I'll get to vote for my neighbors. At least I'll know that they mean what they say, even when their choices are wrong.

Greta and Lily go to the polls

As I'll be out of town next week on election day, I went down to the Salt Lake County Building today to cast my votes. Jen was gone, so I took Lily and Greta along.

As it turned out, their presence came in handy. I'm not normally one for zoos (I think they're a subtle form of cruel and unusual punishment for animals, along with circuses), but I let Lily and Greta vote.

Me: OK, girls. Do you want more money for the Hogle Zoo and Tracy Aviary?

Lily and Greta: Yes! Yes! Yes! More money for the zoo! More money for the zoo! [They were jumping up and down and singing the words.]

Greta, after a pause: What's a Hogle?

So, we're getting our zoo funded. I suspect it will be a popular ballot measure and should pass.

As for other things on the ballot, let's just say that I ultimately voted for national security, and no, that doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. It was my old professor, Stan Taylor, that persuaded me that only one candidate could restore confidence in America abroad. Let's hope he's right, and that the candidate in question doesn't hurt the US at home. It's a gamble, but one that I took.

One more reason I live in Utah

In the midst of watching Scout's game yesterday, I was (perhaps not-so-subtly) reminded of one reason I love Utah:

Mountains.

There, providing the backdrop to a fun soccer game, were massive mountains. This picture (below) helps to illustrate just how close and how pervasive mountains are in Utah...at least until you head west and slum through the Salt Flats.

I couldn't even get all of the mountains in the shot. They are a spectacular, and yet routine, part of Utah life. You should live here.

"I don't even know Heavenly Father"

Jen and Lily went down to visit my grandma in the hospital yesterday. Jen had to leave the room for a few minutes, and came back in to witness the following dialogue between Lily and Grandma:

Lily: Why you sick, Grandma? Why you stay here?

Grandma: I don't know, Lily. My body is just old. I need help. I ask Heavenly Father for help every day.

Lily: I don't even know Heavenly Father. Who is He?

The descent into atheism continues. It all starts with a healthy agnosticism. :-)

Thanks, Mom and Dad. Now I can't be president

I once had aspirations to be president of the United States. No more.

After reading this article - "Is a Dysfunctional Family a Presidential Prerequisite?" - in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, I've given up. My family was too stable.

The families that have produced U.S. presidents aren't always great role models. In fact, they show a striking tendency to be deeply flawed. The childhoods of past presidents have been marked to an unusual degree by absent fathers, mothers so overinvolved that they could easily have been the original helicopter parents, and in some cases outright dysfunction....

Childhood events that would destroy most children seem somehow to spark greatness in leaders-to-be....

My dad was gone a lot at the hospital but unfortunately he coached all my teams. Thanks, Dad. You ruined my life by being around!

As for my mom, she was and is very involved with her kids' lives, but apparently not nearly involved enough to turn me into a president.

But maybe my mother-in-law could stand in as the overinvolved mom? (Just kidding, Kathy! :-)

Sigh. The dream has died. I am cursed by a good upbringing. I'll never do anything significant now. I can, however, completely neglect my own children so that they'll be spurred to greatness. I'll start today.

Fourth grade, all over again

The best thing about having a public blog like the one I write for CNET is that I occasionally hear from people that I haven't talked to in ages. As a case in point, a friend from fourth grade reached out to me today to see if I was "the same Matt Asay that grew up in Chesapeake, Virginia." I was.

He sent me a picture as a reward that I haven't seen in 20 years or so:

Poor Mom. How she must have groaned when I brought home this picture. I think I had managed to pick up a jacket out of a trash can and then made it worse by crossing my eyes for the picture. Oh, and of course I'm wearing some scroungy shirt that I got for free by signing up for baseball. Coolness that only a fourth grader would appreciate.

You can see the eyes-crossing pose in a larger format here. Pictures like this make me grateful that God has let me live long enough to repent for all the stupidity of my youth...now if He'd just keep me from all the stupidity of my adulthood, I'd be set.

