Jamie123

You may be a long way from where God wants you to end up, but does that mean you are not where He wants you to be now?

You may be a long way from where God wants you to end up, but does that mean you are not where He wants you to be now?

all the other blather about what Joseph Smith maybe did or didn't say, or people's personal glosses on scriptural passages, or stories about some supposed prophecy that may or may not have been made 150 years ago, all start sounding like college sophomores prattling on about their pet politically correct topic. It's the blind leading the blind, a maddening parade of foolishness and noise, an example of the words Shakespeare put into Macbeth's mouth:
 
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more: it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing. 
When our soul craves truth -- real, solid truth, not meaningless trivia or someone's stupid idea of one-upping others by displaying their immense grasp of nothing at all -- then we are ready to be told the painful truths. At that point, the question is whether we are humble enough to receive the truth and whether we have cultivated our spiritual sensitivity enough to have ears to hear.
 
God give me ears to hear and a humble heart to accept what I need to know. Whatever pain I experience will be made up ten thousand fold in the pain I and my loved ones can avoid. And God keep me from being one of the prattling fools who are more interested in showing off than in learning and teaching real truths.

I don't do heroes anymore.  
 
I do know many people who possess admirable qualities, and I admire those qualities and try to instill them in myself.  
 
But I have learned many times that folks usually have done something worthy of disgust and rejection.  I know many people who have committed horrible acts worthy of disgust and rejection.  I speak out against those acts.
 
I think separating people from their actions, once all balanced out, helps me follow the great commandment to love others.
 
Summary: You can still admire the admirable qualities in this ex-bishop ex-mormon.  You can still seek to instill those qualities in yourself.  You can mourn his choice, and should you see harm coming from it, you can mourn the harm.    It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

"Mormon" is another word for "Amish"
"Mormon" is another word for "Quaker"
All Mormons are Freemasons
Mormons are banned from being Freemasons
Mormon men can have as many wives as they like but cannot drink Coca Cola
Mormons believe that God communicates with the saints using tachyons
Sir Richard Branson is a Mormon (I actually believed this for some time before I looked into it)

I mean, seriously, a pregnant turkey? Does the term "egg" mean anything to you?

"Mormon" is another word for "Amish"
"Mormon" is another word for "Quaker"
All Mormons are Freemasons
Mormons are banned from being Freemasons
Mormon men can have as many wives as they like but cannot drink Coca Cola
Mormons believe that God communicates with the saints using tachyons
Sir Richard Branson is a Mormon (I actually believed this for some time before I looked into it)

The fact is that Dune is probably the just-plain-weirdest science fiction book ever to achieve mass popularity. I'm guessing the sandworms are among the largest embarrassingly phallic symbols in popular literature.

"We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God."
 
There are any number of questions and situations, especially pertaining to the next life, that simply have not been publicly revealed. This is one of them: What is the disposition of women (and men) murdered before they could find the gospel, marry, and other such things? The best answer is: God is just. We need have no fear that such people will be cheated or lose any possibility of exaltation because of things beyond their control.
 
But if you are looking for specific doctrines about such things, you are unlikely to find any beyond what others have already offered. As Latter-day Saints, we sometimes start thinking we know a whole lot -- and compared with the rest of the world, in some areas, perhaps we do. But your question points up how little we Latter-day Saints know about how all things actually work together and how all problems are to be resolved. We are pretty much as ignorant as the next person when it comes to such things; we have just enough knowledge to help us on our way.

The apostles have taught that no blessing, including celestial marriage, will be denied those who didn't have the chance to receive it in this life.  Searching the past few years of General Conference would find such references (though I'm not sure it would be a simple search).  Past prophets have taught this too.  (This is a logical conclusion given all those who have died before reaching an age when marriage was an option, and those who have died without the chance to have the Gospel in their lives.)  Fortunately, Christ will be the one to decide what chances we did and did not have, and what blessings we do or do not receive.
 
If one is worthy of a celestial marriage, but didn't have the chance to receive it in mortality, it's logical to believe that a proxy ordinance will have to be performed by a mortal (thus, in a sense, it must be done in mortality) - either before or during the millennium.  Personally, I think there will be resurrected beings traveling between the spirit world and the millennial earth helping with this work.

