Hypothesis: literal meaning of the word "Mormon"

[From a 2013 post in another conference which, I think, never made it onto this blog. -Max]

I think I'm the only person I know who has a theory as to the literal meaning of the word "Mormon," as in Mosiah 18:4.

I think it has something to do with the concept of reclamation or restoration. First we have the verse (Mosiah 18:4) where Mormon attempts to explain the name as follows:

And it came to pass that as many as did believe him did go forth to a place which was called Mormon, having received its name from the king, being in the borders of the land having been infested, by times or at seasons, by wild beasts.

So the name 'Mormon' is appropriate for... a place which had formerly been infested by beasts but isn't any more? And it's a name which is important enough and appropriate enough for Mormon to not only mention the name but give the etymology, which isn't usually the case except for a few names like Irreantum.

Then throughout the remainder of the chapter, the name Mormon is heavily emphasized in a way which makes it clear that it is fraught with meaning to Alma's people in their own new start:

7 And it came to pass after many days there were a goodly number gathered together at the place of Mormon, to hear the words of Alma. Yea, all were gathered together that believed on his word, to hear him. And he did teach them, and did preach unto them repentance, and redemption, and faith on the Lord.

8 And it came to pass that he said unto them: Behold, here are the waters of Mormon (for thus were they called) and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another's burdens, that they may be light;

...

16 And after this manner he did baptize every one that went forth to the place of Mormon; and they were in number about two hundred and four souls; yea, and they were baptized in the waters of Mormon, and were filled with the grace of God.

29 And this he said unto them, having been commanded of God; and they did walk uprightly before God, imparting to one another both temporally and spiritually according to their needs and their wants.

30 And now it came to pass that all this was done in Mormon, yea, by the waters of Mormon, in the forest that was near the waters of Mormon; yea, the place of Mormon, the waters of Mormon, the forest of Mormon, how beautiful are they to the eyes of them who there came to the knowledge of their Redeemer; yea, and how blessed are they, for they shall sing to his praise forever.'

He uses the word 'Mormon' nine times in describing the purification of the Nephites. Try to find a word or concept that fits better into verses 4,7,8,16,29, and 30 than 'reclamation' and then account for the fact that active verbs in English are sometimes passive in Hebrew and vice-versa, and it could be either 'reclamation' or 'restoration', emphasizing either the actor who reclaims or that which is redeemed.

Also look at 3 Nephi 5:12, Alma 5:3, Mosiah 25:18, Mosiah 26:15, and consider how much more meaningful and poetic each of these verses would become if the hypothesized meaning/wordplay were present in the original tongue. Not to mention Moroni's choice of title: "The Book of Mormon."

[Moroni--I see what you did there!]

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Doubt your doubts

[written to a friend publicly wrestling with doubts about the Church, rejecting some doctrines and scriptures while expressing a desire to find a way to still believe in the rest]

I want to echo those who express appreciation for your forthrightness, [redacted], and I can relate to having doubts, although for me it's doubts about my relationships with other people. I read [redacted]'s comment above, for example, and think, "Yeah, I know what that uncertainty feels like. That sounds like my relationship with (for example) dear Katherine Morris back in the day: lots of rational reasons to think the friendship is just over, forever, and walk away, but I feel somehow that I shouldn't walk away, but I don't know if I'm just being stupid in not listening to reason." It kind of leaves you feeling bad about yourself no matter which road you choose.

For what it's worth, I *did* eventually walk away. (Several times, but the last one finally stuck.) And yet here we are years later, good friends, the kind I always wanted us to be. So my rational doubts weren't wrong, and yet my feelings/inspiration/intuition about what we ought to be wasn't wrong either. Reason and faith turned out to be compatible after all, and it just took time to get there.

I can think of at least one other important relationship which took a similar path, and it's taught me not to give up on my feelings too early. (Not the same thing as emotions in this context BTW.) I now think that it's okay to walk away, instead of beating my head on a brick wall, but if I do that I am not obligated to conclude that my feelings about what ought to be are wrong--better to adopt an attitude of "wait and see." And if I don't walk away from someone, I don't have to feel bad about that either.

Religious doubts and interpersonal doubts aren't exactly the same thing, but for me it was. I have an easy time trusting Heavenly Father and a hard time trusting human beings (for completely logical and rational reasons!). If you have an easier time trusting human beings and a hard time trusting in God and/or the Church (for completely logical and rational reasons!) then I sympathize, and hope things work out well for you.

--

If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

A proper ally

And I, the Lord God, said unto mine Only Begotten, that it was not good that the man [Adam] should be alone; wherefore, I will make an help meet for him.

"Meet" means "equal to" or "fitting for." Another translation might be, "I will make for him a proper ally."

Lucky Adam. Someday I hope to have a proper ally to watch my back, too. But for now it is better to go to war alone: a false or incompetent ally is worse than none at all. (It increases the number of exposed targets, without yielding a corresponding defensive benefit.)

~B.C.

P.S. This does not mean I would never aid someone who increases my own risk. I know how to make sacrifices. There have even been a few girls whom I would have gladly married if they had needed me to. But I'm very aware that I'm better off because they did not need any such thing from me, and I'm not going to feel guilty about that.

