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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/23/21 in all areas

  1. I have had impressions to draw attention that we are perhaps living in the greatest time of miracles. I thought about starting a new thread. A few weeks ago I was involved in a serious cycling accident. I was ridding a decent (which means I was going fast - in this case faster than the speed limit). The road took a hard right turn. I have ridden this route at least a hundred time but this time there was sand and gravel in the road (where there have never been before). Some pictures: I was knocked unconscious. Had x-rays but no broken bones (leg and hip were worse but do not have a picture). I received a blessing and two weeks later there were no bandages - no more bleeding or infections. I had no pain meds nor pain. The only pain I experienced was cleaning at the hospital and showers (I had to change dressings and bandages every 24 hours). I had lost all skin on part of my arm and leg. After 2 weeks; I have no scabs - just new scars. The scars are quite cool and look like I was attacked by a tiger or something. I believe my recovery was a miracle. During this time we had some flood damage at one of our rental units. I was able to do most of the cleanup (which involved 3 truck loads to the dump) using just one arm. I was given promptings how to get things done. I do not like to talk about personal things but in this case I think I need to in order to make a point about miracles. I also had my last mission companion call - his call led to many things including taking a trip to my last area (over 50 years ago). All the individuals I baptized had moved but I did encounter some members that remembered me. This area was the most difficult area of my mission and had lots of problems - I never felt I had done enough. As it turns out I was never intended to solve the problems but it was intended that many contribute. Another great miracle and revelation. There are now 20+ missionaries working my old area. I have pondered what to post - there are so many miracles and blessings. And so I believe that I should speak to this great age of miracles and blessings. And that as the Latter-days come to a conclusion - that we have faith that we are living in a day and age of so great miracles and blessings that our time was told of and prophesied of. All we need is the faith to realize and see. The Traveler
    2 points
  2. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiewire.com/2021/09/dune-released-internationally-before-domestic-1234665431/amp/ Fly to Europe you can watch it now. Huge Fanboy BTW.
    1 point
  3. As a "scientist" I wrote with a great deal of sarcasm. It has never ceased to amaze me how quickly people will make rash spiritual decisions based upon a rather incomplete knowledge of events and histories, etc., and when those sandy foundations shift under their feet they panic. If people are patient, the Lord will one day reveal all scientific things about the Book of Mormon and even my PhD cousin whom I love dearly, but who left the Church because he couldn't reconcile native American genetics with the Nephite/Lamanite narrative, will be able to see that all truth is indeed wrapped up in our imperfect but wonderful faith.
    1 point
  4. I'm not sure how seriously to take this. I, for one, certainly hope that we don't stop seeking new knowledge and new understanding. Perhaps you are overly concerned that new knowledge means "constant disruption and change"? Perhaps I am not as swayed by the strong language in the article, but it doesn't seem like a complete rewrite of the prevailing narrative of how the Americas were peopled. The only real change I see is that the previous assumption that people could not have crossed the Bering land bridge until late in the ice ages is wrong. For all intents and purposes, it looks like the main idea that the Americas were populated when people from Asia crossed the Bering land bridge is still intact. Exact timing seems uncertain, but, all in all, not much has changed. Maybe I am making a mole hill out of a mountain, but it certainly does not seem like something from which one should extrapolate that science is bogus and completely unreliable for learning about and understanding the world around us.
    1 point
  5. NeuroTypical

    Disney wokeness

    Oh that’s easy. It started in the 60s, with the children of the World War II vets. Bunch of pot smoking peace sign throwing antiwar hippie Beatnix. Throw in birth control, which made free love consequence free in theory, but not always practice. Picture them raising a generation or two, throw in the easy accessibility of divorce, and public policy that put an entire generation or two of black fathers in prison. Next thing you know, religious folks preaching good old celibacy until monogamous marriage, are in the cultural minority. and yes, it’s absolutely how life works. When we see it in the book of Mormon, we call it the “Pride cycle“.
    1 point
  6. LDSGator

