Book Math and Some Macs

While I was walking home from campus yesterday, I was thinking about my reading habits, namely, how long it takes me to pick up a book and once I have it how long it takes me to finish it. Without further ado, I present to you some really ridiculously made up math. (Rachel would cry.)

T(x) is a function where x represents time and T represents my relative progress in the book. Thus, the x intercept of T(x) is the point where I first pick up the book.
T(x)=I/(10N)(x-R)^3-b-t
I=general interest in the book. For Harry Potter books, I approaches infinity. :D
N=number of books currently reading. I hate starting a new book when I am in the middle of other books. Right now, I think I am at a record high of 5 books. I prefer reading books one at a time rather than in packs.
R=recommendation index of person recommending book = I(1)E(1)^2+I(2)E(2)^2+...+I(i)E(i)^2-abs(D)
I(i)=interest level of past books recommended
E(i)=actual enjoyment of past books recommended
D=perceived relative intelligence of recommender (In abs() because I tend to resent recommendations from people who I perceive as superior and ignore recommendations from people less intelligent. Sad that this is a factor, but it's true. However, the importance of this factor diminishes as we add books to the equation. :D)
b=stress factor=m+s
m=messiness of apartment
s=school work load
t=time it takes me to get to the local library or bookstore

It almost works, if I could figure out some realistic units.

*headdesk* I am such a geek.

If only to prove the point, I now present my collection of Mac switch ad parodies. I have no idea why I like these so much, but they are hillarious. For your own safety, do not drink any milk while watching the following videos.
The Original Ad
Editting Switch - Language Warning
Han Solo
Mac Gamer?
Oh! Baby Mac
Productivity?

Bonus for anyone who has ever used Flash.

I have my reasons...

Yesterday at the Writing Center, I was talking with Jon about my blog, and he asked me if I write what I write "to criticize or to be criticized"--meaning a review of life or a creative work, I suppose. That caused me to think for a while about what this blog really is, thus far.

I guess the main purpose is to keep me writing. Daily practice makes any skill better, and writing is no exception. (Neither is chemistry, if you ask Dr. Shirts.) The exercise of condensing my thoughts into (semi-)coherent paragraphs with structure is like lifting weights for my writing brain.

From this purpose springs a secondary one: I use this blog to get my thoughts out of my head. I have a habit of having great epiphanies and never writing them down. As a result, my brain becomes so clogged with trying to remember the things that it knows that I don't have anymore space to write something new. Writing these ideas down is a way of saving them to permanent memory, freeing up 'brain-RAM' to work on expanding these ideas with further connections and thoughts.

Writing also allows me to clear up in my head what my position is. Take my as-yet-unfinished trilogy of posts on homosexuality. My main purpose in writing it was to clarify to myself exactly why I believe what I believe. (Which is probably why parts 2 and 3 haven't been written. Merely planning them clarified my position in my head, which sort of used up my motivation for writing them.)

I guess that doesn't really answer the question. To criticize or be criticized? Hmm. Can't I have both? Really, I have no desire to separate my thoughts on the world from my creative writing. There's no reason that a work shouldn't be both critical and creative.

Reading Material

If you know my reading habits at all, you know that I pratically worship Orson Scott Card. He's a very clear yet eloquent writer with excellent insights into people, religion, politics, and life in general. In addition, he is a great role model for how to balance the conflicting roles of creator, critic, and disciple of Christ.

He writes two columns/essays for a local paper which usually appear on his website within a few weeks. The political column, World Watch, always has a great twist, and never follows the right/left party lines you might expect. He defends truth and logic, which ever party has them, and his results will suprise you. His recent essay on illegal immigration, "What Is This Crime Anyway?", has caused me to seriously reconsider my own position on the topic.

The other column, Uncle Orson Reviews Everything, is slightly uneven, both in quality and content. The staple of the column is movie reviews, which sometimes go a little far in their sensitivity about Hollywood's treatment of political issues (see the review of Mona Lisa Smile near the bottom). Book reviews show up frequently, along with food and restaurant reviews, as well as criticism of the local government. But my favorite parts of this column are his criticisms of people in general. For example:

What, exactly, does it mean when someone says, "My, but you're opinionated." Or "Well, we aren't opinionated, are we?"

What does it mean to be opinionated? Well, presumably, it means that you have opinions and you say them.

But if to be opinionated is something to be discouraged (and the word is always used disparagingly), what is the virtuous alternative? To have no opinions? Or perhaps merely to refrain from saying them?

I believe that "opinionated" is used precisely the way that "judgmental" is used -- in an attempt to make someone embarrassed to state their views, thereby silencing them without having to resort to actually answering any of their views or offering contrary evidence or reasoning. (emphasis in original)

Just amazing, and so true. Reminds me of the old comment Ali made during the "Soul Force" mini-blog-war-thing.

Speaking of reading material, today the Leaky Cauldron posted this interesting study which quantifies the effect Harry Potter is having on reading in children. According to the study (neglecting possible bias, since it is published by Scholastic), over 60% of children age 9-11 and 12-14 have read Harry Potter. Holy cow. And 63% of boys didn't read for fun until they read HP. Talk about influence! It makes me yearn to ever have that sort of audience with my words.

Maybe I'm just power hungry, and that's the real reason I'm an English major.

Top Four Rules of Social Ettiquette

. . . in other words, people who break these rules irritate me. This was going to be a top ten list, but then I realized there aren't that many things that really irritate me. This is probably a good thing.

1. Never open with "Are you busy?" when asking for a favor or date. This rule is not nearly well known enough, and whenever I am confronted by it, I just want to scream. When you begin this way, the person is left with no graceful way to back out of your request. I mean, ideally, we would always help others out and accept every date we're asked on, but there are some very valid reasons to reject either one. And, since you've already determined they aren't busy, the only other way to reject your offer is to tell you that they don't want to go out with you or help you. So unless you are trying to find out if the other person really doesn't like you, leave the back gate open by mentioning the activity first and the time later.

2. Open doors for women, but not just because they told you to. There is a certain spirit of door opening that has been lost due to the masses of males attempting to follow the letter of the door-opening law (especially in the BYU environment). The reason men are supposed to open doors for women is not because we are too delicate/weak to open them ourselves, but to show thoughtfulness and to make the evening (or morning, or afternoon) flow more easily for the woman. In essence, you are trying to keep her mind off of such mundane things as opening doors and more on you. Thus, if you insist on opening doors, do it like a butler--that is, before she realizes that you are doing it. Be there before she goes to reach for the door handle. If a woman has to wait while you amble around the car and open her door what seems like an eternity later, she's thinking more about this whole door opening thing than she is about you. If you can't get there fast enough, just let her open the door, and be more aware next time.

3. If your cell phone rings while you are with company, answer it but get off as soon as possible. Nothing is more irritating to the real people sitting next to you than being pushed aside for some immaterial voice. If they have any manners (or curiousity), it will be fairly difficult to continue with normal conversation whilst you gab away. And text messaging counts, people. Treat it exactly as you would if someone knocked on your door while you were at home with some friends. Answer the call, and let your caller know exactly where you are and what you are doing. If the call demands urgent attention, explain the situation to your company and excuse yourself. If not, ask the person to either come join the group in person or call back later.

4. If you are unsure of someone's name, ask it before you start talking. This is the only one of these rules I admit to being fairly terrible at. Case in point: one time at a ward activity, I was chatting to some guy who I happened to be next to in the line for refreshments. We kept talking and a little while later he asked me to go see a movie with him. Being new in the ward, I had no idea what the guy's name was and was thoroughly embarassed to have to look him up in the ward directory later. However much awkwardness it causes, always make sure of the person's name as soon as possible in a conversation. It will save you an infinitely greater amount of awkwardness later.

Depression and iPods

One good reason for me to keep blogging every day is that when I skip a day, I suddenly find I have a million things to post about. Argh.

Let's put the most serious topic first: Tuesday's forum on religion, being LDS, and mental health. This is a topic very close to my heart, considering I have several family members battling depression and various other mental problems. The problem with this topic is trying to come to one conclusion as to what a mental illness is and what causes it. Different people draw the line between normal sadness and depression at different places. As for causes, the suggestions vary widely between personal sin, social problems, chemical imbalances, and heredity.

I am often quite shocked when discussing this topic with other people, especially within the LDS community. There are some pretty harsh and unfair conceptions of depression out in the church. For instance, yesterday at work, someone tried to convince me that there were no medical causes of depression and that it was simply the result of our society's unrealistic expectations of happiness. He seemed to think that medicating depression was ridiculous and that all these people needed was some good counciling to set them right. Let's make this perfectly clear: I am not a fan of our medicate-it-and-forget-it culture. I personally believe many drugs are overprescribed, and I avoid using even painkillers unless absolutely necessary since overuse creates tolerance.

