Sunday, May 27, 2012

NASA reform

Hey man, check this out. From http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=7579, it looks like NASA has changed their ways of doing business while we weren't paying attention. This could lead to good things, including cheaper science, and further development of propulsion technology (since they'll have a customer to pay for development and a reason to try to operate efficiently).

Excerpt:

This is just the first step, but it's a big one. I have been asked by a colleague why this is different. NASA paid for this, didn't it?

Yes, but not in the old NASA way, with cost-plus contracts and with NASA trying to run things as they did with Space Station. Dragon wasn't designed at Marshall or in Houston, and NASA inspectors weren't wandering around the factory floor and insisting in "testing" components (as Marshall did with the tanks for DC/X, which they managed to break and had to weld back together – it was the failure of the weld that caused DC/X to burn up, thus ending the DC/X threat to NASA's plans). Just as NASA doesn't operate the trucks that deliver the chow to Fort Hood mess halls, it's not NASA's job to build and fly the Falcon and Dragon. They just collect the cargo. And that cargo was delivered.

-Max

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Volunteerism

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon1130pp.html 

Emphasis added.

The school-district leadership finds itself caught between the volunteers and the union, seeking to pacify both parents and the CSEA. Meanwhile, important positions lost to budget cuts that volunteers could handle remain unfilled. Deputy Superintendent Steve Bolman is left to quote from the union contract and labor law: "It's not policy, this is law. [Volunteers] can't do work 'usually, ordinarily or regularly done by classified employees.'" For her part, Kruusmagi sounds a little sketchier on the legalities: "I can't cite the exact thing," she says, "but there are state rules. I believe it's in [education] code that volunteers are not allowed at schools." 

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

How to find the best food

J.,

I think I'm going to try these tips next time I go out. What do you think? Excerpt follows.

At fancy and expensive restaurants (say, $50 and up for a dinner), you can follow a simple procedure to choose the best meal. Look at the menu and ask yourself: Which of these items do I least want to order? Or: Which one sounds the least appetizing? Then order that item.

The logic is simple. At a fancy restaurant, the menu is well thought-out. The kitchen's time and attention are scarce. An item won't be on the menu unless there is a good reason for its presence. If it sounds bad, it probably tastes especially good.

Many popular-sounding items, on the other hand, can be slightly below the menu's average quality. For instance, you should be careful not to get too enthusiastic about roast chicken, especially if you are in a restaurant that, like virtually all restaurants, does not specialize in roast chicken. Roast chicken is an exceedingly familiar dish, and many people will order it to experience the familiar. Consider the incentive this provides the chef. And consider that a few items may be on the menu specifically because they are generally in demand, not because the chef cooks them with special brilliance.

So order the ugly and order the unknown. You'll probably get a better and more interesting meal.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/six-rules-for-dining-out/8929/ 

-M.

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.




--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Really fascinating article on statistics

[Cc J.]

D.,

This article on something called "colliders" and selection bias in statistics has fascinating implications. I think the following two paragraphs give the flavor (emphasis added).

Conditioning on a collider can occur any time that there is an underlying selection regime that involves either variables in the dataset or correlates of variables in the dataset. This is almost inevitable if you have built a composite dataset out of multiple constituent datasets. That is, a case appears in the sample if it meets one or more sampling criteria. This is actually a fairly common sample design, usually premised on the idea of not wanting to "miss anything" and/or wanting to increase the sample size. 

Once you start looking for it you see it in a lot of studies. For instance, suppose a researcher were interested in which firms had donated to a particular PAC. The researcher might start with a basic sample like the Fortune 500 but then notice only 5 firms had donated to the PAC. Because statistical power in analysis of a binary variable is a function of both the number of cases (higher is better) and the proportion (close to .5 is better), the analysis would have minimal statistical power. The researcher might then add to the data all firms that donated to the PAC, regardless of whether or not they were in the 500. If the researcher were then to do a logistic regression of donating to the PAC as a function of annual revenues the results would almost inevitably be a strong negative effect. The reason is that inclusion in the sample is defined by high revenues (which is the inclusion criteria for the Fortune 500) OR donating to the PAC. There are firms with low revenues that didn't donate to the PAC, lots of them in fact, but they don't appear in the dataset.

This is definitely something I will keep in mind when reading analyses.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/when-correlation-is-not-causation-but-something-much-more-screwy/256918/ 

-M.

