Interesting Things

Ran an update to the blog engine yesterday and am trying to clean up some junk that it left behind…

Too often educational institutions, people and parents generally (particularly in our nation) seem to really avoid teaching the process of thinking and learning in a critical and truly informative way.

I really like Richard Miller’s thoughts on his blog which can be found in “TEACHING THE UNTEACHABLE SKILLS.”

I’m so thankful for Joseph Smith, Jr., who, in the early and mid 1800’s asked some very difficult questions with an open mind and an open heart. He set some powerful precendents for my thoughts and the processes which govern my thought and questioning process today. It is incredibly critical to be able to approach questions, problems and world issues with an open mind which is ready to receive greater knowledge than that which currently exists in our world.

I am of the mind that not a fraction of the knowledge that has yet to be obtained has indeed been obtained. Sure, we are many orders of magnitude better off than we were 200+ years ago, however there is so much to learn.

I have too many times in previous years discussed spiritual matters and man’s ability to receive divine knowledge. Too many folks are under the impression that God, our loving heavenly father, does not wish to give us, His children, all things. When I say this, often they agree that He indeed does wish to give us all things in time, including eternal life, but when it comes to this mortality people are so often satisified with the answer that “we cannot know that while in mortality.” Whenever I hear this I shutter within myself. Sometimes I’ll respond, but most of the time it is inappropriate.

Here is my belief:

I believe that Heavenly Father is no respecter of persons and that he equally loves His children. When we have deep yearning desires for knowledge which are based in need or ability to use He most certainly will answer us. Perhaps not on our timetable, but He will answer us when we are ready. Sometimes that is through our own experiences through the bumbling linear format of time in which we bump through this earthly sphere.

I also, however, believe that He will imbue knowledge into us that is also simply a deep desire that we may have to receive. In other words, I feel that He can also give us knowledge and understanding of all things and even open up the visions of eternity to us as we are prepared and willing to receive it. And we are prepared to remain silent as appropriate.

So many inventions and joys of our “modern” world are manifestly and directly given from beyond the veil which separates us from that which is beyond our mortal glove or body which is designed to allow us to pass through mortal experience. There is so much more yet to receive.

Rather than considering religion some entirely different entity from science, I prefer to consider religion (when understood and followed properly) is a more pure form of science. As we experiment within the bounds that the Lord sets we obtain more through various means of understanding and levels of comprehension. I also like to consider Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ to be ultimate scientists. They themselves exhort us to be like them and even unified with them. Not different. Not some guinea pigs in their experiments, but equals in their work and glory.

What a blessing it is to have this deep understanding and conviction. It makes my heart swell with greater love and peace when I consider these things and I hope to help others to ask more questions and seek more knowledge; particularly those in my immediate stewardship, which is to say, my family.

It is so unfortunate that an individual who is trying to represent our country would say such a statement with such an absolute conviction as to absolve any feelings of forgiveness and understanding.  Are we not a country of understanding and forgiveness?  Being founded on Christian principles, do we not believe in being peacemakers and turning the cheek in situations such as this?  Sure McCain, you were in a horrible situation, but I have heard of so many other folks who were in your shoes – OR WORSE – who have readily forgiven their captors and enemies.  Try to put yourself in their shoes for a moment in terms of how they may have felt with the propaganda and misinformation that they may have been fed.

Click here to read the article.

Please, lets get someone with stronger roots and foundations in the GOP candidacy.  This type of open behavior is intolerable for the would be leader of our nation.  Sure, you worked to reform and normalize that nation following the war, however how can you say things that could be misunderstood today by innocent bystanders that may not know of your history or efforts and judge you and our nation by your face-value statements?

As you know and as I have learned throughout my life that the first impression is indeed the most important and that holds so true for the supposed head piece of our nation.  To me Romney is both more careful and honorable in his presentation.  We need someone like Mitt that can shine forth an example of good will and professionalism to our fellow world citizens.

Yahoo!!! Very exciting indeed: we may see our obsession with gas guzzling vehicles and non-U.S. oil problems come to a form of resolution. This startup says that it can make ethanol for $1 a gallon and without corn AND CAN DO IT NOW (not in 5 years).