However, as I have watched some close family struggle with depression, ADD, anxiety, and other diseases, I have seen the huge difference medication can make. Contrary to popular belief, depression medication is not something that makes the person feel instantly happy. It is not a wonder happy pill. As far as I have been able to tell, what it does is remove the person's inability to deal with their problems. When someone is depressed, everything seems hopeless and even the smallest of obstacles seem impossible to get over. With medication, I have seen this barrier removed and people able to tackle their problems, which are still difficult, hard and painful, but now manageable.

As you might have noticed, I try to take a balanced approach to depression. I believe that there is a biological/chemical component which, when removed, allows to person to deal with the underlying social/personal problems that caused it to appear in the first place. When life is good, people with depression are just like any of us; it's just that when obstacles appear, their biological make up causes them to panic, freeze, and plunge into despair out of proportion with the problem. No, I can't site any studies to back this up, yet. These are just my observations from personal experience. Feel free to send sources my way.

And on that note, sixth and lastly, I bring you iPod accessories to the point of ridiculousness. Alright, I admit, I sometimes envy the cuteness and portability of the iPod. But most of the time I manage to resist the temptation to buy one by thinking of two things. One, how disgustingly consumeristic this whole thing is. And two, it's really ridiculuous of me to have to pay to have my life soundtracked when I can just do it myself. *I'm siiiiiiiingin' in the rain . . . . .* Besides, I have an mp3 player on my phone, assuming I ever get around to purchasing some memory for it.

Post # the Fiftith One

Ha ha! I have actually succeeded in creating a blog with 50 posts in it! This is probably more entries than are in any one of my journals. I am notoriously bad at keeping habits going (well, not notoriously, I guess, since that would imply that other people know/care about it), especially ones that involve as much introspective effort as journaling.

Habits and I have a love-hate relationship. On the one hand, I love the feeling that I know what I need to do at every moment of the day, and that everything I need to do will get done if I just stick to the routine. It makes me feel gloriously productive, and I feel excited to wake up and accomplish things. And there's something inherently satisfying about an unbroken, consistent flow of action.

On the other hand, I resent the way habits take over my life. When I actually schedule in time for all the things I am supposed to do (exercising, blogging, journaling, cleaning, etc.) I have almost no time left in my day. Ask me to show you my schedule if you want proof. Today's schedule, outside of routine actions, has just enough time for FHE and one hour of math studying. (No, I'm not in classes, but I'm studying up on my calculus so I can take Math 302 in the fall. Wish me luck!) As much as I love the structure of a day well-planned, I also bask in the glory of a deliciously unscheduled life.

Ah, the conflict. To habit or not to habit? Perhaps this is once again a question of balance.

P.S. Anyone want to take a road trip to New York? The new Hill Cumorah pagent, written by none other than the Card himself, is now in theatres . . . or hilltops, as the case may be.

Reflections on Introductions

So, I picked up Jesus the Christ at the library yesterday. I've never read this book before, but I decided it's high time that I started picking up some of the church classics. (No, From First Date to Chosen Mate does NOT count--though it is hillariously good reading, right Marisa?)

I've only just finished the introductions to the book (there are about three or four in my copy) describing how it came about, and I've already had several amazing realizations as a result.

The origins of the book have reinspired my desire to learn more about the history and mythology of BYU, or more generally the Church's role in higher education. Apparently, the inspiration for Jesus the Christ was a series of lectures given at what was called in the preface the Latter-day Saint University or alternately the University Sunday School. Very interesting.

Also, reading about this series of lectures reminds me of why I love being at BYU, or in Utah in general. Sure, as most people point out, you end up with some very inbred (ideologically speaking) church members. But I just love feeling like I am at the heart of the action in the church. Being at the place where it all happened, and is happening, and will happen. It just send chills down my spine to think of the steps we are making in the pursuit of truth and Zion. I don't think I could ever leave Utah for very long, for all my complaints about the heat. Not to mention that all my family is here; it's hard enough being an hour away from my grandparents and aunts and uncles--being in another state for very long might be impossible. I mean, maybe I could move out for a few years, but I definitely plan to raise my children in Utah, preferably Salt Lake.

The idea of University Sunday School brings me to another point, related to my previous complaints about Sunday School and the BYU Religion Department. Apparently this book was once used as a text for the "advanced Sunday School" class in the church. Why do they not have this anymore? I mean, you've got your Gospel Essentials, for new converts, etc. And then you have the specialized classes--family history, marriage and family, temple prep, mission prep. And then we just throw everyone else in Gospel Doctrine, which usually ends up being a pretty general review of the stories in the scriptures (with some questionable historical facts thrown in) and applications of the principles in them. But I can just see how much cooler Advanced Sunday School would be--kind of like CS Lewis Society, only maybe a little more doctrinal.

Then again, maybe this kind of distinction was done away with because of the possibility for pride and contention: who gets to go to advanced SS? And if it's by choice, how do you handle the difference between those who chose to go and those who don't, without saying one group is more spiritual, or mainstream, or intellectual . . . . Possibly also done away with because of the expansion of the church--not every ward would have someone qualified enough to teach it, if anyone can consider themselves to be. Maybe I should just trust the Church's organization more. It's all done for a reason, I assume.

Finally, James E. Talmage is definitely going on my list of writing heroes, which is good, since the current list is very short: Orson Scott Card and CS Lewis. I mean, what better place to write a book than in the temple? I've got to remember that for when I finally get around to writing these books that keep poking into my mind. Also, he sets a good example in that books never get written when you have your hands in too many other projects. I mean, Jesus the Christ would probably have never been finished had the First Presidency not almost ordered him to work on it exclusively. This says something about the productivity of taking on too many projects at once (Ben, this means you).

Weak Things

Sorry about the lack of recent posts. I've been working on getting back in the habit of writing in my journal, and it seems to absorbed all my blogging time. After the journal guilt trip lesson in the Wilford Woodruff manual, I've recently rediscovered some of my old journals.

As I was reading through them, I realized something: I keep making the same mistakes and discoveries over and over again. Seriously, I was reading my journal entries from last summer, and I could almost just change the dates and call them good for this summer. The same rants about a lack of time, dropping good habits in favor of stress, feeling lonely and worried, new resolve to do better, etc. etc. in endless cycles of the same realizations, the same problems.

It seems to me that maybe these are the things that the scriptures are referring to when they talk about taking our weaknesses to the Lord. For some reason, I had always thought of "weak things becoming strong" in terms of talents, or areas of knowledge. For example, I know I could never have made it through my Physics series without the Lord's help--it's simply not something I could have understood on my own.

Perhaps the scripture is true in that way, but I wonder if the Lord wasn't more specifically referring to weaknesses of character, those flaws in our own personality and thought process that we can't seem to see past. Because as I read my journal entries, I notice that when I am not keeping up on my scripture reading and those daily things, my weaknesses are magnified. When I become overwhelmed with my weakness and sink into the depths of despair, it is then that I am inspired to pick up again, to come close to God, and as I do, I see my weaknesses fading away.

It's almost like my own personal pride cycle. I'm not sure that I could ever fully be rid of it, but maybe someday I'll be able to shorten those downward periods and prolong the periods of light.

A Gaggle of Quotes

I've been quite absorbed in my own thoughts today, and don't have any that I can really share with you. So now I'm going to do something I swore never to do, and that paradoxically I've been meaning to do for a while, and share a few eclectic quotes with you. Each of these quotes has become a part of me in a rather post-modern way. "Nothing outside the text" and all that. Sometimes I feel as though all I am is a collection of all that I have read (see You've Got Mail quote). So here they are, some of the anthem of texts that make up my life. Hopefully they aren't too cliche for you.

"I'm afraid of time. . . . I mean, I'm afraid of not having enough time. . . . Not enough time to understand people, how they really are, or to be understood myself. I'm afraid of the quick judgements and mistakes that everybody makes. You can't fix them without time. I'm afraid of seeing snapshots instead of movies."
- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Ann Brashares

" To fight for the right
Without question or pause,
To be willing to march into hell
For a heavenly cause!