That said, I'm perhaps equally grateful that my mom didn't commit infanticide to get rid of this ugly boy that plagued her home. Or maybe we were all ugly back in the 1980s. I'm struggling to find disproving evidence....

My twist on the Word of Wisdom

It's 9:23 PM on a Sunday night and I'm seriously hung over. No, I'm not drunk. I haven't had a drop to drink. Instead I've done what all good don't-drink-don't-smoke-what-do-you-do-? Mormons, and particularly Asay Mormons, do on a Sunday night:

I've eaten so much food that I'm afraid I may fall through our floor into the basement.

As a faithful Mormon ("Latter-day Saint"), I resolutely abide by the "don'ts" of the Word of Wisdom. I don't drink alcohol, coffee, or tea. (No, Diet Coke is not against the Word of Wisdom. If it were, most of my sisters-in-law would be driving Ferraris down the Highway to Hell. :-) )

And, like most faithful Mormons, I also completely overlook the "do's" of the Word of Wisdom, e.g., eat meat sparingly, load up on fruits and vegetables, etc.

Like a faithful Asay, I don't even dare to think about the most basic rules of health clearly implied by the Word of Wisdom. Like, um, "Don't eat so much that you're physically incapable of moving without someone rolling you across the floor or being carried by a heavy-duty crane." Or how about, "When eating dessert, try to limit yourself to the cake in front of you without also eating all of the raw ingredients that the cook may have neglected to lock away out of sight."

I pig out, therefore I am (an Asay).

Tonight I tried to tell Jen that I ate five helpings of lasagna (with an amazing Alfredo sauce) because I was being charitable to the new family that invited us over for dinner. "I wanted them to know just how much I welcome them to the neighborhood, Jen," was my rational. The reality is that my brain doesn't know how to disengage from "GORGE!" mode when my mouth latches on to particularly good food. So I started eating the scraps off Jen's and Scout's plates. I would have started to scrape the food off our hosts' teeth but I thought that might be a bit too impolite.

(Yes, the food was that good.)

I am now sinking into a food coma, so I'll have to end this sad tale. But let me leave you with this word of advice: if you want to feel good about your cooking, invite an Asay over. By the time we recognize that the food isn't any good, we'll already have plowed through at least three helpings, and you'll be calling yourself the Iron Chef.

(Of course, if you notice that we skipped the fourth helping, you'll know that we hated it. So stop watching after the second helping or so.)

Lilly leaves the straight and narrow

Ah, Lily. So young, and already so dubious about some fundamental tenets of the LDS faith.

This morning Jen was helping Greta memorize the second Article of Faith. Unfortunately, Lily was nearby and kept interrupting:

Jen: We believe that men...
Lily: Hey! We're not men. We're girls!
Jen: ...will be punished for their own sins...
Lily: I don't want to be punished! Why we need to be punished, Mommy?
[Jen explained the need to repent and become perfect...]
Lily: I'm perfect, Mommy. I don't want to be punished.
Jen: ...and not for Adam's transgression.

She'll be a confirmed atheist by the age of five. I think it's too late to try to stop the momentum.

All too human

I'm in the middle of reading Rough Stone Rolling, a biography of Joseph Smith, and I'm loving it. It's very comforting to see the cracks and fissures in someone that I respect so highly. Joseph had all sorts of character flaws, but he was also an indomitable rock in the areas that mattered.

The book makes it clear that Joseph rarely could see how things were going to turn out, and often was left to spend time fishing for answers by simply living through rough experiences, some made rougher by his own foolish choices. He didn't get a free pass on trials. Quite the opposite.

In like manner, I find myself wanting to know what's going to happen next, as it would make surviving today much easier. That's not the way it works. If God let Joseph struggle, there's really no reason to expect it to be easier for the rest of us. That's why we're here: to grow. If life were easy, we'd become amorphous blobs of wasted potential.