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Quick explanation of Bayesian probability (mondo typo fixes)

[Ack. Fixing a ton of horrible typos.]

Okay, I can't resist sharing the formula. The formula is provably rational (and optimal), though the tricky part lies in coming up with probabilities to plug into it.

Notation:
P(x) = probability of x occurring/being true/etc.
P(x|y) = probability of x given y

For example, P(person is male) is about 0.5, but P(person is male | person has deep voice) is high, say 0.995 if one deep-voiced person in two hundred is a woman who smokes or something. Okay, now the way you do Bayesian inference is to take two or more competing hypotheses h1 and h2 to which you have assigned a probability. Then you observe some evidence e and compute P(h1 | e) and P(h2 | e). Since you know that e is true because you observed it, these are the new probabilities you should use for h1 and h2.

There's some simple math involved in proving this next statement, but

                    P(e | h) * P(h)
P(h | e) =  --------------------------
                        P(e)

That is, the probability of h after given e is the probability that h would produce e, weighted by how probable h already was and by the probability that you would have seen e anyway. Surprising evidence carries much more weight than commonplace evidence.

Suppose I am evaluating whether my neighbor is a serial killer. Let's say that I believe, for some reason, that normal people have blood leaking out of their garage very infrequently, 1/10,000 of the time. Serial killers leak blood out of their garage 1/100 of the time. Say I sneak onto his property tonight and look for blood. I will show how I should adjust my beliefs based on whether or not I find blood, and I will show how to do it for two different levels of a priori belief in his serial killer-ness.

CASE 1: I'm 99.9% sure he's not a serial killer.
  P(blood) = 0.999/10,000 + 0.001/100 = 0.0001099 
  P(no blood) = (0.999 * 0.9999) + (0.001 * 0.99) = 0.9998901
  1a. I find no blood. Since even serial killers leak no blood 99% of the time, 
     P(killer | no blood) = (0.99) * (0.001) / 0.9998901 = 0.000990108813
     I didn't really think he was a killer, and I didn't really change my beliefs much by not finding anything.
   1b. I find blood!
     P(killer | blood) = (0.01) * (0.001) / 0.0001099 =  0.0909918107 
     I still don't really think he's a serial killer, but I was surprised to find the blood and I'm probably going to pay close attention to him in the future.

CASE 2: I think it's 50/50 that he might be a serial killer.
  P(blood) =  (0.50 / 10 000) + (0.50 / 100) = 0.00505
  P(no blood) =  (0.50 * 0.9999) + (0.50 * 0.99) = 0.99495 
  2a. I find no blood. Since serial killers leak no blood 99% of the time,
    P(killer | no blood) =  (0.99 * 0.50) / 0.99495 = 0.497512438
    I'm still pretty convinced he might be a serial killer. It's going to take many, many nights of lurking outside his garage to convince me otherwise, but if I only find blood about 1/10,000 of the time, eventually I'll decide he's innocent.
  2b. I find blood!
    P(killer | blood) = (0.01 * 0.50) / 0.00505 =  0.99009901 
    I thought he might be a killer before, and now I'm dead certain.

I want to point out two things here:

1.) Probabilities are subjective, but even if you may not agree with someone about the probability of a hypothesis, you may be able to come to an agreement on how likely some evidence is under that hypothesis (P(e|h)), and thus how strongly to weight the evidence. "I don't think Senator Lugard is corrupt, but I agree that having lunch with that lobbyist all the time is suspicious. If I didn't know him so well personally I'd probably agree with you, but I think he's probably just being naive." If you can't even agree on P(e|h) though there's not much to talk about.

2.) Falsifying a theory quickly requires looking for improbable evidence. Finding no blood never changes belief much in either 1a or 2a. To prove someone (likely) innocent, you need to come up with something that would be very unlikely for a serial killer and see if he has that characteristic, like doing anonymous good deeds. Surprising evidence is what changes minds quickly.

-Max

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Quick explanation of Bayesian probability

[Part of a conversation about belief. Related to http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2012/04/on-belief.html but I was talking with J. not D. She said she'd never heard of Bayesian inference. -B.C.]

Okay, I can't resist sharing the formula. The formula is provably rational (and optimal), though the tricky part lies in coming up with probabilities to plug into it.

