Carborendum

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Posts posted by Carborendum

  1. 6 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

    I've often extolled the virtues of privilege with woke folk when we're discussing the world's issues.  It's not about getting rid of privilege, it's about making sure as many folks have access to it that I do.   Hooray privilege!

    That is exactly the problem.  I remember the question that Chris Gardner asked the rich guy "What do you do? And how do you do it?"  The rich white man told this down and out black man the answer.  Chris then went after it by doing what the man told him to do.  Now Chris is a multi-millionaire.

    Wokesters would rather tear down anyone with wealth so that we're all equally poor rather than allow avenues for everyone to become rich.

  2. 30 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

    Somewhere near Vernal is a mountain that sees some sort of massive bug activity just about every year.  For whatever reason, my in-laws like visiting there to "see the bugs".  So we drive up the mountain for 30 minutes with the radio turned up loud so we can't hear the crackle-squish as we drive over them.   Then we get out of the car and watch the entire landscape move for 5 minutes.  Then I nope out early and drive back down, with the radio even louder, because everything we squished is now surrounded by 10 bugs eating the squished one, so we're running over 10X what we were before. 

    I guess they weren't cicadas or crickets, because other than the squish and the sound of the wind, it was totally silent.  That made it even more freaky - couldn't even hear any scuttling noises.  

    [shudder]

    Box elder bugs are a common pest in that area.  They can be cannibalistic with their dead.  And they don't make a lot of noise.

    Could that have been your bugs?

  3. I'm not familiar with this relief.  But that doesn't look like a bucket of water.  It looks like a basket in which he places the fruit.

    There are many flood myths in many cultures.  This lends credence to idea that there really was some historical event that people believed to be a "great flood."

    There are also many garden myths from ancient cultures.  The garden was considered a symbol for paradise.  And all stories begin from paradise and go through the hero's journey from there.

    But in both cases, the basic description of a (flood and a boat) or an (idyllic paradise) are where the similarities end.  The details are quite different.

    Gilgamesh and Enkidu were invaders into paradise, and they chose to kill the gods and other rightful inhabitants.  Then they cut down the great cedar which connected earth to heaven.  The flood was supposed to be secret among the gods.  And the humans outsmarted the Gods by building a boat the same size as the dimensions of the boat the gods built.

    Only in the very general and vague outlines are these stories similar to the Biblical accounts.  And it is in the details that we see the goodness of God rather than the pride of man.

    EDIT: I just found a similar relief online.  Apparently, this is a depiction of a djinni (angel) performing his duties in the garden.  The tree to the left is fruit.  The tree to the right is "the sacred tree" (in Assyrian).  In Babylonian, this was the "cedar of heaven."  It was that cedar that gilgamesh and Enkidu chopped down.

  4. So, things have taken an interesting turn.

    The boy in this story is doing better.  The parents aren't exactly abusive.  But they are very strict and they simply don't know how to adult, much less parent.

    He has already signed up for the military.  He has gone to boot camp. And he's just waiting for HS graduation before he heads out.

    He has chosen to believe that the families he sees at church are the family he wants to have when he grows up.  I see a bright future for that boy.

    But now...  I have to ask, Is normal life really that foreign to people?

    His little sister keeps making the wrong choices.  While the brother has chosen the life that will provide the family that he has seen in others' examples, the sister has chosen to continue in her mother's footsteps of basically being a slut.  There is no other word for it.

    She has had the chance to see all the same families as her brother.  She has seen just as many good examples of what she could have.  But she keeps making bad choices.

    She considers herself a victim.  She thinks all her friends have abandoned her.  The truth is that she abandoned them in favor of her lifestyle.  She had a long period where it appeared that she would come around.  But in the end, she simply made a choice just like her brother.  But she chose differently.  She didn't want this life.  She wanted the life of a slut.  Again, there is no other word for it.

    As a result she actually did temporarily kill herself through starvation (anorexia).  She was resuscitated and nursed back to health.  But she is continuing down the same path and worse.  There is simply nothing we can do.  

    She stopped talking to all her family and friends.  Recently, she opened up to my daughter whom she still considers a friend.  This is the same girl who was gaslighting my daughter for months without my realizing it.

    The girl has decided to move in with her pregnant friend who is carrying her uncle's child.  We have no way to contact her or her friend or figure out if the uncle is in jail for this or not.

    Two people in the same situation. Both are shown a better life and how to get there.  One chose the better path.  The other chose a path of death.  We simply can't do anything to help her.

    This is just insane.  I've been suicidal with depression before.  But this is something else entirely.  I am at a loss how people keep choosing such paths that are so long and protracted through a valley of pain and sorrow.  There are hands being offered all around, but they simply don't want to accept them.

