To Be Or Not To Be

A List of Articles in this Blog

2008-10-07T18:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader:

Nearly fifty articles were posted to this blog between May 6 and July 26 of this year. I stopped because there was no indication anyone was reading what I’d written. The way this blog works is annoying too.

First, you can look backwards in time from wherever you are, but you can’t always look forward. Archives are only available on the home page or one of the Archives pages.

Second, the links to the articles are in reverse order in the right hand column. This makes it difficult to read multi-part articles in order.

Third, there is no easy way of getting a global view of what is on the blog.

To address all three problems, I’m posting another blog with a list of all the articles, organized in a more-or-less logical order by subject.

My Autobiography

June 23 - My 64th Birthday - An Autobiographical Sketch

May 9 – No Games, Just Sports

May 14 – Dürer: Self-Expression and Depression

Mother’s Day

May 9 – Mothers to Emulate – Mary Fielding and Emma Smith – or maybe not...

Father’s Day

June 15 - Father's Day: The Names of God - Introduction

June 15 - Father's Day: The Names of God - Abba to Zur

Memorial Day

May 26 – Musings on Memorial Day

The Family

July 12 - Families: Defending Traditional Marriage I

July 16 - Families: Defending Traditional Marriage II

July 24 - The Proclamation on the Family and David Bednar’s challenge.

Religion and the Scriptures

May 19 – The Ages of the Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph

July 4 - The Bible - Inspired and Imperfect

Poetry and Parallelism in the Scriptures

June 6 - My Poetry - or - from the Sublime to the Ridiculous

June 8 - English Poetry and the Poetry of the Scriptures

June 9 - Chiasmus I - Noah, the Flood, and Hebrew Poetry

June 12 - Chiasmus II – Parallelism in the Old Testament

June 16 - Chiasmus III: Isaiah in the Book of Mormon

June 22 - Chiasmus IV: Six Book of Mormon Stories from 1 Nephi

June 22 - Chiasmus IV: Nephi’s Outline One

June 24 - Chiasmus V: Nephi’s Outline Two

June 29 - Chiasmus VI: Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, and Mormon

June 29 - Chiasmus VI Revisited: Alma 13 in greater detail

July 2 - Chiasmus VII: Some Modern Examples

Columbus and the Flat Earth

May 21 – Columbus and the Flat Earth I

May 22 – Columbus and the Flat Earth II

Art and non-Art

May 24 – The Emperor’s New Clothes

Education

July 8 - Public Schools: Salina Kansas eighth-grade final exam

July 9 - Public Schools: Salina Kansas revisited

July 22 - Public Schools: And You Think You Have Problems

Entertainment

July 6 - Hollywood’s Three Big Lies

July 10 - Trash TV: We Can Clean the Screen

July 16 - One Hundred and One Reasons Not to Watch TV - April 1992

July 26 - Television 1996: That Vast Wasteland!

Creation and Evolution

May 28 - Darwinism: There Are No Limits and I Can Do Anything I Want

May 30 - Darwinism: People before Adam and Eve?

June 5 - Darwinism: Cultural Continuity and the Universal Flood

Mass Extinctions and Global Warming

June 14 – Mass Extinctions

June 2 - The Carolina Bays and the Younger Dryas impact event - I

June 3 - The Carolina Bays and the Younger Dryas impact event - II

June 4 - The Carolina Bays and the Younger Dryas impact event - III

June 18 - Motion: Global Warming Is NOT a Crisis!

July 20 - Motion: Global Warming is Not a Crisis II

Urban Legends

June 26 - Urban Legends and The Thermodynamics of Hell

June 28 - A Great Cookie Recipe from Nieman-Marcus

Miscellaneous Mutterings and Musings

May 15 – The Horrors of an Unread Blog

June 20 – Oxymoron: Artificial Intelligence

June 30 - Relativity in Words of Four Letters or Less

Television 1996: That Vast Wasteland!

2008-07-26T11:18:00.001-07:00

Our family (this was written in 1996) has not been hooked up to cable television for more than fifteen years. Once in a while I look through an issue of "TV Times" to see what we're missing. The following 109 movies are a representative sample of what was offered during the first week of 1996, although I didn't get around to writing this article until March. The sit-coms and soap operas and advertisements on TV all have pretty much the same sort of message too.

I made the following print tiny so that if your kids are looking over your shoulder you can hit the BACK button before they see too much.

Accidental Meeting: Two women scheme to kill men for each other.

After Dark, My Sweet: Widow and con man try kidnap caper.

Almost Golden: Insecurity, substance abuse plague newswoman.

Ambassador: Blackmailers have U.S. ambassador's wife on film with PLO lover.

Ambition: Writer plays mind games with mass murderer.

American Cyborg - Steel Warrior: Killer cyborg hunts last fertile woman on Earth.

Angel Face: Socialite and her chauffeur up for murder.

At Close Range: Rural teen joins father's crime clan.

Babysitter: Baby sitter is the object of clients' obsessions. (T)

Bad Boys: Detectives probe murders linked to stolen heroin.

Badge 373: Racist police detective hunts thug for killing partner.

Bedroom Eyes: Jogging Canadian stockbroker peeps on kink, sees murder.

Belly of an Architect: Architect in Rome thinks wife is poisoning him for rival.

Blackout: Amnesiac cannot recall murders: ex-policeman can.

Blue Tiger: Woman seeks her son's tatooed killer.

Body and Soul: Medical-student boxer, his girlfriend, and the mob.

Body Chemistry 4 - Full Exposure: Attorney falls under sex psychologist's spell.

The Border: Easy money corrupts Border Patrol officer.

Breach of Conduct: Army colonel stalks wife of officer at Utah base.

Bret Maverick: Lazy Ace: Arizona poker player acts when sore loser robs bank.

The Burning Bed: Battered wife sets bed on fire with husband in it.

Cal: Young IRA recruit and policeman's widow have Ulster affair.

Caroline at Midnight: Reporter seduced by corrupt policeman's wife.

Casual Sex?: Single women talk about men at health spa. (V)

Charlie Varrick: Thief and partner rob mob bank, flee hit man and police. (V)

Choices of the Heart: The story of the U.S. founder of the birth control movement.

Choose Me: Radio sex therapist, romantic, hipster, gangster, and wife.

Club Med: Resort manager in Mexico has ex-lover as guest.

Cobra: L.A. detectives protect model from neo-fascist slasher. (V)

Code of Silence: Chicago cop attacks cocaine store by remote control.

Color of Night: N.Y. psychologist seeks friend's killer in L.A.

Columbo Goes to the Guillotine: Police detective suspects mind reader of murder.

The Comfort of Strangers: English lovers seduced by diplomat's son in Venice.

The Companion: Android's love for novelist turns lethal.

Cross My Heart: Couple spend third date lying, confessing.

Daddy: Pregnancy forces teen lovers to make adult decisions.

Dallas Connection: Bikini-clad assassins vs. secret agents.

Dead On: Married lovers scheme to kill for each other.

Deadly Love: Policeman falls for vampire photographer.

Deadly Past: Ex-convict helps blackmailed ex-girlfriend.

A Death In California: Socialite lies for man who raped her and killed her fiance.

A Death In Canaan: Writer defends teen for killing his mother.

Death Valley: Boy joins mother and her boyfriend, finds corpses.

Death Wish 4 - The Crackdown: Vigilante targets L.A. drug rings in girlfriend's behalf. (V)

Devil's Bride: Duke and friends form pentagram against satanist in 1920s.

Dial M for Murder: London playboy plots perfect murder of wife.

Dirty Work: Bail-bond buddies torn by mob and betrayal.

Disclosure: Boss accusses her co-worker of sexual harassment. (T)

Dolores Claiborne: Murder suspect and her daughter face past traumas.

Double Cross: One night of lust connects man to murder.

Dress Gray: Military cadet mired in general's cadet-murder cover-up.

Ed and His Dead Mother: Clerk's dead mom comes back as cannibal.

The Egyptian: Maid loves, Babylonian Temptress ruins Pharaoh's doctor. (T)

Experiment in Terror: Woman helps FBI agent catch killer holding her sister.

Fallen Idol: French ambassador's son casts murder shadow on butler.

Final Analysis: Psychiatrist beds patient's sister, prompting murder.

The Final Conflict: Antichrist Damien, now ambassador to England.

Four Weddings and a Funeral: English charmer meets lusty American.

Friday: Loafer, pot-smoker hang out on front porch.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle: Petty Boston hood rats on friends to avoid jail.

Friendships, Secrets and Lies: Baby's skeleton points toward ex-sorority sisters.

The Fugitive: U.S. marshal hunts doctor for murder of his wife. (T)

Ghoul: Ex-cleric in 1920s England keeps cannibal son in attic.

Gorilla at Large: Law student or gorilla could be fun-park killer.

The Graduate: College man gets seduced by his girlfriend's mother. (T)

The Great White Hope: Boxing champ punished for having white mistress circa 1910.

Hard Vice: Las Vegas police suspect call girls of murder.

Harlem Nights: Night club partners sting white mobster in 1930s Harlem. (V)

The Haunting of Sarah Hardy: Heiress's husband and friend plot seaside mansion murder.

Holy Matrimony: Hutterite's widow weds 12-year-old brother-in-law.

The Horror at 37,000 Feet: Jet captain's cargo brings ghosts on board.

How Sweet It Is: Photographer and wife flirt with others in Europe.

Illicit Behavior: Policeman's abused wife plots revenge.

Impact: Man hides with widow after wife botches his murder.

Indecent Behavior II: Sex therapist suspected in her patient's murder.

L.A. Dreams: Sleazy film producer casts small town starlets.

La Strada: Carnival strong man mistreats witless waif.

The Last Hit: Ex-CIA hit man loves widow marked for murder.

The Legend of Hell House: Physicist, wife, medium and researcher bait demons.

The Lost Weekend: Boozing writer lands in Bellevue with DTs.

The Manitou: Psychic asks witch doctor to get evil off girlfriend's back.

Meatballs III: Porno queen's ghost coaches summer-camp nerd.

Natural Born Killers: Lovers go on spree through New Mexico.

Night of the Demons: Teen holds Halloween seance to scare friends.

Night Visions: Writer experiences sexuality through the ages.

Nightmare on the 13th Floor: Travel writer finds cult of Satan in Victorian hotel.

Nuts: Public defender sides with call girl up for manslaughter.

Out of Sync: L.A. DJ falls for drug dealer's girlfriend.

Paradise Motel: Teen lets local Romeo use family's motel suite.

Parallax View: Reporter traces corporate assassination conspiracy.

Perfect: Rolling Stone reporter seduces aerobics instructor.

Poltergeist II: American Indian helps family prey to poltergeist. (V)

Poltergeist III: Demons find girl living with aunt and uncle in high-rise.

Popeye Doyle: New York detectives link call girl's overdose to Mideast power play.

Prince of Foxes: Cesare Borgia sends Renaissance man to seduce duke's wife.

Professional: Italian hit man protects orphan girl in N.Y. (V)

Raw Justice: Murder links ex-policeman, call girl and suspect.

Scorned: Wife seeks revenge on husband's co-worker.

Serial Mom: Baltimore housewife kills in her spare time. (V)

The Seven Year Itch: Wife's away; blonde upstairs gives man ideas. (V)

Sex, Love and Cold Hard Cash: Call girl and ex-con go after embezzled savings.

Sleep With Me: L.A. man loves his best friend's wife.

So Evil My Love: British widow joins con man in Victorian crime and passion.

Stay the Nite: Teen's mother entraps his lover whose husband he killed.

This House Possessed: Evil force holds rock star and his nurse.

Traces of Red: Palm Beach Policeman works sordid serial slayings.

Vice Squad: Hollywood hooker helps detective trap sick pimp.

The Wedding Banquet: Gay partners try to fool Taiwanese parents with fake wedding.

The Year of Living Dangerously: Reporter betrays friend, lover in 1965 Indonesia.

That's the list, arranged alphabetically.

Sadly, I must admit that I have watched five of the above movies (T) in the theater, and have brought home nine others (V) from the video store. We have a TV set and a VCR, but no cable hookup. We rent movies and have a rule about not renting anything rated 'R'.

Now here is another alphabetical list of the beliefs, lifestyles, and ideals you will have firmly implanted in your hearts and minds if you watch these movies (or the sit-coms, soap operas, and advertisements) on TV. Every one of these sickening ideas is expressed in one or more of the movies above:

Wives are ABUSED. People make ACCUSATIONS and have AFFAIRS. We find the ANTICHRIST. There are ASSASSINATIONS by ASSASSINS. People AVOID JAIL.
BAIL BONDSMEN ply their trade with BANK ROBBERS. BATTERED WIVES burn their husbands. People with BEDROOM EYES keep BEDDING one another. We have BETRAYAL, BIKINIS, and BIRTH CONTROL. People BLACKMAIL one another. Men and women have BODY CHEMISTRY and are BOOZERS.
They use CALL GIRLS and resort to CANNIBALISM, CASUAL SEX, and CHILD ABUSE. They go to the COCAINE STORE, where there are CON MEN involved in CONSPIRACY with CORPSES. CORRUPTION and COVER-UPS are used by CRIME CLANS and CULTS OF SATAN.
Couples indulge in DEADLY LOVE and DEATH WISHES. They have DELIRIUM TREMENS. There are DEMONS and the DEVIL'S BRIDE. People do DIRTY WORK and are involved in DOUBLE CROSSES with DRUG DEALERS and DRUG RINGS.
They look for EASY MONEY, and are involved in EMBEZZLEMENT and ENTRAPMENT to get it. throughout the whole thing there is EVIL and EVIL FORCES. EX-CONVICTS and EX-LOVERS abound.
Lovers FAKE their FLIRTATIONS and FOOL one another. FUGITIVES flee.
GANGSTERS lurk. GAY PARTNERS deceive their parents. GHOSTS and GHOULS grimace.
There are HAUNTINGS and appeals to HELL. People are hooked on HEROIN. HIT MEN, HOODLUMS and HOOKERS provide a sense of HORROR.
IDOLS are idolized with ILLICIT BEHAVIOR and INDECENT BEHAVIOR.
There are KIDNAPPINGS, wives KILL their husbands, and husbands are KILLING their wives. It is all very KINKY.
There is LETHAL LOVE and there are LIES. Of course the LOVERS are unmarried and LUSTY.
We find MANSLAUGHTER and MASS MURDER. MEDIUMS and MIND READERS provide inspiration. MISTRESSES and MOBSTERS MURDER each other. There are a whole host of MURDER SUSPECTS.
NEO-FASCISTS in NIGHT CLUBS experience NIGHTS OF LUST and then have NIGHTMARES.
OBSESSIONS for children and drug OVERDOSES occur.
PASSION involves PEEPING TOMS who make PENTAGRAMS while dreaming of the PERFECT MURDER. Meanwhile, PLAYBOYS are PLOTTING to POISON POKER PLAYERS. There are some POLTERGEISTS and some PORNOGRAPHY QUEENS. People become POSSESSED and SMOKE POT with PSYCHICS. There are unwed PREGNANCIES.
RACISTS RAPE and RAT on each other and get REVENGE.
SATANISTS SCHEME during SEANCES to SEDUCE people. People are involved in SERIAL SLAYINGS and feel the SEVEN YEAR ITCH. And of course throughout all is SEX, SEX, SEX! SEX is overused and abused in every possible way. There are SEX PSYCHOLOGISTS and SEX THERAPISTS. There is SEXUAL HARASSMENT and SEXUALITY THROUGH THE AGES involving SICK PIMPS and the SKELETONS of babies. There are SLASHERS. The whole thing is SORDID. SORE LOSERS cast SPELLS while STALKING STARLETS. Bad cops and dirty detectives perform STINGS involving STOLEN HEROIN. There is politically correct SUBSTANCE ABUSE. Many SUSPECTS are suspected.
TEEN LOVERS and TEMPTRESSES feel TERROR. THIEVES and THUGS do their thing.
VAMPIRES with VICES are hunted by VIGILANTES. And of course throughout all is VIOLENCE, VIOLENCE, VIOLENCE!
There are even WITCH DOCTORS.

I have had people tell me that they don't have enough time to read the scriptures every day. They claim they don't have time to say their personal or family prayers. They state that there isn't enough time for family home evening. These same people often watch several hours of television every night.

They may even defend some of the movies in the above list. They'll say, "I saw this one and it wasn't all that bad..." It will be pointed out that television includes much more than the movies I've listed here. But as I've noted, the sit-coms and soap operas and advertisements all espouse pretty much the same themes. I guess if you could really limit the channels on your TV to KQED and the History Channel or something similar it would make a difference. But how often are parents around to supervise what children watch? And how often, when parents are at home, is supervision taking place?

It worries me a little that some of the people who read this might actually have their prurient interests stimulated by it, and use it as a list of movies to rent. Maybe I'm wrong to write these things.

P.S. You'd better click the BACK button right now and not leave this on the screen where your kids might see it.....

The Proclamation on the Family and David Bednar’s challenge.

2008-07-24T22:38:00.000-07:00

The Proclamation on the Family is a statement of Latter-Day Saint doctrine concerning the family. It was read by President Gordon B. Hinckley as part of his message at the General Relief Society Meeting held September 23, 1995, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Proclamation on the Family addresses the overwhelming attack on traditional family values currently taking place in America and around the world. I've already talked about this attack in previous articles.

In "Let Our Voices Be Heard", an address given in October 2003 General Conference, Elder M. Russell Ballard says this.

Church leaders have the responsibility to speak out on moral issues and to counsel individuals and families. The family is the basic unit of society; it is the basic unit of eternity. Thus, when forces threaten the family, Church leaders must respond.
The family is at the heart of Heavenly Father’s plan because we are all part of His family and because mortality is our opportunity to form our own families and to assume the role of parents. It is within our families that we learn unconditional love, which can come to us and draw us very close to God’s love. It is within families that values are taught and character is built. Father and mother are callings from which we will never be released, and there is no more important stewardship than the responsibility we have for God’s spirit children who come into our families.
Within this context of the preeminent importance of families and the threats families face today, it is not surprising that the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles used strong words in the proclamation to the world on families: "We warn that individuals … who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets."

I’ve already posted several articles about the effects of TV and other "entertainment" in our lives. Elder Ballard says this about TV programming.

"The fall of the year is when television airs its season premieres and introduces its new shows. A friend told me that there are 37 new TV series being inaugurated this fall. As he has read the reviews, he has found few if any of them that he would want his children to watch. Most of the sitcoms, dramas, and reality shows contain immorality, violence, and subtle ridicule of traditional values and traditional families. Each year the new shows seem to get worse, pushing the envelope of what the public will accept. What comes out of Hollywood, off the Internet, and in much of today’s music creates a web of decadence that can trap our children and endanger all of us."

On Saturday January 9, 1999 Elder David Bednar spoke in the priesthood session of our Stake Conference. He talked about The Proclamation on the Family and gave us an assignment. We were to write each sentence from the Proclamation on one side of some sheets of paper and then try to write what we thought the devil’s take on each of them would be. When I got home that night I did what he suggested. I wasn't able to finish because I got disgusted at what I was writing. Elder Bednar said that's the same thing Elder Boyd K. Packer said when he did the assignment. But, he said, the important thing was to do the assignment.

In 2000 the same assignment was given to everyone by Elder John B. Dickson in the Sunday session of Stake Conference. I wonder how many people did it?

Here's what I wrote.

The Proclamation goes on after this, but, as I said, I got disgusted at this point and didn't go any farther.

I assume the same assignment was given to every stake in 1999 and again in 2000. Do you remember it? Did you do it?

Public Schools: And You Think You Have Problems

2008-07-22T05:50:00.000-07:00

When my kids were really little I served as vice president of the PTA at Sun Terrace Elementary school for several years. When they were a bit older I was on the Glenbrook Site Council for a couple of years. I’ll admit I was more than a little frustrated by the lack of real, measurable success.

This is the Mission Statement of the California State PTA.

The mission of the California State PTA is to positively impact the lives of all children and families by representing our members and empowering and supporting them with skills in advocacy, leadership, and communication.

Sound vague? You betcha! Have anything at all to do with Reading, and Writing, and Arithmetic? Doesn’t sound like it. On another California PTA page is a somewhat more detailed list of goals. The use of "family" is laudable until you get to the fifth bullet.

We believe:
Every adult has a responsibility to ensure that all children have the opportunity to develop to their full potential

Parents/guardians are children's first teachers

Family involvement is essential throughout a child's educational experience

Family is the basic unit of society responsible for the support and nurturing of all children

Family may be defined in many ways

Our collective responsibility includes advocating for the safety, welfare and the opportunity for quality public education for all children

What did The Sun Terrace PTA do to further any of these goals? Oh, we had great ideas, but we wound up spending nearly all our energy trying to raise funds for the school. You’ve seen this bumper sticker?

Amen, and amen.

The first year I was on the Site Council at Glenbrook Middle School, Sacramento gave the school about $50,000 as part of a special program. There were certain guidelines, but (within reason) we could spend it any way we saw fit. How to spend this money was debated that entire school year. Several hundred dollars were spent for small projects the principal wanted to push through. Almost all that money just sat in a bank somewhere, accomplishing nothing for Glenbrook. I was the treasurer that year, so I pretty much know what I’m talking about.

We eventually arrived at a general consensus about using the money to buy computers and software for the school. We bogged down on whether to buy Apple hardware or PCs, and what software to buy. I’m an electrical engineer. I managed fiber optic and Ethernet voice and data network installation projects. I suggested we install a network around the school with outlets in each classroom that could be patched in a centralized multimedia closet from a server to classroom PCs and from a bank of video cassette players to TV sets mounted on the walls in the classrooms. That would give the school administration control over what was shown and by whom. With $50,000 to spend we could have accomplished a lot.

At the end of the year it was decided to purchase a round table with vertical dividers and Apple computers to go in each of the sections. These would be interconnected using Appletalk. These would go in the library and be available the following school year. Of course that was only going to cost a few thou$and. The rest of the money would be continue to molder in the bank. Or maybe the unused funds would revert back to the state. In any case, it was the last straw, and I was already carrying a Bunch of Bales.

I resigned. In my journal I wrote, "I attended my last meeting this afternoon. In retrospect I can scarcely believe I have been willing to subject myself this long to that circus."

In my July 8 article about the Salina Kansas final exam, I asserted that we might not be getting as good an education as people did a century ago. I said I thought our "entertainment" had a lot to do with the "dumbing down" of America. I placed a big part of the blame on problems with the family. I meant the traditional family, which, as I wrote on July 12 and July 18, is under attack. An example of that attack is the California PTA's assertion that families "may be defined in many ways". I’ll restate those four observations here.

Blue-collar vs white-collar families. Parents with higher education have different attitudes toward school than those who only finished high school – or less.

Families in which English is not the primary language. This observation is reversed in families from Southeast Asia, whose students characteristically excel. ESL does a lot to help, but the school system can only do so much.

Single parent families. A single mom has to do more than is humanly possible. So-called "latchkey" kids get into a lot of mischief while mom is working, and don’t get as much help with their homework. This problem also tends to exist in families where both parents work.

"Minority" families. The problem here is that many minority parents have low expectations. They haven’t seen the system work for them, they have experienced lifelong prejudicial treatment, and they transmit their cynicism, frustration and despair to their kids.

During the years I served in the Sun Terrace PTA presidency and on the Glenbrook Site Council I associated with teachers who were Caring and Capable. One little-known fact about California teachers is that, on average, each teacher spends about $2,000 per school year, out of his or her own pocket, on classroom supplies the school can’t afford to buy.

I guess the person I told you about in my July 8 article, who taught at Concord High, could have purchased textbooks for her classes. Right? How would you feel if the company you work for expected you to do your job but wasn’t willing to supply the materials you needed to get it done? Would you be willing to spend $2,000 a year of your own money on office supplies?

If you are like most people you expect to get paid for the time you are at work. You resist and resent unpaid overtime. The last thing most normal people would be willing to do is give up their weekends and evenings to volunteer at work. A lot of the parents I met were upset that more teachers didn’t want to attend PTA meetings or be on the Site Council. They expected teachers to be available for "consultations" whenever parents needed to talk to them. How is a parent’s time any more valuable than a teacher’s?

So far I've identified several problems facing public schools.

Our "entertainment" industry - whether intentionally or because it brings them the most money - seeks to dumb us down.

Families do not adequately support education - for a variety of reasons.

The PTA spends all its time trying to raise money for the schools.

The schools don't have enough money for textbooks and classroom supplies - the teachers try to fill the gap out of their own pockets.

Even when funds are available they may be diverted or held back because of management's indecision.

There are darker forces at work.

On Halloween in October 1992 the gymnasium at Ygnacio Valley High School was turned over to the local witches – ON A SCHOOL DAY – for a series of meetings and ceremonies. A portion of the "Faculty Parking" lot became "cult Parking", with "Fa" and "y" masked off on the sign. Our three oldest kids, who attended YVHS, told us about this and brought home a copy of the school newspaper. Below is the newspaper article.

I'll stop here and let you mull that over for a while before I continue.