Notation:
P(x) = probability of x occurring/being true/etc.
P(x|y) = probability of x given y

For example, P(person is male) is about 0.5, but P(person is male | person has deep voice) is high, say 0.995 if one deep-voiced person in two hundred is a woman who smokes or something. Okay, now the way you do Bayesian inference is to take two or more competing hypotheses h1 and h2 to which you have assigned a probability. Then you observe some evidence e and compute P(h1 | e) and P(h2 | e). Since you know that e is true because you observed it, these are the new probabilities you should use for h1 and h2.

There's some simple math involved in proving this next statement, but

                P(e | h) * P(h)
P(h | e) =  ---------------------
                     P(e)

That is, the probability of h after given e is the probability that h would produce e, weighted by how probably h already was and by the probability that you would have seen e anyway. Surprising evidence is carries much more evidence than commonplace evidence.

Suppose I am evaluating whether my neighbor is a serial killer. Let's say that I believe, for some reason, that normal people have blood leaking out of their garage very infrequently, 1/10,000 of the time. Serial killers leak blood out of their garage 1/100 of the time. Say I sneak onto his property tonight and look for blood. I will show how I should adjust my beliefs based on whether or not I find blood, and I will show how to do it for two different levels of a priori belief in his serial killer-ness.

CASE 1: I'm 99.9% sure he's not a serial killer.
  P(blood) = 0.999/10,000 + 0.001/100 = 0.0001099 
  P(no blood) = (0.999 * 0.9999) + (0.001 * 0.99) = 0.9998901
  1a. I find no blood. Since even serial killers leak no blood 99% of the time, 
     P(killer | no blood) = (0.99) * (0.001) / 0.9998901 = 0.000990108813
     I didn't really think he was a killer, and I didn't really change my beliefs much by not finding anything.
   1b. I find blood!
     P(killer | blood) = (0.01) * (0.001) / 0.0001099 =  0.0909918107 
     I still don't really think he's a serial killer, but I was surprised to find the blood and I'm probably going to pay close attention to him in the future.

CASE 2: I think it's 50/50 that he might be a serial killer.
  P(blood) =  (0.50 / 10 000) + (0.50 / 100) = 0.00505
  P(no blood) =  (0.50 * 0.9999) + (0.50 * 0.99) = 0.99495 
  2a. I find no blood. Since serial killers leak no blood 99% of the time,
    P(killer | no blood) =  (0.99 * 0.50) / 0.99495 = 0.497512438
    I'm still pretty convinced he might be a serial killer. It's going to take many, many nights of lurking outside his garage to convince me otherwise, but if I only find blood about 1/10,000 of the time, eventually I'll decide he's innocent.
  2b. I find blood!
    P(killer | blood) = (0.01 * 0.50) / 0.00505 =  0.99009901 
    I thought he might be a killer before, and now I'm dead certain.

I want to point out two things here:

1.) Probabilities are subjective, but even if you may not agree with someone about the probability of a hypothesis, you may be able to come to an agreement on how likely some evidence is under that hypothesis (P(e|h)), and thus how strongly to weight the evidence. "I don't think Senator Lugard is taking corrupt, but I agree that having lunch with that lobbying all the time is suspicious. If I didn't know him so well personally I'd probably agree with you, but I think he's probably just being naive." If you can't even agree on P(e|h) though there's not much to talk about.

2.) Falsifying a theory quickly requires looking for improbable evidence. Finding no blood never changes belief much in either 1a or 2a. To prove someone (likely) innocent, you need to come up with something that would be very unlikely for a serial killer and see if he has that characteristic, like doing anonymous good deeds. Surprising evidence is what changes minds quickly.

-Max

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

School innovation

http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/time-will-render-bold-oconomowoc-school-plan-effects-da56n8d-149398195.html 

Faced with a budget crisis, this school is going to: decrease from 75 to 60 teachers, keep class sizes the same, ask teachers to teach more classes, and increase salaries by $14K/yr. The most interesting quote for me was this:

Which gets to another part of the change at Oconomowoc: No one will discuss it openly because of confidentiality rules, but the 15 teachers who have been told they will not be back next year were not picked casually. The old seniority rules are gone under Act 10. A mix of factors, including subject area, was involved, but it is a sure bet that administrators' assessment of quality played a big part. And quality is not something everyone agrees on - more than 2,000 people became "friends" of a Facebook page expressing solidarity with the 15.

We'll see if it works.

