LittleWyvern

I usually pay monthly, but just because I'm using Mint and it's easy to tell Mint "Show me all the things in the Income category for X month," and it's easy to just add up the entries. I don't think there's a right or wrong time period to pay tithing, though; whether or not you pay it is more important.

Check out this site. It's made for those who want to build their own computers (and building your own computer is a great way to squeeze more out of your budget, and it's super easy these days), but it's also a great guide on what hardware to look for for any price point. :)

Oh, in picking Category #1 I certainly didn't mean to endorse your phrasing of "hate mormons," but if the conservative evangelical reaction to people like Glenn Beck and Mitt Romney is any indication (you'd think evangelicals would like them), it certainly wouldn't be a wholly positive experience. At the very least there would be some subtle (or not so subtle) proselyting going on in this program.

Considering that Trail Life USA seems to be targeted toward conservative to fundamentalist evangelicals (it's been all over sites like onenewsnow and wnd), it probably falls under category #1. Although, those in the Church that keep on saying that the Church should have severed its ties with the BSA will probably still gravitate over to this new thing.

Perhaps it's an intentional echo of the style of wording in John 20:17?

Oh, ok. Thank goodness there's not like a temple there or anything.

Oh, so Bolulder is some sort of satanic pit of vandalism and anti-Americanism wholly infested with hippies and man-eating wildlife who have formed a symbiotic relationship with man-hating hippies. ... I think. I'm still trying to figure out what kind of question this could possibly be the answer to.

What the heck did I just read?

Wait, weren't we just saying that dismissing people who have an opposing view by saying they have a mental disorder is a Bad Thing?

Dismissing another way of thinking as a mental disorder just because you don't agree with it and don't see why anybody would think that way gives your argument just as much legitimacy as if you pasted a picture of the thing you don't agree with on a punching bag, hit it for a while, and concluded that you're better than the punching bag.

Well, sure. Eternal gospel principles never change but our own implementation of those principles can always (and perhaps should always) be improved for the better. :) You also just reminded me of one of my favorite Joseph Smith quotes:

I'm getting the feeling that a prophet can't make even a minor otherwise unremarkable suggestion without being hyped up and scrutinised to death by members and non-members alike. I mean, if President Monson suggested to somebody that he wanted to see a movie I'd imagine that something like this would happen at church the next Sunday:

From what I've understood about your point of view, I think this conclusion is mostly due to unfamiliarity with the Church's implementation of tithing than anything else. I've found that the easiest way to understand why the Church does what it does with tithing funds is to go participate in a program that uses them. For instance, go volunteer at Welfare Square for an hour or so and I think you'll leave with a greater understanding of how the Church handles tithing funds and why it treats tithing as such an important thing.

I know you're kinda getting piled on already but let me try approaching this from a practical perspective. You seem to be expecting some kind of local immediate feedback from tithing that simply can't exist in a church with millions of members. Tithing was instituted long before the Church grew that much, and in its early days it probably was more obvious from an individual's perspective that their tithing funds were helping somebody they knew. Now that the Church has millions of members, it's unavoidable that, from your perspective, it may seem that your tithing funds enter some kind of nebulous cloud and exits that nebulous cloud at some unpredictable spot that doesn't immediately make much sense. That just comes as a nature of the Church's size, not as a indication of a problem with the institution of tithing. What helps with understanding why that happens is trying to have a big-picture view on tithing. As everybody else in this thread has already stated, the Church does a great number of things all over the world. In my experience, learning more about those programs (especially by participating in them) has helped me be fine with not understanding the distribution of my tithing funds by my perspective. On a more local level however, if you see somebody who is slipping through the cracks and needs the support of the ward, speak up. Be their advocate. Most often the reason why somebody who needs help doesn't get it is because the ward doesn't know about their situation and/or they may be too afraid or embarrassed to ask for help. Go to your bishop and see what you both can do to ensure that their needs are met. What the bishop ultimately does is up to him, but he's the one responsible for the welfare of the members of his ward and you can help him accomplish that goal in responsible, productive ways.

It may not have been so much of an acknowledgement of a problem as a general statement of "We could do better at this."

Yeah, but that's not fool-proof: a lot of people don't even know what the lock sign is for. Man-in-the-middle attacks that involve shunting someone from a secure site from a non-secure site hoping they don't notice exist out there. Web security really needs to get more intuitive, but I'm hoping things like HTTPS Everywhere gets more traction in the meantime.

That seems to me like a very narrow view of fasting. There's so many spiritual blessings you gain from fasting as well. Isaiah 58 is a good scripture to read about the spiritual blessings of fasting. :)

I don't think we can assume rich = deserving that easily.

Not to mention that these kind of operating systems are built completely differently. Operating systems that run safety-critical applications are called Real-Time Operating Systems, and have a completely different architecture than the operating system on your computer. These kind of operating systems run things like cars, medical devices, and spaceships. If you are using experiences with Windows or OS X when talking about computers in cars, you aren't comparing apples and oranges: you might as well be comparing apples with Abraham Lincoln.

Ok... don't panic when I tell you this, but... There are already computers (and operating systems!) inside cars.

I think the key with electronic systems in safety-critical applications is redundancy. There must be another system to fall back to, and switching from main to fallback must be easy to do manually. In this case, I think I would feel safe if DRCC was as easy to turn off as regular cruise control.

Why not go the rest of the way and make a set income requirement to vote?

What. The. Heck. I have never been so maliciously misread in my life. Nothing you have claimed about me here has even a shred of truth in it. I'm out of this now-libelous thread. Go bother someone else.

Look, why don't we just agree that claims of apostasy or corruptness are best reported to Bishops and not to the Internet and drop this line of the argument. Sounds good?