Motion: Global Warming is Not a Crisis II

2008-07-20T06:23:00.000-07:00

On June 18 I posted an article about the Motion: Global Warming is Not a Crisis. My brother read it yesterday and wrote to point out abortion was not on the WHO World Health Statistics 2008 chart. I was surprised/shocked/dumbfounded that I’d missed that! I guess the reason why abortion is not on the WHO chart is because abortion is legal and WHO is politically correct.

There is another huge cause of death that seems to be missing from the WHO chart – that I also failed to include in my June 18 article – but I’ll leave that for another article in a few days. Can you figure out what it is?

Here is an article I wrote toward the end of 1998 about abortion.

At various times in my life I’ve had the pleasure of teaching the adult Sunday school class in our church. On September 6, 1998 in a class about the book of Micah, I made this statement.

One of the most terrible sins committed by Israel was that many of them worshipped the pagan fertility gods and goddesses of their wicked neighbors. One practice of these religions was the murder of their firstborn sons as sacrifices to these devil gods. Micah refers to this practice (Micah 6:6-8). What common practice done by many people around us today is similar to that ancient evil? [abortion.] It makes my skin crawl when I hear people supporting the murder of millions of innocent children. And these little babies are killed merely for convenience, not for some supposedly religious reason, but just for convenience. I think people who are pro-abortion are much more evil than those ancient people who murdered their babies, because the ancients – in their twisted way – thought god (lower case) wanted them to. Abortionists are chaff (see Isaiah 5:20-24) indeed.

Some people might think this is a harsh statement. But listen to the words of one of the presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I think you'll find that abortionists gave him the creeps even more than they do me. More than 100 years ago, President John Taylor (Journal of Discourses, Vol.23, p.36, March 5th, 1882) said:

The pious, zealous, religious and hypocritical in our day, uniting with political demagogues, have set up a God for us to worship, which they boastfully represent as the embodiment of everything that is pure and virtuous, embodying the enlightenment and civilization of the nineteenth century. Their god is overlaid with gilt and tinsel, but inside it is pregnant with the social evil with its twin adjuncts feticide and infanticide. Like a great Moloch it is crushing out female virtue, trampling upon innocence, and prostituting and destroying millions of the fair daughters of Eve. Yet this loathsome, filthy, debauched, degraded monster is held up for our veneration and worship by its corrupt Christian devotees as the essence of everything that is great and grand, noble and praiseworthy; and we are called upon to fall down and worship this loathsome monster under the threat of unconstitutional pains and penalties, and the violation of every principle of liberty and protection guaranteed under the Constitution. Shall we worship this unnatural, lascivious Moloch? Shall we bow down before the shrine of this fetid, corrupt and debauched monster? No! We will worship the Lord our God, yield obedience to his behests, and, if we are faithful, live our religion, and keep his commandments, the God whom we worship will deliver us out of the hands of our enemies, and we shall triumph over all our foes.

Now THAT is harsh! In the 1880s they called abortion "feticide" (or foeticide) - just like genocide, homicide, and infanticide. They hadn't softened it yet to "abortion." Two years after the statement quoted above, President Taylor spoke on this subject again. This time he was quoting George Q. Cannon. President Cannon, in turn, had an article published by the American Social Sciences Association that discussed abortion in America. It seems that in the 1880s, the practice of murdering babies had spread in New England to the point that (from the ASSA article)

"nowhere in the history of the world was the practice of abortion so common as in this country .. in New England alone, many thousands of abortions are procured annually. ... we have become a nation of murderers. ... 15% of wives have the criminal hardihood to practice this black art, [and] there is a still large and additional per cent who endorse and defend it. ... Among married persons, so extensive has this practice become, that people of high repute not only commit this crime, but do not shun to speak boastingly among their intimates of the deed and the means of accomplishing it. ... examining the number of deaths, we find that there are absolutely more deaths than births among the strictly American children, so that aside from immigration and births of children of foreign parentage, the population of Massachusetts is rapidly decreasing. ... The birth rate in the State of New York, shows the same fact, that American families do not increase at all, and inspection of the registration in other States shows the same remark applies to all."

After reading this quote, President Taylor had this to say (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 25, p. 315, October 6 and 7, 1884).

"If any doubts existed heretofore as to the propriety of my warnings on this subject, they must now disappear before the fact that the world itself is beginning to be horrified by the practical results of the sacrifices to Moloch which defile our land. Again I warn you that they who do such things cannot inherit eternal life. If there be a special damnation for those who shed innocent blood, what must be the portion of those who have no mercy upon their own flesh."

Hartman Rector, Jr., in April 1981 General Conference quoted D&C 2:3 and said, "I have often wondered how or why the earth would be 'wasted' if the children's hearts did not turn to their fathers." How and why indeed! A Church News article (April 11, 1981, p.18.) describes what he said.

"Attacking the practices of abortion, sterilization and homosexuality, Elder Hartman Rector Jr. of the First Quorum of the Seventy said in his Sunday afternoon address that the family is under the most serious threat of any time since the creation, with the possible exception of the days of Noah. He decried the philosophies of governments to enforce birth control, abortions and sterilization in order to limit the number of children in a family. He said that the family is the basic unit of society and of exaltation and that such restrictions will literally destroy nations.
"He criticized a commonly accepted idea that governments should care for the aged family members, thereby relieving the children of any responsibility. For the U.S. White House Conference on Families in 1980, many delegates tried to get state conventions to define a family as "any group of people living together." This would not have meant the traditional mother, father, children relationship, but any group of people living together. "Now whom do you suppose would sponsor such a resolution?" he asked. "It is those who represent the so-called 'alternate life-style.' Birth control is rampant. Sterilizations and vasectomies increase annually. The statistics on abortion in the United States are mind-boggling.
"For example: abortionists will kill over 2 million babies in the next 12 months. That amounts to three abortions every 60 seconds. Abortion kills more Americans in one year than all the wars did from Valley Forge to Vietnam. Eight million American babies have been slaughtered by abortion since Jan. 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized abortion and over $3 million of taxpayers' money will be used to pay for government funded abortions this year.
"He said the conditions today seem similar to those Noah faced. He quoted D&C 2:3 and said, "I have often wondered how or why the earth would be 'wasted' if the children's hearts did not turn to their fathers. Today, it is very clear for all to see. If, when the Lord comes, He finds nothing but birth control, abortion, sterilization and homosexuals, the earth is wasted. What was the purpose of its creation anyway? This earth was created so God the Father would have a place to send His children to receive a body of flesh and bone and prove themselves. If we will no longer permit Him to do so, of what good is the earth to the Lord? Therefore, it is wasted and as in the days of the flood He will surely destroy it."

I think many people may be unaware of the incredible number of babies murdered each year. The table below came from Baptists for Life, which cites the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Those two sources yield different figures.

A more recent AGI report says there were 1,313,999 abortions in 2000, 1,303,000 in 2001, and 1,293,000 in 2002. Abort73.com says 1.21 million babies were murdered in 2005.

According to the AGI, from 1973 until the end of 2005, more than 45 million babies were murdered in the United States.

And worldwide? A National Right to Life article cites the same sources used in the above table and says 46 million babies are murdered annually worldwide.

Horrifying.

In case you forgot what this article is really about, it is about the Motion: Global Warming is Not a Crisis.

Global Warming is not even an issue. Whether Al Gore likes it or not.

Families: Defending Traditional Marriage II

2008-07-16T05:17:00.001-07:00

Have you heard about Proposition 8?

This November, the California Marriage Protection Act will be on the ballot as Proposition 8. This will amend the California constitution, adding SECTION 2, Article I, Section 7.5. These words will be added to the constitution, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

A few days ago I posted a letter from LDS Church leaders asking members in California to support Proposition 8. I also commented on a piece of Yellow Journalism about the First Presidency letter that appeared in the Contra Costa Times newspaper.

In this article I’ll try to give some background information about Proposition 8, the California Marriage Protection Act.

The federal Defense of Marriage Act, also known as DOMA, was passed by Congress by a vote of 85-14 in the Senate and a vote of 342-67 in the House of Representatives, and was signed by President Bill Clinton on September 21, 1996. It became Public Law No. 104-199, 110 Stat. 2419.

Its provisions are codified at 1 U.S.C. § 7 and 28 U.S.C. § 1738C. You can look these up, but I’ll put the pertinent text here.

1 U.S.C. § 7 says, "In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word "marriage" means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word "spouse" refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife."

28 U.S.C. § 1738C says, "No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship."

In other words, the federal government would not recognize, and no state would be forced to recognize, same sex marriages even if legal in one of the states. It was left up to the states to pass their own legislation deciding how marriage would be defined in their jurisdiction.

In 2000, California Family Code section 300 defined marriage as, "a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman, to which the consent of the parties capable of making that contract is necessary."

Even though the definition governing who may marry explicitly precluded contracting a same-sex marriage in California, a separate provision, section 308, governed recognition of marriages contracted elsewhere. "A marriage contracted outside this state that would be valid by the laws of the jurisdiction in which the marriage was contracted is valid in this state."

Section 308 was seen as a "loophole". Proposition 22, also known as the California Defense of Marriage Act, and the Knight Initiative after its author, the late state senator William "Pete" Knight, closed the "loophole". Prop 22 added section 308.5, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." The fourteen words in Prop 8 are identical to what was in Prop 22.

At the end of 1999 and during the first months of 2000, I spent many hours going door-to-door in the city where I live handing out brochures and telling people about Proposition 22. Thousands of other people did the same thing in other places across California. Our efforts to make people aware of the issues surrounding Prop 22 were successful. Voters adopted the measure on March 7, 2000 by a wide margin, with 61.4% in favor.

That’s where things sat for several years in California. What were things like elsewhere? At the end of 2007 only Massachusetts allowed same-sex marriage. Connecticut, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Rhode Island did not have statutory or constitutional language protecting traditional marriage. Of the other 44 states, 24 have both constitutional and statutory marriage protection, 17 have statutory protection, and 3 have constitutional protection. California was one of the statutory states. (The link in this paragraph has complete information, including a clickable US map.)

On May 15, 2008 the California DOMA was ruled unconstitutional by the California Supreme Court as a violation of the "equal protection" clause. The decision took effect on June 16, 2008, and was hailed with a flurry of gay "marriages".

The proposed California state constitutional amendment was then placed on the 2008 California general election ballot.

In addition, Federal constitutional amendments were proposed in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005/2006. So far none has passed. Senator Roger Wicker introduced the 2008 Federal Marriage Protection Amendment on June 25. This year’s Marriage Protection amendment is identical to the 2004 version. It states, "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman."

If that could be added to the federal constitution, a lot of nonsense in a lot of states could be avoided. But if not, then it is up to us to promote and enact Proposition 8.

Leading the Proposition 8 initiative is ProtectMarriage.com, a diverse coalition of various organization and individuals. This coalition consists of many organized Christian denominations including: Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Mormons, Presbyterians, and many protestant non-denominational churches as well. Some well-known individuals supporting this measure include: Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson, Republican State Senator Tom McClintock and presidential candidate and U.S. Senator John McCain. ProtectMarriage.com reports support from over 1 million individuals.

This article gives a history of efforts to defend traditional marriage. It does not present the pros and cons of traditional marriage. I'll take a stab at that in a few days. I encourage you to study the issues and (from the First Presidency letter), "do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman."

This article is part of my effort to follow the prophet.

One Hundred and One Reasons Not to Watch TV - April 1992

2008-07-16T05:17:00.000-07:00

In the following list of movies from the April 19-25 Oakland Tribune "TV Book" you will find affairs, ancient rituals, bordellos, child abuse, corpses, crimes of passion, dead bodies, devil cults, drugs, drunkedness, eroticism, fatal attractions, ghosts, homosexuality, hookers, infidelity, killing, kinkiness, lust, murder, pedophilia, pornography, prostitutes, rape, Satanism, scandals, seduction, selling souls, sexual triangles, temptation, warlocks, wife sharing, and witches. Is there anything missing?

If this doesn't shock you, in a few days I'll post a similar article I wrote four years later, in 1996. That should be enough.

1. The Bad Seed - Freak accidents force a widow to realize her precocious 9-year-old daughter was born to kill.
2. Badlands - A thrill-seeking teen-age girl joins a garbageman on a South Dakota killing spree.
3. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant - Two women form a sexual triangle with a fashion designer in her arty apartment.
4. Blame it on Rio - A middle-aged coffee broker eyes his partner's nubile teen-age daughter on vacation in Brazil.
5. Blaze - Louisiana Gov. Earl K. Long has a scandalous late-1950's love affair with stripper Blaze Starr.
6. Body Chemistry - A kinky colleague has a fatal attraction for the married director of a sexual-behavior research lab.
7. The Brotherhood of Satan - The leader of a small-town devil cult seeks young members for ancient rituals.
8. The Burning Bed - A battered wife with three children sets her marital bed on fire with her drunken husband in it.
9. Cannery Row - An ex-ballplayer studies marine biology and a bordello girl in his run- down town.
10. Carmen Jones - A sultry plant worker drives a wartime soldier to murder in Jacksonville, Fla.
11. Cherry 2000 - A 21st-century tracker leads a yuppie to a warehouse of parts for his out-of-order robot sex object.
12. The Comic - A silent-film comedian drinks, cheats on his wife, bullies his buddy, and makes a brief TV comeback.
13. Corvette Summer - A student hooker in a van picks up a Las Vegas-bound teen on the trail of a stolen Stingray.
14. Dream Machine - An heiress gives a Colorado fraternity pledge a Porsche 911, with her husband's corpse in the trunk.
15. Drop Dead Gorgeous - The debut of a fashion model is followed by fame and by people around her being slain.
16. Eleven Days, Eleven Nights - Lusty New Orleans writer meets man getting married in 11 days.
17. The Entity - Psychic-phenomena experts and a psychiatrist treat a California mother for supernatural rape.
18. Escape to Paradise - Frenchwoman tempts man amid balmy island unrest.
19. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) - No explanation needed.
20. Fourth Story - A private eye's client becomes his lover as they search for her husband, who may be someone else.
21. Frankenhooker - A New Jersey mad doctor reguilds his girlfriend with body parts from exploded hookers.
22. Ghosts Can's Do It - No explanation needed.
23. The Good Mother - A Boston woman's ex-husband sues for custody of their daughter after an incident over her live-in lover.
24. Heart Beat - Beatnik drifter Neal Cassady shares his wife, Carolyn, with writer Jack Kerouac.
25. Heat and Dust - An Englishwoman's affair in India parallels her great-aunt's 1920s scandal.
26. Hot to Trot - No explanation needed.
27. Impulse - An undercover Hollywood policewoman goes too far with an assistand district attorney on a drug case.
28. Jaws of Satan - No explanation needed.
29. Lady Chatterley's Passions - No explanation needed.
30. Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III - No explanation needed.
31. Limit Up - A commodities-exchange runner sells her soul to the devil for a chance to trade soybeans.
32. Midnight's Child - A lawyer sees the devil in the Swiss au pair she and her husband have hired for their daughter.
33. Never on Sunday - An American intellectual tries to reform a happy prostitute in Greece.
34. No Secrets - Three teen-age girls play dangerous games with a handsome stranger who has something to hide.
35. The People Across the Lake - A couple and their children move to the country, where they open a shop and find dead bodies.
36. The Postman Always Rings Twice - A drifter stops at a Greek diner and helps the owner's lusty wife become a widow.
37. Pretty Woman - A corporate raider pays a gorgeous hooker to be his escort for a business week in Beverly Hills.
38. Right to Kill - An IRS agent subjects his wife, son, and daughter to daily abuse; his son ends it with a shotgun.
39. Sensual Pleasures - Feuding couple share tour guide in Greek hotel.
40. Shattered Innocence - A Kansas cheerleader turns 18, moves to Los Angeles, and becomes a porno star hooked on cocaine.
41. She Done Him Wrong - Gay '90s saloon-keeper Diamond Lou shoots another woman, seduces a missionary, and sings.
42. Totally Exposed - Tanning-salon co-workers get frank.
43. Twisted Obsession - An American screenwriter feels drawn to a British director's strangely erotic sister in Paris.
44. Unfaithfully Yours - Thinking his wife loves a violinist, a conductor orchestrates a crime of passion for revenge.
45. Valentine Magic on Love Island - A witch and her assistants bring four couples to a resort for a memorable Feb. 14th.
46. Warlock - No explanation needed.

OKAY! I know there aren't 101 movies listed here. Frankly I got really sick of the whole thing after 46. How can people watch this filth? And these were just the blatantly evil movies. There were a much larger number of movies that peddle a more subtle filth.

Families: Defending Traditional Marriage I

2008-07-12T05:02:00.001-07:00

On June 29 the following letter was read in LDS sacrament meetings throughout California.

On July 7 the Contra Costa Times ran a front page article, Mormon notions of gays may shift, written by Rebecca Rosen Lum. This is the first sentence.

"Some Mormons are rejecting their prophet's call to campaign for a ban on same-sex marriage in California, suggesting the church leadership's sway over the issue of homosexuality may be weakening."

I'm always intrigued by statements and articles about my church by people who are not members and who don't understand us. I'm sure Ms. Lum is a good person, and she possibly meant no harm when she wrote the article. In any case, Freedom of the Press is one of the foundations of our republic.

In spite of that, a little fairness in reporting – an honest and unbiased presentation of both sides of the issue – is one of the hallmarks of Great Journalism. I would have to label the article Yellow Journalism, at best. It is so strongly biased in favor of homosexuality and against the LDS Church that the email I wrote to Ms. Lum is no doubt a waste of time. The same is probably true of this post. But even though I don't hope to change how anyone thinks, maybe I can at least put some additional thoughts into someone's mind.

First of all, there have always been "dissidents". One of the great things about America, which goes right along with Freedom of the Press, is the opportunity for people to have differences of opinion without getting arrested for their beliefs.

Let's do a thought experiment here. Suppose the LDS church is telling the truth when it proclaims Thomas S. Monson to be literally a prophet of God. Then any rational person should "follow the prophet" to the best of his or her ability.

Now suppose the LDS church is wrong: Thomas S. Monson is just a nice old man. If that's the case, then the LDS church doesn't matter. Who cares what we think?

But a lot of people obviously DO care a lot about what we think, even though they don't believe God speaks to man through prophets today like He always did in ancient times. I have to ask myself when I read Yellow Journalism about my Church: why are people who don't think it is true so concerned about it? I suspect their motivation comes from darkness, rather than light.

Don't forget that a lot of very confused (but perhaps well-meaning?) Jews crucified the Savior of the world. They will regret what they did for all eternity. But they had every right to disagree with the Man and his Message. They had every right to choose darkness over light. We likewise have our agency today.

I was also intrigued by the "Mormons" Ms. Lum quoted in her article.

In any organization there is always a group of "core" people who keep the organization running. There is a much larger group of people who are there for the benefits and the fellowship. There are even people who participate just to avoid the pain of separation – in the business case so they don't get fired, and in churches because they are on a guilt trip and think they are "supposed to" be there, or because their family is pushing them into it.

In Ms. Lum's newspaper office there are people who are movers and shakers, who promote themselves and their causes with great efficiency, who are charismatic and sociable, who fit in well, and who have outside window offices. Then there are the rank-and-file employees who contribute meaningfully but who lack the excitement and the energy to be leaders. Finally, there are the drones; people who are hard to get along with, who put in their eight hours, but won't give more, and who do just enough to keep their jobs. I daresay the Contra Costa Times staff includes all three kinds of people.

The same "organizational behavior" is found in churches. Some people are "anxiously engaged ... and bring to pass much righteousness" (D&C 58:27). They give 10% of their income to their church. They accept "callings" to positions in the church organization and try to do a good job serving in those positions. Other people are there every Sunday because that's where all their friends hang out. They don't usually pay tithing or accept callings. (I'm the financial secretary of my church, so I have a first-hand knowledge of who does what.) A third large group of members don't come to church very often. They typically don't ever read the scriptures or have much understanding of the beliefs and doctrines of their church. But they are still members, and if you asked them about having their names removed they'd get all huffy with you.

"Members" of the LDS church – in all the different categories of membership – are under no obligation to support the church leaders with their time or money. Those who openly oppose the church leaders, on the other hand, cannot expect to remain in the church. How in the world would that make any sense? I'm sure you can get away with a lot of misbehavior and still remain an employee of the Times, but if you were to write and publish articles criticizing your boss or coworkers, how long would you keep your job, especially if what you wrote about them was filled with twisted half-truths and biased misrepresentations like this July 7 article?

Businesses reorganize periodically, try to adopt a new corporate culture, and in the process downsize. They get rid of some of the drones. Churches are unlike businesses in that respect. God is "unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity" (Moroni 8:18), so a true church would never reorganize or try to adopt a new corporate culture. Churches never downsize you, either, as long as you don't break any of the rules (commandments) too badly.

I think most of the "Mormons" Ms. Lum talked to are in the extreme outer fringes of church membership. They are almost certainly not "anxiously engaged" or even socially motivated. They might be people who have lost their membership because of immorality. It is interesting that they have (and express) these opinions and lack of faith but still tell you they are "Mormons".

In a talk he gave in General Conference in October 1998, Why We Do Some of the Things We Do, President Gordon B. Hinckley explained the position of the Church on homosexuality.

"In the first place, we believe that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God. We believe that marriage may be eternal through exercise of the power of the everlasting priesthood in the house of the Lord.
"People inquire about our position on those who consider themselves so-called gays and lesbians. My response is that we love them as sons and daughters of God. They may have certain inclinations which are powerful and which may be difficult to control. Most people have inclinations of one kind or another at various times. If they do not act upon these inclinations, then they can go forward as do all other members of the Church. If they violate the law of chastity and the moral standards of the Church, then they are subject to the discipline of the Church, just as others are.
"We want to help these people, to strengthen them, to assist them with their problems and to help them with their difficulties. But we cannot stand idle if they indulge in immoral activity, if they try to uphold and defend and live in a so-called same-sex marriage situation. To permit such would be to make light of the very serious and sacred foundation of God-sanctioned marriage and its very purpose, the rearing of families."

I believe that God's prophets have always taught these things. The New Testament certainly teaches that homosexuality is an abomination to God. Things were the same in Old Testament times. Look at what the prophet Moses taught his people in Leviticus 20:13, for example.

The Lord God has always taught the same standard of morality, and He will never change.

Trash TV: We Can Clean the Screen

2008-07-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

This is an article by Steve Allen, creator of "The Tonight Show", that was in the September 1, 1999 issue of Family Circle Magazine, p. 124. As you read this article, keep in mind that it is almost a decade old, and that things may have gotten worse or better since then. Which do you think has happened?

Recently I went over to visit my son Bill and his wife, Marie. His children, 4-year-old Amanda, 12-year-old Bob, and 14-year-old Bradley, were watching TV with four or five of their friends. I joined them and was astonished to find that they were watching a video of a film called Scream 2. The movie was littered with shockingly vulgar language and graphically violent images. We’re not talking here about a high work of art, which might also involve shocking language and graphic violence, but about the kink of picture that has only one purpose: to make money.

When I asked Bradley how the video had gotten into the house, he explained that he had bought it a few days earlier from a nearby video store (as easily as the Columbine high school student was able to buy guns), even though it is an R-rated film and not supposed to be available for viewing by children under 17!

Videos aside, these days broadcast television itself is too often offensive. Though The Howard Stern Show might be the worst example, it’s certainly not the only one. Jerry Springer is recognized as a disgrace to television even by people in the medium. And there are other daytime talk shows that are almost as offensive. Dramas are often overtly sexual or filled with violence. As for situation comedies, children watching them must get the impression that there’s nothing the least bit questionable about having sex with casual acquaintances, making endless jokes about flatulence and masturbation, or using course language.

Television was once called an electronic baby sitter. Would you hire a baby sitter who deliberately brought X-rated entertainment into your home?

It’s important to establish that we’re not talking here about a matter of taste. We’re talking about actual psychological and moral harm done by a culture that exposes its children morning, noon, and night to forms of alleged entertainment that are deliberately vulgar and violent.

And I’m not speaking only as a concerned citizen, but also as an outraged grandfather – of 12!

The good news is that as the tidal wave of vulgarity, cruelty, and sleaze increases, so do the efforts to combat it. I’ve been speaking and writing about the issue for more than 10 years. Recently a number of organizations such as Parents Television Council, Morality in Media, The Dove Foundation, The Christophers, and others have been welcomed my participation in the campaigns they’ve been conducting.

Another hopeful note is that more major corporations – the sponsors, of course, of television and radio programming both good and bad – are beginning to pay closer attention to the placement of commercials by their advertising agencies. Our country’s corporate community, by itself, could solve this problem overnight if it refused to advertise on vulgar or violent shows.

Another positive sign is that I am by no means a lone show-business voice criticizing the ugliness that characterizes so much of modern culture. Of course Mother Teresa would have disapproved of programs like Dawson’s Creek and South Park, but so do many popular entertainers.

This is an issue that concerns Americans all across the political and philosophical spectrum. Citizens on the political right and left, religious believers, nonbelievers, and people of all races and ethnic backgrounds are disgusted by a lot of what now passes for entertainment on television. And they can all help to do something about it. You can help to do something about it.

The next time you see a program that includes vile and revolting elements, make a note of the station, the network, and the advertiser. Then send a brief letter of protest to an executive officer of the company sponsoring the program. You might ask if he or she would want his or her own children exposed to such things.

