Eleventh In Line

Primary 4 Lessons 5 through 7

2008-01-20T22:16:00.000-05:00

So at the YSA meeting I was asked to make posters and my lesson work here got delayed. I should have the PDFs here tomorrow. At least from now on I'll finally be ahead of schedule!

2008 Senior Primary (Book of Mormon)

Lesson Five - Lehi and His Family Are Led through the Wilderness

Church-Approved Materials
Related Gospel Principles Chapter: Faith In Jesus Christ
Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Liahona; Nephi
Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #5, "Hearken Unto the Truth, and Give Heed Unto It" (Class Member Study Guide)

Useful Articles from the Friend:
Keeping Promises (a Sharing Time page including instructions for a "roller box" illustrating the Liahona story)
Compass of Faith (a Sharing Time with paper figures of Lehi's family, and a dot-to-dot picture of the Liahona.)
Journey to the Promised Land Game
"Do You Know" (a version of the broken bow story with a question in the middle, to see if the children know what happened.)

Lesson Six - Heavenly Father Commands Nephi to Build a Ship

Church-Approved Materials
Related Gospel Principles Chapter: Obedience
Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Obedience
Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #5, "Hearken Unto the Truth, and Give Heed Unto It" (Class Member Study Guide)

Useful Article from the Friend:
Nephi Builds a Ship (a Sharing Time with many ideas for teaching this story)

Lesson Seven - Crossing the Sea

Church-Approved Materials
Related Gospel Principles Chapter: The Holy Ghost
Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Holy Ghost
Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #5, "Hearken Unto the Truth, and Give Heed Unto It" (Class Member Study Guide)

Useful Articles from the Friend:
Keeping Promises (a Sharing Time page including instructions for a "roller box" illustrating the Liahona story)
The Holy Ghost is Real (an interview with Elder Craig A. Cardon)
The Witness of the Holy Ghost (an interview with Elder Robert S. Wood)
Being Smart (a story about being prompted by the Holy Ghost)
Help from the Holy Ghost (a poem)

Primary 4 Lessons 2, 3, 4

2008-01-19T20:34:00.000-05:00

The transition on Millennial Star still isn't done! My apologies for missing last week -- I'm making up for it by doing several weeks in advance today and tomorrow; I hope to get lessons 5-7 up after my YSA meeting tomorrow night. To be honest, I was sort of surprised anyone actually used my stuff. ^_^

I am putting all the PDFs on one page on my Geocities site for now, to make the links easier. They're organized by lesson; let me know if it doesn't work well for you all.

Lesson Two - Nephi Follows His Father, the Prophet

Church-Approved Materials
Related Gospel Principles Chapter: Prophets of God
Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Revelation
Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #2, "All Things According To His Will" (Class Member Study Guide)

Useful Articles from the Friend:
Lehi's Journey To the Promised Land (game - you will need the original magazine for the board, if you don't want to make your own.)
Courage (a Sharing Time idea, including a Scripture Heroes puzzle, and some activities related to lessons two and four of the Primary 4 manual)

Lesson Three - Obtaining the Brass Plates

Church-Approved Materials
Related Gospel Principles Chapter: Obedience
Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Obedience
Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #2, "All Things According To His Will" (Class Member Study Guide)

Useful Articles from the Friend:
Nephi Gets the Brass Plates (a mixed-up picture game)
Scriptural Giants: Nephi's Courage (the story of the Brass Plates in relatively plain English)
Brass Plates Code (funstuf decoding activity, scroll down)
Friend to Friend with Earl M. Monson (talks about how nervous he was to be called as a bishop and how Nephi inspired him)
Friend to Friend with Lowell D. Wood (talks about how Nephi inspired him)

Lesson Four - The Tree of Life

Church-Approved Materials

Related Gospel Principles Chapter: Free to Choose
Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Agency; Temptation
Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #3, "The Vision of the Tree of Life" (Class Member Study Guide)

Lehi's Dream (w/illustrations)
Lehi's Vision (matching activity, near the bottom of the page.)
Friend to Friend with Jeffrey R. Holland (he talks about the iron rod and a time he got lost)
Courage (a Sharing Time idea, including a Scripture Heroes puzzle, and some activities related to lessons two and four of the Primary 4 manual)

Oh, Come With Me to Primary!

2008-01-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

I found out yesterday that I will definitely be teaching the Book of Mormon this year to our ward's eight-year-olds (well, half of them.) I'm very excited - through a confluence of circumstances, I've always missed the Book of Mormon courses in Seminary and Gospel Doctrine; I've always studied the Book of Mormon on my own. So, I'm going to be collecting links and creating activities for my own class, and thought, hey, why not publish them here on M*, too. For those who don't know, this will be my fourth year of teaching in Primary.

Let me also take the time out to put in a plug for the Senior Primary teachers' group on Yahoo. It's quiet now, but hopefully it'll pick up soon.

FYI, the theme for the year is "I Am A Child of God;" I usually do some activities based on the yearly theme as well as the monthly themes, though I don't have any in lesson #1 because it's a big topic. But don't be surprised to see some of that sprinkled in there in the future. Oh, and the future weeks will be better, as I'll have, you know, time to do them. ^_^ Anyway, on to the stuff I collected.

2008 Senior Primary (Book of Mormon) Lesson #1: The Book of Mormon, a Gift from a Loving Heavenly Father

Church-Approved Materials
- Related Gospel Principles Chapter: Scriptures
- Guide to the Scriptures Entry: Book of Mormon
- Our Heritage Entry: Establishing the Foundations of the Church
- Related Gospel Doctrine Lesson: #1, "The Keystone of Our Religion" (Class Member Study Guide)

Useful Articles from the Friend:
-- Mormon & the Book of Mormon (a short explanation of the origins of the Book of Mormon)
-- Make your own plates (shows the children clearly the parts of the Book of Mormon and who wrote which plates.)
-- What Happens in the Book of Mormon (I will be using this to help the children build our first timeline project)

Outside (non-official source) Stuff

PDF Activities & Helps (made by me, hosted on my Geocities site till we have a spot for them here)
-- Memorization Activities: Moroni 10:4, 8th Article of Faith, Joseph Smith quotes
-- Supplemental Activity Ideas: Hardships (matching hardships suffered by various prophets who helped bring the Book of Mormon to us;) Who Did What (matching Book of Mormon names to what they did;) Righteous or Wicked (I say, e.g., "King Noah," they say "wicked.")

Outside Resources: (not made by me)
Book of Mormon map (just shows where things are in relationship to each other.)
Book of Mormon timelines

Note: For the first few months of 2008 I will be attempting to follow the following schedule, publishing each lesson help file about two weeks before I will be teaching that lesson to my class. Our Stake Conference is always two weeks after General Conference, but given that my job as a Primary teacher is actually easier in those weeks, I will probably take the opportunity to get ahead and thus compensate for the weeks where I have to prep our class Sharing Time in May (and later, in November.)

This week - Lesson 1: The Book of Mormon, a Gift from a Loving Heavenly Father
This week - Lesson 2: Nephi Follows His Father, the Prophet
This week - Lesson 3: Obtaining the Brass Plates
Jan 13 2008 - Lesson 4: The Tree of Life
Jan 20 2008 - Lesson 5: Lehi and His Family Are Led through the Wilderness
Jan 27 2008 - Lesson 6: Heavenly Father Commands Nephi to Build a Ship
Feb 03 2008 - Lesson 7: Crossing the Sea
Feb 10 2008 - Lesson 8: The Prophet Jacob Is Confronted by Sherem
Feb 17 2008 - Lesson 9: Enos Prays
Feb 24 2008 - Lesson 10: King Benjamin Teaches His People
Mar 02 2008 - Lesson 11: Abinadi and King Noah
Mar 09 2008 - Lesson 45: The Book of Mormon Is a Witness of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Easter)

Comments and suggestions are always appreciated!

(cross-post from M*)

Faith in America - the speech

2007-12-06T10:56:00.000-05:00

Liveblogging the Romney speech, yay.

-- President Bush (the first one) looks good for a ninety year old.

-- I did not realize that the first Governor Romney was a friend of the Bush family. Apparently he worked on the Points of Light thing.

-- Dude, Mitt is going grey. We're turning all our best politicians into old men years before their time, anymore (the crummy ones, who stay corrupt city councilmen, obviously not so much.)

-- Everyone likes everyone at this level of politics. I swear it's like watching a fraternity reunion sometimes.

-- World War II versus the Baby Boomers. Heh.

-- Islam, China, Government Spending, Foreign Oil, and Family Breakdown. I think they must have done polls to determine which five issues to talk about all the time: the message control is tighter than ever this year.

-- Woot! Quoting John Adams, yay!

-- Dude. Has it really been almost 50 years since Kennedy's speech?

-- I just realized that journalists must have had this speech at least an hour ahead of time. The captions are perfect.

-- I love this: "A President must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States." Apparently the audience does, too.

-- "Some people believe that such a confession will sink my candidacy."

-- "These are not bases for criticism, but a test of our tolerance."

-- "No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith" is now the MSNBC headline (a second ago it was "I believe in my Mormon faith and endeavor to live by it.")

-- A President Romney would be much more pleasant to listen to than President Bush has been. We should have more public speaking classes in this country.

-- Apparently Romney feels okay with losing the atheist vote.

-- Not to mention the ACLU endorsement.

-- "But I will not separate us from the God who gave us Liberty." Dude, it's like they're channeling the Enlightenment. Someone must have been reading a lot of old pamphlets. Especially the Adams party (Madison, Sam Adams, etc.)

-- "We believe every single human being is a child of God."

-- Again with the quoting of John Adams.

-- He's reused Thompson's claim about no other people having sacrificed more lives "for liberty." (it's arguable, though I wish they'd stop saying it.)

-- "America must never falter in holding high the banner of freedom." Doesn't want the non-interventionist vote, either.

-- MSNBC is using the Adams quote "Freedom and religion endure together or perish alone" as their headline, and attributing it to Romney. Heh.

-- He just referenced Anne Hutchinson! And Roger Williams! And Brigham Young! In one paragraph! It's actually... totally appropriate, given the banishment/journey for religious freedom thing.

-- "Not as a matter of policy, but as a matter of right." Thank you.

-- Ooh, a hit on European secularism. And established religion.

-- And hating on jihad-as-violent-conversion. Good. Makes me think he might actually know the difference (it's not always clear with some of the candidates) between that and the word jihad, which means lots of things.

-- "We do not insist on a single strain of religion."

-- I am SO sure they pulled out the 1765-1800 Adams archives for this. I suppose it's to be expected, the man was governor of Massachusetts, after all.

-- "Any believer in religious freedom has a friend and ally in me."

-- There should be a moratorium on standing ovations. They make crummy television and are an invitation for candidates to make themselves look stupid.

-- Related: I am SO glad Romney doesn't grin like an idiot when he's pleased with something (cf. Les Miles.)

MSNBC mostly likes it.

2008 Primary Theme Stuff

2007-12-03T18:08:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of cute designs on CafePress that directly relate to the Primary theme for 2008 ("I am a child of God," Pslam 82:6.) Some are even in Spanish, which is pretty awesome, if you ask me. Makes me want to make one in Russian.

But there's a shortage of designs for boys. The "Soy un nino del Dios" design I linked to above does come in an English version, but that's about it; I tried creating a version of my "I am my father's daughter" design for boys, but it was just too girly for my tastes, and I didn't really know what a "manly" look would be anyway.

There are some designs out there which boys might like (you have to wade through the adoption-related ones, though.) But really, it seems like the "Child of God" idea leans towards girly designs. I wonder why that is?

I'll probably post specific designs later on this week. It will be fun, I swear.

I really need a job.

2007-12-01T21:41:00.000-05:00

Okay, this is just me whining here. Move along if you just don't want to hear it. Because I really need a job.

I need a job in the sense of "I had this babysitting gig last month and they paid me $75 and through intrigue and miserly behavior I managed to stretch it out till today when I had to buy conditioner and now I've got quarters." I need a job in the sense of I designed, like, thirty things on CafePress in a week and a half, and practically jumped out of my seat and sang when my commission total rose above $25 (I should get a check in February.) I need a job in the sense of I am now so depressed that looking at my long list of company HR sites to visit makes me want to convert to Catholicism and become the kind of nun who lives in a cloister and makes bead crafts.

I've sent resumes and brilliant, agonizingly enthusiastic, I spent half an hour re-reading this to make sure it didn't sound desperate cover letters out by the dozen, and other than two OSU administrators who (likely as not) remember me from my time as a student, I haven't had any response at all. Oh, I forgot the auto you stink email from McGraw-Hill, which came about thirty hours after I hit "submit." I was grateful for that message, by the way. There are jobs which OSU's HR site thinks I'm still up for, which have been in "Application Referred" status since August. The only job I've been offered was an 8-day mail room spot from a temp agency, and I had to turn it down because they required Sunday work. I have the HR websites for the top 40 Columbus employers (yes, Daddy, including all the governments -- even Southwestern City Schools is on there,) as well as Craigslist, CareerBuilder, Monster and Jobster on my daily rounds. I email resumes for legal assistant and student adviser and administrative lackey and pretty much everything else, except for call centers and food service (and those are excluded only because I know I won't last long.)

I've started looking at Lansing jobs. I'm considering Salt Lake City. I'm fasting and praying for a job this weekend, and pretending that my self-centered attitude doesn't make me feel guilty. I can't make myself fall asleep at night anymore, and I'm about an inch away from deleting my resume and moving into a cardboard box on High Street out of sheer frustration. Glargh.

I really, really, really need a job.

CafePress Madness, Part Three (The Danger Zone)

2007-11-27T01:47:00.001-05:00

So we started out with my lovely non-political, geeky, happy, writerly, snuggly goodness type designs. Yay. Unless you get offended by made-up swearing or are a Wolverines fan, you're probably not miffed.

Then we took a look at my LDS designs. If you are an "OMG Cultist! UR so going to Hell!" type, go away. If you're LDS, you might find them cute (or hideous, whatever,) and the rest of you probably don't care much. Phew.

But now we have my authentically make-people-mad-for-the-next-year stuff. Half of which I came up with either because I was annoyed or amused by something I saw somewhere. Word to you folks who are going to send me nasty letters: I don't think any of the Democrats are Satan. I don't think that Hillary is in league with the devil. I do think it's a sad commentary on our political culture that the "Hillary/Satan 08" design, which I came up with on a lark, is my highest-selling logo to date, and it's only been there for 9 days. The Spoiler Free one, which had been king, has been up for over three years now. Sigh. On the other hand, this makes me think there's probably a market for crazy candidate hate out there. Depending on how much more desperate I become, you may soon see nutty anti-SuchandSuch slogans on this post. I mostly think it's funny.

I am an (increasingly marginally) pro-Mitt person, though that's always subject to change. With my political designs in particular, I'm often responding to ugliness in what other people have done. I hate, hate, hate a lot of the political designs on CafePress: they use poorly chosen images, they pick nasty fonts, they don't seem to care about readability, and they're often pretty insulting. My conspiracy t-shirt is probably the most direct commentary on what I've seen there.

Oh, and I'm totally freaked out about the idea of us going more than thirty years with the same two families occupying either the Presidency or the Vice-Presidency. No American under the age of 45 has ever voted in a US Presidential election where neither a Bush nor a Clinton was on the ballot. That's just creepy. So I made the "28 More Years" ones.

By the way, for the curious, the shop-builder that I use only lets you link to individual products (instead of whole stores.) You can get to the full list of things with each design by clicking the item, though (there's a link on the next page.) So it's not like I only made, say, a single tile coaster with the "Faith" logo, and just the black shirt for the Cylon Overlord one. That would be crazy, and inefficient, and wouldn't explain all the hours I spent making alternate versions of each design to fit on all the different products. Phew.

CafePress Madness, Part Two

2007-11-27T01:30:00.000-05:00

So in my last post I put up all my easy-to-figure-out, non-controversial, not-likely-to-garner-evil-comments designs. That was simple enough. Now to enter the murkier waters of... LDS themed designs!! Stupid anti-Mormon comments won't even get a polite response from me this time, people.

As you can see, there are all kinds of fun designs -- I have two CTR ("Choose the Right") logos, some funky (almost?) ugly art with the text of Moses 1:39, an "I Am A Child of God" sort of logo specifically for girls and women (I'm still trying to come up with a "manly" looking one for the guys,) an FHE (family home evening) logo that I'm really rather proud of, a faith one that I mostly did out of a desire to make a good-looking sun (I don't think I'm quite there yet...), and a sort of sloppy yet hopefully cool block with the text of the 13th article of faith. There will probably be more designs added to this collection over time -- the system I'm using will, niftily enough, update this post automatically with any changes. Yay!

I wasn't kidding when I said I needed a job, though. Nine designs (technically, the tenth -- the Moses 1:39 one -- has been floating around waiting for me to use it for about two years.) One week. Yeesh. Oh, and there's one more post coming!

[edited to add: I also have a Christmas design in there! Not specifically LDS, but I wanted to keep all my "religious" stuff in one post... yeah.]

CafePress Madness, Part One

2007-11-27T01:20:00.000-05:00

So, in a bout of desperate "I don't have a job and I have lots of energy and I need to do SOMEthing" mania, I've been creating designs for CafePress. Lots of designs. Lots and lots and LOTS of designs. Except for the "I Heart Rebel Scum," "Spoiler Free", and "Follow Me To Primary" designs, all of these were created in the last eight days.

Those are all my non-LDS, non-political designs: my Ohio State stuff (referring to Jim Tressel,) one for Pickerington (after I noticed that I didn't like any of the other Pickerington designs,) four writing-related ones for NaNoWriMo (the Latin one means "I joined, I wrote, I won,") one literature one (I heart Orwell!), one photo I took in Salt Lake City, and the geek collection: three Battlestar Galactica designs, one Star Wars design (rebel scum, get it?) and one generic geekery Spoiler Free one, which until this week was my highest-selling design ever.

More on my other designs in a bit. Suffice to say I really need a job.

2008 Election

2007-10-13T00:40:00.001-04:00

Does anyone else wish that we could see a Lieberman/Someone-Like-Cheney-Was-Circa-1992 ticket? Anyone? Sigh. I can't come up with a setup as good as the VP opponent set we got in 2000, out of this bunch. I don't like or admire anyone running. How depressing is that.

(Yes, this is what I'm doing on a Friday night. That's pretty depressing, too...)

Harry Potter 7

2007-07-21T07:30:00.001-04:00

A few, mildly spoilerish thoughts about Harry Potter 7. Note: I received my book at approximately 12:20am, having woken up at 7am the previous morning, driven across three states, and not even stopped to go to the restroom before walking into the bookstore to claim my spot in line. I got home around 12:45, got the car unloaded and my PJs on by 1:15am, and finished the book at 7:15am. So, six hours again, thanks to not needing to stop to do the dishes. Now for some spoiler space.

SPOILERS!!

SPOILERS!!

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW,

THEN YOU SHOULD GO AWAY!

SPOILERS!!

SPOILERS!!

HEREIN LIE DETAILS OF

THE LAST HARRY POTTER BOOK!

IF YOU LEARN SOMETHING YOU

DIDN'T WANT TO KNOW,

DON'T COME CRYING TO ME!!!

SPOILERS!!

SPOILERS!!

If you're still reading...

Apparently the 'shipping wars weren't only important to the fans. I have to admit, I didn't have a ton invested; the fact that she was careful to spell it out was... amusing. ^_^

I take back all the nasty things I thought about the people who thought Snape was good for reasons I thought were stupid. Snape-Loved-Lily people: it wasn't in the books, but it was in JK's heart. I commend your mind reading skills, and/or lucky joint wishful thinking with the author. If I'd written the books, I wouldn't have done it, but she did, and that's what counts.

However, I mock relentlessly all those who were convinced Snape was Evil From The Get-Go. Here I go, mocking you now: BWAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!

Ahem, that wasn't very nice. And yet... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!!!!! On his own side, indeed!

At least "scar" was in the last line, right?

Fanfiction makes serial fiction much more difficult to stay in love with.

In particular, I kind of like the "Psychic Serpent" and "Roman Holiday" renditions of HP5-HP7 better than Rowling's. Sigh.

I find myself not needing things to be as prettily wrapped (with the satin bow, etc.) as I thought I needed them -- to say nothing of how much Rowling apparently wanted to provide them. Dude. 19 years later? I really didn't need to have the matter of who becomes a teacher at the school spelled out like that (by the by, it was who I suspected it'd be: she doesn't want to show married teachers, it seems, and there was one "good" kid singled out as inherently unromantic and unlikely to reproduce from the very beginning of the very first book.)

The Red Hen collection was more on target than I was, and deserves an A-/B+ (and that's only because she was so very far off on a Certain Ship, the matter of Grindlewald, and alas, the Battle of Hogwarts.) Dude, she even predicted the vision quest! I thought she was loony, but there it was!

My predictions, which I splashed all over the place, were about fifty percent right. I am particularly proud of my assertions at the Volokh Conspiracy, especially the bit about students not dying unless they got in the way of something they were told to stay out of (I'm going to get sniffly the next time I read Chamber of Secrets.) I was, however, unspeakably lousy at predicting the deaths of adults, and basically only got Dumbledore, Pettigrew, and Voldemort's eventual fates correct. On the other hand, every major character under 18 who I was *sure* would survive, did. And I don't follow birthday notice updates.

OH YEAH! And while my dream of Red Hen's Secret Agent Percy was totally ruined, he still came out all right in the end! WOOOOOOOOOT!

Sad about the lack of "good" Slytherin kids, though. Sheesh. And let's just not talk about how hard it would be to rebuild that society, given how it'd been ripped to shreds, because apparently JK Rowling doesn't much care about that stuff.

I bet the "last chapter" she'd had written up forever was that little short one (another of the Red Hen predictions, actually.) It makes sense, her saying she was trying to make the rest of the books "live up to" that.

