Did you happen...

Did you happen to see this picture of the southern rock band Jeff the Brotherhood?

That's Jamin on the left.  He's sporting a $1500 shirt and $1300 pants.  The cheapskate on the right is Jake whose $1400 shirt needs to be a little longer so I don't have to see his $830 pants.  Personally, if I had that kind of money to spend (and already had a wave runner), I'd get me some of Jake's hairdo.

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Did you happen to read the Sherlock Holmes mystery "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"?  If so, did you happen to laugh as I did when you came across this passage:

"I should  be very much obliged if you would slip your revolver into your pocket....  That and a tooth-brush are, I think, all that we need."

I've been trying to come up with a way to slip those sentences into casual conversation.

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Did you happen to read or hear about the book "Lost in Transition" in which Notre Dame professor Christian Smith shares the results of in depth interviews with 230 young adults ranging from 18 to 23?  What he and his research team found is a generation of emerging adults who lack the ability to speak or reason about moral issues.  The prevailing code is one of moral individualism where a thing is right if it makes you feel good.  As one respondent put it:

"I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong."

In the words of the authors, this idea that right and wrong only exist on an individual level and can be fully determined by the individual...

"...supposes and proposes (1) that no objective moral truths exist (or, if they do exist, humans cannot know them well), and therefore (2) that what people take to be moral truths are only socially constructed, historically and culturally relative ideas about morality."

Thelma and I have discussed recently how blessed we are to have testimonies of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I guess that's "church language" coming through.  In social science terms, we know through experience the objective truth of Jesus Christ, his mission and his gospel.  That knowledge gives us a moral code we can teach our children so they have an understanding of what is right and what is wrong and why.  As a manifestation of God's love for his children, they also have access to personal revelation through prayer and the influence of the Holy Spirit to help guide them in making right choices and to help them gain their own testimony of the Savior so they don't have to rely on us to know what to do.

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Have you heard the popular wisdom that all of our Goverment spending is being financed by the  Chinese buying US treasuries?  The idea that we are heavily indebted as a nation to another government is an alarming one.  Referencing Chinese president Hu Jintoa, Michelle Bachmann scored points with conservative political activists earlier this year when she said, "With all the money that we owe China, I think you might correctly say, Hu's your daddy."

It turns out Uncle Sam is still our daddy.  China does hold a lot of our debt.  $1.1 trillion worth.  But that's only 8.1% of the $14.3 trillion Federal deficit.  Government accounts hold 32.3% of the debt (of which the biggest portion, 18.3%, is the Social Security trust fund). That doesn't include the Federal Reserve which holds another 10% of the total.  Private domestic investors hold enough marketable securities to total 22.6% of the debt.

So the portion held by China is large (slightly smaller than Japan plus the UK), but it's not as though we've mortgaged the farm to the Bank of China.

For a nice summary of who holds our Federal debt, check out this interactive feature from Congressional Quarterly.

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And finally, did you happen to hear about the drunk moose that made of with a swing set in Sweden?  Apparently, moose are commonly drunk this time of year in Sweden when the apples begin to ferment. So when the local police found the missing swing set resting against a tree in the forest, they assumed it must have been an inebriated moose.  Makes sense, but I don't know why anyone would assume the moose was drunk.  Maybe it was smart.  Afterall, a few days earlier, a drunk moose was found stuck in a tree.  Maybe the moose who stole the swing set was just looking for an easy way to get up and down the tree.