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Science of fat storage (The Obesity Code)

[Dear J., you might find this interesting. -M.]
So... I'm normally pretty skeptical of nutritional fads and medical findings, because I often feel like it's not really grounded in good science. But I feel like I can recognize solid science when I see it.

My friend Eric Mueller recommended a book to me called The Obesity Code, in which the author (a kidney/diabetes specialist by the name of Dr. Jason Fung) advances the hypothesis that obesity is essentially a hormonal imbalance (high insulin levels leading to insulin resistance), and I find the claims impressive, consistent with my own experiences, and persuasive.

One key fact, supported by many, many case studies (Dr. Fung describes so many case studies that it starts getting tedious), is that your brain can adjust both appetite (calories in) and metabolism (calories out) and tries to balance them against each other. If you try to feed someone more food than they'd naturally eat, not only do they lose appetite and resist eating that much, but even if you do get them to overeat, their metabolic rates go up too. (I'm oversimplifying because there are multiple ways to body consumes energy, from raising your temperature to motivating movement to depositing it in stool.) If you decrease food consumption, metabolism slows too--not perfectly but pretty close, which is why obesity is something that generally takes years to develop instead of being something that can happen to you in a single month of really bad decisions in college. And it's also why trying to "Eat Less [calories], Move More" practically never results in long-lasting weight loss, even in studies where we measure the participants and know that they really are exercising more and eating less.

But the argument (as I understand it) goes that this metabolic homeostasis (keeping calorie intake and metabolism close to each other) is regulated by hormones (chemical signals sent to each cell of the body), and there's excellent evidence (detailed in the book) that the key hormone is insulin. High insulin levels tell cells to store energy; low insulin levels tell cells to release energy; insulin levels rise after a meal (especially carbohydrates without fiber), telling your body to store food. Normally that is fine, but here's the sticky point: when your insulin levels are high all the time from constant eating, your liver and muscles develop insulin resistance (respond less and less strongly to a given dose of insulin) but your brain, which regulates your appetite and metabolism, does not. Over a period of years or decades, your insulin levels get higher and higher as your insulin resistance in your muscles and liver get higher and higher (because more insulin is needed to do the job), but the parts of your body controlled by your brain get more and more inclined to store energy. Then if you ever manage to lose weight, your insulin resistance outside your brain is still as high as ever, so your body still keeps insulin levels high, so your non-insulin-resistant brain is still very willing to return your body to its previous weight.

I'm about halfway through the book so I haven't finished reading all the science yet, but it's obvious at this point what the conclusion is: in addition to eating fewer foods that boost insulin production and insulin resistance (i.e. eat fibers, whole grains, and avoid sucrose and fructose like the plague, especially soft drinks, because fructose boosts your liver's insulin resistance due to being metabolized only in the liver)--in addition to that, it's important to be hungry more often. 21st century humans spend waaaay too much time in a "fed" state (insulin excess) and often the only time we spend in an "unfed" state (insulin deficiency) is when we're asleep. For decades I've thought that you need at least 500 calories per day or so to prevent muscle loss--I'd been told that your brain can't metabolize fat, so your body winds up burning muscle to fuel your brain, but that turns out to be untrue. There is nothing wrong with occasional fasting, and the world record is a guy who (back in 1973) went 382 days without eating, under medical supervision, and came out of it much thinner but perfectly healthy and ambulatory. [ref: http://cristivlad.com/total-starvation-382-days-without-food-study/] So clearly being hungry isn't going to kill you or liquidate your muscles.

So that's basically it, apparently. Reduce insulin levels by eating fewer highly-processed, sugary carbohydrates, and by being hungry more often and for longer periods of time. (Dr. Fung recommends skipping or delaying breakfast, which is something I like doing anyway.) These are things, I think, which I can actually be quite good at doing, now that I understand specifically what I'm trying to accomplish. I've always been better at absolutism than moderation, and "don't eat right now" is a much easier message for me to get my head around than, "Eat right now but don't eat very much." (How much is "very much"? If eating is sort of bad right now, why am I eating at all? Etc.)

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Black Panther movie

I just realized one of the reasons I didn't enjoy Black Panther very much. Movies about fighting for its own sake bore me, and Black Panther was set up as a movie about who gains political control of a country whose system of government centers on who can beat whom in a fight. There were a lot of fights during the movie, most of which didn't accomplish anything, and then the dramatic question ("Who will retain control of the country?") was resolved in a fistfight, because of course it had to be, since that was how the country's rules were set up.

No wonder I didn't really connect with it emotionally as much as I was hoping to.

~B.C.

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

[Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor? is a riff on the old classic, Can A Biologist Fix a Radio?

Here's one passage that caught my attention.

~Max]
http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005268

...What constitutes an understanding of a system? Lazbnick's original paper argued that understanding was achieved when one could "fix" a broken implementation. Understanding of a particular region or part of a system would occur when one could describe so accurately the inputs, the transformation, and the outputs that one brain region could be replaced with an entirely synthetic component. Indeed, some neuroengineers are following this path for sensory [26] and memory [27] systems. Alternatively, we could seek to understand a system at differing, complementary levels of analysis, as David Marr and Tomaso Poggio outlined in 1982 [28]. First, we can ask if we understand what the system does at the computational level: what is the problem it is seeking to solve via computation? We can ask how the system performs this task algorithmically: what processes does it employ to manipulate internal representations? Finally, we can seek to understand how the system implements the above algorithms at a physical level. What are the characteristics of the underlying implementation (in the case of neurons, ion channels, synaptic conductances, neural connectivity, and so on) that give rise to the execution of the algorithm? Ultimately, we want to understand the brain at all these levels.