Firefox doesn't know how to spell "Voldemort," "Pettigrew," "Dumbledore," "Snape," OR "sheesh." What the heck is up with that?

Family Business

2007-06-02T03:24:00.000-04:00

1. I found someone who's quoted Grandpa Parker: Wreath Laying at Frank Ryan's Grave". The lines following the mention of "The New York Jewish International Brigader Max Parker" are almost a word-for-word rendition of what Grandpa said about the day he was captured, in the Al Tocar Diana recordings/booklet.

2. I've found the booklet online! It's a PDF and it's a little messy, but it's free. They've also got the album in MP3 format for sale.

3. I'm in the process of ordering copies of the video interviews done with Grandma Parker in 1986, and the librarian at NYU is looking to see if a CD has been made of the 1960s interview with Grandpa that they have a reel-to-reel master of. I'm also trying to find out if the "Molly" Parker that is stated to be in several photographs in an SCW collection is actually Grandma Parker (I think it is -- they were taken in Los Angeles, in 1982, and a Max Parker is also listed in one of them.)

4. There's a list of American Jewish volunteers in the SCW out there that lists Grandpa Parker as "Max A. Parker." I didn't think he had a middle name?

5. There are only a few days left to order graduation photos of me. I'm still sorting out the distribution of the ones Mom bought, but she only bought the one pose. Anyone who wants a copy should email me before Sunday night, as Monday's the ordering deadline.

I think that's all I've got at the moment.

Law School Admissions: Essay Prep

2007-04-01T14:11:00.000-04:00

So, I'm working out some basic positions before I actually go ahead and write my law school admissions essays. This is not just background information/positioning, however: I tend to get mildly freaked out by the chapters in law school prep books which bear titles and themes such as: "We lawyers all hate it here, please get an MBA instead." This stuff is supposed to make me feel better after encountering naysaying; it's very narrowly focused apologetics, essentially.

I'm not posting because I need to post something (though I do) or to brag about how swell my thought processes are, but rather in hopes of getting comments from the learned blogging community (which is heavily populated by lawyers.) So, feel free to comment.

Why do I want to go to law school? (philosophy)

I want to go to law school because I believe it will prepare me for a worthwhile, yet sustainable, career, which will give me opportunities to both make the world better and pay off my student loans. Moreover, I am well-suited to the practice of law, both temperamentally speaking and in terms of the topics and methods which interest me. And, though it's true law school cuts off some options, I feel it is of more broad application than a PhD in international studies (said PhD is not excluded from future possibilities, anyway -- especially seeing as how I'll be working to stay published.)

What do I want to do with a law degree, once I have it? (plans after law school)

I would like to help other people through a system that is both complicated and often illogical. While my ideal job would be something along the lines of helping Eastern European businessmen and bureaucrats build and become better able to succeed in a Western-style free market/democratic society, I am also moved by the cause of ordinary citizens in the United States who simply cannot be expected to devote the resources necessary to understand and utilize the legal system effectively. Therefore, I am open to local prosecutorial positions, opening my own private practice, joining a small firm, or working for a public interest organization, if the opportunity arises (unlikely, but possible.)

Specific plans include expanding on the work I'm doing for Mom, as far as creating educational materials are concerned, and becoming certified as a public defender. I also intend to serve as an example to the girls and young women at church, as a woman with professional obligations and intellectual interests who still retains both her faith and her committment to the church.

Though I find it unlikely that I will find the practice of law intolerable, I may come to a point where I can't make enough from private practice (allowing time for family and outside interests) to make it worth my while. Therefore, I also intend to seek part-time teaching opportunities in paralegal education programs at local community colleges, with an eye to potentially taking up teaching work at a law school in the future. To that end I will also strive to publish both informally (via a blog) and formally (1-2 articles per year).

Moreover, I will continue to seek education in outside areas, both through outreach programs (e.g. BYU Independent Study) and through regular participation in outside academic groups and cross-disciplinary groups (such as the Mormon Studies in the Humanities Association.) And, I will continue to work on my language and cultural skills: before I attend law school, I will visit Eastern Europe for the purposes of gaining a TORFL rating, and will continue to work on my Russian skills while in school. Later, I may add other languages as necessary, and will continue my association with various organizations focused on the area.

What do I want to do while I'm in law school?

While at law school, I intend to publish at least two articles for law review/journals, to work as a research assistant for a professor, and to join the Federalist Society, the J. Reuben Clark Society, and the local Bar and Inn of Court student sections in my community. I also intend to compete for a place on Moot Court and Law Review, and to devote at least 500 hours to pro bono or public service (this works out to about 5 hours a week -- or about 10 hours a week in the 2nd and 3rd years.) I will also continue my non-law school activities: participating in YSA, attending church, and fulfilling any callings that may present themselves. And I will likely continue to support my mother's private practice, doing research, public relations, and copy-editing.

What helps me stand out from other candidates intellectually?

I am tenacious and I have the courage to face the unknown -- I am dissatisfied with not knowing, and willing to put forth considerable effort to resolve any questions or uncertainties I uncover. I believe in being sure, of finding the truth, and of behaving as though both history and human knowledge matter to the real world -- because they do. I also have various other intellectual gifts (including a gift for words,) and I strive to use all of my abilities for the good of those around me.

What helps me stand out from other candidates socially/culturally?

I am a Mormon in the Midwest, who has stood in line for Star Wars, grew up a Unitarian Universalist, and has lived in 5 states. My grandfather served both in World War II and in the Spanish Civil War; my great-grandparents fled Eastern Europe as children. I'm also an INTJ if you care about stuff like that, and I was even born on a cusp!

What are the mistakes or blemishes on my record?

I have some very serious loan repayment issues which I am working to resolve. I also have a lot of gaps in my employment/school record, there's a six year gap between the last quarter I took as a full-time student and my graduation date, and most problematically, I have a small number of "fail" and "C" grades that require explanation.

What are the strengths on my record?

My GPA in my majors is far higher than my average GPA, and my average GPA is .2 above the median at my university. My LSAT score is quite high. I have done something "real" outside the world of college, though admittedly, nothing of a "professional" nature.

So, it's done...

2007-03-23T21:38:00.000-04:00

I've actually, really, truly, here's-your-diploma-now-listen-to-a-speech graduated. I swear, it's true.

I've made the following sentiment my signature at LUN:

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

^_^ More to follow later.

What Romney Actually Said

2007-03-03T10:48:00.000-05:00

People are annoyed (I was at first, too) about what Mitt Romney may or may not have said during his CPAC speech, which immediately preceded a speech in which Ann Coulter embarrassed herself, conservatives, and the entire human genome (as is her custom.) Some have said his comments were along the lines of "woohoo! Ann Coulter's on right now, yeehaw I loves me some Ann Coulter!" Others have said no, he said something more like "Haha, they're scheduling that crazy loon to talk after me, I just love it when they get gentle, loving moderates to talk more often!!"

I invite you to judge for yourselves which is the more accurate paraphrase. It's in the second paragraph of this 8-page PDF. ^_^

EDIT: note, I'm still looking for audio/video to see what he said, as opposed to what he planned to say. It seems that liberal commentators all heard "yay for Coulter" and pro-Romney commentators heard something close to the planned remarks. I'll update this post if I find anything.

Let's sing Ohio's praise...

2007-01-08T09:52:00.000-05:00

Even at grossly inappropriate, bizarre, and/or giggle-inducing moments. Yes, yes, I know, the big game is tonight, and yay for national championships (though an even bigger yay for Big 10 championships, which can't be gamed by journalists nearly as well as the BCS is.) I too hope the Buckeyes win, and indeed at this very moment I sit waiting for word from my Political Science advisor (at Ohio State) about graduating (from Ohio State) this March, and moreover I am currently wearing a VERY scarlet t-shirt from my year in Block "O", which reads "TRESSEL'S TROOPS."

But I must stress that any time I find myself singing along to the prelude hymns at church, and realize halfway through the first tune that the organist is playing Carmen Ohio, well... let's just say that even die-hard Buckeyes ought to recognize that there is a time and place for everything, and church is not really the place for expressing your collegiate athletics fandom. I mean, she wasn't even trying very hard to disguise the tune -- the family sitting behind us also picked up on it right away, and in fact their younger daughter and I (quietly) finished the chorus out loud, after we stopped giggling.

Of course, the child in my class who used our "draw something nice" time to color a page which was not just OSU-themed (I'm so glad Crayola's "basic colors" now includes grey,) but also featured the names of our two local high school teams, too, would do well to realize that, too. On the other hand, he's 7 years old, so I'm going to cut him a bit more slack than the grown-ups.

So, it's been a while...

2006-11-09T15:37:00.000-05:00

And honestly, I'm really a little too busy to be blogging, but I got a couple of comments in my email today, and I was taking a break from noveling or studying (I'm in Russian 104! I could very well graduate soon!) And I thought, hey, why not blog a bit.

Today I'm going to do something really easy: compare the April 2006 General Conference citation rankings to the Top 25 General Conference Overall Scripture Rankings I did earlier this year.

First, the top citations for the 2006 conference talks, reverse alphabetically arranged within each instance category (and with previous Top 25 General Conference Overall Rankings in parentheses):

4 Instances
D&C 58:42 (39)
D&C 115:5-6 (471)
1 Peter 2:9 (110)

3 Instances
Moses 1:39 (1)
D&C 59:9 (23)
D&C 13:1 (49)
BM Title Page (148)

2 Instances
Mosiah 18:9 (130)
Moses 7:62 (455)
JS History 1:17 (45)
Helaman 5:36 (N/A)
D&C 84:44 (267)
D&C 81:5 (193)
D&C 132:19 (179)
Alma 5:14 (80)
Alma 42:30 (N/A)
Alma 42:15 (425)
Alma 42:13 (N/A)
Alma 34:32-34(316)
Alma 34:16 (N/A)
Alma 12:32 (N/A)
Abraham 3:25 (176)
2 Nephi 9:45 (N/A)
2 Nephi 32:5 (425)
1 Corinthians 15:29 (43)
1 Corinthians 13:11 (N/A)

Next, we try to balance the two rankings -- since some of the scriptures cited more than once in 2006 weren't on the Top 100 lists by book, they didn't have a preexisting ranking. I arbitrarily set their ranking as 2,500 -- the lowest ranking from my previous all-time list was in the upper 600's. Then I divided the 2006 ranking (4 instances = 1, 2 instances = 3, etc.) by twice the all-time ranking ([2006]/[2*AllTime]). That way the best-ranked 2006 citations (given a rank of 1) which had the best all-time ranks (in this case, we're talking about D&C 58:42, obviously) would have the largest resulting score within its own citation group, but not (automatically) the highest score overall The top 25 for 2006 are, thusly:

1. Moses 1:39 (Pearl of Great Price) [Top 50]
2. Amos 3:7 (Old Testament) [Top 50]
3. Matthew 5:16 (New Testament) [Top 50]
4. D&C 59:9 (Doctrine & Covenants) [Top 50]
5. John 10:16 (New Testament) [Top 50]
6. 1 Corinthians 10:13 (New Testament)
7. John 3:5 (New Testament)
8. 1 Corinthians 15:29 (New Testament) [Top 50]
9. Joseph Smith History 1:17 (Pearl of Great Price) [Top 50]
10. Matthew 6:33 (New Testament)
11. D&C 13:1 (Doctrine & Covenants) [Top 50]
12. Alma 5:14 (Book of Mormon)
13. John 14:26 (New Testament)
14. Matthew 11:28-30 (New Testament)
15. Matthew 3:17 (New Testament)
16. D&C 58:42 (Doctrine & Covenants) [Top 50]
17. Matthew 25:21 (New Testament)
18. Ephesians 1:10 (New Testament)
19. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (New Testament)
20. Mosiah 18:9 (Book of Mormon)
21. Daniel 2:28 (Old Testament)
22. 1 Corinthians 2:9 (New Testament)
23. 1 Corinthians 11:11 (New Testament)
24. Luke 18:22 (New Testament)
25. Acts 3:19-21 (New Testament)

Note that this isn't the same as putting the 2006 citations in order by their all-time rankings (to illustrate that, I marked the 9 scriptures which appear on the Top 50 all-time ranking.) Note also that, if you thought this year was a bit heavier than normal on the New Testament, you're right:

Book of Mormon (2 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 16)
Doctrine & Covenants (3 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 10.33...)
Old Testament (2 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 11.5)
Pearl of Great Price (2 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 5)
New Testament (16 Top 25 entries, average of all ranks: 14.3125)

Now, you could argue that by folding in the all-time rankings, I'm essentially eliminating the true up-and-coming citations (especially considering that no scripture was cited more than 4 times in 2006, and not even the Pearl of Great Price all-time ranking goes down to just 4 citations.) On the other hand, this largely eliminates any bias from one speaker repeatedly citing the same scripture (with no one else following suit;) unless at least two or three other speakers have had the same impulse. Since I already provided the "more than two citations in 2006" list above, I've decided I'm not too worried about this problem. Similarly, I'm not using the pure citation rankings today -- I'm using the combo ranking, which takes into account placement on the Scripture Mastery lists (either the old one or the new one.) Again, the point is "stuff that would be really really good to study, especially in light of 2006 Conference citations" and not just "stuff that gets cited a lot," for which you can visit the BYU citation site and get the answer right away. ^_^

I am a little annoyed that my list isn't a perfect "all the 4-citation scriptures in General Conference Overall Rank Order" display, but again that would be easy to calculate from what I've put up there. I like this weighted list the best, since it points out that 3-citation, #1 overall-ranked Moses 1:39 beats 4-citation, 39th-ranked D&C 58:42, which pretty much meshes with what I'd guessed would be appropriate.

[final note: I was waiting for the October 2006 conference to show up on the BYU site before doing this, but it's November now and it still isn't there and hey, I wanted to put something on the blog already. I'll just redo this exercise whenever it shows up. ^_^ Also, be aware that there's a beta version of the scripture index -- but it doesn't seem to include any 2006 data at all, not even from just April, so I didn't bother with it today. When they add the 2006 data, I'll start messing with comparative Journal of Discourses and General Conference citation rankings; unsurprisingly, Moses 1:39 remains king of that contest, with the top rank in the JoD/GC combined ranking -- but shockingly, it drops off the Top 100 altogether if you just look at the JoD! Daniel 2:44, not cited at all in April 2006, and ranked 49th in the GC ranking, is #1 in the JoD ranking and second in the genuine all-time ranking.]

Superman!

2006-07-01T14:30:00.000-04:00

I'm not really reading spoilers or reviews yet, since I haven't seen Superman Returns, but my sisters and I rented Superman I and II and had a mini marathon tonight because a) I, for one, hadn't really seen Superman I all the way through, b) I, for one, had completely mixed up elements of Superman II and Battlestar 1980 [don't ask], and c) all three of us were completely unsure as to the actual storylines present in those two movies. Though all three of us remembered Lois dying, none of us could say for certain which movie it was in, one was sure it was in II or III, and another had only ever heard of it.

Anyway, I have officially revised my expectations for Superman Returns downward thusly:

1. I hope that when the audience cheers at the end of the movie, the Laws of Physics will not be weeping in the corner like an abused child.
2. I hope that under no circumstances does Superman or Clark Kent even hint at including any of the following items in his Fortress of Solitude: a bird of paradise freshly gathered from some tropical island, a kitchen, a bottle of champagne, or a bed, with or without shiny silver comforters.
3. I hope that the flying and super fast running doesn't look completely horrible.
4. I hope that at least some of the dialogue is as clever as the clever bits of Superman I.
5. I hope that the first fifteen minutes of the movie don't consist of a montage of moments from Superman I, carefully choreographed to eliminate any sign of Marlon Brando as well as any scenes that will be, of necessity, duplicated in this film.

If I can get those five things, I'll be happy.

(I haven't been blogging much because I've been working, getting ready to start my (hopefully) final undergrad class in September, and posting a lot at LiningUp.Net. I've also been collecting really nice comments on my comments on other peoples' blogs, and trying to come up with a good guest post topic for Millenial Star. So, yeah.)

Belay my last...

2006-04-23T16:41:00.000-04:00

I knew there was something odd about the Old Testament not having any instances in the top 25 -- now I know why. For some reason, the top 4 Old Testament scriptures didn't get their citations included in my Excel spreadsheet (I think it was a copy & paste error -- I've fixed it now.) Moreover, I realized that I gave the Articles of Faith short shrift; the reason the Scripture Mastery scriptures are given a boost is because Latter-day Saints are expected to memorize them; accordingly, I now give the Articles of Faith the same bonus that they would have had if they were on a single Scripture Mastery list. And, oddly, one entry (D&C 13:1) was given a lot more points than it should have (it went down to 49th, with 166 points, when I copy & pasted the new scoring formula; since I pasted over the old formula, I don't know what was wrong with it.) So, the correct Top 25 (plus the extras, from the original list, that were moved out of the Top 25) are:

Scripture -- Volume -- Score/Rank
Moses 1:39 -- Pearl of Great Price -- 1350/1
2 Nephi 2:25 -- Book of Mormon -- 505/2
Romans 1:16 -- New Testament -- 460/3
D&C 14:7 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 435/4
John 17:3 -- New Testament -- 424/5
Mosiah 3:19 -- Book of Mormon -- 415/6
1 Nephi 3:7 -- Book of Mormon -- 405/7
Amos 3:7 -- Old Testament -- 390/8
Moroni 10:4-5 -- Book of Mormon -- 380/9
Joshua 24:15 -- Old Testament -- 350/10
John 14:15 -- New Testament -- 345/11
A of F 1:13 -- Pearl of Great Price -- 340/12
Matthew 5:16 -- New Testament -- 335/13
Alma 41:10 -- Book of Mormon -- 325/14
D&C 82:10 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 320/15
D&C 130:20-21 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 305/16
John 7:17 -- New Testament -- 295/17
2 Nephi 31:20 -- Book of Mormon -- 285/18
Moroni 10:4 -- Book of Mormon -- 280/19
1 Corinthians 15:22 -- New Testament -- 280/19
D&C 1:38 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 275/21
Revelation 14:6 -- New Testament -- 275/21
2 Nephi 2:27 -- Book of Mormon -- 260/23
D&C 59:9 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 260/23
D&C 84:38 -- Doctrine & Covenants -- 240/25
Matthew 25:40 -- New Testament -- 253/26
James 1:5 -- New Testament -- 244/27
[...]
D&C 13:1 -- D&C 13:1 -- 166/49

(the scores are slightly higher now, as I changed the formula slightly, to give all the Scripture Mastery scriptures which didn't appear in the Top 100 citations lists a score; this also affected some of the rankings, but all of the original Top 25 are up there.)

I included the volume information for any non-members who might be stopping by. The correct numbers for the volumes (for the Top 25 only) are:

Book of Mormon -- 8
New Testament -- 7
Doctrine & Covenants -- 6
Old Testament -- 2
Pearl of Great Price -- 2 (incl. Article of Faith)

We're still not big on the Old Testament, clearly. And if you don't count the Articles of Faith or Joseph Smith History, just Moses 1:39 and Abraham 3:22-23 have scores higher than the mean.

Speaking of which, I have a total of 620 scripture references (obviously, there are some duplicates: Moroni 10:4 and Moroni 10:4-5 each independently rank in the Top 20,) and the mean score is 50.7 -- there are 137 references that have scores of 51+. I'm thinking seriously of adding the hymnal references in -- though I think I'll make two separate scores and ranks if I add the hymnal, because only about half of my current Top 25 are officially referenced by any hymn at all (I should point out that each hymn only has 2 scripture references; that plus the similarity in wording/content between various specific scriptures probably accounts for a lot of the scriptures that seem to have been overlooked.)

Incidentally, we had our Stake Conference today. The highest-ranked scripture that was specifically cited by any speaker was Moroni 10:4-5. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was cited by our visiting General Authority. Interestingly, he's only spoken at General Conference four times, and didn't cite Moroni 10:4-5 any of those times; I looked at the list of scriptures he's cited in his General Conference addresses, and he doesn't seem to go for the really popular scriptures much; he's cited 27 scriptures, but only 7 of them have scores on my sheet (remember, there are lot of scriptures with multiple citations that aren't on my ranking,) and only 2 of his cited scriptures have scores above the mean on my list: Mosiah 3:19 (ranked 6th) was cited in 2001, and Moses 1:39 was cited in 1994. He's only cited one scripture twice: Moses 1:10 (1989 and 2001;) -- that's ranked 438th on my list, with 12 citations. The other speakers at General Conference who've cited it more than once were Harold B. Lee (4 times,) and Neal A. Maxwell (2 times.)

I'm definitely researching the next General Authority I see speaking, ahead of time. It's like Conference Bingo, only more nerdy!

A Unified Theory of LDS Scripture Ranking

2006-04-21T03:44:00.000-04:00

[edit: see the next post up; I've had to correct the rankings somewhat -- the Old Testament benefits, while poor Doctrine & Covenants 13:1 is demoted substantially]

I ran across, finally, the list of the original 160 Scripture Mastery scriptures (they reduced it to 100 before I even joined the Church) and thought, hey, why not incorporate this into my list of important LDS scriptures?

These are the 25 most important scriptures, in order, taking into account whether or not they were on the old list, whether or not they are on the current list, their ranking on the BYU index of conference citations, and whether or not I'd run into more than one citation of them as "really important missionary scriptures." That last is totally random, but I wanted some kind of folklorey component, and that was the easiest one to find. I added together the yes/no questions (old, new, recommended), multiplied them by the total number of citations in General Conference, and then added the total number of citations in General Conference (the formula is: "((2*C2*J2)+J2)"), then sorted them with the highest scores on top.