Tell these people that you are holding them personally responsible for corrupting the minds and morals of our nation’s children. Encourage your friends to write, as well. Appeals to decency and morality may – alas – fall on deaf ears, but if corporations fear marketplace repercussions, I assure you they will pay close attention.

Public Schools: Salina Kansas revisited

2008-07-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

Gotcha!

Or at least Snopes thinks so. Snopes debunks the 1895 Salina exam, but then gives "a certification examination for prospective teachers, prepared by the Examiners of Teachers for the Public Schools in Zanesville, Ohio, in the late 1870s". You’ll notice that the Zanesville test is every bit as difficult (for us, today, at least) as the Salina test. Snopes does not actually say where the Salina Urban Legend came from. And whoever wrote the Snopes article was giving his personal opinion. Maybe there WAS such a test in 1895 in Salina, Kansas.

The point of the Salina test article is that we don’t know as much as 8th graders did in 1895. Snopes says that isn’t so, but then backpedals by showing us the Zanesville test, which sure seems to be saying we don't know as much.

In spite of these things, the Snopes article does bring up some good points.

First, could you or I pass the tests our own 8th graders have to take today? I don’t know if they even give "final" exams in the 8th grade today, but if they do the answer to that question might be interesting.

Second, maybe the test merely looks hard to us older folks because we’ve been out of school for so many years. Snopes says, "If a 40-year-old can't score as well on a geography test as a high school student who just spent several weeks memorizing the names of all the rivers in South America in preparation for an exam, that doesn't mean the 40-year-old's education was woefully deficient — it means the he simply didn't retain information for which he had no use, no matter how thoroughly it was drilled into his brain through rote memory some twenty-odd years earlier."

I sure wish I were 40 again. But I digress...

Third, as Snopes points out, "the questions on this exam don't reflect only items of "basic knowledge" — many of the questions require the test-taker to have absorbed some very specialized information, and if today's students can't regurgitate all the same facts as their 1895 counterparts, it's because the types of knowledge we consider to be important have changed a great deal in the last century, not necessarily because today's students have sub-standard educations."

Snopes then lists some things we would have on our tests today that are missing from the Salina exam: questions about the arts, the greatest works of English literature, algebra, geometry, and maybe even trigonometry. There would be questions about world history, as well as questions about our own government and institutions. There would be a huge difference in the number and type of science questions. There would probably be questions that would require some foreign language competence. An 1895 Salina, Kansas 8th grader wouldn’t be able to pass our test any more than we could pass his.

Snopes goes on to ask, "would it be fair to say that the average Salina student was woefully undereducated because he failed to learn many of the things that we consider important today, but which were of little importance in his time and place? If not, then why do people keep asserting that the reverse is true?"

Well then, how are our public schools doing today? It will come as NO surprise to most people when I say our system of education has serious problems. In my previous article I mentioned the family and our entertainment industry as root causes. If you are having trouble reading this blog you'll have to put down your TV remote or your can of beer so you can use the mouse. One or the other. I'll have more to say. Stay tuned.

Public Schools: Salina Kansas eighth-grade final exam

2008-07-08T05:22:00.000-07:00

Below is the 1895 Salina Kansas eighth-grade final exam. It was taken from an original copy on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina and reprinted in the Salina Journal. Unfortunately, the date of the newspaper article wasn’t given, so verification is difficult.

Remember when old-timers used to tell us they only had an 8th grade education? That might be more meaningful that you thought! Read on...

For a short time someone I know very well “taught” Science at Concord High. She did almost no teaching.

The high school did not have enough textbooks to go around. Students could only use the books during class and couldn’t take them home to study. Homework? Forget about it.

Some of the students sat at their desks and participated during class time, but many listened to portable radios, used cell phones, walked around the room, talked noisily to each other, and even engaged in fist fights in the classroom. She tried almost everything short of pepper spray to maintain classroom discipline. She complained that she was little more than a babysitter.

The school administration would do nothing to restore order. She was told not to kick students out of class. She was told that if she did not adopt a more passive attitude, she could be fired.

With all the distractions, the students who wanted to learn were very nearly prevented from doing so.

After half a semester of being threatened by the students for trying to teach and by the school administration for trying to discipline, this beleaguered teacher called it quits and went on to something else.

But not all the fault can be placed with the schools. Many years ago I was active in the local PTA and Site Council at my children’s schools. I wrote a research paper – which I might use as the basis for a future post – concluding that, all else being equal, there were four major causes of low academic achievement.

Blue-collar vs white-collar families. Parents with higher education have different attitudes toward school than those who only finished high school – or less.

Families in which English is not the primary language. This observation is reversed in families from Southeast Asia, whose students characteristically excel. ESL does a lot to help, but the school system can only do so much.

Single parent families. A single mom has to do more than is humanly possible. So-called “latchkey” kids get into a lot of mischief while mom is working, and don’t get as much help with their homework. This problem also tends to exist in families where both parents work.

“Minority” families. The problem here is that many minority parents have low expectations. They haven’t seen the system work for them, they have experienced lifelong prejudicial treatment, and they transmit their cynicism, frustration and despair to their kids.

You could add our “entertainment” industry to this list. My previous post, Hollywood’s Three Big Lies, dealt with this subject. More articles are planned. Our “entertainment” industry produces mostly a virulent mixture of dishonesty, sex, and violence, so that even in the best families, parents fight an uphill battle.

The result: we are turning out students who are totally unprepared to be productive members of society.

It all begins in the home, folks. The failure of the home is arguably the greatest peril our society faces today. With all that having been said, here’s the exam.

Could you pass this test?

Eighth Grade Final Exam: Salina, Kansas - 1895

Grammar (Time: 1 hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.

2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.

3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.

4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie,lay and run.

5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.

6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.

7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time: 1 hour 15 minutes)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.

2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?

3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. bushel, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?

4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?

5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.

6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.

7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per metre?

8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.

9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per arce, the distance around which is 640 rods?

10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time: 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.

2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.

3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.

4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.

5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.

6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.

7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?

8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607,1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865.

Orthography (Time: 1 hour)

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication?

2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?

3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?

4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.

5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'. Name two exceptions under each rule.

6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.

7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup

8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.

9. Use the following correctly in sentences, cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.

10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time: 1 hour)

1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?

2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?

3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?

4. Describe the mountains of North America.

5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.

6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.

7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.

8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?

9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.

10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

This gives a whole new meaning to our grandparents saying, "I only had an 8th grade education." I don’t think there are very many college students today who could pass this test. The dumbing down of America is almost complete. But of course, today’s students are being well prepared to wait tables at a local restaurant or to work as a security guard. And there are always "guv'mint" jobs. So what am I complaining about?

Hollywood’s Three Big Lies

2008-07-06T05:28:00.000-07:00

Our family owns a TV set and a DVD player. We have not had network TV in our house for something like a quarter of a century – ever since we realized the effect TV would have on our children. When I criticize TV, people always pop up with "but we only watch The History Channel" or some such nonsense. Riiggghhhttt...

I’ll be posting several articles about the "entertainment" industry. This one is the text of a Ricks College Forum on October 20, 1994. It was delivered by Michael Medved, an outspoken critic of the decline of moral values and increasing violence in Hollywood movies and in TV programming.

Hollywood’s Three Big Lies about Media and Society

Let me give you a statistic, the most chilling statistic I have ever heard: the average American child, by the time he or she reaches the age of six, will have spent more time watching TV than that child will spend speaking to his father in [his] life time. The media that we consume so eagerly, so avidly, so many hours of the day are a profound influence on every adult and on every child in this country.

The consistent message from the entertainment industry is, "Don’t worry about it, it’s just entertainment, don’t take it seriously. Look at how good the acting performance is, look at those special effects, don’t ever question the underlying messages, the underlying values. The way that Hollywood justifies that approach is with three prominent lies about the impact of American entertainment.

The three lies are: (1) we just entertain, we don't influence people; (2) we just reflect society as it is, we don’t shape society; and (3) if you don’t like it, just turn it off.

Lie #1 "We just are in the business of entertainment, we really don’t influence anybody."

Do you know what? The entertainment industry doesn’t even believe that, it’s purest hypocrisy, and I had a demonstration of this about a year ago now when I appeared in a panel with a number of presidents of major studios. It was me and a bunch of top executives. Naturally they wanted me to speak first, and then the executives would answer me, so I spoke, and I talked a little bit about Hollywood’s responsibility, and some of the messages that the people of America were taking away from mass media. Speaking after me was the president of one of the major film companies in the country. He said, "You know, the trouble with Michael Medved is he only talks about the terrible things that we do; he never gives a credit for the great things that we do. For instance you don’t hear him giving us credit for the fact that our movie Lethal Weapon III saved thousands of American lives."

"How is it that you think that Lethal Weapon III saved all of these lives?" I asked. He said, "Oh it’s very simple, I sure everybody else here understood it. You remember in our movie there is a scene where Mel Gibson and Danny Glover are about to go off on a high-speed chase, and before they do we show an intense close-up showing them fastening their seat belts."

Now just think for a moment about the double standard here. Here is somebody who gets millions of dollars a year to run a film studio and he wants you to believe that three seconds showing somebody fastening seat belts on screen is going to cause millions of people to imitate that, but the rest of the movie, which is all eviscerations and lacerations and gun shot wounds and knife wounds and explosions and broken glass and death and gore, that the rest of the movie nobody will imitate. How absurd can you be, how stupid can you be? But you know the same contradiction is built into the very warp and woof of the TV industry.

In 1982 the surgeon general of the United States released five volumes of data showing that prolonged exposure to violence on TV promoted more hostile, aggressive, and violent behavior and attitudes on the part of people who saw it. It was conclusive‑they had over sixty studies that had been done over twenty years that showed that there was a conclusive relationship between prolonged exposure to violence and aggression and hostility on the part of the viewer.

So do you know how ABC TV responded to that? They trotted out one of their vice presidents who said, "Unfortunately, there is no conclusive scientific evidence to suggest that media imagery impacts real world behavior in any way. Do you know what the proper response is to that? If that’s true, if media images don’t impact real world behavior, then you, Mr. ABC, should start refunding several billion dollars in advertising money that you’ve charged over the years for people to sell everything from canned goods to candidates. The whole idea of a commercial is that thirty second of flickering images on a cathode ray tube can change the way people vote, can change the way people buy, can change the way people think, act, and feel. And you know what, commercials work; they clearly do! Major American corporations are not known to be elementary institutions. They’re not paying millions of dollars a year to ABC and Fox and CBS and NBC because they want to support the high arts. That’s not the motivation. The motivation is they know they can sell products! So what are we supposed to believe, that thirty seconds of a commercial can change people, but thirty minutes of a program can’t?

What about ads? For an advertisement to work, it doesn’t need to reach everybody who sees it. TV doesn’t impact everybody, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t impact anybody. The whole situation with crime in this country, with violence, with sexual violence directed against women and children, all of that is changed if only one of 100,000 people who see the worst of this material is impacted.

But there’s something else, because that’s not the only influence. . . . By glamorizing violence and promiscuity and anti-social behavior of every kind TV and the movie industry create the idea that this sort of behavior is glamorous, is desirable. It’s maybe not something you’ll do right now, but it’s something that you have a much more positive attitude toward because you’ve seen it so often on TV. That’s the real power of the medium of TV in particular—it redefines normal.

Most people assume that anything they see often enough on TV is normal behavior. And in that sense, the entertainment industry not only changes our notion of what is accepted in society, but it changes our notion of what is expected.

Lie #2 Hollywood apologists say, "It’s just our job to reflect society. We don’t shape things, we just show them as they are." "If the face in the mirror is ugly, you don’t blame the mirror."

Really? How many of you here have ever in your lives witnessed first hand someone being murdered? How many have ever seen a murder dramatized on TV? in the last week? When they say, "We just reflect reality," when it comes to violence in particular, the most violent ghetto in American life is prime time TV.

On average there are seven murders during prime time on any given evening. That means seven out of let’s say three hundred people die. Do you realize we’d have no population problem at all in America if that were the crime rate in real life? Thank God it’s not! There’s no place in America that approaches that kind of crime rate, seven people dying every night, that would mean forty-nine out of three hundred dying in the course of a week, there’d be nobody left! . . . This is not reality!

. . . But it goes to something even more basic. The screen actors guild did a study of the opportunities for men and women in acting jobs, and do you know what they found? In feature films 72% of all speaking rolls went to men. In TV 64% of all speaking rolls went to men. Do you want to know why, because the emphasis is on violence, but the fact is, how can you look at a world that is 64% male on TV, 72% male in movies and say, "This just reflects reality."

Last week there was a major survey commissioned by the University of Chicago, the biggest survey of American sexual behavior that anyone had ever done. And what did it show? Were Americans leading wild and crazy lives? Quite the contrary.

Do you know what percentage of American married people, men and women, cheated on their spouses in the previous year? Six percent, while 94% remained faithful.

Do you know what percentage of Americans, single and married, had multiple sex partners in the previous year? It was 20%. The number of people who had more than five sex partners was infinitesimally low.

Do you know the median number of sex partners for American women in a lifetime, women of all ages? two.

Hollywood portrays a world just like that, right? Does anybody watch soap operas? In soap operas the number of married people who cheat on their spouses is about 120%. It’s not reality! Most people lead sex lives that aren’t at all what you see up there on screen. And yet by creating this image, that everybody else except you is having this incredibly exciting time, how difficult that makes it to lead a decent life, how much harder to lead a happy marriage, how much harder to be a teenager or young adult growing up when you feel that if you’re trying to be decent and to save sex for marriage, that there’s something wrong with you, that you’re a nerd, you’re a wimp, you’re a loser. What a distorted image of sexuality Hollywood portrays!.

. . . And one final thing, while men, and sex, and violence are definitely over-represented in Hollywood, there is another kind of incredibly common activity that is dramatically under-represented. Everybody talks about the Super Bowl. An estimated 130 million people watched the Super Bowl last time out. But that same Sunday, more people participated in another activity even than the number of people that watched the Super Bowl. Do you know what it was? Church! According to every single survey, between forty and fifty percent of Americans go to church or synagogue every week. Do you see that in Hollywood?

The majority of Americans begin their meals, according to the Gallop poll, by blessing their food, and yet the only reference you see to that in Hollywood was on the Simpson show one time. Bart Simpson said, "Dear God, we paid for all this food ourselves, so thanks for nothing." What sense does it make?

A Martian who was trying to do a sociological study on America based only on the images he got on a very powerful satellite dish up on Mars would conclude that religion was something in this country that was limited to a few nuts, a few crooks, and a few losers, because most religious people who are dramatized as characters in TV or inside movies are that kind of negative characterization. It’s not reality! . . . The world on screen shows families that are less intact, less stable, less nourishing, a world that is more violent, more ugly, more profane, more destructive than the world that most of us live in. A columnist whom I respect, Joe Erschel said, "When something is not worth doing at all, it doesn’t matter how well you end up doing it." We focus today on lavishly loathsome losers, people who are less interesting, less decent, less heroic than our own friends and neighbors.

Lie #3 "If you don’t like this stuff, than just turn it off."

But this, too is a lie, and again I think I can show you that it’s a lie with another little public opinion survey here in Rexburg, Idaho. How many people here have ever bought tickets to a Madonna concert? [three hands raised] How many people here have ever purchased a Madonna video, CD, or cassette tape? [more hands raised] How many people here know who Madonna is? [every hand raised] The point is very simply this: for the overwhelming majority, well over 95% of the people in this room, you never chose to make Madonna a part of your life. . . . The fact is that you can’t avoid this woman, even if you want to. . . . I don’t want Madonna taking up space in my mind, and I don’t want Bruce Willis up there either. There’s limited space, there’s limited time in life, I’d rather not waste my time on these people. . . . When it comes to avoiding people like that it’s like the great philosopher Joe Lewis once said, "You can run, but you can’t hide" because popular culture is everywhere, it’s in the air we breathe, it’s part of the polluted air in Los Angeles, it’s part of the air right here in Rexburg, Idaho, it’s everywhere!. And saying to people, that if you don’t like popular culture, just turn it off, makes as much sense as saying, "If you don’t like the smog, just stop breathing."

I know a lot of parents who became very upset at one point a few years ago with something that happened to America’s most respected man of medicine, Doogey Hauser, when Doogey on national TV lost his virginity. Since a lot of eight- and nine- and ten-year-olds watch this show, I knew a lot of parents preferred that their kids don’t see it, but you can tell your kids, "No no, you’re not going to watch the show tonight," but it doesn’t matter, because the network ran promos even on Saturday morning cartoons saying, "Doogey does it for the first time, tune in" and there he was bare-chested carrying his girlfriend to the bedroom.

It is absolutely phenomenally dishonest for people to suggest that you can escape popular culture. You cannot! And even if you protected your own children, what about everybody else’s children? What about your neighbor’s kid who hits yours over the head, or rapes her? We are all impacted by this material, and that’s exactly why the popular culture is an environmental issue. And at a time when we are demanding rightly that big corporations show greater responsibility for their pollution of our air and our water, it’s also appropriate to demand greater accountability from the entertainment conglomerates about their pollution of the cultural atmosphere we all breathe.

Final point: What do we do about it?

We’ve talked about the three lies, the idea that it’s just entertainment, it doesn’t influence anybody, the idea that it just reflects reality, it doesn’t shape reality, and the final notion that it’s always easy just to turn it off, all of them lies. How do you respond to a lie? With the truth. Learn the truth to speak the truth, and if possible, to live the truth.

How do you respond to the first lie that we just entertain people, we don’t influence? We need to affirm in our own lives a simple truth, a two-word truth: messages matter. It matters what you put inside your imagination, the TV shows you watch, the music you listen to, the movies you go to see.

If you go out and eat one hot-fudge Sunday it’s not going to kill you, it’s not going to change your life, but if you start eating a hot-fudge Sunday every day, or five hot fudge Sundays every day, it’s not going to be too long before you start looking like Roger Ebert. The same thing is true of violence or sex-drenched popular culture. If you go and see one piece of garbage it’s really not going to kill you; it may be a bad experience, but it’s not going to ruin your life. But if you see this stuff every day and hours every day it has a cumulative impact because messages matter.

So the answer to the first lie is tell the truth to yourself, become more discerning consumers. When you go out to see a movie, or when you’re planning to turn on a TV show, don’t look only at how glamorous the stars are, but look at what the impact is going to be on you, on society. Because the impact is there, and it’s real, and the most important thing here is for people who know better, who are trying to lead lives of goodness and decency.

That brings me to the second lie, the idea that we just show the world in all of its hideous ugliness. We have to reject that idea, and respond to that lie by not looking at the world through a TV screen, but looking at the world by throwing open the windows and looking at the actual world around us. And you know what you’ll see? You’ll see a country that is far better, that is far happier, that is far more decent and fulfilled than any of the world you see on TV or at the movies. . . . Yes, there are lots of things that appear to be going wrong, but open the windows, stop moaning and belly-aching and look at some of what’s right with America, and feel gratitude, because when you owe a debt of gratitude, and you don’t pay that debt of gratitude, and you don’t express gratitude to our parents, to our country, to the Almighty who has given us all of this, that ingratitude becomes an acid that corrodes our very souls and helps to lead to some of the bitterness and misery that you see so unnecessarily in this country.

And that leads me finally to the third point, the lie that says we can always turn it off, tune it out. No you can’t, but you know something you can do—turn it down. Everybody in this room can improve the quality of your life by going on a pop-culture diet, by watching a little bit less TV, by spending a little bit less time with movies,. It is absolutely appalling the amount of time that the average American wastes on this material. The average American now watches 28 hours a week of TV; that’s the average, that means that half the country watches more than that. Do you know what that comes to? That comes, if you figure it out over the course of a seventy-five year six-month average life expectancy, it comes in the course of a life time to 13 uninterrupted years of TV! . . . Do you want that on your gravestone! "Here lies our beloved husband and father who selflessly gave 13 years of life to his TV set." The TV set doesn’t need that gift, your family does, your community does, your country does. It’s so easy, you can get up from this place and make a resolution, cut it down, for goodness sake. . . . It would be so easy to cut down an hour a day, and do you know what cutting down an hour a day means, it means seven extra hours [a week] to enjoy friendship, to enjoy loved ones, to volunteer for your church or for your community, to read a book, maybe, to listen to music or to play music, to do athletics or to exercise, to go out and about on a beautiful day like this one, and to enjoy this beautiful world and this beautiful country the Almighty has given to every one of us. Let’s make the most of it.

The Bible - Inspired and Imperfect

2008-07-04T05:23:00.000-07:00

Translations and versions of the Bible.

According to the United Bible Society, at the start of 2008 the full Bible was available in 438 languages. Various portions of the Bible were available in 848 more languages. One of the two Testaments [probably the New Testament] was available in 1,168 other languages. In addition, in English, there are numerous versions. I use the King James version.

King James Version (1611)

Challoner’s revision of the Douay-Rheims Bible (1752)

Quaker Bible (1764)

Thomson’s Translation (1808)

Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible (partial) (1830)

Webster’s Revision (1833)

Young’s Literal Translation (1862)

Julia E. Smith Parker Translation (1876)

Revised Version (1885)

Darby Bible (1890)

American Standard Version (1901)

Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible (1902)

Ferrar Fenton Bible (1903)

Revised Standard Version (1952)

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (1966)

New American Standard Bible (1971)

The Living Bible (1971)

Good News Bible (1976)

New King James Version (1982)

New Revised Standard Version (1989)

21st Century King James Version (1991)

New American Standard Bible - Updated (1995)

Contemporary English Version (1995)

God’s Word (1995)

New Living Translation (1996, 2004)

Recovery Version (1999)

English Standard Version (2001)

The Message Bible (2002)

New English Translation (2005)

Ken Collins compares some of these versions. He has this to say about the King James version.

The King James Version is almost incomprehensible to anyone who has not been brought up on it. For example, the word comfort means strengthen, suffer means let (or allow), let means prevent, and prevent means precede. Some verses are completely incomprehensible or misleading; for example, Psalm 5:6, 1 Kings 11:1, and Ezekiel 27:25. The textual scholarship underlying the King James Version has been superseded in the last two centuries. Most US editions do not include the Apocrypha, the translator’s footnotes, or the translator’s preface, all of which were part of the original edition. Many US editions contain the epistle dedicatory, which was the translators’ cover letter presenting it to the king. The King James Version makes a distinction between the second person singular (thou, thee, thy, thine) and the second person plural (ye, you, your, yours) which is not easy in modern English. If you think that ‘thou’ and ‘you’ are synonyms, or get ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ mixed up, or don’t understand the difference between ‘ye’ and ‘you,’ this is not an advantage.

Anyone who speaks more than one language, and who has spent some time reading, studying, pondering, and trying to understand what is in those nearly sixteen hundred pages, and who has compared several of the available versions and translations, will be surprised to learn that many Christians believe the bible to be perfect and infallible.

Catholic statements on the inerrancy of the Bible.

According to The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, the books of the Bible "are sacred and canonical because, having been written by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, that have God for their author, and as such have been handed down to the Church. The inerrancy of the Bible follows as a consequence of this Divine authorship. Wherever the sacred writer makes a statement as his own, that statement is the word of God and infallibly true, whatever be the subject-matter of the statement." Pope Benedict XV, in Spiritus Paraclitus, paraphrases Pope Leo XIII as confirming "the ancient and traditional belief of the Church touching the absolute immunity of Scripture from error: So far is it from being the case that error can be compatible with inspiration, that, on the contrary, it not only of its very nature precludes the presence of error, but as necessarily excludes it and forbids it as God, the Supreme Truth, necessarily cannot be the Author of error."

I say Benedict paraphrases his predecessor because in Providentissimus Deus, Leo actually says this.

It follows that those who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings, either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration, or make God the author of such error. And so emphatically were all the Fathers and Doctors agreed that the divine writings, as left by the hagiographers, are free from all error, that they laboured earnestly, with no less skill than reverence, to reconcile with each other those numerous passages which seem at variance - the very passages which in great measure have been taken up by the "higher criticism;" for they were unanimous in laying it down, that those writings, in their entirety and in all their parts were equally from the afflatus of Almighty God, and that God, speaking by the sacred writers, could not set down anything but what was true.

Protestant statements on the inerrancy of the Bible.

In 1978 a gathering of American Protestant churches, including representatives of the Conservative, Reformed and Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Baptist denominations, adopted the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Here is their position regarding the inerrancy of the Bible.

God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God's witness to Himself.

Holy Scripture, being God's own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God's instruction, in all that it affirms: obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God's pledge, in all that it promises.

The Holy Spirit, Scripture's divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.

Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives.

The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible's own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.

What non-Christians think about the Bible.

Many people say the Bible is merely a literary work - that it contains no revelation - and that there is really no God. These folks are all dressed up in coffins with nowhere to go. What is so amazing is that many of the people in this group are doctors of religion - the very people one would think should most staunchly defend the Word of God. If you want to expose yourself to some anti-Bible material, check out the Skeptic's Annotated Bible or Joseph Frances Alward's website. Just a brief foray into this material will leave you shaking your head. These people have spent an enormous amount of time commenting on things they don't understand. Some say ignorance is bliss. These folks must be ecstatic.