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually place these genrative devices at gas stations around the country with storage compartments in place so that each gas station could produce and sell its own ethanol at reduced rates???

Wow, in this model, the gas stations would actually make more money than they currently are making and provide a very high degree of self sufficiency for our fuel needs without ticking off the auto industry. At least we could now have a few winners with the only losers being the oil providers and shippers. That’s a big win for everyone in light of today’s crisis!

The other really big win is for farmers. I am all too familiar with this crisis as the smart ones are moving to haylige rather than trying to deal with current corn prices. This could save the corn market and really reduce some serious stress on the agricultural industry.

Looks like John McCain won’t be getting up from this one. Indeed, who would want a president that does not know who Vladimir Putin is and who the actual leader of Germany is? Very sad to see someone running for office who cannot *at least* quickly correct himself in such a situation as lesser things have caused wars in the past.

What an amazing article. We certainly need to see this move forward quickly. I know a fellow at this very moment on a waiting list for a heart transplant and I’d love to see him receive such a wonderful gift. Still quite a ways off it seems as it has not been moved to humans quite yet, but exciting nonetheless:

Summary:
… Professor Doris Taylor, director of the university’s centre for cardiovascular repair, believes it could be a significant step towards creating custom-built hearts, blood vessels and other organs for people with serious illness.

“The idea would be to develop transplantable blood vessels or whole organs that are made from your own cells,” Taylor said. “It opens a door to the notion that you can make any organ – kidney, liver or pancreas. You name it and we hope we can make it.”

The new technique was reported at the American Heart Association’s recent annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. “This is a proof of concept,” Taylor said. “Going forward, our goal is to use a patient’s stem cells to build a new heart.”

Just an FYI, this is one influencing factor to really pursue posts regarding the Church in my opinion. I already felt very strongly this way long before I read this, but I thought that this would be somewhat validating for folks who may question sharing personal thoughts, feelings and testimonies to the world by way of the Internet. Satan surely uses the Net for a lot of things, why cannot we utilize it for uplifting and educating as well?

A quote from Elder Ballard that I particularly like and that I’ve advocated for quite a while and which I’ve tried to share with strong conviction is:

“We cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the Church teaches.”

We indeed are foreigners living in America it feels all too often. And we often do face a glass ceiling. Please find below the text of an article that very much caught my eye and indeed often makes me very sad that there is so much misunderstanding and misinformation among my friends and associates everywhere:

Better duck — if you’re a Mormon

By Doug Robinson – “Deseret Morning News”
Published: January 8, 2008

I missed the memo that said it’s A-OK to make disparaging and often erroneous statements about Mormons.

Apparently, they are fair game.

Sure, these are hypersensitive times, when name-calling or perceived bias against any group will get you the Don Imus treatment, but you get a free shot with Mormons. You can say what you want about them with impunity.

If you denigrate a racial group, you’re racist.

If you denigrate women, you’re sexist.

If you denigrate Mormons, you’re hip.

No one would openly suggest that you shouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton because a woman can’t lead the country, especially an ornery one.

Nobody would dare say that you shouldn’t vote for Barack Hussein Obama because he’s black, or of Muslim descent, or because he has a name that sounds like a terrorist. One Clinton worker even apologized for alluding to Obama’s use of drugs as a youth, so apparently it’s wrong to disparage former drug users, too.
But nobody is shy about saying you shouldn’t vote for Romney simply because he’s a Mormon. It doesn’t even register on the PC-O-Meter.

Just like that, 6 million Americans have been virtually disqualified from running for president. They’ve been rendered second-class citizens. They’re foreigners living in America. They face a glass ceiling.
How un-American is that?

It would be one thing if most of those who oppose Romney did so because they disagreed with his politics or character. But Romney is one of the few candidates who has no character issues, a “squeaky clean” man who has a distinguished record of accomplishments, success and service, with no divorces, no affairs, no scandal. The only thing opponents can say about him is that he belongs to a church they don’t understand.

A Harvard law professor called Romney the most qualified of all the candidates and “the perfect candidate for this moment in time.” But there is his Mormonism, he noted.

Even the self-styled PC chief of police, Al Sharpton, once jumped in on the action, saying, “As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways.”

Mormons don’t believe in God?

For his penance, all Sharpton had to do was endure a family home evening in Utah.