Moses 1:39 -- 1330 -- 1
2 Nephi 2:25 -- 485 -- 2
Romans 1:16 -- 440 -- 3
D&C 14:7 -- 415 -- 4
John 17:3 -- 414 -- 5
Mosiah 3:19 -- 395 -- 6
1 Nephi 3:7 -- 385 -- 7
Moroni 10:4-5 -- 350 -- 8
John 14:15 -- 325 -- 9
Matthew 5:16 -- 315 -- 10
Alma 41:10 -- 305 -- 11
D&C 82:10 -- 300 -- 12
D&C 130:20-21 -- 285 -- 13
John 7:17 -- 275 -- 14
2 Nephi 31:20 -- 265 -- 15
D&C 13:1 -- 260 -- 16
Moroni 10:4 -- 260 -- 16
1 Corinthians 15:22 -- 260 -- 18
Revelation 14:6 -- 255 -- 19
D&C 1:38 -- 255 -- 19
Matthew 25:40 -- 243 -- 21
2 Nephi 2:27 -- 240 -- 22
D&C 59:9 -- 240 -- 22
James 1:5 -- 234 -- 24
D&C 84:38 -- 220 -- 25

(the list gets less useful the further down you go, because the citation index is biased in favor of shorter books -- the top 100 Pearl of Great Price citations gets you down to just five citations each, whereas the top 100 Old Testament citations only goes down to 8 citations, and the heavily cited Book of Mormon only to 12.)

As you can see, the one thing that keeps recurring is that Moses 1:39 is a LOT more important than any other scripture out there. Which makes me once again say that the March Madness showdown (which I can't even find anymore, but rest assured, " For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" did NOT win -- I don't think it was even running!) was totally off-kilter and wrong.

Interestingly, these are the scores for the different books (across all my rankings):

Old Testament: 3211 (0)
Pearl of Great Price: 3285 (1)
Book of Mormon: 6145 (8)
Doctrine & Covenants: 6295 (7)
New Testament: 7653 (9)

I'm surprised by that. The numbers in parentheses are the instances of each in the Top 25 -- that surprises me rather less. I knew that a lot of our really basic doctrines are expressed mainly in the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenenants, and New Testament. I just hadn't realized how much we rely on them (verses the Pearl of Great Price and particularly the Old Testament) on even the smaller or more unusual stuff. The top Old Testament scripture is, ironically, #26 on my main ranking -- Isaiah 29:14, with a score of 210. LDS readers shouldn't be surprised that Malachi 4:5-6 is right behind it, at #29, with a score of 195.

In case you're curious as to how the Scripture Mastery and recommendation bonuses impacted the rankings, the top 25 in my version are 1st, 6th, 8th, 11th, 3rd, 15th, 18th, 54th, 23rd, 24th, 28th, 29th, 35th, 36th, 41st, 46th, 46th, 46th, 50th, 50th, 13th, 63rd, 63rd, 17th, and 78th in pure citation order, respectively -- there are a LOT of ties, since that ranking is just based on how many times they've been cited; my rankings have a lot fewer ties, thank goodness. The reason that, say, Daniel 2:44 (#1 in Old Testament citations, 46th in overall citations) ranks lower than the Isaiah and Malachi scriptures is because it's only on the current Scripture Mastery list -- the Isaiah and Malachi scriptures are on both.

In case it's not obvious, I'll point out now that this system is not very sensitive to changes over time -- I gave the most weight to the continually popular (as evidenced by the citation index, from 1942 to the present) and that which both the CES of 1986 and the CES of today, and in a very few cases, returned missionaries of today, thought most helpful. I thought about giving a bonus to, say, everything that President Hinckley has cited personally, but decided against it.

I may or may not add in the hymnal and children's songbook references. It'd be a lot of data entry, so I'm already biased against it, and I'm not sure how much overlap there would be with the other two lists (the biggest victims in my scheme are the Scripture Mastery scriptures that aren't on the Top 100 of any of the five citation indices -- they all have scores of 0.) It'd be a fun experiment, anyway. I have a strong suspicion that the overall winner, Moses 1:39, can't be unseated under any responsible method of calculation.

Sackcloth, ashes, etc., and so forth...

2006-03-31T17:56:00.000-05:00

Well, OSU, UCLA, a bunch of random sites with instant self-test mechanisms, and I are all really, really sure that I'm comfortable with the first two quarters of college Russian. It's the fourth quarter that we're in conflict over -- and of course, OSU wins.

So I've got to take one more class before I can graduate. And lo, and behold, the next time it's offered as a classroom experience is... next Fall. And so we must turn to the Individualized Instruction Program, that bastion of C- marks and "hey, why don't I just move to California and take the class at UCLA" inspiration. But the problems I've been ranting about to the Office of Information Technology since January still haven't been fixed; they've finally actually looked (yes, they said they looked back then -- hah!) and it turns out there are "database errors" and... the registration deadline is midnight tonight, and it took so long to actually determine why I couldn't register that of course, everyone had gone home by the time I was informed that the only solution is for an adviser in my college to manually register me. Argh.

But the good news is that I'm an Ohio resident for tuition purposes (see, just being here for years doesn't make you a resident.) Not that I can pay any tuition until I'm registered, of course. Argh, again.

If I can't register this term at all, I'm thinking of trying to arrange for my stuff in California to make its way here. I'm paying a not minor sum (for me) in monthly fees for the rental space, and all of my Russian textbooks are there; I think the gas for the round trip might actually cost less than replacing the books I need to finish the class. Plus the savings on that monthly fee. We'll see.

Why a wall is a stupid idea...

2006-03-27T21:30:00.000-05:00

Fences may make good neighbors, but a wall across our Mexican border would probably bankrupt us, if we actually did it well enough to keep people from crossing it. Join me in a pointless attempt to avoid studying for my Russian exam; I was just reading some blogs, and then this post on Millenial Star got me typing and now look where I am:

Assuming we can't build a wall so strong and so tall as to keep people out -- we'd have to put an absolutely ridiculous amount of manpower into patrolling it. We have 8,500 people living at Guantanamo Bay -- 2,000 civilian family members and 6,500 sailors, Marines, airmen, coasties and civilian staff. Their guards -- and there are hundreds of them -- are staring across a relatively small fence (in terms of total length: 29 kilometers), guarding it twenty-four hours a day:

A map of Guantanamo Bay.

The only reason that we didn't (before 2004, when we turned over patrolling to the South Korean military -- 600,000 strong, primarily focused on defense against North Korea, with which they share a 151-mile long border) have the majority of the 40,000 or so US troops in South Korea patrolling that border is because we'd been down to just two observation points for years; to adequately guard the whole border would take far more people, and that's to defend against a presumed invasion, involving large military vehicles you can see from a satellite. Not small groups of people crossing a desert border, which really would require essentially line-of-site observation 24 hours a day.

Say we had patrols with one or maybe two men stationed 20 yards apart (line of sight, roughly,) with "observation stations" ala North Korea every 40 kilometers (25 miles), all along a fence with Mexico (remembering that our border with Mexico is 3,141 kilometers long, or 108 times the size of that border with Cuba,) and we won't be able to rely on their soldiers shooting anyone who tries to cross (like we can with Cuba).) Assume 8 hour patrols, and two support/administrative types for every guy who's patrolling:

-- 40 kilometers/20 yard patrols: 2188 patrol sections per station.
-- 3 shifts per section: 6564 patrolling personnel per working day.
-- Giving everyone two days off out of every seven: 9190 patrolling personnel per station.
-- Giving each patrolling individual 2 support staff types (including doctors, kitchen patrol, prison guards, DHS immigration officials...): 27,570 personnel per station.
-- A station every 40 kilometers for 3141 kilometers: 79 stations.
79 stations times 27,570 personnel: 2,178,030 personnel.

That's almost exactly the size of today's active and reserve military (1.4 million active, 860,000 reserve,) and I think we'd still get a lot of people sneaking past these patrols. Oh, and it's about the same size as the only active military with more personnel than ours (China,) and the size of the next two down (India and Russia) put together. It'd require nearly 1% of the total population of the United States to manage, and we'd still have another half a percentage point doing other military/defense work outside of this border defense force, and the borders with Canada (continental and Alaskan: 8,893 km.) Assuming 3 year terms of service, that the majority of those patrolling won't be in the military right now, and an average increase in the number of military-age citizens of 4 million annually, that puts us into a situation where more than one out of every six people (18%) turning 18 is enlisting in the border patrol.

If you give us two guys walking together, 20 yards from the next one down, we're up to 1,452,020 men who spend every single day of their work week walking along that border. That's the size of the entire active duty military in the US right now. 30% patrolling is a relatively generous estimate, based on how the US Border Patrol works today, and how the military services work -- the Marine Corps is the only one above the 30% infantry range, with something like 65%; the larger the task and the more complete its operational discretion, the larger the support staff required. The US Army has five clearly combat-related areas: infantry, armor, cannon field artillery, short-range air defense artillery, and special forces. They make up about a third of the total Army force.

As to why I think so many patrolmen would be necessary:

Anything short of line of sight patrolling is going to be very difficult to manage, just because you're going to have to start blowing people up from a distance or trying to track them while they're still on the Mexican side (or, if you're in one of the really rural areas on both sides of the border, put your trust in being able to track and catch up to AND catch them before they reach safety, defined primarily in terms of a city or other population center, where they can blend in. Unless you don't care how many people you let through, in which case why expand beyond the 11,300-man Border Patrol present today (we've got a proposal out there to add 10,000 border patrol agents, 1000 investigators, and 1250 port inspectors, which would shift the balance of the Border Patrol significantly.) You also need to consider the availablity of other patrollmen to show up and support anyone in difficulty; 20 yards is less than a minute's run. You can probably do strict vehicular patrols at a greater distance, but that would put them on the wrong side of the wall (either on the side with all the immigrants, or cut off from the immigrants -- there's no driving on the wall itself; even the Great Wall of China isn't big enough to really do that.) Also, that'll increase the number of people sneaking through.

Oh, and way before we've reached the point where we've got a population the size of the entire public school enrollment of the Los Angeles Unified School District patrolling the Mexican border, people will have started coming in along the coasts, or taking boats/planes to Canada. A grand total of 12,034 km of land boundaries and 19,924 km of coastline to watch, then...

(this reminds me of playing "Age of Empires"... at a certain point, it becomes so difficult and expensive to win using a military defense strategy that you have to become powerful economically to win; the computer opponents leave their populations behind everyone else technologically, and resort to a campaign of attrition against the entire world, trying to goad you into building a wall around your island to keep them out -- they will always break through the walls eventually, so you've got to either have a ton of allies to join you in an assault against their territory, or succeed so much economically that the computer opponent decides to resign.)

Someone brought up the IDF security fence:
As far as Israel is concerned, they have a) a border of 365 km (about 1/9th the size of our border with Mexico) that they want to fence in, and b) universal conscription with three-year terms of service for combat personnel (which, essentially is the group doing the patrolling: those called up choose either the IDF or the Border Police) Every healthy man between 18 and 43 is officially in the IDF and can be called up at any time for active duty. Also, they're dealing with an environment sufficiently hostile that sticking to the roads is the only sensible option for the overwhelming majority of travelers, and a population of terrorists who want to blow them up living next door. Moreover:

"During 1950-66, Israel spent an average of 9% of its GDP on defense. Defense expenditures increased dramatically after both the 1967 and 1973 wars. In 1996, the military budget reached 10.6% of GDP and represented about 21.5% of the total 1996 budget."

(anyone who can get a tourist visa to Israel and a letter of good character from their local police station -- and, presumably, can speak Hebrew -- can volunteer to serve on a Border Police guard patrol, or at a checkpoint. That sounds like fun!)

[I got everything here from the CIA, the IDF/Border Police website, and WikiPedia... it's a crummy bit of blogging not to link, but then again this was a two minute comment on someone else's post not very long ago; if anyone wants I can hunt the links down again.]

Notes from the mission field...

2006-03-12T01:13:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I needed a title and there it is. I mostly just wanted to share with the world that I've decided to be evil this week -- we're doing the Abraham and Isaac story, you see. God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, they go up the mountain, Abraham ties his son up, lifts his arm to complete the ritual... and you know the rest of the story. Except, I bet most of my students (7/8 years old) won't know it, at least not for sure. And I'm not going to tell them. Mwahahahahaha!!

I will, of course, be providing them with the necessary reference to find out the answer for themselves. I just think it'll have more impact if they have to look it up on their own time. Anything to get them to read their scriptures, right? ^_^

Sure, why not?

2006-01-14T23:48:00.000-05:00

I'll sign onto this one. The Abramoff situation is appalling, especially considering the kind of effort that ordinary people put into getting these politicos elected. For crying out loud, I handed out signs for one of those congressmen -- and I was just a kid at the time. Anyway, none of the other candidates for majority leader are looking too great; at least this one is behind something I can support.

Note to the Blogosphere:

2006-01-06T09:40:00.000-05:00

This is how you ought to be handling your coverage of Ariel Sharon's condition. I'll give you three guesses as to why the latter half of this is tacky, opportunistic, rude, and frankly disgusting. And the first two guesses don't count. A man is dying, for crying out loud. We could well be staring down a return to the worst of the last twenty years in terms of Israeli-Palestinian relations. This is not a time to be tooting your own horns. You'd decry that kind of treatment from the main stream media you're so thrilled to be "better" than -- you ought to remember own obligations as well. Ugh.

I love the Old Testament

2006-01-06T01:02:00.000-05:00

And also the Pearl of Great Price. Seriously, I'm digging teaching the actual scriptures so much, it's not even funny...

That's this week's lesson. Soooooo much fun! We don't have nearly enough space in the classroom to put up a full size cut-out style version the way I did last week with the Plan of Salvation, but I almost like the mini sized one better.

Unfortunately, now I'm reeeeeally wishing there was a Sharing Time bullet for something along the lines of "Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ Promised Us Our Agency" -- because this jail theme is seriously groovy. I can see it now, dressing up half the class in stripes and handcuffs. ^___^

[Tags: Mormon, LDS Church, Bible, Church, Religion]

Ariel Sharon

2006-01-05T08:31:00.000-05:00

Roundup at Mere Rhetoric.

Go read the whole thing.

First what we do know: First, Ariel Sharon's political career is over. He will not recover fully from this operation, but even a miracle will not allow him to either run for or to execute the duties of an office.

Sharon was not the only Israeli alive capable of negotiating the diplomatic and military situation that Israel finds itself in - he was the only one capable of handling the political crises that he put Israel into and that he intended to lead Israel out of. What will happen to the politicians who left careers in other parties to join him - planning to ride his popularity until Kadima could grow roots - is anyone's guess.

In other words, it doesn't look good. At all.

Oh, and the Palestinians are in the streets, celebrating. Because Sharon was the only Israeli who ever gave them what they asked for -- land for peace.

(now, go back and click that link at the top of this post, and read the whole thing!)

The Finish Line!

2005-12-31T22:52:00.000-05:00

I offer a challenge to members of the Church throughout the world and to our friends everywhere to read or reread the Book of Mormon. If you will read a bit more than one and one-half chapters a day, you will be able to finish the book before the end of this year.

Well, that was issued in August, but I didn't start till October 16th. And, as of today, I still hadn't read anything past the end of 3rd Nephi, leaving me with 35 chapters, or 130 pages, to go. My copy of Excel started freaking out around 8pm -- it said I needed to average 769 chapters a day to finish on time! It said I wouldn't be done till January 13th at this rate.

But it was wrong. ^_^

Completion Dates (by book):
Title Page -- 16 October 2005
Introduction -- 16 October 2005
The Testimony of Three Witnesses -- 16 October 2005
The Testimony of Eight Witnesses -- 16 October 2005
Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith -- 16 October 2005
First Nephi (1 Ne.) -- 26 October 2005
Second Nephi (2 Ne.) -- 27 October 2005
Jacob (Jacob) -- 9 December 2005
Enos (Enos) -- 9 December 2005
Jarom (Jarom) -- 9 December 2005
Omni (Omni) -- 9 December 2005
Words of Mormon (W of M) -- 9 December 2005
Mosiah (Mosiah) -- 15 December 2005
Alma (Alma) -- 20 December 2005
Helaman (Hel.) -- 20 December 2005
Third Nephi (3 Ne.) -- 30 December 2005
Fourth Nephi (4 Ne.) -- 31 December 2005
Mormon (Morm.) -- 31 December 2005
Ether (Ether) -- 31 December 2005
Moroni (Moro.) -- 31 December 2005

Erm, yeah, that book of Jacob was a rough one. Not to mention Helaman. Heh.

Anyway, though my powers of procrastination were great, my powers of determination were greater. Whee! And with nearly two hours to spare!

Now I just have to find a job, and I can change my signature at LiningUp.Net to something other than my current to-do list.

My Own Law School Rankings!

2005-12-29T20:45:00.000-05:00

Celebrate my brilliance with me! My sisters don't care and my parents are watching 24 (hi, Mom!) and I've come up with my very own rankings for law schools. This is just one of the several dozen different rankings I'm working on: Columbus Recruiting/Law Firm Reputation.

I went to the NALP site and copied down all of the places that the fifteen employers listed in Columbus said they did on-campus interviews at. I gave each school a raw rank, based on the number of "votes" -- Ohio State, unsurprisingly, came in first (Capital, Case Western, Michigan and Vanderbilt rounded out the top five, in that order.) Then I weighted each vote: the three firms with the largest pool of schools got a 5, the next three got a 4, etc. The top 5 schools stayed the same; Cleveland Marshall and Notre Dame fared worse, Akron fared very badly (dropping from 21 st to 30th.) Then I weighted the scores for each school by region/big name: big name schools were penalized by dividing by 6, Columbus area schools by 5, etc. Lots of changes came in that round: Vanderbilt moved up to first, and Michigan moved up to second, tying with Washington & Lee and Boston College.

Then I thought about it, and decided that on a practical level, given that the whole idea is to measure Columbus area reputation (I'll be doing something similar for Washington DC, Salt Lake City, and a few other markets I think I'd enjoy living/working in,) I should weigh those original votes a LOT more than the others. The final composite ranking is...

Composite Rank/School Name/Composite Sore
1/Ohio State/4.6
2/Michigan/5.2
3/Case Western/5.8
4/Vanderbilt/6.2
5/Capital/6.6
6/Cincinnati/9.2
7/Georgetown/11.2
7/Northwestern/11.2
9/Cleveland Marshall/15
10/Virginia/16
11/Notre Dame/17
12/Boston College/17.2
12/Washington and Lee/17.2
14/Dayton/19.2
15/Howard/19.8
15/Washington University/19.8
15/Cornell/19.8
15/Pennsylvania/19.8
19/Chicago/20.4
20/Harvard/23.6
21/American University/26.6
21/Boston University/26.6
21/George Washington/26.6
21/Texas/26.6
25/North Carolina/30
26/Wake Forest/31
27/Indiana - Bloomington/31.8
28/NYU/33
29/Akron/35.4
30/Duke/35.6
31/Emory/41
31/William and Mary/41
33/Wisconsin/42
34/Pittsburgh/46
35/Columbia/47.2
35/Stanford/47.2
35/Yale/47.2
*** Recruiting Fair ***
*** Recruiting Fair ***
40/Ohio Northern/48
41/Toledo/49.8
42/Catholic University/54.4
43/Illinois/56.4
44/Franklin Pierce/57.8
45/Kentucky/59.6
45/Louisville/59.6
47/Boalt Hall/60.2
*** Recruiting Fair ***
49/Iowa/63.6
50/Salmon P. Chase College of Law/66.8
*** Recruiting Fair ***
52/Tennessee/69.2
*** Recruiting Fair ***
54/SUNY at Buffalo/72
55/Tulane/76.6

Yes, that's right, Yale was only given about as many on-campus interviews as a couple of career fairs. Obviously, their reputation would win out over the whole "we never came to your school to do interviews" thing; the point of my own research is not, generally, to try and convince myself that I'll have a better career than a Yale grad (as I'm not, clearly, going to Yale myself.) The point is all those other schools -- the ones I don't know much about, like Vanderbilt or Dayton -- that you wouldn't necessarily think of as "feeders" to Ohio law firms. Schools where I might actually be a good fit (both for admissions and afterwards,) and by the way still have a good career back here, if this is where I decide to work.

In case you're wondering, these are the employers in Columbus that I looked at (the number of places they reported recruiting at is in quotes; one of them put at the botton of their list of 25 or so locations that they interview at "over 40 schools," but they didn't say which ones so I could only count the ones they listed):

Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP -- "Very Large"
Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP -- "Very Large"
Thompson Hine LLP -- "Very Large"
Frost Brown Todd LLC -- "Large"
Baker & Hostetler LLP -- "Large"
Bricker & Eckler LLP -- "Large"
Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP -- "Medium Large"
Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro's Office -- "Medium Large"
Hahn Loeser & Parks LLP -- "Medium Large"
Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP -- "Medium Small"
Schottenstein, Zox, & Dunn Co., LPA -- "Medium Small"
Kegler, Brown, Hill & Ritter -- "Medium Small"
Ohio State Legal Services Association -- "Small"
Chester, Willcox & Saxbe, LLP -- "Small"
Bailey Cavalieri LLC -- "Small"

Obviously some of those firms are probably larger than what it seemed from their lists; I decided against ranking them by actual size or the number of lawyers they recruited because, well, the spreadsheet was already quite large, and an initial glance indicated it wouldn't change the top rankings much. I mean, considering that the three firms classified as "very large" interviewed at almost every school on the list (every single one of them, at a minimum, interviewed at Ohio State.)

Oh, I found out my official, final GPA at OSU (unless they make me take more Russian -- I'm hoping they don't, even if it could help my GPA) -- 2.891. Slightly higher than I thought, and depending on how LSDAS calculates my GPA I could actually get up above 3.0 with all those A's from everything I've done since 2001. A 3.0 and a 170... that really doesn't sound that bad. Sigh.

Oh, yeah...

