Month: May 2006

Maria’s treasure

Maria, a seventy-five-year-old widow, member of our tiny Mormon branch, had asked me to meet her at a Notary’s office. She wanted me to be the executor of her will. I reluctantly agreed, remembering the council of a friend to avoid that kind of responsibility. But since I was the branch president…

Around the blogs

A few posts that I’ve noticed of late: -Bob Caswell at BnL asks how we tell the difference between doctrine and history. E.g., why is the Word of Wisdom doctrine while polygamy is merely history — and how are these decisions made? -Kathleen at some-other-blog writes on free agency and choices: How does our situation influence our choices and our agency, and how does that combination influence the consequences of our choices? –Lynette at ZD asks what it means to translate Christ’s life into our own actions. “I don’t think the question, ‘what would Jesus do?’ is always all that helpful in this endeavor,” she writes. “A more useful question, perhaps, is ‘what would Jesus want me to do?’”

Peace

It happened last night, around midnight, on a near-empty gym floor, after I took a break from grading exams to go work out for a while. I’ve found that I can’t control these things, really — I just take them where they fall, and sometimes, wonderfully, they fall on me.

Peak oil and taxes

On the Urban thread, Jonathan Green pointed out that the major issue with oil scarcity may not be how much oil we have in the ground, but how much we can pump in a given year. If we are maxed out on supply for a year, any oil disaster creates a huge crunch.

Motherhood and Priesthood–Take 57!

I think that motherhood and priesthood are parallel; I know that many of you don’t. And one argument against my position that I see frequently is that you need the cooperation of the opposite sex (not to mention the blessing of fertility) to be a mother but not to be a priesthood holder. I’ve never found that argument persuasive, but until now, I haven’t been able to articulate why.

The Da Vinci Code Movie: Better Than the Book

My wife and I read The Da Vinci Code two years ago. Describing the book on T&S, I used "clumsy," "tedious," and "implausible" in one sentence. When I saw that the film was getting panned by the critics, I was not very excited about seeing it, but Friday is "date day" for my wife and me, and we decided to judge for ourselves. I thought the movie was better than the book. Much better.

True Neighbors

Suppose that you splurged for the $6 version of the Church’s scriptures on CDROM. It has various ancient language toys that I am in no position to evaluate but am happy to play with. It also has a fun little tool such that when you do a search, you can click on a tab “Sort by Neighbors”. Ever wonder what that did?

Salting the water

If you’ve had any cooking training, you almost certainly were told to salt the water in which you cook vegetables. It turns out that, objectively/scientifically, it doesn’t matter whether you do.

The why and when of baptism

How prepared should a person be before being baptized? How long should this preparation take? Recently the permabloggers had a brief e-mail exchange on this topic. The participants found it interesting to submit it to our broader forum.