Cheap Turpentine

I've been reading a lot about discovery and the art of design. Here are two quotes that I particularly like:

 

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea." - Francis Bacon

 

This invites the question, "But isn't that the road to self-delusion?" Not necessarily. You may have reasons to believe there is something there which don't involve having actually seen land. You may have seen seagulls in the distance, or you may have analyzed the ocean currents and things that drift through them, or you may, like Christopher Columbus, have calculated the circumference of the earth relative to Marco Polo's reports on the size of Asia. That's where faith comes from, actually, before it becomes a perfect knowledge: evidence that you comprehend and believe, but imperfectly. You may even have no evidence that you can articulate, but curiosity or a feeling that there must be land out there closeby--this is more like hope than faith, but it still can lead to discoveries. (You just have to be prudent about pursuing such hopes full-time because they don't always pan out.)

 

When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine. - Pablo Picasso

This doesn't really need comment, does it? Sometimes theory is no substitute for practice, which yields experience and hones intuition. Plus I just think it's a funny quote.

 

-Max

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Sketch-a-Move toy car

This video is discussed by one of my textbooks on design as a great example of how "sketches" of concepts can help you decide what to build, even if you don't have the technology to actually build the thing yet. It's a lot better than investing $100 million in a technology and then finding that it isn't any fun to use.

Plus, wouldn't it be cool if toy cars DID work like this?

http://www.vimeo.com/5125096

-Max

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Temptation tax

Some thoughts from Edge.org on the psychology of temptation. Has implications for anyone trying to build wealth. Even has some implications for getting in shape or improving your education: you need to find a way to avoid frittering away your gains on your own personal "temptation tax." Not only will this help you make progress, but knowing that you will keep your gains improves your motivation to get started saving/exercising/whatever in the first place.

When you're very poor, you have very little income to spend on anything other than food. There's very little spending on temptation goods. At some point you might start to spend more on these temptations. You can start to eat dosas, doughnuts, lots of things that you might not value so much, but they're around you when you have cash and you buy them. And of course because of the regressivity, that flattens out. Once you're over here, you can now spend on things like education, etcetera. So, we've got an S-shaped curve: very low spending on temptation goods at deep poverty, but an increasing amount as income increases and then it flattens out as you get wealthier.

If you have somebody like this, notice that being here is very good. Being [at the top] is very good. But moving from [along the middle of the curve] is ultimately pointless—it looks like your income has doubled, but so much of that extra discretionary income is being spent on wasted things, on things that you don't think are that important. [emphasis added]

The key thing is to find a way not to waste the gain on things you don't care about.

-Max

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Article: Can A Biologist Fix A Radio?

J. & T.,

You might enjoy this short article by a microbiologist on the difficulties involved in making scientific progress in understanding complex phenomena like apoptosis--or a radio. It's quite readable, takes maybe ten minutes to finish.

Can A Biologist Fix A Radio?

[snip] How would we begin? First, we would secure funds to obtain a large supply of identical functioning radios in order to dissect and compare them to the one that is broken. We would eventually find how to open the radios and will find objects of various shape, color, and size (Fig. 2, see color insert). We would describe and classify them into families according to their appearance. We would describe a family of square metal objects, a family of round brightly colored objects with two legs, round-shaped objects with three legs and so on. Because the objects would vary in color, we will investigate whether changing the colors affects the radio's performance. Although changing the colors would have only attenuating effects (the music is still playing but a trained ear of some people can discern some distortion), this approach will produce many publications and result in a lively debate.

A more successful approach will be to remove components one at a time or to use a variation of the method, in which a radio is shot at a close range with metal particles. In the latter case, radios that malfunction (have a "phenotype") are selected to identify the component whose damage causes the phenotype. Although removing some components will have only an attenuating effect, a lucky postdoc will accidentally find a wire whose deficiency will stop the music completely. The jubilant fellow will name the wire Serendipitously Recovered Component (SRC) and then find that SRC is required because it is the only link between a long extendable object and the rest of the radio. The object will be appropriately named the Most Important Component (MIC) of the radio. A series of studies will definitively establish that MIC should be made of metal and the longer the object is the better, which would provide an evolutionary explanation for the finding that the object is extendable. [snip]

-M.

