Captain_Curmudgeon

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Posts posted by Captain_Curmudgeon

  1. As you can guess from my (infrequent, but not lately) postings, more LDS, but not this Latter. More like 50 to 60 years less latter. I'm comfortable in the church of my childhood, a Stranger in a much-too familiar land (mainstream "Christian" fundamentalist) now.

  2. Strang may have been the most successful imposter in the history of the Restored Church.

    Strang is also responsible for the hyphen in "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." After the break up, he managed to get hold of the rights to "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints."

    (PS. After the Strangites were driven from Beaver Island, some of my wife's relatives gained possession of Strangite property.)

  3. I can think of one possible modern instance. Prophet, seer, revelator, and President David O. McKay asked Bruce R. McConkie NOT to reprint Mormon Doctrine but he did, implicitly saying that he knew more about Mormon doctrine than David O. McKay.

  4. Is GOD Omniscient?

    One of the legs of Hume's Triangle: if GOD is Omniscient, if GOD is Omnipotent, and if GOD is Omnibenevolent, how comes evil into the world?

    I remember in my youth that some LDS teacher with a degree in philosophy (not religion) said that we're about the only Christian church that escapes Hume's triangle. I think that two legs are broken because the GOD of Mormonism is a real person and not a series of abstractions derived from Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy.

    YMMV.

  5. Are there any sailors (Navy or civilian) LDS out there who can give me a better picture of what it's like living out of a suitcase on a boat and how much it may interfere with my church activities?

    USN, 1963-67, USS Sellers, DDG-11 (and MCB6 (Seabees), DaNang, VN). Ain't a boat, ain't a suitcase. Go read Melville. A ship at sea is at the furthest remove from the venue of most religions, which are pastoral. Drove Noah to drink.
  6. Try a hunter's safety course.

    That's what I came here to say. Back when I belonged, the NRA had an excellent one. Now it seems to have disappeared. But hunting goes beyond safety. If you're going to be a good hunter, you must acquire a pretty good skill set, not excluding field dressing, or you will just be wasting your time and animals' lives.

    Best bet: find a friend who has been hunting for decades and get permission to go with him.

  7. If you're not supposed to watch TV on the sabbath, why is KBYU broadcasting on all four channels all day? If I can watch America's Test Kitchen on KBYU-4, why can't I watch the Super Bowl on CBS, which KSL-TV used to be a part of?

    PS. If you shouldn't watch TV, why should you be able to watch the Internet?

  8. Zone Alarm used to allow you to download just their firewall for free and I used it for years -- until a Microsoft "patch" release killed it.

    Good stuff then. If you were running the firewall, you were invisible to probes from the Internet.

    Since then, I've been using the firewall that comes with my anti-virus software. Really like to get my firewall and my anti-virus on my router and away from any computer.

  9. Random thoughts (that's the best I can do lately).

    • There was a truly gruesome incident in Idaho in the past. When I studied it, it made me about lose my lunch. The fact that there had even been an incident was classified then and still may be now. Believe me: you don't want to know the details.
    • Once I grasped the simple fact that the supply of oil is not infinite and that we'd probably reached the peak, I immediately tried to find out how to invest in nuclear power. Not that simple -- if you have some ideas, please post them here. Looks even better when you see how slowly the research into alternatives or even the recognition that we're going to need them is.
    • The plan for a nuclear plant in southern Utah is a pipe dream fueled, as usual, by some get-rich scheme of some member of the Utah Legislature. Cooling water.
    • I wouldn't invest in fusion schemes. They've been "promising" since I was in my 20s (look at my avatar photo).
    • If fusion ever does work, it's going be incredible (check out Ossian's Ride by Fred Hoyle).
    • Not in my back yard. Elsewhere, how do I buy some?
  10. How is this different from The Tonight Show?

    No desk. What I hate is that the commercial breaks seem to be as long as they were at 11 (or whenever). Leno obviously has some incriminating photos of top network officials or this show wouldn't last long.