And I know, if I'll only be true
To this glorious Quest,
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this,
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach the unreachable stars!"
- "The Impossible Dream," Man of La Mancha

"Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever."
- Alma 26:12

"What I mean is you've never been hurt before . . . . You've gotten so good at hiding who you really are that you're afraid to show the real you. The fake you pretends she doesn't feel pain, even if she gets hurt. But the real [you] feels it deep in her heart. And the person you're afraid will hurt you most is [the one you love]. Being afraid of getting hurt makes you selfish. You're protecting your own feelings instead of considering the feelings of the one you love. But isn't love the opposite of that?"
- Kare Kano, Masami Tsuda

(Incidentally, this is a brilliant anime series, if you're looking for an example of how the genre can have more meaning than, say, Digimon. In particular, the first six episodes are a brilliant masterpiece in timing and dialogue. At least, I think so.)

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."
-John Donne

"So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around?"
- You've Got Mail

" I thought home was all I'd ever want
My attic all I'd ever need.
Now nothing feels the way it was before
And I don't know how to proceed.
I only know I'm meant for something more
I've got to know if I can be
Astonishing"
- "Astonishing," Little Women The Musical

Split-Decision

Ever since I first participated in Model United Nations (MUN) in 9th grade, I've casually followed the decisions of this body. So, here's today's bit of UN news: the United Nations Security Council is hung up on the North Korea issue.

North Korea raised tensions last week when it test-fired seven missiles - including a long-range Taepodong-2, a weapon which is believed to be capable of reaching Alaska.

The much tougher draft resolution proposed by Japan brands North Korea a "threat to international peace and security" and invokes Chapter Seven of the UN charter.

Resolutions made under Chapter Seven are legally binding and can authorise sanctions or even military action.

According to our correspondent at the UN in New York, China and Russia, which both have the power of veto in the Security Council, believe that using a UN resolution to impose sanctions on North Korea at this stage would be irresponsible and unconstructive.

Mr Wang said such action "could make the situation even worse" and that China was worried it could ultimately pave the way for military action against North Korea.

Instead he believes that the best initial response is a statement by the Security Council calling on Pyongyang to stop the development of ballistic missiles and halt any testing.

My summary for the layman: China and Russia have proposed a draft resolution which condemns the missile tests. But delegates from the US, UK, and France believe this is not enough, instead choosing to back Japan's resolution which proposes sanctions and possible military action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Russia and China, of course, want to give North Korea some time and space, to see if things might work themselves out and to avoid possibly provoking North Korea to further action.

It's a classic senario I've seen play out in too many UN and MUN sessions: a dead-lock in the Security Council, with the sovereignty-loving China/Russia versus the more action-oriented US/UK/France. The Security Council is an interesting body. The ironic thing about it is that this deadlock was built into the framework of the UN on purpose. Things like this make some people question the usefulness of the UN as a peacekeeping body, and clearly there are good and bad aspects to the Security Council.

On the one hand, the veto power given to these members with very different world views ensures that action can only be taken when it is fairly universally agreed upon, preventing the UN from falling into the hands of one radical power or another, much like the US's check-and-balance system. On the other hand, this sort of deadlock means UN actions are few and far between. It does not do for the UN to become a body used solely for debate and humanitarian purposes, for, lacking any authority, it has the potential to die out like its weaker brother, the League of Nations.

I'm not sure whether it can be improved upon or not, though I've discussed the issue thoroughly in MUN debates. Adding veto members or doing away with the power all together could upset the delicate balance that keeps the UN neutral. Though it is full of bureaucracy and redundant committees, it does get the world talking, and sometimes even bands together to accomplish things. I personally am not sure that the founders of the UN movement were not inspired by God. As I see it, the only way to make the UN better than it is would be by improving the nature of the people in it, in the governments that comprise it, and in the world in general. So, until that day, I say of the UN as Ben Franklin once said of the US Constitution:

I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not approve, but I doubt whether any other convention may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect product be expected? I consent to this Constitution because I expect no better and because I am not sure it is not the best.

In Defense of the English Major, Part I: The Meaning of Lit Crit

Alright, alright, in spite of the disclaimer in Ben's post, I feel a need to write a response in defence of the English major. I'll even throw in my own disclaimer: this may not be everyone's reason for being an English major; it simply happens to be mine. Also, I definitely recognize that the English major isn't for everyone.

Ben's post summarizes the main complaint against the English major, or rather against literary criticism:

To me, all that literary criticism and theory sucks all the joy out of reading in a most dreadful and vile manner. I’m not against analyzing literature to see how the writer put it together — that’s what I do to become a better writer, among other things — but my main contention is that the English major has turned the analysis into a god, a golden calf if you will, and almost everything that’s really important about the work itself falls by the wayside.

It might shock you that I'm not even going to fight this charge. A good deal of lit crit has become exactly that. Either it is a method of pulling and twisting and "wresting" books into new meanings, or a way of restating things we all know in new jargon. (My writing hero, Orson Scott Card, has much to say on the subject.) So, if I openly acknowledge this huge problem in much of lit crit, why do I still continue to pursue it?

There was a time, perhaps about half-way through AP English, when I felt that analyzing lit sucked the life out of things that I read. Not only that, but I felt that literary analysis tended to focus mostly on texts that were incomprehensible to normal readers. About half-way through my IB English class, however, I had a revelation. This is only a current trend, not the heart of lit crit. Not all lit crit is this way: although the currently dominant lit crit is the jargon-filled drivel that I abhor, there are other ways to do it which not only don't destroy the literature, but greatly enhance it. Behind the ridiculous jargon of each theory, there lies a kernel of truth, which when understood and applied to each book makes the experience so much richer. For Marxism, the right to question our assumed social heirarchies; for postmodernism, the idea that everything in reality can affect the reading experience; for feminism, how the way we portray people in stories reveals the social attitudes of the time and culture; etc.

If the worship of criticism is not the main point of lit crit, what is lit crit at its heart? Understanding the effects of a text on an audience and its implications about humanity. This is not the same as understanding what the author intended, but it is so much more powerful. We attempt to understand why certain stories affect us in certain ways, and why we as humanity keep returning to the same archetypes. It is a very personal and at the same time very universal experience. Lit crit is essentially an attempt to grow to understand humanity through the stories it tells and retells and remembers, almost a specialized sort of social anthropology or psychology. It is the heart of understanding what it is to be human.

This is what lit crit should be, and used to be, before we buried it in an impenetrable coffin of jargon and obscurity. Current lit crit has lost sight of its lofty mission by burying itself in ever smaller and more fractured theories. Luckily, I'm still young, idealistic, and maybe egoistic enough to believe that I can be part of the movement that changes that, that resurrects lit crit into what it was always intended to be, an expression of the relationship between humanity and its creations.

Which is why I have scribbled this motto in the margins of my modernism notebook: I will not be content with criticism. I will create.

(There's a sequel to this post, In Defense of the English Major, Part II, in which I deal with the issue of immorality in literature.)

My Philosophy of Fun

Wednesday night at institute our stake president's wife said something that might have been a slip of the tongue--or just a poorly constructed sentence--which I can't stop thinking about. It went something like this: "Being single is a time to practice vital life skills and habits you will need when you get married, like eating right, exercising, self-discipline, following the commandments, and having fun."

Having fun as a life skill, huh? I like it. I think I'll have much more fun working on that than many of the others. :D More than a little dry humor there, but still it's set me thinking: is the ability to have fun a life skill?

I've come to the conclusion that yes, it probably is. It involves knowing when you are taking too much work on yourself (work-a-holics, this means you!) and being able to take time off to just do things that are fun. Yes, work can sometimes be fun--I'll admit I pretty much love writing English essays for school--but don't you think there is a difference between the fun you have enjoying your work and fun you have just having fun? When you start transforming your hobbies into work, they lose some of the element of fun. For instance, when I started knitting something as a wedding present for a friend, instead of just fooling around making stuff for me, knitting took on a new character--still fun, but sort of a burden at the same time. Somehow not as relaxing as before.

And that's the main thing about having fun, I think: relaxing. Fun is sort of like the sleep we can do while we're awake: you can be free from the constraints that every day life puts upon you and just have a good time, doing something for no other reason than because you enjoy it. Not to create a finished product, not to hone your skills, or learn things, or help others, or even to spend quality time with other people (which is a kind of work--at least if you are me). Just for fun. It's like CS Lewis and an essay I read at the Writing Center both said: what is the purpose of a sport? Not to win, but to have fun (which is why games get boring when people become too competitive).

It's the same reason I play video games, or ARGs, since that's what I'm into now: to do something that doesn't count. Unlike real life where the ending is crucial, there is (usually) no eternal consequence to a game. You can just do things without the pressure you feel in real life.

So get out there and have fun.

If you need a game to play, ask me for a copy of the rules I recently devised for a backwards scavenger hunt, inspired by the Zen Scavenger Hunt on Avant Game. We played it at FHE and it was one of the best activities I've had in a long time, and hilarious too. What's the key to world domination? Why, a plunger, of course!