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Theory and practice

Jenny,

You might find this article interesting. It's on commercializing a research tool for static analysis of software, and the surprising differences between academic requirements and commercial requirements. The article took me around a half-hour, and the whole thing was worth reading.

-Max

This is the research context. We now describe the commercial context. Our rough view of the technical challenges of commercialization was that given that the tool would regularly handle "large amounts" of "real" code, we needed only a pretty box; the rest was a business issue. This view was naïve. While we include many examples of unexpected obstacles here, they devolve mainly from consequences of two main dynamics:

First, in the research lab a few people check a few code bases; in reality many check many. The problems that show up when thousands of programmers use a tool to check hundreds (or even thousands) of code bases do not show up when you and your co-authors check only a few. The result of summing many independent random variables? A Gaussian distribution, most of it not on the points you saw and adapted to in the lab. Furthermore, Gaussian distributions have tails. As the number of samples grows, so, too, does the absolute number of points several standard deviations from the mean. The unusual starts to occur with increasing frequency.

For code, these features include problematic idioms, the types of false positives encountered, the distance of a dialect from a language standard, and the way the build works. For developers, variations appear in raw ability, knowledge, the amount they care about bugs, false positives, and the types of both. A given company won't deviate in all these features but, given the number of features to choose from, often includes at least one weird oddity. Weird is not good. Tools want expected. Expected you can tune a tool to handle; surprise interacts badly with tuning assumptions.

Second, in the lab the user's values, knowledge, and incentives are those of the tool builder, since the user and the builder are the same person. Deployment leads to severe fission; users often have little understanding of the tool and little interest in helping develop it (for reasons ranging from simple skepticism to perverse reward incentives) and typically label any error message they find confusing as false. A tool that works well under these constraints looks very different from one tool builders design for themselves.

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

The Parable of Bob and the Bill

[letter excerpts]

Posit: Day-old bread is better than nothing. Posit: Nothing is better than chocolate. Conclusion: Day-old bread is better than chocolate.

Once there was a man named Bob who attended a charity auction. The auctioneer explained that this was a pay-as-you-bid auction, like poker: you pay as you bid, and if you lose you don't get your money back. "That's dumb," thought Bob, "but I guess if it's for charity…" Then the auctioneer unveiled the item up for bid—a twenty-dollar bill. Bob, who considered himself a very rational person, looked around the room at the other thirty-odd people and thought, "If I bid and lose, I lose everything. If I win, I get twenty dollars. I have a one in thirty chance of winning twenty dollars, so the bid is worth $(1/30 * 20) = 67 cents to me." He immediately bid a quarter, hoping to make a profit, and put his quarter out in front of him.

Another bidder bid fifty cents, and someone else bid seventy-five cents. "Going once," said the auctioneer. Bob frowned in thought. "Odd. There's only three of us bidding. That raises my expected value to $6.67, so I can afford to bid a dollar rationally." The other bidders, after some hesitation, matched his bid and soon the price was at $5. Bob shook his head, "Let's end this," and bid $6.67. Further bidding would be irrational. Bob would pocket the $20, and they could all go home.

The third bidder immediately bid $10. "Oops," said Bob, now seeing the flaw in his reasoning. "No matter what the odds are, the payoff for winning is $20, not $6.67, so of course other people will bid above $6.67. My profit is the difference between my winning bid and $20, not between my winning bid and $6.67." So he bid $15, hoping for a 33% profit on his investment. Bidder #2 bid $17, and bidder #3 bid $18. Grumbling, Bob bid $19.99. Bidder #3 sat down abruptly. Bidder #2 hesitated again, then bid $21.