-Max

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

RE: Dimorphism

(Haha, my coworkers are having a conversation right now about the Matrix. "It's not you bending the spoon, it's the spoon bending you." It has professional relevance to programming, I promise. :))

J.,

About the subject at hand, I want to say first of all that I am asking you because two minds are better than one. I hate trying to reason things out all by my lonesome because there's too much risk I'll overlook something important. Thank you for taking the time to disagree, and thank you for asking questions. I may be wrong about this topic--I frequently am--and I value your opinion.

I'm not sure which question to answer first. Maybe feminism/gender roles? I'm not sure what you mean by "gender roles" actually, but maybe this imaginary story will help: my female counterpart takes up blacksmithing for fun. Some people disapprove and tell her it's not a very "feminine" occupation. She laughs and replies that there's a female doing it, so it's a female occupation now. Then she ignores them and keeps right on doing it.

I don't know about personality being binary, but I think from experience that it's certainly bimodal. In my observation, gender is the single most important independent variable influencing personality. We spend lots of time nowadays looking for subtle DNA effects, genes for autism and schizophrenia and aggression etc., expecting a few accidental base pair changes to make a large difference in behavior. Men have a whole chromosome chock-full of genes that alter behavior and neurology, not to mention millions of years of evolution exerting selective pressure specifically on those genes. It would be crazy to expect all that DNA to have no effect on brains.

That doesn't mean the differences will always be stark, "binary" as you called it. It's generally true that men are taller than women, for example, but some women are taller than most men. Women have extra processes going on in their bodies that make certain kinds of cancer more likely for them, but that doesn't mean there's no pathway which results in men having that same kind of cancer sometimes too. Women have a different neural architecture which seems to increase their ability to process emotion and cognition simultaneously, whereas men have a more serialized architecture and can more easily compartmentalize--but not in all cases. Etc. etc. Trying to understand a cause from its downstream effects is a murky process. I wish I had a better understanding of what the intrinsic differences between masculinity and femininity are, but all I've got is an intuition from personal experiences and lots of reading. (For instance, reading books by women on how to succeed in the male business world. "If you cry in public," she may say, "men will assume you're not thinking rationally." Then she'll cite examples from interviews with men talking about how they perceive displays of emotion, and how they generally shut off their emotions when they need to think. This is interesting because the fact that she bothers to point this out implies that she and her audience function differently.)

I think religion affects my view to a certain extent. In particular, modern revelation from the prophets confirms my intuition that gender is intrinsic and not merely biological--you were female before you ever had a body with X chromosomes in it. (Even though I'm not quite sure what the definition of "female" is.) If it weren't for religion I wouldn't be as sure. 

Finally, to answer your question about feminism: I am grateful for feminism. I may not know exactly what the differences between men and women are, and I may not know exactly how we should treat each other, but I think feminism moved the line closer to the truth. I want my counterpart to have the freedom to blacksmith or run a research lab if she feels like it, and without feminism it would have been a lot harder for her to do that. I don't reject gender roles per se, but I tend to dislike them, and I think the ones we were using in the 50's were wrong and didn't correlate well with reality.

What does it mean to reject gender roles? Do you reject specific gender roles or the validity of the concept of gender? I've done a lot of talking, but I need to hear from you in order to learn.

-Max

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Prophets, opinion, revelation

Some good quotes, some of which I have gone hunting for before. I got this from an Internet document that was sitting in my "Downloaded" folder, but I have no idea where it came from. Maybe a friend on Facebook?

Putting it in gmail so it becomes searchable. The Harold B. Lee quote on opinions is one of my favorites.

-Max

Joseph Fielding Smith - It makes no difference what is written or what anyone has said, if what has been said is in conflict with what the Lord has revealed, we can set it aside.  My word, and teachings of any other member of the Church, high or low, if they do not square with the revelations, we need not accept them.  Let us have this matter clear.  We have accepted the four standard works as the measuring yardsticks, or balances, by which we measure every man's doctrine.  You cannot accept the books written by the authorities of the Church as standards of doctrine, only in so far as they accord with revealed word in the standard works.