    I don't really know why I'm telling you all this.  There's nothing I can do.  But I can't just keep it bottled up inside me.   I guess I just consider this therapy.  Thanks for listening.

  5. I’ve made statements to the effect that truth and chastity are inseparably connected.  This was based on the metaphoric “Armor of God.”  The Girdle of Truth is often associated with chastity (protects the privates).

    I had pointed to Hamlet asking if Ophelia was honest.  This was a double meaning.  He was first asking if she was being serious about giving his keepsakes back to him.  But he realized something was up, and that they were probably being spied upon.  So, he took it a different way.  He turned it into a question about her chastity.

    A man who got a woman pregnant needed to marry her which would “make an honest man out of him." 

    Pres Kimball wrote of the relationship between honesty and chastity very briefly in The Miracle of Forgiveness.

    Even with all that, I recognized that in our generation, we don’t quite seem to understand what honesty & chastity have to do with one another.  Part of that is modern religion.  Part of that is modern culture.

    Jordan Peterson said,”Sex has never been free.  There were always consequences.  Casual sex is a myth.  There is always some sort of emotional exchange and bond formed.”

    He brought up the idea that children are always a possible consequence of casual sex.  With today’s wide and affordable access to contraceptives, there does appear to be a crack in the wall.  But because we’ve only had both cheap contraceptives and widespread casual sex in the culture for maybe one generation, we don’t have enough data to determine if that really changes anything.  So, it is too early to tell if this technology changes thousands of years of history and evolution or not.

    Recently, I’ve done a lot of learning about male-female relationships in today’s society.  One thing that had me worried was why my children and all my nieces and nephews were having such difficulty finding an eternal companion.  I count 14 young adults of marriageable age. Only three are married. One solidly moving toward engagement.  One more has a prospect, but the more I observe that one, the more misgivings that relationship is generating.  We’ll see.

    Many of these young adults are finding it difficult to find someone who is even interested in getting married.  One of them has no interest in finding a girl because of the maneaters out there.  He doesn’t know if he can find a girl that won’t just destroy him like two of his uncles have experienced.  He is a textbook hermit. 

    He works from home with a fine paying job.  And he’s looking to double his income by taking a few more classes.  He’s making a lot of money, has few expenses.  And he is a savvy investor.  He’ll probably be a millionaire by 30.  But what woman out there is going to be his proper match and value an eternal marriage?

    We see declarations of such “strong-independent-modern-women” (SIMW) who don’t need a man, but still expect her man to make more than she does to prove he’s worthy of her.  Really?  What logic generates that?

    These SIMW only look for rich SIMPs.  But if a man is really all-that then why would he want a woman who will walk all over him?  SIMW want to lead except for the times that she is tired of leading.  Then she expects the SIMP to immediately take the reins and know exactly what to do and make all the right decisions that she must eventually approve of.  Are they being honest with themselves?

    SIMW goes to gyms with barely anything on and sets up her exercise station directly in front of a man who has been working out for the last 10 minutes.  Then she raises a stink about how he’s checking her out.  Is this honest behavior?

    SIMW decides that she no longer needs a man and divorces him because she wants to lead her “authentic life” for real fulfillment.  And BTW, she wants joint custody with 100% child support and a ton of alimony.  Is she for real?

    SIMW refuses to get married until she can find a man with $300k income, over 6ft tall, and is a 10.  She believes this is possible because that is what social media says she can do.  Nevermind that she has never gone to the gym, herself, and she has a seriously high body-count, and she doesn’t even make $30k/yr.  Is her head screwed on straight?  She wouldn’t know truth if it hit her in the face.  No, social media says she's a 10 and can bag any man.  No problem.

    Now, what about men?  When women behave like this, it is all too easy for men to forsake marriage.  Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?

    Where is commitment?  What is commitment?  Men just take what they can get whenever they can.  But now we see a lot of men leaving the dating/marriage market entirely because they know that they always get the shaft.  From me too fraud to divorce always favoring the woman (especially no-fault divorce) men know what a high risk merely dating can be, let alone marriage.  Why?  Because there is no trust.  No one is honest anymore.

    Honesty is always linked to chastity.  If your chosen partner has a high body count, then how can you trust them?  They never made a commitment about the most intimate decision of their lives.  They chose intimacy and made it like playing a video game.  It’s just something you do when you have the time.  You can take it and leave it.

    If you’re flippant about committing to intimacy, then you’re flippant about committing to anything.

    BIOLOGY: Oxytocin has been called the “cuddling hormone.”  A great deal of it is released during intercourse.  It is not merely a sexual high.  It is an emotional bonding high.  It is also released when mothers nurse their babies, so it is not just a sexual thing.