In this paper, much as in systems neuroscience, we consider the quest to gain an understanding of how circuit elements give rise to computation. Computer architecture studies how small circuit elements, like registers and adders, give rise to a system capable of performing general-purpose computation. When it comes to the processor, we understand this level extremely well, as it is taught to most computer science undergraduates. Knowing what a satisfying answer to "how does a processor compute?" looks like makes it easy to evaluate how much we learn from an experiment or an analysis.

...Lesions studies allow us to study the causal effect of removing a part of the system. We thus chose a number of transistors and asked if they are necessary for each of the behaviors of the processor (Fig 4. In other words, we asked if removed each transistor, if the processor would then still boot the game. Indeed, we found a subset of transistors that makes one of the behaviors (games) impossible. We can thus conclude they are uniquely necessary for the game—perhaps there is a Donkey Kong transistor or a Space Invaders transistor. Even if we can lesion each individual transistor, we do not get much closer to an understanding of how the processor really works.

This finding of course is grossly misleading. The transistors are not specific to any one behavior or game but rather implement simple functions, like full adders. The finding that some of them are important while others are not for a given game is only indirectly indicative of the transistor's role and is unlikely to generalize to other games. Lazebnik [9] made similar observations about this approach in molecular biology, suggesting biologists would obtain a large number of identical radios and shoot them with metal particles at short range, attempting to identify which damaged components gave rise to which broken phenotype.

[Also, don't miss this comment on alpha waves]

In neuroscience there is a rich tradition of analyzing the rhythms in brain regions, the distribution of power across frequencies as a function of the task, and the relation of oscillatory activity across space and time. However, the example of the processor shows that the relation of such measures to underlying function can be extremely complicated. In fact, the authors of this paper would have expected far more peaked frequency distributions for the chip. Moreover, the distribution of frequencies in the brain is often seen as indicative about the underlying biophysics. In our case, there is only one element, the transistor, and not multiple neurotransmitters. And yet, we see a similarly rich distribution of power in the frequency domain. This shows that complex multi-frequency behavior can emerge from the combination of many simple elements. Analyzing the frequency spectra of artifacts thus leads us to be careful about the interpretation of those occurring in the brain. Modeling the processor as a bunch of coupled oscillators, as is common in neuroscience, would make little sense.

[And this part about culture, funding, and goals moving forward is important I think.]

...Culturally, applying these methods to real data, and rewarding those who innovate methodologically, may become more important. We can look at the rise of bioinformatics as an independent field with its own funding streams. Neuroscience needs strong neuroinformatics to make sense of the emerging datasets and known artificial systems can serve as a sanity check and a way of understanding failure modes.

We also want to suggest that it may be an important intermediate step for neuroscience to develop methods that allow understanding a processor. Because they can be simulated in any computer and arbitrarily perturbed, they are a great testbed to ask how useful the methods are that we are using in neuroscience on a daily basis.

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

When Upon Life's Billows: Counting My Blessings

Money can't buy happiness but a lack of money can sure buy insecurity, especially if you have no family and no friends with money. I've been really poor but I'm not any more, and I have to admit that I really enjoy not being poor.

I was talking to someone the other day about social capital and how nerve-wracking it must be to be the first one in your family to ever go to college, and have to learn the ropes on your own. (How do you get a job? How do you afford tuition? What happens if you're struggling in a class? Etc.)

Anyway, I feel very lucky to be as comfortable as I am. I'm grateful to Heavenly Father for giving me opportunities. I am waaaaay more comfortable living among human beings this way than I would be living on my own on a desert island with whatever furniture I could carve out of coconuts.

~B.C.

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

In Defense of Mainstream Science

[Hang onto this for me please. -Max]

http://quillette.com/2017/06/11/no-voice-vox-sense-nonsense-discussing-iq-race/ by Richard Haier

Long before the Trump Administration, alternative facts and misrepresentations have permeated attacks on the science of human intelligence. Even reasonable discussions are not immune. The recent piece posted on VOX (May 18, 2017) by Turkheimer, Harden & Nisbett (THN) excoriates Sam Harris about his recent podcast discussion with Charles Murray, author of the 1994 book, The Bell Curve(co-author Richard Herrnstein died before the book was published).

Sam Harris is not an expert in intelligence research but I am. After hearing the podcast, I emailed congratulations to him and Murray for conducting an informative discussion of complex and controversial issues. Every point they enumerated as having broad support among intelligence researchers is correct. There is an overwhelming weight of evidence to support the ideas that intelligence is something real, it can be reliably and validly measured without bias, and the measures predict many real world variables that are important to most human beings. There also is broad agreement that one component of intelligence is a general ability (the g-factor) to reason and problem-solve across a wide range of situations. There also is overwhelming evidence that genes play a significant role in explaining differences in intelligence among individuals.

