MarginOfError

Tom and Jerry

Well, I should certainly hope that communication between the living and the dead is not strictly forbidden, because then we get into all sorts of problems. To start, Christ communicated with the Apostles following his death. Thus, if such communication is forbidden, then all of Christianity is a farce. Sure, you might make the argument that Christ wasn't dead, having been resurrected and all...but then again, Moroni was resurrected too, so that would still reconcile that. I'm not able to cite where communication between the living and the dead is forbidden, and I'm too lazy to look up if such references even exist. If they do, I am confident that these references are in the context of sorceries and wishing to communicate for personal gain, by influences of Satan, or for reasons not condoned by God. Furthermore, it isn't like God has any problem going against his own rules when necessary. Nephi murdering Laban is an obvious example. Just some different ways of looking at it.

I've also come to understand that it involves showing proper reverence to sacred things, even outside of our meetings. At the risk of sounding judgmental and overly strict, these scriptures make me question the practice of referring to Baptism as a 'dunking,' or calling the Garment "g's" or "garmies." Or what about calling the Bishop, "the Bish." I sometimes wonder if such diminutives breaches that plane of light-mindedness.

Complete sidenote: I am watching jeopardy, and as I came across the title of this thread, I heard someone on the show say, "What is a sperm whale." The timing was just right so that I ended up reading "Sperm whale in wolf's clothing." I could not figure out what this was going to be about. Okay, off the sidenote.

A white horse fell in the mud...wait, you said clean. I went white water rafting on Sunday with my scout troop. I was put in the boat with four rather weak paddlers. I knew that ahead of time and I figured I'd get through it okay. But at one point, I told the four of them to paddle. I watch all four paddles go in, I watch all four paddles move back in the water, and then I sat there in shock as the boat didn't move. I almost fell out of the boat laughing.

And God has a great sense of humor. I went camping last weekend. Checked the forecast, and it was supposed to be clear until mid morning on Saturday, then we'd get scattered showers. The radar didn't show a cloud in the sky. So I decided to sleep outside. About an hour after I went to sleep, rains that would have rivaled Noah's deluge came pouring down on me. I'm really glad God has a sense of humor, but it really stinks to be on the receiving end of it sometimes.

I'm sorry. I'd love to contribute, but the experience of thought is so far outside my realm of experience that I just wouldn't know what to say. :-) What is thought? Does it exist on the quantum level? Is it controlled my an exchange of electrons? Is it an inherent characteristic of matter? So my pet rock really does has an opinion of me?

I don't get it...what's the punchline again?

MOE's list of things that must be in heaven (or else it wouldn't be heaven) 1. Sex (This is a deal breaker for me) 2. My wife (Number one is kind of pointless without Number Two) 3. Hiking Trails 4. Beaches 5. Frisbee 6. Barbecue 7. Baseball (where the yankees are always in last place) 8. Very high fat content foods 9. Seafood 10. Thongs and Cleavage (Why this is funny)

As an active, and non-apostate (although slightly heretical) member, I have to agree with the 'apostate' here. Knocking on doors is, in general, a waste of time. Going door-to-door was my favorite activity as a missionary, and I did it a lot. But every time a door opened, my goal was to see how long I could keep the person talking to me, about anything, without bringing up the Church or the Gospel. And then I would never, ever teach a discussion on the spot, but set up a time to come back to teach. Most never showed up for their appointment, leaving me with even more time to knock on doors. The reason I tried to get people to talk as long as possible: so I'd knock on fewer doors. Only one person whose door I knocked one went on to be baptized. And if you believe for a second that there was any amount of inspiration or divine guidance in that, then you're horribly misguided. I promise you that was just plain dumb luck (combined with some incredibly good record keeping). I happened to be in the mission office (as the Mission Secretary) when the mission president changed. The primary reason for the mission presidents to have so little time together--and both presidents told me this independently--is so that they won't have time to discuss individual missionaries. Each mission president is supposed to develop his own opinion of each missionary outside the influence of the previous president. In fact, they are instructed not to discuss missionaries, but are asked to focus on local leaders, programs, activities, etc.

I am so hungry. I need to buy some lunch. The cafeteria here makes an incredible lasagna, and I like to eat it with some of the garlic bread, a little bowl of soup, and a tall glass of lemonade. I know, lemonade and lasagna aren't the most traditional of combinations, but I'm a sucker for lemonade. I could also go to the Subway and get a couple of footlong subs I guess. It's always been my dream to look like Jared. But that still takes some money. Does anyone know where I could get a quick ten dollars?