Bob couldn't believe it. "Who would bid $21 for a $20 bill?" he said to himself. Then with a sudden sick shock he got it. "No," he said, "bidder #2 already bid $17. If he loses, he lost $17. If he wins at $21, he lost only $1. Clearly it is rational to bid again to reduce his losses." And with the same sick certainty, Bob knew the same logic applied to himself. Bob bid: $25. Response: $28. "Again," thought Bob, "I have the choice between losing everything, only it's $25 instead of $19.99 this time, or paying $4 for a 50% chance at winning the $20. 50% of $20 is $10, and $4 is less than $10 so clearly the only rational action is to invest another $4." Bob bid $29, hopelessly, while the rest of the audience watched in fascination. This could have gone on for quite a long time but Bob's wife hit him with her purse and told him to stop being a nit. Bidder #2 won at $30. The auctioneer thanked them all, gave $20 to bidder #2, and put their combined bids ($18 + $29 + $30 = $77) in the charity cashbox. Everyone applauded and Bob went to lie down.

Last story for today: my dad went to med school in Louisiana when I was one or two years old. Some of my earliest memories are of Louisiana and Tulane University—going for stroller rides with my mom, playing in the pool, etc. I'm not sure but I think I might even remember the flood that buried the streets in over a foot of water. (Then again, I might be getting it mixed up with the floods from my mission, which I definitely remember, including what it did to our basement rooms: it was like an indoor swimming pool, which is bad news for missionaries. Or an indoor baptismal font, which is good news I suppose.) In particular I remember a large room, which must have been at Tulane, and one wall of the room was covered with transparent glass cubes or jars, stacked one on top of the other. In each jar was yellow liquid, and in the liquid floated a dead baby. I remember two babies in particular. One had a big corkscrew of a belly button that seemed several inches long and reminded me of a screw. The other baby had two heads. I thought that was quite interesting. I don't remember if this was before or after I saw the two-headed snake at the Santa Ana zoo, which was interesting because it was alive, but I think the baby was even more interesting because it was human and had arms and legs and stuff, which snakes do not. Anyway, I don't remember feeling scared at all but I wasn't sure why the liquid was yellow and I think I drew the obvious conclusion for a two-year-old at that—especially a two-year-old familiar with swimming pools and babies—and perhaps that did disturb me a little.

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Rare earth technologies

According to the article, many new technologies are reliant upon rare earth elements, of which China controls 97% of the world's supply. I'm not sure what the implications are.

As Deng Xiao Ping presciently commented, at a time when electric cars and wind power seemed like ecotopian wet dreams: "Arabia has oil, China has rare earth".

-Max

--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Science is

Science, in its purest sense, is as much an individual activity as religion. Science means reasoning by means of repeatable, testable hypotheses: science is what you can put in a letter and mail to another scientist and have him verify. Asking a paleontologist if dinosaurs were warm-blooded is not science; studying the papers and the fossils and then forming (and checking) your own opinion is science.

-Max

--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

WMDs

I'm not allowed to discuss politics until 2010, but you should read this:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/12/09/is_climategate_the_new_downing_street_memo_99468.html

I will note parenthetically that I was completedly fooled on Iraq, but had I listened to Greg Cochran's views here (http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail227.html) I would have been a lot closer to correct, which is a large part of the reason I'm skeptical of Iran as a threat and trying to be appropriately skeptical of Afghanistan.

The really great thing about Cochran is he's quantitative, cogent, and fact-based. You can disagree with his priorities but you should always hear out people like this.

-Max

P.S. I didn't see this article at the time, but even though the surge in Iraq worked, should we have done it? Cochran discussed an alternative at the time. http://amconmag.com/article/2007/sep/24/00006/

--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Why Object Oriented Languages Need Tail Calls

According to this argument, object oriented languages that don't require tail call optimization from their compiler(s) don't preserve object-oriented abstractions. I'm not 100% sure I buy the argument, since even if you do tail-call optimizations there are ways to implement the example in such a way that it runs out of stack space anyway--but perhaps his argument is that there's no correct way to implement the example (in the OO paradigm) without tail call optimizations. If that's the argument then I need to think about it some more.