2005-12-25T05:54:00.000-05:00

Forgot to add, I've put myself on this site so I can compare myself to other people who are applying to the schools I'm looking at. The best part is the little graph logo next to each school's name -- you can see acceptances and rejections on a graph where the X axis is GPA and the Y axis is the LSAT score. It's an easy way to see that while I've got next to no chance at Georgetown, I have a very good chance at Cooley and a decent chance at, say, Case Western.

Tier 4, Here I Come...

2005-12-25T03:21:00.000-05:00

[warning: whining ahead!]

So, I got a 170 on the LSAT (that's it -- next standardized test I take, my goal is going to be a perfect score; my goal for the SAT was 1350 and for the LSAT was 170, and I got 1380 and 170, respectively.)

But, my undergraduate GPA is something around 3.0 (I have to try and recalculate it using the LSDAS method to know for sure, but it'll be between 2.95 and 3.05, unless I've totally messed up my estimates or forgotten some "A" grades, which is possible but unlikely.)

Now, as far as I remember, these are my grades (very roughly):
Freshman - 3.4 (1997-98, age 16/17)
Sophomore - 2.1 (1998-99, age 17/18)
Junior - 3.5 (1999-00, age 18/19)
Senior - 3.7 (2000-01, age 19/20)

[Sophomore year could be lower, I don't have one of my grade reports so I can't be 100% confident that I got that year's GPA over 2.0 at the end of Spring 1999; Freshman year includes a repeated course (Calculus) that I got a D in the first time, so that might hurt me more]

My Sophomore year was... bad. Very bad. Mostly in the form of a quarter where I got two E's and a C- (there is a medical explanation that I'd rather not go into here, but I don't know if it'd be especially persuasive and my parents say that won't matter.) At the end of that quarter, I changed my major to History and Political Science (from Computer Science Engineering,) and got mostly A's with a few B's and at most two C's (I don't think it's that many, but it's been a while since I looked) after that.

I also did some good social stuff (e.g. volunteering at an AIDS charity) and career enhancing experiences (e.g. internship at the Department of State.) I took a lot of 500-level social science classes and got all A's in my majors (I dropped the History major in 2001 because I didn't want to take on loans for another full year of study.) I took the last 6 low-level classes I needed to graduate (Russian 2 and 3, Marine Biology, Geology, Environmental Geology, and World Regional Geography) at UCLA and some California area community colleges (think $11 a credit hour vs. $135, and semester versus quarter credits at that.) Except for Russian 3, I got A's (B in Russian 3.) Incidentally, I worked a lot harder on those community college classes than I would have had to at OSU. I haven't taken any college classes in two years, but haven't done anything remarkable professionally either (though working at Disneyland helped me figure out a lot of stuff.)

And my undergraduate GPA reeeeeally bites.

Meanwhile, my mom's law school has a really good deal for people with high LSAT scores. It's not a highly-ranked school, but it's hard to justify not trying for free tuition (or going to a place that's higher-ranked but incurring 4 times the level of debt.) And though it seems like it's really hard to get good grades there, I'm good at overworking classes and doing well when no one else does (in Marine Biology, I had the only A, and most of my friends got C's.) And now they've had someone go to be a circuit court clerk, and there's a graduate who's now teaching at Notre Dame. So. Maybe, if I decide to go the academic route (*) I can go to some place I'd really like to (e.g. Georgetown, where my great-uncle taught for a very long time) for an LL.M. program or something.

(*) people who try and convince me that that dream isn't feasible will be sh -- that is to say, their comments will be deleted. With prejudice. Grrr.

Another year, gone!

2005-12-17T03:10:00.000-05:00

Well, okay, not quite, but I'm wrapping up the final touches on my last lesson in Primary CTR-7B. They just changed presidencies, and I'm going to be teaching CTR-8A next year; it'll mostly be the same kids but I'll be doing a lot of things differently (the biggest change will be administrative: this year they'll be divided into teams, and will be competing for points in behavior and helpfulness and Gospel knowledge.)

Anyway, for my last lesson (which is on Christmas -- we're not having Primary on Christmas Day) I'm focusing on the 3 Nephi 1:13 line: "Behold, the time is at hand!" and especially on the idea that these people were waiting and waiting and waiting for so long, and didn't know when this huge great thing was going to happen, and then all of a sudden, it was happening. I'm dividing the class into two halves: Jerusalem and Zarahemla. The kids in Zarahemla will get Lamanite feather headbands (I know, I know, but I can't very well make them whole costumes) and the kids in Jerusalem will get shepherd's crooks. Tomorrow I'm making a star to turn on at the appropriate moment in the lesson -- it'll use one string of Christmas lights and some pieces of wood to give it shape. I'm still trying to sort out how I'm going to divide the classroom -- trying to decide if there's enough time and if I'll have enough hands to bring in a proper large body of water to separate the two sides of the room. I've already picked out how I'm going to represent each place: pictures on one side of a Mayan temple and the Madrid Codex and stuff, and on the other, a model of the Temple in Christ's time and a map of the old city and, well, a bunch of sheep. ^_^

The take-aways will be a Lamanite feather and a sheep, each, plus a cute bookmark with "Behold, the time is at hand!" in big letters and a cute star I made in Publisher. Oh, and unless serious fighting breaks out, they'll get to keep whichever props they're assigned. I'm sort of hoping less than 5 kids show up, just so I can keep some of the props for the future (though I can't imagine what I'd do with them, unless I put them in some kind of a portfolio for preschool teacher job interviews.)

Oh, and I'm just over halfway done with the Book of Mormon now; I'm in Alma 26. I'll be trying to finish Alma before we go to church on Sunday; that'll make the final push through to the end much, much nicer.

[Tags: Mormon, LDS Church, Church, Religion, Christmas, Primary]

So, like, wow!

2005-12-06T19:44:00.000-05:00

I was just telling my sister Laura yesterday -- this is the first time since February, 2002, when I didn't have Some Big Thing hopping around on my schedule, demanding that other stuff make room for it. There are no more Star Wars lines, no more Lord of the Rings parties, no more entrance exams, no more cross-country jogs for potential career advancement, etc. It's kind of liberating, really. If I go to California or Washington DC or someplace else, it'll be on my own schedule. Yay!

Anyway, on top of that, I've also finally finished the Big Important Stuff that needed lots of my mental energy (most notably, the LSAT) -- if I have a spare half hour, I don't have to worry that I'm not practicing logic games, or something, anymore. And I can accept a job that might have wildly fluctuating working hours, or have me moving from location to location, without worrying about the long-term consequences. Whee!

As a result, I'm now fully engaged in my new job hunt. I've submitted about a dozen applications, most notably to the Hyatt on Capital Square and Medco (formerly called Merck-Medco.) I've even started going on interviews, if you can believe that. Today was the Hyatt; they're very nice and seemed to like me (I interviewed with two different people, for a total of about 55 minutes.) I should know if they liked me enough to hire me within a week. Meantime, I'll be hunting down other opportunities.

Anyway, that's it for now from me. I might come up with a more bloggy post later; I've also got to get back onto the novel writing horse, though, so we'll see.

A stroke of (maybe) luck!

2005-12-02T19:00:00.000-05:00

So my stepdad (hi, Gene!) is driving me to the LSAT tomorrow morning. It's on the OSU campus -- it was, I thought, going to be in the student testing center, but it's not; they've moved it to a different room. And it turns out, I've been in that room before. I've been in that room very often, in fact. I was in that room almost every day in, I think it was, my very first term at OSU -- it's the room I had my (hideously boring) Chemistry 101 lectures in. ^_^

Hopefully, this will get me just slightly better luck on the LSAT than the similar situation with my Foreign Service Oral Exam did (I got 5.25 on that, with a required minimum score of 5.5 -- then again, that's like, 90th percentile right there.) I doubt the secretary in charge of the exam will be one I've worked with before, though (I've only worked in Maintenance, Astronomy, and Payroll at OSU,) which was pretty much the coolest part about the FSOE. Seriously, all the other candidates were impressed by the whole "she recognized you" thing.

Anyway, I'm doing laundry so I'll have warm AND clean clothes to wear for tomorrow (I might put them back in the dryer a few minutes before we leave; it's going to be near 0 tomorrow morning) and I'm going to take the night off of thinking about the LSAT and being on the computer, by watching Stargate while reading the third Harry Potter book (it can be accomplished, I've done it before!) Wish me luck!

Oh, before I forget, I'd like to dedicate my performance on the LSAT tomorrow to:

Arwyn (for extraordinary helpfulness and generosity)
Stephen (Ethesis) (for having written some seriously thoughtful advice)
My parents (for material support), especially my mom (who already did all this stuff -- I find that very helpful, psychologically at least)
eBay (for providing the means for me to get my critical PowerScore book)
PowerScore (for writing my critical Logic Games Bible)

And all my friends, for putting up with me for the last two months. Thanks, everyone! ^_^

LSAT woes...

2005-11-28T23:31:00.000-05:00

In case anyone's wondering why I'm not posting much, or why I disappeared from the NaNo forums, it's because the LSAT is on Saturday and I'm having serious issues keeping my practice test performance consistent. I keep getting better and better at Logical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension (the last test I took, I got 70 out of the 77 LR/RC questions right) but my performance on the Logic Games is incredibly spotty (on that same test, I got just 9 out of the 24 LG questions right.) I think I'm getting easily unnerved or something; probably has something to do with the fact that I can finish any other section in 17-22 minutes, but keep going over on the Logic Games (the first two practice tests, I finished the LG section with several minutes to spare -- my last one, I made myself stop at 11 minutes past the deadline, with four questions unanswered.) And, the more I pay attention to how slow I'm going, the slower I go! I'm taking the rest of the night off -- I'm going upstairs to watch a DVD, then I'm going to read a few chapters from the Book of Mormon, and then I'm going to BED. Do not pass Go, do not under any circumstances even think about the LSAT.

Tomorrow is a new day. I actually am getting quite good at the Logic Games (when time isn't a factor, I'm getting 6/7 or 5/7 questions right on any one game;) there's just something about today that's made them impossible.

Oh, according to the charts in the back of the practice tests, my scores so far have been:

First Batch: 153 (consistently)
3. 167 (Saturday)
4. 168 (Sunday)
5. 163 (Monday)

Note the rather sudden drop there... yeah. Harry Potter and I have a date in the living room now. TTYL.

Go Bucks!!

2005-11-19T17:12:00.000-05:00

We won! Too, too much fun. ^_^ I've only been to 8 OSU home games (4 doing the flag in ROTC, 4 doing card stunts in Block "O") but they were all VERY exciting, and I've always been under the impression that nothing you could see on TV could compare to that. But boy, this game was close. Now I know why so many people pay $350+ for tickets!

Anyway, you can find the scores and highlights and pretty much everything you want to know about the game elsewhere, so let me just say this: GO SPARTANS!!!

(I would love to see us playing Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl... yes I would... hmmm...)

Yes, I have some NaNos...

2005-11-05T00:50:00.000-05:00

Or rather, excerpts from my current efforts. They're going on my writing journal, located here.

So far I've gotten to 12,094 words, which is where I was on 11/18 last year, so yay!

Disillusioned, Etc.

2005-10-28T15:55:00.000-04:00

[A]s a faltering/wavering member, the bloggernaccle is where I come to sincerely and earnestly try to work through some of my doubts. Even though I don’t always comment, I ALWAYS read. I find/found some strength here in the bloggernaccle. I went from reading View from the Foyer every day to reading Times and Seasons and feeling hopeful.

Of course, one wonders how exactly you can do that when at least two of the folks you were gaining strength from were complicit in a rather hefty conspiracy/hoax.

Everyone else already said good stuff at a blog I'm still pretty sure is real, in the comments.

My picks are...

Sue, who wrote that above quote, also wrote...
I just never thought the bloggernaccle was a place where I had to worry about getting punked.

[I]t isn’t even the fake BOH blog, it’s the fact that you lose faith in the whole idea of a bloggernaccle community of people whose “light” you might be able to borrow for a while, people who you might be able to trust a little not to deliberately lead you in the wrong direction, and ask occasional doctrinal advice from. You wouldn’t get advice from the folks from the Banner, obviously (because they were a little too strange), but the naccle in general - only it turns out you can’t trust any of them either - they’re all in on it - isn’t that hilarious? I feel like an idiot.

JKS, too:
[T]o find out that people are just screwing around, playing mind games, and snickering with their fellow in crowd naccle buddies - it’s disappointing.

And Maria, who sums the specific matter up well:
I read BoH on a pretty regular basis, but I never once posted. Nevertheless, I feel an extreme loss of respect for those involved and a general disillusionment with the bloggernacle as a whole.

My take? I put it in the comments there, but since everyone's already moved on, here you go again:

I've never been so glad to be a "personal"/"light extemporania"/"sooooo not a bloggernacle blogger" person. Even the jerks on slashdot live up to a minimal "reveal your real identity or be seen as an annonymous coward" structure. I can't really look down on them for being meaner or less considerate or less "real" than anyone in the bloggernacle now, now can I?

For the record, I'm a real person, and so is everyone else I know. I really did stand in line for Star Wars (twice!), I really do teach in Primary, I really am looking for a job, and yes, I really am a Mormon. As far as I'm aware, all of the sites I've linked to on my blogroll are, if annonymous, then obviously so -- and 20.7% are people I've met in person (one of them's my mom.) She really is my mom. Honest. I swear. No, really. Sigh. It was a lot easier when everyone else was telling the truth, too, you know?

[Tags: Mormon, Bloggernacle]

BOM Blogging! part two

2005-10-27T23:53:00.000-04:00

So, I've gotten through 2 Nephi 11 -- which means that if I keep up at exactly this pace, I'll finish on New Year's Day. ^_^ I heart Excel spreadsheets. Today I started 2 Nephi in earnest, and ran across this, which had never really impacted me before (as far as I can remember):

2 Nephi 4:26 - 35
O then, if I have seen so great things, if the Lord in his
condescension unto the children of men hath visited men in so
much mercy, why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the
valley of sorrow, and my flesh waste away, and my strength
slacken, because of mine afflictions?

And why should I yield to sin, because of my flesh? Yea, why
should I give way to temptations, that the evil one have place in
my heart to destroy my peace and afflict my soul? Why am I angry
because of mine enemy?

Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my
heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul.

Do not anger again because of mine enemies. Do not slacken
my strength because of mine afflictions.

Rejoice, O my heart, and cry unto the Lord, and say: O Lord,
I will praise thee forever; yea, my soul will rejoice in thee, my
God, and the rock of my salvation.

O Lord, wilt thou redeem my soul? Wilt thou deliver me out
of the hands of mine enemies? Wilt thou make me that I may shake
at the appearance of sin?

May the gates of hell be shut continually before me, because
that my heart is broken and my spirit is contrite! O Lord, wilt
thou not shut the gates of thy righteousness before me, that I
may walk in the path of the low valley, that I may be strict in
the plain road!

O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of thy
righteousness! O Lord, wilt thou make a way for mine escape
before mine enemies! Wilt thou make my path straight before me!
Wilt thou not place a stumbling block in my way--but that thou
wouldst clear my way before me, and hedge not up my way, but the
ways of mine enemy.

O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee
forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; for I know
that cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of flesh.
Yea, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh
his arm.

Yea, I know that God will give liberally to him that asketh.
Yea, my God will give me, if I ask not amiss; therefore I will
lift up my voice unto thee; yea, I will cry unto thee, my God,
the rock of my righteousness. Behold, my voice shall forever
ascend up unto thee, my rock and mine everlasting God. Amen.

I mean, wow. Exactly. You said it, Nephi. (emphasis was mine, though)

[Tags: Mormon, Book of Mormon, Church and Religion]

Happy Birthday to Me!

2005-10-23T14:28:00.000-04:00

I am now old enough to rent a car (if I ever get a credit card again - thanks for reminding me, Gene) and run for Congress and all kinds of fun stuff. Quarter of a century old, more than 1/3rd of the way to "there's no way you can deny you're an old person now" land. And I got to sleep in this morning. WOOT.

Now, one person telling me "you know, I have no idea what to get you for your birthday," you can easily dismiss. Two, and you might wonder if you're some kind of closed book. Three such comments, though, and it's time to take action.

After five years, I have finally updated my Amazon.Com wishlist. There shouldn't be any more VHS format stuff on there. There shouldn't be anything that sold out in mid-2002. There shouldn't be any comments apologizing for being a Harry Potter fan, any requests for my non-air conditioned dorm, etc. I deleted everything I didn't want or had bought for myself. There are 150 items, ranging in price from $5 to $200. Let's be clear, though. These are all things I'd love to get. I heart presents greatly. Don't think this is some kind of creepy "you must buy things for me you evil people" thing, though. I don't hold the universe under an obligation to get me stuff. This is just to fulfill a request. Three of them, actually. So, go forth and shop. Or not. ^_^

And have a happy My Birthday. Each and every one of you. Do it. Do it now!

The Book of Mormon Challenge

2005-10-16T23:03:00.000-04:00

So... like, three months ago (four months ago? a long, long time ago...), President Hinckley said everyone should read the Book of Mormon before the end of the year. I was kind of in my soul-killing job at the time, and had ironically gotten about halfway through Helaman before that job started, and then totally (TOTALLY) slacked off. As in, I read up to Helaman 8 in 5 weeks, and didn't read at all after that.

I've spent the last three months (or whatever it was) debating whether to start over from the beginning or from where my old Seminary scripture mastery bookmark is sitting (which is where I left off.) Today I decided to enlist the assistance of Excel and determined that if I read 4 chapters a day, I'll be done before Christmas (even counting the testimony of the three and eight witnesses as separate chapters, 4 chapters a day gets you to December 14th if you started today.) Soooo... I'm starting over from the beginning. ^_^ Just finished 1 Nephi 4.

And, since I'm starting over, I'm also working on a project I thought up a while ago... I've long noticed those "study bibles" and "bible for teens" and whatnot, and decided I should create a personalized version of the scriptures for ME. I can make the font nice and readable, I can put whatever notes I want in the margins, etc. So I'm starting with the Book of Mormon (conveniently, one of the volumes NOT thoroughly covered in the "study bible" market;) I'm trying to do the initial formatting at the same rate I read it (four chapters per day,) which means that I'm actually reading each verse... well, at least 1.5 times, and more likely 2 or 3 times, each day.

We'll see if those promises (re: greater measure of faith, etc.) hold up. ^_^

Church, Religion, Book of Mormon, Mormon

Anyone who thinks...

2005-10-05T09:13:00.000-04:00

That a Romney Presidential run would generate lots of fuzzy happy "Aww, shucks, Mormons are okay folks!" feelings in the American electorate... please see here. That is all, thank you.

Arrrrr!

2005-09-19T19:39:00.000-04:00

Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, me buckos. In honor o' that, today's post be full o' richy, piratey goodness.

I've got too much t' do, and not enough time t' do it, but it's me day off and I don't care. I'm probably goin' t' reschedule t' LSAT, just t' give meself more time t' get that score up. Honestly, I think I'd be improvin' smartlyer if it weren't for t' fact I was already gettin' a pretty decent score, mateys. I'll defin' take it in December, though, should I move t' date aft once (i.e. I won't move it aft t' February if it looks like me score be still stuck below 160 at t' end o' November.)

In oth'r news, it's less than two months t' NaNoWriMo, and I've actually got a plot I be likin' this year, mateys. I think last year's project was fatally flawed, in that th' story I wanted t' tell had characters I liked, but no day t' day conflict.

Jus' now I got a call from t' Blackwell campaign for gov'nor. T' race mus' be heatin' up now, I takes it.

Lastly, we did our rehearsal for Sharin' Time yesterday. I keep havin' to remember what things sound like to yer average 7-year-old -- I'm changin' th' stuff to make it easier, not harder (me bilge rats had a very hard time understandin' th' concept, and I think "good or bad" is easier than "which one is good") and I'm also goin' to bite th' bullet and use 100 lb. Bristol instead of th' drawin' paper I got (me test quote pages got totally trashed in rehearsals.) I may also go ahead and create "hold to th' rod" props to place along th' path to th' Tree of Life, provided I can find me some rod pieces that will look all ri' (I don't think th' ought to be shiny, see.)

Oh, jus' a fair word o' warning, me hearties -- Lost premieres this week, and Battlestar Galactica goes on i' fall hiatus. Apparently th' powers that be only want one good TV show on at a time anymore, the blaggards. Shiver me timbers!

Mormon, Ohio, LSAT, TV Pirates, Talk Like a Pirate Day

Sharing Time is here again...

2005-09-11T20:43:00.000-04:00

The Primary Presidency revised the Sharing Time schedule and I didn't get a copy -- which meant that today I found out I'll be doing the presentation in two weeks.

Given the brevity of our preparation period (we'll get an hour to go through our lesson next week AND do any preparation for the presentation) I basically came up with a presentation on my own, and the kids will help me execute it. It's a little annoying, since I'd wanted them to contribute more to it this time around, but I think I've got a good way for them to help out more effectively during the presentation than they did in February -- and realistically, given the age group I'm dealing with, I'd probably end out making most executive decisions myself anyway.

Anyway, the idea is pretty simple. Our theme for September is Choose the Right; I decided to go a slightly different direction than the basic "which are the right choices to make" simply because we've done that the last two weeks, and the kids in general aren't participating as much as I'd like them to. Also, it's hard to get all 40+ kids to participate when brainstorming.

So we're going to do a choices thing, but instead of choosing actions, we're choosing words. More exactly, the kids will be evaluating two statements, and deciding which one is the word of God, and which is the word of Man. And yes, it's been fun collecting stuff for the word of Man side.

The format is going to be a trek to the Tree of Life. The child (or possibly two children, for a race) will start at the back of the room, and try to move forward towards the Tree of Life I'll have by the chalkboard. They'll have to pick the word of God to move a step forward (this is a take on Lehi's dream, and the hymn "The Iron Rod," where "the iron rod is the word of God.") The rest of the group will help them (the child or children trying to get to the front of the room) decide which one is the word of God, probably by raising their hands. When the child makes their selection, one of my students will hold up either a giant black "X" (for the word of Man - the incorrect selection) or a giant "CTR" shield (for the word of God - the correct selection.)