Latter-Day Saint statements on the inerrancy of the Bible.

The Latter-Day Saint eighth Article of Faith says "we believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly." That puts us squarely in the middle: the Bible is an inspired book, but it is also an imperfect book.

One of the things that most infuriated Joseph Smith’s neighbors was his assertion that the Bible was imperfect and incomplete. Some people think polygamy was the fly in the ointment, but very few people knew about this restored principle until after the Saints were in Utah. It was the Bible that, more than any other thing, caused the persecution of the Saints. The fact that none of the Saints owned slaves, and that they were moving into slave states, was a second huge factor. But it was the Book of Mormon that gave the sectarian religious leaders so much distress. Of course, Nephi was shown this latter-day condition and wrote about it.

2 Nephi 29:3 - And because my words shall hiss forth--many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.

Prior to this, an angel taught the prophet Nephi some things about the Bible - which wouldn't be put together for another thousand years. You should read this entire chapter.

1 Nephi 13:23 - And he [the angel] said: Behold it [the Bible] proceedeth out of the mouth of a Jew. And I, Nephi, beheld it; and he said unto me: The book that thou beholdest is a record of the Jews, which contains the covenants of the Lord, which he hath made unto the house of Israel; and it also containeth many of the prophecies of the holy prophets; and it is a record like unto the engravings which are upon the plates of brass, save there are not so many; nevertheless, they contain the covenants of the Lord, which he hath made unto the house of Israel; wherefore, they are of great worth unto the Gentiles.

This same angel told Nephi that evil men, or perhaps ignorant men, had changed the Bible, and that because of it people "do stumble exceedingly."

1 Nephi 13:34 - And it came to pass that the angel of the Lord spake unto me, saying: Behold, saith the Lamb of God, after I have visited the remnant of the house of Israel--and this remnant of whom I speak is the seed of thy father--wherefore, after I have visited them in judgment, and smitten them by the hand of the Gentiles, and after the Gentiles do stumble exceedingly, because of the most plain and precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb which have been kept back by that abominable church, which is the mother of harlots, saith the Lamb--I will be merciful unto the Gentiles in that day, insomuch that I will bring forth unto them, in mine own power, much of my gospel, which shall be plain and precious, saith the Lamb.

The Encyclopedia of Mormonism (Vol. 2, Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible) has this to say about Nephi’s vision.

The Book of Mormon presents an account of a vision in which an angel, looking to the future, describes the Bible as a "record of the Jews" containing writings of "the prophets" and of the "Twelve Apostles of the Lamb." The vision asserts (1) that the ancient authors wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, (2) that originally their words contained the fulness of the gospel and were plain and easy to understand, but (3) that many things which were plain and precious, and many covenants, would be "taken away" from the original manuscripts; as a result, afterward (4) a great many persons, even with a Bible, would not understand the fulness of the gospel, but (5) the lost material would be restored through "other records" that the Lord would bring forth (1 Ne. 13:21-41). A somewhat parallel statement came to Joseph Smith in June 1830 while he was restoring a revelation received by Moses, declaring that many things would be taken "from the book" which Moses would write, but that the missing information would be restored through another prophet and thus be "had again" among those who believe (Moses 1:41). Latter-day Saints believe that the "other records" referred to include the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, the JST, and other records still to come forth, and that the prophet divinely raised up to begin restoring the lost material is Joseph Smith (see Scriptures: Forthcoming Scriptures). In light of the foregoing statements, it is worth observing that the principal difficulty in the Bible apparently has been omissions. The remaining text may be generally correct in itself, but many important doctrinal items (resulting from the loss of a single word, a verse, a longer passage, or even whole books in some instances) are now missing.

A number of authors have noted that the Bible suffers more "from losses than glosses." In other words, some things have been taken away, but for the most part what's there hasn't been changed very much.

Reynolds and Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 5, p.11 - When Lehi left the Land of Jerusalem, where he had resided all his life and where his children had been reared, he took with him a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures which were engraved upon plates of brass. These, it may be assumed were complete. Besides the writings of Moses and the prophecies of Isaiah which they contained, Lehi's son, Jacob, and other Nephite servants of God, often quoted the words of the Prophets Zenock and Zenos also found thereon. The wonderful parable of the vineyard given by Zenos and recorded by Jacob in his own book is almost incomparable. The writings of these holy men are now omitted from all available Old Testament compilations. There are other missing records. The excuse is sometimes made that all the books presently comprising the Bible are old; that there are no original manuscripts accessible to us for collation. Those who make that apology infer that it would be fruitless to compare the versions now in use with those of a thousand years ago because, they say, "the same conditions prevailed then as now."

Hugh Nibley, Ancient Documents and the Pearl of Great Price, p.4 - And then Professor Albright, who has talked here and has an honorary degree from here; the most distinguished biblical scholar America ever produced, William Foxwell Albright. I'll never forget what he said as we came from the airport, "My, it feels good to get away from those anemic Protestants," he said. Well, the Pearl of Great Price is not anemic. It carries a wallop. As Professor Albright puts it, "Our Hebrew texts have suffered more from losses than from glosses." Glosses are changes and corrections by scribes—alterations, notations, those things. That isn't what has damaged the Bible. It's losses, the stuff that has been removed. That's where it really suffers. And he proceeds to illustrate the point from a number of books showing he says, "Future translations will have to expand the text substantially, including some passages of great importance in their content that are missing from the Bible because they have been removed." They are being restored now.

Hugh Nibley, quoted above, is a world famous antiquities scholar. Dr. Nibley had this to say about Nephi’s vision and the idea that wicked men had taken "plain and precious" things out of the Bible.

Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Semester 1, p.258-260 - The final idea: Why do so few people know anything about the Atonement? We leave it up in the air—we don't know what we are talking about. Why do so few know anything about the gospel, for that matter? But the point is, here is this thing which is the central point of the teachings of Jesus Christ—his atoning blood. The term is used over and over [in the Book of Mormon]; it's dominant. It's a central theme, and yet, as we saw here, there is no agreement about it [in the world]. People are trying to figure out what it is. There is one very good explanation of that—something has been taken away. As I told you about Johanan Ben Zakkai, they didn't want the temple. They didn't want any of this. Remember, the main purpose of the temple was the carrying out of the sacrifices of the Atonement. That's what you find described in the books of Moses. The rabbis, who were teachers and not priests, were glad to get rid of it. Ben Zakkai took his school and went over in Jamnia and founded the first rabbinical school. They didn't want any of this, so these things were removed. As the Book of Mormon tells us, many precious things were removed. That's why people stumble. It's very obvious that the Atonement stands right there, and yet it's a vacuum. There's something missing. The explanation is very clearly given by Nephi at the first that many precious things have been removed; therefore, many stumble because of that. The Gentiles stumble, etc. It's obvious that has happened, but the Book of Mormon replaces that. It replaces those parts that have been removed, and that's why we need it—-among other things. Precious things have been removed from the Bible.

In his book Articles of Faith, Apostle James E. Talmage wrote this about "missing" scriptures.

p.501, Footnotes - Those who oppose the doctrine of continual revelation between God and His Church, on the ground that the Bible is complete as a collection of sacred scriptures, and that alleged revelation not found therein must therefore be spurious, may profitably take note of the many books not included in the Bible, yet mentioned therein, generally in such a way as to leave no doubt that they were once regarded as authentic. Among these extra-biblical scriptures, the following may be named; some of them are in existence today, and are classed with the Apocrypha; but the greater number are unknown. [See my list of lost books below.]

This is from Elder Talmage’s book Jesus the Christ.

Ch.9, p.119 - p.120 - Missing Scripture. -- Matthew's commentary on the abode of Joseph, Mary and Jesus at Nazareth, "and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene" (2:23), with the fact that no such saying of the prophets is found in any of the books contained in the Bible, suggests the certainty of lost scripture.

Well, enough of the preliminaries. Let's get into the evidentiary portion of this brief.

A list of lost or missing books of the Old Testament.

2 Chronicles 9:29 - Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, [are] they not written in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat?
King Josiah is mentioned in 2 Kings 22-23 and also in 2 Chronicles 34-35. In 2 Kings 23:28 we read that the "rest of the acts of Josiah" can be found in "the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah." Is this a reference to a lost book, or merely to 2 Chronicles? Since the 2 Chronicles version doesn’t add much to the story I suspect this is talking about another book.
Exodus 24:7 - And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.
Jude 1:14 - And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
1 Chronicles 29:29 - Now the acts of David the king, first and last, behold, they [are] written in the book of Samuel the seer, and in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the book of Gad the seer,
2 Chronicles 9:29 - Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, [are] they not written in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat?
2 Chronicles 12:15 - Now the acts of Rehoboam, first and last, [are] they not written in the book of Shemaiah the prophet, and of Iddo the seer concerning genealogies? And [there were] wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually. [Note: are the two above the same as the one below?]
2 Chronicles 13:22 - And the rest of the acts of Abijah, and his ways, and his sayings, [are] written in the story of the prophet Iddo.
Joshua 10:13 - And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. [Is] not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.
2 Chronicles 20:34 - Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, first and last, behold, they [are] written in the book of Jehu the son of Hanani, who [is] mentioned in the book of the kings of Israel.
2 Chronicles 9:29 - Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, [are] they not written in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat?
1 Chronicles 29:29 - Now the acts of David the king, first and last, behold, they [are] written in the book of Samuel the seer, and in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the book of Gad the seer,
2 Chronicles 33:19 - His prayer also, and [how God] was intreated of him, and all his sin, and his trespass, and the places wherein he built high places, and set up groves and graven images, before he was humbled: behold, they [are] written among the sayings of the seers.
2 Chronicles 12:15 - Now the acts of Rehoboam, first and last, [are] they not written in the book of Shemaiah the prophet, and of Iddo the seer concerning genealogies? And [there were] wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually.
1 Samuel 10:25 - Then Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom, and wrote [it] in a book, and laid [it] up before the LORD. And Samuel sent all the people away, every man to his house. (I suppose this could merely be the Book of Samuel.)
1 Kings 11:41 - ¶ And the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did, and his wisdom, [are] they not written in the book of the acts of Solomon?
Numbers 21:14 - Wherefore it is said in the book of the wars of the LORD, What he did in the Red sea, and in the brooks of Arnon,
2 Chronicles 26:22 - Now the rest of the acts of Uzziah, first and last, did Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, write.

A list of lost or missing books of the New Testament.

A missing epistle to the Colossians, written from Laodicea: Colossians 4:16 - And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the [epistle] from Laodicea.
A missing epistle to the Corinthians: 1 Corinthians 5:9 - ¶ I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:
A missing epistle to the Ephesians: Ephesians 3:3-4 - 3 How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, 4 Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ).
A missing epistle of Jude: Jude 1:3 - Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort [you] that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
A declaration of belief mentioned by Luke: Luke 1:1 - ¶ FORASMUCH as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,

Joseph Smith’s "Inspired Revision" of the Bible did not restore any of these missing scriptures.

Merrill Y. Van Wagoner, The Inspired Revision of the Bible, p.17-18 - The Prophet Joseph Smith did not restore any of the missing books mentioned in the Bible. On June 25, 1833, seven days before ceasing the work of revision, the Prophet stated in a communication to the brethren in Zion, "We have not found the Book of Jasher, nor any other of the lost books mentioned in the Bible as yet; nor will we obtain them at present." (History of the Church 1:363.) Such books as the book of Remembrance kept in the days of Adam, the book of the Covenant, the book of the Wars of the Lord, the Acts of Uzziah, the book of the Prophet Shemiah, the book of Jehu, and others yet remain to be restored when the Lord deems it necessary.

One need not think that the many "plain and precious parts" taken from the Bible were the result of one person. Rather, they are the result of the efforts of the Adversary working over thousands of years with fallible mortals.

Merrill Y. Van Wagoner, The Inspired Revision of the Bible, p.33-34 - To summarize, many changes which were indicated by the Prophet's inspired corrections are of such great regularity and of such vital nature that they appear to have been made deliberately to keep the truth from man. Some of the most important of these changes include the first statements of the Gospel plan and its ordinances, statements about the work of the Messiah who was to come, and statements of the higher Priesthood, all of which show that these facts were made known to man as soon as he was placed on the earth. "Who brought about these changes?" we ask again. And again the answer is, "We do not know." In this connection we are certain of only two things: First, that when the books of the Bible were first written, they were correct; moreover, they were understandable. Second, that as they are today, there are many important items missing, and too many passages border on in-comprehensibility. It is difficult to imagine any one individual, group, or organization having had sufficient power and influence to cause the changes to be made in both the Greek and Hebrew texts as well as in the many versions. We must lay many of those changes which we label planned to the workings of the Spirit of Darkness, influencing various individuals in different ages in order to thwart the purposes of the Lord.

There is also evidence throughout the scriptures that men have taken earlier writings and, as Mormon did, compiled and abbreviated them. Whether they were commanded and inspired in what they did, as was Mormon, or had a darker motive, probably has no simple answer. The next quote talks about the true meaning of "and it came to pass."

Franklin S. Harris, Jr., The Book of Mormon: Messages and Evidences, p.119 - Elders E. Cecil McGavin and A. S. Reynolds note that the phrase "and it came to pass" is characteristic of an abridgment both in the Bible and the Book of Mormon. It occurs 386 times in the Old Testament and 81 times in the New Testament. It is entirely missing from 15 books of the Bible, and also entirely absent in the Moroni appendix of nearly 7,000 words which Moroni adds to the abridgment of the rest of the Book of Mormon. Though the phrase occurs 1,382 times in the Book of Mormon, every time it is in the midst of summarized material.

One interesting thing to do is to compare the chapters of Isaiah given in the Old Testament and in the Book of Mormon. I have written a fairly complete series of articles about Isiaiah which include information about these chapters. If you email me, I'll mail you a CD.

A few years ago I did a study called Women of the Old Testament. As I did my research I noticed a lot of textual errors in the King James Version. Most of these seem to be merely the result of poor proof-reading. Was this the fault of ancient scribes, or of the King James translators? I wonder how many of these discrepancies appear in other versions of the Old Testament. The ones I found are presented below for your consideration.

A list of discrepancies in the text of the Old Testament.

ABI/ABIJAH - The daughter of king Zachariah. Also notice the variant spelling of Zachariah/Zechariah.

2 Kings 18:2 - Twenty and five years old was he when he began to reign; and he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also [was] Abi, the daughter of Zachariah.
2 Chronicles 29:1 - ¶ HEZEKIAH began to reign [when he was] five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name [was] Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah.

ABIJAH/ABIJAM - Also note the variant spelling of his mother’s name.

1 Kings 15:1-2 - 1 ¶ NOW in the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam the son of Nebat reigned Abijam over Judah. 2 Three years reigned he in Jerusalem. And his mother's name [was] Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom.
2 Chronicles 13:1-2 - 1 ¶ NOW in the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam began Abijah to reign over Judah. 2 He reigned three years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also [was] Michaiah the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. And there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.

ABISHALOM/URIEL - Maachah was also the name of one of the wives of Rehoboam, king of Judah. notice that her father is called Abishalom in one place and Uriel of Gibeah in the other. Perhaps Uriel was Absalom’s son, or was married to Absalom’s daughter? It is all pretty confusing!

1 Kings 15:1-2 - 1 ¶ NOW in the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam the son of Nebat reigned Abijam over Judah. 2 Three years reigned he in Jerusalem. And his mother's name [was] Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom.
2 Chronicles 13:1-2 - 1 ¶ NOW in the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam began Abijah to reign over Judah. 2 He reigned three years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also [was] Michaiah the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. And there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.

ABSALOM’S SONS - did he or didn’t he?

2 Samuel 14:27 - And unto Absalom there were born three sons, and one daughter, whose name [was] Tamar: she was a woman of a fair countenance.
2 Samuel 18:18 - Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and reared up for himself a pillar, which [is] in the king's dale: for he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance: and he called the pillar after his own name: and it is called unto this day, Absalom's place.

AHAZIAH/AZARIAH - Ahaziah is called Azariah in 2 Chronicles 22:6.

2 Chronicles 22:6 - And he returned to be healed in Jezreel because of the wounds which were given him at Ramah, when he fought with Hazael king of Syria. And Azariah the son of Jehoram king of Judah went down to see Jehoram the son of Ahab at Jezreel, because he was sick.
2 Kings 8:25 - ¶ In the twelfth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel did Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah begin to reign.

ASRIEL/ASHRIEL & MANASSEH’S WIVES - Manasseh the son of Joseph had a wife who bare Ashriel, and an Aramite concubine who bare Machir, the father of Gilead. But we also read that Machir was Manasseh’s firstborn. Notice that there are two spellings for the name of one of the sons of Manasseh.

Joshua 17:1-2 - ¶ THERE was also a lot for the tribe of Manasseh; for he [was] the firstborn of Joseph; [to wit], for Machir the firstborn of Manasseh, the father of Gilead: because he was a man of war, therefore he had Gilead and Bashan. 2 There was also [a lot] for the rest of the children of Manasseh by their families; for the children of Abiezer, and for the children of Helek, and for the children of Asriel, and for the children of Shechem, and for the children of Hepher, and for the children of Shemida: these [were] the male children of Manasseh the son of Joseph by their families.
1 Chronicles 7:14 - The sons of Manasseh; Ashriel, whom she bare: ([but] his concubine the Aramitess bare Machir the father of Gilead:

ATHALIAH - Athaliah is said to be the daughter of Omri in 2 Kings 8:26 and 2 Chronicles 22:2, but she was really his granddaughter! Notice that Omri’s son was Ahab, and Ahab’s son was Ahaziah.

2 Kings 8:26 - Two and twenty years old [was] Ahaziah when he began to reign; and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother's name [was] Athaliah, the daughter of Omri king of Israel.
2 Chronicles 22:2 - Forty and two years old [was] Ahaziah when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name also [was] Athaliah the daughter of Omri.
1 Kings 16:28 - So Omri slept with his fathers, and was buried in Samaria: and Ahab his son reigned in his stead.
1 Kings 16:29 - ¶ And in the thirty and eighth year of Asa king of Judah began Ahab the son of Omri to reign over Israel: and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years.

AZARIAH/UZZIAH - Many of these errors appear in parallel versions of a story. And many of these things are merely name spelling differences. I wonder if these names are identical in the original Hebrew?

2 Kings 15:1-2 - 1 ¶ IN the twenty and seventh year of Jeroboam king of Israel began Azariah son of Amaziah king of Judah to reign. 2 Sixteen years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned two and fifty years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name [was] Jecholiah of Jerusalem.
2 Chronicles 26:1 - ¶ THEN all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who [was] sixteen years old, and made him king in the room of his father Amaziah.

BATHSHEBA/BATHSHUA & AMMIEL/ELIAM - David’s whore Bathsheba and her father also have a name problem. Since Eliam looks a lot like Ammiel spelled backwards, maybe this is some weird kind of translation error.

1 Chronicles 3:5 - And these were born unto him in Jerusalem; Shimea, and Shobab, and Nathan, and Solomon, four, of Bathshua the daughter of Ammiel:
2 Samuel 11:3 - And David sent and enquired after the woman. And [one] said, [Is] not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

BATHSHUA - Another Bathshua was one of Judah’s wives. Her name means "daughter of wealth." I wonder if this was not a name at all, but merely a description of her father? See Shua below for this same question.

BITHIA’S SONS - The following verse says, "these are the sons of Bithia," but doesn’t give their names. Something is missing. Another wacky example similar to this one is Miriam. Check it out too.

1 Chronicles 4:18 - And his wife Jehudijah bare Jered the father of Gedor, and Heber the father of Socho, and Jekuthiel the father of Zanoah. And these [are] the sons of Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh, which Mered took.

CHERUBIM - The plural of cherub is cherubim, but the King James Version of the Bible uses cherubims 59 times in the Old Testament and once in the New Testament. Cherubim is never used. This is like saying, "the three deers crossed the road." The Book of Mormon, Moses, and the JST of Genesis all use cherubim. We think of a cherub as some kind of cute baby, but these angels were actually mighty warriors. Think of the guardian angel in Rose is Rose whenever Pascuale is threatened.

CHILEAB/DANIEL - David’s second son. His mother was Abigail.

2 Samuel 3:3 - And his second, Chileab, of Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite; and the third, Absalom the son of Maacah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur;
1 Chronicles 3:1 - ¶ NOW these were the sons of David, which were born unto him in Hebron; the firstborn Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; the second Daniel, of Abigail the Carmelitess:

DINAH - Dinah was the daughter of Leah. If you look up Dinah in the LDS King James Bible dictionary, you’ll discover that she was the daughter of "Leach." So errors can creep into dictionaries as well as into the Bible itself.

EPHRATAH - Caleb’s wife’s name is spelled two ways.

1 Chronicles 2:19 - And when Azubah was dead, Caleb took unto him Ephrath, which bare him Hur.
1 Chronicles 2:50 - These were the sons of Caleb the son of Hur, the firstborn of Ephratah; Shobal the father of Kirjathjearim,

ESAU’S WIVES - One of my sources claims that Esau’s wife Bashemath was also called Adah and Mahalath. But from the text it would appear that Esau married two daughters of Elon; Adah and Bashemath, and he married two daughters of Ishmael; Mahalath and Bashemath. And then he also married Judith and Aholibamah. Confusing at best.

Genesis 26:34 - ¶ And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite:
Genesis 28:8-9 - 8 And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father; 9 Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham's son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife.
Genesis 36:2-3 - 2 Esau took his wives of the daughters of Canaan; Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Aholibamah the daughter of Anah the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite; 3 And Bashemath Ishmael's daughter, sister of Nebajoth.

FORESKINS - Saul was envious of David. He sought to kill him by offering him his daughter Merab in return for a certain number of Philistine foreskins. How many foreskins did David bring back? This was "full tale," which means it was what had been promised. Saul, assuming David wouldn’t make it back, had given Merab to another man, so he gave David another daughter, Michal. Maybe David was just being generous by bringing 200 foreskins instead of the requested 100.

1 Samuel 18:25 - And Saul said, Thus shall ye say to David, The king desireth not any dowry, but an hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of the king's enemies. But Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines.
1 Samuel 18:27 - Wherefore David arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king's son in law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife.

HODIAH - The sons of Ezra’s wife Hodiah the sister of Naham were the father of Keilah the Garmite and Eshtemoa the Maachathite, but their names are not given. It sounds like there is something missing here. One of my sources says "The King James Version erroneously translates this section to identify Hodiah as the wife of a man named Ezra. Actually Hodiah was a man, an ancestor of Keilah the Garmite and Eshtemoa the Maacathite."

1 Chronicles 4:19 - And the sons of [his] wife Hodiah the sister of Naham, the father of Keilah the Garmite, and Eshtemoa the Maachathite.

ISAIAH - The chapters of Isaiah that are found in the Book of Mormon are all indicated in the LDS King James Version of the Old Testament. Except for Isaiah 50 and 51. Somehow these were overlooked. Check it out!

JAEL - The wife of Heber the Kenite, Jael is highly regarded in Hebrew tradition for the murder of Sisera. Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, Rachel, and Jael hold equal prominence. Eve is not held in high regard, is blamed for most of mankind’s problems, and is call "treacherous." Isn’t it nice we know the truth about mother Eve? Most of the errors I’m showing here are not doctrinal - but the misunderstanding regarding Eve and the Fall certainly fall into the category of "plain and precious parts" missing and causing "many to stumble." But I digress. The two versions of Sisera’s death sound as though he either died while drinking, or in his sleep.

Judges 4:21 - Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.
Judges 5:24-27 - 24 ¶ Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent. 25 He asked water, [and] she gave [him] milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. 26 She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. 27 At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.

JALON - Since Miriam is usually a woman’s name, perhaps 1 Chronicles 4:17 should say "and Miriam bare Shammai,..." or perhaps it should say, "and he bare Miriam..." (ie., Miriam was Jalon’s son or daughter.) Or perhaps the "she" in verse 17 refers to "Bithia" in verse 18. You tell me.

1 Chronicles 4:17-18 - And the sons of Ezra [were], Jether, and Mered, and Epher, and Jalon: and she bare Miriam, and Shammai, and Ishbah the father of Eshtemoa. 18 And his wife Jehudijah bare Jered the father of Gedor, and Heber the father of Socho, and Jekuthiel the father of Zanoah. And these [are] the sons of Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh, which Mered took.

JEHORAM/JORAM - King Omri’s son Ahab married the infamous Jezebel. Their son Joram, mention in 2 Kings 9:23 is called Jehoram in the next verse.

2 Kings 9:23-24 - 23 And Joram turned his hands, and fled, and said to Ahaziah, [There is] treachery, O Ahaziah. 24 And Jehu drew a bow with his full strength, and smote Jehoram between his arms, and the arrow went out at his heart, and he sunk down in his chariot.

JEHOSHABEATH/JEHOSHEBA - One of Jehoram’s sons by his wife Zibiah, named Joash, was rescued by Jehosheba in 2 Kings 11:2, or by Jehoshabeath in 2 Chronicles 22:11. This lady was the daughter of king Joram, mentioned above.