-Max

--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Public speaking

Tips on public speaking from Scott Berkun, who presented at work here recently:

 

1. Don't be afraid of the crowd. If necessary, arrive early, acclimate to the room, exercise beforehand. Amygdala.

2. Don't make it look like it's your first time ("nervous surgeon syndrome"). Practice slides, pitches, video manipulation, etc., beforehand until it feels good.

3. Keep a rhythm. ("Turtle on crack") Let people know how long each segment is supposed to take, be consistent. Attention span: 5-10 minutes. "I've got six pieces, five minutes each." May also be useful to give people an outline to follow in case they drift off for a minute.

4. Keep an interesting angle on things. Make it interesting to yourself at minimum. Also study the audience, talk to the audience beforehand about past experiences.

5. Avoid obfuscation of rhetoric: watch your tendency to use big, obscure words to win arguments (because people won't ask what things mean in an argument). Be clear, bring people along. Don't use language to defend yourself from questions. Do not be afraid of questions! (Side note, trying to make arguments strong: there's a difference between the point you want to make, and the arguments you use to support the points. Points must be clear, arguments can be clarified reactively.)

6. Slides serve what you are saying. Huge bulleted lists are often an indication that you have not practiced this, and are planning to use slides as notes. (Back to the audience, feel obligated to cover every point on the slides, etc.) Makes too many demands on visual bandwidth (information density--speaker doesn't know what the point is). Goal of a slide should be to support your points. If you need density, write a report, make a web site, whatever--but don't do a presentation. The acceptable level of density depends upon the presentation goal and the audience--if you're presenting code programming tips it may be okay to have more density than if you're giving tips on dating. When in doubt, rip it out.

 

-Max

 

--

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

Metacognition

I had to dig this up recently:

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Leads To Inflated Self-Assessments

It turns out that the very thing which prevents you from being good at certain intellectual or social tasks also prevents you from recognizing that you're not any good at it. Fairly poignant stuff if you look at it from a certain perspective, since there may be things you think you do well (sense of humor?) which you're worse at than almost anybody without even realizing it. On the other hand, it may also explain why we we're so hard on ourselves on at stuff we're good at.

-Max

--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Two-year-old reciting Gettysburg address

Subject: Two-year-old reciting Gettysburg address

Dr. P_____,

If you have two and a half minutes, you will get a kick out of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvlsco7ux4g&feature=related

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Archaeology

[From Chaos Manor. May be of indirect interest to amateur Book of Mormon archaelogical enthusiasts. -Max]

'A wind arose from the south, strong and deadly, bringing with it vast columns of whirling sand, which entirely covered up the troops and caused them wholly to disappear.'

The supposedly unreliable Herodotus is vindicated yet again:

<http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/
cambyses-army-remains-sahara.html>

-- Roland Dobbins

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Religion from a functional perspective

"Stealth religions": interesting essay on objectivism, atheism, and other non-standard "religions" from a well-defined functional perspective.

http://scienceblogs.com/evolution/2009/10/atheism_as_a_stealth_religion.php

The main purpose of a religion or a stealth religion, however, is not to describe the real world but to motivate a given suite of behaviors. One way to do this is by creating a stylized world without tradeoffs, in which the prescribed behaviors are portrayed as good, good, good for everyone and the prohibited behaviors are portrayed as bad, bad, bad for everyone. Behaviors with mixed effects are absent from the stylized world because they do not clearly tell the believer what to do.

This might be a good working definition for the work of a "false prophet" (see Matthew 24:11).

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Cleanshaven Lincoln: true story

Hey you three,

 

Did you know Lincoln was cleanshaven most of his life? He grew out his beard only in 1860, on the advice of an eleven-year-old girl who said she could get her two brothers to vote for him if he would grow out some "whiskers."

 

 

 

Full story at http://home.att.net/~rjnorton/Lincoln50.html.

