Vort

I am no RBG lover. Ginsberg's opinions were rarely insightful, IMO. (Her writing was top-notch, though.) The best thing she ever did for herself was to keep her ears open and her mouth shut when around Scalia. She often disagreed with Scalia, of course, which is to say she was often wrong. But even in her wrongness, she knew enough to recognize his transcendent intellect, and perhaps more importantly his method of fully understanding and dissecting the arguments of one's opponent before attempting to defeat those arguments. Obvious enough, right? Yet all too rarely seen today. Ginsberg, for her many faults, was fundamentally inquisitive, open-minded, searching, probing, and highly intelligent. Sotomayor is none of those things. Her analyses are sloppy, typically not exceeding the borders of the courthouse walls. She frames arguments from the get-go not based on what the fundamental issues are about, but on how to set things up in order to make it so that her predetermined outcomes are most likely achieved. Her writing is literally laughable; there is a reason she is not the go-to candidate when choosing an author for the majority. Sotomayor is literally the stupidest justice we have had on the Supreme Court since...when? I don't know. I am sincerely curious how you see Sonia Sotomayor as "the new version" of Ruth Ginsberg, or what that even means.

Only if you believe that taking upon ourselves a fallen condition is a punishment.

I rather like this idea and have for some time. The artificiality of goals has always left me cold. Unsurprisingly, I don't do well with them. But at the risk of banging That Same One Note, I would point out the overt anticompetitive nature of this. Such a system is yours alone, without direct reference to what anyone else may or may not be doing. I believe that the day we quit worrying about how we measure up to Joe Blow's or Jane Roe's accomplishments and how much better we are than Pathetic Pete or Simple Sally, and instead begin focusing on how to become like our Prototype and do the things he does and how to help others do the same, is the day we begin taking large, positive strides toward Zion.

Where, if I may ask? (Not to pry if you don't want to answer.)

My bad. Corrected above to Sense and Sensibility. He had already seen P&P, and I wasn't ready to do a six-hour marathon anyway. FWIW, I have always found Lydia's characterization in the book (and brilliantly done in the A&E/BBC P&P by Julia Sawalha) to be a spoiled and boorish young woman who draws attention to herself constantly, almost insufferably, yet is so charming and pretty that anyone under the age of about 30 gives her a pass—which, after all, is all she cared about anyway. I have spent more time than I ought wondering how the world's Lydias turn out in life, and deciding that their relentless upbeat nature must eventually be worn down by the consequences of their short-sighted actions and head-shakingly stupid choices. I don't have a daughter like Lydia, but I could see having one. It would be a headache, and almost certainly a heartache. I've been geeking out on musical modes the last few weeks, and have loved the fact that the two other major modes (other than our "normal" major mode, Ionian) are called Lydian and Mixolydian.

I hesitate to put blatant speculation out there...but I'm doing it anyway. I speculate that, possibly, our time here in mortality is at least partly to learn to master our bodies. That's why we fast, for example. But why would mastering the flesh be sooooo important to our progress when, in the eternities, we will have a perfect body without carnal drives and such? Because there is no indication that a "perfect body" is a body without physical drives. Such seems quite obviously untrue to me. I would imagine that the drives and desired of a glorified, perfected, and exalted (note the word) body would be vastly greater than those we experience today. It is certain that the element of flesh is absolutely necessary to partake of exaltation: D&C 93:33-34 The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; And when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy. I speculate that this "fulness of joy" includes such things as the proper and righteous fulfillment of the physical drives of a perfected and exalted body, not unlike our situation today, but to a vastly greater degree. FWIW.

My almost-24-year-old, home for Christmas from BYU, told us a few days ago that he had never seen the 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility. We corrected that oversight post haste. To be honest, I noticed flaws and characterization choices that I never noticed in the past four or five or six (or however many) times I have watched it. Still, it was two hours well-spent.

In my opinion, these things are not known. If a person may always choose to live, and if that person, in a state of fulness of joy, would never choose death because that would be not only irrational but antithetical to the principles the person holds dear—well, to me, that sounds like immortality. Note also that resurrected beings most assuredly can eat (and drink). If all appetites are kept strictly under control, I see nothing intrinsically unlikely about this. I believe the only reason this seems objectionable is from two thousand years of neo-Greek rationality arguing that nothing on the Earth is sacred.

I don't see why not. I would also argue that the law of chastity is only tangentially about sex. At its root, it is about honoring one's covenants. It actually doesn't seem at all unlikely to me. I do not know how God procreates. I have never even asked him that question. But I have long believed that the procreative act is one of the most intrinsically spiritual and Godly of acts, unless it is polluted by outside evils.

Up to this point, we mostly agree. But I am convinced that when we discover the real meaning of eternal life, it will be the most obvious and natural thing imaginable. I suppose we might even wonder how we could have been so blind not to have seen it the whole time. Doctrine and Covenants 130:2 And that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy. So eternal life sounds a lot like old home week, assuming you love your family deeply and enjoy sharing you life and your time with them. That's my take.

I would argue that the child-to-parent sealing is a major point—indeed, perhaps THE major point—of the spouse-to-spouse sealing.

Moses 1:39 For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. D&C 11:20 Behold, this is your work, to keep my commandments, yea, with all your might, mind and strength. D&C 18:38 And by their desires and their works you shall know them.

I love how the negative space in your avatar looks like Patrick handing something to SpongeBob.

What if...? What if we find out in the hereafter that our ability to know other people on a personal level is infinite, not limited by time or number of people? In fact, what if we all knew everybody premortally? What if we were as well-acquainted with each other as we are today acquainted with our spouse or child? What if the limits that we experience today in our circle of acquaintances are strictly artifacts of mortality, with no real eternal equivalents? This would fundamentally alter the nature of our understanding of interpersonal relationships. Moreover, it would really point up those who cynically maximize their profit from their political connections. In the next life, we would not only remember each other, but we would know how individual people treated their relationships, whether as a means to profit, a resource to be milked, or a sacred trust to be fostered and guarded, even if doing so didn't offer any advantage to their mortal state. What might become of a person eternally when everyone knows he willingly sold out his brother or sister to gain status? What horrific character does forcible rape or seduction take on when the man realizes he raped a beloved sister or the woman that she seduced a struggling brother, all for some sort of selfish carnal satisfaction? What a keenly painful, yet just, realization when we understand that our betrayals of those around us are ultimately deep betrayals of ourselves, betrayals that will follow us in the eternities! Yet that is a hell that, save for the atoning blood of our Savior, awaits us all. I love God and try to serve him. I believe in Christ and in his atonement, and strive to make it effective in my life. But all too often, God and Christ and the atonement and such other ideas seem abstract and remote from me in my day-to-day living. But my relationships with my wife, my children, my parents, my siblings, my cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, friends—these things seem solid and immediate. As I struggle to fulfill my duty to such precious people, I try to remember the satisfaction I take in my happy relationships with those I love and the pain I have felt when experiencing the sting of betrayal from one of them, or worse yet, the remorse of having betrayed someone, even in a small way. Just putting some random thoughts out there.