2 Kings 11:2 - 2 But Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's sons [which were] slain; and they hid him, [even] him and his nurse, in the bedchamber from Athaliah, so that he was not slain.
2 Chronicles 22:11 - 11 But Jehoshabeath, the daughter of the king, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's sons that were slain, and put him and his nurse in a bedchamber. So Jehoshabeath, the daughter of king Jehoram, the wife of Jehoiada the priest, (for she was the sister of Ahaziah,) hid him from Athaliah, so that she slew him not.

JOZACHAR/ZABAD - Shimeath was the Ammonite mother of Jozachar or Zabad.

2 Kings 12:21 - For Jozachar the son of Shimeath, and Jehozabad the son of Shomer, his servants, smote him, and he died; and they buried him with his fathers in the city of David: and Amaziah his son reigned in his stead.
2 Chronicles 24:26 - And these are they that conspired against him; Zabad the son of Shimeath an Ammonitess, and Jehozabad the son of Shimrith a Moabitess.

MAACHAH/MICHAIAH - There are several women named Maachah in the Old Testament. In the verses below we learn that David’s son Absalom was the son of Maachah the daughter of Talmai, and that Absalom’s daughter was also named Maachah. One of my sources says "a careful study of her genealogy bears out the ancient historian Josephus’ statement that [she] was a granddaughter of Absalom." This generation skipping happens frequently in the Hebrew genealogies. Also see the entry for Absalom’s sons.

1 Chronicles 3:2 - The third, Absalom the son of Maachah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur: the fourth, Adonijah the son of Haggith:
2 Chronicles 11:20 - And after her he took Maachah the daughter of Absalom; which bare him Abijah, and Attai, and Ziza, and Shelomith.

MAACHAH/MICHAIAH - Maachah was also the name of one of the wives of Rehoboam, king of Judah. Her name is also spelled Michaiah. And notice that her father is called Abishalom in one place and Uriel of Gibeah in the other. Perhaps Uriel was Absalom’s son, or was married to Absalom’s daughter? It is all pretty confusing!

1 Kings 15:1-2 - 1 ¶ NOW in the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam the son of Nebat reigned Abijam over Judah. 2 Three years reigned he in Jerusalem. And his mother's name [was] Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom.
2 Chronicles 13:1-2 - 1 ¶ NOW in the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam began Abijah to reign over Judah. 2 He reigned three years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also [was] Michaiah the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. And there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.

MERAB/MICHAL - Who brought up the sons of Adriel? Merab and Michal were both Saul’s daughters. Saul gave Merab to Adriel. Michal was given to David, but never had any children because she criticized David for dancing naked in public.

2 Samuel 6:23 - Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death.
2 Samuel 21:8 - But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite:

MIXED STORIES? - Here’s an example from Numbers 25 where there may be three separate stories somehow mingled. While the Israelites abode at Shittim, some men began to go over to the daughters of Moab and committed whoredoms both with the Moabite women and with their gods, especially Baalpeor. The Lord commanded the people to hang up the heads of all those who had participated. One man, Zimri, a Simeonite, brought a Midianite woman, Cozbi, the daughter of Zur, to the tabernacle, apparently so he could have sex with her! Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, followed them into the tent and thrust both of them through with a javelin. For this righteous act, Phinehas was promised that he and his seed would always have the Priesthood. This stopped some kind of plague which had killed 24,000 Israelites. Read this whole thing and you’ll be as amazed as I am.

PHALTI/PHALTIEL - During the years David was an outlaw, Saul gave Michal to another man. What was his real name?

1 Samuel 25:44 - But Saul had given Michal his daughter, David's wife, to Phalti the son of Laish, which [was] of Gallim.
2 Samuel 3:15 - And Ishbosheth sent, and took her from [her] husband, [even] from Phaltiel the son of Laish.

RACHAB/RAHAB - In Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:4-5) we read that "Naasson begat Salmon; and Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse." Most scholars think the Rahab mentioned here is the famous woman of Jericho who helped the spies sent in by Joshua in chapter 2 of that book. But the fall of Jericho occurred in about 1451 B.C., and David was born in about 1078 B.C. As near as I can figure, from my own genealogy, this works out to at least 12 or 13 generations, not merely 5. So there are some missing pieces in this genealogy. The text should probably say that Booz was a descendant of Salmon and Rachab and so forth. Also note the Rachab vs Rahab spellings.

REBEKAH/SARAH - There are two very similar stories told about Abraham (Genesis 20) and Isaac (Genesis 26) and their wives. Both husbands prevaricated and said their wives were merely their sisters. Both women were strikingly beautiful. Both stories took place in a land called Gerar. Etc. I wonder if these are really just one story which the ancient chroniclers somehow ascribed to one couple or the other incorrectly.

SARAH/SERAH - The daughter of Asher, who, according to Jewish tradition, was asked to hint to Jacob that Joseph was still alive before his sons told him who they ran into in Egypt, so the shock wouldn’t kill the old man. For this kindness, Jacob supposedly "blessed her with eternal life." Perhaps this woman was named after her illustrious great grandmother.

Numbers 26:46 - And the name of the daughter of Asher [was] Sarah.
Genesis 46:17 - And the sons of Asher; Jimnah, and Ishuah, and Isui, and Beriah, and Serah their sister: and the sons of Beriah; Heber, and Malchiel.

SHIMRITH/SHOMER - Jehozabad’s mother was Shimrith. Was Shomer his father, or is Shomer another spelling for Shimrith?

2 Kings 12:21 - For Jozachar the son of Shimeath, and Jehozabad the son of Shomer, his servants, smote him, and he died; and they buried him with his fathers in the city of David: and Amaziah his son reigned in his stead.
2 Chronicles 24:26 - And these are they that conspired against him; Zabad the son of Shimeath an Ammonitess, and Jehozabad the son of Shimrith a Moabitess.

SHUA/SHUAH - One of my sources said her name was Bathshua - daughter of wealth - so this may not even be an actual name, but a description of the family’s social status. Also see Bathshua.

Genesis 38:2 - And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite, whose name [was] Shuah; and he took her, and went in unto her.
1 Chronicles 2:3 - The sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah: [which] three were born unto him of the daughter of Shua the Canaanitess. And Er, the firstborn of Judah, was evil in the sight of the LORD; and he slew him.

TAMAR/THAMAR - I’ve mostly used examples from the Old Testament. Here’s one that includes the New Testament.

Genesis 38:6 - And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, whose name [was] Tamar.
Matthew 1:3 - And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram;

UNLIKELY STORIES!! - One of the most incredible stories in the bible is the account of the Levite’s concubine found in Judges 19-21. A Levite gave his concubine to some wicked men. These men "abused her all the night until the morning" and then let her go. She dropped dead on the Levite’s doorstep. So he cut her into twelve pieces and sent the pieces to the twelve tribes. The result is that 40,000 Jewish soldiers and 45,100 Benjamite soldiers were killed, along with all the women and children of Benjamin except for a few of the young Benjamite boys, and all the people of Jabeshgilead, a city that hadn’t sent any men to help in all the other meaningless fighting. And there are other pointless cruelties and barbarisms. Whatever happened here, this recounting of it must surely be mostly distortion and hype.

ZACHARIAH/ZECHARIAH

2 Kings 18:2 - Twenty and five years old was he when he began to reign; and he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also [was] Abi, the daughter of Zachariah.
2 Chronicles 29:1 - ¶ HEZEKIAH began to reign [when he was] five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name [was] Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah.

Conclusion.

You probably noticed that none of the examples above reveals any problem with the doctrines of the Bible. At the same time, this is certainly enough information to dispel once-and-for-all any notions about the inerrancy of the Bible.

Unfortunately, some minds are like concrete: thoroughly mixed up and permanently set.

What do you think about all this?

Chiasmus VII: Some Modern Examples

2008-07-02T11:51:00.000-07:00

In my last chiasmus article I mentioned the false assumption that chiasmus is only found in ancient writings. This article will dispel that notion. Here are some examples of chiasmus in talks given by the LDS General Authorities. (These examples all come from Sterling D. Allen.)

Ezra Taft Benson - April 1987 General Conference - The Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. The talk can be found here. Sterling D. Allen's article can be found here.

Howard W. Hunter - October 1994 General Conference - "Exceeding Great and Precious Promises". The talk can be found here. Sterling D. Allen's article can be found here. Please notice that I've made some changes to my version.

James E. Faust - October 1994 General Conference - The Keys that Never Rust. These are just the four simplest chiasms in Elder Faust's talk. Sterling D. Allen's entire article can be found here.

Gordon B. Hinckley - April 1997 General Conference - Our Testimony to the World. The talk can be found here. Sterling D. Allen's article can be found here.

Many people have interpreted this statement to imply that the prophet will not, even cannot lead the people astray — that he can be implicitly trusted. When these sentences are organized chiastically, however, it is easy to see that God is the only one we can ultimately trust, although our leaders are fallible.

The two great functions of the Holy Ghost are to serve as a Comforter and as a Revelator. These are contrasted here.

Some examples from non-LDS writers - which are always much simpler than the ones above - can be found on the website of Dr. Mardy Grothe.

Winston Churchill

John F. Kennedy

Oscar Wilde

George Bernard Shaw

Ralph Waldo Emerson

William Shakespeare

Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Samuel Johnson

Dennis Ridley

Confucius

To wind up (or down) this series of articles on chiasmus, I present some examples of Anti metabole, which is similar to Chiasmus except that it typically repeats the same words and phrases in reverse order. Chiasmus typically uses different words and phrases in the two parallel halves.

"Who sheds the blood of a man, by a man shall his blood be shed..." (Genesis 9:6) In the original Hebrew the above phrase is exactly six words long, in the form (A B C C B A)

"...ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country." (John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961.)

"...Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.." (John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961.)

"Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." (John F. Kennedy)

"Let's make sure that the Supreme Court does not pick the next president, and this president does not choose the next Supreme Court." (Al Gore Jr. at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.)

"America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America." (Jimmy Carter's Farewell Address.)

"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." (Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself.)

"To be kissed by a fool is stupid; To be fooled by a kiss is worse." (Ambrose Redmoon.)

"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight — it's the size of the fight in the dog." (Dwight D. Eisenhower January 1958 speech to the Republican National Committee.)

"Well, it's not the men in your life that counts, it's the life in your men." (Mae West in I'm No Angel, 1933.)

An earlier example from Croesus dates back to the 6th century BC: "In peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons."

"In America, you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, the Party can always find you!" (Yakov Smirnoff.)

A popular saying is, "You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy."

Chiasmus may be implied, referring to a well-known expression, as when Kermit the Frog says "Time's fun when you're having flies" or Mae West says "A hard man is good to find," or Jethro Tull's "In the beginning Man created God."

Chiasmus is not limited to an exchange of words; it can also involve the exchange of letters or syllables, as in Tom Waits' quote, "I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."

Here are a couple of cartoons to give you a multimedia finale.

And now, finally, I’m finished with this subject.

Relativity in Words of Four Letters or Less

2008-06-30T04:42:00.000-07:00

When I was in college I really struggled with some of the textbooks - the $75 to $100 texts - that we were forced to buy for our classes. They didn't seem to be written to teach us anything. One especially egregious example was a "circuits" text our professor was getting paid to review. Our grade was partly based on finding and reporting errors in this horrible book. It had hundreds of greater and lesser instances of unlabeled graphs, incorrect formulas and calculations, typos, missing information, duplicated information, and just about every other bewildering sort of misinformation you can imagine. Somehow I got an "A" in the class.

In Textbook Publishing Biz Julie Spears writes, "What standards of accountability do textbook publishers have when textbooks have unconventional or just plain wrong information in them? Do we really expect children to learn about physical science when the textbook they are learning from has over eighty-five documented errors in it? [She is talking about a specific textbook.] Is there something wrong with an American history textbook that has just a few lines about George Washington but six and one-half pages about Marilyn Monroe? Is it acceptable for that history book to give the impression that Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain to discover America in 1500 rather that 1492?

The abstract of How Clearly Written are Children's Textbooks?, by Thomas H. Anderson, says "Two representative samples of expository prose from sixth grade textbooks (one in science and one in social studies) were analyzed for clarity of explanation. Four text criteria were applied to the analyses: structure, unity, coherence, and audience appropriateness. The results of the analysis suggested that many children's textbooks are not clearly written. It was proposed that the procedures commonly used by authors to make texts easier to read (shorter sentences, easier vocabulary, less detail, and use of condensed explanations of ideas) may instead cause the text to be even more difficult to comprehend. The effect of poor quality text on how well children learn to read and comprehend text may also be very great. A third suggestion, based on these research results, is that poorly written texts may develop undesirable student attitudes toward reading texts."

Born 2 Rule (possibly not his/her real name) offers some good suggestions for improving engineering texts.

The variables used in engineering textbooks should be standardized. It is tremendously confusing to students to see the same equation written three different ways.

Every concept should be introduced in a qualitative manner before it is introduced in a quantitative manner. They shouldn't just be a blur of equations.

No engineering textbook should be written by engineers alone. They should be a collaboration between an engineer and someone with a strong background in educational psychology and technical writing. Every textbook has an editor. These people should do more than correct grammar. The only reason that an engineering textbook should be written by engineers alone is to protect their fragile egos or to cut costs by not hiring additional writers.

Every table, graph, chart, and figure should be labeled in a way that explains what the student should learn from it.

The layout should be such that it is clear which equations are the most important. Although derivations are extremely important, perhaps they should be put in sidebars so that the main body of the text flows better and appears less overwhelming. If the text only contains a few equations, it is much easier for the students to read it and get a general understanding, then go back and read the derivations to refine that understanding.

Exciting trivia should be included to enhance the enthusiasm of the students. Learning should be a form of entertainment.

Digital textbooks would be much better than conventional printed ones.

To this list I'd add a suggestion of my own: texts should be carefully proofread before being foisted on students.

Born 2 Rule then goes on to list the advantages of Digital Textbooks. [Can you say Wikipedia, I ask?]

Every technical term can be linked to a definition of that term. This would allow even the laziest of students to quickly eliminate any confusion about what a word or term means.

The teacher could easily standardize the symbols that are used to represent variables in all of the equations. This could be done by filling out a key that is then used to update all of the student's textbooks.

Such textbooks could contain lots of multimedia enhancements and simulations. A picture really is worth a thousand words. Students could have the benefit of hundreds of hours of lab work at little cost and with little risk of injury.

They could include lots of self-tests for the students which provide them with immediate feedback about whether they are right or wrong. Getting immediate feedback is extremely helpful to learning.

They can be inexpensively reproduced. This is especially good for schools in developing countries or public schools that are operating on a low budget. While this may be bad news for the publisher, it would be incredibly good for the world in general.

They can easily be searched through and translated. Text to speech programs could be used to make them easily accessible to the blind or otherwise handicapped.

They can contain the primary sources of information instead of just including references.

They could be organized into a modular format so that teachers could quickly create custom textbooks for a course.

Multiple explanations of the same concept could be presented.

Another allegation I recall from my college days (but can't seem to document as I'm writing this article) is that textbooks are written by "educated" people to impress their peers, not to teach. Other highly "educated" people have no trouble reading them, and if textbooks were actually tutorial, there would not be so great a need for teachers to interpret them for students.

Penultimately, I've observed that "educated" people are often pedants. Why use big words when diminutive words are just as good?

And that leads us into my final gripe: textbooks are often written in Purple Prose. This term is "used to describe passages, or sometimes entire literary works, written in prose so overly extravagant, ornate or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself. Purple prose is sensuously evocative beyond the requirements of its context. It also refers to writing that employs certain rhetorical effects such as exaggerated sentiment or pathos in an attempt to manipulate a reader's response", and "any writing that is undermined by its overstylized and formulaic nature." Here is one example.

But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth precogitations; making Cables of Cobwebs and Wildernesses of handsome Groves. Besides Hippocrates hath spoke so little and the Oneirocriticall Masters, have left such frigid Interpretations from plants that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise it self. Nor will the sweetest delight of Gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the Bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the Ghost of a Rose.

What in the world is Sir Thomas Browne trying to say here?

As a refreshing change from the above, I offer Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity written in words of four letters or less by Brian Raiter (aka Organic Worker Drone BR903) of Muppetlabs. As near as I can figure, this is just about the ONLY sane material from Muppetlabs. Way to go BR903!

[ 0 ]

So, have a seat. Put your feet up. This may take some time. Can I get you some tea? Earl Grey? You got it.

Okay. How do I want to do this? He did so much. It's hard to just dive in. You know? You pick a spot to go from, but soon you have to back up and and go over this or that item, and you get done with that only to see that you have to back up some more. So if you feel like I'm off to the side of the tale half the time, well, this is why. Just bear with me, and we'll get to the end in good time. Okay?

Okay. Let's see....

[ I ]

Say you woke up one day and your bed was gone. Your room, too. Gone. It's all gone. You wake up in an inky void. Not even a star. Okay, yes, it's a dumb idea, but just go with it. Now say you want to know if you move or not. Are you held fast in one spot? Or do you, say, list off to the left some? What I want to ask you is: Can you find out? Hell no. You can see that, sure. You don't need me to tell you. To move, you have to move to or away from ... well, from what? You'd have to say that you don't even get to use a word like "move" when you are the only body in that void. Sure. Okay.

Now, let's add the bed back. Your bed is with you in the void. But not for long -- it goes away from you. You don't have any way to get it back, so you just let it go. But so now we have a body in the void with you. So does the bed move, or do you move? Or both? Well, you can see as well as I that it can go any way you like. Flip a coin. Who's to say? It's best to just say that you move away from the bed, and that the bed goes away from you. No one can say who's held fast and who isn't.

Now, if I took the bed back but gave you the sun -- just you and the sun in the void, now -- I'll bet you'd say that the sun is so big, next to you, that odds are you move and not the sun. It's easy to move a body like ours, and not so easy to kick a sun to and fro. But that isn't the way to see it. Just like with the bed, no one can say who's held fast.

In a word, you can't find any one true "at rest". Izzy was the one who told us that. Izzy said that you can't tell if you move or are at rest at any time. You can say that you go and all else is at rest, or you can say that you are at rest and all else goes. It all adds up the same both ways. So we all knew that much from way back when.

Aha, but now wait! The sun puts off rays! So: why not look at how fast the rays go past you? From that you'd see how fast you move, yes? For you see, rays move just the same if what puts them off is held fast or not. (Make a note of that, now.) Izzy had no way to know that, back then, but it's true. Rays all move the same. We call how fast that is: c. So, you can see how fast the rays go by you, and how far off that is from c will tell you how fast you move! Hell, you don't even need the sun for that. You can just have a lamp with you -- the one by your bed that you use to read by. You can have that lamp in your hand, and see how fast the rays go by you when you turn it on. The lamp will move with you, but the rays will move at c. You will see the rays move a bit more or less than c, and that will be how fast you move. An open-and-shut case, yes?

Well, and so we went to test this idea out. Hey, you don't need to be in a void to do this test. We move all the time, even as we sit here. We spin, in fact. So they shot some rays off and took note of how fast they went east, and how fast they went west, and so on. Well, what do you know? The rays went just as fast both ways. All ways, in fact. They all went at c, just the same. Not an iota more or less.

To say that we were less than glad to find that out is to be kind. It blew the mind, is more like it. "What is up with that?" we said. And here is when old Al came in.

[ II ]

Old Al, he came out the blue and said, "Not only do rays move at c if what puts them out is held fast or not: they move at c even if you are held fast or not." Now that may not look like such a big deal on the face of it, but hold on. What this says is that you can move as fast or as slow as you want, and rays will go by you at c all the time. You can have a pal run past you and when you both look at a ray go by at the same time, you will both see the same ray go by at c! That is a bit wild, no? You, back in that void, you just can not say if you move or not -- with the lamp or no. Not that you can't tell: it can't be said. It's moot!

But for that to be true, then time also has to get in on the act. For you and your pal to see the same ray go by at the same clip, her idea of time must be off from your idea of time!

I can hear you say, "No way. That can't be!" But I tell you it is. Old Al said so. He said, here, I'll show you. Get a load of this. We have Bert and Dana. Take a bus, and put Bert on the bus. The bus goes down the road. Dana, she sits here, on the side of the road. He's in the bus and she's on her ass. And now take a rock off of the moon, and let it fall at them. It hits the air and cuts in two. The two bits burn, and then land just as Bert and Dana are side by side. One hits the dirt up the road a ways, and one hits down the road a ways. Dana sees each rock at the same time, but Bert sees one rock and then sees the next rock. Now: if Bert and Dana both see Dana as the one who is "at rest", they both will say that the two bits came down at the same time. Dana will say, "I am 'at rest', and I saw them both land at the same time, so they both did, in fact, land at the same time." And Bert will say, "I move away from the rock down the road, so when I add that fact in, I can see that if I were 'at rest', I'd have seen both land at the same time. So it must be the case that they did land at the same time." Okay, but what if Bert and Dana now see Bert as the one who is "at rest"? Eh? You get to pick who is "at rest" and who isn't, no? So make Bert be "at rest". Now Bert will say, "I am 'at rest', so the one up the road beat the one down the road, on the way to the dirt, just the way I saw it." And Dana will say, "I saw them land at the same time, but I move away from the rock up the road, so when I add that fact in, I can see that the rock up the road must have beat the one down the road."

So you see, when you give up on the idea of a one true "at rest", then you have to give up on the idea of a one true time as well! And even that is not the end of it. If you lose your one true way to see time, then you also lose your one true way to see size and your one true way to see mass. You can't talk of any of that, if you don't also say what it is you call "at rest". If you don't, then Bert or Dana can pick an "at rest" that isn't the same as what you used, and then what they will get for time and size and mass won't be the same.

What a snag, eh? I hope you can see how that gave some of them the fits, back when old Al told us that one. But even so, that ain't the half of it. I mean, most of us know that if old Al had got hit by a bus at age ten, we'd have got this far on our own in good time. No, it was what came next that was the real slap in the face.

[ III ]

Now, I've said a lot here on how to see (or how not to see) how fast you "move". What I need to tell you now is just what I mean by that word "move". When I say "move", I also mean that you don't slow down or get sped up at any time, and that you don't veer to one side at all. When you move, you just keep all that the same as you go. How we say it is, you don't have any "pull". Why do I make a big deal out of that, you ask? Okay, let me tell you.

Cast your mind back to Ari, from way way back when. He's the one who said that if you are at rest, you tend to stay at rest, and if you move, you tend to come to rest. He was off, you know, as he had no way to know that it was the air that has you come to rest. We had to wait a long time for Izzy to come by and say, "No, Ari: if you move, you tend to just go on and on. To come to rest, you need to have a pull." The air will give you a pull, a pull that has you come to rest. Then we also have the big pull, the one that says what is down and what is up, the one that has all of us in its grip. Izzy saw that this pull was the same pull that has the moon in its grip, too. I said that a pull can be a veer, yes? That is what the pull on the moon does. The moon has to veer all the time for it to stay with us. Were it not for that pull, it'd just go off in a line -- no veer -- and we'd just sit here and wave bye bye. Same with us and the sun. We veer, each hour, or else we'd get real cold real fast.

But then, see, Izzy had to deal with the way that the pull acts. If a body has more mass, then it also has more pull, yes? That is why the sun is the axis we spin upon, and we are not the axis for the sun. But then why can't it go both ways? You take your ball of lead and your ball of wood and drop them, they land at the same time. But the lead ball has more mass, so it must get more pull. Izzy said, "Well, see, a body has one more kind of pull. This pull is such that it will want to stay put all the time. And the more mass it has, the more it will want to stay put. That pull is the 'a body at rest will tend to stay at rest' part of the deal. So you see, that pull and the big pull are in a tug-of-war, and they work out so that any mass will fall just as fast."

I call it a "new kind of pull", but it isn't so new: you feel it all the time. Get in a car and step on the gas -- you feel a pull back into your seat. Let up on the gas a bit, and the pull goes away. Make a left, and you feel a pull to the side. Stop, and you feel a pull out of your seat as you slow down. Or, go to the fair and get on a ride. As you spin, you feel a pull out, away from the ride. You spin: that is to say you veer, and veer and veer and veer, just like the moon. If you had no seat belt, you'd fly off the ride, and you'd fly off in a line. (Well, that is to say, you'd fly off in a line as a bird sees it. To be fair you'd also arc down at the same time. But put that to one side.)

Okay but now, see, old Al's big idea did not work when you look at pull. Go back to when you were lost in the void. You can't say if you move or not, yeah, but you sure can say if you have a pull on you or not. If you did, you'd feel it, no? Sure. So then you have no one true "at rest", no one true way to look at time, or mass, or size, but you do have one true way to look at a pull? Old Al said, "Erm. I don't buy that." We all said, "Aah, why not? Just give it a rest, Al." You can see why Al did not want to give it a rest, I bet. But this one was not such an easy nut.

[ IV ]

Izzy once said, Look here: say you have a disk that can spin, and so you put a pail of milk on it and you make it spin. You will see the milk go up the side of the pail, and fly over and out onto the disk. No big deal, eh? The spin will make a pull. But now what if you said that the pail of milk is your "at rest"? Then you have you and the sky and all that in a big huge spin, and the disk with its pail of milk is the only body that is "at rest", yes? How can you say then why the milk goes up? What can make the at-rest milk fly out of the pail like that?

