Recently by John

I'm enjoying the latest book by Jonah Goldberg, "Liberal Fascism."  An excerpt:

"The exaltation of passion over reason, action over deliberation, is a naturally youthful impulse.  Treating young people as equals, 'privileging' their opinions precisely because they lack experience and knowledge, is an inherently fascist tendency, because at it's heart lies the urge to throw off 'old ways' and 'old dogmas' in favor of what the Nazis called the 'idealism of the deed.'  Youth politics--like populism generally--is the politics of the tantrum and the hissy fit."

I have decided to break with tradition this year and actually finish and publish the family Christmas letter.  A quick check of Westhoff.net reveals that the last time our family went to press with a cheeky yuletide update was 2004.  Gentle reader, I take full blame for this shameful travesty.  Let's move on then shall we, and knock this out before I run out of diet soda.

Westhoff.net will never die, though it certainly seems to be in hibernation.  If you're interested in my goings on of late, feel free to sign up at Facebook and become my "Facebook Friend."  It's kind of addicting.

Happy Father's Day everyone.  I'm doing some tinkering on the back-end of the website and thought I'd use some pictures from a hike we did last fall as a "test post."  This particular hike was significant as the entire family was able to summit Taum Sauk mountain, the highest point in all of Missouri!

Rachel and I have been saying for years how great it would be if all of our family had bikes so that we could go on rides together.  A couple of months ago we started applying resources towards that goal and we are pleased to announce that we are living our dream--we are Missouri's newest biker gang.  Quite impressive, as you can see from the following picture.  That's no small investment in bike-transporting equipment I might add, particularly since I had to get the trailer hitch installed for just that purpose.

Just fooling with the new MT templates!  Again...and again...and again.

I just used CSSEdit to fix a layout annoyance that has been bugging me on this site for YEARS. I love you MacRabbit! I'd explain the details but I don't have a single friend or family member who would understand, or care for that matter. Anyway, if you tinker with Cascading Style Sheets, give it a go.

Good news! My work on the "back end" of the site has been successful. The bottom line for you, gentle reader is that soon Westhoff.net will be back in business, i.e. regularly updated with all the little annoyances fixed. Manic episodes allowing, eventually it'll get a major facelift.

I'm in the process of upgrading the "backend" of the site (i.e. the software that runs it) so you may find things a bit loose around here for a while. Not that anyone will notice--it's been like infinity years since I've posted anything.

For the past two weeks we’ve had a small LDS service each Sunday here at the 21st CSH. Our chaplain is not LDS but she’s been very helpful in putting out meeting times, providing space, complementary LDS edition scriptures, etc. Our first meeting was run by a national guardsman who had been set apart as a servicemen’s group leader. The following week, an LDS chaplain from the Utah Guard stopped by and led us. Both meetings were spirit filled and were attended by about a dozen or so soldiers and a handful of civilian volunteers and contractors. This week neither were available and while we had priesthood holders we couldn’t hold an officially sanctioned meeting as none of us been set apart as a group leader—a problem we will all rectify before we deploy to Iraq. It’s interesting how it works, you can read more about it here.