Some examples; just from my own experience.  As one of two principle engineers in a major engineering company; my responsibilities was to bid engineering work on most contracts and oversee development on 1/3 of new product development.  The company owned 90% of the market share and we made profits of about 100 million a year.  There was a slight downturn in the economy but with already funded new development and current projects all our engineers were more than busy for the next 5 years.
 
An emergency all hands meeting was called and our company president announced we were in financial difficulty and that we would have to lay off 20% of our engineers.  The remaining engineers would have to take a 10% cut in pay (not including 401K contributions that were being suspended indefinitely.   Management would take a 25% cut in pay.  The reason for all this was that during the next quarter the company would have to declare a 680 million dollar loss.   
 
I asked to be recognized and pointed out that there was not a single contract in the last 5 years that lost money – all the engineers were doing their job?  The only possible way the company could have a lost was if management in their efforts to expand had acquired debt from companies purchased.  I suggested that since management cause the problem in the first place that all bonuses be forfeited until the company was back on sure financial footing.  I pointed out that a sacrifice of $75,000 from a single upper management salary may seem like a great sacrifice but if the same individual took a 5 million dollar bonus – it did not seem right to do so at the expense of all the engineers.
 
Here is a regulation that neither the Democrats or Republicans will consider in the USA but it is law in Japan.  In a year that a company has a layoff there can be no corporate bonuses for management and no dividends for stockholders – those that take bonuses also get stiff fines in excess of any bonus with additional prison time.   
 
BTW the company I use to work for???  Now has less than 10% market share and has been sold twice – but the top management that ruined the company???? – They are all multi-millionaires from bonuses despite utter failure to do their job.
 
Here is another one from my personal experience.  DuPont developed polyester based x-ray film that they had a patent on.  All companies (3M, Kodiak, Agfa and others) distributed film from DuPont under their name.  I worked with DuPont automating their manufacturing process.  The profits were in excess of 2 million a day.  But digital imaging was being developed and DuPont decided to sell off their patents and operations for 600 million – that is less than a single year of profits.  Several investors wanted to by the operations for obvious reasons but among the buyers was an employee buyout offer for the full 600 million.
 
The federal trade commission denied all buyouts from any US based company because any US company would have a monopoly on the x-ray film industry – despite the fact that DuPont already had a monopoly.  Federal regulations required that if the operation was sold to a US company that it could not buy more than 49% of the operation.  But since all the manufacturing was in a single facility it was impossible to split up. 
 
The x-ray film facility ended up being sold to Agfa (a German company) that closed the facility two months after the sell and put 150 employees out of work.  Agfa bought the division for the dwindling market share – which is still profitable to this day.  The profits would have been divided between the 150 employees and since that was about 20 years ago the profits would have been over a billion dollars.
 
I do not care if you are a Democrat or Republican – the results are that workers get screwed despite all the political (liberal or conservative) rhetoric.

My wife (who is American) thinks it very strange that British people don't fly the Union Jack* outside their houses the way Americans fly "Ol' Glory". The reason is of course that our national flag has been hijacked by far right: anyone who flaunts it in public is presumed to be a racist skinhead only one step away from wearing a white conical hood with eye-holes.
 
Another two words that have been hijacked are "hacker" and "troll". A hacker used to be a person who was uncannily good at computer programming. Such people would get top marks in computing assignments but struggle to pass any of their other exams (mostly from sitting up all night playing D&D), get their degrees with the lowest possible grades and go on to get highly paid jobs in the software industry. Nowadays though, a "hacker" is someone who attempts to breach firewall security to get their hands on vital financial information.
 
And a "troll" was originally someone who posted silly messages on bulletin boards in order to enjoy the angry responses of people clueless enough to take them seriously: a somewhat naughty but generally harmless activity. Nowadays a "troll" is someone who defaces obituary websites with obscenities and otherwise engages in "cyber bullying".
 
And another thing (this rant is getting as long as Vort's) The word "Cyber" comes from the Greek "Kybernisi" which means controlling/guiding/governing. It's where we get "cybernetics" - which is the science of control systems (natural and artificial). It has nothing inherently to do with the Internet. Nowadays "cyber" has become a synonym for "electronic" or "computer-related" - usually in relation to crime or crime prevention (e.g. "cyber terrorism", "cyber security" etc.) I think this may be partly down to the "Cyber Men" in Doctor Who.
 