Every man who writes is responsible, not the Church, for what he writes.  If Joseph Fielding Smith writes something which is out of harmony with the revelations, then every member of the Church is duty bound to reject it.  If he writes that which is in perfect harmony with the revealed word of the Lord, then it should be accepted." (Doctrines of Salvation, v. 3, p.203-204)

Harold B. Lee - If anyone, regardless of his position in the Church, were to advance a doctrine that is not substantiated by the standard Church works, meaning the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price, you may know that his statement is merely his private opinion.  The only one authorized to bring forth any new doctrine is the President of the Church, who, when he does, will declare it as revelation from God, and it will be so accepted by the Council of the Twelve and sustained by the body of the Church.  And if any man speaks a doctrine which contradicts what is in the standard Church works, you may know by that same token that it is false and you are not bound to accept it as truth.  (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, p. 544)

Harold B. Lee We can know when a man speaks as a prophet.  Now, when does a person speak as a prophet?  Do you recall that oft-repeated revelation in which the Lord said:     

And, behold, this is an ensample unto all those who were ordained unto this priesthood [and he is talking of General Authorities], whose mission is appointed unto them to go forth-    

They shall speak as they are moved upon by the Holy Ghost.  

And whatsoever they shall speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost shall be scripture, shall be the will of the Lord, shall be the mind of the Lord, shall be the word of the Lord, shall be the voice of the Lord, and the power of God unto salvation.  (D&C 68:2-4.)    

This is so when a General Authority is speaking by the power of the Holy Ghost.  

Someone has rightly said that it is not to be thought that every word spoken by our leaders is inspired.  The Prophet Joseph Smith wrote in his personal diary: "This morning I visited with a brother and sister from Michigan, who thought that 'a prophet is always a prophet'; but I told them that a prophet was a prophet only when he was acting as such" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 278.)    

It is not to be thought that every word spoken by the General Authorities is inspired, or that they are moved upon by the Holy Ghost in everything they write.  I don't care what his position is, if he writes something or speaks something that goes beyond anything that you can find in the standard Church works, unless that one be the prophet, seer, and revelator - please note that one exception - you may immediately say, "Well, that is his own idea."  And if he says something that contradicts what is found in the standard Church works, you may know by that same token that it is false, regardless of the position of the man who says it.  We can know or have the assurance that they are speaking under inspiration if we so live that we can have a witness that what they are speaking is the word of the Lord.  There is only one safety, and that is that we shall live to have the witness to know.  President Brigham Young said something to the effect that "the greatest fear I have is that the people of this church will accept what we say as the will of the Lord without first praying about it and getting the witness within their own hearts that what we say is the word of the Lord" (see Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 135)

A prophet may not always speak as a prophet.  We had a bishop from down in Florida that had a great problem.  A third of his total ward membership had been trying to buy a large piece of property, twenty-six thousand acres.  They had obligated themselves to a bank and an insurance company and things hadn't gone right, and now the bank and the insurance company were going to foreclose.  The property was worth twice as much as they had borrowed, but somebody had to bail them out.  So this good bishop called the First Presidency's office and said, "I'd like to come to Salt Lake.  I'd like to see if we can do something to save my people."  This good bishop, good old Southerner that he was, came with all the papers.  He just neglected everything else pertaining to his business, because he wanted to save his people.  And so for two hours the First Presidency listened to him, and I sat there and I said, "No, we can't do that.  We can't invest the Lord's money in that property.  It can't be done.  No, I can't see a way out.  We'd get into more trouble."  I could see all these difficulties, and so he was sent on his way back home.  The President of the Church had said no.  But before the next morning came, I knew that the President of the Church hadn't been speaking by the Spirit of the Lord.  And when I met my counselors the next morning I said, "Where's the bishop?" And they said, "Oh, he's left on an early morning plane back home."  And I said, "Well, I've had a complete change.  I've done some praying; I've done some thinking.  We mustn't let that bishop go down there without sending somebody down to see if we can help him.  I don't know whether we can or not, but we can't send him back with just saying, 'No, there's nothing we can do to help you.' We've got to see if there's not some alternatives."  We've had some brethren down there this last week trying to see if we can find a way by which part of the land might be purchased for what is all owing on the balance and save them sixteen thousand acres of their property.  Now, I don't know what they're coming back with, but I knew that I hadn't spoken by the Spirit of the Lord the night before.  But I knew before the next morning what the Lord was trying to say to me.    

Now, do you see the difference of what I'm trying to say to you?  Sometimes we can speak just as a man.  But when we get the Spirit of the Lord we may think differently, and so it's our responsibility when we stand in holy places that we speak by the Spirit of the Lord and make as sure as we possibly can that we're speaking as the Lord directs us to speak. 