These points were reasonably well established when The Bell Curve was published, as evidenced by a task force of prominent researchers constituted by the American Psychological Association in 1995 (report published in 1996), hardly a right-wing group. And, as Murray noted in the podcast, all these findings have been validated even further by subsequent research with much larger samples and more powerful research designs.

*snip*

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Re: Magical F#

​[sending slightly improved version to blog]

open System

open System.Collections.Generic

type Stats = Map<string, obj>

// Lens code based on http://www.fssnip.net/7Pk/title/Polymorphic-lenses by Vesa Karvonen

type Lens<'s,'t,'a,'b> = ('a -> Option<'b>) -> 's -> Option<'t>

module Lens =

let view l s =

let r = ref Unchecked.defaultof<_>

s |> l (fun a -> r := a; None) |> ignore

!r

let over l f =

l (f >> Some) >> function Some t -> t | _ -> failwith "Impossible"

let set l b = over l <| fun _ -> b

let lens get set = fun f s ->

(get s |> f : Option<_>) |> Option.map (fun f -> set f s)

module Props =

let prop<'t> (propName: string) f =

Lens.lens

(fun x -> match Map.tryFind propName x with | Some(:? 't as v:obj) -> (v |> unbox<'t>) | _ -> Unchecked.defaultof<'t>)

(fun v x -> Map.add propName v x)

f

let set prop v stats = stats |> Lens.set prop (box v)

let get prop stats = stats |> Lens.view prop

open Props

let name = prop<string> "Name"

let id = prop<string> "ID"

let iq = prop<int> "IQ"

let me = Map.empty |> set name "Max" |> set id "30777" |> set iq 4

printfn "%s (%s) is %s" (get name me) (get id me) (if get iq me > 100 then "smart" else "not smart")

// prints "Max (30777) is not smart"

// Did you catch that? iq returns an int, not a boxed int, and name statically knows that it's returning a string! Magic!

Magical F#

Check this out!


open System

open System.Collections.Generic

type Stats = Map<string, obj>

// Lens code based on http://www.fssnip.net/7Pk/title/Polymorphic-lenses by Vesa Karvonen

type Lens<'s,'t,'a,'b> = ('a -> Option<'b>) -> 's -> Option<'t>

module Lens =

let view l s =

let r = ref Unchecked.defaultof<_>

s |> l (fun a -> r := a; None) |> ignore

!r

let over l f =

l (f >> Some) >> function Some t -> t | _ -> failwith "Impossible"

let set l b = over l <| fun _ -> b

let lens get set = fun f s ->

(get s |> f : Option<_>) |> Option.map (fun f -> set f s)

module Props =

let prop<'t> (propName: string) f =

Lens.lens

(fun x -> match Map.tryFind propName x with | Some(v) -> (if (box v :? 't) then (v |> unbox<'t>) else Unchecked.defaultof<'t>) | _ -> Unchecked.defaultof<'t>)

(fun v x -> Map.add propName v x)

f

let set prop v stats = stats |> Lens.set prop (box v)

let get prop stats = stats |> Lens.view prop

open Props

let name = prop<string> "Name"

let id = prop<string> "ID"

let iq = prop<int> "IQ"

let me = Map.empty |> set name "Max" |> set id "30777" |> set iq 4

printfn "%s (%s) is %s" (get name me) (get id me) (if get iq me > 100 then "smart" else "not smart")

// prints "Max (30777) is not smart"

// Did you catch that? iq returns an int, not a boxed int, and name statically knows that it's returning a string! Magic!

~B.C.

--

If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Diversity hiring initiatives

I'm in favor of diversity hiring initiatives as long as they are done carefully, and the reason why is "to fight confirmation bias."

I read a study a few years ago about an orchestra in New York that started doing blind auditions. I don't remember the exact numbers, but my takeaway was twofold: (1) even with blind auditions, there was still a gap between the probability of female and male candidates actually making the cut; (2) the gap was significantly smaller with blind auditions. What that says to me is that even when there is a real difference in ability between two subpopulations, hiring managers can be overbiased by their past experience, more than the difference in actual performance justifies.

Sure, maybe women are better nurses than men, but not necessarily THAT much better, that often.

So the fact that Microsoft is taking modest steps to increase the number and promotion rates of under-represented demographics including women is, to my eye, a reasonable step to take. It would be unreasonable to ever expect all demographics to have equal representation in every profession, but it's reasonable to think that confirmation bias may play some role in hiring and promotion decisions at Microsoft, and to be deliberately looking for opportunities to let under-represented groups achieve great things.

That's my opinion.

~B.C.

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

On D&D Alignments

[From a discussion on Lawful Evil vs. Chaotic Neutral, and whether Chaotic Neutral implies foresight, and in response to the specific claim that highly disciplined people "get so wrapped up in the right way that they fail to see possibilities"]

Lawful != organized.

An interesting illustration is Captain America: Civil War. Tony signs the Accords because he figures, hey, I can always break them if I need to (and he does), and besides, this is what I need to do RIGHT NOW to keep what I want. IMO that's a Chaotic (Good) attitude Tony is displaying. Steve Rogers is very reluctant to sign them because he assumes he will be bound by them if he signs them (the idea of "hey, I could always just break them" doesn't seem to ever cross his mind) and worries about the possibility of being someday given orders that he doesn't agree with. IMO that's a clearly Lawful attitude.