    When we engage in intercourse so often without even really considering a relationship, our very biology is getting screwed up.  The oxytocin is trying to tell you that the person that you just shared this with needs to be with you.  You need to stay.  You need to commit to a relationship.  When we ignore and treat casually such biological signals, it messes with our entire psychology related to commitment and keeping promises.

    This is why Balaam was able to destroy the children of Israel by sending in the loose women to tempt the men away.  There is never any such thing as casual sex.  There is always a consequence.  And refusing to acknowledge that consequence/responsibility is dishonest.

    It doesn’t matter if we avoid tyrannical government.  Hollywood already introduced casual sex into this society when I was a kid.  Yes, there was always some of it in any society.  But "society" at least knew it was wrong.  It wasn’t until the 80s where it started being considered acceptable behavior.  And it was during the Friends era that it became expected.

    When society stopped being honest, we were all ready to listen to any politician tell us anything. And we'd believe it.  Not because we had confirmation by the Holy Ghost, but because it was pleasing to our ears.  And pleasure without responsibility is all we wanted.

  6. UPDATE: 

    The foreclosure rate is nearly 50%.  That's a lot more than I was led to believe earlier.

    The article blames this on the 12.9% interest rate.  This is reminiscent of the sub-prime mortgage market that contributed to the '08 collapse.

    Usually, banks and mortgage companies are required to give back any additional proceeds from the sale of the property back to the homeowner.  However, because the financing arm (separate business entity) arranges public auctions with the most minimal compliance with the law, they end up selling it back to the developer at sub-principal prices.  Then the developer can sell the property to any new purchaser at market rates.

    So, yes, I guess it is a predatory practice.

    The development says that they have to charge higher for the tremendous risk that they take on with such a development.  But they wouldn't need to do that if they offered the properties to people who they knew could actually afford it.

    Additionally, they are about to be investigated by the IRS, EPA, USACE, and TCEQ.

    I saw some of their plans when I was negotiating with them.  I didn't see any problems with the EPA, USACE, and TCEQ issues.  There were some concerns. But as far as I could tell, they did it the legal & technically correct way.  They could have a problem with the TCEQ because of construction conditions.  But the overall final design looked compliant.

    As for the IRS, I have no idea.

    One of the stupidest comments I read about this was that the site was prone to flooding.  Well, duh-uh.  It's Houston.  The entire region is prone to flooding.  But the plans I saw had proper mitigations in place.

    All the same, I'm glad we were not able to come to an agreement.  I may have had my license taken away for simply being involved with the guy.

  7. https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-781456

    I'm not sure I understand what all happened.  I've read several different websites about this story.  And I don't really hear much about these "extremists."  What was their motive?  What made them extremists?  What separated them from the Jews of this Synagogue?  Why did they target the sanctuary?

    I don't know why I think this is important. I don't know if it is important.  But for some reason, I just think this is a very thin story for something like this.

  8. 20 hours ago, mikbone said:

    Can you think of any time he offended non-members?

    He was not sent to the Gentiles, but to the House of Israel.  How often did He even interact with them?  Very infrequently.  His primary mission (in His preaching) was not to preach to or condemn or convert any Gentiles.  His primary mission was to bring the House of Israel into the new dispensation.

    Did he ever offend Gentiles?  I don't know.  If I searched, I'm sure I could find something.  But if His only reason to condemn or offend (if you can call it that) was when he was specifically preaching about obedience to the Law of Moses and how it was a preparatory law for the New Covenant.  He condemned Jews for not realizing what the true meaning of the Law was.

    Gentiles wouldn't even understand what He was saying.  He wasn't talking with them.

  9. 1 hour ago, zil2 said:

    You have to have 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third - that's a haiku.  (Well, there are a few other rules if you want to get technical, but you have to at least get the syllable count right.)

    Ahh.  Haiku.  Ok.

    I was simply thinking about Japanese sentence structure.

  10. 1 hour ago, Traveler said:

    I had a problem finding a link that estimates 1 billion to one (nuetrinos to protons)

    You had asked about Neutrinos to Neutrons, not protons.

    EDIT:  Oops.  I guess you asked for both.  Well, the answer would be different for each wouldn't it?

    1 hour ago, Traveler said:

    This doesn't say how many there are.  Neither link did.

  11. 58 minutes ago, Traveler said:

    Supernovas will not occur without neutrinos.  Here are a couple of links for those interested to get started:

    https://phys.org/news/2021-07-supernova-explosions-sustained-neutrinos-neutron.html#:~:text=It's hard to conceive that,the heating provided by neutrinos.

    https://phys.org/news/2021-04-titanium-triggers-titanic-explosions.html

    Here is a fun question for the forum - For each neutron and proton in the universe -- how many neutrinos are there?  Try guessing first and looking up the answer second.