And now I'm going to go run in the rain while the thunder is still going!

A University in Zion

Growing up in Utah is a very different experience than growing up elsewhere, but not always the sort of experience out of staters might expect. I'm thinking in particular of the in-state attitude toward BYU. Maybe it was just the circle of people I ran with (a lot of smart-alec IB snobs), but BYU was surrounded by a negative aura. It was the school you went to if you were a) a goody-goody, hyper-orthodox Mormon whose parents and grandparents met at BYU, b) not smart enough to get into a good university (Harvard, etc.) , and/or c) not strong enough in your testimony to handle the opposition of going to a worldly school after growing up in Mormon-land. (Nevermind that none of these are necessarily true--that's why they are stereotypes.)

My own decision to attend BYU didn't have any particular rhyme or reason to it. The scholarship deal here was good, a couple of my friends were going there (Joni!!), and it was farther away from home than the U of U which meant I could justify living away from home. Going to BYU just sort of happened. But I'll admit I had my reservations about this school. I was actually sort of nervous about the effects of going to a school "controlled" by the Church. Would classes be like Sunday school? Or worse, seminary? No offense, but having my brain numbed by rhetorical questions and restatements once a week is enough. I had always been disappointed with the repetition of the same things every four years, and hoped that BYU might actually bring the ability to move past that, but worried that it might not.

After a few years here, I'm mostly won over by the idea of BYU. There are a ton of things I love about BYU, particularly the opportunity to discuss how the gospel fits into all subjects. I don't just mean being able to learn evolution without having to fight about whether it eliminates the possibility of God. I love that when we talked about relativity in my Physics class, the teacher could bring up scriptures about the connection between light and God; that I can do a final project for my pre-1500 civilization class on how Christ is the archetypical hero; that in my modernism class we can discuss feminism and gender as it relates to the gospel.

Aside from being able to discuss and think about gospel connections publicly, there are some more subtle benefits of the BYU spiritual/educational combination. As I mentioned, I volunteered as a Y Group leader this year, and I've had an opportunity to attend all of the motivational BYU-is-so-great events I didn't go to as a freshman. On my BYU-is-great kick, I also picked up Learning in the Light of Truth, a collection of talks by former BYU President Merrill J. Bateman. Here's one quote he gives from President Kimball that I think summarizes some of these subtle benefits of BYU:

This university shares with other universities the hope and the labor involved in rolling back the frontiers of knowledge, but we also know that, through divine revelation, there are yet "many great and important things" (AoF 1:9) to be given to mankind which will have an intellectual and spiritual impact far beyond what mere men can imagine. Thus, at this university among faculty, students, and administration, there is, and there must be, an excitement and an expectation about the very nature and future of knowledge. That underlies the uniqueness of BYU. (37)

In other words, at BYU we know that we are not alone in our process of learning. We have the assistance of the Spirit in understanding new material and doing our coursework. We can and should expect our research to be guided by the Spirit into the correct course. We should have less anxiety about the direction of our studies and careers. There is no worry that we could be studying something completely false or pointless because we have the testimony of the Spirit to confirm truth to us or point us in another direction. This benefit is worth more than anything to me. Of course, we could be so guided at other universities as individuals, but I think the effect is magnified here by having a campus full of people who all use it.

Most of the things that bug me about BYU are the side-effects of the benefits. I'm still intensely disappointed in the Religion department, which from my experience has been like seminary or Sunday school with an occasional extra dash of false doctrine. Maybe this is just because I haven't taken any higher level classes yet, but it seems to me that it is hard for teachers to find a way to teach these classes: you can't grade on testimony, and most are too humble to attempt to grade on doctrine, so you end up grading on only participation and memorization, which aren't very helpful. My initial feeling is that this problem could be helped by teaching classes on specific ideas and doctrines, rather than a body of scripture covering all of them. (I understand at one point we used to do this . . . this requires more research to fully sketch out.)

And then there are the social problems. No, I don't just mean dating. I mean the sometimes intolerant attitudes that arise at BYU, this division into orthodox, right-wing Mormons and left-wing "New" Mormons. But I've already written my opinions on that.

So conclusion: no, BYU is not a Zion university. Not yet anyway. But it is a university in Zion, for which I am very grateful.

The Left-Overs

Time to clean out the fridge where I store my unused blog post ideas. Alright, here it goes.

So I went and saw the rest of Much Ado about Nothing on Saturday. My family even came down from the SLC and saw it with me. No rain this time, but there were fireworks. But the actors took it all in stride: the firecrackers hit during the first scene with Dogberry, who simply looked shocked and said "Excuse me." Classic. The cast members did a very good job, turning a new light on an old play. I especially liked Claudio's delivery of "Another Hero!" in the final scene. Simply hilarious! Changing the place names to American ones was a little odd though. It simply doesn't work with the play, since there are no independent lords fighting wars against each other at any point in our history (so far as I know). But, all things considered, I will definitely go see Cyrano de Bergerac when they do it next week at the Botany Pond (6:30 pm, Th, F, or Sa, if you care to join me).

The lost post from the other day, the one that got bumped off by Brittany McComb, was supposed to be on how our personal perspective affects our happiness. I volunteered as a Y group leader this year--which I find ironic, since I went to only two events during my own freshman orientation. One of these two events was the showing of the Iranian film Color of Paradise. I forgot how completely amazing that movie is, and it made a lot more sense the second time around. If you haven't seen it, try to find it, or just sneak into the showing for the freshman next NSO.

The movie is about a young blind boy looking to belong, his father who feels burdened at having to care for a disabled boy, and the boy's grandmother. Through these three characters, you can see a scale of perspectives on the world. The grandmother chooses to believe that God is good, and consequently takes joy in most things, and takes the disappointments in stride. On the other hand, the father seems to believe God is punishing him for no reason--he has no son who can care for him when he is old, his only boy is blind, he lost his wife--and feels utterly hopeless and lost. The boy is somewhere in between: he knows that his father resents him for not being whole and people in general treat him strangely, but his teachers and grandmother have taught him that God loves him, possibly more, because of his blindness. His struggle to reconcile these two views leads us to find what the grandmother has that makes her life so much more bearable than the father's: she asks God for help, and is mindful of helping others, while the father seeks to find his own way and ignores the needs of his son. It's a very powerful movie and I highly recommend it to everyone. Even better, there aren't any sketchy scenes you'll have to explain to your friends and family!

Speaking of film reminds me of a talk I read for my persuasive writing class by a humanities professor at BYU. He talked about building a literate family--literate in the sense of intellegent and well-read, rather than just competent. I agreed with him on most points, but then he went off for a page or two on how awful film is as a medium. As an example of this, he compared several pop-culture, kitschy movies of the time (Rambo, anyone?) with great literary classics (Dostoyevsky, of all things), and concluded that this proved his point. Well, I personally would say he was comparing apples to oranges: if you want to compare your standard Hollywood film to something written, you'd do best to point yourself to the pulp fiction section rather than the classics. If I compare a thought-provoking film like Color of Paradise or a bizarre mind-warping film like Solyaris to, say, The Baby-Sitters' Club or Dragonriders of Pern, I would reach the conclusion that film is infinitely better at getting a deep message across than the written word. Really people, the medium is not as important as the person crafting it: any medium can be made into something mundane and boring. Same goes for genres. Just because it is sci-fi, doesn't make it garbage. It is up to the artist whether the medium is transformed into the Mona Lisa or the next fluffy pop song on the radio.

Related tangent (oxymoron? redundant?): I still get frustrated that some people can't take an animated film seriously. Just because this medium is used to produce Pokemon doesn't make it worthless. And Hayao Miyazki can prove that any day, if given the chance. But most people seem to come to his films from the mindset that animation can be only Disney or Saturday morning cartoons, and so the films just come across as wrong to them. Really, I think Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle are two of the most interesting films I have ever seen. Even My Neighbor Totoro has a perfect balance of innocent fun and thought provoking story.

Alright, that's enough.

A Groundling Experience

The experimental theatre group on campus was performing Much Ado about Nothing, one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, for free near the botany pond on campus yesterday. Since none of my friends wanted to go, I picked up my knitting and headed down by myself. Of course, I wasn't expecting any really high quality acting, but all things considered I'd say that the play was definitely worth seeing. The actors weren't particularly wonderful and sometimes forgot their lines (not that I blame them--I don't think I could ever memorize that much), but they had some interesting takes on the characters (Beatrice and Benedick as the geeks? Don Pedro as a strict general?) good BYU spins on the Shakespeare. Maybe it's just because I have been considering the nature of love lately, but I noticed how much the play reads just like a manual of what (not) to do when forming a relationship.

