Why Mormon Prophets?

I got to meet with a couple of very nice Mormon missionaries the other night and they kept bringing up how they have a living prophet today.

So I asked a very logical question: Has Gordon Hinckley given any prophecies that I need to hear about? (Hinckley is their current prophet – their prophets are voted in)

They responded "Oh, yes!" and gave me a pamphlet on how important marriage is written by Hinckley. That's not really a prophecy, that's just good common sense.

What else you got? "Well, Hinckley prophesied that the Nauvoo Temple would be rebuilt and it was!" Okay, but city planners make this sort of prophecy all the time – they've got the money, they've got the men, they've got the equipment, they've got plans and schedules, where's the prophecy in that?

Da Vinci Code: Opus Dei

With all the buzz about the Da Vinci Code, I thought I'd do some research into Opus Dei. It's actually a pretty interesting subject.

It was founded in 1928 by Josemaría Escrivá and basically he was interested in helping Christians understand that their life was about holiness and to spread the gospel. Opus Dei means “God’s work”.

If you're a Da Vinci Code reader, I'm sure you're wondering: Do they really use that spiked chain thingy on their legs? Or do they really beat themselves bloody with that rope thingy?

Well, the answer appears to be: yes, sort of. They don't beat themselves bloody, but that's always a personal option. The purpose of these implements is to help the user to "mortify" their body.

Da Vinci Code Movie – Reviews!

The DVC movie comes out this weekend and from the reviews: it's horrible.

Well, it's nice to feel justified in my not liking the plot. Oh, I know, people will say I didn't like it because it mocks Christianity, but it's not even that, it's just that the story wasn't any good.

As a mystery novel it was rather predicable at times and apparently that is really coming out on screen.

Now, Harry Potter has all sorts of theological issues but I at least find that an entertaining read (note: this is not to endorse the HP books, because my advice would be that they're dangerous).

Most of the critics are just horrified at how boring the DVC movie actually is. Here are some review sites:

Howard says Da Vinci reviews "frustrating"

Rotten Tomatoes

IGN

Rotten Tomatoes has links to a ton of reviews. Check them out to decide if you want to drop your 50 bucks (by the time you add popcorn and a small coke to the package) to see a movie that is dull (review the book if you've read it and try and imagine it on the big screen: review the dialog and chase scenes to decide if this will be a "thriller" or not)

Robot’s that reproduce!

Simple but seminal: Cornell researchers build a robot that can reproduce

Now this was sort of a cool article. As an electrical engineer, I’m always interested in electronic gizmos.

I’ve designed numerous things in the past and what gets me is the idea of something healing itself, or reproducing itself. Think about it. What if your computer could “heal” itself after a power surge fried it? That would be cool. Or what if, when Microsoft releases a new operating system, your computer could just evolve to fit the new conditions?

However, what these Cornell students did isn’t really true “reproduction”. Their little robot is designed to start with predesigned modules to which other predesigned modules are then added. It reproduces by using these building blocks.

It doesn’t start with nothing and then design the building block.

One thing I find fascinating as an engineer is that evolution says life started from nothing and through random processes everything eventually came together. As a designer, I know that if you start with nothing and do nothing then what you end up with is a big pile of nothing.

When I design something, I start with something, then manipulate that something into something else.

As a designer I’m fascinated with my dog. I mean, she moves fluidly (no jerkiness like robots), she can reproduce (if we hadn’t had her fixed), she can process things (when I say “bunny” she runs to the door to see if there’s a rabbit out there), she powers herself (with food and water), she can heal herself, and she can respond to things very quickly.

I can’t imagine the amount of code I’d have to write merely to get the firmware responses down – much less the hardware to respond fluidly and that could heal itself or adapt to changes in the environment.

So from a purely engineering stand point, I don’t really buy into the whole blind luck of evolution. And in a previous post (Intelligent Design article), I pointed to a website where people with PhD’s in biology don’t buy into evolution either.

But still, those little robots are cool.

Hack the web: Bookmarklets

Ever visit a page and the web designer was probably smoking crack because the text colors they used matched perfectly with the background color which makes the webpage almost completely unreadable? How about visiting a page with a ton of ads all over the place?

We all have our annoyances while surfing the web, so the only thing you can do is… hack the web!

Maybe you’re thinking “I’m just a normal person, I saw the movie ‘Hackers’ what do I know from hacking the web?” No problem, the solution is a bookmarklet!

What’s a bookmarklet? Well, you know what a bookmark is right? When you find a webpage you like, you bookmark it so you can find it again later. A bookmarklet is like a bookmark but instead of storing a web address, you store some JavaScript code in it.

Don’t worry what JavaScript is, it’s just a nice little thing.