What makes this particularly interesting is that the character who has a clear ethical code is the one who winds up an outlaw, because of that code, and the one who doesn't retains his position of power (despite continuing to flout the law even in the last scene of the movie) because he has no qualms about saying one thing and doing another. Now I wouldn't claim that Tony Stark is not capable of foresight (clearly he can invent things that he doesn't yet need), but with respect to the moral dilemma, it is Steve Rogers who is worrying about precedents and structure and things that haven't happened yet, and Tony Stark who is basically winging it.

AFAIC that is Lawful vs. Chaotic in a nutshell. Lawful Good individuals think through the Trolley Problem and the Tragedy of the Commons in their spare time. Chaotic Good individuals shrug it off until it actually happens and then go by their gut feel.

-Max

--

If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Old history

I am not one of those who thinks the Nephite civilization was located in Central America. I don't think the Mayans were Nephites[1]. But I _do_ think there's an enormous amount about human history that we don't know yet, because figuring out information about the distant past is HARD when so much evidence is buried or missing.

[1] I think the Eastern U.S. is the obvious and better place to hypothesize a Nephite presence, for doctrinal and geographical reasons including the fact that the only Nephite artifact we can definitely source was found in the hill Cumorah, in upstate New York.

In any case, here's new evidence about a Mayan "megalapolis" just discovered: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/maya-laser-lidar-guatemala-pacunam/

-Max

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Disney's Star Wars franchise

I saw Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Power Ranger in the theater today. I have so much to say about it now. I thought reading the Wikipedia entry had prepared me for it, but the experience exceeded all my expectations!

Contrary to what I had expected from reading the summary, the whole story was NOT pointless. The end of the movie leaves the story in a significantly different place from when it started. For most movies you might take that for granted, but from reading the reviews I wasn't sure that was going to be the case, but it was, and that was nice. You won't be able to skip over this movie and still understand the Disney Star Wars trilogy.

I liked the way Mark Hamill portrayed Jake Skywalker, a grizzled old Jedi Master clearly inspired by Luke Skywalker. The fact that they got the same actor to play both characters is a nice touch.

I liked the way Jake Skywalker tried to educate the audience in the ways of the George Lucas Star Wars universe (e.g. the Force is not just for Jedis; Luke Skywalker can't defeat the Empire just by waving a laser sword).

I liked some of the dialogue between Rey and Kylo (the "You're a monster," "Yes. I am," bit was particularly nice), and I sort of liked the Twilight-over-Skype-themed relationship they developed, while a high-stakes space battle was raging elsewhere. (A space battle which, knowing what I knew about the plot, had me asking, "Why are you throwing away this med-ship, foolish #Resistance? If lightspeed ramming is a thing in your story, why not have the med-ship ram the star destroyer? Why does the First Order not have custom-built lightspeed-equipped missiles for destroying enemy ships in one shot? Why don't both sides have such missiles? Why, sixty years after Star Wars, are they STILL flying around X-Wing fighters and basic TIE fighters?" But I digress...)

I also liked the space cows. The fact that they were made vaguely bipedal only enhanced how nonspecifically-disturbing they seemed. It was a nice touch.

My biggest takeaway: I am in awe. I'd like to say that I had no idea it was possible for a movie to be ludicrously bad on so many levels simultaneously--I'd like to say that, but I've seen /Thor/, directed by Kenneth Branagh, so it would be untrue. Still, in terms of characterization, plot structure, originality, world-building, military tactics, logic, and pacing--the Last Power Ranger manages to be bad at ALL of these. There were definitely times during the movie when I could not stop laughing. I am in awe.

I have soooooo much to say about this movie.

~Max


P.S. It makes noooo sense why, if Jake Skywalker just wanted to be left alone to die, he left behind a puzzle MacGuffin which, when assembled and correctly interpreted, gives the location of his secret hideaway. It's almost as if they introduced an unnecessary story element without any clear idea what purpose it was serving from the perspective of the characters! But of course they wouldn't do THAT...

P.P.S. Also I found the Power Ranger Foot Soldier fight in Snoke's throne room hilarious. "Now let's everyone take turns dying to the good guys. Be careful never to actually use your weapons to strike at a good guy who isn't ready for your attack. Oh, time for some grunting and grappling! Nobody else interfere until we're done fighting for control of this lightsaber!"

And don't think I overlooked the way Snoke wasted time gloating megalomaniacally about how "I cannot be betrayed.... I know EVERYTHING, bwahahahaha!" in order to deflect attention from the fact that betrayal between masters and apprentices is old hat in Star Wars. Palpatine betraying Dooku; Vader asking Luke to help him overthrow the Emperor; Palpatine tempting Luke to strike down (damaged, imperfect) Vader and become the new, more powerful Sith apprentice (Sith Lords, like certain Star Wars/comic book fans and the writers of The Last Power Ranger, are obsessed with "power" and who is more powerful than whom), Vader ACTUALLY betraying Palpatine and throwing him down a shaft, etc.