    Disney wokeness

    I wonder how that happened. Obviously the values that one generation had were not passed down to the next generation. Of course that always happens, so maybe it’s just how life works?
    1 point
  7. The various Facebook groups are full of people who have seen early previews. Overwhelmingly positive so far. I’ve told my family will be seeing the opening weekend, or I will be taking their water for the tribe. “As for the books, my daughter decided that her audiobook files were corrupted, so I am reading the books to her.” Sorry to hear about the stone-burner accident, but she is wise to avoid Tleilaxu eyes.
    1 point
  8. T minus about 1 month and counting. I'm seeing 22 October as the release date. Is anyone thinking of trying to catch it opening night/weekend to avoid any chance at spoilers? Or is it better to wait a couple of weekends and see what the overall reaction is? As for the books, my daughter decided that her audiobook files were corrupted, so I am reading the books to her. We just finished Dune Messiah (she was a bit broken up at the death of Chani and the "death" of Paul). She keeps openly wondering how Leto becomes a sandworm and the God Emporer, but I am trying not to give any spoilers away. It's been fun to share the experience, though.
    1 point
  9. I think your bio mom was wise. Never confuse bedside manner with skillset competence. It's why job interviews are notoriously bad at predicting employee performance IMHO.
    1 point
  10. Some do, some don’t. My bio mom was a nurse, and while that hardly makes her an expert on COVID, she had amazing insight on doctors. Her most insightful and interesting comment was that the biggest jerks are usually the ones you want operating on your daughter or father-while the nicest, sweetest doctors are often times the most incompetent. No, it’s not universal. But it is interesting.
    1 point
  11. Job burnout due to Covid has hit many professions. And many people are simply looking at a woke world gone crazy and deciding to John Galt the situation. If I didn't feel an obligation to serve my fellow man I would drop off the radar and stop earning money for the socialists stealing it out of my pocket and giving it to others. I wonder how God will judge those who feel that it's OK to steal as long as they have the government do it through taxes and welfare programs.
    1 point
  12. It’s also worth noting that your average doctor is not an expert in communicable disease either. Just because he or she is a wonderful GP doesn’t mean they know what they are talking about when it comes to Covid.
    1 point
  13. 1 point
  14. Traveler

    Soon...

    Mathematically I can prove that Christmas and Halloween are the same day. Follow if you can: Christmas is Dec 25 Halloween is Oct 31 According to simple number theory of base 10 and base 8 numbers it is obvious that a decimal 25 written Dec 25 equals an octal 31 written Oct 31. Thus Dec 25 = Oct 31 As a side note to all this - I am wondering if anyone can explain the official Latin names of the month --- Why is the 9th month named the 7th month, the 10th month named the 8th month, the 11th month named the 9th month and the 12th month named the tenth month? How dumb are we???? The Traveler
    1 point
  15. clwnuke

    The Holy War

    We were north off of 20 in a little town called Lithonia. I had a cousin in Snellville back then too. My home teaching companion was the first Temple President in the Atlanta Temple, Bro. Joyner. Loved it there. Wished we could have stayed but jobs were scarce at the time.
    1 point
  16. LDSGator

    The Holy War

    The old saying that college football is a religion down here is still true.
    1 point
  17. Gut feelings count. There hasn't been enough time to even perform a scientific study on the long term effects of the vaccine on pregnancy, fertility, possible birth defects, etc. Science doesn’t tell us why. It can only tell us why we were wrong - after the fact. Hopefully they can get their better half to step up to the plate and provide for the family. And yes, I am seeing the same thing in my neck of the woods.
    1 point
  18. mordorbund