I'm hoping that some of my selections will be tricky enough that we'll get a few wrong answers, because a) wrong answers make them pay more attention to the next few questions and b) one of my kids will have nothing to do but hold up a giant "X" and I don't want them to stand around bored for 20 minutes (I know, I know, it's really terrible.) The rest of the kids in my class will be in charge of holding up posters with each reading on them; I've got 7 active students, so hopefully they'll be able to keep up. One kid will be holding the Tree of Life poster, which leaves 4 holding quote/scripture posters. I'll be buying a lot of poster board (and spending about 2 hours writing scriptures and quotes out on those poster boards... ugh) this week.

If it's a race, the kids will take turns answering which one is right and which one is wrong. If it's not a race, we may end out trying this twice -- either way, I've made 20 selections for each category. I haven't yet paired them up with one another, which I want to do for maximum effect. I'm not sure I'll get all 40 posters (yeah, exactly) done, so I'll probably also start with the best ones.

Anyway, here are the selections. First, the word of Man:

"Evil is just a point of view" - Anne Rice
"Find your own road to the truth."
"If a real God exists, we'd never be able to tell he was there."
"If there was an all-powerful God, he would have made all good, and no bad." - Mark Twain
"If thou wilt show me a sign, that I may be convinced that there is a God, yea, show unto me that he hath power, and then will I be convinced of the truth of thy words." - Korihor
"No one can depend on anyone but himself."
"No one can really know if a choice is really right or wrong. It just depends on what you think."
"No one can tell if something is actually true."
"Nobody can tell me how to live my life"
"Nothing is evil which is according to nature." - Marcus Aurelius
"The end excuses any evil." - Sophocles
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"There is nothing either good or bad." - Shakespeare
"These things which ye call prophecies, which ye say are handed down by holy prophets, behold, they are foolish traditions of your fathers." - Korihor
"Thou shalt not commit sins, except if thou art unhappy and think it will make thou happy again."
"What happens on earth is the only thing that matters. You shouldn't worry about returning to live in Heaven or what God might think of what you're doing."
"Whatsoever a man does is no crime." - Korihor
"When a man is dead, that is the end thereof." - Korihor
"Ye say that those ancient prophecies are true. Behold, I say that ye do not know that they are true." - Korihor
"Buy it. Sell it. Love it." - eBay

This is the finished, merged list, with scriptures -- I'll post the references in a little bit, once I sort out which scriptures I decided to use in place of my original list.

Evil is just a point of view. -- For I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.

Find your own road to the truth. -- If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

If there was an all-powerful God, he would have made all good, and no bad. -- Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil.

If a real God exists, we'd never be able to tell he was there. -- Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

If thou wilt show me a sign, that I may be convinced that there is a God, yea, show unto me that he hath power, and then will I be convinced of the truth of thy words. -- Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.

No one can depend on anyone but himself. -- Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.

No one can really know if a choice is really right or wrong. It just depends on what you think. -- The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

Buy it. Sell it. Love it. -- No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Nobody can tell me how to live my life. -- Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

Thou shalt not commit sins, except if thou art unhappy and think it will make thou happy again. -- Do not suppose, because it has been spoken concerning restoration, that ye shall be restored from sin to happiness. Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness.

Nothing is evil which is according to nature. -- For the natural man is an enemy to God.

No one can tell if something is actually true. -- He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

Whatsoever a man does is no crime. -- Let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God.

The end excuses any evil. -- Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it. -- Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

What happens on earth is the only thing that matters. You shouldn't worry about returning to live in Heaven or what God might think of what you're doing. -- For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.

There is nothing either good or bad. -- And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

Ye say that those ancient prophecies are true. Behold, I say that ye do not know that they are true. -- He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

These things which ye call prophecies, which ye say are handed down by holy prophets, behold, they are foolish traditions of your fathers. -- And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.

When a man is dead, that is the end thereof. -- Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a clove of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.

(yes, I know, a few of those word of Man quotes were originally meant sarcastically, or ironically, or what have you -- the point here is not "OMG, Anne Rice is EEEEEVIL!", the point is that these are wrong ways of thinking... heck, some of those, I wrote myself, because the original stuff was way over the head of your average 6 year old... I've also already shortened some of those scripture verses, and will probably shorten some of the others... that is, the quote will be all-scripture, but might not be that entire verse; again, trying to reflect the fact that I'm working with 40 kids who were, for the most part, born after 1999)

Anyway, considering I pretty much came up with that during spare time between meetings, and while talking with my students, I think it'll work out well. If I have time, I'll try to get Laura to take some photos of all the posters. There'll be 43 of them in all if I get them all done (1 Tree of Life, 1 CTR, 1 "X", 20 word of God scriptures, and 20 word of Man quotes.) Whee...

[edit: I did some editing of the selections, and edited the post to reflect that... also, I merged the two lists because I've now paired them up with one another, and added Technorati tags. ^_^]

Tags: Mormon, LDS Church, Book of Mormon, Bible, Church, Religion.

WOOT!

2005-09-05T11:47:00.000-04:00

The Church has finally, finally posted an MP3 version of the Old Testament! They've had a streaming version (I think .wma) for a little while, but for some reason the MP3 set was missing the OT for ages. Now it's there! I've got 92% of the book of Genesis already saved. WOOT!

Tags: Mormon, LDS Church, Bible

"I'm Okay" - Katrina Site

2005-09-05T11:31:00.000-04:00

In case you're hunting for information on a relative/friend missing in New Orleans/the rest of the Gulf -- or if you're from New Orleans/the rest of the Gulf -- you can search OR enter yourself into the database I've linked on the sidebar. It's a cute little green and white button that says "I'M OKAY." No really, go look.

This should be of particular help to anyone interested in the following ZIP codes:

-New Orleans, LA and surrounding area: 70000 through 70499
-Biloxi and Gulfport, MS and surrounding area: 39426 through 39595
AND 35450 through 39425 AND 39596 through 39772.

Those are the ones that are so bad, UPS and FedEx can't bring stuff in; they don't have power, other utiltiies, or clear roads (the second and third ranges in the Missouri area say to expect massive delays.) If you've gotten out of those ZIP codes and/or know someone who lives in/was visiting one of them, this is the database for you.

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, Flood Aid

Louisiana Companies

2005-09-01T21:24:00.000-04:00

Lots of individuals live in New Orleans, and have lost their homes and workplaces. And lots of companies are based in New Orleans, and have lost stock and warehouses and computer equipment... their stock prices probably aren't going up right now, and they may not have insurance to cover their losses, let alone reestablish their businesses. One of the things that has most helped third world countries is plain old capital investment in local ventures... so in the long term, why not invest in some New Orleans based companies?

The New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau website is still running, and gives a partial list of NO-area companies.

Some of these sites are down, and some seem to go up and down periodically. The company/brand names are all pretty unique, though.

And if you or someone you know owns a small business in the affected areas, you should contact the Small Business Administration for assistance. There's a good overview of what's available here.

FRENCH MARKET HOT SAUCES
Tony Chachere’s
Zatarain’s
McIlhenny’s Tabasco sauce

BEANS
Camellia

BEER AND SPIRITS
Abita Beer
Dixie Beer (note: not their own site)

COFFEE AND TEA
Community Coffee and Tea
French Market Coffee
Luzianne
New Orleans Coffee Company

CONDIMENTS, SPICES AND SPICEBASED FOOD MIXES
Blue Plate Mayonnaise
Crystal Condiments
Magic Seasoning Blend
Melinda’s Original Habanero Pepper Sauce
Rex Pure Foods and Horse Shoe Pure Products
Steen’s Syrup

GRAIN PRODUCTS
Watermaid and Mahatma Rice
Reising and Zip Bread
King Cakes
-- Haydel
-- Gambino
-- Randazzo

List courtesy New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. Fall 2004.

(I deleted Southern Comfort from the list, because they are now based in Louisville, KY -- they still might be a good choice to help rebuild in the area, though, since they're originally a New Orleans company)

[Technorati tags: Flood Aid, Hurricane Katrina.]

To those who keep coming to my site,

2005-09-01T09:50:00.000-04:00

Looking for instructions on how to setup a Greatland tent? I have two words for you: Pray. Hard.

Seriously, I gave up. I suggest buying a new tent instead.

In case you were wondering...

2005-09-01T08:49:00.000-04:00

Yes, LDS Humanitarian Services is working on Hurricane Katrina.

The best way to donate seems to be to go through your local ward clerk -- just fill out an ordinary tithing slip and mark "Humanitarian Fund." You can also send funds to the Humanitarian Fund directly (the link has the phone number, address, and website.) Remember that if you use a credit card instead of a check, the credit card people take out a processing fee -- that's a standard issue, and might be a good reason to donate directly to the local branch of a national or regional charity.

For information on the Church's efforts, including information on the safety of Church missionaries and members in the area, go here -- I'll update this post if and when they put up more recent information.

And as for non-LDS charities, Strengthen the Good is doing a donation matching program, and InstaPundit has a ton listed. LDS Humanitarian Services is even in there now.

Technorati tags: Flood Aid, Hurricane Katrina.

Where'd the comments go?

2005-08-30T22:54:00.000-04:00

I've removed the HaloScan comments because I'm tired of them getting deleted after 6 months. Hugs to everyone who commented on the old comments -- and rejoice, for now you can comment on the Blogger comment pages, which will ask you to prove you're a human, but won't insist you have a Blogger account (and won't require you to bypass your popup blocker.)

Glargh...

2005-08-30T22:41:00.000-04:00

Okay, this LSAT thing is going to give me an ulcer or mental breakdown or possibly both. The last copy of that PowerScore Logic Games Bible left in Columbus has apparently disappeared. I've given myself 24 hours to decide whether or not to try and move my test date to the December slot. This is very frustrating.

Now entering APM (Absolute Panic Mode)...

2005-08-29T23:07:00.000-04:00

So, my mom helped me register for the LSAT today. I'll be taking it on October 1st. Most of the last month has been 100% devoted to learning how to do DSL tech support (I got a smoking modem on Friday, and cussed out on Saturday!) and getting used to a new schedule. Now I have to go crazy to get a decent score on this test. Blah.

I just submitted reservations for two LSAT prep books (the Logic Games Bible recommended by Steve/Ethesis and Arwyn, and a book by Kaplan, who got me a decent score on the math section of the SAT back in the late 1990s) Depending on my scores on the practice LSAT I'll be taking on Wednesday or Thursday, I may try to order more publications.

I need to raise my score by 20 points in the next 30 days. Gah. Must get back to work.

Explaining, Rephrasing, and Dissembling

2005-08-14T21:16:00.000-04:00

Okay, so today one of the kids in my Primary class was trying to copy down the lyrics to the songs for our program in October, instead of singing along. This seemed hopeless -- I don't know any second graders that can copy down the songs as fast as we go through them, and she wasn't learning anything about the tune (which is the bigger problem for some of the kids, who can read but don't yet actually know how to sing along.) Negotiations commenced and were brief, because I promised that next week, I'd bring her pages with all the lyrics to all the songs we're singing in the program. She went back to listening.

Now, I'm not one to hand the kids a stack of pages and say "sing along." Oh, no. Because as soon as I sit down to do that, I start noticing... issues. See, we're singing some older songs, some songs they've never heard before, and a hymn. We're singing some fairly esoteric stuff, especially for a collection of kids who don't know what words like "discouraged" mean (and let me tell you how TOTALLY pumped I am that they're finally actually asking me when they don't know a word -- I've been explaining, without being asked, almost every third word, for the last eight months, and now they finally feel comfortable asking for help...)

So, I'm adding a glossary. MOst of the kids aren't quite at a reading level where they can get through this glossary very easily (according to Word it's at a 7th grade reading level,) but they've got older siblings (who can't define "restored" or "ponder" very coherently, I suspect, but almost certainly can sound out and explain my definitions.) Plus, this was a good exercise for me, since the ones that can't read will probably need to know what most of those words mean to understand what the heck it is they're singing. And don't try to tell me they'll learn from osmosis; there are probably adults out there that are still disappointed that apricot trees do not, in fact, produce popcorn.

Anyway, here goes. I still haven't done a final edit; I know there's inconsistent captialization and I'm sure I'm off the doctrinal deep end thanks to one or two insane typos (there are some VERY different words that sound VERY similar, okay? now I proofread all talks several times...) That'll be the task for next Saturday, most likely, since I'll be off work that night.

And in case you're wondering, this is pretty much EXACTLY the way I talk in class.

amens -- "Amen" is what we say at the end of a prayer. It means "yes, I agree, I'm saying that, too." It comes from Hebrew, and means "firm," or "faithful." When we sing "in grand amens my tongue employ," we're saying that we want to sing loud and proud about how much we love Heavenly Father and appreciate what He and Jesus Christ have done for us.

comfort -- "Comfort" means "to help make someone feel better." The Holy Ghost comforts us by letting us know that the Gospel is true, and by reminding us that Heavenly Father loves us and is taking care of us.

commandments -- "Commandments" are things that Heavenly Father has asked us to do. Some of them are in the Ten Commandments (don't kill, don't steal, obey your parents,) and some of them are things the Prophets ask us to do (don't date until you're 16) and some of them are found in the scriptures (don't drink alcohol, take the Sacrament every week.) Following Heavenly Father's commandments is a good way to stay happy, and it helps keep you on the path to living with Him again.

delight -- "Delight" is another word for "pleasure," or "happiness," or "joy." Usually it means "extra big joy." When we talk about "songs of delight," we mean songs that tell Heavenly Father that He's the person who makes us the happiest.

direct -- "Direct" is another word for "manage" or "organize." It means to give someone instructions: if I told you how to drive from our Stake Center to the temple, I would be directing you. When we talk about "God's light directing us from birth," we mean that Heavenly Father's commandments and the whispers of the Holy Ghost are the things we listen to when we make decisions.

disciples -- "Disciples" are followers, or students. Jesus Christ made a few good men his disciples while he was living on earth. They followed him from place to place, watched him teach people, and tried to learn to be like him. He also chose disciples when he visited the Nephites. These men were given the authority to direct the Church after Jesus went back to live with Heavenly Father.

dwell -- This is another word that means "live in." Jesus Christ came to live on earth, just like we all did. While he was here, we could say that he "dwelled" on the earth.

employ -- This is another word for "use." When we say "in grand amens my tongue employ," we mean that we're using our tongues to sing about how happy we are that Heavenly Father loves us.

eternal -- This means lasting forever. Mortal beings, like dogs, cats, people, and spiders, die. Most everything that people build, like houses and bridges and playgrounds, eventually gets old and falls down. But Heavenly Father has told us one of His biggest jobs is to make sure we can have eternal life, so that even though our bodies die, we can get them back again and live forever. When we talk about the Holy Ghost as "our true eternal friend," what we mean is that He will never disappear or leave us alone. So long as we listen to Him, He'll be there for us.

forgiven -- To be forgiven means that when you've done something wrong to someone, they say "No, it's all right, I'm not mad at you." We repent and ask for Heavenly Father's forgiveness when we break His commandments. He has promised that if we truly feel sorry for what we have done, try to fix it, and try our best to never do that bad thing again, we will be forgiven. In fact, He'll forget we ever did that thing in the first place.

grateful -- "Grateful" is another word for "thankful." It means we're happy and appreciate the good things we have been given.

guidance -- Guidance is counseling or advice about what to do or say. Heavenly Father loves us, and has given us a lot of advice about what to do in our lives. Usually we can find that advice in the scriptures, or in the things the Prophets have said.

holding fast -- "Holding fast" means to hold on to something very, very tight, as though your life depended on it. It comes from a word that means "firm." When you say "holding fast to his word and his love," you should think about Nephi and Lehi holding on as tight as they could to the Iron Rod, and not letting go, even when people make fun of them.

improve -- This is another word for "get better." We always want to make ourselves better: we want to do a better job at following Heavenly Father's commandments, at being nice to our families, at working hard at school. It's very important to keep trying to get better at these things, because nobody on earth is perfect yet.

kingdom -- A kingdom is an area or group of people which has one person in charge. The Kingdom of Heaven is the group of people that Heavenly Father is in charge of: the people who show Him love and follow His commandments. All little children are in His kingdom, because they don't yet have the ability to choose to be evil.

lighting -- This just means "making it brighter." When it's very dark, it's hard to see, but when the sun comes up, everything gets bright, because of all the light that shines on the earth. That's what "lighting each new day" means.

lovely -- "Lovely" means pleasant, good, nice-looking, or enjoyable. Jesus Christ made our earth a place that is very beautiful and nice to be in. That is why we sing about "our lovely home on earth."

mortal -- This means something that does not last forever. Mortal beings, like dogs, cats, people, and spiders, die. Most everything that people build, like houses and bridges and playgrounds, eventually gets old and falls down. But Heavenly Father has told us one of His biggest jobs is to make sure we can have eternal life, so that even though our bodies die, we can get them back again and live forever. When we talk about "our mortal birth," we mean the day our mothers gave birth to us here on earth. We know we lived with Heavenly Father before we came to earth, and we know that we can return to live with Him again if we make good choices and have faith.

obey -- "Obey" means to do what we are asked to do, when we are asked to do it. We need to obey Heavenly Father's commandments, what the Prophet says, what the scriptures say, and what our parents and Bishops and teachers tell us to do. It is very important to listen when we are asked to do things, so we will be able to do it well. When we do what we are asked, we feel good and remember that our Heavenly Father loves us.

ponder -- This means "to think about seriously." The original word meant "weight," which is a good way to think about pondering. You ought to think about things like the scriptures, the things that the Prophet asks us to do, and what you learn in church as though it was a great big important thing (because it is big and important!) When we sing about "pondering the beauty of the earth made clean again," we mean that we're thinking very hard about how beautiful clean things are -- and how much it reminds us of the gift of baptism and repentance. These are really important things, which is why we say "ponder" instead of just "think."

praise -- "Praise" sounds a lot like "prize," which is a good way to think about praising the name of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. If you got a big screen television or a lifetime's supply of popcorn or ten million dollars, you'd probably be REALLY happy, right? Well, you should be even happier about the things that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have done for you! If you won something really fantastic from a company or a person, you'd probably go around telling everyone, "WOW, this person is SO GREAT! I mean, LOOK at the cool thing they gave me!!!" You should do the exact same thing when you talk or sing about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, because they gave you things that are a lot more valuable than a television or a big bag of snacks.

presence -- this means to be near or in the same place as someone or something. When we talk about Heavenly Father's presence, we sometimes mean that we feel Him close by, or that someday we'll be living in the same place He does. When we sing "home to his presence, to live in his sight," we mean actually going to live with Him.

priesthood -- this means "the right to act and talk for God on earth." Heavenly Father and Jesus don't usually walk around and lay their hands on your head and give you a blessing, because they've got worthy priesthood holders on the earth who can do it already. It is very important that someone with the priesthood use it righteously, and act worthy of it, because he's supposed to use it to do and say the things that Heavenly Father and Jesus would if they were right there. If you would like help from Heavenly Father with something, like being sick or scared, it's a really good idea to ask a priesthood holder to give you a blessing. We believe that the right -- or authority -- to speak and act for God was restored when Joseph Smith was ordained by Jesus Christ and His apostles.

purpose -- this means "reason for being around." When we say that our lives "have a purpose," we mean that there's a reason we're here. Heavenly Father didn't send us to earth and give us bodies because He thought it'd be fun, or because there was nothing better to do that day. We're here to learn how to control ourselves and have faith in Him. That's the purpose of our lives.

rejoice -- This means "to be filled with joy." If you were a cup, you'd be so full of joy you'd be spilling joy everywhere and making a big mess. You're really, really happy and glad. It's not the kind of happy that has you laughing hysterically: it's the kind of happy that makes you want to give everyone you know a great big hug.

restored -- This means "to put back into place." Heavenly Father has given mankind his commandments a couple of times, but people sometimes forget, and sometimes they do wicked things, and sometimes the papers they wrote the commandments on get lost or stolen or changed around. When things get so bad that no one can really say that he or she knows what Heavenly Father wants, and no one has the right to hold the priesthood, Heavenly Father has to step in and put the commandments and priesthood back on the earth. The last time He did that was when he told Joseph Smith that all of the churches on the earth were at least a little bit wrong, and that no one had the right to speak for God anymore. Then he and his servants gave Joseph the Book of Mormon, and ordained him to the priesthood, and that's what we mean when we say that "the priesthood was restored."

return -- This just means "to come back." If you had an older brother or sister who moved away to school for a year, and then came back home, your mom and dad would say they've returned. Right now we're all on a special trip here to earth, to get bodies and to learn. We left Heavenly Father's home to do that. If we choose the right and have faith, we'll get to go back and live with Him again. That's what we mean when we sing about "returning to his presence."

seek -- This means "to look for." Usually when you "seek" you aren't just kind of wandering around, halfway looking and halfway thinking about something else (like what you're going to have for dinner.) You really, really want to find whatever it is you're looking for, so that's all you're thinking about. When we sing about "seeking for God's light" we mean that we really want to find out what Heavenly Father wants us to do, so we can return to live with him.

still small voice -- A "still, small voice," is a voice that's hard hear if you aren't paying attention or don't care. It doesn't say a whole lot of stuff really loud and really fast. Usually it's more like whispering "hey, you know this is true." When the Holy Ghost wants to let us know something, he speaks in a still, small voice, so it's really important to stop, be quiet, and pay close attention.

strengthened -- This is a way of saying "make stronger." We want to make our faith in Heavenly Father stronger (a lot stronger!) and just like with lifting weights to make your arms stronger, we have to exercise our faith to do that. We can make our faith stronger by following Heavenly Father's commandments and by doing the right things.

suffer -- Sometimes this means "to endure pain," but when we sing "Suffer the children to come to me," this word actually means "allow" or "permit." Basically, we're talking about the time when Jesus told his disciples to let the little children come up to him and receive blessings. The disciples didn't like that idea very much, but it was very important to Jesus that the children come up to him and receive blessings. Heavenly Father and Jesus love children a lot.

surrounds -- this means "it's all around you." If you put a rock in a bucket of water, the water would surround the rock. Even though we can't see it, Heavenly Father's love is all around us, just like the water is all around the rock. You can't make Heavenly Father not love you, any more than the rock can push the water away; you can't run away or hide from his love, either. Which is okay, because Heavenly Father's love is a very good thing!

swelling -- this means "getting bigger." When we talk about a "swelling within my heart," we mean that our hearts feel like they're getting bigger. This can happen when you're very happy, like when you think about how much Heavenly Father loves you.

testifies -- This means "telling other people." We're supposed to tell other people about how much Heavenly Father loves us and wants us to come back and live with him. And the Holy Ghost tells us that he knows those things, which is why we sing that he "testifies of God and Christ."

thee -- This is an old way of saying "you." We use it to remind ourselves that Heavenly Father deserves respect; He's pretty much the only one we say "thee" to anymore, so reminds us of how special He is.

trust -- Trust means being so sure that someone else will act or speak in a certain way that we aren't worried about it at all. If you fell backwards, they'd make sure to catch you, so you aren't even going to look behind you to be sure they're ready. We trust Heavenly Father and Jesus to love us and take care of us and give us good instructions. That's a big part of faith.

walk in his way -- This means "follow his commandments," or "do the things he would." We want to follow the commandments of Heavenly Father, and we want to act the way Jesus did while he lived on earth. That's why we sing that we promise to "always walk in his way."

wrongs -- This is another way of saying "sins" or "bad things we've done." When we are baptized, our sins are washed away, and we start over fresh and clean. We can do the same thing after we're baptized, by truly repenting.