Or the way Snoke fetishizes Vader (who was a failure BTW, from Palpatine's perspective), or the strange way everyone fetishizes Luke Skywalker when there's a thousand generations of OTHER Jedi they should theoretically be aware of, not that anyone besides the Jedi themselves ever had any real reason to care about famous Jedi before this movie (notice how in Star Wars Episode IV, Vader gets mocked by the Imperial officers as a vestige of a dead religion).

There's so much to say.

P.P.P.S. Jake Skywalker's reaction to Rey's negligent discharge (as she claims) is pretty funny too. He's just like, "Oh, whatever." It shows that whoever wrote that script has no knowledge of weapons whatsoever.

Imagine that one of your friends accidentally melts the glass out of their car window. You ask them, "What happened?" and they say, "Oh, I washed the car and the window accidentally melted," and instead of asking, "How in the world were you washing this car such that MELTING THE WINDOW is something that can possibly happen?!?" you're like, "Oh, okay, whatever."

That's what it's like when Jake Skywalker casually accepts Rey's "I was cleaning my blaster and it went off and blasted a hole in the wall" story.

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Mammoth extinctions

I looked into the North American mammoth thing, wondering how we know that mammoths were in Alaska up until 5600 B.C. Turns out it's not from fossil evidence--it's from DNA sampling of permafrost. Ergo, if there were no permafrost, we wouldn't know the mammoths existed. (Actually, if we had missed that one core, we wouldn't know mammoths existed.)

Again, the point here is that it's really hard to know ancient history, and there are a lot of true things that really happened which science will never know anything about.

-Max

from https://www.livescience.com/9771-mammoths-alive-thought.html

Woolly mammoths and other large beasts in North America may not have gone extinct as long ago as previously thought.

The new view — that pockets of beasts survived to as recently as 7,600 years ago, rather than the previous end times mark of 12,000 years ago — is supported by DNA evidence found in a few pinches of dirt.

After plucking ancient DNA from frozen soil in central Alaska, researchers uncovered "genetic fossils" of both mammoths and horses locked in permafrost samples dated to between 10,500 and 7,600 years ago.

"We don't know how long it takes to pinch out a species," said Ross MacPhee, Curator of Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History. "Extinctions often seem dramatic and sudden in fossil records, but our study provides an idea of what an extinction event might look like in real time, with imperiled species surviving in smaller and smaller numbers until eventually disappearing completely."

At the end of the Pleistocene, the geological epoch roughly spanning 2.5 million years ago to 12,000 years ago, many of the world's megafauna — giant sloths, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, stag-moose, and mammoths — vanished from the geological record. Some large species such as Equus caballus, the species from which the domestic horse derives, became extinct in North America but persisted in small populations elsewhere.

Scientists have blamed the extinctions on everything from human overhunting to a comet impact to the introduction of novel infectious diseases.

The swiftness of the extinctions, however, is not suggested directly by the fossils themselves but is inferred from radiocarbon dating of bones and teeth discovered on the surface or buried in the ground, the researchers involved in the new study point out. Current "macrofossil" evidence places the last-known mammoths and wild horses between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago.

But hard remains of animals are rarely preserved, difficult to find, and laborious to accurately date because of physical degradation, the scientists said in a statement today.

So MacPhee and colleagues decided to tackle the problem by dating the creatures through dirt. Frozen sediments from the far north of Siberia and Canada can preserve small fragments of animal and plant DNA exceptionally well, even in the complete absence of any visible organic remains, such as bone or wood.

"In principle, you can take a pinch of dirt collected under favorable circumstances and uncover an amazing amount of forensic evidence regarding what species were on the landscape at the time," said co-researcher Eske Willerslev, director of the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen.

The team collected soil cores from undisturbed Alaskan permafrost. Two independent methods (radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence) were used to date plant remains and individual mineral grains found in the same layers as the DNA.

"With these two techniques, we can be confident that the deposits from which the DNA was recovered haven't been contaminated since these lost giants last passed this way," said Richard Roberts of the University of Wollongong in Australia. "It's a genetic graveyard, frozen in time."

The core samples revealed the local Alaskan fauna at the end of the last Ice Age. The oldest sediments, dated to about 11,000 years ago, contain remnant DNA of Arctic hare, bison, and moose; all three animals were also found in higher, more recent layers, as would be expected. But one core, deposited between 10,500 and 7,600 years ago, confirmed the presence of both mammoth and horse DNA.

The team also developed a statistical model to show that mammoth and horse populations would have dwindled to a few hundred individuals by 8,000 years ago.

"At this point, mammoths and horses were barely holding on. We may actually be working with the DNA of some of the last members of these species in North America," said team member Duane Froese of the University of Alberta in Canada.

The findings are detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

--

If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Santa Clause (Yes, Virginia)

If my kids ever ask me about Santa, I will answer like this:

"Santa is real, but not in the way you think. 'Santa' is a guise-by-convention, a nom de guerre if you will, which we assume in order to do good without being named as individuals. There's no one living at the North Pole, but if anyone tries to tell you that there isn't any Santa Claus, they are mistaken."