I liked the way they set up Claudio's distress that Don Pedro wooed Hero for himself: it made me realize just how ridiculous/dangerous it is to use second hand messengers in matters of the heart. We've been discussing this in our apartment and decided it's just so much better to be simple and frank (so long as you are careful not to be too intimidating). I also realized how truly insecure Beatrice's character is: she puts up a good offensive front of wit, but underneath I think she is simply worried about the possibility that no desireable man would want to marry a smart girl. I definitely empathize with here . . . but we don't need another rant on my worries about being alone, do we?

But the part that really made my day was the groundling experience. Let me explain: I was late, so I showed up during Benedick's rant about not getting married, which means I unfortunately missed the initial banter between Beatrice and Benedick. All the chairs worth taking were taken, so I ended up sitting on the grass, which I preferred anyway. The play was very all encompassing if you were sitting on the ground. I got to watch the actors rush past me to the mascarade, and have Benedick and Claudio exit past me discussing Hero. It was great!

But even during the initial scenes we could hear thunder in the distance and while Hero and her maid were baiting Beatrice the clouds broke open and started to pour down really hard rain on us. Some people immediately got up and left, but I sort of liked it. I was nice to have the play be part of reality instead of some carefully set apart experience in a dark room. The actors added reactiongs to the thunder, especially when it came at appropriate moments in the script. I felt like a groundling in the 13th century, having paid little (in this case, nothing) to get in and stand (sit on the ground) during the entire play. It was very postmodern experiencing the full force of the play along with the elements--nothing outside the text indeed. It connects a lot with my recent fascination with immersive gaming.

Of course, once it started to hail, they cancelled the second half. They're doing the same play again today at 6:30 pm in the JFSB courtyard. Maybe I'll go instead of hanging around for Stadium of Fire. Oooh! Maybe the fireworks will be timed right and come in during the ending wedding scene!

Beauty and A Really Old (-Fashioned) Love Story

I am not usually the type of person for love stories. Perhaps because I have little (read: no) experience in them myself, they've always seemed far more fantastic and unrealistic than the sci-fi and fantasy I prefer. Also, I usually don't empathize very well with the heroines: either charming or naive, but always beautiful, none of which I have pretensions to. I've always defined myself based on a fairly gender-neutral intelligence. Pretty much, I think Jane Austen is boring, and my favorite chic flicks are IQ and You've Got Mail, mostly for Einstein and the witty construction (respectively) rather than the love story, which gets in the way for me.

Leave it to Orson Scott Card to write a romance that I could really enjoy. I'm only half-way through Rebekah, the second in his Women of Genesis series, and if there was anyone who could improve on the beauty of that story in the Old Testament, then it's the OSC. As a friend of mine said (John, this means you) Card is so amazing at understanding people that he makes you feel like a genius just to be witness to his analysis. In Card's religious fiction (Women of Genesis + Stone Tables), I have been continually impressed with his ability to flesh out these iconic figures into realistic characters while still remaining faithful to their place in the religious cannon. Without ruining the story for anyone who hasn't read it, Rebekah has shed much light in my mind on the issue of beauty.

He made me remember that for some beauty can be as much a curse as a blessing when looking for a relationship. (As Tevia would say, may God smite me with it, and may I never recover.) I had sort of realized this in the character of Lina in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants--kitschy, I know, but true in feeling. Beauty--true beauty, and not just good grooming--is unlike almost any other trait in that it seems to happen almost as an accident, not being an essential part of a person's character. Rebekah's realization of her own beauty and subsequent panic were quite enlightening--I've never had the same worry that someone might want me not for myself but for some accident of birth.

Some will object that beauty is not so much looks as a way of behaving, and this is the other thing Card brings out. As Rebekah meets a particular woman for the first time, she is shocked to realize that though she is as beautiful as this woman, Rebekah has none of the grace, charm, and social skill necessary to really use this to full, feminine advantage. And so she sets out to learn and acquire the ability to make small-talk, flirt (such as it is in biblical times), etc. Until recently, I had mostly assumed that people were either just born with this grace or without: I had never really contemplated it as a skill to be acquired.

Now that I think about it, this is one skill that I could really use, considering my natural tendency is to be blunt or outspokenly passionate about everything. A little charm or grace could do a lot to mediate the bad effects of these two things. I've always avoided being too feminine, but maybe it's time to dabble in that area. I won't hesistate to say I feel quite silly though.

(Aside: I find it ironic that I finish this post while listening to "Astonishing," the song from the Little Women musical in which Jo's refuses Laurie's proposal. Pretty much the antithesis to the woman aspiring to marriage, and currently one of my favorite songs. Hmm.)

The Real Independence Day: Primary Thoughts

So I voted today in the primaries . . . did you? Probably not, considering only about 10% of Utahns actually vote in the primary. I find it fascinating that the same people that couldn't be bothered to vote today will next week be celebrating the ideals of our nation. It's fairly ridiculous that such a small percentage of the people actually care what happens in the primaries. In a politically lop-sided state like Utah, it seems that most elections would be pretty much decided in the primaries, since most Republican candidates are shoe-ins in November (with notable exceptions). You missed out on the real ceremony if you were waiting for the 4th to celebrate your American-ness.

And granted, some primary elections seem trivial: I don't understand the big hoopla over the Cannon/Jacobs race. The race is not over issues, since the candidates agree on almost everything. I mean really, the only argument in this race is whether experience is more productive than change. Why are people wasting all this campaign money to replace one representative with another who will do exactly the same things? Seems like a big waste of time to me. (Luckily for those of you who care, I am registered at home, not in the Bubble, so I didn't vote on this race anyway.)

Also, I was quite suprised at the ignorance shown by the candidates in the Jordan School District Prescint #3 race: two of the candidates didn't even bother to create websites, or ones that I could find anyway. You would think that in this tech-saavy world that would be a given. I did all my voting research online, and their lack of online information pretty much cost them my vote.

Oh, and if anyone out there was worried that electronic voting would be confusing, it's not. It is the most absolutely wonderful thing ever! Okay I exaggerate, but it definitely outranks punch cards--which even I found confusing--by a mile. And I say this not just from my tech-saavy perspective: my tech-backwards mother (sorry Mum!) was able to easily figure out the system. I enjoyed the large print option. Even though I didn't particularly need it, it was nice not to have to put my nose next to the ballot in order to read it. The only step that might be confusing is the double-confirmation of the ballot, since some people might forget the last step and just walk away. But the machine won't give you back your little ID card thing unless you do, so it should be fairly easy to spot and take care of.

Pros and Cons of Being Martha

This wasn't what I originally intented to write about, but I need to write it down before I forget what it was about. So Saturday's intended blog entry is being put off indefinitely.

As this semester has come to a close, I've noticed a problem I have that's always been lurking in the back of my mind, but I never really bring out and conquer. It's one that should be obvious, but for some reason I manage to always ignore it. The problem is this: I am always living waiting for something to end, for the future, I guess, but mostly for change.

In particular, during the semester I tend to rationalize the fact that I have no time to do what I want by the fact that it will soon be over. This semester has really been the worst: I literally go to school everyday, come home, eat, do homework, and sleep. When I do have free time, I spend it vegging out in front of my computer because my brain and will are simply so fried that I can't do anything else. When the semester ends, I spend a few days just hibernating in my apartment recovering. But then, I don't learn from my experience and simply load myself up again with way more than I can handle.

I probably get this from my dad: he tends to go in this same full-throttle/crash-and burn cycle. He'll work a sixty hour week, perhaps staying at work for even 48 hours straight. Then he comes home and crashes through the weekend. I know this is not a good way to live; as I said to my dad, I don't want to live waiting for my life to be over.

So while I've been pondering this, I came across in my scripture reading the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10. When people discuss this story, we talk about the problem of being too busy to stop and listen to the gospel. The work Martha is doing is something that needs to be done, but sometimes it is more important to stop and listen to the gospel. Mary is symbolic of the quiet listener, Martha the overworked and distracted disciple.

However, this time as I was reading this story, I looked up a cross reference and read in John 11 the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. I hadn't ever read this story focusing on the Mary/Martha aspect, but when I did, I noticed another aspect of this relationship which caused me to reconsider the meaning of the story. When Jesus comes to Bethany, Martha immediately comes to him, and when asked if she believes Christ has the power to raise the dead, she immediately says yes. But when Mary comes to the Lord, she seems, at least to me, to be in total despair, lacking the hope that Martha seems to have in the gospel.