Prophets may speak their own opinions at times.  There have been times when even the President of the Church has not been moved upon by the Holy Ghost.  There is, I suppose you'd say, a classic story of Brigham Young in the time when Johnston's army was on the move.  The Saints were all inflamed, and President Young had his feelings whetted to fighting pitch.  He stood up in the morning session of general conference and preached a sermon vibrant with defiance at the approaching army, declaring an intention to oppose them and drive them back.  In the afternoon he rose and said that Brigham Young had been talking in the morning but the Lord was going to talk now.  He then delivered an address the tempo of which was the exact opposite of the morning sermon.  (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, p. 540-542)

Mark L. McConkie - Thus it is that prophets are entitled to personal opinions just like any other man (Alma 40:20; 1 Corinthians 7:25), and sometimes have differences among themselves.  They even make mistakes (Galatians 2:11).  Orson Hyde, for instance, once preached a sermon that contained some false sentiments.  Joseph Smith was present, and following the meeting said, "I told Elder Hyde that I was going to offer some corrections to his sermon this morning," and, to Elder Hyde's eternal credit, Elder Hyde replied, "They shall be thankfully received."  In the afternoon meeting Joseph spoke and "then corrected Elder Hyde's remarks, the same as I had done to him privately" (Nelson, 1979, p. 215-16).  Similarly, we have in our history an account of Brigham Young preaching something in the morning session of a conference and returning in the afternoon session of the same conference and saying "this morning you heard what Brigham Young thinks about this subject, and now I would like to tell you what the Lord thinks about it."  He then reversed the position he had taken in the morning session (McConkie, 1966a)(Remembering Joseph, Personal Recollections of Those Who Know the Prophet Joseph Smith, Deseret Book Company, 2003, no pg number available.)

N. Eldon Tanner - I would like to explain to you exactly what took place following the unexpected death of President Harold B. Lee on 26 December 1973. I was in Phoenix, Arizona, to spend Christmas with my daughter and her family, when a call came to me from Arthur Haycock, secretary to President Lee. He said that President Lee was seriously ill, and he thought that I should plan to return home as soon as possible. A half-hour later he called and said: 'The Lord has spoken. President Lee has been called home.'

President Romney, Second Counselor, in my absence was directing the affairs of the Church, and was at the hospital with Spencer W. Kimball, President of the Council of the Twelve. Immediately upon the death of President Lee, President Romney turned to President Kimball and said, 'You are in charge.' Remember, the Prophet Joseph Smith had said that without the President there was no First Presidency over the Twelve.

Not one minute passed between the time President Lee died and the Twelve took over as the presiding authority of the Church.

Following President Lee's funeral, President Kimball called a meeting of all the Apostles for Sunday, December 30, at 3 P.M. in the Salt Lake Temple Council Room. President Romney and I had taken our respective places of seniority in the council, so there were fourteen of us present.

Following a song, and prayer by President Romney, President Kimball, in deep humility, expressed his feelings to us. He said that he had spent Friday in the temple talking to the Lord, and had shed many tears as he prayed for guidance in assuming his new responsibilities and in choosing his counselors.

Dressed in the robes of the holy priesthood, we held a prayer circle; President Kimball asked me to conduct it and Elder Thomas S. Monson to offer the prayer. Following this, President Kimball explained the purpose of the meeting and called on each member of the quorum in order of seniority, starting with Elder Ezra Taft Benson, to express his feelings as to whether the First Presidency should be organized that day or whether we should carry on as the Council of the Twelve. Each said, 'We should organize now,' and many complimentary things were spoken about President Kimball and his work with the Twelve.

Then Elder Ezra Taft Benson nominated Spencer W. Kimball to be the President of the Church. This was seconded by Elder Mark E. Petersen and unanimously approved. President Kimball then nominated N. Eldon Tanner as First Counselor and Marion G. Romney as Second Counselor, each of whom expressed a willingness to accept the position and devote his whole time and energy in serving in that capacity.

They were unanimously approved. Then Elder Mark E. Petersen, second in seniority in the Twelve, nominated Ezra Taft Benson, the senior member of the Twelve, as President of the Quorum of the Twelve. This was unanimously approved.