 

-Max

 

--

Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

 

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

High Taxes: a California vs. Texas case study

California ranks 4th in terms of total revenues (including federal subsidies) and Texas ranks 44th. What does California get for all this money? Comparison of public spending in Texas vs. California here:

 

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_california.html

 

-Max

 

--

Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

 

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

 

Sherman

William T. Sherman is a personal hero of mine, a kindred spirit and a modern-day Moroni. Here are some of my favorite quotes.

 

-Max

 

=====================================

 

If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place. I know thousands and millions of good people who at simple notice would come to North Alabama and accept the elegant houses and plantations there. If the people of Huntsville think different, let them persist in war three years longer, and then they will not be consulted. Three years ago by a little reflection and patience they could have had a hundred years of peace and prosperity, but they preferred war; very well. Last year they could have saved their slaves, but now it is too late.

 

All the powers of earth cannot restore to them their slaves, any more than their dead grandfathers. Next year their lands will be taken, for in war we can take them, and rightfully, too, and in another year they may beg in vain for their lives. A people who will persevere in war beyond a certain limit ought to know the consequences.

 

-Letter to Major Sawyer, Jan 31, 1864

 

Hold the fort! I am coming!  

 

-Signal to Gen. Corse, Oct 5 1864

 

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war. The United States does and must assert its authority, wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes one bit to pressure, it is gone, and I believe that such is the national feeling.

 

-Letter to City Council of Atlanta, Sept 12, 1864

 

Boys, I've been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It's entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here.

 

Suppress it! You don't know the horrible aspects of war. I've been through two wars and I know. I've seen cities and homes in ashes. I've seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is hell!

 

-Speech to cadets at Michigan Military Academy, 1879

 

--

Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

 

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

 

Conference notes from Sunday

[Priesthood notes not included since I don't have them with me.]

Sunday morning.

Sister Ann M. Dibb: (Collapsed bridge story) Get a grip, hold to the rod.

Elder Nelson: communication w/ heaven, conversion, discernment. Revelation facilitated by proper reverence for Deity. May be incremental, those who heed are given more line upon line.

Pres. Monson: Dr. Jack McConnell's father, every day at dinner, "And what did you do for someone today?" He who loses his life for my sake shall find it. Kindness. Ideal gift, "Find someone who is having a hard time, or is ill, or lonely, and do something for them." Received dozens of cards recording service rendered.

Sunday evening.

Elder Holland. Protection against personal calamity, vs. the mist of darkness. Hold to the rod. Mist of darkness descends on ALL, successful travellers resist all distractions. Divinity of the Book of Mormon. Joseph & Hyrum, Ether 12, "Thou shalt be made strong even unto the sitting down in the place which has been prepared for you in the mansions of my Father." Apostolic witness of the divinity of the book and the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith. Great-grandfather: "No wicked man could write such a book as this, and no good man would write it, unless he were commanded of God to do so." Like Christ himself, it is a stone of stumbling, a rock of offense, a barrier in the path of those who wish to disbelieve this work.

Elder Cook. Stewardships, we believe we are our brother's keeper. Story: Jewish visitors to temple square & welfare square. "Obedience to the unenforceable." Faithful stewardship exercises righteous dominion, looks to his own, cares for the poor and needy. Story: clear spring at grandfather's ranch, when not protected eventually became polluted. Was then returned to original purity and beauty. Rationalization: "The ship must sail. You can't explain to the ocean." "What happens in Vegas" vs. "What happens in Severe County, you can share with your friends." Provide family with physical security and spiritual nourishment. From abundance, impart portion unto the poor and needy. Story: as new bishop, "some will respond to every suggestion, even at great sacrifice." (Sarah on top of a ladder, at age 80, cleaning out neighbor's raingutters.) Be prudent, but also diligent.

Elder Brent H. Nielson. To rising generation: go ye therefore, and teach all nations, every young man prepare to serve an honorable mission. Story: Finnland (Vipori/Freiburg, praying to open the Soviet Union for the gospel, fulfilled unknowingly by son 32 years later). Jacob 5, "[labor because] this is the last time that I will prune my vineyard."