So, reading Stone now, as I try to lead my team through a difficult patch in American business history - there really is no way to go through a recession completely unscathed - it's comforting to know that this is how it's supposed to be. Hard.

I, like you, am a weak, often silly person. But that's the point. Put enough weight on the arch and it grows stronger. I'm not asking for more weight and more difficult experiences to smooth out my own rough edges, but I'm a bit more grateful today for this particular struggle.

I'm told that if it doesn't kill me it will make me stronger. How comforting. Really.

And I thought I had class

When Isaac walked into the kitchen this morning in yet another ugly t-shirt (This one with "Cub Country" emblazoned on the front), I came close to asking him to go take it off and dump it in the trash. It was, after all, the twentieth ugly white t-shirt he has worn in the last four days (yes, really). Some say "Samba Futsal" on the front. Some say "Bonneville Bobcats." All are pretty lame.

But then I looked down at what I was wearing: an O'Reilly Media t-shirt. Now, there's nothing wrong with O'Reilly Media - I quite like the books and blogs it releases. But coming on the heels of my Red Hat t-shirt the day before, and a Sun Open Solaris t-shirt the day before that (and an Apple shirt for the two days before that), it was a bit much.

Isaac and I have no class. Scout, Lily, and Greta look like they walked out of a Mini Boden catalog. Isaac and I looked like we took whatever free t-shirts people handed to us...

...which is exactly what we did. I buy one new shirt each year (two, if you count the white shirt I buy for church each year), and subsist on software-sponsored t-shirts the rest of the year. This might make me cool in Silicon Valley (but probably not). Here in Utah it makes me a scrounge.

That said, if you're reading this and you want to send me a t-shirt to wear, I'll gratefully advertise for you. If you could send a youth large, too, Isaac and I can be twins. :-)

The perspective of kids

Lily was upset that Greta "got to go to Rachel's and the people said 'No!' to [her]". Greta was right next to her (as Lily would have known had she opened her eyes), set to launch into a complaint that she couldn't go over to a friend's house. Isaac was downstairs playing Wii with a neighbor, making Greta and Lily jealous since they couldn't find someone with whom to play. Scout is away for the day.

None of them is worried about the recession. None of them will remember it in 10 years time, much less two years. Want perspective? Check with your kids.

As Isaac's team worked the ball around for their seven-to-one victory, I couldn't even remember this past week of doom and gloom on Wall Street. There was no nagging concern about my 401(k). There was just the occasional moment of brilliance as a pass threaded their defense or a formidable stop was made by our defense.

My kids don't read the Wall Street Journal, as I do. They read Magic Tree House, Lord of the Rings, etc., and they don't seem the poorer for it.

Recently the leaders of my church spoke to the members and urged prudence and moderation in response to the financial crisis. Sound advice. "Get your houses in order," was the principle, but it didn't require panic. Perspective.

I think most of us would be a lot happier if we took care of bringing our expenses in line with our income and then not frittering away any additional time thinking about the economy, except to be aware of those less fortunate that we are and reaching out to help them. We'd have more time for books and games, and less time to wring our hands and wait.

I think my kids are right: there is little to fear. Fear causes the problems - it solves nothing. If the economy could take a collective breath, think for a bit, and then act, I suspect we'd be a lot better off.

I'm going to be looking to my kids a lot more in these coming weeks. They seem to have the right perspective.

The incredible bulk (of noise)

Perhaps there is one thing worse than politics.

After sitting through the seemingly unending grunts and roars of The Incredible Hulk, I've discovered something worse than an Obama vs. McCain debate. Does Hollywood know no restraint anymore?

Hulk wasn't filled with gratuitous sex or vulgarity/profanity, those modern staples of film. Instead it was stacked end-to-end with mind-numbing violence. It wasn't violence like The Dark Knight or Reservoir Dogs - there was little gore. It was more violence against the senses.

Hulk's principal problem was a complete lack of understanding of nuance. The movie is either completely blaring or dead silent.