100% true, and if they are old enough to understand the words they are old enough to understand the sentiment. Unlike with, say, the Easter Bunny, I'm sort of uncomfortable around people who tell kids there isn't any Santa Claus because it isn't really true. It's the truth but not the whole truth.

(Shout-out to Jim Butcher and Cold Days: it's a mantle!)

~B.C.

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Star Wars: the Last Jedi (trailer 2)

So, I finally watched the most recent DisneyWars trailer. I haven't read many of the Star Wars books (maybe ten of them tops) but I still feel like this movie is a story I've read several times before.

Just like with Kyp Durron in the Sun Crusher books, Rey's storyline appears to be using Luke Skywalker mostly as a prop to showcase how Kyp/Rey is "even MOAR powerful than Luke!" Obsession with power made sense for Darth Sidious the megalomaniac Sith (not that it did him much good in the end) and it made him do interesting things that furthered the story; but in a film franchise instead of a character in a film franchise, that obsession becomes rather unattractive. (And of course they already did the Sun Crusher equivalent in The Force Awakens with their little long-range Death Star successor.)

I'm willing to consider this new DisneyWars movie a Star Wars fan-fiction movie, but I won't dignify it with the label of Episode VIII. Whatever else George Lucas was as a writer and director, at least when it came to Star Wars he was never derivative. Lucas's Episode VIII might have had bad casting and bad dialogue; but it would have a good story and interesting ideas, and probably would have introduced you to new corners of a vast and exotic conceptual universe. The Last Jedi is just going to be a rehash of ideas that George Lucas already made at least one movie about.

I'll pass on this one.

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Rash vow #97

I, Maximilian Wilson, hereby vow that I will eat no sweetmeat, until I rendezvous with my true love, or discover that I have none. On my honor I swear it, as a sign to the heavens that all worldly hungers are but as air and nothing as long as Thou, my dearest and best friend, art absent.

Thursday, Sept 14, 2017.

5E encounter difficulty

[Historical context] Why "6 to 8 medium/hard encounters" meme is obsolete

The DMG, as well as the Basic Set, contains some self-contradictory guidance on adventuring days. There's a little section which reads:

Quoting http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/DMBasicRulesV05.pdf

The Adventuring Day

Assuming typical adventuring conditions and averageluck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.

In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress.

For each character in the party, use the Adventuring Day XP table to estimate how much XP that character is expected to earn in a day. Add together the values of all party members to get a total for the party's adventuring day. This provides a rough estimate of the adjusted XP value for encounters the party can handle before the characters will need to take a long rest.

*SNIP TABLE*

The thing is, the table that they give doesn't actually match the language in that first paragraph about "six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day." I think most people don't notice this, and even those who do notice it don't usually know why the discrepancy exists. I don't work for WotC, but I can explain the discrepancy by pointing to 5E's historical documents.

The "6-8" meme made sense before they revised the difficulty guidelines, back around Basic 0.2. Back then, the breakpoints were ceilings, not floors, so what today is an easy/medium encounter would have been a medium/hard encounter back then. If you do the math using those guidelines, you'll find that you actually can fit 6-8 encounters in.

Unfortunately, when they updated the difficulty guidelines and then printed them in the DMG, they did not update the accompanying text blurb saying that "most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day," even though they had changed the definition of "medium or hard encounter."

Concrete example: if you look at Basic 0.1 pages 56-58, there's a Hard encounter given as an example encounter between four PCs (three level 3, one level 2) and four hobgoblins. That consumes 800 out of the 4200 XP budget for the day (3*1200 + 600, per table on page 58), leaving 3400 XP left. If you distribute those 3400 XP evently between six other encounters for a total of seven encounters, that gives you one Hard encounter (hobgoblins, 800 XP) and six more barely-Hard encounters (whatever else, 566 XP). That's because a Medium encounter can be at most 550 XP (3*150 + 100) and a Hard encounter can be at most 825 XP (3 * 225 + 150), according to the table on page 56. So we see that "six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day" held, back then.

Quoting https://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/DMDnDBasicRules_v0.1.pdf

(Basic 0.1 page 57)

Example: Encounter Difficulty

You've designed an encounter for four player characters andwant to estimate how difficult it's going to be. Three of thefour players have 3rd-level characters and one has a characterat 2nd level (due to missing a session).First, note the XP values that define the four categoriesof difficulty. For each difficulty category on the EncounterDifficulty XP per Character table, you'll find the number fora 3rd-level character and multiply it by three (for the three3rd-level characters), then add the number for a 2nd-levelcharacter.

That gives you the following numbers:• Easy: up to 375 XP• Medium: up to 550 XP• Hard: up to 1,050 XP• Deadly: up to 1,400 XP

Now you look at the encounter you've designed, a fightwith four hobgoblins. Each hobgoblin has an XP value of100, so the total XP is 400. Since there are four hobgoblins,you double the XP value of the encounter; the encounter'sXP value, for the purposes of figuring out its difficulty, is800 XP. That makes this encounter tougher than a mediumencounter, but not higher than the hard threshold—so it's ahard encounter.