Some things never change...

2005-07-26T17:32:00.000-04:00

So, the Atlantic Monthly (article expires July 28th, 2005) did a profile of Mitt Romney. A few people have noticed that its tone was inappropriate. I tend to agree, and sent the Atlantic Monthly a letter:

Re: The "Holy Cow!" Candidate

I note with displeasure the final section of your article on Mitt Romney, in which your correspondant Sridhar Pappu asked the governor about his LDS temple garments. Pappu characterized himself as being "uncomfortable" asking the question.

Of course he was uncomfortable. That's what happens when you ask something grossly inappropriate like that, and then publish it in a national forum. That question is the grossest possible combination of "boxers or briefs" and "how many days out of the week do you go to church?" Neither question is germane to anything but sensationalism and superficial notions regarding spirituality. The question is not a proxy for "how Mormon are you?" -- and even if it was, it wouldn't need to be asked in this interview, given that the governor answered that very question immediately before hand.

It almost seems like the question was designed to slap readers in the face. 'Ooh, ooh, let's talk about the(peculiar) habits of the (obviously creepy) Mormon candidate for President!' I can't imagine why the interviewer would want to do that -- my goodness, that might obscure the actual issues and let people rest on nonsensical prejudices. Might even make them decide to vote for a 'safer' Democrat, whose underwear and religious practices are left essentially unexamined, as they should be in all cases.

But that would be an indication of prejudice on the part of this publication, and we can't have that. So I'm going to interpret the inclusion of this question as simple immaturity, and poor judgement, on the part of your editorial staff. One hopes you'll refrain from such choices in the future; I'll look to your presumably upcoming profile of Harry Reid to see if you can control yourselves in the future.

(The governor is a topic of conversation within the Bloggernacle at large, of course...)

I don't know whether I'd vote for Romney for President or not. But I know I'd never give an interview to Sridhar Pappu.

I drove 50 miles for...

2005-07-25T18:25:00.000-04:00

Diddly squat. My first training session at my new job was scheduled for this afternoon, but apparently sometime between my interview (in June, remember) and today, they decided to push the start date back to Wednesday. I said "but I didn't get any kind of a call," and they said: "We only call to confirm start dates one day in advance."

Which means that I'll be getting a phone call tomorrow, letting me know that I don't need to show up for training today but rather two days from now.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. This on top of their whole "if you apply today you can work on Monday!" ad campaign (I applied in late May and will get my first paycheck on August 24th) has not really inspired a whole heck of a lot of confidence. We'll see. Meanwhile, now I have to be extra careful with gas and driving; hopefully I can get some cash for fuel by sealing the driveway next weekend, because otherwise I'm not sure what I'm going to do. And I can't go to YSA tonight (Caroline has to go straight to work so she can't give me a ride) because I wouldn't be able to get us to church on Sunday if I went to the building tonight.

Grr. At least this is forcing me to study more for the LSAT.

This makes no sense at all...

2005-07-23T23:44:00.000-04:00

So I spent all of Comic-Con making up logic puzzles, and this afternoon/evening I spent about two hours solving the easiest five logic puzzles in a book of games my mom lent me. And this evening, I took a second practice LSAT... and I got a 153 again.

Now, at first I wasn't all that surprised, because one of the logic puzzles in the practice test left me so utterly lost I simply guessed at the answers. But -- and this is the part that's got me annoyed -- I actually raised my score in the games section of the practice test! And, correspondingly, lowered my score in Reading Comprehension (I'm going to go over that one again, because I was pretty confident about that section.) My percentages?

Arguments (Logical Reasoning) -- 74%
Reading Comprehension -- 51%
Games (Analytical Reasoning) -- 54%

Erm, yeah.

I've got two months left (Arwyn: yes, I'm taking it in October.) And I start my new job on Monday. Let me therefore take this opportunity to freak out slightly:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUGGHHHHH!

Okay, that makes me feel better. I think I'm going to go sic some armies on one another (Age of Empires, WOOT) and take another look at Reading Comprehension tomorrow. Maybe I'll try to LSAT-ize the Book of Mormon or something. Heh.

The end of an era?

2005-07-23T00:50:00.000-04:00

I'm about one episode away from giving up on Stargate SG-1. No, I'm serious, I am. It's been fun, sure, and yeah, I endured the rough periods: they killed Daniel, they killed pretty much everyone who knows Teal'c or Daniel, they killed Sam's dad, they killed Daniel again, they ditched Hammond, they promoted Richard Dean Anderson almost out of the show, and all of this I endured. But in the last ten episodes, they've imported the main Farscape team, they've completely ditched O'Neill, and quite frankly they're just being stupid now. Even their Comic-Con appearance just annoyed me. I mean, how sad is it that the Atlantis episode that showed this evening is at least twice as good as SG-1, and still awfully pathetic? I can also console myself, there, with the knowledge that they're only adding one extra cast member to that show.

At least I've got Battlestar Galactica to look forward to. But boy, I'm not sorry I asked for Sunday/Monday off (for my new job) instead of a Friday/Sunday split...

Leaving for a bit...

2005-07-12T05:18:00.000-04:00

Comic-Con calls. Things would be dead with or without me around here -- my sister just took her test at driver's ed, and my other sister is starting a job at Wal-Mart tomorrow. Mostly I'll be missing an awesome fireside on Sunday and a missionary farewell on Friday; I'll also have more bugs to fight off and clean up once I'm back. Hopefully when I get back I can also find some cash-generating activities; my job at Call-Tech doesn't start till the 25th and it'd be swell if I had gas to get to and from... bleh.

On the cash note: counting all my coinage, I'm going to Comic-Con with just $26.50 in my purse. That is officially insane. I'm not doing it again till I have actual money.

Well, it's a start...

2005-07-10T23:23:00.000-04:00

I took one of my mom's computerized LSAT practice tests just now. All I can say is... heh.

Okay, fine, I can say more than that.

The score I got, according to the computer, was 153. This is not as good as I'd hope for, though to put it in some perspective I can recall that the first time I took a practice SAT I got an 1150 score (my eventual score was 1380.) Also, it'd qualify me for a 50% scholarship at my mom's law school. Still, I need to raise that by about 15 points before the end of September.

The -- how shall I put it -- greatest area of "opportunity" is, unsurprisingly, the Games section. I had to flat-out guess on two of the questions (always a terrible sign) and got just 45% of the questions right. For comparison's sake, I got 64% of the Reading Comprehension questions right, and 71% of the Arguments section right. I had a feeling the Games section would be the worst, since I'm not much good at the logic games in puzzle books.

My eventual goal is to get 85% or more of the questions right on the practice exams (that works out to a score around 170, I believe.) I figure I'll have to put in at least 10-15 hours of work to raise my practice score by 1-3 points (I figure it's something like five hours per point, but it probably won't work out quite like that) and I have a little less than 2,000 total hours between right now and the start of the test (that translates into a more convenient 'nearly 11 weeks,' by the way.) Anyway, since my goal is to gain 17 points, I figure an hour or two a day for the next, you know, 82 days, will be more than sufficient. I can probably even take Sundays off. I suspect I'll try another practice test every week or so; expect boring analysis like this every five to ten days, therefore.

Bleh. 153.

I hate tents!

2005-07-07T00:04:00.000-04:00

Okay, so some friends decided to arrange a "we'd really like to see you" thing for Comic-Con, in which all of this year's birthday presents are going towards airfare and such, and I'm actually able to go. Which is cool, and I love them, and yay for Comic-Con.

BUT. My major logistical contribution is the tent. Yes, we are camping out for Comic-Con (and when you consider that Larry is spending like $760 for five nights in a hotel...) and it'll be fun. Assuming, of course, that we can get a tent that will work. Since there will be between 2 and 5 people in the tent every night, I figured a nice, large, 2- or 3-room tent would be perfect. And it just so happens that my family has one of those, in the garage. 10ft x 14ft, 2 rooms, woohoo!

Or not. Now, let's ignore the fact that I haven't actually asked if I can use the tent yet (I figured I should see if it's still in working order,) because the tent isn't in working order! We're missing two critical elements: the instructions, and 1 Tent Pole Segment #2. For reference's sake, the tent should look like this, only a different color and without those awning things. Tent Pole Segment #2 is one of the two types of tent segments that goes straight across the top of the tent. In this case, we're looking for one of the two side arches, rather than the one down the middle. Ugh.

Anyway, setting up tents (especially ones this large) is already not a ton of fun, but with rusty/sticky tent poles (don't worry guys, if I can use the tent I'll clean the poles before I pack them up) and not enough space/light and with all these annoying setbacks (why do we have pieces left over, AND missing pieces too????)it's extra BLEH. I can't even figure out who made the tent (American Broadway? Greatland? Neither actually exists... I think they're both North Pole Ltd. brands.) Like I said, BLEH.

That is all.

Well begun is half, umm,

2005-06-25T21:28:00.000-04:00

Okay, it isn't really half done, but I'm still proud of myself for doing the trim of our front door. I'm in a total painting mood now -- all these bare walls and unfinished bookcases had better watch out. The trim looks good, I think. It's weird how a new coat of white paint looks so much whiter than an old coat of off-white paint. Heh. Anyway, I think with the green on the doors themselves, it'll look really cool. We should put up, like, a brass thing of some sort (nameplate, knocker, whatever) to complete the look. We won't, though.

My next project is probably going to be the stairs coming down to the basement. I haven't decided yet whether to try washing those walls or do more work organizing my room (I want it clean enough that I feel not icky doing yoga on the floor by my bed...) after writing my Sunday School lesson. We'll see; I expect to have lots and lots of spare time tonight because a) all of my friends are at Disneyland and b) this is probably the easiest lesson to write ever (forgiveness!) Funny how some of the most complicated things to really do is so easy to teach (at least, the principle itself.) I've narrowed down my "hard to say" example (to show how hard it can be to say "I forgive you") to either onomatopoeia or antidisestablishmentarianism (they're all 6/7 years old, and most can read.)

Compromise Bites

2005-06-23T17:59:00.000-04:00

So, Kelo. See InstaPundit's roundup for all the links I would have given you at the beginning of this post.

What I wouldn't give for a major political party that could manage to be sane in terms of international relations, basic economics AND the fundamental principles of a free society all at the exact same time. No, not these people -- I will not support a party full of people who think they can manage a country but who can't actually manage a simple campaign for Congress.

Argh. I don't trust government. I think it's utterly insane to trust government. The whole idea behind limiting powers left, right, and center in the Constitution is that it's completely irrational to trust government. You just don't do it. It's like letting serial killers be in charge of elementary school administration, having groups of professional politicans be in charge of your money and your military and the rest. Honestly, if Kerry hadn't been such a twerp and there hadn't been this whole war on terror deal, I so would have been more conflicted about voting for Bush. His nominees would be even lamer, I bet, on this issue than the folks we have now.

For way less emotional discussion, see here.

This doesn't make much sense...

2005-06-21T17:10:00.000-04:00

Dubailand?

Okay, first off, yay for more theme parks! I want to be the first one to work at them all. ^_~

Second off, there are lots and lots of disgruntled former Disney employees. Please seek some of us out and get help with your theming, guys. Eco-Tourism World? Bleh.

Third... how much do you expect to pay your employees? The reason I ask is, well, if you're expecting to have 300,000 people working there, and only 200,000 visiting per day, that means that you have to have every one of your guests supporting the salaries of 1.5 workers, and all the marginal and fixed costs of their stay, AND all the profits you anticipate getting per guest. That's going to be hard. Disney and most of the other Western theme parks charge between $25 and $55 (the premier ones are all over $45) per day in admissions; meals cost about 1.6 times what you'd pay for them in the outside world, and most retail items cost 20-50% more than what you'd pay at the stores across the street from the main gates. The hotels run at a premium, too. Most of the workers make a little less than your average unskilled worker in the local economy... and their ratios are more like 30,000 workers for 120,000 guests (actually, the Disneyland Resort, excluding the hotel, employs around 22,200 people, and gets 11,000 guests on a VERY slow day and 90,000+ on a really busy day; max capacity is over 100,000, if you include Downtown Disney, which has no entry fee.)

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how this one pans out. And for the geographically challenged amongst my readers...

Hat Tip: BoingBoing

Home Improvement

2005-06-20T21:22:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I have one project! I'll be painting the trim around the front door (and the front door itself) for $20. I need to find sand paper and I'll be all set. Once we have some sealant for the driveway and back porch, Caroline and I will attempt those projects together. I'm also thinking there's potential in the fact that most of the interior walls haven't been painted yet, though I have to figure out how to get all the dirt off the primer before any actual painting takes place. And, of course, all of that has to be done with the cats running around. Oi. On the one hand, a temp job (or starting this blasted tech support gig) would be better in terms of having a steady stream of cash. On the other, it's kind of cool to be able to see the fruits of my labor, as it were. I mean, I go through that front door all the time.

Good News, Bad News...

2005-06-14T11:59:00.000-04:00

Okay. I have a job. Yay! But, not only does it not start until July 25th -- I won't get paid until August 24th (!)

Yeah, exactly.

So, I'm going to be going to a temp agency after lunch. See if I can get lots and lots of short term assignments. 40 hours a week at $9/hour (11am to 8pm, Tuesday through Saturday) and pretty much exactly the shift I want -- I can go to YSA family home evening and dances, and watch Battlestar Gallactica, AND sleep in -- is basically ideal, for the short to mid term. Really really stinks I can't start right away. Also, the training pay is bizarre ($60/day, rather than a set hourly rate) which has me worried about classes going till 2am or something. Ah, well. That first paycheck will be substantial (I'm thining around $1070, after taxes?) which will be, you know, good. Can't believe I won't see that till August, though... bleh.

Anyway, I've technically got a job, so I think I'll watch Clone Wars today. Probably won't go see Ep. III again till I actually get paid, though, since that'll cost money and I have... well, none really.

Thinking about asking my stepdad if Caroline and I can stain the deck in back for cash. Hmmm.

Opportunity Costs and Blog Comments

2005-06-14T02:30:00.000-04:00

I will probably never comment on this post.

I know, I know. Why on earth am I posting here about how I won't comment over there? Well, this is what the original post says (a small chunk, I should say):

Here are some thoughtful responses to Milbank’s work. They model the kinds of responses that are appropriate. I’ve requested a couple more and as they come in, I will add them to the list.

Erm...

One of the very best things about the blogosphere, in my opinion, is how much it resembles my favorite classes in college. Lots of really, really awesome material is put out there -- and all kinds of responses are safe. You'll probably get yelled at if you bring up your cat's latest antics in the middle of a European history discussion (say, a review of family relations in 1650s England?) unless you're really, really good at making it relevant. And if you are really, really good at making it relevant, well, class is way more fun. But it's okay to respond to an analysis of gender roles and household responsibilities with "Wow, I have no idea what any of that means, but it kind of reminds me of how my mom thinks that I should know how to cook and knit even though I can buy food and clothing at Wal-Mart," because it shows you've at least made an attempt to meet the material on some level, and anyway, in a second one of your classmates is going to either shoot you down or say something so impressive (good or bad) that it makes everyone forget that you just said something kind of silly. Discussions can shift, people are engaged... everyone (hopefully) did the reading and in the meantime, the exploration is fun, because you know you don't have to be profound for every second of every conversation. Which is especially nice, since you're taking four classes and doing about 200 pages a week of reading, and you have a part time job and the roommate from someplace unspeakable, and frankly, half of this material is either hideously boring or way, way beyond your level still. And your professor has been studying it for the last twenty years (and by the way, selected the textbook herself.)

Anyway, it took me nearly 8 months to get comfortable commenting on blogs (only took about 4 months of college classes to stop being too shy to talk -- by my senior year, I was asking questions in lecture halls.) It took over a year before I worked up the courage to email Glenn Reynolds (or, bizarrely, any other blogger,) though; he's a professor and a famous blogger, for heaven's sake.

The point is, I don't need any kind of "make this conversation meaningful, darnit!" pressure, since I give it to myself in rather large doses already; it's bad enough we insist on that in all that stuff that goes through peer review (honestly, if I do go to law school, I'll probably have my meltdown halfway through Scholarly Writing.)

Some of the best conversations on blogs that I've seen lately have included random whining, Star Wars references, and even "hey, we went on a blind date with each other ten years ago!" reunions. Those are the ones I got a lot out of; the ones that made me rethink my views on stuff. The ones that made me click on the links in peoples' signatures. The ones that didn't take such a huge effort to read and comprehend -- and the ones that didn't demand, up front, serious discussion.

Now, it's okay that there are posts out there that do demand that. I'm all about serious discussion much of the time (ask anyone I've dated -- or for that matter, anyone who's met me -- if I like serious discussion.) But I think that blogging has a huge advantage in its inherent unpredictability, and light-heartedness, and low barriers to entry (both technologically and culturally.) And I just don't... enjoy feeling like my response to a post will get more scrutiny than my paper/poster on Lithuanian nationalism did at the last undergrad research conference I participated in. In fact, the posts I'm least likely to ever respond to are the ones that seem to demand a really thoroughly researched reply. Please, I find myself saying, please just make a simple error of fact -- or ask for a relatively unambiguous opinion...

Reading four essays about "radical orthodox" philosophy and trying to formulate a reasoned, well-written response in the space of around 24 hours (of which 2 will be spent trying to write the actual post) is likely to generate 2 or 3 click-throughs to this blog, and no reply comments or emails. I can get that with a random "ummm, I don't really care for pop fiction endorsed by Oprah, and probably won't read the Da Vinci Code" reply on M*, with three seconds of effort and no massive level of stress. Moreover, I'll definitely understand what the heck my own position on the matter means at the end of the day (i.e., "I don't like Oprah, and I won't be reading The Da Vinci Code!") which I sort of doubt will happen with anything I could say in reply to Jim's post. I'm, uh, not even sure what question I'm supposed to answer in Jim's post, which kind of worries me, to be honest. Given that, I'd probably spend another 20 minutes trying to find the question (it's taking a lot of self-control to refrain from doing that right now, just to settle the matter.)

So, ummm, I won't be replying in that thread. Too much risk, not enough reward... Sorry, Jim. I thought it was an awesome essay (at least, the chunks I understood, which were actually greater in number than what I thought I would understand, because I had been trying to watch CNN while reading it, the first time through) I hope you liked writing it. Good luck with the experiment -- I think there are a lot of people at T&S who will not be all defeatist (as I am, I'm afraid) when faced with your challenge. It's definitely the blog to try it at, at least. ^_^

(no offense to Jim meant, by the way -- this post was born because I literally said out loud "Whoa... there's no way I can reply to that" as soon as I hit the "(More)" link on the front page of T&S, and wanted to figure out why I'd had that reaction -- and as an illustration of how much work a *real* reply to Jim would take, I've spent 55 minutes writing and editing this post... which probably goes to show why I should get over this whole perfectionism thing, I bet.)

A thousand words...

2005-06-11T19:42:00.000-04:00

Okay. I'm sick of not having a camera. Yes, it's taken two years to get to this point (my old one broke in April of 2003,) and I feel justified in blaming Caroline for this.

Anyway, I've got (or soon will have) a $50 voucher from Best Buy (my old cell phone simply will not stay on, so I'm applying for a replacement voucher,) so I'll have to get this camera from them. And, once I have a job I'll have bazillions of things to pay for (insurance, gas, rent of the storage shed, rent at home [?], student loans, food, shampoo...) -- and of course, I don't have a job yet (prayers will be much appreciated around 9am Tuesday morning, by the way,) so things will be even tighter as I'll have stuff to buy that I've been putting off (I must, for instance, get a job before I run out of toothpaste.) So. I don't think that realistically I'll be able to spend more than 5% of my weekly pay for the summer (or about $150-200) on this camera. That puts the upper limit of my price range at around $149-179, I think (since the $50 will be largely offset by the price of a memory card and taxes.)