I thought I'd watch Hulk to unwind from a week of meetings and a long flight home from DC, but instead I just finding myself wanting to roar and grunt....

Mission accomplished for the producer? :-)

McCain and the poverty of ideas

One thing became crystal clear during last night's presidential debate: Senator McCain was a fool not to choose Mitt Romney as his running mate.

Why? Because Senator McCain is completely devoid of ideas, energy, and a chance of winning. People may point to Governor Palin as the weak link in the McCain/Palin ticket, but at least she brings energy and fortitude. McCain? Well, let's just say that he fell asleep some time ago and has not yet bothered to wake up and refresh his mind with the slightest clue as to what to do about domestic or even foreign policy.

It pains me to write this. I'm a conservative, after all. But I can't get excited about McCain. I kept wanting him to come up with a thoughtful suggestion as to how to fix the economy (not that I expect him to have The Answer - no one does); to provide a nuanced view of foreign policy; or say anything that sounded like it had been considered in the past decade or so. Instead McCain's policy proposals never climbed much higher than a dig at Obama.

Obama, right or wrong, came with some new ideas. Yes, most have Democratic ideology as their foundation, but at least they sounded like fresh refrains on an old song. I'm not sure I can vote for Obama, but I'm increasingly disinclined to vote against him, not when my option is McCain.

Romney wouldn't have given McCain electoral votes, and he likely would have angered Evangelicals for being (gasp!) Christian, but not their brand of Christian. Whatever. But he at least had ideas. He would have been the guy to have when the economy was collapsing. He's the sort of guy that gets better when shoved up against the wall. McCain? There's no doubt he can take a beating. But it's equally clear now that he has no idea how to respond to the beating constructively, with creativity and agility.

Even as a Republican, I have more faith in Obama's ability to handle the economic crisis than McCain. I still don't like Obama's social policy prescriptions, and I may even not like his financial proposals, but at least he has some. McCain? Not so much.

Jeff Waugh points out in a comment to my previous post that perhaps this ideological bankruptcy of the Republicans will lead to a renaissance of conservative thought. I hope so. If McCain is the best we can offer, we deserve to lose. Again and again and again.

The delicate balance between liberalism and conservatism

Barack Obama, whatever the faults with his social views (and I think they are deep and wide), is almost certainly a good, earnest person. Indeed, I would ascribe the problems with his social views to the fact that he's a good and earnest person.

This is precisely why I worry about him as president. In reading a Wall Street Journal review of Obama's legal views (Obama was president of Harvard Law Review and is by all accounts astute on such matters), I can't help but worry what an Obama Supreme Court would create.

Sen. Obama wants judges who won't "think, in 1954, of 'separate but equal' in a very formalistic way," but rather recognize that in practice segregation is "inherently unequal," as Chief Justice Warren wrote, says Danielle Gray, an Obama campaign aide and former Breyer law clerk.

This sounds so good on its face that how could anyone doubt its rectitude? After all, an Obama court would likely find its way to the correct decision in a Brown vs. Board of Education than a rear-view mirror Scalia-esque court, right?

Probably, but there are very few Brown decisions to be made, and far more Scalia-esque decisions, decisions that I believe are best settled with an appeal to the past, rather than to the future. I don't want an Obama court looking forward to remedy all social ills through the courts, as I'm concerned that such a practice would create far more problems than it solves.

"I appreciate the temptation on the part of Justice Scalia...to assume" that if the 18th century text is followed "without question or deviation...all good will flow," Sen. Obama writes in his book, "The Audacity of Hope." "Ultimately, though, I have to side with Justice Breyer's view of the Constitution -- that it is not a static but rather a living document."

This is true...to a point. But the problem arises when living judges get caught up in rectifying wrongs "once and for all" with broad brushstrokes...which ultimately may end up hurting many more people than they help.

As an example, it is almost certain that judges in the near future will strike down millennia-old strictures related to marriage, because (they'll say) it is "absurd" to withhold the right to marry from consenting men and women of the same sex. In this rush to remedy such an "obvious" wrong, I fear that courts will overlook history to try to force a "fair" future...a future of their making, but not one that comports well with history.

