Category Archives: Only in Utah…

Honor Code: Why Johnny Can’t Write, Only Copy-and-Paste

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Okay, this is both funny and desperately sad. Also, I really, really think the UT-SAT students really need to take a look at the fine print:

U. of Texas honor code apparently plagiarized from BYU’s code – Salt Lake Tribune

SAN ANTONIO – University of Texas at San Antonio students wanted to draft an honor code that discouraged cheating and plagiarizing.
Unfortunately, it appears they copied Brigham Young University’s code without proper attribution.
The student in charge of drafting the code said it was an oversight, but cheating experts say it illustrates a sloppiness among Internet-era students who don’t know how to cite sources properly and think of their computers as cut-and-paste machines.

Spiritual caregivers: Salt Lake Trib mentions a friend

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Spiritual caregivers: Beyond physical healing – Salt Lake Tribune

For 22 years, Lincoln Ure, an Episcopal priest, has been the clinical pastoral education supervisor at St. Mark’s Hospital, the one site in Utah that offers the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE) training. Succeeding as a chaplain, Ure explained, “takes some serious internal work.”

Father Linc spent some time with Mom and with the rest of our spiritually divergent family while Mom was at St Mark’s. He was such a good sport when she was throwing us out one by one – offered to go in and be thrown out, too. She was sorta cranky that one night but she had one more good morning before things started to go downhill.  Father Linc came around a lot because he was acquainted with my sister and brother-in-law.

He’s an amazing chaplain and gives so much of himself – I attended two Wednesday services conducted by him at the hospital while in Salt Lake, before and after Mom died, and frankly I couldn’t have coped otherwise (as my poor family knows). The services are attended mostly by staff and people in the ACPE program, and they were short but intense little Rite III Eucharists that really “fed” the little congregation and recharged their spiritual batteries.

Go Father Linc!

[tags]Episcopal, Utah[/tags]

The Politics of Fear: Only 13 times? Isn’t it more?

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Keith Olbermann makes it 13 times that the Bush administration used a suspiciously timed terror alert or arrest announcement to either negate unfavorable news, or neutralize positive news about political opponents.  Only thirteen times? But it’s linked at One Utah:

One Utah » Blog Archive » The Nexus of Politics and Terror (and Lying)

Salt Lake Tribune – Cannon in line for possible promotion

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Salt Lake Tribune – Cannon in line for possible promotion

WASHINGTON – Republicans will have a difficult time reclaiming the House in November’s elections with a slew of incumbents deciding to retire, resign or run for higher office.

Huh? Why did they change the headline? Why is this a duplicate story? I blogged it yesterday.
Salt Lake Tribune – Cannon growing old in D.C.

WASHINGTON – Republicans will have a difficult time reclaiming the House in November’s elections with a slew of incumbents deciding to retire, resign or run for higher office.

Here’s something else that caught my eye – the Trib always has a sidebar with the most-read and most-emailed stories, and the current list shows that lots of people are reading all about Chris Buttars, and all the letters to the editor criticising his anti-gay and anti-immigration stance, and generally giving me hope that there might be more tolerant people in Salt Lake than I previously thought possible.

Stories with the highest ratings by Tribune readers in the past five days.

  • Rebecca Walsh: Anti-gay patriarchy takes SLC to woodshed (522)
  • Walsh: Buttars is craggy face of homophobia, racism (363)
  • Leave us alone (215)
  • Mitt’s untruths (155)
  • Buttars must go (150)
  • Fear and prejudice: No excuses for Chris Buttars (139)
  • LDS Church asks lawmakers to weigh morality, ethics in immigration reforms (139)
  • Buttars and gay people (121)
  • Disgusting remark (114)
  • Butt out, senator (114)

    • Chris Buttars: A Homophobe For The Nation

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    Yep, I had more on Chris Buttars that I found today.

    Buttarsface.jpg

    Sen. Chris Buttars listens to Cristy Gleave, of Salt Lake City, as she
    testifies before the Senate Health and Human Services Committee on Monday about
    Buttars’ bill to repeal the new domestic-partnership registry. (Scott
    Sommerdorf/The Salt Lake Tribune)

    “Christensen said Amendment 3 deliberately outlaws synonyms or substitutes
    that “approximate marriage.” And he alleged that registry supporters have “a
    broader agenda” than securing health benefits or visitation rights – which
    never have been threatened, according to SB267 backers.

    Tell that to Cristy Gleave, a lesbian mother who told the committee she was
    not immediately allowed to see her partner at LDS Hospital after a serious car
    accident.

    That did not sway Buttars, who equated the registry certificate with
    marriage papers. But City Attorney Ed Rutan rejected the comparison, saying
    there is “absolutely nothing” in the language that violates Utah’s marriage
    law.”

