Vort

I could not agree with you more, and I think you have gotten my point exactly.Joseph Smith was famously friendly and courteous, even to enemies. Some may call him arrogant, brash, aggressive, and inflexible. They can call him a potted plant, if they want. I do not believe history bears out such a view, nor do I believe that anyone 160+ years after the fact can possibly give an accurate gauge of the man. Contemporary historical records, at least the believable ones, do not bear out any such description of Joseph Smith. I can appreciate an effort to maintain an unbiased viewpoint, but I have little patience with stretching history and known facts around in an effort to look broadminded. Joseph Smith was not "fantastically flawed", unless you want to apply that description to every other man and woman who has ever lived on the earth (besides Christ).

I am confused by your confusion LOL. You trust the prophet of God on earth today and yet you know he is, by nature, imperfect.I trust him despite his imperfections, not because of them. I don't understand how a man being imperfect makes him trustworthy. Jesus Christ was not imperfect; does that mean he should not be trusted?

Oh, I think it's been a great game, Ben.

The first thing you need to do is learn the local language. It's not as hard as it might sound, but it takes concentration. motto: MAH-doe American Fork: 'MAHR-kun FAHRK Pleasure beyond measure: PLAY-zhoor bee-YAWNED MAY-zhoor Practice, practice, practice!

One day, when you're down in the gutter In filth and in rags, then you'll mutter, "I did indeed sin When I ate margarine; From now on, I will only eat butter."

It takes someone very comfortable in his masculinity to hear the Christmas Shoes song, suppress his gag reflex, scream in rage, and hurl the radio completely through the gypsum board wall while threatening the physical well-being of anyone who ever plays that stupid song in his presence. While at a Relief Society-sponsored social.

Why do you like Ubuntu? And if you're not a Linux person any more, what do you do for computer use? Have you been inducted into the Mac cult, or do you just plug your neurons directly into an internet server?

I pay on my gross. I think it's a good way to tithe. But I'm happy to leave that decision to each individual rather than presume to instruct them. Nevertheless, while I'm not competent to declare to people the specifics on their method of tithing, I do feel justified in saying that those who are looking to cut their "tithable income" by taking "tithing deductions" wherever they can find them are completely missing the spirit of the law and the point of what they are supposed to be doing. Businesses don't pay tithing. A businessman who pays himself a salary of $100,000 from his business pays tithing on the $100 grand. If his business makes ten million dollars, he still pays on his salary. On the other hand, if all the business' profits go to his personal account, I'd say at that point he should be paying $1 million, not $10 thousand, in tithing. A business's expenses are required for the business to run. No one lives off of that money; it's purely overhead. On the other hand, you quite clearly do live off of the money you pay for rent and such. So that is increase for you -- hence, you tithe it. You are totally missing the point of tithing. Your logic is also faulty. By your logic, as long as I always live to the very limit of my income, I should never "have" to pay tithing. After all, I HAVE to pay utilities (on my mansion), car payments (on my Lamborghini), and credit card bills (on everything else I've enjoyed over the year). So, hey, since I HAVE to pay these things, that means I have zero "increase". No tithing! I don't think so. The business owner does not "get" to deduct. If a business costs $2 million each year to operate and turns a profit of $200,000, do you really believe the owner should tithe on the $2.2 million in receipts -- that is, tithe without deducting business expenses? That is absurd. It would more than wipe out his profit. This is a far different scenario from the one you're proposing, saying that "My apartment costs me X, my food costs me Y, my car costs me Z, and all of my miscellaneous expenses add up on my credit card, so I need to deduct the cost of all those things first." That doesn't mean God didn't author those words. It just means God didn't author your confusion about them. Either you have no understanding of how a business operates, or you are choosing to ignore the very real and substantial differences between business finance and personal finance. In the former case, you can educate yourself about businesses, if you like, but the takeaway is that you don't tithe your personal income the way a business calculates its profit. In the latter case, none of the conversation is worthwhile anyway, so I'll just let it go.