Outside the judicial realm, the housing mess is largely a fabrication of government efforts (both Republican and Democrat) to bring home ownership to millions of people that could not afford the privilege. Good principle - "everyone should be able to afford a home" - but bad policy. I'm worried that Obama will follow his heart more than his head in his policies.

This is why I think it is good to have a liberal heart but a conservative mind. Let our best impulses move us, but let our most grounded principles restrain us.

Lily's revolution

Let it be stated clearly that Lily is a righteous little girl.

Look at her studying the scriptures with such studious intensity! Witness her attempts to penetrate the clouds of doubt and uncertainty that plague the world! Ponder her attempts to find solace in the gospel!

Or simply look on and see the cunning mind of the demon child as she plots the overthrow of the Asay household.

Lily is currently writing her book, The Audacity of Nope, in which she brings her plan to the world of children. "When your parents ask you to clean and suggest, 'Yes, you can,' you must turn to them with utter indifference and remonstrate, 'No, I can't.'"

Tomorrow's revolutionary...today.

Law school inflation

I found this data from Stanford Law School's (SLS) Paul Lomio fascinating.

Paul's data shows that over the last 25 years SLS has kept is tenured professor headcount relatively flat, while the number of visiting and junior faculty has exploded. The library staff is also roughly constant while other SLS staff has nearly tripled. Lastly, "advanced degree" students are way up while full-time JD students has actually dropped a tiny bit.

What does it all mean? Tuition has grown enormously over that stretch, but it's not buying better (or, at least, more) tenured professors. Instead it seems to be buying fashions and flexibility in the curriculum. (Actually, it's the endowment which likely pays for everything, but I digress....)

By "fashions" I'm not intending to be derogatory. Rather, I'm thinking of my Constitutional Law professor, Jed R______ (Name withheld to protect the innocent). He was a fine professor but I think SLS was happy to have him spend the semester with us (from Yale Law School, his employer) because he was an up-and-coming legal hotshot with a theory of "totalitarianism" (Don't ask - I thought it was a bit silly. Basically, he felt that it was totalitarianism for a society to do things like tell women they couldn't have abortions, but he never really explained why it was simultaneously OK to tell people they couldn't do other things they wanted to do).

By hiring more visiting professors like Jed, Stanford is able to keep its curriculum fresh without having to take on the long-term expense of a tenured professor.

Even so, I would not have expected the student count to have remained so constant even while the total faculty and support staff exploded....

What I would have asked the candidates

I watched a few minutes of the vice presidential debate last night. I didn't see anything I didn't know: Biden is a consummate politician and Palin, well, she's not.

I would have asked a different question near the end, after both had spent the hour repeating tired party lines and declaring untruths and half-truths:

Have you ever considered changing your political affiliation?

My follow-up question would then be:

Please name one major issue on which you've flip-flopped at least once.

I'm betting that the answers to both questions would be frantic attempts to assure the questioner that they believe - even absolutely, mind you - in the positions of their respective Democratic/Republican parties; that they have always felt in such-and-such way; etc. Sure, they might call out where they've voted against their party to show how independent they are, but that's not the question I (would have) asked.

I want to know if there's any independent thought left in them, thoughts that change as they are presented with new information. Thoughts that are firm but shakeable. I want to know if these are partisans or people. I suspect every one of them is increasingly becoming the former, even though they used to be more of the latter.

Senator Biden and Governor Palin resolutely declared their positions and pretended to be 100% behind their presidential candidates. Neither articulated a moment of fallibility, when they had clearly been wrong and had changed their minds.

That's a real failing. Yes, we need people that believe they are right and will stand up for that position. But we also need people that will change in the face of new information and new experiences.

Romney took a lot of heat for changing his positions, and perhaps rightly so: it was argued that he changed his opinions out of political expediency. I'm sure there's at least some truth in that.