*Well OK then the Union "Flag" you annoying pedant!

This reminds me of something that happened to me when I first graduated from college. I was interviewed and recommended for a technical post at GCHQ (similar to the NSA in America). Of course they have to do a lot of background checks on prospective employees - which I assumed was just to make sure I wasn't a Soviet spy (this was at the tail end of the Cold War). And since I wasn't a Soviet spy I naturally assumed this would be a formality. However, the investigation dragged on for quite some time, during which I bummed around doing occasional warehouse work and gradually lost interest in working for GCHQ. Finally a letter arrived from GCHQ saying that as a result of their investigations they would not be able to employ me.
 
By now I was determined to reject any offer of a job from GCHQ anyway, and was already making arrangements to go back to university. But the letter still bugged me: it was laconic to the point of rudeness, giving no indication of what they had against me. If there was something nasty in my background I wanted to know about it! However several letters and telephone calls left me none the wiser.
 
After a few days I let the matter go and concentrated on preparing for grad school. But it still left a nasty taste in my mouth. I still wonder now what the skeleton had been discovered in my closet!

10100 = [2(3.322)](100) = 2332.2
 
So we would need 333 places to allow a computer algorithm to count up past a googol. We are currently using 64-bit systems, with 128-bit systems on the horizon. The next logical step is 256 bits, and then 512 bits. So a system that considers addresses and numbers greater than 333 bits is not at all far-fetched, though it is outside today's architecture.
 
EDIT: Oh, wait. You said "googolplex". Yes, I agree, that would not be likely to happen in computer terms. But if computers had need to deal with such absurd numbers in a mathematical way, they would be represented and dealt with differently, not as actual numbers encoded in the RAM but something more along the line of strings of digits, where we apply operations the way we would do it on paper.

Numbers have been defined that are so vastly much larger than a googol (or a googolplex) that it almost hurts just to contemplate it. One example is Graham's number, which is so unthinkably large that if you allowed every particle in the universe to represent a googolplex and then stacked them in a "power tower" (i.e. xx), the resulting number still would be fantastically less than Graham's number. Donald Knuth developed a so-called "up-arrow" notation that allows Graham's number to be represented as 3↑↑↑↑3.
 
But, to give just one example, even Graham's number is tiny compared with the so-called "busy beaver" function, represented as Σ(64). So we can easily invent numbers that are vastly larger, such as Σ(100), or Σ(googol), or Σ(Graham's number), or Σ(Σ(64)).
 
And all of these are microscopically, unfathomably small compared with the vast majority of numbers, almost all of which are incalculably larger.

This reminds me of something that happened to me when I first graduated from college. I was interviewed and recommended for a technical post at GCHQ (similar to the NSA in America). Of course they have to do a lot of background checks on prospective employees - which I assumed was just to make sure I wasn't a Soviet spy (this was at the tail end of the Cold War). And since I wasn't a Soviet spy I naturally assumed this would be a formality. However, the investigation dragged on for quite some time, during which I bummed around doing occasional warehouse work and gradually lost interest in working for GCHQ. Finally a letter arrived from GCHQ saying that as a result of their investigations they would not be able to employ me.
 
By now I was determined to reject any offer of a job from GCHQ anyway, and was already making arrangements to go back to university. But the letter still bugged me: it was laconic to the point of rudeness, giving no indication of what they had against me. If there was something nasty in my background I wanted to know about it! However several letters and telephone calls left me none the wiser.
 
After a few days I let the matter go and concentrated on preparing for grad school. But it still left a nasty taste in my mouth. I still wonder now what the skeleton had been discovered in my closet!

According to this website http://www.googolplexian.com/ the largest number with a name is a "googolplexian".
 
To explain: a "googol" is 10^100, or 1 with 100 zeros: 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
 
(I may have missed the odd zero - or added 1 too many - but if you're planning to count them to make sure then you're as sad as I am! Having said that, anyone who thinks numbers of that size have no practical purpose needs to read up about RSA.)
 
