Two things I learned today

1. Salt lake City has not had a republican mayor in 3 decades. How crazy is that?
   
2. To have a great day, all you have to do is get a great hair cut. Unfortunately there is just so many times you can do that before you stop getting any compliments. Incidentally, compliment is how half of my students spell complement no matter how many times I correct them.
   

Couple of things

This blogging thing is not working well for me. Got too many other things to do.

After being way too hot for way too long, "I" finally installed the swamp cooler in the house. It feels great.

There is a new gadget out there that I want. I just have to figure out where to get it. It measures your electricity consumption constantly. In dollars. People freak out when they realize how much they spend, so they start shutting things off :)

Speaking of energy. This morning on NPR they were talking to some random people who want to get on government case to develop alternative energy sources. So, that's great. One thing that slightly bugs me is their reason for that. It is "We're too dependent on foreign oils". I guess whatever works.

weather

So, we moved. There are lots of things that happened, it'll take me a while to write about it. An exciting one is that I finally, finally finished My name is red. That took forever. The title of the post? It is so, so hot in Salt Lake City. Let's look at some data:

June 13 -- we arrived to SLC:
13: 88 | 55
14: 90 | 61
15: 93 | 60
16: 100 | 62
17: 83 | 65
18: 80 | 50
19: 93 | 57
20: 98 | 67
21: 95 | 64
22: 98 | 62
23: 94 | 69
24: 93 | 71
25: 86 | 60
26: 89 | 57
27: 97 | 63
28: 99 | 68
29: 100 | 69
30: 95 | 60

July:
1: 98 | 61
2: 99 | 61
3: 94 | 64
4: 97 | 64


5 Forecast: 101 | 68
6 Forecast: 102 | 70
7 Forecast: 101 | 67

Christian Science Monitor?

I was walking downtown Ann Arbor the other day, and saw a sign for Christian Science Monitor. I realized I was confused about this name. Do they monitor christian science? If so, then I can't imagine what that might be. Or do they monitor science done only by christians? If so, it seems as an amazingly scientific way to choose which science to talk about. I suppose one might say that christians are monitoring all science, but I'm not sure that is what the title suggests. Maybe I don't get it, being a foreigner and all.

Packing

sucks! That's pretty much all I have to say.

The Mormons, Part II

In the second part of the series, people talked more about how they feel about religion, way of life, and their beliefs. They are pretty nuts. However, they did pick a wonderful place to settle. In fact, I don't think I mentioned this, but we are moving back! Yay.

The Mormons

Few days ago I found an ad in the New Yorker for a PBS show The Mormons. At the time I wondered how connected this show might be to Mitt Romney's presidential bid and whether any of the funding resources were connected to him. I watched the show tonight (there is another episode tomorrow which will talk more about contemporary mormons) and I have not learned whether Mitt paid for the show. But one thing was rather clear: almost all the interviewed were mormons. I guess that makes sense, mormons do know most about mormonism :) I don't really understand why America is worried about mormons. They aren't any more dangerous/different than/from any other average religion subscriber.