What a bookmarklet will do is give you the ability to change a webpage’s appearance.

trylookinghere.com has an AutoFill Anonymous function that will fill in every field with the word anonymous. Pretty handy for those websites that make you register all the time.

Jesse's Bookmarklets site has a lot of really useful bookmarklets – the Zap functions are very nice. Zap ads, colors, whatever. Makes checking your yahoo mail (if you still have a yahoo account you really should try gmail) nice.

SubSimple has some nice bookmarklets particularly the layout bookmarklets. You can remove ads, you can allow right-click for those websites that disable this mouse function.

For futher information visit Introduction to bookmarklets By Simon Willison

All you have to do to install a bookmarklet is to click on it and hold down your mouse button and then drag it up to your toolbar. Any changes the bookmarklet does can be reversed simply by hitting refresh! Have fun!

Ever hear of the 12th Imam?

He's the soon coming messiah type figure that the muslims are looking for.

Check it out: The return of the Mahdi

Witnessing Tip: Bible and Homosexuals

When talking to atheists, they sometimes like to bring up the argument "The God of the Bible hates homosexuals because in Leviticus 18:22 it says that homosexuality is an abomination." They use this argument as some sort of magic bullet that they KNOW makes Christians uncomfortable when answering. Usually the Christian will squirm.

Well, yeah, it does. Homosexuality is a sin in the Bible. The Bible isn't anti-homosexuals, it's anti-sin.

I think what people don't understand is that homosexuality isn't just a sexual preference, it's a worldview. A worldview defines how you look at life, how you live your life, how you interpret laws, or whatever. It defines how you live.

The homosexual agenda isn't looking for "tolerance" because a lot of people are tolerant – what you do in your bedroom is your own business. What they really want is approval. They not only want you to recognize their lifestyle as valid, but they want you to approve of it as well and when the Bible or anyone dares to criticize that… well, watch out. They are very intolerant of people or things that are intolerant.

So how do you answer this allegation? Well, let's just look at the issue for a second.

Sure, the Bible considers homosexuality a sin (read Romans 1) but what's the message of the Bible?

Matthew Shepherd and Jesse Dirkhising

With the weirdness in California going on, it got me to thinking about a story I had heard about several years ago.

We all have heard of Matthew Shepherd, MTV did a movie about him, HBO did a movie about him, he’s become an icon of the homosexual community. (If you don’t know, Matthew was beaten and killed because he was a homosexual.)

If you do a search on google you’ll find that: 501,000 pages refer to “Matthew Shephard” and about 6,5700,000 for “Matthew Shepherd”.

That’s huge.

Now, let me ask you how many of you have heard of Jesse? Probably not many. I even forgot his name and had to do several google searches to find him.

Here’s the thing, around the same time as the Matthew thing, Jesse was also beaten and murdered, but with a twist: he was raped, beaten and killed by two homosexual men.

If you do a search on google for Jesse you’ll get about 19,500 pages.

So here I am to post a reminder not to forget about Jesse so the next time someone brings up Matthew, please remember to bring up Jesse.

Links to Jesse sites:

Wiki: Jesse Dirkhising
Voices of Unreason
WorldNet Daily
Covenant News
Traditional Values Coalition

Note: I don’t necessarily approve of anything else on these webpages, I’m just linking to their article about Jesse.

Only in California: Ban “Mom” & “Dad”

I found this absolutely amazing: California law would remove sex-specific terms from books, mandate pro-homosexual lessons.

Basically there's a bill going around in Cali that wants to remove all gender specific words from textbooks, words like "mom" and "dad". This bill would also affect any other gender specific titles including "prom king" or "prom queen".

At the same time, the textbooks would require students to learn about homosexual contributions to society.

What I find fascinating is how a tiny fraction of the United States can push so much stuff through. After reading this story I went to the Census website and they said that there are about 600,000 partners of the same sex based on the last census. Sounds like a lot? Well, there are 4.9 million other unmarried partner households in the U.S. That makes the homosexual group a whopping 1.2% of just the unmarried category.

I keep hearing that the total population of homosexuals is 10%. That seems to be the standard number, but it seems like from the Census website, the number is probably closer to less than 1%.

So why do people submit to the voice of the few?

What do you want for your 128th birthday?

Having recently celebrated a birthday, I ran across this article: World's oldest person celebrates 128th birthday.

She happens to have the same birthday I do, but she's got me beaten by 95 years. That's crazy!

Born in 1878, this lady has seen a LOT of changes. She's seen the horse and buggy replaced by rickety steel cars that were replaced by bigger and faster cars now replaced by rickety plastic cars.

She's seen corrupt politicians come and well, stay.

She's seen the turn of the century and the turn of the Millenium

That's very cool. All I've got to say is, you're 128 and you've got to start taking better care of yourself!