dprh

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  1. Haha
    dprh reacted to LDSGator in The Holy War   
  2. Haha
    dprh reacted to mirkwood in The Holy War   
    It's tithing time.  I can live with one loss every ten games.
  3. Haha
    dprh reacted to mikbone in The Holy War   
    NOBODY BEATS BYU 10 TIMES IN A ROW!
  4. Like
    dprh reacted to LDSGator in The Holy War   
    Mr/Mrs @mirkwood (no assuming gender here) BYU fans are ready to serve you a large helping of your own words. 
  5. Haha
    dprh got a reaction from Anddenex in The Holy War   
    Maybe he meant 'holey' war, referring to BYU's defensive line.  BOOM!
  6. Like
    dprh reacted to Backroads in I was the loving, patient, long-suffering person and it paid off   
    Just wanted to share a bit of job success.
    I teach for one of the virtual schools.
    Last week, I got a nastygram from a parent. Like, insulting my intelligence and skill. After letting myself imagine lots of delightfully  nasty and unprofessional responses in my head, I responded with nothing but empathy and sorrow and offers of help. I did this to about half a dozen more nastygrams. 
    Turned out that while the parent and I were talking over how to solve problems A, B, and C, it turned out the real problem was in an entirely different universe. Coworker in charge of separate universe helped and matter was resolved.
    Parent has been nothing but supportive and polite and friendly since. Like, freakishly polite and kind. 
    I think, though, we may become good partners over the year. 
  7. Haha
    dprh got a reaction from JohnsonJones in The Holy War   
    Maybe he meant 'holey' war, referring to BYU's defensive line.  BOOM!
  8. Haha
    dprh reacted to mirkwood in The Holy War   
    Interesting perspective @Vort.  I've experienced some less than light hearted rivalry while attending basket ball games between the two down in Provo (never could get football tix.)  I would not say either set of fans is innocent, though I suspect the minority are the problem.
     
    That said:

     
  9. Like
    dprh reacted to NeuroTypical in Brigham Young, Indian Slavery & Indentured Servitude   
    Almost.  I pass on passing judgement of cultural aspects of the past.  And it's pleasing.
  10. Haha
    dprh got a reaction from mirkwood in The Holy War   
    Maybe he meant 'holey' war, referring to BYU's defensive line.  BOOM!
  11. Haha
    dprh got a reaction from MrShorty in Brigham Young, Indian Slavery & Indentured Servitude   
    You pass on passing judgement on the past? So passe!
  12. Like
    dprh reacted to Vort in The Holy War   
    There was a time when the football rivalry between BYU and the U of U was fun and light-hearted. When I was a student at BYU in the 1980s, that is how we approached it. I was shocked to discover that many U of U students, even back then, sincerely despised BYU and honestly wished evil upon its football team as well as the institution itself and especially its students. Charges of "holier-than-thou" attitudes abounded, though I rarely saw such from BYU students. Acquaintances at the U of U confirmed that the bitter feelings were both sincere and widely felt.
    I avoid most rivalry nonsense now. Some U of U students, alumni, and supporters I count as friends, even family. I have been disappointed to find in my adult life that some U of U alums proudly wear a chip on their shoulder and actively denigrate BYU as an institution as well as its students and alumni, even at Church. A better man than I would take pity on such souls. For myself, I tend to despise those who despise me and things I find sacred.
    There is nothing ennobling or fun or enjoyable about "rivalry" interactions with Utah. U of U students, alumni, and faculty have seen to that. It's all hatred and virtue-signaling allegations of oppression. Mockery is common; a favorite of many U of U students is "sacrament" using Jello and whiskey shots. Har de har har.
    Personally, I am all for BYU dropping U of U from any and all sports and other intermural activities forever. Winning streak? Losing streak? Who cares? If they want to proclaim their superiority, that's okay by me. Let them wallow in their own filth. Just keep those I care about away from them.
    The point is, there is nothing holy about it.
    (And for the record, I'm certainly not talking about mirkwood. Don't mean to rain on his parade or his rivalry smack. I consider him one of the Ute friends I mentioned back in the second paragraph.)
  13. Haha
    dprh got a reaction from LDSGator in The Holy War   
    Maybe he meant 'holey' war, referring to BYU's defensive line.  BOOM!
  14. Like
    dprh reacted to MarginOfError in The Deaf culture phenomenon - insights?   
    We had a Deaf member in our ward for a time. I enjoyed a number of conversations with him on this topic while reading his dissertation (about improving education of Deaf individuals) and helping him prepare statistical methods and analyses. It was very much an empathy developing experience for me.
    Some of the things I learned from him
    Deaf culture is very much a thing. This is because language and culture are intertwined. Their culture affects their language and their language affects their culture. For many living in Deaf culture, receiving cochlear implants is akin to rejecting a part of the culture (I'm not interested in debating if this is rational or fair, especially among adults. I insist, however, in recognizing that it is how many in the Deaf community feel).
    Receiving cochlear implants would be somewhat similar to a person in a very strict and orthodox Mennonite community opting to join a less restrictive community that permits the use of light bulbs. It may seem to us outsiders that not much has changed, and that life should now be easier with light bulbs instead of candles--but the original community feels a sense of rejection and loss.
     