But the overriding principle I'd like to see and maybe he displayed: changing one's mind because one was wrong. I want more of that.

It's the same in business, unfortunately. In a contract dispute neither side will give an inch on fault, because to do so is to open one's company up to greater liability. I've been in that situation and it's terrible.

I'm by no means perfect in this, but I can at least say that I've changed my political affiliation a few times. In Utah I thought I was a Democrat. Stanford taught me that I was not even close to being a Democrat. Moving back to Utah has shifted some views; getting a job and paying taxes has changed others; etc. Jen chided me last night for changing my position on an issue. That was perhaps the best compliment she's given me all year (though I admit I didn't feel very complimented :-).

It's a Utopian dream, but I would really like to see the day when we see real debate in Congress, debate that actually changes minds (and hearts). I'd like to see a presidential debate where the two candidates sit side-by-side and talk through the issues, clearly highlighting their differences and perhaps bridging some others. I'd like to see someone admit they're wrong.

Wouldn't you vote for someone that would do that? I know I would.

I wrote before that I'm not voting for a savior - I'm voting for a leader, someone to manage complexity and lead. (Unfortunately, I'm going to have to settle for neither a savior nor a leader.) The way candidates on both sides of the aisle behave, they act like God gave them Ten Commandments that they have to batter each other with, rather than strong hunches that guide them but which might just prove to be wrong.

Again, I'm not suggesting that politicians should discard strongly held views. I'm just suggesting that they should be prepared to flipflop like crazy when those views prove wrong. What if they found out that France may well offer better health care than the US? That abortion is wrong? That guns really do more harm than good? That welfare can work, but needs to be changed? That more government isn't the solution? Or that it is? Etc.?

I hope they would flipflop. But I'm not holding my breath. As someone that has a hard time changing my mind, I'm not going to expect these people to change theirs. But I see good people changing their minds in my work every day, including myself, so I know it's possible.

I'll vote for the first politician to admit to being completely wrong on an issue.

In case you're depressed...

...by the financial meltdown, I would heartily recommend listening to Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush." No, it won't make you feel any better, given that it talks about people ruining the world, but what a song...! I especially like Radiohead front man Thom Yorke's version, which you can listen to at the link I provided. Haunting and beautiful.

Hell is like watching Chelsea play

Chelsea is in the middle of a 0-0 draw with no-name CFR Cluj-Napoca. Heard of them? Neither had Chelsea, but they're sure making CFR Cluj-Napoca look good. Ridiculous. Chelsea's boring grinding-out of 1-0 wins makes me physically ill.

Especially against Arsenal. :-)

Why I love Arsenal so much

This article in the International Herald Tribune sums up why Arsenal is my great escape:

The rain fell, the wind swirled, but as we watched supremely gifted young men play their way out of recent doubts about their capability, we sensed that there could be no more significant result, and nothing closer to poetic motion, than this.

Arsenal's team destroyed Porto 4-0. It could have been 10; but it was the performance, the movement, the demonstration of high speed precision and trust in one another that was so heart warming....

In times when every one of us wonders what the bankers and politicians are doing with our money, there has to be an escape in life. A night at soccer's opera can only provide that outlet if the intention is to entertain us, and not merely to win, win, win.

Or, worse than that, neither to win or lose, nor to dare risk anything.

And on the eighth day, God created Arsenal.

If you've always thought soccer is boring to watch, it's because you've been watching boring, boring Italian soccer. You certainly haven't been watching Arsenal, and you've clearly never attended a match. There is nothing like the roar of a British crowd, howling down a ref or agonizing over a near miss or exulting in the goal that puts its team ahead. And nothing like a Latin American crowd bouncing and dancing to the joy of soccer.

In short, there is no sport like soccer. Nothing else comes close.

Your new budgeting plan

Given the financial meltdown right now, I was reminded of this timely reminder of how to budget effectively, from the writers at Saturday Night Live:



Sometimes the simplest solution is also the right one.