I'd like to get a camera that can at least do ordinary portrait size photos (8x10), can do a bit of the pretty sunset/super up-close flower/cool shot of a tractor from the side of the road type photography, as well as get good shots of Ohio Stadium from the banks of the Olentangy River and photos of my friends at conventions and such. I want to be able to take the camera places (camping, Europe, whatever) and I want it to still be a decent-yet-fun camera in four or five years. I don't need to be able to do fancy tricks (take a photo with a sepia filter, say) with the camera itself; that's what Paint Shop Pro is for.

I want to have a memory system that isn't insanely expensive ($100 for 1gb of memory is probably my limit,) and I want to be able to take more than one photo every 20 seconds. I want to have one of those LCD screens. I definitely want to be able to upload photos directly to a computer using a USB port. I'd like to be able to put the thing on a tripod, since Caroline has one of those and I think they're useful. I want the memory system to be available in five years; it'd be swell to get one that's compatible with lots of different readers. I don't want the camera to insist on me installing a ton of proprietary software just to get my photos on the computer.

I like video, but it's not a big deal to me if I can't have it. I need to be able to do a moderate amount of fiddling with the zoom and such. I have to be able to turn off the flash, to force the flash to go off, etc. Oh, and I want to be able to fit the camera in an ordinary size small camera bag -- I already own three of the things, and don't want to get anything else, especially anything bigger. I don't need the thing to fit in my pocket, though.

It would, incidentally, be swell if the thing had either a really strong battery that can go a few days (say 12 hours of operation) without recharging, or uses AA batteries (since I already own a recharger and 8 rechargeable AA batteries.) Weeks of working at the photo booth across from it's a small world has permanently soured me on special size batteries for cameras.

Anyway, are there suggestions or comments or anything? Anyone know of a camera that would fit those requirements? My last camera was a 3.2mp (I think) Olympus Camedia, and I liked it -- my biggest thing is just being able to get slightly higher resolution on my photos (I'm sorry, but using real film has spoiled me on that one.) I'd like to have a slightly more intuitive control system, too -- I'd had that camera for more than a year before I was comfortable with even simple stuff like scrolling through all the photos on my card.

Darfur

2005-06-10T18:19:00.000-04:00

"It's simple," one woman here explained. "When the men go out, they're killed. The women are only raped."

2 million of the 6 million people living in Darfur have been forced from their homes -- over 2000 villages have been burned to the ground. They're stuck in refugee camps, unable to tend to their crops or provide for themselves, so 3.5 million people in Darfur are in need of food assistance from relief agencies. Most aren't getting it.

Leila is 9 years old:

To help her family survive, Leila usually has other things to worry about.

“I am busy during the day. In the morning I wash our clothes and sweep the house, and we always need to collect water and firewood for cooking. Sometimes we walk for hours like everyone else in the camp,” she says.

Not going hungry is a constant anxiety. For their two meals a day, the family depends on food rations and donations. This morning’s breakfast consisted of porridge and Unimix, a nutritional supplement that the aid agencies hand out to combat the steadily rising malnutrition figures in Sudan’s camps.

As many as 300,000 people (at least 70,000) have been killed. The Sudanese government and their allies, an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, are blamed for most of the deaths. That's why no one knows for sure how many have died.

Government forces and militias conducted indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement, throughout Darfur. These acts were conducted on a widespread and systematic basis ... The vast majority of the victims of all of these violations have been from the Fur, Zaghawa, Massalit, Jebel, Aranga and other so-called 'African' tribes.

President Bush declared it a genocide more than 7 months ago. There's a war crimes tribunal convening at the Hague. And yet, somehow, no one -- not even the African Union -- is actually protecting these people. The Sudanese government arrests humanitarian workers, and all they get is a "please don't do that" from the US. The AU is trying to get a total of under 8,000 troops in the region -- but right now they have about 2,700, and it's unclear how even 8,000 peacekeeping troops could protect millions of people from the combined Sudanese and militia forces, considering that all they need to do to win is keep killing civilians (i.e. there's no specific land they're trying to capture.)

Especially when you consider that we haven't even tried significant sanctions (we've done less to Sudan than we have to China, Syria, et al) and that the great majority of Americans don't even know about what's going on, I find it incredible that anyone would argue we have no moral imperative to act (or even just speak out.)

More here at Times & Seasons. And more here at InstaPundit. I'd link more, but it sounds like a big thunderstorm is coming and I want this to get posted today.

Counsel with the Lord...

2005-06-05T01:21:00.000-04:00

Alma 37: 36-37
Yea, and cry unto God for all thy support; yea, let all thy doings be unto the Lord, and whithersoever thou goest let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yea, let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever.

Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day.

Okay, so I've gone through... probably 220 Fast Sunday meetings in my life, give or take (you have to take out all the years we were inactive, plus the months I was at my dad's house, etc.) In that whole time, I don't think I've ever really conciously been looking for an answer for something, and actively fasted and prayed for that answer. It's weird -- you'd think it'd have come up rather sooner, but it hasn't. I've fasted for other stuff, just not answers, per se.

Anyway, it's been a very different experience already. Maybe it's because this purpose means something to me -- maybe because I'm really looking for an answer, and have committed myself to following through on the answer I receive -- but it's much more meaningful this time around than most other times. This would be something I'd ask about in prayer anyway; I don't know why it seems like fasting is making it more, like, genuine, but it is.

This is probably why they're having me teach in Primary instead of Gospel Doctrine. ^_^

Blehhhh...

2005-05-31T23:29:00.000-04:00

The other thing that the Star Wars line did for me? Wreck my physical discipline. Seriously, I've totally lost momentum in terms of walking -- I'm like, back to January's levels (speed, endurance, etc.) Bleh!!! I'll have to work twice as hard as I was before the line, because I can't stand falling behind. Anyway, today I did about 20 minutes, including warm-up time, and walked about a mile (including almost five full minutes at 2.0 miles per hour -- yelch!) I stopped mostly because of my "bleh" feeling (as opposed to pain or whatever.) I have to get back into my fun walking mental space; tomorrow I'll start back up with the spreadsheets and all (nothing like competing against your own best record.) For now, though, I'm going to wallow in self-pity. Bleh!

New Scripture!

2005-05-31T22:10:00.000-04:00

Okay, it's not really new, but it's new to you! Actually, I rather hope not; this new Scripture of the Moment was one of the scriptures most quoted at General Conference this April (alongside Joseph Smith History 1:25,) and I like it. Reminds me of the whole free agency thing -- and reminds me that while I have an obligation to share the Gospel, I am not the one responsible for choosing the path others follow. In other words, if you don't listen, it's on your head. Heh.

2 Nephi 2:27

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.

No new quote for the moment, I'll take care of that later. I'll also probably talk some more about the most quoted scriptures from Conference -- there are some interesting patterns. ^_^

I stood in line for Star Wars...

2005-05-31T20:46:00.000-04:00

And all I have to show for it are great memories, great friends, a DVD player, a Jedi robe, a lightsabre, a bunch of other new toys, experiences to last a lifetime, and a deep and abiding distrust of several media organizations and one or two websites. Heh.

The line was awesome -- 47 days of ups and downs and sleeping in tents (or not, a few nights) and taking breaks at ColdStone and Universal City Walk. The movie was awesome -- go see it now. Both could have been better, but who cares now, hmmm? We live in a fallen world and I'm glad I went and =P to everything else.

Ironically, the longer I wait to explain things, the harder it is to put them into words. It's more and more a matter of expressing feelings -- and never mind the details of specific events. I may end out writing it all down, but I kind of don't think it's going to go on the blog, oddly enough. I'll probably start posting the interviews I did during the line as a kidn of compensation. If anyone has any specific questions, feel free to ask... we raised over $32,000 for the charity ($22,000 in individual donations and eBay auctions; $10,000 from Netflix) and had about 185 participants (about 100 of whom met all the minimums and saw the movie at one of the two theatres.) And, like I said, I had fun (and learned a lot about myself and others.) Cool, huh?

Yeah, that's all I have to say about it for now. Weird.

Rumors of my death are...

2005-05-26T21:43:00.000-04:00

Completely -- okay, fine, there weren't any rumors. But people were concerned because I haven't updated my blog, which is understandable. No one else in the line updated their blogs, btw -- Bryan and Mike in particular (Bryan [1st] did the MTV blog, Mike [14th] did the BBC blog, and I helped on the LUN blog for a bit.) Indeed, I probably updated more frequently during the line than any other LUN blogger. Certainly more than anyone in the top 20.

Anyway, the movie was awesome, the line was awesome, and I fly home in two more days. I was 3rd, with 871 hours logged, and went to church all but two Sundays (no one could wake me up for those two...) Twas fun. I am looking forward to going home and sleeping in my own bed and going to work and stuff again, though.

Oh! Let me take this opportunity to thank everyone, especially Gene and Caroline, for helping keep me spoiler free. The movie was quite a trip; the first Star Wars movie I basically knew nothing about before watching. Too fun. Will elaborate more once I'm home and have some down time. ^___^

Gather together in his name.

2005-04-24T18:21:00.000-04:00

Due to a series of unfortunate coincidences, I was unable to take my weekly break from the Star Wars line this week. The last two weeks, I've gone to Larry & Kathy's house on Saturday night, then church in the morning. But last night, Larry was at the Ringers premiere party (too expensive for this on-a-budget fan, sigh -- will I EVER see the part I'm in???) and that ended so late that he had to just go straight home, leaving me at the line. Since Greg, the only other adult living at Larry's house, was spending the night here, I had to, too. That meant sleeping in someone's van (it rained, sniff) and of course, no church in the morning.

Now, staying at Larry's house once a week has certain perks. I can take a nice long shower, I can do my laundry, I can eat dinner with a family and all that. But none of that helps me as much, I think, as the church meetings.

It's funny, but this whole line is a highly communal experience. I'm surrounded pretty much continually by people of like mind. Generally, for 165 hours a week, those people are of like mind regarding Star Wars, the line itself, the Chinese, etc. And three hours a week (more if you count the time at Larry's house before and after church) are with people of like mind regarding the gospel.

I can't even explain why it is that this kind of gathering helps me feel more centered and complete (either in my geekiness or in the gospel,) but it does. Not having it makes me feel out of place. It makes morning prayers, especially, more difficult (especially when I've been looking forward to church all week long.) It's easier to forget who I am and how I'm supposed to be. It's one thing to be living in Ohio, not seeing my geeky friends for a few months, and more or less forgetting about Star Wars -- it's another going even just a week without gathering with my friends at church.

I'm not expressing myself very well today, I fear. Suffice to say that while I'm definitely looking forward to a real shower today or tomorrow (depends on who shows up to the line tonight as to where that will be) and the chance to do laundry and, dare I say it, the ability to sleep in -- the thing I'm already really, really looking forward to is my three hour block next Sunday. And meanwhile, I'm going to go read the lesson manual entries for today, and feel wistful. ^_^

Day... aw, geez, I've been here a long time...

2005-04-16T16:43:00.000-04:00

I could really use a night on a soft sofa somewhere...

I've got about 250 hours in line so far. I'm fourth in line. I'm 80 hours behind the person who's first -- and less than 20 hours behind the person who's 3rd. It's a real horse race!

Yesterday we had a fun day re: tickets and theatres and such. Read about it elsewhere, please, I beg of you.

I saw Empire Strikes Back in the theatre it premiered in (the Egyptian, down the street) last night. It was awesome. For about two hours it felt like LUN was a real group again. Wish I could feel that on opening night of Ep. III.

My badge glowed in the theatre. It was the awesome. YYYAAAAAY RUSTY!!!

Spoiler Yoda sits here, mocking me.

I have also lost all interest in long paragraphs. I think it'd help if I could sleep on the aforementioned sofa. Larry, come down to the line, please.

Jackie has gone missing. Will keep the universe -- aka all three of you -- updated as needed.

Whatever.

2005-04-10T16:53:00.000-04:00

Note to Wil: try to look yourself in the mirror the next time you want to praise yourself for not having become William Shatner. Thanks.

EDIT: Tell you what, Wil. Do some "research" and see if you can get your "facts" straight. I know that "facts" are really annoying for guys like you because they contradict what you'd like to believe. Come down to the line and talk to me. Tell me to my face that what we're doing is worthy of mockery, and that your shirts are incredibly hilarious. Answer the payphone for twenty minutes. See if it changes your perspective at all.

Day 7, 11:38AM

2005-04-08T14:40:00.000-04:00

HOLLYWOOD, CA -- Courtesy of a TOTALLY AWESOME Detroit radio station we are getting PIZZA delivered to the line. The delivery guy showed up at exactly 11:38am. And the moment may well be preserved in Entertainment Weekly. So not kidding.

It was 97.1 -- Greg and Michelle from the Motor City Middays Show. Give them love. They deserve it.

Star Wars Line, Day... 5!

2005-04-07T22:19:00.000-04:00

HOLLYWOOD, CA -- Between 8 and 120 Star Wars fans are lining up for a movie that isn't even showing at the theatre they're at. D'oh!

Gah. The media can really bite sometimes. Of course, so can life, and the media just won't die, and here we are.

Seriously. What is up with all of you? Get a grip. Quit it with the threats of violence and the mockery. At the very least, if you call us, come up with something better than haning up, please. We're here no matter what, and we don't mind answering the phone, but it pains us to see you waste perfectly good cell minutes and long distance time on something so utterly boring.

I'm in line for Star Wars outside of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, CA. This is where Star Wars lines are meant to be. This is where this line is going to stay. We'll see Episode III at 12:01am, together. That's enough for me. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to text my friend to see if she's going to be coming down here tomorrow night.

This is our most desperate hour...

2005-04-02T05:06:00.000-05:00

It's down to the wire. The final stretch. The last, greatest effort is just in front of me.

I have two days left before I leave for the line.

And I have approximately 75 lbs of ice cream to eat before then.

Jackie says that ice cream lasts, but I fear she is wrong.

The 2/3rds left of my half-gallon of premium Mint & Chip ice cream will not survive two months alone in the garage freezer.

The 8 chocolate-coated ice cream pops will be toast before May even begins.

And I doubt the ice cream cake I got at work yesterday will survive the week.

No, my friends, it is my solemn duty -- sent down from on high -- to consume each and every tablespoon of this delicious sugary goodness in the next 48 hours. I may die of tooth decay and lactose poisoning before I get to see Episode III, but I will not be turned from this -- dare I say it? I dare -- holy obligation.

I do hope your prayers/best wishes/happy karmic waves will be with me in this, my hour of darkness.

Woe is me!

2005-04-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

The Star Wars line starts in about 16 hours. Annnnnnnd... I'm still in Ohio. Bleh.

We knew this moment was coming, but it still bites. The boards are dead, there's nothing to do but pack and burn CDs and so forth. And since I'm nowhere near the fun, all of that preparation stuff is just really depressing and boring to me at the moment.

It'll ironically get easier, I think, after 4pm EST tomorrow. I'll probably call the line, say hi, and get on with things. My flight leaves at 11am on Monday. Really wish it was leaving now. Sigh.

In the absence of Gospel Doctrine and Relief Society

2005-03-28T02:06:00.000-05:00

One must make one's own way through the yearly Church curriculum. I mean, yes, of course, preparing my Primary lessons does give me new insights -- but we spend a lot of time on very basic stuff, and at my level (6-7 year olds) very little to no time on the deeper scriptural insights (deeper than "love one another" and basic "this happened and then this happened" history.) Even the oft-derided correlated adult curriculum is deeper than that. But just reading the manual lessons does not a proper gospel study make.

Which is why I've decided to use that wonderful site everyone mentioned about two months ago -- http://scriptures.byu.edu -- as a source of inspiration/insight into David O. McKay, the subject of this year's Relief Society/Priesthood study.

In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, this is a site that lets you look at all the General Conference addresses since 1942 in terms of what scriptures they cite. You can filter the results to only show you which scriptures were cited by a particular speaker (e.g. President Hinckley, or Sheri Dew) -- and you can list the results in frequency order. I'm thinking of doing some extended analysis of this stuff later -- themes that recur, in particular. What did President McKay talk about then, that resonnates across the conference addresses since? What does President Hinckly still talk about that President McKay emphasized? What new themes have emerged? All that kind of junk. I also want to do that "read the verse before and after" exercise, because if a certain amount of scripture study is good, then clearly, three times as much is at least twice as good! Or something like that.

The top 10 scriptures David O. McCay cited in his Conference addresses (after 1942) were:

Moses 1:39 [21 times]
For behold, this is my work and my glory -- to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

Acts 4:12 [16 times]
Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

Article of Faith 1:13 [14 times]
We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul -- We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

2 Pet. 1:4 [13 times]
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

Matthew 6:33 [12 times]
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Matthew 28:19-20 [12 times]
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Matthew 25:40 [11 times]
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the bleast of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Matthew 5:16 [11 times]
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Matthew 4:10 [10 times]
Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

John 14:6 [9 times]
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

For what it's worth, the top 10 scriptures out of all conference addresses for that period (1942 to 1970) are:

Moses 1:39 [131 times]
(also on President McKay's list)

Joseph Smith History 1:17 [107 times]
It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other -- This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!

Matthew 6:33 [89 times]
(also on President McKay's list)

John 17:3 [83 times]
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

Romans 1:16 [75 times]
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

D&C 93:36 [53 times]
The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth.

Articles of Faith 1:13 [52 times]
(also on President McKay's list)

Matthew 5:48 [49 times]
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

Acts 4:12 [49 times]
(also on President McKay's list)

Matthew 24:14 [48 times]
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

While these scriptures have been on top for President Hinckley (there are eleven, since there's a tie):

Moses 1:39 [11 times]
(we really like this one, it was first on President McKay's list and the overall list, along with this one)

Acts 10:38 [10 times]
How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.

D&C 13:1 [10 times]
Upon you my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah I confer the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and this shall never be taken again from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.

Articles of Faith 1:13 [10 times]
(another favorite, on both other lists)

1 Peter 2:9 [9 times]
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.

Alma 37:47 [9 times]
And now, my son, see that ye take care of these sacred things, yea, see that ye look to God and live. Go unto this people and declare the word, and be sober. My son, farewell.

D&C 76:22-24 [9 times]
And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives!

For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father --

That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.

Isaiah 9:6 [8 times]
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Luke 23:34 [8 times]
Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.

1 Corinthians 15:22 [8 times]
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Book of Mormon title page [8 times]
Wherefore, it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites -- Written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile -- Written by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of revelation -- Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be destroyed -- To come forth by the gift and power of God unto the interpretation thereof -- Sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by way of the Gentile -- The interpretation thereof by the gift of God.

An abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also, which is a record of the people of Jared, who were scattered at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, when they were building a tower to get to heaven -- Which is to show unto the remnant of the House of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever -- And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that JESUS is the CHRIST, the ETERNAL GOD, manifesting himself unto all nations -- And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ.

Phew! Anyone who actually read all of that, gets a prize. ^_^

The hand-off

2005-03-27T18:56:00.000-05:00

Has taken place. Sort of. I gave the Primary President my teacher's manual today, because I couldn't find the substitute she had designated. Hopefully she (the sub) will get it before April 10th -- there's lots and lots (and lots!) of advice in it. And, you know, the lesson materials (those are available online, though.) And the list of Primary Presidency members.

Anyway, it was both sad and fun, despite a (very) rocky start. I have some kind of cold/allergy thing going on, and I also slept in. A lot. As in, we normally leave for church (which starts at 1pm) around 12:15. My sister Laura woke me up at 12:16! So I rushed out, and forgot the glove (for the cool death-and-resurrection object lesson) and the eggs (each with the name of a witness of Christ's resurrected body inside) at home. And when we got to church, everyone had moved up a row, which meant we weren't in the second row from the front (as normal -- and generally no one sits in front of us) but rather in the front-front row (excluding the half-row reserved for families with diabled members, which is the real front row.) It was just very bizarre. I also begged off giving the closing prayer (a continual risk, sitting in the front -- usually the bishop either asks my stepfather, or the mom or dad of the family that sits two rows behind us) because of my voice (I sound like a frog -- and no, fasting didn't help that condition; next time I'm sick I'm NOT going to avoid drinking water and juice, as I could barely talk by the time Primary started.) That worked out okay, because the brother who gave the closing prayer did an awesome job; much better than I would have.

We also had investigators (or rather, a member and an investigator) sit in our row. It was really extraordinary.

So then we went to Jr. Primary (not my sister, just me and the kids and the other teachers, obviously) and I found out that it was totally okay that I forgot the glove and the eggs -- first off, both Singing Time (pick an egg and inside we have the next song we're going to sing!) and Sharing Time (pick an egg; inside is a symbol relating to Easter and also a scripture we'll read!) used eggs. Then I got the (I think pretty cool) idea of using my nylon dance jacket as an object lesson -- the jacket represents the body (instead of the glove.) This results in a much more effective demonstration. First you do a dance, then you throw the jacket on the ground, and then you say, "Can it dance now?"

Admittedly, the shock value is somewhat higher. But I didn't "get" that glove thing until I was about 14 years old and had seen it at least three times, and I think they "got" it with my demonstration. ^_^ So it's really okay that I forgot the glove, honest.

We went over the "I'm leaving for two months" thing again -- further annoyance was declared due to me missing one of their birthdays, but also, "It's okay, because you'll be back practically right after." We also had some fun with "will you be back by Christmas?" type questions. And I told them I'll be contacting the sub to find out how they behave, and their behavior will translate into more (or fewer) CTR Points. Forgot the stickers I was going to use to reward them, but it didn't seem to matter. I may not need to work as hard at getting them away from "materialistic" rewards as I thought I would (though I suspect it'll all be ruined next year by some super cool teacher who gives them stuff all the time.)

Oh, and speaking of annoying cool teachers. I told the kids we wouldn't be having any kind of a snack today since it was Fast Sunday. Guess what EVERY OTHER LITTLE KID IN THE ENTIRE WARD had when exiting their classes? Hmmm?