The conclusion I came to was this: living a busy and less active life sometimes leaves little time to contemplate the gospel, but I think it gives us a testimony of the principles of the gospel in action in our lives. By sitting around contemplating the gospel, we can gain a deep understanding of the principles involved, but it doesn't necessarily give us a testimony of their truth. The gospel is not something that can be studied in isolation; we cannot learn the gospel without having something to apply it about. The most boring and least strong members of the church are those who spend all day studying the gospel. Really, it becomes a sort of inbreeding: you have no substance to live the gospel about and your belief in it becomes founded only on your study of it. But when you live, you see the application of the principles in your life, and your testimony grows stronger even though you may not have as much time to study.

So, as seems to be the conclusion of the most of my posts lately, it's all about balance. I need to find the point in my life when I won't be so overwhelmed that I don't have time to contemplate, but also be busy enough to have experiences and deepen my testimony of the gospel.

Brittany McComb: A Question of Scale

Well, I had another blog topic for tonight, but after reading about Brittany McComb on Ben's blog, I guess I'll put off that post till tomorrow. It'll make a good Sunday post anyway.

So here's the short and fast story of Brittany McComb. Brittany becomes valedictorian. She writes a valediction about how Christ and God have changed her life. The administration, fearing legal ramifications, edits out of her speech all references to Christ and scripture. Girl tries to give original speech anyway, but the microphone is cut by the administration. Legal ramifications and talk shows ensue (see link above).

Now, keep reading, because I don't think I'm going to take the side you expect. In keeping with my Circle of Knowledge theory, I can see that each side in this debate has some truth behind it, and the conclusion I've come to seems to be somewhere in the middle. Keep in mind, I am not really interested in the legal aspects behind this, but the moral ones. After all, we can only have just laws if we truly understand the morals they should be upholding.

But the relationship between law and morality is another topic for another time. Back to the subject at hand.

Two opposing experiences keep coming back to me as I think about this issue of eliminating Christ from public. First, I remember sitting in my Theory of Knowledge class in high school listening to a girl explain how her belief in chakra energies and related religious concepts had healed her life, and were really much better than western medicine. Being from Utah, my high school did have quite a large percentage of LDS students (probably 50%), but since it was part of the IB program, it had a little more of an international flavor than most. This particular class I knew contained quite a few agnostics/atheists, several Jews, and at least one Hindu and one Muslim. But despite our apparent diversity and tolerance at other times, the feeling in the classroom was extremely uneasy, and the students in the class were clearly not comfortable with what she was saying to us. But none of us were willing to say anything about it.

I still wonder why we were uncomfortable. Was it the mere action of advocating a religious view in a classroom that made us uncomfortable, or was it that the philosophy being advocated? Had it been a Christian (or more particularly LDS) student speaking about Christ and the atonement, would we--by which I mostly mean I--have felt the same way? I know I have sometimes felt uncomfortable at the way other Christian religions proselyte. But if it were my own religion being preached to a crowd of essentially captive unbelievers, who hadn't asked to hear about it, would I feel the same way? Essentially, I think the delimma boils down to this: can we, or should we, separate the act of proselyting from the beliefs being proselyted? To this, I would hope I could say yes, that I could look at the act of proselyting from an objective point of view, even if it was my own religion. But this is something you may have to convince yourself of.

Once we admit this separation, and that proselyting can cause discomfort in an audience, we can see how there is some valid point for concern over public religious expression. It boils down to the same debate of the ages: individual rights versus public security. I mean, we have laws against verbal harassment for the same sort of reason: even though it does no physical harm, it can cause discomfort in other ways. In the same way, I hate being harassed by the protestors at General Conference or at the Manti Pagent. It is extremely disconcerting, even heartbreaking, to be forced to listen to your religion be thrashed and trashed, even indirectly by those who are simply preaching other views, in a place where it is not wanted.

Which leads me to the other experience I keep thinking about. This one I didn't experience personally, but did hear from a first-hand source. A German-language teacher at my school used to occasionally have a free reading period in class as a reward after quizzes or tests. However, when some students began to read their scriptures during that time, the teacher ordered them not to do so because it violated her freedom of religion. (In the end, she was not allowed to ban specific religious texts from the period, and instead decided to do away with it all together.)

I would hope that anyone reading that story would realize that what the teacher did was completely irrational. Having someone else read a certain book in your classroom is nearly impossible to rationally construe as a violation of your rights. Clearly there is a matter of degrees here. What Brittany McComb did is not on par with what the garment-waving protestors do at General Conference. A general scale of the relationship between religious practice and the public goes something like this, from most-easily acceptable to totally unacceptable:

• private religious practice
• public religious practice
• expression of beliefs in public
• proselytising and advocating a belief system
• denigrating/descriminating against someone else's belief system

What the Brittany McComb incident represents is a confusion of this scale. Much of the civil rights movement worked hard to prevent the descrimination aspect of this scale, which I hope every rational person could agree is the right thing to do. And the Bill of Rights clearly protects the first two, the right to religious freedom. But what to do with these middle two is the problem.

I firmly believe that we do not live in a society that wants to eliminate expression of beliefs and proselytising all together. There may be some extremists who actually do believe that, but being an eternal optimist, I must believe that the majority are fairly reasonable people such as myself. The thing is that these reasonable people have noticed, as I have, that religious speech is a delicate issue, that at some times it is appropriate to voice belief and at others it is not. Even Christ said, "neither cast ye your pearls before swine" (Matt. 7:6), which I take to mean that we don't need to proselyte in every conversation (which bothers me to no end about some evangelicals), but we should instead reserve our expression to appropriate moments and audiences.

So in the end, after reading the full text of Brittany McComb's speech, I must agree with the school's decision to edit her speech. I disagree with the idea that there is no place for Christ in a graduation speech, but I think that the way she did so was not appropriate. Her speech focuses on her conversion to Christianity rather than her school experience. Her talk might actually fit in at an LDS testimony meeting, but not a graduation. Had she done as she claimed to have done and simply cited her religion as one of the influential factors in her life, in a quiet statement of belief rather than proselytizing, then the school board might have been in the wrong (morally, though perhaps not legally).

(However, after that, I must add that I do agree that this suppression of religion movement is targeted towards Christians. Notice in my two experiences that although there was discomfort in both, action was only taken in the situation involving a Christian religion. I however do not believe this to be due to a particular hatred of Christianity. Rather, it is due to two factors. First, other religions still fall under the protection of our fear of being accused of discrimination. We fear that our actions to preserve our own comfort will be miscontrued as racism or beliefism. Witness how the media deals with Islamic extremism--overly careful to make sure that the audience knows they are not against the religion, but merely some of its expressions. The second factor is simply the nature of Christianity. We are a missionary religion, and therefore we feel the need to speak about our beliefs more, which in turn gives us more opportunities to speak out in the wrong times and wrong places. Again, there may be some who do discriminate against Christianity, but not a majority, by far.)

The "Same Old Thing"

Another post inspired by The Screwtape Letters. Sheesh, CS Lewis is such a genius. Anyway, on my way to school today, I was reading letter 25, in which Screwtape advises Wormwood on the use of the "Same Old Thing" philosophy to distract people from what they should be doing. Here's a description of this concept straight from the book (if you haven't read the book, note that this passage is written from the point-of-view of a devil, and thus the "Enemy" is God and the goal is to get man away from Him):

The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produed in the human heart--an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. . . . [T]he Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasureable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. . . .

Now, just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty. This demand is entirely our workmanship. . . . Only by our incessant efforts is the demand for infinite, or unrhythmical, change kept up.

I've personally been thinking about this problem a lot, both in the church as a whole and in my own life. A particular example of this problem which has been bothering me comes from a sacrament meeting in my ward. The subject of the meeting was to be on the resurrection, one of the most basic, beautiful, and essential doctrines of the gospel. The first speaker was from our student ward and the second was a high council speaker.

When the student got up, he started with the usual banter about being nervous, the bishopric calling him to speak, etc. But when he got to his topic, he said that he was supposed to speak about the resurrection, but that was a boring topic since everyone pretty much already understood that, so he decided to talk about a "personal resurrection" (his term for a change of heart) instead. I was first disappointed: I was really looking forward to hearing a talk about the hope afforded to us by the resurrection. But I decided to make the best of it and enjoy this talk anyway. Conversion and change, after all, is something we all need to work on. But as I was listening to the talk, I became even more annoyed and bewildered. Almost all of his talk came from self-help books, secular leaders, or popular sayings. When I started keeping count a few minutes in, I noted only one reference to Christ and possibly two scriptures or General Authority quotes.