At this point all the members present laid their hands upon the head of Spencer W. Kimball, and President Ezra Taft Benson was voice in blessing, ordaining, and setting apart Spencer W. Kimball as the twelfth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Then, with President Kimball as voice, N. Eldon Tanner was set apart as First Counselor and Marion G. Romney as Second Counselor in the First Presidency of the Church. Following the same procedure, he pronounced the blessing and setting apart of Ezra Taft Benson as President of the Quorum of the Twelve." (Ensign, Nov. 1979, p. 43–44, quoted in TLP, 7-5.)

NOTE:  # of counselors in the 1st Presidency – Besides President Kimball having a 3rd counselor,  David O McKay had 3 counselors in 1961, 3 again for 1 day in 1965, 4 in 1965-1968 and 5 from 1968-1970.

Joseph Smith had up to 6 counselors at a time.  Brigham Young had 3 in 1866-1873, 8 in 1873-1875 and 7 from 1875-1877.

Also, there were several instances where counselors were not ordained apostles.


--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Dimorphism

J.,

Because of the whole "gay marriage in Washington" thingie going on, I've been thinking deeply about the meaning of marriage. Can I share my thoughts with you, and maybe get your thoughts in return?

I am pro-marriage-differentiation, i.e. marriage = husband + wife. I do not think men and women are equivalent or interchangeable. People can do what they want but if there's no wife or no husband in it, they need to make up a new word for it. The issue here isn't really about gay marriage at all, per se. It's about role differentiation. The reason I object to "marriage = 1 man + 1 woman" is that it's completely missing the point. A husband isn't just a spouse who happens to be male, he's someone who is responsible for loving, protecting, and providing for his wife and family. A wife isn't just a spouse who happens to be female, she's someone who has primary responsibility for the nurture and education of the family. The roles are different enough to have different names.

My wife will be my partner and my peer. But a large part of my job is to support the family so she has freedom to pursue her dreams, whether it's having a family or running a research lab. We are friends and equals but we are not interchangeable.

I'm grateful to feminism for many things, including the freedoms it has won for women I care about. However, humans are a sexually dimorphic species, and marriage originated in that dimorphism. It's real. Instead of trying to deny the differences, we need to understand them and utilize them.

What do you think?

-M.

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.



--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Words

J.,

I read a background piece once which criticized someone (Barack Obama but it doesn't matter) for once responding to someone who said "I love you" with the words "Thank you." Why do people think this is an inappropriate response? "I love you" is an expression of warmth and support. "Thanks" and "I know" are perfectly fine ways of accepting that support.


I don't believe in the words, "I love you too." That's just a way of changing the subject. 

-M.

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Skepticism of skepticism

[Cc J. & T.]

D., 

Here's an interesting blog post from a statistician, about skepticism on global warming, and confirmation bias on the skeptics' part. Gelman makes a really good point here that you shouldn't make confident assertions about what the other side is doing unless you really are very in touch with their work.

Recently I was disturbed (but, I'm sorry to say, not surprised) to see Seth post the following:

Predictions of climate models versus reality. I [Seth] have only seen careful prediction-vs-reality comparisons made by AGW [anthropogenic global warming] skeptics. Those who believe humans are dangerously warming the planet appear to be silent on this subject.

In response, Phil commented:

Funny, on the day you [Seth] made your post saying that you haven't seen comparisons between models and predictions except by skeptics, thetop entry on RealClimate, the single most prominent global-warming-related blog that is not run by skeptics, was "Evaluating a 1981 temperature projection."

Pretty amazing, huh? On its face it would seem surprising to claim that the majority of leading climate scientists don't do "careful prediction-vs-reality comparisons," and indeed on the very day of Seth's post, there is such a comparison right there on the first place you might look for what the climate scientists are doing!

How did Seth miss it?

[snip]

I think this is important not only for the followers of Seth Roberts but more generally in that it illustrates the traps that people can fall into when seeking out confirmation of their beliefs. Seth is better-equipped than most people to read about scientific evidence, yet he is stuck, not only in holding a scientific view which I find implausible (after all, I might be wrong) but in not understanding that Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, Rein Haarsma, etc etc etc are doing serious science. It's sad, and it's scary. 

His point is well-taken. This mistake is one I am sometimes guilty of, because I am really judgmental and quick to generalize from examples without thinking about how I encountered those examples. Be skeptical of your own skepticism. And then be skeptical of that too.

:)

-M.

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.