    From your links, it appears we're both right and both wrong.  It is not exactly a "reaction".  It is a process.  And it appears that neutrinos are involved in the process.

    To answer your question, I had believed that the number of neutrinos:neutrons was roughly 1:1 or possibly 10:1.  Do you know of a source that gives a more specific number?

  12. 36 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

    One real interesting thing about Colorado - it passed a law saying it doesn't matter who Coloradans vote for, CO's electoral votes will all go to the winner of the national popular vote.   So if Trump gets the popular vote, CO votes for Trump, even though he might not actually be on the ballot.

    I don't know about the CO statute itself. But my understanding is that most of the states that passed such a law, stipulated that it only takes effect if a certain threshold of states agreed to it as well.  And we haven't reached that threshold yet.

    Again, it appears to be grandstanding for now.  But those laws have little hope of being repealed any time soon.

    Maybe that was kinda your point.  But there is a certain line that is threatened to be crossed here that hasn't happened before.  Removing a name from the PRESIDENTIAL ballot based on accusation alone without conviction?  How dare the people choose a candidate that they disagree with?

  13. 22 hours ago, Vort said:

    So there's your Sunday thought. Gold is created only the heart of stars. Don't think you can get it some other way. You can't.

    I happened to mention to a young co-worker that I'd been married for X years.  She was impressed and asked me what our secret was.  I gave her a cutesy answer and was  about done. 

    Since then I realized that there really isn't a secret.  It is just the same age-old wisdom that everyone tells you, but fewer and fewer actually do anymore.

    In the same way, the family was going over the Come Follow Me lesson for the week.  The subject came up "how do we use the BoM to increase our faith in Christ?"  Well, do what it says.  Moroni's promise.  Simple.

    Read, study, ponder, pray, live.

    There is no secret.  There is no magic wand.  There are plenty of excuses.  But no alternatives.  Simply do what Moroni says.  Nothing else will work.

    How do we gain eternal life?  "What does it say in the Law?... this do, and thou shalt live."

    ********************

    * I almost didn't want to post this. But I had to, to pre-empt any naysayers.  Man has been able to alter the nucleus of other elements in laboratories to make gold.  However, the process takes so much energy that it is cost prohibitive to do so.  It may be an interesting mental exercise to consider the original intent of this thread, if that fact has any useful metaphorical meaning.

    So far as I'm aware, it has been through (effectively) fission methods.  While fusion is theoretically possible (as proven by the reactions in stars) we have not had a successful instance of gold formed by laboratory fusion (that I'm aware of).  Primarily, they have done the calcs, considered the resources involved, and figured "why bother?"

  14. I just found it kinda funny that Colorado & Maine removed Trump from the primary ballots (and, by extension, the final ballots).  It probably wouldn't have much of an effect because those states would likely go to Biden anyway.  So, just what are they thinking?

    I just heard now that DeSantis wants to retaliate by threatening to remove Biden from the ballot in Florida.  Again, why?  There's no way Florida is going to Biden.  So, what is this about.

    Yes, yes, political grandstanding, blah blah.

    But it just got me to thinking... what if every state pre-emptively decided to take candidates off the ballot?  These states would clearly delineate the lines of national divorce.  And we've discussed this in previous threads.

    At this point, is it likely?  Probably not.  But at some point it will be.  And I wouldn't be surprised if I witnessed it in my lifetime.

  15. 10 hours ago, Vort said:

    1. I'm pretty sure you're talking about neutrons, not neutrinos.

    No, he's talking about neutrinos.  But he has a few things mixed up about it.

    10 hours ago, Vort said:

    2. It's not the neutrons (or neutrinos) release from fission that ignites the fusion; rather, it is the immense temperature and pressure generated by the fission weapons that enables the fusion to occur.

    Correct. 

    He got it backwards.  He stated that neutrinos were required as among of the reactants.  Instead, they are (currently theorized to be) among the products of the reaction.

    However, what happens is that Uranium can decay into lead.  The Lead continues to get bombarded by neutrons.  This can go down several paths of decay and loss of neutrons to turn into gold.

    This process is a TINY percentage of the Uranium decay.  However, Uranium mining tends to produce gold as a by-product.  Can you imagine that gold is a "by-product"?  Amazing world we live in.

    @Traveler, I'm not going to claim expertise on neutrinos.  I just happen to know more than the average person.  So, if you can point to a study which shows that neutrinos are among the reactants to a fusion reaction, then I'll accept that correction.  But as far as I know, it is one of the products, not a reactant.

    10 hours ago, Vort said:

    The neutrons are a relatively small part of that heat and pressure.

    They're beginning to wonder about that regarding fusion in stars.  We'll see where the science takes us on that.