I watched a documentary last night about gold digging women who marry rich older men and carry their love children just hoping that the old man will die so they can inherit the money. Spooky.

Did you notice how quickly Halfers threw us under the bus. Makes you think now doesn't it?

It's just so unfair! My wife treats me like dirt! She never lets me share in the meaningful stuff in our life. She never lets me choose who our friends will be. She won't even let me be pregnant or give birth!

No No, she did just fine! Just respond to the last post...or I guess it's inspire the earliest response isn't it? AH! It's so convoluted. I want a baby I want a baby I want a baby! It's so hard to go to Church with all my pregnant friends and they sneer at me for not having one. I'm sick of being a substandard member of the Church!

(yeah, you're doing it right, but we seem to be going off on two very different tangents. I'm going to declare the baby tangent the keeper, cause bugs creep me out) If you're having trouble having a baby, maybe you just don't have enough faith. (cause yeah, that has everything to do with it).

Those traps where they are supposed to pick up the poison and carry it to the nest are a joke. I see the nasty little things jittering before they get 3 feet away, and then they die. It seems anything I try doesn't work. I'm getting kind of desperate.

Dealing with the embassy in Congo has been a nightmare. I don't know that we'll ever get these poor pygmy children back to our home.

Sorry, I guess I wasn't very clear. The idea is for us to reverse engineer a thread. So now I'll take your last sentence, and I have to make up the post that inspired you to say what you did. Ideally, if you started at the end of the thread and read to the beginning, you would have a coherent thread. For example: I found adoption to be surprisingly friendly through the Smiling Time Adoption Agency. Is that who you used to adopt your kids?

Here's a new game to challenge our wit and skill. Instead of writing a response to the previous post, you must write the post to which the previous post is the response. In this manner, we want to build a conversation in reverse. Good luck to us all. My department just moved into a new building, and the cubicles are about 3 feet narrower than the ones we had before. I'm starting to feel pretty cramped.

It isn't hard to stay in touch with the light when you live in the desert.:)

Maureen, I read some of that same stuff, and I wasn't convinced that there was any validity to a lot of it. It seemed like the author was just trying to come up with possible reasons the 6% statistic could be wrong, without actually investigating how divorce was defined in Judd's study. Don't get me wrong, I think this 6% statistic is completely bogus. One of the big reasons I think so is I cannot find anything by Judd to define his parameters. It wreaks of the scent of hiding crappy research (I smell a lot of that in my work). I did locate an mp3 of the talk in which he presented this statistic, but I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. I'll get back to you when I do.

Funny, that's exactly what we were taught in college (Interpersonal was my minor). I probably should include rules #2 and 3 (which are my own creation), so we'd have rules 1) Any misunderstanding is the fault of the receiver. 2) Being understood is the responsibility of the sender. 3) The only meaning that matters is the one that is received. The logic behind misunderstanding being the fault of the receiver is that the sender knows what message her or she intended to send. Thus, no matter what the words or the medium, the sender knows the actual meaning of the message, and cannot misunderstand it. Thus, fault for misunderstanding can belong to none other than the receiver. You're welcome to disagree with me, I don't. Just thought I'd clarify your logic. In general, I think people should be working their hardest to be understood clearly, and to ascertain how well their communicative partners understand them. In the context of gender, this means trying to understand how the other gender interprets communicative encounters. But when there is a misunderstanding, it usually results from the receiver interpreting the communication from his or her own gender's paradigm.

I did actually, but it was in another thread Life Outside of Utah. My comments are on the second page, post number 14. But in the interest of time, here's the full text. In the interest of full disclosure, let me just say that I despise Utah. So go ahead and take anything I say with a grain of salt.

Not at all. I think it's perfectly fine to overly-generalize. Your comment only shows your womanly irrationality. (snicker snicker) No, I realize that there's a lot of personal preference. It just occurred to me that I've heard a lot of the things that drive us out-of-Utah people nuts about the in-Utah people. For my own sick entertainment, I'm curious about the other side. Who knows, maybe I might alter my behavior too, in order to be a little less annoying. But, if no one has anything to say, then I'll assume it's because those of us out of Utah really are superior to those of you in Utah :-)