Elder [not sure]. Heart transplants, need constant attention lest rejection occur. Tendency of the natural man is to reject the changed heart and allow it to harden. Ammonites, "as many as were converted... never did fall away." How? Zeal towards God and men, perfectly upright and honest, held covenants sacred. Story: purposefully late home to skip church for a nap. Discovered he had become casual about prayers and scriptures because of schedule, heart had begun to change back to stone. Do not risk forfeiting the fruits of the ultimate operation.

Elder Michael T. Ringwood. Story, grandfather Ephraim K. Hanks heard that his brother had gone off with the Mormons, went off to retrieve him, ended up getting baptized. Lamoni's father, soft heart that that was willing to change, willing to give up both sins and kingdom. Self-reflection will times when we found it easier to believe the word of God, perhaps especially childhood. Sometimes we are like Naaman, "some great thing." Easiness and willingness to believe, soft hearts, will come from obedience to simple things.

Elder Joseph W. Sitati. Marvelous work. Last dispensation, keys of revelation, no respecter of persons. Dispensations: Enoch, Noah, Babel, Brother of Jared, Nephites, Abraham, lesser covenant under Moses, the Savior's ministry, mission to the Gentiles, last dispensation. Elder Sitati has lived to see the fulfillment of the prophecy of Xenos, all nations partaking of the gospel. Blessings he has seen at home in Africa--celestial culture is developing in homes. Able to break free from the shackles that restrict the use of agency. Singled out dowry as a specific example of one shackle.

Elder Christofferson. Story, James E. Faust in OCS. Does not battle justify relaxed standards? "In the end I simply said, 'I do not believe there is a double standard of morality.'" "This was one of the critical crossroads of my life." Moral agency must be accompanied by moral discipline, self-discipline based on moral standards. To choose the right when it is right, even when it is hard. Society: because there is no discipline, must be imposed by external control. Once gentlemanly behavior protected women from coarse behavior, now we rely on sexual harrassment laws. Recession, partly because of widespread dishonest and unethical conduct. There can never be enough rules so finely crafted as to anticipate and cover every situation, and even if there were enforcement would be impossibly expensive and burdensome. This approach leads to diminished freedom for everyone. We would not accept the yoke of Christ, so now we must tremble at the yoke of Caesar. Moral discipline. We stand with those who demonstrate virtue in their own lives and inculcate virtue in the rising generation. Teaching children: "'Then they will have gained a strength from what they are, not merely from what they know.'" Intelligent use of agency requires knowledge of the truth, knowledge of things as they really are. Satan does not promote objectivity, but is a vigorous multi- media advocate of sin. Story: candy bar. "My mother's love and discipline put an early and abrupt end to my life of crime." We do not have to yield simply because a temptation surfaces. "'Don't you want to?' The question intrigued me because it was so utterly beside the point. Mere wanting... [missed the rest of the quotation]" We cannot presume that the future will resemble the past--politically, economically, etc.--but moral discipline will be immense help to us, whatever challenges may come.

Pres. Monson. Time of permissiveness, we often find ourselves swimming against the current. Ye cannot cross this great deep, save I prepare you against the waves of the sea... and the floods which shall come. If we heed his words we will survive this time of permissiveness. He is ever mindful of us and will bless us as we do what is right. We are all in this together and every man, woman, and child has a part to play.

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

A privilege that could not be denied her

[Cc'ing Brother L______ in case I have your address wrong]

Sister L______,

Here is the quote I was thinking of. I couldn't find a copy of Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith so I couldn't verify whether it's in that book, but I found it in another source.

"He [Joseph Smith] also said many would awake on the morning of the resurrection sadly disappointed; for they, by transgression, would have neither wives nor children, for they surely would be taken from them and given to those who should prove themselves worthy. Again he said, a woman would have her choice; this was a privilege that could not be denied her." (Lucy Walker Kimball, as quoted in They Knew The Prophet, p. 136.)

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a
man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and
desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although
he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F.
Smith (manual, p. 69)