    The Salt Lake Trib’s letters to the editor and editorial pages exploded today after the latest Buttars debacle broke open, and several letters referred to the image above. Trib columnist Rebecca Walsh also attempted to find one voter in South Jordan who admitted voting for Buttars. No one did, and most people she encountered did not even know who he was. He’s supposed to be going on a mission (at his age! Probably hoping for a stake presidency someplace warm and exotic) and will not be running again
    in 2008, thank God.

    Yesterday’s “old Mormon bishop” letter was one of the most-read articles in the Trib. Right on again, bish!

    Here’s a Trib editorial…

    More good quotes from the letters section:

    “The undisguised fear, contempt and loathing on the good senator’s face is
    shocking in its nakedness.”

    “Salt Lake City residents did not elect Buttars to the Legislature. We did
    elect Mayor Becker and the City Council, and we trust them to make decisions
    for our community. Butt out, Sen. Buttars.”

    “What a telling photo of Chris Buttars on the front page this morning
    (“Becker’s registry sparks a squabble,” Tribune, Feb. 12). If there was ever a
    picture of hateful intolerance that is it. “

    Assorted other blogs:

    blogs.sltrib.com – Salt Lake Crawler by Glen Warchol

    dKos: a diary by ragged claws scuttling

    And the caption contest/LOLbiggit extravaganza has started, too.

    A blast from the past: audio of the debate on another Buttars-sponsored piece of nasty intolerance, including an impromptu speech during debate from State Sen. Scott McCoy, Utah’s only openly gay state senator. Buttars once publicly expressed surprise that “the gay?” got a committee appointment, and McCoy promptly registered a vanity license plate: “THEGAY.”

    [tags]Chris Buttars, homophobe, religious nut, Utah legislator, racist[/tags]

    Utah’s Choice: Loose Cannon, or Lose Cannon

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    Utah’s other idiot pol named Chris, Rep. Cannon of that ilk, shoots his mouth off over his dreams of chairing a committee in Congress and bein’ all ‘portant and stuff.  He has a mathematically possible chance and a practically impossible chance: a whole bunch of senior Republicans have decided to retire (or euphemism of choice) off of committees he’s on, but the Democrats would have to lose their majority for him to be anything other than “ranking Republican” on them. Or, “rank Republican” if you prefer.

    He paints a rosy picture indeed of how wonderful it would be for him to chair a committee someday, like maybe Oversight/Govt Reform or Natural Resources. Just by sitting like a lump on a log, he automagically gains all kinds of seniority juju this fall…  that is, if he can get re-elected. And in a heavily Republican state like Utah, an incumbent never faces challengers from within his own party, it’s simply not done.

    Okay, almost never.

    Salt Lake Tribune – Cannon growing old in D.C.

    Before any of this matters, Cannon must secure his seventh term in office.He faces three intra-party challengers, who will try to unseat him at the state Republican convention.

    So far, Utah’s other representatives, Republican Rob Bishop and Democrat Jim Matheson, remain unchallenged.

    THREE challengers. This is a sign that the electorate is not happy with Cannon, and/or that several different factions of the Utah GOP’s coalition of business/mining/energy/social conservative interests think their guy might do better against whatever Democrat is running.

    Utah would probably do better to lose the loose Cannon, IMHO. He doesn’t have a terribly distinguished career, he’s linked to David Safavian, the family lobbying business run by brother Joe is a little too cozy with him, and he was on last year’s CREW watchlist .

    If his dreams come true, that’s one Top Ten list he’ll make in the future.

    Righteousness in Zion: Right on, right on, Bish!

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    Sometimes I read the letters to the editor to the Salt Lake Tribune and feel like jeering. Occasionally, I read the letters and feel like cheering. Today, I feel like wearing balloons and a party hat and waving flags, because an “old Mormon bishop” wrote a righteous, inspiring letter. Now this really rare for me, approving of the opinions of LDS bishops, and I wanted to save the whole letter because they go off the SL Trib website so fast. It’s to do with that idiot Buttars, of course:

    I cannot pick up my copy of The Tribune on any morning and not read how our misguided Legislature seeks to marginalize, minimize and add to the burdens of those who are different but who live among us. They may not look exactly like me, though I like salsa better than ketchup and tortillas better than Wonder Bread. They may not share my sexual orientation, but their agenda, if there is one, does not threaten my marriage, my family or my values.
        I am an old Mormon bishop, and I cannot sit still any longer and listen to the garbage coming from Capitol Hill from our ethnically challenged and homophobic legislators. They are a threat to me and to the tranquility of my life. I ask these erstwhile champions, these protectors of our freedom, our race, our morality: Wouldn’t the world be a better place if you just enjoyed your lobbyist-paid-for Jazz games and junkets to the Caribbean and left the rest of us alone?
        In spite of these legislators of morality, as people of Utah, who are kind, compassionate and caring, can we not find and share the things we have in common, celebrate our differentness, and enjoy that which is unique about us all as children of a loving Heavenly Father, rather than marginalizing and criminalizing so many among us?
       
        George Fisher
        Centerville
    Salt Lake Tribune – Leave us alone