The first time I thought about this question was on my flight from the MTC to the mission home in Florida. My older brother had just asked me something about this in a letter and as I sat pondering the question I was reminded once again that I had nothing insightful to say due to my total lack of life experience. Since then I have had a few occassions to bless babies yet I still wonder about this. What is a baby blessing for? In preparing for a baby blessing should I approach it like I do a healing blessing or is it different? (more…)

As far as I can tell our scriptures don’t say anything specifically relating to world population. But don’t worry because wikipedia does. Here are a couple of interesting graphs from the world population wiki:

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The title of this post is a direct quote from a recent visitor here at the Thang. The observation came in response to a chilly reply I gave to one of her* comments. Of course “Jenny” was right. I often do come across as kind of mean to strangers on the web these days. I don’t know if running a blog for more than five years makes everyone jaded and suspicious about newcomers but it seems to have had that effect on me. I admittedly find myself warily sizing up newcomers and barely being able to hide my sneaking suspicion that this anonymous new visitor is A) an internet troll in disguise, B) a moron, or C) both.

The sad reality for anyone that runs a Mormon blog is that option C) proves to be the case too often. So I find myself a little jaded. How about you? Has blogging made you “kind of mean” and jaded, especially with strangers on the web… yet?

* Her handle was a female name but of course on the internet no one knows…
(See what I mean about being jaded?)

Continued from here.

For those who are new, click here for all parts.

I’m going to keep this one short and sweet.
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Continued from here.

Well, we’ve talked about engagement before, so I don’t want to spend too much time on it, especially as there have not been that many dramatic changes in the results, even though the questions I used this time are a little different.
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Continued from here
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As a way of introducing the data set and setting out from the onset the natural imperfections inherent in doing data analysis via a web based tool, I thought I would begin with a brief explanation of the intent of the survey and some preliminary charts showing the demographics provided for those who took the survey.
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There was an interesting segment on 60 Minutes last week titled “Jihadists And ‘The Narrative'”. You can watch it here:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

“The Narrative” is the all too pervasive worldview among radical Muslims that says the United States is secretly bent on destroying Islam. Near the end of the segment it became clear that The Narrative relies heavily on conspiracy theories for its support. In this case the radical Muslims are convinced that the CIA was the driving factor behind the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on the United States. The logic is that the CIA put Al Qaeda up to the attacks so America would have an excuse to invade Iraq and Afghanistan and to proceed with its secret agenda to destroy Islam. (more…)

My 40th birthday is coming up this Tuesday. These birthdays that end with a zero are landmarks so I figured I should post something. (Plus I realized I haven’t written very many posts here this year.)

I was 34 when I started this blog. That doesn’t seem all that long ago but in some important ways I am a different person now than I was then. That is the beauty and danger of digging into metaphysics and philosophy I think; when you tinker with the very core of your beliefs you are adjusting the lens through which you see the universe. Making changes to the lens through which you see the universe (sometimes called shifting paradigms) is interesting in that it may not have immediate and obvious consequences but it will inevitably have massive long term implications.

I’m reminded of this famous quote attributed to Henry David Thoreau:

For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.

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Currently our survey has 802 responses, but has only picked up about 10 a day for the past week or so. So this is my last pitch. Next week we will take the survey down and start analyzing the results, so if you have anyone you think might be interested in taking the survey, pitch it to them. We really would love to get more participation. Currently our confidence interval is something like +/- 4.5, and it would be great to tighten that up a bit. I guess this is my “Now go and get [others] to partake.” post…

Anyway, thanks to everyone who has taken the survey and to those who have invited friends to participate. It’s been a pretty awesome turn out up to this point, and the results we’ve gathered so far are really interesting. I’m really looking forward to sharing it with you.

To invite friends to take the survey, just pass them this link via whichever method you prefer:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/271583/lds-survey

Ok, so here is our new survey, which focuses on Mormon culture and beliefs. The triple focus of this survey is to measure faith commitment, church engagement, as well as cultural belief on a variety of topics. The survey is 60 questions in length, and so may take as long as 6 minutes to complete. Some of the questions, due to their connection with obscure doctrine, may seem offensive to you. If this is the case, we apologize in advance.

Our goal is to get 5000 responses to this survey, and we will attempt to share this survey via Facebook, this blog, and email invitations. As soon as we feel the responses are no longer coming in, we will prepare our findings and publish them.

To invite friends to take the survey, just pass them this link via whichever method you prefer:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/271583/lds-survey

Thanks for your participation and support.