To make matters worse, the High Council speaker had a similar problem: though he did sort of talk about the resurrection, there were even fewer quotes from General Authorities or scriptures in his talk. Instead, he spent the entire fifteen minutes listing a whole bunch of "faith-promoting rumors" about people who had survived near death experiences, and how this somehow proved that there was life after death, which sort of proved there was a resurrection, and wasn't that nice? The next week was fast Sunday, and my mind was probably still on this problem because all of the roommate-imonies, good-book-imonies, something-I-learned-in-class-imonies, and BYU-religion-department-imonies bothered me a lot more than usual.

It's a problem that seems to be unusually magnified at BYU, since we are surrounded by the gospel not only for 3 (more like 5) hours of meetings on Sunday, but in class, at home, at work. Theoretically, this should be a good thing: we are supposed to make the gospel a part of everything in our lives, like the foundation is to a house. But this massive exposure seems to have the side effect of causing some people to be "bored" with the gospel, bored of the same, simple "Sunday School" right answers--though the fact that such simple answers exist is, to me, one of the most joyous parts of the gospel. And when they are bored, they start looking for ways to make the doctrines of truth into new, novel concepts. (From this concept, we can infer the evolution of what is now the LDS publishing industry. Seriously, every time I walk into Deseret Book, I want to gag at the consumerism of it all.)

As much as I love CS Lewis and other inspiring figures, the main focus of our meetings should be on the basic doctrines of the gospel as taught by the scriptures, General Authorities, and the Spirit, no matter how long we have been in the church. Yes, I realize that the GA's occasionally quote world leaders, CS Lewis, and even Fiddler on the Roof. I have two answers to this: first, they tend to do so in moderation, spending the majority of their talks on scriptures and personal testimony; second, they are GA's, so they have a greater ability to discern truth out of these non-cannonical sources than your average church member.

What I mean is, we should be teaching out of sources that are "safe." When you are dealing with your own spiritual growth, sure, seek learning out of the best books, and the spirit will guide you to discern the truth. But when it comes to teaching others, what the spirit uses to teach you may not be what they need. So stick to the basic sources recommended to all members of the church. Don't make your home teaching thought a quote by Nelson Mandela. Yes, this happened to me. Innovative as it was, I would have much preferred one from the Ensign, or the scriptures.

My personal way to make sure that I stay on the the strait and narrow in my teaching is the SQRT formula: for every concept I want to teach, I look for a personal Story, a GA Quote, a scripture Reference, and give my personal Testimony. This keeps it simple and doctrinal, and keeps me from teaching out of the Book of Liz to those who don't need it or aren't ready for it.

No, the doctrines of the gospel are not new concepts, but why should they be? People through out all ages of history face basically the same problems, and the Lord doesn't need to invent new answers to problems He has already given us the answers to. Give me a meeting where we "preach nothing save it were repentance and faith on the Lord, who had redeemed his people" (Mosiah 18:20). Every time we are called upon to give us lesson, let us put it to the test of 2 Nephi 25:26:

And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.

Crimes of Passion: A Geek Manifesto (of sorts)

So, I took the Geek Test, scoring a delightful 27.7%. (Miserable compared to my Harry Potter Obsession score, though the quiz is slightly outdated. . . . I think I get bonus geek points for actually thinking about rewriting that test.) And oddly I am only ashamed that my geek score is not higher.

Why do I enjoy being a geek? Actually, the question is why is being a geek so out of fashion? In my modernism class, we talked about our society's obsession with entertainment. One of the most important qualities we look for in people is if they are funny (ie entertaining), and the insult that can stop anything flat is "boring."

And yet, we also strangely avoid all semblance of being entertained by anything. Oh sure, you can say you enjoyed a movie, or like a particular song. But if you go much further than that, express any real enthusiasm for anything, much less anything academic, and you are labeled a fanatic (from which we get 'fan'), nerd, perhaps narrow in your interests. In other words, a geek. Really, the word geek encompasses so many interests--science, math, games, literature, music, history, philosophy, movies, theater, band, choir, books, sports--that it has come to mean anyone an abnormally large passion for anything.

And we scorn geeks.

Thus, our society has come to laugh at people who care. This can't be a healthy thing. Though some people might call geekhood an "unhealthy obsession," I certainly think over-indulging in the things you enjoy is much better than this repression of passion that we have in modern society. At least geeks are willing to admit that they care about something, and to follow through with the things they care about. They are willing to be happy, and not because of the big things either. We don't have to wait to get perfect grades, a huge raise, a trip to Hawaii, and perfect relationship to enjoy life. Geeks can enjoy themselves by learning a new word, figuring out that physics formula, watching a new TV show, getting a new RSS feed, or playing dress-up for-goodness-sake! Why does the modern world insist on being so hard to please, when happiness can be found in all these small things that geeks see everyday!

Which brings me to the centerpiece of this blog entry, which I found the other day and made me feel immensely satisfied, especially considering recent posts. I found out about this geek dating website, Geek2Geek, (not of my own accord--it was advertised on PotterCast . . . oh, never mind) built for the express purpose of getting geeks together. Now, I'm not advocating internet dating here. I bring up this website because of this list:

Top 10 Reasons Why Geeks Make the Best Catch

It’s not generally realized that geeks (male and female) are the best catches. Americans focus on the glamor of the good-looking, the male jock and the statuesque female, and tend to make fun of second banana characters like Urkel. Yet, geeks (a.k.a. nerds, etc.) provide the opportunity to have much longer, more stable, and happy relationships. Here are the top ten reasons:

1. Geeks don't cheat. Geeks know that the grass only seems greener on the other side. They instinctively stay devotedly loyal to their lovers through thick and thin. Their social skills are also not well developed enough to support an affair.

2. Geeks appreciate their mates. Since you are likely to be one of the first persons a geek has ever had a significant relationship with, you will be treated well. A geek knows that there aren’t a whole lot of other possibilities. Frankly, geeks aren't quite sure how they ended up with the person they have attracted. When you date a geek, you know that geek will be yours for as long as you wish.

3. Geeks haven't formed bad relationship habits. After years of dating other people, the socially successful have become too confident to be intimate, think of partners as being only for their self-gratification, and focus on making themselves happy. None of this is true of a geek. The lack of past romantic partners allows the geek to approach lovers with the zest of a neophyte. Geeks are not full of romantic confidence. However, once encouraged, they are eager to please and enjoy their relationship.

4. Geeks are good at the things they try. Every geek has skills passionately developed over a long period of time. It could be role playing, chess, hacking, playing video games, or the ability to properly assemble a computer. So you know that geeks won't quit until they have learned how to make their relationship the best.

5. Geeks are not interested in status. Geeks became geeks because they chose to spend their time doing things that would not necessarily make them popular with everyone else in school, like sports and fashion. The ability to resist peer pressure is important to geeks. This means that a geek is more interested in your happiness than in looking good to others.

6. Geeks have imagination. Boredom is important to avoid to the game playing geek. A geek will seek new and creative ways to play, and this translates to relationships as well.

7. Geeks are happy and successful in their chosen field. No matter what their education level, geeks are able to make good incomes doing work that they enjoy. That eliminates one of the most frequent causes of relationship problems, since people who don’t like their jobs may take it out on their significant other.

8. Geeks are analytical. If they don’t get it right the first time, they look at what they did and figure out what to change. And when they DO get it right, they still keep finding ways to improve on it.

9. Geeks can concentrate. Geeks can focus their energy on one task with total intensity. Granted, the task they are focusing on may have more to do with writing new software for their Blackberry, but the fact remains that a geek, once set upon a task, tirelessly sets about to achieving a goal.

All of which means that…

10. Geeks want to be the best at what they do. So they try harder. And they never stop trying.

Amen to that. This list can really apply to anything geeks do. In summary, geekhood may not be the only path to happiness, but it certainly is one that works. Geeks have the power. Embrace your inner geek.

(If you need somewhere to start, you should check out Avant Game, which was recently highlighted on Blogger's Top 10 List. This whole pervasive gaming idea is awesome! I've been doing some geek-like exploring of the genre, and found several really cool ideas. If you'd like to get started on alternate-reality gaming, try one player games like Planetarium or Conspiracy, go in deep with EDOCLaundry, or start out small with this riddle game (I'm still stuck on #1).

Anyone for Tombstone poker? I'd have to learn poker first, or modify it for another card game, but it might be worth it.)