    In addition to that cultural aspect, Deaf culture is also on very high alert. For most of human history, deafness has been considered a burden and limitation. We've typically spent more time trying to correct and/or ignore the problem than we have addressing it. In the not-so-distant past, we sent deaf kids to "special schools." These weren't really schools, though. They were often more like asylums, hiding an inconvenient problem. In many, sign language was banned, and lip reading was required. Abuse was rampant, frequently unchecked. And because Deaf people were easily dismissed as damaged and unintelligent, their complaints often went unaddressed. Deaf culture views attempts to "normalize" them into the hearing world as a step back toward those more abusive days.
     
    Another really important aspect of their hesitancy is developmental. Humans develop a sense of language between 18 and 36 months of age. When I say this, I mean that language is more than just words and grammar. It's the entire sense of building meaning through the use of sounds, gestures, and shared representations. For deaf children, pushing for cochlear implants, or lip reading, or other things that make it easier for non-deaf people to communicate with the child stunts their development of language. If my friends research taught me anything, it was that deaf kids who learn ASL first do better in almost all aspects of life, but especially in language and communication. And it is because, in those developmental months, they are able to develop language, instead of just words.
     
    Lastly, and I think this is probably the hardest one for the hearing to understand, is that being able to hear offers very little in the way of improving their quality of life. For a deaf individual, being able to hear doesn't make it easier to communicate; it actually makes it somewhat harder. Remember, ASL is not English. So as soon as you put that implant in, they are bombarded in a foreign language and culture. All of a sudden, subtleties in pronunciation and tone convey a very complex array of meanings that we have spent a lifetime developing and interpreting. On to of that, the feedback loop isn't very good, because implants might make hearing possible, but it doesn't make it perfect. My friend said that, on a good day, he could make sense of about half of what anyone was saying to him. He had to rely on context and visual communication to fill in the rest. In short, the implant didn't make it easier for him to communicate to the hearing, it only made it easier for the hearing to communicate with him.
     
    I should probably stop here, but some other minor points might be of interest. Given the inefficiency of implants in adults, it is tempting to think that the earlier you can place an implant, the better. But remember, children need to develop a sense of language before they can learn to communicate concepts effectively. And communicating concepts about how well you can hear and distinguish sounds is a pretty abstract concept. How does one with no hearing background perceive the difference between the 'sh' in should and the 'zh' sound in azure? The more time we make a child focus on what they hear, the less time and energy they will spend on language.
    And very importantly, written communication is a poor substitute for the deaf. English is not their primary language. When they try to write and/or read English, they are communicating in their second language.  Asking a deaf person to communicate via writing is like providing a Portuguese interpreter to a Spanish speaker. They will get the gist, but they may miss some of the details.
    As an exercise, try imagining a language without articles (the, a, an). How do you communicate the difference between "the cat" and "a cat?" Now, there are lots of spoken languages in the world that do this (many Slavic languages lack articles) and native speakers are quite adept at picking up the difference from context. ASL works the same way. 
     