This is why Izzy came to say: Yes, we have no one true "at rest", and when you move, some may say you do move and some may say you don't, and that is okay -- but not so with a pull! A pull is a pull, damn it.

But old Al's mind was set. And he had a big clue that that was not the full tale. I told you that Izzy put a new kind of pull next to the old kind. Well, even he felt that this new pull was a tad bit odd. Not to put it down, mind you -- just that this new kind of pull was so much like the old kind of pull in a lot of ways. You know? Say I put you in a box, and then put that box out in a void. (But this time I don't need to have you in a true void. I just want you to be well away from any pull. You can have a star or two, or as many as you like, as long as you keep them far off. Okay?) Now, say I tied a rope from the box to a ship, and then I got in that ship and sent it up, so that it went fast, and more fast, and more fast ... I just burn up fuel as long as I have any left. As long as I see to it that you get sped up all the time, and at the same rate, you will feel a pull that will feel just like the pull you'd feel if you were back here, at home. If you have a ball of lead and a ball of wood in that box with you, you can drop them and they will both land at the same time. That is a bit odd, no? Puts a bug in your ear, yes? You can bet it put bugs in our ears. But no one had come up with a good way to say why that was so. Not yet.

Old Al, he took that ball and ran with it. He went off for a year, and then ten more. Yep. That long. This was no walk in the park, let me tell you. In fact, some of us said that it was more like a walk off the deep end! For you see, when old Al came back, he said, "This 'new' pull that Izzy gave us, it is just the old pull. Not just like it. It is it. The two are one and the same. And from this, you will then see that we have no 'one true pull'."

Do you see what he said, here? When you are in that box with the rope on the ship, the pull you feel won't just act like the pull back home: it is in fact the same kind of pull! So when you say, "Hey! What if I want this box to be my 'at rest', huh? What then? Why does this ball fall down if I'm at rest and all?" -- old Al will say back at you, "Well, you see, you have this big old void that goes by, and gets sped up all the time, and that has a pull on you and your box." You'd say, "Get out of here! The mass in this void is too far away to give me that big of a pull!" But old Al'd say, "Nope. You don't get it. How much mass you have in your void is moot. It's the fact that it's all the mass in the void. All of it but you and your box, that is."

Same with the milk in the pail. If you say that the pail is at rest, then old Al will say that the spin of all else will pull on the milk, and make it jump out over the side.

So here is what we get when we boil it all down. Izzy said that you can't tell if you move or are at rest at any time. You can say that you go and all else is at rest, or you can say that you are at rest and all else goes. It all adds up the same both ways. But old Al then said not only that, but that you can't even tell if you have a pull on you or not. So, at no time, in no way, can you act so that you can't be seen as "at rest". You can go this way or that way or jump up or down or what have you: even so, you can say that you are at rest -- and it will all add up just the same.

This was the big one for old Al. He'd like to jump for joy, it all came out just so. But the rest of us, well, we felt more like it was time to lock Al up, what he said was so wild.

[ V ]

So some of us said, "Al, you are mad. Look here: you want to make this pull, this pull that we need to keep next to the sun -- you want to make this very real pull into some kind of fake pull! I mean, what kind of pull is it that can go away and come back as you pick what to call your 'at rest'? That is no way for a pull to act." And old Al said, "Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. It is a fake pull." And we said, "Okay, that is it. You, Al, have lost it." And old Al said, "Feh. Read this and weep." And we read it, or we gave it a try, more like. It was a real mess. Some of us got it, but most of us just went, "Huh?" And some of us said that even if it was true, we'd just as soon stay with the old lie, Al's idea was so hard to make head or tail of.

But Herb -- what? No, Herb isn't his real name, but I like to call him that -- But so then Herb was one of the ones who got it, and he went in with old Al and his new idea, and what they came up with goes like this.

You know all the ways you can move, here. You have your up-and-down, and you have your east-and-west, and you have your fore-and-back. Well, Herb had said, we want to add one more way here: time. Yeah, time as just one more way to move in. Four ways, all told. And now Herb and old Al said, "Let's take a look at what we can do when we look at here as a four-way here. Like, what if this four-way here can be bent? We don't mean that what is in a four-way spot gets bent: what if the very spot gets bent?" Some of us said, "You two have got bent, is more like it." But they said, "Ha. Get a load of this."

They said, what if mass puts a bend in this four-way here of ours? The more mass you have in one spot, the more bent that spot gets. So now pick out a spot A and a spot B, one on each side of some mass, and each at its own time. What does it look like when a body goes from A to B? You will say: A line. Well, yes and no. It is a line, but it's also bent, as it goes past the bent spot. You see, this line will only look like a line if you can see all four ways! If you can't see one of the ways, if for you the way you can't see is what you call time, then you will see it as a line with a big old veer in it, half way in. Now, take a lot of mass, as much as our sun has, and pick spot A and spot B to be near the mass, and to be the same spot but for the time. Well, when you do that, the line from A to B in the four-way here will be an arc to you and me! An arc that will spin on and on, with that mass as the axis!

"You see?" old Al said. "You say that the sun has a pull, but when we spin with the sun as our axis, in the bent-up four-way here we just move in a line! We don't veer off at all! That is why I say that your pull is a fake pull. You don't need any pull if you just want to stay on a line!"

A few more of us got it, then. But most of us just said, "What are you two on? Put down the bong and get real! This is way too wild to be true." But they just said, "Just try and see if it isn't true."

So we came up with ways to test old Al's idea, and each time Al hit the gold. His idea had the sun's rays a tiny bit more red than what Izzy said. They were. His idea put Mars a tiny bit off from how Izzy had Mars. It was.

The big one, the one that got told over and over, was the one with the dark-at-day time. You know, when the moon gets in the way of the sun. At that time you can get a real good look at a star when it's up next to the sun. (Next to it in the sky, that is. Not next to it for real. You know what I mean.) They went off and got a good look at a star that was very near the sun, and then they used a book to see just what spot that star was in. You see, the rays from the star pass so near the sun that they get bent, on the way to us. Old Al, his idea said just how much the rays get bent. With Izzy, the rays get bent, too, but only by half as much. So they took a look at the star, and they took at look at the big book, and ... well, I'll bet you can tell me as well as I can tell you just how far off that star was.

A-yup.

And then all of us, we all just sat back and said: "Whoa."

And then we all went back to old Al and said to him, "Al, you must have some kind of head on you, to pull an idea like that out of thin air." We said, "Why don't you quit this dumb job you have here and come with us?" We said, "You know what, Al? We like you."

[ end ]

And that is just the way it was. (Well, that is to say, more or less.) Oh dear me, look at the time! Sigh. I do know how to run on, don't I? It must be well past time to turn in. Let me show you out. It was very nice to have you over, and I hope I was of help.

And y'all come back now, hear?

Note: "Herb" actually refers to Hermann Minkowski. (And "Izzy" and "Ari" are, of course, Isaac Newton and Aristotle.)

Chiasmus VI Revisited: Alma 13 in greater detail

2008-06-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

In the article I posted earlier today I included a couple of chiasms from Alma 13 in the Book of Mormon. Sterling D. Allen documented this chapter much more thoroughly. You can find his analysis here. He has an amazing collection of interesting material on his website.

Notice how some of these share material with others: they overlap.

In closing, did you know that there are people who claim to be "chiasm doubters"? One of these is Kaimi Wenger at "Times and Seasons", who declares himself to be a "chiasm doubter". He is also an attorney in New York City, according to his blog, Seeking for Righteousness. Kaimi thinks maybe Joseph Smith studied Hebrew enough "to absorb and adopt various 'scripturese' speech patterns, whether consciously or not. Or maybe we’re all just engaging in cherry-picking interpretations of rorschach blots when we look for chiasm."

I'm serious! This isn't just another Urban Legend. Yes, I know I'm being harsh.

Right off the bat Kaimi states a false premise: "chiasm is an indication of ancient origin". Whoa! Nobody ever said that. Chiasm is an indication of prophetic origin. Try that on for size, Kaimi. In my next, and last, article about chiasmus, I'll demonstrate some modern examples of this kind of poem.

After that false premise, Kaimi goes on to draw some equally false conclusions. Take a look for yourself.

I ask you: after what you've seen in these articles, could you be a "chiasm doubter"? If so, would you like to buy a bridge? Boyd F. Edwards and W. Farrell Edwards have written a paper, Does Chiasmus Appear in the Book of Mormon by Chance". Your brain is probably already saturated with this subject, but if you still aren't convinced, take a look. On page 14 of the article, a computer program used in writing the paper is mentioned. If you check out footnote 33 you'll find out how to get a copy of the program so you can test chiasms yourself. If you are even vaguely interested.

And that’s it for chiasmus in Alma 13 in particular and for chiasmus in the Book of Mormon in general. One more article on this subject to go!

Chiasmus VI: Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, and Mormon

2008-06-29T08:41:00.001-07:00

This is the sixth in a series of articles about the Hebrew poetry in the Scriptures. I’ve expended most of my efforts demonstrating the amazing quantity and quality of these poems in the Book of Mormon. If you found these articles interesting, then you will want to see if you can find your own Chiasms.

After the Books of First and Second Nephi, there are four short books; Enos, Jarom, Omni, and the explanatory Words of Mormon. These are then followed by the much longer Book of Mosiah. Here's a short poem I noticed in Mosiah 3:18-19.

I have made some of the parallel words bold. These outline the major messages in these verses. But there are other things that you will see as you study the poem.

First of all is the idea that an enemy to God is one who does not yield to the Holy Spirit, and conversely, if you yield to the Holy Spirit, then you are God's friend.

Another idea in these verses is that a saint is someone who has been saved, and that to become a saint is to believe in Christ.

The central idea is that this is always so, and it divides this into "from the fall of Adam" (the past) and "will be forever and ever" (the future), and puts us (now) in the very center of the poem. This message is for me right now, not for some hypothetical person.

Another message is that humility can be defined as yielding to the Holy Spirit.

All those things become more apparent when these verses are arranged as a poem. Here's another poem in Mosiah 5:10-12.

Notice that the first half refers to some hypothetical person, but in the second half King Benjamin relates these principles to each of his listeners. In what way does transgression blot the name of Jesus out of our hearts so that we forget it? Have you felt your testimony weaken when you have sinned?

"These passages are just two small parts of the very complex chiastic structure of King Benjamin's entire speech. The fact that King Benjamin uses chiasmus is completely consistent with the traditional coronation ceremony which was taking place. Benjamin's thoughts had been carefully prepared beforehand and had even been "written and sent forth among those that were not under the sound of his voice." This degree of painstaking deliberation in writing was the rule, rather than the exception, among the Book of Mormon prophets." (Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, by John W. Welch, in BYU Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, p. 69.)

Here is a poetic outline of the entire book of Mosiah. It is up to the reader to compare these things with the scriptural references. Keep in mind that within this overall structure there are numerous other sub structures or poems, all intertwined like a tapestry. This example of Chiasmus is also taken from the John W. Welch article mentioned above:

Well, that is amazing, isn't it? When you read the Book of Omni and then the Book of Mosiah, you will notice that the story becomes rather complicated; it is hard to follow who is doing what and to whom, and where the action is taking place. Once you understand that the Book of Mormon prophets used these poetic structures, you’ll understand why the text, if read like prose, seems disorganized. It seems disorganized because it is so thoroughly organized.

The Book of Alma, which contains a wealth of chiastic poetry, comes after the Book of Mosiah. Here is Alma 13:2-9.

The word "rest" in the center of this chiasm has a connection with the priesthood and eternal life. Alma used the word "rest" four times just prior to this (see Alma 12:34-37) and four times in the concluding portions of his discourse (Alma 13:12,13,16, and 29). The "rest" of God is possible only through the Atonement of Christ through faith and repentance (Alma 12:37; see also Alma 40:11-12; 3 Nephi 27:19; Enos 1:27). The chiastic structure of Alma 13:2-9, coupled with Alma's use of the word "rest" before and after this passage adds to the power and meaning of the text in a way that can only be described as poetry. Verses 2-3 in the above also form a secondary chiasm.

Here is Alma 13:20-31. This looks better in color because the parallel elements consist of entire sentences instead of just a few key words!

This is Alma 36. Some authors say this is the greatest chiasm of them all. I think it is probably the one most people are most aware of. From what you’ve seen so far in these articles, I think you’d agree that Alma 36 is impressive, but that it is not necessarily the best tree in the forest.

There are so many great examples of Hebrew poetry in the Book of Mormon that I have a hard time calling any one of them "the best". This is Alma 37. This is one I discovered and diagrammed myself, but it can also be found on the Internet.

In addition to the examples in this article, I’ve found chiasms in Alma 5, 19, 20, 34, and 38 – and there are probably many more.

The Book of Alma is followed by the Book of Helaman. This is a chiasm found in Helaman 6:7-13.

The Book of Helaman is followed by Third Nephi. In my third article about Hebrew poetry I showed you the chiasm I discovered in 3 Nephi 20-22. After Third Nephi is Fourth Nephi, and this is followed by the Book of Mormon. Yes, one of the books in the Book of Mormon is called the Book of Mormon. If you are curious about that, ask one of your LDS friends to explain it. Here is a very small part of the complicated chiastic structure found in Mormon 8 These are verses 12-17.

I’ll leave this to you, dear reader, to analyze and ponder.

A Great Cookie Recipe from Nieman-Marcus

2008-06-28T05:37:00.000-07:00

No discussion of Urban Legends would be complete without this.

What Snopes has to say about the Neiman-Marcus cookie hoax:

Claim: Neiman-Marcus charged a shopper $250 for its cookie recipe, not the $2.50 the woman had been expecting to pay. As revenge on the store for refusing to reverse the charge, she now provides the recipe for free and exhorts others to pass it along.

Status: False.

Origins: What we have here is a golden oldie of an urban legend, one second in tenacity only to Craig Shergold's request for business cards. It's the ultimate "strike a blow for the little guy," and in that lies its appeal. That by forwarding it on, we can be armchair heroes.

Though its present incarnation casts Neiman-Marcus as the bad guy, this legend has been around for at least 50 years, and it's been told of various companies (and various confections) during its long history. Here's a fine example from a 1948 cookbook, Massachusetts Cooking Rules, Old and New, which lists not only the recipe for "$25 Fudge Cake" but also gives the following explanation for the name:

This friend had to pay $25 upon the receipt of the recipe from the chef of one of the railroads. She had asked for the recipe while eating on a train. The chef gladly sent it to her, together with a bill for $25, which her attorney said she had to pay. She then gave the recipe to all her friends, hoping they would get some pleasure from it.

Sound disturbingly familiar?

The 1960s saw this tale mutate into a villainization of New York's famed Waldorf-Astoria hotel over a dessert known as "Red Velvet Cake." A woman who'd dined at the hotel later wrote to ask for the recipe. The recipe arrived . . . along with a bill for $350, a bill her lawyer assured her she had to pay. Her way of getting even was -- you guessed it -- to distribute the recipe far and wide.

($350 is a shocking figure for those times. Just to give an idea of the relative worth of things back then, the grocery budget at my house was $50 a week for a family of four. Faced with a $35 dentist bill, my mother would for the next two weeks stand over me as I brushed my teeth at bedtime, making sure I wasn't half doing the job and thus sentencing the family to the poor house.)

By the late 1970s, this legend had shifted to Mrs. Fields and chocolate chip cookies. Indeed, this version proved so fiendishly popular that in 1987 the following notice signed by Debbi Fields was displayed in her stores:

Mrs. Fields recipe has never been sold. There is a rumor circulating that the Mrs. Fields Cookie recipe was sold to a woman at a cost of $250. A chocolate-chip cookie recipe was attached to the story. I would like to tell all my customers that this story is not true, this is not my recipe and I have not sold the recipe to anyone. Mrs. Fields recipe is a delicious trade secret.

You rarely hear this tale told of Mrs. Fields these days -- the 1990s saw it shift yet again, this time to point a finger at Neiman-Marcus. One possible reason for this shift could have been a double misremembering of names as the legend was briefly told of the department store Marshall Fields: Mrs. Fields to Marshall Fields (similar name) and Marshall Fields to Neiman-Marcus (similar-sounding name plus both are department stores).

As the latest in a long line of victims, Neiman-Marcus has fielded numerous inquiries about the following tale (which I've excerpted from the rather lengthy canonical version):

My daughter & I had just finished a salad at Neiman-Marcus Cafe in Dallas & decided to have a small dessert. Because our family are such cookie lovers, we decided to try the "Neiman-Marcus Cookie". It was so excellent that I asked if they would give me the recipe and they said with a small frown, "I'm afraid not." Well, I said, would you let me buy the recipe? With a cute smile, she said, "Yes." I asked how much, and she responded, "Two fifty." I said with approval, just add it to my tab.
Thirty days later, I received my VISA statement from Neiman-Marcus and it was $285.00. I looked again and I remembered I had only spent $9.95 for two salads and about $20.00 for a scarf. As I glanced at the bottom of the statement, it said, "Cookie Recipe - $250.00." Boy, was I upset!! I called Neiman's Accounting Dept. and told them the waitress said it was "two fifty," and I did not realize she meant $250.00 for a cookie recipe.

(Neiman-Marcus refuses to strike down the bill; then comes the usual exhortation from the writer to pass this along to as many as possible.)

Especially in their particular case, the legend is even more improbable than usual in that:

Until quite recently there was no such thing as a "Neiman-Marcus" cookie. They developed a chocolate chip cookie in response to the rumor.

There is no "Neiman Marcus Cafe" at any of the chain's three Dallas-area stores. Instead, the restaurants are named Zodiac, Zodiac at North Park, and The Woods.

Neiman Marcus does not sell recipes from its restaurants. The department store gives them away for free to anyone who asks.

(Check out the Neiman Marcus web page for a bit about this piece of lore and their newly-developed chocolate chip cookie recipe.)

Ingredients

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1-3/4 cups flour

1-1/2 teaspoons instant espresso powder, slightly crushed

8 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

Cream the butter with the sugars until fluffy.

Beat in the egg and the vanilla extract.

Combine the dry ingredients and beat into the butter mixture.

Stir in the chocolate chips.

Drop by large spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes, or 10 to 12 minutes for a crispier cookie.

Makes 12 to 15 large cookies.

As to why this legend has taken on a life of its own despite persistent and detailed debunkings, it's a classic David and Goliath story. It is, after all, the little guy smacking the big, heartless corporation a swift one right across the nose, something both you and I have often longed to do. This bit of faxlore invites -- nay, demands -- participation. Painless participation too. One tap of the "Forward" key and someone who always saw herself as part of The Forces For Good (but who could never find the time to change the world) gets to enjoy that wonderfully warming self-righteous feeling that comes from Striking A Blow. All it takes is either a couple of pins and a bulletin board or e-mail capability and an alias list and your good deed of the day is done and finished before the morning's first coffee has cooled.

What's the possible slandering of an innocent company when there's a cheap 'n' easy "warm fuzzy feeling" to be had? Like, would an anonymous, forwarded-a-million-times e-mail lie to you?

Urban Legends and The Thermodynamics of Hell

2008-06-26T05:01:00.000-07:00

A thermodynamics professor wrote a take home exam for his graduate students. It had one question:

Is hell exothermic or endothermic?
Support your answer with a proof.

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. Here's the answer that got an "A" on the test.

First, we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass.
Second, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
Third, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not usually belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.
Fourth, let's consider the rate of change of volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant.
One conclusion is that if hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.
The other conclusion is that if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.

Before you get all testy about the many doctrinal flaws in this little piece, remember that it is intended to be funny. But humor isn't the only reason I've put this "joke" in my blog. I also want to discuss Urban Legends.

Some websites say a student named Tim Graham wrote the winning answer. Snopes, your first recourse when faced with a possible Urban Legend, doesn't mention Graham, but has this to say.

Commonly, the piece begins with a statement meant to authenticate the story. "An actual question given on University of Washington chemistry midterm," "from a Yale professor," and "Dr. Schambaugh, of the University of Oklahoma School of Chemical Engineering, Final Exam question for May of 1997" have been spotted so far.

Sometimes the student's comments culminate in the assertion that hell must be exothermic because a girl he'd been chasing had sworn it'd be a cold day in hell before she'd sleep with him, and he'd so far been unable to get to first base with her.

Often the story concludes with "The student received the only 'A' given on the exam."

There IS a Dr. Robert Shambaugh at the University of Oklahoma College of Engineering, but according to one web page he says he never used this question on any of his exams.

By now, if you've read some of my posts, you know how interested I am in religion. So you'll forgive me for reporting that Snopes goes on to say that

... the purported student's opening gambit, "We postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass," stands in opposition to the position taken centuries ago by the Roman Catholic Church. The Holy See had given its official approval to a particular line of scientific thought, the vacuum, to specificially allow for immaterial forms such as weightless souls and armies of angels in what would otherwise be a filled universe. Without vacuums, places where measurable matter does not exist, both Heaven and Hell and all their denizens would have no place in the cosmic order of things. The time-honored Aristotelian assertion "Nature abhors a vacuum" had to be (and was) elbowed out of the way because the vacuum was a theological necessity.

Talk about doctrinal errors!! Oy, vey!

As I was researching this article I found an interesting paper by Mark Goodacre, The Tale of Theresa Banyan, one of several names of the unobtainable girl mentioned in some versions of the story. Using "The Thermodynamics of Hell" as an example, Goodacre's paper compares the differences in Urban Legends with differences in stories from the New Testament. You should read this paper before you read before my post, in about a week, on the Inerrancy of the Bible. Of course NOBODY is reading any of the things I post, so all this is irrelevant. But I digress.

While "The Thermodynamics of Hell" is amusing, a lot of Urban Legends are not. Many of them are attacks on someone or something.

This is an election year, and the mudslingers are out in farce (sic). Snopes has a page with a list of slurs aimed at Barack Obama. There is also a page for John McCain, but it is all positive. Are the Snopes people Republicans? The kind of hatred directed at Obama should NEVER be forwarded to anyone. If you receive emails with this kind of BS, just delete them. Please! (And I'm probably more conservative, politically, than McCain. But fair is fair.)

Since we are all concerned about our health, Urban Legends about Medicine or about Toxins might cause anxiety and mass hysteria in some folks.

Religion and Race are two more areas where Urban Legends can be vicious.

You'll notice, if you look at the links above, that many of the Urban Legends are true, or at least partially so. Obama and McCain, for example, are politicians, so they are, by definition, weasels. You'd have to expect some dirt to cling to them. Here are some other websites you can go to when trying to find out the origin and reality of a suspicious article one of your coworkers just emailed you:

The International Society for Contemporary Legend Research

About.com: Urban Legends and Folklore

The AFU And Urban Legends Archive

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Christian Urban Legends

Myth Busters TV show

Break the Chain

Truth or Fiction

Hoax-Slayer

Sniggle

So what is the bottom line?

Don't take life as seriously as I do!

Chiasmus V: Nephi’s Outline Two

2008-06-24T02:42:00.001-07:00

The information in this article (unless otherwise noted) was adapted from Nephi’s Outline, by Noel B. Reynolds, in BYU Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, p. 131-149.

Further analysis reveals a secondary chiastic structure underlying 1 Nephi 1-9:

It is remarkable that Nephi was able to write each of these stories so that he could use them in parallel with two other stories which themselves do not occur in parallel!

There is also a secondary chiastic structure underlying 1 Nephi 10-22.

Many of the parallels of this chiasm are self-explanatory. The structural requirements of this chiasm explain why Lehi’s exposition of his own vision of the tree of life and the prophecies of the Jews and gentiles were left out in the first report, but included at this later point. We can also see why Nephi’s discussion of how one can come to know the mysteries of God is in a slightly different order in the second half of 1 Nephi as compared to its occurrence in the first half. Its position in the chiasm of the second half apparently has priority.

The sheer complexity of the Book of Mormon account, the quantity and quality of its poetic devices, and the beautiful tapestry they weave are absolutely amazing!!!

A system of parallels similar to the ones in Chiasmus IV and Chiasmus V is found in the four lesser stories of 1 Nephi.

Here is a comparison of the story of Lehi and his family traveling from the valley of Lemuel to the land Bountiful in the wilderness and the story of their journey by ship to the promised land.

      1. Each story begins as the voice of the Lord 
         commands Lehi to depart on a journey.

      2. In both instances the group gathers all 
         their provisions and their seeds. (It is 
         noteworthy that the only three references 
         to these seeds occur exactly in the 
         parallels that have been mentioned.)

      3. In the first they depart across the river. 
         In the second they put forth into the sea.

      4. The journey has barely begun before Nephi’s 
         brothers begin murmuring in the first case 
         because of the difficulties resulting from 
         the loss of Nephi’s bow, and in the second 
         because they have forgotten the divine 
         power that has brought them there.

      5. In the first story Nephi successfully 
         rebukes the murmurers. In the second story 
         he has no such success. As we’ve seen in 
         examples of parallelism given in earlier 
         articles, parallel items are frequently 
         opposites.

      6. Because of his success in the first story, 
         the families receive instructions from the 
         Liahona. In the second story, at the 
         corresponding point, the Liahona ceases to 
         function. Another opposite. In the first 
         story Nephi explains that the Liahona works 
         only by faith, which is the explanation for 
         its failure to work in the second story.