Seriously, be a geek. You will feel better.

a little fall of rain, a house of grace

"I" goes out with the smell of rain,
the skin shed from a snake
exposing a new layer

i see
Angel rings
Ripples
in the pool.

if only I could be--

fastest rising highest
That I might be healed

Ripples fall
faster and faster
i have no chance
can't get, run, catch,
already too late to begin

So many ripples
but not for me

alone.
no ripples--
yet surrounded

could there be rain,
make flowers grow
inside the withered soul?

false expectation,
over-played;
under-interest,
disgust & fatigue
setting myself up.

There could be rain,
it is waiting

i see it waiting
but I am hiding
Afraid of finding what I seek.

After Poem Wind-Down, in Prose

Funny how sometimes when you think you know just the right person to cheer you up or help you out, the universe sends the exactly wrong person. But today, he ended up being the right person because he made me realize all that I am not. I am not hopeless, clueless, or alone. That I do have skills, that I could be likeable, that there is hope for joy.

And I know the answer to my poem is in What the Thunder Said. But how does one get there from the Wasteland? (Sorry for the literary reference, but if you haven't read it, you should. And then you should talk about it with someone who has, or it won't mean anything.) My life is so centered on being lost, different, and alone that it's difficult to see the pathway to being part of something. I seem to have an idea of the bridge, in which I'm sure Christ is involved, but the path is still hazy to me.

Perhaps this all comes about from reading the Screwtape Letters. Or it's another factor anyway. I know, I should hardly dare to put CS Lewis on my interests list if I haven't read it before, but there's a first time for anything. But that part about keeping our beliefs in the theoretical, thinking it is enough to simply think about action, and allowing that to lead us to complacency, that hit to my core. That's me--living in the world of my ideals.

A sign on a professor's door in the Benson building reads:

Theoretically, there's no difference between theory and practice.
Practically, there is.

And that sums up my problem: I know a lot about people and relationships theoretically, but practically is another matter. I am not good at risking myself, trying, caring, being there. And I feel I should be, despite the fact that I have never done so. As a child, I never played games until I was sure I could win (which probably explains my aversion to sports). That continues to today. I have never actually played Risk, but I have watched it so many times. Video games, same deal: I've seen them all, played none. Never played DDR, but I like the idea of it. Ultimate Frisbee, definitely not at all. And relationships, where it's not a game, are much worse. How can I possibly learn how to win before I start?

In order for me to ever find what I seek, I must be willing to "take chances, make mistakes, and get messy." But I am not. I need to find a way to be able to. I could try locking myself off, but clearly that's not something I would do. I try to keep my self at the surface, but as a result I have to be very cautious or I can break. Do break, actually, but we try to keep the damage down.

Growing Together

Sort of a follow-up to my "Weary of Well-Speaking" post: As I said in the comments, one of the reasons I am irritated by debaters is they are taught to win arguments, not to search for truth. The more I think about it, the more I see the reoccurance of this problem in society. Aside from the obvious example of politicians, I am specifically thinking about this principle as it applies to marriage and other personal relationships. At institute tonight (the Marriage and Family series--no great wonder), we discussed at length the yoke metaphor used by the Savior in Matthew 11:28-30:

28 ¶Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

One implication of the metaphor struck me as particularly relevant to what I've been trying to get at recently: If one ox in a yolk pushes too strongly for his own way, rather than following the Lord's way, not only does the team deviate from the path, but they can end up going in circles. When we fight too hard for our own ideas and decisions, it is often at the expense of progress, change, and growth. If instead we are meek about our own ideas and work with the Lord, He will guide our progress in the desired direction.

Of course, this analogy translates not only to our relationship with the Lord, or to a relationship with a future spouse, but really to any relationship in our lives, including parents, roommates, siblings, and friends. Really, the point where we seem to get into trouble in a relationship is where we want things "my way" without bothering to understand the possibility of an "our way." Talking escalates to contention when we set as our ground rule that we are right.

In most arguments of my experience, the phrase "Listen to me" or "Are you listening?" or some variant usually comes up. Well, that's a silly question. If you weren't listening, there wouldn't be an argument going on. What they really mean to ask is "What you are listening for?" Are you listening merely to catch the weak points of their position, so best to plan your next attack when they finally finish, and, assuming they ever stop spouting such utter nonsense, you'll set them straight on the facts? Or are you listening with understanding, to truly comprehend what has led to your differences in position, to find the common ground, the truth behind the conflict? When we are seeking for a good solution for both parties, arguments dissolve into discussions, contention into compromise, confusion into construction.

It's similar to the idea behind my Circle Theory and Habit #4 of Covey's Seven Habits. The secret behind both greater intelligence and more successful relationships is the same: learning to think of opposing views not as the enemy, but as a partner, realizing that compromising can be growth instead of loss. When instead of attacking our political opponents, we sit down with them, get to know the beliefs behind their views; when instead of becoming frustrated with our parent's pushy-ness or old-fashioned-ideas, we understand their motivations and principles; when we not only understand others' beliefs, but come to believe them as well, it is then that the true growth starts.

If we continue to divide humanity into smaller and smaller groups according to who agrees with us, we will end up with nothing. But when we seek to include others, and most importantly the Lord, in our search for right, our ability to grow together borders on the infinite. Division is only necessary for definition of problems, not for truth. Once we have divided, it is our duty to once again build and grow together. If we are not one, well, you know. . . .

The New Development is Orange with Bunny Ears

I just found out about the One Laptop per Child project on Slashdot. An excellent summary of the latest model can be found here. The basic concept is to make a cheap, highly functional, low-end laptop to be purchased in bulk by governments for use in schools, particularly in third world countries. For countries without a power grid, some sort of human power generator (foot pump, or hand crank maybe) would be provided. These laptops will perform all the basic functions of our "obese" laptops, except for massive data storage. Besides basic word processing and internet capability, built-in functions include wireless access, the ability to easily form ad hoc networks, microphones and speakers for chat and music, a tablet-PC-like mode, and durability. At a price of about $100 each, schools might soon be able to afford to check out laptops to students each year. Plus, it looks so cool: orange with bunny ears indeed.

Some may wonder why people are even concerned with access to laptops in countries where basic needs are not always met. I actually think that this is one of the best things for development that I have seen in years. I wrote a topic booklet for RHSMUN a while back on this very subject: access to modern technology is often better at increasing a country's development status than direct efforts. According to the World Bank's 1998/1999 World Development Report, the countries that saw massive increases in development status from the 70's to the 90's (Singapore, Korea, and other Asian nations) focused on their population's acquisition, education, and production of modern technology.

In other words, it is a huge mistake to think that a country must pass through all previous technological states before arriving at modernity, that once they address basic needs they will catch-up. One of the new buzz words in development is "leap-frogging": with the invention of wireless technologies, many less developed nations can skip over the expensive infrastructure of analog and go straight to wireless. By getting modern technology into the hands of the children in these countries, we greatly increase their earning power in the modern world, and thus their ability to help their country grow. It's the "teach a man to fish" philosophy in action! It feels so completely empowering.

Or perhaps this project simply appeals to me because the idea of each student having a laptop reminds me a lot of the "desks" in Ender's Game. :D

Weary of Well Speaking

I have a terrible bias against good public speakers. Here are some possible reasons for this:

• Perhaps this is because I am not one. My presentation tends to be terrible, given that I tend to cry when I am nervous or discuss anything I care about. People who can remain unemotional when discussing something important lack passion or conviction in my eyes.
  
• To me, good speaking tends to indicate a lack of substantial ideas, glossed over with flowery language and anecdotes. Unlike much of the international community, I actually find comfort in the fact that President Bush is a terrible speaker, because it indicates to me he is sincere in his thoughts, elected for his ideas, not for his charm. One of the main reasons I would never have voted for Kerry was his speaking ability: smooth, eloquent, and able to speak about nothing for hours. Very typical of the modern career politician, and in my view, the main enemy of progress in government. Politics (and by extension, life) seem to be so much about how you say things and who you are, rather than the actual ideas you have. Rather than consisting of plans and positions, so much of any speech is just vague filler statements, the kind that I would slash through with my red pen if it were an essay.
• Debaters. Bad experiences with debaters. Something seems so wrong to me with the idea of debate competitions. We teach students to argue either side of an issue, as if your personal convictions, or actually truths, about right and wrong are not really that relevant. They are taught to cut into flaws in evidence and presentation, undermining their opponents not by superiority of ideas but by seeming technicalities. They ignore, or cover up, the valid points of their opponent, pitting the worst of their opposition against the best of their own thought. This seems to me a short, sloppy, and least-effective method of argumentation. If you really want to prove something true, you must take your opponents' best arguments, rather than their worst, and you must acknowledge the weaknesses of your position. Only if you can convince someone in spite of both of these things have you truly found truth.
  

Does anyone else feel this way?