    So anyway, there are a number of cultural influences in the Deaf community that make many of them hesitant toward implants. Some may be more valid than others, but I think it is a big mistake to dismiss those influences simply because we don't understand them. And that may be the biggest contributor to their hesitancy: often, it feels like the hearing don't want to understand the Deaf--they just want the Deaf to be more like the hearing
  15. Like
    dprh reacted to MrShorty in Condoms are flying off the shelves in TX!   
    I know this group tends to disdain the more liberal and progressive sides of the Church, but, if you look over there, you will find anecdotes of people claiming to have received such revelations. Perhaps I have no moral backbone, but I have no desire to try to decide which of these revelations was legitimate and which were not. I certainly don't want the state charged with adjudicating what constitutes "genuine" revelation.
    I believe that abortion is a morally significant issue, but I don't know how to craft legislation that adequately addresses the moral issue (recognizing that the Tx law is probably more about political messaging/posturing and not really about wrestling with the moral ambiguities) with it's gray areas. I find myself preferring to leave government out of the difficult decisions and leave those decisions up to individuals. Sure, that means that some people will abuse the privilege, but that seems preferable to me to having the state be placed in a position of choosing for people how to make morally ambiguous decisions.
  16. Like
    dprh reacted to mirkwood in Requiring a COVID-19 Vaccine (shot/s)   
  17. Haha
    dprh reacted to askandanswer in What's a popular word, saying or phrase you can't stand?   
    I thought surgeons used stitches rather than buttons?
  18. Like
    dprh reacted to mikbone in What's a popular word, saying or phrase you can't stand?   
    At the end of the day.
    Lets button this up.
  19. Haha
    dprh reacted to LDSGator in What's a popular word, saying or phrase you can't stand?   
    Anything that @mirkwood says. 
  20. Haha
    dprh reacted to Milluw in Meme   
  21. Like
    dprh reacted to LDSGator in Musicals   
    @The Folk Prophet-Thoughts on Little Shop of Horrors? An all time favorite of mine. If I could sing (I can’t) I’d love to play the Dentist! 
  22. Like
    dprh reacted to NeuroTypical in Requiring a COVID-19 Vaccine (shot/s)   
    Oh, I get it.  Especially for folks who are young/fit/healthy/etc. And, depending on who you ask, it's totally possible surviving the actual thing gives a bit better protection, for longer than a vaccine.
    But from a "humans like their civilizations" perspective, we need to do a little math though.  With 7.64 billion people on earth, 1% is 76.4 million dead.  Not to mention 10-100X factor on people who just need hospitalization.   Depending on how many of 'em get sick and die at once, that many patients and corpses can overload services, wreck economies, overthrow governments, and such things.
    Around 150,000 people die every day on earth.  That's ~55 million/year.  So the "let nature take it's course" argument basically doubles how many people die in roughly a year.
    Such a better decision to make it a 99.99% survival rate with a 99.94% never getting sick enough to go to hospital.  But folks'll do what folks'll do.
    In the end, this will still eventually fade from our public consciousness, and take a place as background noise.  We'll think about it as much as we do cancer, fatal car accidents, and all the other things that kill humans. 
     
  23. Like
    dprh reacted to NeuroTypical in Requiring a COVID-19 Vaccine (shot/s)   
    - Limited definition of effective: "It makes you between 20 and 244 times less likely to get seriously sick or die of COVID".  IMO, the absolute bestest, most perfectest limited definition possible.  Would you prefer another?
    - I'm not in favor of mandating or forcing anything.  Even in cases where it might be legal.  Because history tells us about human nature, and human nature says it won't work.  
    - Yep, notions of herd immunity and stopping the thing via a vaccinated population, are pretty much dead notions at this point.  Bummer.  Delta variant sucks, we saw the possibility, but hoped it wouldn't arrive.  And it did.  'rona ain't never going away.  
    - I'm content with folks making their choices and living with their consequences.  Big fan of agency here.  "Hey, you wanna be between 20 and 244 times less likely to get sick or die of this thing?  They're handing out free shots over there."  Make the info available, help people not believe crap or dumb things, run all the incentives you want, leave everyone else alone.
     
  24. Like
    dprh reacted to The Folk Prophet in What in Sam Hill is the Point of there Being an LDS Church at All?   
    You know I realized I was just pasting a bunch of quotes from the same page. Just read the page yourself!
    https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/doctrines-of-the-gospel-student-manual/31-redemption-of-the-dead?lang=eng

     
  25. Like
    dprh reacted to Vort in What in Sam Hill is the Point of there Being an LDS Church at All?   
    Your entire premise is flawed. Other than Jesus Christ, no one "lives a life worthy enough to be admitted to the Celestial Kingdom." No one. There is no such man (or woman).
    Entrance into the celestial kingdom of God happens only because of the atonement of Jesus Christ. The atonement of Christ is received only on conditions of acceptance. Acceptance of the atoning blood of Christ means repenting and obeying Christ's teachings. Such repentance and obedience includes making and keeping divine covenants.
    Only Latter-day Saints are in a position to make and keep such covenants.