      7. The death of Ishmael, the afflictions of 
         his daughters, and the attempts of Laman 
         and Lemuel to kill Lehi and Nephi are 
         paralleled in the second story by the 
         report of Lehi and Sariah’s grief 
         (almost unto death) and suffering due to 
         the sins of Laman and Lemuel.

      8. In the first story the voice of the Lord 
         chastens Laman and Lemuel, thus sparing 
         the lives of Lehi and Nephi. In the second 
         story only the Lord’s power in the storm 
         can soften Laman and Lemuel’s hearts.

      9. In each case, the chastening is followed 
         by a period of travel. In the first story, 
         the Lord nourishes the group for eight 
         years in the wilderness. In the second, 
         Nephi guides the ship for many days by 
         following the Liahona, which now functions 
         perfectly.

     10. The first story concludes as the families 
         arrive in Bountiful, pitch their tents, 
         and find much fruit and honey. The second 
         story ends as they arrive in the promised 
         land, pitch their tents, and find beasts 
         in the forest and a variety of ores.

One reason for the use of this parallelism is that significant ideas can be emphasized by their placement in a chiasm. I will give two examples (of my own) from 2 Nephi chapter 9. The first example is in verses 24-26. As you can see, the central theme is that the power of God will deliver us. The word "atonement" brackets this central statement on either side. And above and below "atonement," we see "mercy" paired with "justice" and "have claim" paired with "satisfieth the demands" We see in the surrounding text that mercy applies to those who have not a law given, but that those who have the law must repent, be baptized, and "have perfect faith in" God, which is compared to "and endure to the end" in such a way that we may come to the conclusion that they are the same thing.

The second example is in the first three verses of the same chapter. Notice that the central message is that the covenants of the lord are for every generation, from the beginning of the earth down to its end; that the true church is like the promised land; that Jacob’s purpose in speaking to his people, and in reading the words of Isaiah to them, is that they might know concerning the covenants, and that as a result of knowing them they may rejoice and lift up their heads forever. Notice that before and after the central theme are two small chiasms that emphasize in parallel the covenants that have been covenanted (to use the Hebrew way of saying things), and the resulting blessings that will be bestowed; that both these are centered on the Lord; and notice the way brethren, house of Israel, and children are placed as the makers of the covenants and the recipients of the resulting blessings.

You will have to study this for a while before you can begin to appreciate it. Even though I discovered it and diagrammed it I need to look at it for a while before all the different things that are going on here become clear. You'll also note that I've stopped highlighting the key words. I'll leave that to the reader as sn exercise.

When I was outlining 2 Nephi chapter 9 for this article, I noticed that I kept rearranging the parallelisms I discovered. They seemed to fit together in many different ways. Brother Reynolds says,

We do not have access to Nephi’s ideas about the rules governing the use of literary structures. .. The rules for chiasmus were obviously very broad, and they varied considerably from one culture and period to another. .. Without direct access to their rules it is difficult to analyze fully the structure of their writings. In reconstructing hypothetical outlines we are not certain how to handle sections of text that do not fall neatly into a pattern or that fit a pattern in an obviously unbalanced way.

You may recall my theory that the word order may have been changed in some instances when Joseph Smith translated the unsealed third of the golden plates from ancient Hebrew into English. I've translated a lot of my material into Spanish, and the word order in that language messes up some of the Chiasms and makes others better. Brother Reynolds continues,

There are undoubtedly other aspects of my hypotheses which may raise doubts in the minds of readers. .. In this article I have attempted to identify only a few such elements. As others are identified, the patterns suggested here will undoubtedly be revised or even replaced. The more creative response there is to the hypotheses of this article, the more my objectives in writing it will be fulfilled.

Brother Reynolds, like the writer of this "unread blog", liked feedback. Recall that the story of how Nephi obtained the plates of brass and the story of the building of the ship, which were shown in a previous article in this series to be parallel, are also chiastic. None of the other stories is chiastic.

Obtaining the Brass Plates (1 Nephi 3-5):

Building the ship (1 Nephi 17-18):

There are other examples of Hebrew poetry in the Book of Mormon that I'll show you later. I hope these things make you more excited about studying the Book of Mormon.

I am looking forward to the day when the Lord lets us have the sealed two-thirds of the Book of Mormon, the writings of Joseph who was sold into Egypt, the visions of John that Nephi was commanded not to write, and the writings of the prophets of the lost Ten Tribes. I’m pretty sure we’ll have to read the Scriptures we’ve already been given before any of that can happen.

My 64th Birthday - An Autobiographical Sketch

2008-06-23T03:43:00.000-07:00

Come, Come Ye Saints my favorite hymn!

I was born on June 23, 1944 in Reno, Nevada. During the first few years we lived in Berkeley, California, in Portland, Oregon, and in St. George, Utah. But I started school back in Reno and graduated from Reno High School in 1962. This is a picture of me with my dad in the snow.

Probably Idlewild Park - about 1947

Here I am in my Cub Scout uniform. I was never athletic, and the other boys in my den, who were just naturally more agressive, seemed like bullies to me. I remember Cub Scouts as more of an ordeal than anything else.

Probably the back yard at 845 Bates Ave in about 1953

In a future post I'll tell the story of my great-great grandfather Thomas Cottam. Here are photos of Floyd Mac Spencer and Mae Listman, my mother's parents.

I suppose this was his WWI uniform - I still have his pistol

I think my grandma was a babe!

My parents, Grant and Virginia, both grew up during the Great Depression, and were very poor during most of that time. Here's a picture of my mother when she was just a little girl.

This must have been about 1923-25 - How could you say no to so dramatic a petition?

And here's another picture of her mother that I treasure.

Mae Listman as a young girl

My mom was getting a degree in chemistry and my dad was a carpenter when they met during WWII. My mom was very popular and was a sorority girl and involved in a lot of "extra-curricular" activities. Here she is dancing with a friend named Kathryn.

Virginia Shirley Spencer in about 1942-44

My mother and father only had eleven days together after they were married. Then my dad went off to war, wound up in Pakistan building a railroad, and they were separated for twenty-seven months. Here are photos of my dad in his uniform and my mom at Gabbs, Nevada. She worked there at the magnesium mine until shortly before I was born. I was eighteen months old when my dad came home.

Grant Evan Cottam - Northern India or Pakistan during WWII

Virginia Shirley Spencer overlooking the mine at Gabbs, Nevada - She worked as a secretary instead of as a chemist so none of the men there would risk losing his deferment

Later on my mom taught sixth grade science. After the war my father worked as a carpenter for many years. He eventually got a degree and was a college professor until he retired. My dad's mother, Sarah Ellen Manwaring, died when he was only ten years old. He was raised by his sister Verda, who was only two years older, and wild as a march hare - at least for Utah in the 1930s. Here is a picture of "Sadie" on her wedding day.

Sarah Ellen Manwaring - 'Sadie' - on her wedding day - September 14, 1910 - She died February 10, 1932

Here are my dad and his two younger brothers, Alvin and Donald, taken around the time their mother died. They look like a handful.

My father had 8 brothers and sisters - Ellen died before she was a year old - Rulon, Mildred, LaVell, Raymond and Verda were older, and Alvin and Donald were younger

My father's father, Charles Walter Cottam, remarried and had a second family. His second wife, Ruth Shepherd, had also died when this picture was taken.

The children are Emily, Mary Alice, Catherine and William, from left to right - I'm in between Emily and William in age

I think not having a mother during his teenage years made it difficult for my dad to be a husband and father. But he was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I'm certain the Church helped fill in some of the gaps left by the death of his mother. My mom was a Methodist. She was later baptised into the LDS Church. The year I graduated from high school my parents were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. We always attended church as I was growing up. My parents worked at many different callings in the Church. My brother and sister and I are all "active" in the Church today as a result. "Train up a child in the way he should go ..." That word "active" may not mean the same thing to someone who isn't LDS, and who only attends church for weddings, funerals and holidays.

Family traditions - childhood.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of our road trips. I especially remember one trip up the Oregon and Washington coasts, on a boat up into Canada, across Canada to some of the beautiful parks, and down through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. We drove to San Francisco or to Los Angeles to see relatives. In those days it took seven hours to drive from Reno to San Francisco. I loved going to Golden Gate Park, Fleishacker Zoo, the beaches, Fisherman's Wharf, Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, the San Diego Zoo and Balboa Park, the La Brea Tar Pits, Griffith Park and especially the Planetarium and many other great places in sunny California.

We often went camping. I learned to love the outdoors. I grew up when Westerns were popular and loved the history of the wild wild West with its cowboys and Indians and History. We went to Lake Tahoe, Yosemite and Dog Valley to camp. I got to see Firefall in Yosemite many times. We went out to eat together when we could afford it. I remember a fast food drive-in that sold barbecued beef sandwiches - something like Arby's. I loved to go to A&W Rootbeer drive-ins. There was a Chinese restaurant in Sparks that had a big bronze Buddha in the entry. Thanksgiving and Christmas both bring back many wonderful memories.

Family Traditions - adulthood.

I tried to do these same things when I got married. Unfortunately, traveling by car is impossible for my wife, so there have been very few camping trips with her along. I've taken a few trips by myself when the call of the road becomes too strong to resist. Eating out is something we enjoy. I like to try ethnic food more then the others, but I've tried to broaden their appreciation for things culinary. Since the kids have grown up the holidays aren't quite the same - Susan does most of the work for these things and probably resents it.

I think we've neglected some of the things that would have helped us to grow spiritually. If I were to regret anything about my life it would be this. Our church urges us to have regular family prayer, to read the scriptures together often and to set aside one evening a week to get together to make plans, solve problems, play games, sing together, share a lesson about Jesus and have a little fun as a family. We certainly could have done these things more regularly over the years. I think we've all suffered because of our rebelliousness.

If I could start married life over, I think I'd spend more time working in the home. I think I'd try to control my kids less and to love them more. I think I'd try to reason things out less and to laugh more. Someone said if we could live our lives over we'd probably not make the same mistakes. We'd just make different ones. So maybe I should be content with the way things are.

How faith has affected my life.

I grew up in my church. My parents participated in the organizations as teachers, youth leaders, and in the work of fellowshipping. I resisted. I ran around with a bunch of kids who smoked and drank. There was some "midnight auto". Years later I learned that some of them had done "hard" time for armed robberies. There was even a murder in there. The summer I graduated from High School we moved to Walnut Creek, California. That got me into a different group of friends. They weren't as vicious as my Reno buddies, but they were still interested in trying everything on for size. That winter several of us planned to go to a cabin in the mountains with a veterinarian from Lafayette to try LSD. Right before we were about to leave for the mountains a doctor crashed his car on the Bay Bridge after taking LSD. Suddenly LSD was front page news and a controlled substance. Luckily for me, our veterinarian friend got cold feet. We, of course, had even hotter feet!

In Walnut Creek I realized that I wasn't very happy. I saw some of my peers in the church youth group who seemed to have their act together and who seemed to be self-confident and to have purpose in their lives. I decided I wanted that. I was paired with a man, Armand Mauss, to visit some of the families in our church. This program is called Home Teaching. Brother Mauss was a faithful home teacher and took me with him every month. I was also blessed with a gifted youth leader, Stanley Gold. He got me to start attending church and to participate in the youth activities.One of the smartest things I ever did was to put in my papers to go on a mission for the church. Here's our family about the time I went on my mission.

My brother's name is Spencer and my sister is Lynda

I went into the missionary training center in Provo in March, 1964. In June I flew to Uruguay, where I was a missionary for two years. After I came home I went to Brigham Young University. My grandmother Mae left me an inheritance and I blew it going to school, driving a Corvette and taking flying lessons. The first summer after I returned I took out more than one hundred different girls. It is a little unsettling to realize that if I had invested that money in some real estate I might be a wealthy man today. But I sure wouldn't have had as much fun...

Well, that's a little sample of the first twenty-two years of my life. Maybe in a future post I'll tell you about the forty-two years that followed.

This is a good place to explain what it means to be "active" in the Church. It means you go to church every Sunday. It means you accept "callings" to serve in the organizations. It means you actively seek to "magnify" your callings by learning what is required and then doing it - and by trying to go the extra mile. It means you try to keep God's commandments and pray to know what He wants you to do with your life. I've had many different church callings. I've been Sunday school president, Elders quorum president, Scoutmaster, Ward Clerk, Executive Secretary to the bishop, Membership Clerk, Gospel Doctrine teacher, Seminary teacher, Ward Mission leader, Primary teacher, High Priest Group leader and had other jobs. For six years my wife and I were on a stake service mission in the Richmond III Spanish branch. We are now serving another stake service mission in the Addiction Recovery Program and I'm the ward financial secretary.

I believe you have to live a balanced life. You have to put your career, your family, your hobbies and your religion into perspective. You need to take care of all the aspects of your life and not let one of them push out the others. I think I've probably neglected my career and my family to pursue things that seemed more satisfying at the time. As I look back over my life now, I can see a lot I'd do different if I could start over again. When I'm tempted to ask, "Why me?", I'm reminded of those wonderful words of color sergeant Bourne from the movie Zulu. "Because we're here, lad. Nobody else. Just us."

Chiasmus IV: Nephi’s Outline One

2008-06-22T22:14:00.000-07:00

In my last post about Hebrew Poetry (Chiasmus III), I presented some information about Isaiah in the Book of Mormon: Nephi's interest in Isaiah around 600 BC, and what Jesus Christ had to say about the prophecies of Isaiah when he visited the Nephites after his resurrection in 34 AD. In this article I'll further explore Nephi's use of Hebrew poetic imagery.

Nephi’s Outline, by Noel B. Reynolds, BYU Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, furnished some of the information for this article.

Besides the fact that Nephi did not receive the commandment to make the small plates until some thirty years after his departure from Jerusalem, it also appears that it took him approximately ten years to write the first twenty-five chapters. This ten-year writing period, based on a perspective of thirty years, gave Nephi both the distance and the time he needed to devise a highly complex account with a carefully fashioned rhetorical structure.

Analysis reveals that 1 Nephi is part of an extended argument based on a thesis which the author announces near the beginning of his narrative and repeats in many forms throughout the book: "Behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance" (1 Nephi 1:20). With this thesis as a guide, we discover that the entire book of 1 Nephi is a compilation of approximately thirty proofs of the idea that the Lord will deliver those who obey him and endure in faith. Nephi supports his thesis with a wide variety of evidence designed to appeal especially to the "stiff-necked" and "hardhearted," such as his own brothers, as well as to the righteous. Nephi’s faith is consistently poised against the murmurings and doubtfulness of his faithless brothers. His primary purpose is to persuade those whose faith might be weak, but who may be receptive.

At the end of 1 Nephi 9, we find the words, "And thus it is. Amen." Again at the end of 1 Nephi 22, we find the same words. The first use of these words seems to suggest that there are two records: an abridgment of Lehi’s record followed by an account of Nephi’s proceedings. If those few verses were removed, we would never suspect two records: Nephi is the narrator of the entire book from beginning to end. So why does Nephi divide the book in this manner? The answer is not that there are two distinct records in 1 Nephi, but rather that the book is divided into two parallel structures. 1 Nephi 9:6 serves to call our attention to that structural division. A comparison of these two structural halves reveals that the major elements of each portion are directly parallel to each other:

Lehi’s account - 1 Nephi 1-9

Nephi’s account - 1 Nephi 10-22

So 1 Nephi in its entirety starts and ends with Nephi’s thesis and is centered around it.

Notice that there are two sets of chiastic elements ABC CBA and XYZ ZYX, and that these are centered in each half of the two most important stories in each half: the expedition to obtain the brass plates, the expedition to get Ishmael and his family, the construction of the ship, and the journey on the ship to America.

Even though the story about the trip to bring back Ishmael and his family doesn’t seem to parallel the journey on the ship, analysis of the two stories reveals the following eight elements which occur in the same order in both stories:

     1. Both accounts are prefaced by a command 
        given to Lehi.
     2. In both accounts Nephi’s brothers first 
        become rebellious because of their 
        afflictions and lack of faith.
     3. After Nephi’s exhortations, they rebel 
        against him and bind him with cords.
     4. In the first story Nephi is given power 
        from God to 
        burst his bonds, but in the second he 
        specifies that the Lord permitted him to 
        be bound for a purpose.
     5. In both instances one of Ishmael’s 
        daughters and others plead with Laman and 
        Lemuel to reconcile themselves with Nephi.
     6. In the first story they are successful, 
        but in the second these pleas fail and the 
        older brothers are persuaded to relent only 
        when the power of God threatens them with 
        destruction by a storm.
     7. In each case relief comes as Nephi prays.
     8. Both times Laman and Lemuel repent of their 
        actions.

If we compare the story of Lehi taking his family into the wilderness with the story of Ishmael taking his family into the wilderness, we again find eight parallel elements:

     1. Both open with a family going into the 
        wilderness because of the Lord’s command 
        to Lehi.
     2. The departure is followed both times by the 
        murmuring and rebellion of Laman and 
        Lemuel, who desire to return to Jerusalem.
     3. In each case, Laman and Lemuel are then 
        admonished - in the first episode by Lehi, 
        and in the second by Nephi.
     4. Lehi testifies in the first story that 
        Jerusalem will be destroyed. In the second 
        story Nephi testifies the same thing.
     5. In the first episode Laman and Lemuel seek 
        to kill their father, and at the same point 
        in the second story they seek to kill Nephi.
     6. In the first story Lehi is spared as he 
        confounds Laman and Lemuel by the power of 
        the Spirit, and in thesecond story Nephi is 
        spared as he bursts his bonds through the 
        power of God.
     7. Both stories then report the submission of 
        the rebellious brothers: in the first case 
        as they obey their father, and in the 
        second as they seek their brother’s 
        forgiveness.
     8. Each story ends at Lehi’s tent.

By now it should be apparent that what is hidden in the Book of Mormon surpasses our wildest imaginations. We’ve been reading the Book of Mormon over and over all our lives and never appreciated that it is an absolute work of art. We’ve never dreamed of the richness of poetic imagery hidden in its pages.

I have to suppose the Book of Mormon is written this way because it "is the most correct of any book on the earth," and that God uses this kind of imagery in his revelations to the prophets.

Chiasmus IV: Six Book of Mormon Stories from 1 Nephi

2008-06-22T03:56:00.001-07:00

In the articles I'm posting about Hebrew Poetry in the Book of mormon, several stories are mentioned. Here is a brief synopsis of each story with a reference to where you can read it in the Book of Mormon.

Lehi takes his family into the wilderness (1 Nephi 2:1-7)

The Lord was pleased with Lehi and one night spoke to him in a dream. He told Lehi to take his family and leave Jerusalem. Lehi obeyed the Lord.

Lehi’s family packed food and tents. They left their house and their gold and silver and traveled into the wilderness.

Lehi and his wife, Sariah, had four sons. Their names were Laman, Lemuel, Sam, and Nephi.

After traveling for three days, Lehi’s family camped in a valley near a river. Lehi built an altar from stones and made an offering to God. He thanked God for saving his family from being destroyed.

The trip to get the Brass Plates (1 Nephi 3:1-5:22)

Lehi told Nephi that the Lord wanted him and his brothers to go back to Jerusalem. They were to get the brass plates from a man named Laban. The brass plates were important records. They told about Lehi’s forefathers and contained the words of God revealed through the prophets. Laman, Lemuel, Sam, and Nephi traveled back to Jerusalem to get the brass plates.

Laman went to Laban and asked him for the plates. Laban was angry and would not give Laman the brass plates. Laban wanted to kill Laman, but Laman escaped. Laman told his brothers what had happened. He was afraid and wanted to give up and go back to their father in the wilderness. Nephi said they could not return without the brass plates. He told his brothers to have more faith in the Lord and they would be able to get the brass plates. Nephi and his brothers went to their old home in Jerusalem and gathered their gold and silver to exchange for the plates. They showed Laban their riches and offered to trade them for the plates. When Laban saw their gold and silver, he wanted it for himself and threw them out.

Laban told his men to kill Lehi’s sons. Nephi and his brothers ran and hid in a cave. Laban kept their gold and silver. Laman and Lemuel were angry with Nephi. They beat Nephi and Sam with a stick. An angel appeared and told Laman and Lemuel to stop. He said the Lord would help them get the plates. He also said Nephi would become a leader over his brothers. Nephi told his brothers to have faith in the Lord and not be afraid of Laban and his men. Nephi encouraged his brothers to go back to Jerusalem.

That night Nephi’s brothers hid outside the city wall while Nephi sneaked inside. He walked toward Laban’s house. As Nephi got close to Laban’s house, he saw a drunk man lying on the ground. It was Laban. Nephi saw Laban’s sword and picked it up. The Holy Ghost told Nephi to kill Laban, but Nephi did not want to kill him. The Holy Ghost again told Nephi to kill Laban so Nephi could get the brass plates. Lehi’s family needed the plates so they could learn the gospel. Nephi obeyed the Holy Ghost and killed Laban. Nephi then put on Laban’s clothes and armor.

Nephi went into Laban’s house and was met by Zoram, Laban’s servant. Nephi looked and sounded just like Laban. He told Zoram to get the brass plates. Zoram thought Nephi was Laban, so he gave him the plates. Nephi told Zoram to follow him. Laman, Lemuel, and Sam saw Nephi coming and were scared; they thought he was Laban. They started to run away but stopped when Nephi called to them. Then Zoram realized that Nephi was not Laban, and he tried to run. Nephi caught Zoram and promised not to harm him if he would go with Nephi into the wilderness. Zoram agreed. Nephi and his brothers took Zoram and the brass plates and returned to Lehi and Sariah. They gave the brass plates to Lehi. He and Sariah were happy their sons were safe. They all rejoiced and thanked God. Lehi read the brass plates. They told about Adam and Eve and the Creation of the world. They contained the words of many prophets. Lehi and Nephi were happy because they had obeyed the Lord and had been able to get the brass plates. Lehi’s family packed the brass plates to take with them on their journey so they could teach their children the commandments recorded on the plates.

The trip to bring back Ishmael and his family (1 Nephi 7:1-5)

The Lord wanted Lehi’s sons to have wives who would teach their children the gospel. He told Lehi to send his sons back to Jerusalem to get Ishmael’s family. Nephi and his brothers returned to Jerusalem. They told Ishmael what the Lord wanted him to do. Ishmael believed them, and he and his family went with Lehi’s sons.

Ishmael takes his family into the wilderness(1 Nephi 7:6-22)

While they were traveling in the wilderness, Laman and Lemuel and some of Ishmael’s family became angry. They wanted to go back to Jerusalem. Nephi reminded Laman and Lemuel of all the Lord had done for them. He told them to have greater faith. They were angry at Nephi but did not go back to Jerusalem. Nephi, his brothers, and Zoram later married Ishmael’s daughters.

Building the ship (1 Nephi 17:6-18:4)

After Lehi’s family had camped by the sea for many days, the Lord spoke to Nephi. He told him to build a ship to carry his family to the promised land. Nephi did not know how to make a ship, but the Lord said he would show him. He told Nephi where to find metal to make the tools he would need.

Laman and Lemuel made fun of Nephi for wanting to build a ship. They did not believe that the Lord had shown Nephi how to do it. They refused to help. Nephi told Laman and Lemuel to repent and not be rebellious. He reminded them that they had seen an angel. He also told them that God has the power to do all things. Nephi told Laman and Lemuel to obey their parents and obey God. Nephi said if they would do this, they would be blessed. Laman and Lemuel repented and helped Nephi build the ship. Nephi went to the mountain many times to pray for help. The Lord taught him how to build the ship.

When Nephi and his brothers had finished building the ship, they knew it was a good ship. They thanked God for helping them.

The journey on the ship (1 Nephi 18:5-23)

The Lord told Lehi to take his family onto the ship they had built. They loaded it with fruit, meat, and honey and with seeds to plant in the promised land.

Strong winds blew the ship toward the promised land. Laman, Lemuel, and some of the others began being wicked. When Nephi told them to stop, they got angry and tied him up with ropes. Because of their wickedness, the Liahona stopped working. They did not know which way to steer the ship. A terrible storm blew the ship backward for three days. Lehi told Laman and Lemuel to untie Nephi, but they would not listen. Lehi and Sariah were so upset that they became ill. Nephi’s wife and children cried. They begged Laman and Lemuel to untie Nephi, but they refused. On the fourth day the storm got worse. The ship was about to sink. Laman and Lemuel knew that God had sent the storm. They were afraid they would drown. Finally Laman and Lemuel repented and untied Nephi. Even though his wrists and ankles had become swollen and sore from the ropes, Nephi had not complained. Nephi then picked up the Liahona, and it worked again. Nephi prayed, and the wind stopped. The sea became calm.

Nephi steered the ship, and it sailed again toward the promised land.

Oxymoron: Artificial Intelligence

2008-06-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

I've enjoyed Science Fiction all my life. I have to admit that most of the good ideas seem to have been used up. One common theme is Artificial Intelligence. This was the basis of the Terminator movies, where the AI quickly decides humans are a disease and takes steps to eradicate us. Somehow I prefer Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. He introduced them in his 1942 short story "Runaround". Another Asimov short story from the previous year, "Liar", also has the first use of the word "robotics".

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. (It does not have to obey an order to destroy itself.)