    Free will

    I think what’s getting lost here is YouTuber isn’t just dealing with dichotomies, even when he only offers 2 choices, instead there’s an unstated hierarchy of wants. My want at level 50 is “don’t sound pretentious” while my lower want at level 75 is “shake it up a little”. Given the rankings I will greet you with “Hello” instead of “Bonjour”. That’s how it’s going to play out. And it will play out like that every time. That being the case, why did I say “Bonjour”? YouTuber says it’s because there’s actually another want at play. At level 38 is “I want to prove YouTuber wrong about free will.” The problem as you’ve stated is that, although it is sel-consistent, it’s also circular. For addicts, “take a hit” ranks higher than “don’t” but there are addicts who don’t. Therefore they must have a third want that you don’t know about. They want “in tact family” or “steady job” or “stop breaking mom’s heart” or some other want. This philosophy is unfalsifiable. The implication of this model is if we want to change behavior we need to add a new want to the hierarchy in a higher rank, or alter the ranking al an existent want. This then leads to the second issue with this philosophy. (I’ll get there after the following paragraph). In the Hello/Bonjour example another solution that YouTuber didn’t discuss at all is that maybe there wasn’t a third want - maybe my hierarchy shifted. Every time I say “Hello” my “shake it up” want moves up the hierarchy a notch. Once it’s at 49 I say “Bonjour” and it drops down again. This is something like the infinite prisoners dilemma (there’s a good TedEd video on that) (this is also the problem with the stable marriage algorithm - it only works if everyone’s rankings stay the same). Whether Bonjour comes from a new rule or a shift in the hierarchy, it highlights the same question: Where does the hierarchy of wants come from? YouTuber is arguing a mechanical-style of free will based on the hierarchy of wants which means (hopefully I’m not presuming too much) this hierarchy falls under the nature/nurture debate but must ultimately be nurture. That is, if it is mechanistic then the current example can come from how a person was raised (outside influences) or genetics (natural influences) but if it’s ultimately mechanistic then the outside influence (culture, counter culture, parents, etc) is the result of meta-evolution and the natural influence is from evolution. Since YouTuber hasn’t expressly made this argument I won’t engage it further, but I’ll leave it here for consideration. Beyond nature and nurture I can think of two other sources for this hierarchy of wants. How bout God? The challenge here is a theological one @Traveler often raises. If a person sins because of the hierarchy God set, who is ultimately responsible for that sin? Is God just for condemning the man He preset to sin? This lead to the fourth option, that there’s something independent within the individual uncreated by God. @Just_A_Guy wrote previously about “intelligences” and while Latter-day Saints are comfortable with it, it creates a divide when discussing with credal Christians about Creation or God’s relationship to man.
    1 point
  19. [sarcasm] There is nothing to show that drinking water is the cure for covid...except the MILLIONS who have caught it and gotten over it after drinking water. Amazingly, Hospitals will give patients water, but WON'T prescribe it for Covid-19! We have literally millions who recovered from Covid-19 after drinking Water...I wonder why they don't promote it as a cure... There was the case of the guy drinking it from a Pig Trough who died, but he died of Ring worm...NOT covid! Even if you have to drink the water from Animal troughs it seems to be the best cure for Covid-19! [/sarcasm] Maybe it helps, maybe it does not. From what I've seen most medical studies that have been peer reviewed have not yet shown that it actually helps or not...though I HAVE heard it makes people who overtake it have rope worms come out of their digestive tract. (actually, their intestinal linings). I'd say, don't do anything without medical personnel involved...if the prescribe the human version of Ivermectin and you feel it helps...good, but if they don't...don't go to the animal store and buy the version for the Cow to take it yourself.
    1 point
  20. I remember creating this in like March of 2020. It aged rather well, I think.
    1 point
  21. To me, it seems like the answer to a question like this is a product of trying to balance the potential ill effects and efficacy of the vaccine itself, versus the ill effects and mortality rate of the disease the vaccine is supposed to protect against, and factoring in the severity of punishment imposed upon those who refuse to comply with the vaccine. That's the calculation that a lot of the folks who are citing Jacobson v. Massachusetts for the proposition that "heck yeah, the government can force you to take a vaccine" are missing: a) the disease in question was smallpox which IIRC had 30%+ mortality amongst European-Americans (and far higher amongst Native Americans), b) the defendant failed to provide any technically-admissible evidence as to why he, specifically, was an unfit subject for vaccination, and c) the penalty imposed against him for noncompliance was fairly minimal (a $5 fine, equivalent to less than $200 today) In the hypothetical you offer: Ebola, I understand, has a mortality rate that averages around 50%; and I will presume that "90% effective" means "90% of the people who receive it neither become symptomatic with, nor spread, the disease thereafter". I will further presume that the evidence that this hypothetical vaccine is harmful is statistically sketchy at best, and that it is impossible to take any particular individual and make a sound medical argument as to why this individual would be better off remaining unvaccinated. And so in that case, I'd say "sure, let's do a mandate". But let's remember that when it comes to COVID-19: The disease's mortality is somewhere on the order of 5% or less (possibly *much* less; I'm too lazy to look up the stats and refresh my memory); It has been demonstrated that at least a few people have good medical reason not to receive some particular versions of the vaccine; The penalty being bandied about is, effectively, your employability--your ability to support yourself. While I freely support the right of individuals and corporations to associate with and disassociate from whomever they please, I believe that should be a grass-roots process rather than the result of government effectively hanging a scarlet letter around your neck. And frankly, based on things "mainstream" wags like Jimmy Kimmel and others have said lately, there seems to be a spreading perception that "we really don't mind if these unvaccinated rubes just die off altogether"; which is downright scary. While (last time I dug into it) there had been good evidence that the various COVID-19 vaccines could limit one's likelihood of being infected with/spreading some earlier variants of COVID; my takeaway at present is that with the Delta variant the traditional indicia of "effectiveness" for the various COVID vaccines have been seriously compromised (significant portions of the vaccinated can still get it, and it appears a majority of the vaccinated can still transmit it even if they don't "get" it themselves). The one overwhelming remaining benefit to vaccination seems to be that it appears COVID-19-infected folks tend to manifest less-severe symptoms if they had been vaccinated prior to infection--which is a great reason for you to get the vaccine; but which really has very little to do with me. Now, all that said: I think COVID vaccination is a good thing; I am inclined to think most of the arguments against vaccination are overblown; I am upset that so many people shillyshallied about getting it back before the Delta variant became a thing. And I support the right of overloaded hospitals to triage their ICUs and, if necessary, give preferential treatment to patients who did get the vaccine. But, would I want to see the unvaccinated jailed, fired from their jobs, or forcibly exiled from the rest of society? No. I think the punitive regimens that are being bandied about at this point impose penalties that are disproportionate to the misbehavior they seek to address, and most likely represent a White House that is lashing out at an enemy it thinks it can beat after having just had its clock cleaned by the Taliban.
    1 point
  22. I think the vast majority of people are. It’s the mandate that has people angry
    1 point
  23. Dude, you gotta lay off the peyote.
    1 point
  24. clwnuke

    The Holy War

    Oh, the disappointment on people's faces when I told them I was in grad school at Tech ;) But that was the year they tied for the National Championship so I guess it worked out all right. Tells you how old I am 😎
    0 points
  25. mikbone

    Opioid Epidemic.

    Got this in my inbox today.
    0 points