The problem is that history is a notoriously inexact and faulty area of study. Which of the scandalous stories do you write off as scurrilous falsehoods, which do you dismiss as misunderstandings of greatness by lesser souls, and which do you accept as character flaws? Except, of course, that you haven't. The man died over a hundred years before you were born. You have nothing to go on except historical accounts of highly variable reliability, some penned by friends, some by enemies, some by people who really didn't have a clue what they were talking about. I am not trying either to discourage you or to criticize you. I am just pointing out that history in general is a minefield, and the history of Joseph Smith is even more volatile and highly fraught with peril for the seeker of historical fact. There is one, and only one, way to get lasting truth: Through personal revelation from God. If God reveals to you that Joseph Smith was his prophet, that is something you can hang your hat on. Everyone else's whisperings and mutterings about seerstones and Kinderhook plates and Zelph and whatever else you care to pile on really do not amount to anything. Since you cannot know of their validity, it's hard to see what sorts of conclusions you can draw from them, except that history is unknowable* by its very nature. *For example: I clearly remember as a youth in the 1970s being told that we might be in for a returning ice age, and that human byproduct waste was a major culprit, with clouds of pollution blocking out sunlight and thousands of square miles of city concrete reflecting those precious solar rays back into space. Now, of course, we are told pretty much the opposite. I read a Slate piece within the last year talking about this very thing. Their takeaway? Why, they couldn't find any reputable evidence that any such "ice age scare" ever existed. AND THAT WAS ONLY THIRTY YEARS AGO! You think things from 150-200 years ago will be any less liable to distortion? I have no doubt this is true; Joseph himself was the first to admit his lack of perfection. But how could you possibly conclude this based on the unreliable histories given? Fawn Brodie's laughable effort is STILL quoted as "authoritative". I confess, I don't understand this even a little. "I can trust you, because you are imperfect." Nope, doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, that's my take.

I suggest that you start by finding out more about your girlfriend's religious background. While there is doubtless some of what you describe that is caused by differences in the US vs. UK, there is also a lot of difference in how a typical European (or American) Catholic views religious things vs. how a typical US (or UK) Mormon views them. I have met a great many Catholics who know, and care, very little about the specifics of their religion or anyone else's. They are Catholic, which they consider to be as much an ethnic identifier as any declaration of belief. They are what you might call "cultural Catholics", and several of them openly consider themselves to be CINO (Catholic in name only). Such people exist in Mormonism, as well, but in my experience they are a much smaller percentage. Most Mormons tend to view their religion less as a cultural identifier and more as a declaration of their principles of living. For example, most children who grow up in a Latter-day Saint home will want to be married "for time and for all eternity" in an LDS temple. This ordinance is available only to faithful Latter-day Saints. As a result, faithful Mormons typically don't date outside the LDS dating pool and usually do not marry non-members. It's not that they consider non-Mormons to be less decent or good, it's that they want the blessing of an eternal marriage, and they can only get that with another Mormon. Something for you to think about. The cultural divide is actually much broader than just the US/UK difference.

It would not be "inappropriate", exactly, but since the crucifix is not a part of LDS culture, she would probably feel uncomfortable wearing it to Church (and perhaps anywhere else). What could you give her instead that has a religious feel? I am not sure. When I was a child, I was given a cheap, Crackerjack-type ring with the letters "CTR" on it, which stand for "Choose The Right". As an adult, I have noticed some other adults (usually young adults) wear an adult-sized CTR ring, quite a bit nicer than the cheapo kind I got as a child but otherwise pretty much the same look. If you Googled around you could probably find someone to sell you this. DISCLAIMER: I have no clue if she would like this. Not everyone enjoys wearing around jewelry from their childhood, and the bright green background on the CTR shield won't necessarily match any and every outfit.