Let's just say it was pastel and chock-full of SUGAR. Argh. I stand by my policy, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the kids think it's massively unfair and arbitrary. I would, too, in their position.

Nooow it's time to say good-byyyyyyyyye....

2005-03-27T02:07:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I'm not actually leaving for Los Angeles until the 4th, right? Right. But tomorrow will be my last chance to see my CTR7s until May twenty-somethingth (so not a word.) Which means that tonight was the night to write the "Sub Pack" for the marvelous substitute teacher the Primary Presidency found to cover for me for seven weeks (no class on April 3rd, due to General Conference.)

It was kind of sad, but also fun. This sub pack has to be a lot more involved than the one I gave Caroline, since I'll be gone longer and since this teacher hasn't heard about these kids every Sunday since January 1st. My favorite part?

This is how our class is usually organized. Feel free to deviate or make up a whole new routine on your own; the kids have been warned and they all agreed it was their job to follow your rules. They're looking for all the cool stuff that you come up with that they can tell me how to do, when I get back.

We talked about it in class last Sunday (I got lots of hugs.) And they were the ones who came up with the "we'll watch for her good ideas so that we can tell you about them when you come back!" thing. Isn't that cool? I think it's cool. I'm not sure how firm an awareness of "two months from now" these kids have (most aren't even seven years old yet) but they know it's a long, long time. I'm glad they're not freaking out, and have (hopefully) internalized the idea that it's okay and expected that they accept the new teacher's regime. Says the woman who has yet to teach the Last Lesson. Eeeeek...

Stubborn, Bull-Headed, and Single-Minded all at the same time!

2005-03-26T21:18:00.000-05:00

Yes, that's the number one reason I'm lining up for Star Wars. I'm intractable.

Really, I am. No ride to the St. Patrick's Day parade? Fine, I'll walk. Have to get there by 9am? All right, I'll leave at 4am. Have no idea where it is? That's okay, once I realize I've gone three miles out of my way, I'll turn around, go back, and (having gone effectively 1/4 of a mile towards my destination, 23 miles away) start over again in a more-or-less accurate direction.

I mean, sure, by 8am (with about six miles to go) I was really wishing I had a cell phone and money for a taxicab. But by 9:15am (less than 2 miles to go!) when I was picked up by another parade participant's mom, I was kind of feeling sad about not seeing the whole walking plan (which was born barely 12 hours earlier) through.

I try to redefine "determination" every few months. Which is why all the perfectly reasonable blocks to my participating in the Hollywood Star Wars line simply haven't detered me. Sure, I live in Ohio, and need to be getting my degree, and won't have any way of getting around LA once I get there. But I said I'd do it, darn it, and I will, even if I go insane in the process.

And that's why it ranks first on the list of reasons why I'm lining up for Star Wars. ^_^

Getting your money's worth...

2005-03-26T02:54:00.000-05:00

Wow. So I didn't actually intend to drive people to the blog from that comment at Times & Seasons. Mostly I was hoping to get included on their blogroll -- I feel quite empowered by my inclusion on Millenial Star, you see.

Which is why there's hardly anything recent here. Or, rather, why I feel bad about said same lack of new stuff.

So! To solve this, let me give you Part I of my Grand Theory of Star Wars Line Motivation.

Yes, that's right. Thanks to my self-imposed absence from LUN (I cannot overstate this enough: don't post angry -- or sad, for that matter) I've had all kinds of time to think about stuff. Including that all-pressing question: why on earth am I doing this crazy thing?

Today I'll give the list. And in the coming days, I'll explain it. Woohoo!

Note: the list is in a combination of "relevance" and "truthfulness" orders. That is, if I were to give each reason a score from 1 to 10 (how relevant is the statement to my participation, how truthful is the statement), a combined score could be assigned, and the reasons ranked on that basis. No, I didn't actually score them; I have a bad enough "obsessive compulsive nutty person" reputation as it is.

Anyway, enjoy:

1. I said I'd do it.
2. I don't back down from a challenge.
3. I need more geeky "war stories."
4. My friends are, for the most part, in Southern California.
5. I grew up in CA; it's in my blood (as is going to see important movies on Hollywood Blvd.)
6. It's one of those once-in-a-lifetime things.
7. It's going to be fun!
8. I might very well meet someone famous, or get on TV for a few more seconds -- and I'm all about the celebrity thing.
9. I like Star Wars!
10. I really enjoy camping, sleeping under stars in tents, etc.
11. Last time was so gosh-darned awesome I just had to do it one last time.
12. I am a huge Carpenters groupie, and could not pass up the opportunity to sit in front of their star for six weeks.

Draw your own conclusions from the above. ^_^

Unadvertised side effects...

2005-03-24T00:33:00.000-05:00

Okay, so my experiment/feasting deal has been going well (even though I forgot the New Testament CD, and thus made do with the Book of Mormon study guide audio set -- which is actually pretty informative; I'll probably go all the way through that before moving on to the NT,) I think. But it's having bizarre effects on my life.

For example, some of my readers may be aware that I'm currently driving my stepdad's car (a similar model to Jackie's car -- only older, and with a manual transmission, and white, and not dying, and not in California -- but otherwise very similar.) This car has a tendency to like to make its doors slam on you while you've turned to grab something from the passenger's seat -- especially when you've parked face up on a hill, such as the one my mom's house is on. This usually happens while your leg is out on the ground, and thus your leg gets squished.

Normally I say, in my mind, something like "HEY, QUIT IT," when the car does this.

Today I said, in my mind, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, that she was annoyed. Yea, she was annoyed both in the morning and in the evening, and yea, both in the driveway and in the parking lot; verily I say unto you, she was annoyed unto the very depths of the cul-de-sac, and thus was the car door cursed for all of time."

Yeah. Exactly. Somewhat scarily, this effect actually shows up -- at least for me -- if I read more than about 10 verses on any given day. It only gets a little worse when you go from a chapter-a-night silent reading to "listening to the scriptures on MP3 for six hours a day."

Anyway, yeah. For I forsee in my mind's eyes, indeed my friends will find this aggravating before long. ^_^

I'm afraid she's gone and done something rather rash...

2005-03-23T15:57:00.000-05:00

Okay. So an hour of reflection, some meditation, and a firm committment to not go back to LUN for two days (never post angry -- especially when you're actually angry at the actual people for actual real-life decisions, as opposed to hot air swirling about the boards) have caused me to rethink me posting my complaints about LUN's latest decision kefluffle on this blog.

I don't think it was wrong to post my complaints -- there or here -- but the reason I did it was lousy (I was really, really, really upset.)

So let me take this opportunity to repent of the spirit in which my previous post was written. The issue still needed to be addressed, and there's no reason to hide from the public (though I'm not sure that my 14 visitors/day counts as "the public" exactly) but I was coming from the wrong place when I posted, and as such that was wrong.

Ahhh, that felt good.

I may go insane before this is through

2005-03-23T14:06:00.000-05:00

Or possibly, before it's even started.

LUN has been planning the Star Wars line as a collective for over a year.

We've known the Star Wars line was going to last six weeks since 2002.

We've known that "Ep. III Release Date" - 6 Weeks = April 7th for at least as long as the collective has been in force.

Mysterious forces decided -- without public discussion that I saw, or any kind of "hey, guys, just to warn you, we're thinking of starting this thing early" notice to the general community -- to start it on April 2nd, on Friday (15 days before the start of the line.)

I had changed my plane ticket from Saturday the 2nd to Monday the 4th (since I couldn't make their INSANELY EARLY BRUNCH either) on Thursday.

Yeah, see, and I'm on a team whose goals include convincing people in other countries and states that we really want them to come to the line. At least with other changes, new people wouldn't have known about the "old" ways, and it wouldn't have bothered them.

ARRGGGGGH.

This is what I'll be posting to LUN just as soon as the posting mechanism is back up. Yes, it's insanely bitter. I'm kind of in that mood right now.

I'm sorry, but this is really bugging me now.

Can I please get an affirmative, "we love people from other states and countries, we really want you to come to the Star Wars line, we understand exactly how expensive and disruptive to your lives it is for you to come down here, and we realize that it's hard to coordinate your participation in our line and we're really glad you're doing it and YAY for you" post from everyone right now?

Please?

Because right now, as an out of towner, things aren't looking that great.

I mean, okay, team meetings can't be attended. I can see that. Teleconferences are impractical, can't be held effectively in restaraunts, and anyway cost me long distance money.

Some people found travel hours incredibly offensive and/or unfair. I can see that. They change the final line-up order and so forth. Did you really earn those hours or not, etc. And travel hours made me 11th in line instead of 10th, so.

Now the line date -- we've been talking about a six week line for what, three years? What exactly is [the movie release date] - 42 days? What was the supposition in the FAQ? What did Sarah (the other Sarah, the real one) say in that thread from not even two weeks ago?

Moreover, where was the "umm, hey, what do you all think about moving the line date to five days earlier than normal" thread? Where was the "is a fancy Saturday brunch better than the evening get-together going to achieve our purposes" discussion? Where was the transparency? Forget the transparency, where was the advance notice???

Anyway, I won't yell anymore (though you all have most firmly reestablished my belief in my own unilateral decision-making process.) But I'd appreciate a little reassurance right now. Out of towners invest a lot in this line, in terms of finances and time, all in one fell swoop -- to say nothing of the emotional/psychological investment. The kids in my Sunday School class were near tears when I said I was leaving for two months.

I'm sort of feeling like they're the only ones who care.

Hrrrrallllllllllrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

Or, not so much...

2005-03-23T02:08:00.000-05:00

Then again, it could turn out that I've forgotten (again) that the church still hasn't put out an MP3 version of the Old Testament. D'oh!

The only other MP3 version I can find has music in the background (I find it distracting and overbearing -- I want to hear the message from the writer, not the composer, thanks,) so I'll just press forward with the Pearl of Great Price and then, straight on to the New Testament! I'll probably listen to the Book of Mormon again after the Doctrine & Covenants is done.

And I emailed the church's web managers to ask when the Old Testament (and the Joseph Smith History!) will be put up in MP3.

Feasting on the... yes, exactly.

2005-03-23T01:27:00.000-05:00

I'm up to Ether 11 now. My job keeps only lasting 6 hours a day instead of 8, so it's going to take about half of tomorrow to get through the rest of the Book of Mormon.

Then I will be faced with a choice (!)

I've decided, I should have done this in chronological/thematic sequence (i.e., the Pearl of Great Price, Old Testament, Book of Mormon, New Testament, and Doctrine & Covenants -- in that order.) Since I can always do with extra exposure to the Book of Mormon, I am therefore going to start with the Pearl of Great Price and the Old Testament tomorrow or Thursday (don't know how much longer the rest of Ether plus Moroni will take,) and then listen to the Book of Mormon again. Then I'll move forward with the New Testament and D&C. After that, I figure I'll listen to "Jesus the Christ," then start on the BYUTV commentaries and recent conferences other than General Conference. Once I'm done with all the commentaries and such (looks like that'll take about 258 hours -- or three and a half weeks at 10 hours/day,) I'll either start on the April 2005 General Conference (and work backwards until I run out of MP3s) or find something else to listen to. There are a few hundred pieces of literature out there on MP3 (that's just the free stuff, mind) and there's always... all of the stuff above, but in another language!

This could easily take years. Woohoo!

Title change...

2005-03-20T18:58:00.000-05:00

I don't know what my eventual line position will be for the 2005 line -- and while at this point my plan is NOT to change the actual title of the blog (it has a definite quirky/geeky/mysterious air to it, IMHO) based on my line position in the Episode III line, I thought it appropriate to change the title of the blog on a temporary basis to reflect my current situation.

So as, until the line starts (in early April) I'm *almost* actually in line, and then I'll *actually* actually be in line, that's what the blog's title lines will say.

Don't worry about changing the title in your blogroll links, though. I'm still eleventh in line at heart. ^_^

Don't Tread On Me.

2005-03-20T01:44:00.000-05:00

No, really. I mean it.

I always thought McCain-Feingold was dumb, and even on the brightest and sunniest of days knew it was at the least the equivalent of TP'ing the First Amendment's house.

But now I'm actually *$#&ed off (I bet your imaginations are better than mine -- go ahead and insert the appropriate word in the above space; it'll be more fun, I swear.)

My first amendment rights include whatever I doodle on a napkin at Denny's, and the stuff I chart about my novel-in-progress in my notebooks between church meetings, and what I put in my Amazon.com book reviews, and most assuredly everything I put on this blog.

Meaning, basically, that no matter if I post the most offensive, irritating, and/or boring stuff on this blog I expect the US government (particularly that pesky Congress which was actually mentioned in the previously referenced amendment!) to back me up. I might lose all my friends (or readers!), I might get fired, but I had better not be fined by the FEC (or FCC, for that matter) or otherwise harrased by the duly appointed representatives of this democratic, federally constituted republic of ours.

And if it looks like they're going to start said same harrassment, I'll be sure to be offensive, irritating, and/or boring on an ever-increasing basis. Grrr.

Annoying and alarming your home teacher in less than 80 minutes a month...

2005-03-20T00:17:00.000-05:00

So, my stepdad was asked to join the High Priests' Quorum, since he's, you know, not 30 anymore. When that happens, they give you a new home teacher. In our case, perhaps our new home teacher selection was due to the fact that I bugged the bishop over when we'd be getting a new assignment -- because he assigned us his father-in-law and elder son.

Yeah.

See, we're nuts. Really quite mad, sometimes. And we're not afraid to show it. We have beer steins on the piano and three cats and a half dozen musical instruments and a library with something like 4,000 books (and a lot more books in boxes not currently in the library), and a sword collection and oh yeah, five crazy people, in our house.

Our last home teacher -- the dad of one of the kids in my Primary class -- was great. He's a therapist of some sort, and I think his professional outlook really helped him cope with us. He was always: smile -- "wow, that's great" -- nod politely -- "as I was saying..." to our diversions, such as talking about my stepdad's time in Baptist day school, Caroline's dislike of patronizing/condescending religious discussions, and the Star Wars line.

Our new home teacher just gets this look which seems to say, "how exactly am I supposed to explain this in the next meeting with the bishop?" And his grandson -- who's in between Caroline and Laura in age -- mostly sits in the corner (normally he's a little annoying, as 16-17 year old boys tend to be) and distracts himself with the cats. Today we went crazy -- it was a lot of fun. My best line was in response to a question re: the Atonement of Christ. The home teacher said: "What had to happen first, then?" (he was looking for the Fall of Adam, I think.) I replied "The War in Heaven. Or, you know, matter coalescing -- but that's getting into questions you don't want to deal with during today's lesson on Easter..." The younger home teacher then put in something about those "chicken or the egg" questions. About five minutes later, my stepdad started showing off the swords.

I'm pretty sure we're going to get called in for a "what on earth kind of drugs are you people on" meeting any day now. My only defense is that I was the only one wearing shoes today -- and I had my scriptures with me. ^_^

An experiment upon the... well, you know.

2005-03-17T23:17:00.000-05:00

But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

I have a confession: I've never actually read the Book of Mormon all the way through. And I've only read probably 50-60% of the Doctrine & Covenants. Thanks to Seminary, I've actually read the Old and New Testaments, but I mean, come on. I'm the girl who's already read the textbook before class starts. This is pathetic. How on earth can I say I believe in something I haven't even read?

So, I've decided I'm going to listen to the scriptures on tape (well, MP3 -- you can fit the entire Book of Mormon on about 60% of a single CD.) I'm going in this order:

1. Book of Mormon
2. Doctrine & Covenants
3. Pearl of Great Price
4. New Testament
5. Old Testament

So far I'm through Mosiah 13. And I think it's working. Will comment more later -- I'm also going to take all of the last six BYU Womens' Conferences and a bunch of General Conferences and a ton of BYUTV shows with me to the Star Wars line. Should be fun times, I think.

And if nothing else, I figure I'll have the scriptures themselves memorized before the six weeks of the line are over. ^_^

*note* reading is a really, really, REALLY hard thing to do in line -- and you can't read at work (at least while you're actually working); I don't want to get into the "woohoo, I've finished 2nd Nephi, now I'll take a week off" mentality, since that always turns into "wow, it's been a year since I last picked this book up... where was I? Nah, nevermind, I'll just start over... 'I, Nephi, having been born...'" Yeah, no. Not this time. Grr.

Lileks takes mailbox into own hands,

2005-03-15T01:03:00.000-05:00

Risks everything for a minor quip.

Okay, no. But dude -- I'm a fair-weather Objectivist on the best of days, and I seriously considered writing an email. Really. Why poke keyboard-wielding people in the eye when there are so many illiterate folks without so much as a modem to their names, in our world? He should recognize that it's approximately as useful as giving crummy services to a nationally syndicated columnist. You don't step on Superman's cape, you know?

But that's okay. He knows it was a silly thing to do, and you have to respect him for pushing through anyway. I think he's nuts, and I'm sure he knew better, but you gotta admire someone for insisting on stepping in the doggie doodoo after they know what it'll do their shoes. As it were. Hope he's got a new filter set up on his email...

Oh, my goodness...

2005-03-13T20:11:00.000-05:00

This is way too cool. BYU TV has hundreds of hours of downloadable programs -- Mormon TV. I'm like, completely overwhelmed. I'm still downloading, but it looks like I'll have enough to listen to two or three hours of this stuff every day during the Star Wars line, without repeating anything. I've finished getting the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, and the first New Testament roundtable on my hard drive -- each one is like 30+ hours of material. I'm working on the second New Testament program and the most recent BYU Women's Conference will be after that. ^_^

It also turns out you can watch BYU TV online. They have a streaming video link. I have no idea how I failed to notice this... but I'm taking advantage of it now! Right now it looks like a tribute to Hugh Nibley. I'm sure all of you in Utah think this is very minor. But dude, I'm in the mission field. It's like I've hit an oil well or something. I've put the link to the streaming broadcast in the sidebar, below KZION radio.

The power of just one link...

2005-03-12T22:11:00.000-05:00

So imagine my surprise when I reopened my personal start page (wrote the HTML myself, of course -- who needs a flaky corporation doing things like that for them?) and found that today I'm a Crawly Amphibian in the TLB Ecosystem.

Why, you ask? Why, when I've been a crustacean for most of the last two years, and a fish for only 3 out of the last 7 months (not consecutively, either?)

Because someone cool linked to me! And I don't just say that she's cool because she linked to me -- her coolness rating is a matter of strictly objective observation on my part. I like DDR too -- and yes, I'm definitely a Tolkienite -- and Russian, though sadly you can't tell from my blog (and I haven't updated SamizBlog in approximately two years -- maybe that's a good project for the line?)

Anyway, yay! I've got to write my Primary lesson for tomorrow (I believe we've finally gotten to the lesson on baptism -- since we did repentance last week.) But I'll post more later; I've finished compiling a fairly authoritative list of media contacts here in Columbus (I still need all the university-based papers and radio stations in Ohio,) and have written to both of the Star Wars line participants in the Columbus area (one I know will be at the Lennox -- I don't know if the other will be at Grauman's, the Lennox, or what) to find out if they want me to mention them in my letters and phone calls. I even posted a note to the spoiler filled Columbus Fan Force boards... hopefully what I said won't be considered spamming. I hate it when I break rules and such, even if it's unintentional (their TOS didn't say I couldn't -- but you never know.)

Anyway, will post more later tonight. For now, the Primary 3 manual calls to me...

Ouch!

2005-03-05T23:01:00.000-05:00

So, 168 minute long phone calls are expeennnnnnnnnnnnnsive.

I need to not call LUNers, hostels in Washington, and (emphasis here) people who can call me for free after 9pm their time, the way I did in December/January. Unfortunately, this feedback comes after February concluded -- hopefully I won't have nearly the long distance charges I had to deal with this month, while I'm away at the line.

Anyway, no steak for me for... a while. ^_^

Alessia

2005-03-05T17:18:00.000-05:00

Alessia is a member of my church in Belgium, who has been (in large part thanks to the attitude that we're a cult) been forbidden from having contact with the church by her foster family:

During the first months of her stay in the foster home, Alessia continued to show the firmness of her faith and her commitment to the Gospel. She was still able to communicate with Nina, whom she paid furtive visits. Through Nina we got glimpses of the girl’s new life. She had to read anti-Mormon slander, which the foster father provided. She was not allowed to attend Church. She was coerced to break the Word of Wisdom, as coffee and tea were the standard drinks. She did not receive the letters and cards Mormon friends, made at youth conference and camps, sent her.

The little Mormon branch brought up the money to have a tombstone placed over Tatiana’s grave. They had a small commemoration ceremony when it was installed. Alessia, invited, did not receive permission to attend.

The breaking point came over tithing. From the little pocket money she received, Alessia continued to pay tithing. She gave her cents to Nina, who gave it to the branch president, who wrote out the receipt, which Nina returned to Alessia.

Until one day the foster father, enraged, called Daniella. He had discovered the tithing receipts. That was it. From now on, he claimed, Alessia had decided that she did not want anything to do anymore with the Mormon church. If there would be any form of contact from us, any letter or phone call or whatever, he would alert the IACHSO and the press, to expose the Mormon cult as threatening his foster daughter.

Apparently they attempted to enlist the support of Adelbert Denaux (apparently a man who is personally familiar/friendly with the church -- but who also is an "anti-cult" expert,) but he was either a) unaware of their request (this is what he appears to claim now) or b) okay with the whole thing. Good times.

In any case, I am praying for this young woman, and hope she is doing well -- and will soon have the freedom to act and worship according to the dictates of her own conscience, and not the dictates of a bureaucracy's list of cults.

Feh.

2005-03-04T00:49:00.000-05:00

My internet connection is behaving in a screwy manner, and I can't reliably
connect to any given site for more than about thirty seconds. After having
reset our wireless transmitter and the router, and restarted my computer
twice, I officially give up. I'll post more tomorrow, hopefully. ^_^