If you build a later encounter with four bugbears, withan XP value of 200 XP each, you'd end up with a total valueof 1,600 XP for the encounter. That number is above thethreshold of deadly encounters, meaning it's probably toohard for your characters to handle. If you adjust it down tothree bugbears, your total is 1,200 XP—still deadly, but atleast the adventurers have a fighting chance. Two bugbearsis probably a better encounter for this party: you multiply the base XP value of 400 by only 1.5 for a pair of monsters, giving you 600 XP—slightly easier than the hobgoblin fight.

Notice that Deadly is "up to 1400 XP" in contrast with today's "at least 1400 XP." Note also that back then there was such a thing as "Deadlier than Deadly" difficulty, which Kobold.com used to call "Ludicrous" difficulty.

Contrast that with today's DMG rules. (I'm AFB so I'll refer to Basic 0.5 instead here: http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/DMBasicRulesV05.pdf but they are the same rules.) Now the example Hard fight is of a bugbear and three hobgoblins against the same party of three level 3s and a level 2. Due to the addition of a bugbear, it's 1000 XP, which crosses the new Hard threshold of 825 XP. The adventuring day budget hasn't changed, so we've still got 4200 XP total to spend, and 3200 XP to split between six encounters. That gives us 533 XP per encounter, which according to the new difficulty table on page 56 means each encounter is Easy (just shy of the 550 XP threshold for Medium).

The upshot is that whereas Basic 0.1 would have given you seven Hard encounters in a day, Basic 0.5 or the rules printed in the DMG would give you one Hard and six Easy encounters. Both versions preface the "Adventuring Day" XP table on page 57 with a text blurb stating that "Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day", but that's a holdover from Basic 0.1. In 5E as the DMG actually published, that statement is no longer compatible with the table it's introducing.

In both cases, there never was any expectation that you have six to eight encounters a day. The expectation was that you don't exceed your adventuring day budget and accidentally TPK the party. 5E's design parameters are built to handle two or three hard/deadly encounters per day just as readily as six to eight easy/medium encounters.

IMO the game is at its best when the PCs are outnumbered and outgunned but not outthought; I like pitting e.g. four 9th level PCs are up against six CR 6 Chasmes and a couple of CR 17 Goristros. DMG guidelines tell me that that encounter is ludicrously difficult (124,500 XP when the Deadly threshold is 9600 XP) but my experience tells me it is about right for a couple of hours of fun. I'd love to be one of the PCs in that party, especially when they collect all the DMG-generated treasure associated with such monsters.

TL;DR 5E guidelines recommend a couple of deadly, a small number of medium-hard encounters or as many as six to eight easy-medium encounters in a day. If you do the math, they don't actually recommend six to eight medium/hard encounters per day. The reason people sometimes think otherwise is due to sloppy editing of the DMG and the Basic Rules, neglecting to update some fluff text when the rule guidelines were updated, somewhere around Basic 0.2. What used to be "hard" encounters back then are now "medium," so it's actually recommending six to eight easy/medium encounters per day or the equivalent in fewer, harder encounters.

--

If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Dust of thy feet

In regard to those who reject the Lord's messengers, Doctrine and Covenants section 60 reads in part, "And shake off the dust of thy feet against those who receive thee not, not in their presence, lest thou provoke them, but in secret; and wash thy feet, as a testimony against them in the day of judgment. Behold, this is sufficient for you, and the will of him who hath sent you." And again in section 74, "And in whatsoever house ye enter, and they receive you not, ye shall depart speedily from that house, and shake off the dust of your feet as a testimony against them.  And you shall be filled with joy and gladness..."

I had long been mildly puzzled by the "joy and gladness" part, especially with regard to the following verses which talk about judgment. But I recently had an experience--the details don't matter, but it was about being witness to an online community which is casting out its righteous and everyone who will not call good evil and evil good, which prompted me to leave that community--and the promptings of the Spirit to me in that experience clarify what the Lord was saying to these missionaries. That is, when you are unjustly persecuted, you will be tempted to contend. You will be tempted to point out all the ways they are being unfair, and how hypocritical they are being, and to argue and contend and maybe even call names in your frustration. But just as Jesus spoke not a word to certain of his tormentors, you should not argue with those who cannot hear. Shake off the dust and move on, rejoicing--rejoicing not because of the fate that awaits them, but rejoicing because the Lord Jesus Christ has saved you from your sins and your life is good and filled with good people and good things to do. "Depart speedily" from the wicked instead of dwelling on the way they once behaved in your presence.

When the Lord showed Enoch a vision of the wickedness of his brethren and the fate which (a thousand years later) awaited those who would not repent in the time of Noah, "[Enoch]  had bitterness of soul, and wept over his brethren, and said unto the heavens: I will refuse to be comforted; but the Lord said unto Enoch: Lift up your heart, and be glad; and look."

Now I understand that scripture. Peace, be still.

~B.C.


--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Weak magic items for 5E

This resource is amazing: http://www.lordbyng.net/inspiration/. I'm definitely going to include some of these items in my game.

For example:

Scarlet Blade of Shade

Weapon (Shortsword), uncommon (requires attunement)

This weapon perpetually drips the blood of a monstrous race, chosen by the DM. The bearer can speak that race's language and has advantage on intimidation checks against monsters of that race when the weapon is revealed.

The bearer suffers no harm or discomfort in temperatures as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

--

If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."