Oh, by the way, did I mention how much Linux costs? It's offered at an especially low price. In fact, your check to me should pretty much cover the price to download Linux. For more information, Google "Linux download" and pick your favorite link. (Or come back to this thread to find out which distros people like and why...)

Something like this (forgive me if my inexact retelling slaughters the joke): A missionary returning from his service is seated by an Irish gentleman. During the flight, the stewardess asks the Irishman if he would like a drink, and he orders a whiskey. The stewardess hands the Irishman his drink and asks the missionary if he would like a drink, too. The missionary wrinkles his nose and says, "I'd rather fornicate with the head stewardess than drink that vile sauce!" Whereupon the Irishman hands his drink back and says, "Me, too. I didn't know we had the choice."

Awesome story. Reminds me of Pam's joke from a few weeks back.

VORT'S TRANSLATION SERVICE 50% off -- today only! Which Linux distro and why? As Dravin explained above, Linux is an "operating system", like Microsoft Windows. An operating system is a bridge between the physical computer ("hardware") you have and the applications (such as Internet Explorer) you use. The operating system also provides you with the nice "desktop" that you use to get around on your computer, find files, and so forth. Unlike Windows, which is owned by Microsoft and offered in only a few specific versions, Linux is open source, meaning (essentially) that no one and everyone owns it. Different groups collect different configurations of the Linux OS, bundle them up with different sets of applications, and offer them as "distributions", or "distros". Some distros are specifically targeted at people new to Linux and migrating over from Windows; others are targeted toward the super-technical computer geek who likes to write all his own code; and others are targeted at other types of submarkets (gamers, students, server administrators, etc.). My question was, Which Linux distribution do you prefer to use, and why do you like it best? FreeBSD fans welcome, too. The Linux operating system was developed primarily by Linus Torvalds (not Linus Pauling, as I almost wrote ) from an old and very reliable operating system called UNIX. (Hence the name Linux, a geeky combination of Linus and UNIX.) Torvalds and his buddies essentially copied UNIX by rewriting the software code libraries that make UNIX run, but instead of the large computers UNIX was written for, they wrote it for PCs. Meanwhile, UNIX was still alive and well in several versions among different companies. Some folks at AT&T used their Berkeley UNIX "kernel" (the basic code for the operating system) as a base for a version of UNIX to run on a PC. The called it the "Berkeley Software Distribution 386" (the "386" shows it was meant for PCs), or BSD386. Thus was born FreeBSD (and several other BSD-derived OSes). A few years later, the AT&T Unix group sued BSD, so they simply rewrote their code, removing all proprietary AT&T-owned code. So as far as I can tell, BSD is basically the same thing as Linux -- a UNIX-type OS that looks, sounds, and smells like UNIX but runs on a PC. Please name your preferred *nix distro and tell why you like it. I said "*nix" to include FreeBSD, since technically it is not Linux. In Computerland, the asterisk * is used as a "wildcard" and means "put whatever fits into this place". Thus, *nix would mean Linux, UNIX, or (by extension) FreeBSD or other BSD distros. (I realize that FreeBSD does not end in "NIX"; this is geekspeak, so please work with me here.) I am sure that Vanhin, rameumptom, Dravin, and many others here could tell you a whole lot more about Linux than I can. Ask if you're curious. Wikipedia has a pretty good write-up on Linux and related issues.

Why RedHat, and why do you prefer the BSD license?

Which do you personally use, and why?

"Life is too short to eat margarine." - Vort

A commonly held fallacy. There appears to be some words missing from this. But in any case, Traveler's point remains: If we should treat retarded people with special respect, should not we treat everyone else that way, too?

Thanks for trying, but The Eyes have it. Scrooge, Marley, & Vort.

FreeBSD fans welcome, too. Please name your preferred *nix distro and tell why you like it.

Well, it's not a big deal, just a simple mistake. I was just saying.

So what was the resolution?

There is nothing notorious about it. And it wasn't a General Conference talk.