A "googolplex" is 10^(1 googol), or 10^10^100 or 1 and a googol zeros. (And if you watched Carl Sagan's Cosmos back in the 1980s you'll know that is unwriteoutable. Sagan ran around Trinity College Cambridge with rolls and rolls of paper with zeros on, but eventually admitted that the paper needed couldn't be stuffed into the known universe.)
 
A "googolplexian" is 10^(1 googolplex), or 10^10^10^100 or 1 and a googolplex zeros. (Don't even think about it.)
 
OK.....so I'm now going to make history....
 
A "googolplexiantantiddlyupmumpum" is 10^(1 googolplexian), or 10^10^10^10^100 or 1 and a googolplexian zeros.
 
Time to re-write the maths books!

Remember lewy when you were growing up, and how you got into that fight that one time?
Remember how you said some pretty bad things if you ever saw him when he was grown?
Remember how lewy always said he'd grow up to be a spy one day?  

Or alternatively the smarter you are, the less money you spend to do the same amount of work

Or alternatively the smarter you are, the less money you spend to do the same amount of work

Or alternatively the smarter you are, the less money you spend to do the same amount of work

Evil definitely has intelligence behind it. The way temptation has worked upon me over the years has certainly been quite organized and cunning. I can very often see after the event what the devil's plan was - but that doesn't always make it easier next time.
 
I suspect C.S. Lewis' depiction of devils in The Screwtape Letters is quite close to the truth - though of course I'm not suggesting that Hell is really organized along the lines of the British Civil Service. That was just a bit of satire on Lewis' part :)

Yesterday morning, my wife (lovely thoughtful lady that she is) brought me a nice big cup of coffee to me in bed. I put it on my bedside table. However I had failed to notice two things: (I) My beloved iPhone 5s was on the bookshelf above the nightstand, and (ii) about half of said iPhone 5s was projecting over the edge of said shelf.
 
I think you can guess what's coming...
 
I removed iPhone 5s from cup, dried it and turned it off. Later I tried turning it on again but it wouldn't work. I tried plugging it into charger but still no joy. I looked up online what to do - it suggested putting it in uncooked rice to absorb the moisture. But when I came home yesterday the thing was still as dead as a doornail.
 
You'd think that Apple - with all their advanced technology - would make an iPhone that is waterproof. This sort of thing easily happens, and the things cost about £200 to replace or repair. What a life!
 
Prophecy or not, there seems to be something to be said for WoW!

Yesterday morning, my wife (lovely thoughtful lady that she is) brought me a nice big cup of coffee to me in bed. I put it on my bedside table. However I had failed to notice two things: (I) My beloved iPhone 5s was on the bookshelf above the nightstand, and (ii) about half of said iPhone 5s was projecting over the edge of said shelf.
 
I think you can guess what's coming...
 
I removed iPhone 5s from cup, dried it and turned it off. Later I tried turning it on again but it wouldn't work. I tried plugging it into charger but still no joy. I looked up online what to do - it suggested putting it in uncooked rice to absorb the moisture. But when I came home yesterday the thing was still as dead as a doornail.
 
You'd think that Apple - with all their advanced technology - would make an iPhone that is waterproof. This sort of thing easily happens, and the things cost about £200 to replace or repair. What a life!
 
Prophecy or not, there seems to be something to be said for WoW!

Yesterday morning, my wife (lovely thoughtful lady that she is) brought me a nice big cup of coffee to me in bed. I put it on my bedside table. However I had failed to notice two things: (I) My beloved iPhone 5s was on the bookshelf above the nightstand, and (ii) about half of said iPhone 5s was projecting over the edge of said shelf.
 
I think you can guess what's coming...
 
I removed iPhone 5s from cup, dried it and turned it off. Later I tried turning it on again but it wouldn't work. I tried plugging it into charger but still no joy. I looked up online what to do - it suggested putting it in uncooked rice to absorb the moisture. But when I came home yesterday the thing was still as dead as a doornail.
 
You'd think that Apple - with all their advanced technology - would make an iPhone that is waterproof. This sort of thing easily happens, and the things cost about £200 to replace or repair. What a life!
 
Prophecy or not, there seems to be something to be said for WoW!