At least three other robotic laws have been proposed by later writers.

A robot must establish its identity as a robot in all cases. (1974, Lyuben Dilov , "Icarus's Way")

A robot can do "whatever it likes" so long as this does not conflict with the first three Laws. (1990s, Roger MacBride Allen)

A robot must know it is a robot. (Nikola Kesarovski, "The Fifth Law of Robotics")

David Langford suggested three laws for military robots.

A robot will not harm authorized Government personnel but will terminate intruders with extreme prejudice.

A robot will obey the orders of authorized personnel except where such orders conflict with the Third Law.

A robot will guard its own existence with lethal antipersonnel weaponry, because a robot is bloody expensive.

Since it seems that all technology, sooner or later, is either developed specifically for military purposes, or is quickly turned to military use, perhaps the question that should be raised is, "SHOULD WE START GETTING WORRIED?"

I remember the first time I encountered Eliza The Doctor, created by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966. It was interesting to carry on a conversation with a computer program pretending to be a psychiatrist. I just found a copy of Eliza on the Internet. This is what we said to each other.

    Eliza: Hi! I'm Eliza. What is your problem?
    Grant: Mice are nocturnal.
    Eliza: Are you saying no just to be negative?
    Grant: It was a figure of speech.
    Eliza: Say, do you work in broadcasting?
    Grant: Sometimes I say too much.
    Eliza: What does that suggest to you?

As you can see, Eliza was not very bright, and like most therapists, when confronted with a sentence "she" couldn't parse, either changed the subject or asked, "What does that suggest to you?" Eliza was easily confused, and the most fun I had with "her" was getting her to give nonsense responses like these.

Back when I first encountered Eliza I tinkered with her source code and added a lot of words and phrases to her vocabulary. My version was a little better, but not much.

Eliza was a ChatterBot, a term coined by Michael Mauldin (Creator of the first Verbot, Julia) in 1994. ChatterBots respond entirely by pattern matching, without any reasoning behind them. Some "advanced" ChatterBots learn from interactions with humans, rather than being driven from a static database, but all the ones I've "talked" to are still not really very "advanced".

In about 1972, Kenneth Colby created PARRY. While ELIZA simulated a therapist, PARRY attempted to simulate a paranoid schizophrenic. Here is a somewhat longer snippet of "conversation".

     Parry: I'm in the hospital.
     Grant: Why are you in the hospital?
     Parry: I shouldn't be here.
     Grant: Who brought you here?
     Parry: The police.
     Grant: What trouble did you have with the 
            police?
     Parry: Cops don't do their jobs.
     Grant: What do they do instead?
     Parry: Cops arrest the wrong people.
     Grant: They arrest the right ones sometimes.
     Parry: The law should get those Italian 
            crooks.
     Grant: Are you Italian?
     Parry: My background is British, but I was 
            born in this country.
     Grant: Do you know any Italian crooks?
     Parry: I try to avoid the underworld.
     Grant: Are you afraid of the underworld?
     Parry: The mafia are the worst gangsters.
     Grant: Are you connected with the mafia?
     Parry: You know, they know me.
     Grant: How do they know you?
     Parry: They spy on me.
     Grant: Why do they?
     Parry: They want to get false evidence to 
            frame me.
     Grant: What do they have against you?
     Parry: They are out to get me.
     Grant: What for?
     Parry: I have incriminating evidence against 
            the mafia.
     Grant: Are you sure of all this?
     Parry: You don't believe me?

Alan Turing kicked off the Machine Intelligence debate with his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence, which asked the question, "Can machines think?" It turns out it is pretty difficult to find a definition of "think" that everyone can agree on. Instead of trying to determine if a machine was thinking, he proposed the Imitation Game, more commonly called the "Turing test" today. In the Imitation Game a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which try to appear human. If the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test. The "conversation" is carried out over a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen to eliminate the whole problem of speech and verbalization.

Turing proposed nine arguments against machine intelligence. Nobody has come up with any major additions to this list since then.

1. Theological Objection: Machines cannot have souls, so they cannot truly think.
2. 'Heads in the Sand' Objection: "The consequences of machines thinking would be too dreadful. Let us hope and believe that they cannot do so." This objection is a fallacious appeal to consequences, confusing what should not be with what can or cannot be.
3. Mathematical Objections: This objection uses mathematical theorems, such as Gödel's incompleteness theorem, to show that there are limits to what questions a computer system based on logic can answer. Turing suggests that humans are too often wrong themselves and is pleased at the fallibility of a machine.
4. Argument From Consciousness: This objection says a machine cannot be conscious, and that a machine would have to write a sonnet or compose a concerto based on emotion and not just "the chance fall of symbols" before we could "agree that machine equals brain."
5. Arguments from various disabilities: This objection claims a computer can never be kind, resourceful, beautiful, friendly, take initiative, have a sense of humor, tell right from wrong, make mistakes, fall in love, enjoy strawberries and cream, and so on.
6. Lady Lovelace's Objection: One of the most famous objections states that computers are incapable of originality because they are incapable of independent learning.
7. Argument from continuity in the nervous system: The brain is analog, not digital.
8. Argument from the informality of behavior: This argument states that any system governed by laws will be predictable and therefore not truly intelligent.
9. Extra-sensory perception: In 1950, extra-sensory perception was an active area of research. No serious researcher today believes in ESP, so this argument against Machine Intelligence is moot.

A common rebuttal often used within the AI community against many of these objections is, "How do we know that humans don't also just follow some cleverly devised rules?" (in the way that ChatterBots do). Two famous examples of this line of argument against the rationale for the basis of the Turing test are John Searle's Chinese room argument and Ned Block's Blockhead argument.

The Loebner Prize is an annual competition that awards prizes to the most humanlike ChatterBot entered in that year's competition. The format of the competition is that of a standard Turing test, with a human judge faced with two computer screens. One is under the control of a computer; the other is under the control of a human. The judge poses questions to the two screens and receives answers. Based upon the answers, the judge must decide which screen is controlled by the human and which is controlled by the computer program.

The contest was begun in 1990 by businessman Dr. Hugh Loebner in conjunction with the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in Massachusetts. It has since been associated with Flinders University, Dartmouth College, the Science Museum in London, and most recently the University of Reading in the UK.

Not everyone likes the Loebner contest. Artificial Stupidity, by John Sundman, says this:

"The saga of Hugh Loebner and his search for an intelligent bot has almost everything: Sex, lawsuits, and feuding computer scientists. There's only one thing missing: Smart machines."

Harvard University's Stuart Shieber wrote Lessons from a Restricted Turing Test" in 1994 critiquing the Loebner contest. Shieber goes on at great length about just what a stupid idea the whole Loebner Prize was and then proceeds to lecture Loebner about how to spend his money:

"Given that the Loebner Prize, as constituted, is at best a diversion of effort and attention and at worst a disparagement of the scientific community, what might a better alternative use of Dr. Loebner's largesse be? .... In order to prevent degrading of the imprimatur of the reconstructed Loebner Prize, it would be awarded on an occasional basis, only when a sufficiently deserving new result, idea, or development presented itself."

Dr. Loebner's most prominent critic is MIT's Marvin Minsky. In 1995, Minsky called the Loebner Prize a publicity stunt that does not help the field along. Minsky has even offered money to anyone who can stop Loebner from holding this contest. This is what Minsky wrote about a clause in the Loebner contest rules to the effect that using the term "Loebner Competition" without permission could result in a revocation of the prize:

"I do hope that someone will volunteer to violate this proscription so that Mr. Loebner will indeed revoke his stupid prize, save himself some money, and spare us the horror of this obnoxious and unproductive annual publicity campaign. In fact, I hereby offer the $100.00 Minsky prize to the first person who gets Loebner to do this. I will explain the details of the rules for the new prize as soon as it is awarded, except that, in the meantime, anyone is free to use the name "Minsky Loebner Prize Revocation Prize" in any advertising they like, without any licensing fee."

Both Shieber and Minski are AI professionals. You have to wonder why two prominent men would have their knickers in such a twist simply because someone else was having fun "playing" with what they would prefer to call "work". Maybe they are jealous?

And the Loebner Prize IS just for fun. Neither Eliza nor Parry would fool anyone, I don't think. And if you take a look, you'll have to agree than none of the other ChatterBots out there are a lot more convincing.

The 2008 Competition will be held on October 12 in University of Reading, UK. The event, which is being co-directed by Kevin Warwick, will include a direct challenge on the Turing test as originally proposed by Alan Turing. The first place winner will receive $3000.00 and a bronze medal. Let's hope for the best, but you'll notice no silver or gold medal awards are planned..

The 2007 Competition was held on Sunday, 21 October in New York City. Robert Medeksza from Zabaware, creator of Ultra Hal Assistant took first place.

     Hal:   Hello Grant. Its nice to meet such 
            a fine gentleman as yourself.
     Grant: Nice place you've got here.
     Hal:   New topic: Can I trust you completely?
     Grant: Sure. I really like what you've done 
            with the furniture.
     Hal:   Are you good at reading maps? Scientists 
            like to get out for a beer and some 
            laughs, now and then.
     Grant: Maps are my specialty. I don't drink 
            alcoholic beverages.
     Hal:   Have maps ever been your specialty 
            before? What kinds of beverages do you 
            like to drink?
     Grant: Ones with water in them.
     Hal:   Uh huh, In them?
     Grant: That's right.
     Hal:   Yes? Is that so?
     Grant: Wet ones.
     Hal:   Ignorant people imagine that they're 
            always right.

I've noticed that a lot of ChatterBots resort, sooner or later, to insults and verbal abuse.

The 2006 contest was held on September 17 in London. Rollo Carpenter's Jabberwacky Joan won the bronze award. You can chat with Joan. Below are the first few lines of our dialog.

      Joan: What is your highest hope for the future?
     Grant: I'd like to go to heaven.
     Joan:  Which sea?
     Grant: Paradise, then. I'd like to go 
            to paradise.
     Joan:  Why? You won't be able to see anything.
            Computers don't have eyes?
     Grant: You won Loebner 2006?
     Joan:  You know, I could really use your help 
            here.

That's for certain! Not very convincing. After this Joan began insulting me. Nothing "she" said was really a response to anything I said, and Joan, unlike Ultra Hal Assistant, had no contextual memory. If this is the best of 2006, I'd say we aren't at risk yet from military robots.

In the humorous ChatterBod department we have Racter, written by William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter in 1983. Racter is short for raconteur: someone who tells stories and anecdotes with skill and wit. Racter was presented to the world in a book called "The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed", which was described as being composed entirely by the program. A very limited port of the program is available at the Endangered Software Archive.

     Racter: Hello, Grant. I believe you're 
             interviewing me. What would you like 
             to know? Excuse me a minute while I 
             attend to some business – I'll be 
             right back. I'm back.
     Grant:  That didn't take you very long.
     Racter: Ask a question, please.
     Grant:  What is your highest aspiration?
     Racter: I don't know what my highest is 
             aspiration. Did you hear about 
             Mortimer Snerd?
     Grant:  Is he still alive?
     Racter: I think so. Yes. I want you to 
             answer my question. Did you hear 
             about Mortimer Snerd?
     Grant:  No.
     Racter: Listen to this! Mortimer Snerd had 
             tried to hope while softness was 
             rampant. But then Adam met Mortimer 
             Snerd hence Mortimer Snerd ran away 
             from Adam! Shocking, isn't it? But 
             what would you expect from an 
             imbecile? A conventional scientist 
             often falls prey to a fictional 
             human. I'm afraid of soft jackals. 
             What are you afraid of?
     Grant:  Spaghetti.
     Racter: That's not nearly as bad as softness; 
             why are you such a coward?

Thus begin the insults. ChatterBots certainly are not polite conversationalists.

Richard Wallace began development of A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) in 1995. A.L.I.C.E. won the Loebner Prize three times (in 2000, 2001 and 2004). Convincingly human? You be the judge.

     Grant: Do I look fat in this dress?
     Alice: All humans look the same to me.
     Grant: Do you support the Iraq war?
     Alice: I am in favor of all records being 
            broken, at any time.
     Grant: I think war is not the answer.
     Alice: Why? Ja.
     Grant: What is the question?
     Alice: What is your favorite movie?
     Grant: I like war movies.
     Alice: I'm not sure if I like it. No, I don't 
            care for it.

At the present, according to some articles I've read, malicious ChatterBots are frequently used to fill chat rooms with spam and advertising, or to entice people into revealing personal information, such as bank account numbers. I don't think I've ever encountered one. Would you really give your personal information to someone as incoherent and unresponsive as the AI examples I've given here? I think not.

Although ChatterBots showed initial promise, at present the problem of dealing with natural language seems intractable. There is currently no general purpose conversational artificial intelligence. This has led some software developers to focus more on the practical aspect of ChatterBot technology - information retrieval. This is where the Expert System comes in. Expert Systems eliminate the need for a parser, since the user only has to say "yes" or "no" or select from a list of options. Expert Systems are actually used commercially - and they are very useful. Wikipedia has a good list, with links, of Expert Systems and Expert System development software.

A well known early Expert System was the game "Animal". As near as I can tell, Animal was written by John Kelner in 1986.

     Computer: So, are you thinking of an animal?
     Grant: Yes.
     Computer: Does it have four legs?
     Grant: No.
     Computer: Does it live in the water?
     Grant: Yes.
     Computer: Does it have fins?
     Grant: No.
     Computer: Does it live in a shell?
     Grant: No.
     Computer: Does it sting?

My recollection, although I've been unable to document it as I've been writing this post, is that Animal soon clogged up the hard drives of mainframe computers all across the country. Everyone had multiple personal copies. Someone wrote a version of Animal that would seek out and delete other copies in the user space. It was programmed to not delete all copies of Animal until a certain date. On that date everyone suddenly had lots of free space on their hard drives. I clearly remember this happening, but I can't find any historical references to it.

I once wrote a version of Animal that contained a complete descriptive key to the trees and shrubs of the western United States. It very successfully identified any tree you could describe to it. Unfortunately, that was on my first computer, which had two 8" floppy drives, 64k of RAM, and used the CP/M operating system. It was way before the days of laptops. This computer was so heavy it took two people to move it around. Not too useful for field work. When I got my first Windows computer, all the work I'd done on that CP/M computer just went out the window, metaphorically speaking. I'd kind of like to have a copy of my "Tree Finder". Oh, well...

About thirty years ago I helped install the front end to an Expert System at Kaiser Medical Center in Martinez, Ca. This system would interview patients as they arrived at the hospital. The goal was to save the nurse-practitioners and doctors some time by getting a list of complaints and symptoms in advance. I guess the Patients were not smart enough to correctly answer the questions, because the system was only in use for a very short time. At present, when your Kaiser membership card is presented to the receptionist, your medical information is made available to the medical staff. This probably accomplishes almost the same thing.

Should we start worrying about Skynet? I, for one, sure won't be losing any sleep over it.

Motion: Global Warming Is NOT a Crisis!

2008-06-18T05:17:00.000-07:00

As soon as I decided to try to write something about Global Warming I realized that there might not be anything I could say that hadn’t already been said. But like some of my other posts about controversial subjects, my goal is to shed light on the political and moral agenda of Global Warming rather than on the technical or scientific basis.

The World Health Organization's World Health Statistics 2008 has a chart (below) comparing the leading causes of death in 2004 and 2030.

Some causes of death will climb higher in the list simply because demographic changes and advances in medicine and medical care move some other diseases toward the bottom of the list. Some causes of death are lifestyle related, or are an inherent weakness in the human body, such as cardiovascular disease, which is right at the top and will stay there. WHO predicts death from some diseases will be drastically reduced.

In addition to moving around in the list, the actual number of people killed also changes. Notice that deaths from cardiovascular diseases are expected to increase from 21.9% to 26.3% of the total. This is partly due to the decrease in the percentages of some of the other causes of death. It is also due to anticipated increases in tobacco use and in obesity around the world. Isn't it strange that obesity is a major problem when the most recent estimate (2006) of the FAO says that 854 million people worldwide are undernourished?

"Children are the most visible victims of undernutrition. Children who are poorly nourished suffer up to 160 days of illness each year. Poor nutrition plays a role in at least half of the 10.9 million child deaths each year--five million deaths. Undernutrition magnifies the effect of every disease, including measles and malaria. The estimated proportions of deaths in which undernutrition is an underlying cause are roughly similar for diarrhea (61%), malaria (57%), pneumonia (52%), and measles (45%) (Black 2003, Bryce 2005). Malnutrition can also be caused by diseases, such as the diseases that cause diarrhea, by reducing the body's ability to convert food into usable nutrients."

At present diarrhea kills about 1.5 million people a year, mostly children. This is dramatically down from 4.5 million people in 1980, and according to WHO is expected to drop from 5th to 23rd on the list. Tuberculosis kills 1.6 million people each year. This is increasing at present because of all the HIV positive people with weakened immune systems, but is still expected to drop from 7th to 20th on the list. A vastly greater number of people suffer from TB without dying from it. The same is true of Malaria, which kills between 1 and 3 million people a year, but which infects over 500 million people worldwide. Death from Malaria is expected to drop from 13th clear off the list to 41st. But will the suffering caused by Malaria, TB, and diarrhea be reduced?

There is no doubt that the earth is experiencing a rapid increase in temperature. Nobody disagrees with that. What is in doubt is the extent to which man is responsible, and to what extent man could and/or should do something about it. What is the relationship and relative priority of Global Warming to other important global needs? Currently nobody is dying as a direct result of Global Warming. Isn't that the answer?

On March 14, 2007 the Rosenkranz Foundation and the Center for Science and Public Policy hosted an Intelligence Squared debate about Global Warming. You can check out those three entities to see how far right or left they are, since lefties discount out of hand anything said by the right, and vice-versa. And I sure wouldn't want anyone to start thinking for themself and try to actually understand the issues. Good luck finding the Rosenkranz Foundation’s website. Brian Lehrer of NPR’s WNYC was the moderator of the debate. Votes were cast on the motion before and after the debate. Here are the results:

I was commuting when I listened to the NPR broadcast. Later I found the complete audio, excerpts of the audio, and a transcript of the debate. You should listen to this debate.

One of the six panelists, Brenda Ekwurzel, who spoke against the motion, works on the national climate program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Prior to joining UCS, she was on the faculty of the University of Arizona. Her doctorate research was at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and post-doctoral research was at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. With all these credentials, you’d think that Brenda would be able to say something compelling and convincing, instead of the utter crap you’ll read or hear if you click on the links above. What a wonderful example of fuzzy thinking. On the other hand, I think the arguments in favor of the motion are compelling. So did the audience, as you can see from the results of the poll. After you read or listen for yourself, I wonder how you'd vote?

Enjoy!

I'm not suggesting we stop trying to save the environment. I'm suggesting we put saving the environment into perspective with other global issues and not let that which matters most be at the mercy of that which matters least. As is so often the case!

Chiasmus III: Isaiah in the Book of Mormon

2008-06-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Our sixth Article of Faith states: We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the Word of God.

Like the Bible, the Book of Mormon has a very repetitive style. And for the same reason. The Book of Mormon is filled with poetic Hebrew parallelism.

If you've read the Book of Mormon, you know that Nephi – and other Book of Mormon prophets – quoted extensively from Isaiah. Nephi was told that John, in the meridian of time, would write certain things, and that "the things which thou shalt see hereafter thou shalt not write" (1 Nephi 14:25), because John would write them. Now, there's an interesting principle of prophecy! But Nephi wasn't commanded not to write down what Isaiah had to say about those same visions. This is my interpretation, but I think that if Nephi couldn't tell us what HE saw, he could tell us what ISAIAH saw! And he did at great length. Here's a list.

1 Nephi 20-21 Isaiah 48-49
2 Nephi 6:6-7 Isaiah 49:22-23
2 Nephi 6:16-18 Isaiah 49:24-26
2 Nephi 7-8 Isaiah 50-51 & 52:1-2
2 Nephi 12-24 Isaiah 2-14
2 Nephi 26-27 Isaiah 29

Isaiah was born in about 775 BC. He was called to be a prophet in 740 BC and died in 695 BC. Nephi fled Jerusalem with his father's family in about 600 BC, 95 years after the death of Isaiah. I was born in 1944, 100 years after the death of Joseph Smith. Isaiah is arguably the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. And Joseph Smith is The Prophet of the Restoration, the prophet called to open the Last Dispensation. Nephi probably revered Isaiah just about the way we revere Joseph Smith.

If you look in the Book of Mormon footnotes and count the number of references to the book of Isaiah, you'll see that after the generation in which Nephi lived, Isaiah was gradually phased out of the minds of the Nephites, or at least there are fewer and fewer references to his writings in the footnotes. But Isaiah's writings were had among the Nephites, and occasionally a reference is made to Isaiah.

Jesus Christ visited the Americas immediately after his resurrection. In 3 Nephi 20-23 we find what Jesus thought about the words of Isaiah. His comments are given in the form of a Hebrew Poem. I discovered this Poem as a BYU student many years ago. I have only included the key words below: it is just an outline.

There are other poetic devices woven into and around the central theme. Notice that there are alternating references to events in the Meridian of Time in the Old World and references to events in the Last Days in the New World. Items pertaining to the ministry of Jesus Christ alternate with items pertaining to the ministry of Joseph Smith. Notice that these are also paired: they form a second chiastic structure inside the overall structure. And yet if you were to look at the plain text of these chapters you'd hardly recognize what is going on. Those two references to Isaiah at the beginning and at the ending are what first caught my attention.

The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Vol.2, ISAIAH, explains the juxtaposition of Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ in the above verses:

In a reference to the 'marred' servant of Isaiah 52:13-15, [Jesus] spoke of the servant's 'marvelous work'. While the marred servant was clearly the mortal Jesus (Mosiah 15:1-9), Isaiah's words form a dual prophecy because the resurrected Jesus said that it also referred to a latter-day servant. Latter-day Saints believe that this servant was the Prophet Joseph Smith, and the marvelous work referred to was the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the restoration of the gospel (3 Nephi 21:8-11).

John Taylor wrote this about The Prophet Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it (D&C 135:3).

I have a testimony of The Prophet Joseph Smith, of the Book of Mormon, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and of the Restoration of the Priesthood authority and keys. That testimony is one of my most precious possessions.

Here is the testimony of Elder Neal A. Maxwell, an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, of the Book of Mormon. This is from his book, A Wonderful Flood of Light, pp. 31-32.

We believe the Book of Mormon because of the witness of the Spirit and because of the book's impressive internal evidences. We do not rely overly much on external evidences, but still it is good to be aware of it as corroborating information comes along.
The Book of Mormon, indeed a marvelous work and a wonder, is rich beyond our present appreciation. Examples are the apparent presence of Jewish festivals in the Book of Mormon, and extensive and precise chiasmus. When Joseph was translating the record, he could not have known of such things. Once he even inquired of Emma as to whether there were walls around Jerusalem! He simply did not know.
The demographic impact of the Restoration was very small in the beginning, but it is crescendoing in the last decade of the twentieth century and will soon flow and spread into the twenty-first century. Increasingly we shall see the Lord's words being fulfilled:
     "Righteousness and truth will I cause to 
     sweep the earth as with a flood" 
     (Moses 7:62). 
And again,
     "But first let my army become very great, 
     and let it be sanctified before me" 
     (D&C 105:31). 
The kingdom will also be constrained by conditions. Looking ahead two and a half millennia in vision, Nephi wrote:
     "I beheld that the church of the Lamb,... 
     the saints of God were also upon all the
     face of the earth; and their dominions 
     upon all the face of the earth were small, 
     because of wickedness" 
     (1 Nephi 14:12). 
Regrettably, Satan's power would expand as the Lord's kingdom grew. Said Brigham Young:
     "It was revealed to me in the commencement 
     of this Church, that the Church would 
     spread, prosper, grow and extend, and 
     that in proportion to the spread of the
     Gospel among the nations of the earth, 
     so would the power of Satan rise" 
     (Journal of Discourses 13:280). 

I encourage anyone who reads this article to get a copy of the Book of Mormon, read it, and pray about it. To close this article I'll show you one more chiasm from the Book of Mormon. This is Nephi's discussion with his brothers about their refusal to pray. It is found in 1 Nephi 15:9-11. I found this poem in Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon by John W. Welch, BYU Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1.

In this example, we see Nephi's recollection of his clever rebuttal to his rebellious brothers. Notice that the turning point of Nephi's argument is the piercing question: "Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said?" The first half consists of the words of Nephi, and the second half is built from the words of the Lord. What better debate partner could Nephi have in his parallelism than God? The two terms which are not identical mention asking in faith as opposed to perishing. These form a contrast between the living faith which motivated Nephi, and the ominous fear of death which might, as a last resort, have motivated Laman and Lemuel.

Keep in mind that Nephi was commanded to prepare the small plates, from which all of the Book of Mormon up to the Words of Mormon is taken, but not until he had been gone from Jerusalem for thirty years. During that time he must have done a lot of thinking about his experiences, and he must have spent a lot of time organizing his thoughts. As we will see in future articles, the resulting books of 1st and 2nd Nephi are a marvel of artistic literary design. Most of all, Nephi prepared the gold plates and recorded his story on them under inspiration. I suspect chiasmus is one of the hallmarks of prophetic utterance.