It’s open season on Mormons. A few days ago, Miami Herald columnist Dan Le Batard stated on ESPN and in the newspaper that part of the reason fired coach Cam Cameron failed was because he got stuck with a Mormon quarterback — not a rookie quarterback (which he is) but a Mormon quarterback.

“And you’ll have a hard time finding a leader anywhere in sports who was as unlucky this year as Cameron,” Le Batard said, noting that because of injuries, Cameron was forced to play “a United Nations huddle of a Mormon quarterback, Mexican receiver, Samoan fullback and some guy named Lekekekkkkerkker.”

Now Mormons are foreigners?

Ignorance makes no difference. You can say Mormons have four wives or that they aren’t Christian, and no one cares.

Imagine the uproar if Le Batard had written that the Dolphins suffered because they had to play a black quarterback for part of the season? Or a Catholic?

The Salt Lake Tribune has had a field day for more than a week since learning that Mike Leavitt and some of his like-minded cohorts met early in the morning to discuss Mormon theology and governance while he was Utah’s governor. What if it had been a Bible study?

Nobody seems to mind when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says his religion “defines me.” Or when Obama says his church guides “my own values and my own beliefs.”

People worry that Romney will take his orders from his church leaders. They don’t worry that Obama will take orders from his church, whose “10-point vision” includes two references to its “non-negotiable commitment to Africa,” with no mention of America. Oh, and the church statement begins by noting on the Trinity United Church of Christ Web site, “We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black.”

It’s a different set of rules for some out there. You can print newspaper cartoons disparaging Mormons. You can harass their families as they walk to their biannual conference with all sorts of foul language. When someone commits a crime, you can note the criminal’s religion, but only if he’s Mormon. You can make them a one-liner on Leno. Good luck reconciling all this with the paranoid political correctness that’s so in vogue.

Meanwhile, the most politically correct presidential election field ever assembled — a woman, a black, a Mormon, a Baptist, etc. — has gone politically incorrect, but only when it comes to you know who.

Doug Robinson’s column runs on Tuesdays. Please e-mail drob@desnews.com.

I’m quite intrigued by this Orexin A study that has been released. How wonderful it would be to have something that promises it’s benefits without serious negative side effects if used with prudence. That would be wonderful to shave the edge off of a night’s rest or become more alert when arising in the morning. It even appears that you can purchase this in some form or another from googling around.

Can anyone with more background in this arena shed some light or insights on this?

And a more pointed, question, what can we consume in terms of nutrients in order to stimulate abundant production of Orexin A within our own bodies? There must be some method for helping the production of this peptide along within ourselves.

Some references to this:

• dailygalaxy.com
• Wikipedia
• And just general googling will turn out quite a bit of information.

WARNING: I just did find some other things that disturb me of the usage of Orexin as a stimulant until we have better control over biological processes such as cancer. It appears that there could be adverse affects for those with cancer who may use Orexin and consequently if someone does not know that they have cancer and start utilizing Orexin for stimulation it seems that they may be able to “overdrive” the cancer cells into a higher production state, thus worsening this person’s condition. Any thoughts, further observations or deeper understandings of this article?

Just a reminder, we now have the all seeing `dtrace` with us on Mac OS X and there are so many incredible advantages to this.

Don’t forget to poke around. `grep`ing through some bin folders reveals some very useful scripts already written:

bitesize.d
cpuwalk.d
creatbyproc.d
dappprof
dapptrace
diskhits
dispqlen.d
dtruss
errinfo
execsnoop
fddist
filebyproc.d
hotspot.d
httpdstat.d
iofile.d
iopattern
iopending
iosnoop
iotop
kill.d
lastwords
loads.d
newproc.d
opensnoop
pathopens.d
pidpersec.d
priclass.d
priclass.d
pridist.d
pridist.d
procsystime
procsystime
runocc.d
rwbypid.d
rwbytype.d
rwsnoop
sampleproc
seeksize.d
setuids.d
sigdist.d
sigdist.d
syscallbypid.d
syscallbyproc.d
syscallbysysc.d
topsyscall
topsysproc
weblatency.d


Don’t forget about ‘/Developer/Applications/Instruments.app’ when you install the developer tools… Wow.