As some of you might remember, I was participating in a Sept. 15 to Nov. 15 mustache growing contest with my five brothers and one brother in law. The contest is now over and entries are in.

BEHOLD! (and tremble)

The judging is taking place right now. (Judges are mostly extended family members on a family emailing list.) The three categories are Bushiness, Coolness, and Goofiness. While most of the bros went for bushy staches of sorts I decided to mix it up and focus on the goofiness/coolness angle. We’ll see soon how that works.

Anyhow, Kristen created the grand prize. Here it is:

(more…)

This talk by Dan Gilbert is one of my all-time favorite TEDTalks, I must have listened to it a half-dozen times. I can’t help but think of my mom who has as one of her principal catch phrases, “I like to keep my options open.”

(more…)

I can’t get my head around it. Why do Mormons name their kids crazy gibberish words? Or if they go with a normal name, they have to spell it in some insane way that makes no sense? What is up with that? There’s at least one in every ward I’ve ever been in. Is it Cree-L’s fault?

No wonder missionaries all go by Elder and Sister. No one would listen to a guy named Bucket.

If I’ve counted correctly, A Serious Man is the Coen brothers’ 14th film. As the 2000s got underway, I was starting to think the Coens had lost their mojo. With Intolerable Cruelty in 2003 and then The Ladykillers in (2004) things were on a bad trajectory. Luckily, after taking a few years off they proved they still had some genius left by adding another masterpiece to their body of work with No Country For Old Men. Last year brought Burn After Reading which, despite having its moments, was not in contention for their best work. (more…)

No, seriously. See here.

Oh, and the BYU football team managed a win this weekend too.

52-0. Just the way I like it.

A guest post submitted by our good friend J. Stapley:

In this post, I hope to successfully describe what I believe to be a prominent and persistent failing among individuals seeking to explore Mormon cosmology. Specifically, I will describe the common use of analogy, its limitations and highlight how, when employed in the exploration of Mormon thought, it frequently yields conclusions that are highly unreliable.

When forming an analogy, an individual takes a source and then maps attributes onto a target. For an analogy to be successful, both the source and the target have to be systemically continuous. That is to say, they have to be playing by the same rules. Furthermore, for any likelihood that the analogy be accurate, the observer has to be aware of the rules.

Let’s look at some historical examples of failed analogies and how they relate to the two requirements of likely analogical success:
(more…)

In the absence of revelation on the subject, we are left to speculate on the nature of spirits. In this post I will to sketch out some of the possibilities.

Spirits vs. Intelligences vs. Minds

One of the first difficulties we have is with definitions. There is no clear revelation that explains whether a spirit is the same thing as an intelligence or not. There is some evidence to support the idea that spirits/intelligences/minds are all names for the same thing, or at least that Joseph Smith considered them to all be names for the same thing. But counter arguments have been made that spirits are a more complex things than intelligences/minds. (Eternal minds and intelligences are almost universally considered to be the same thing in Mormonism as far as I can tell.)

Beginningless or not?

Near the end of his life Joseph Smith taught that the “mind of man” is co-eternal with God and thus without a beginning. Brigham Young was away on a mission when Joseph Smith publicly taught this idea and Brigham taught years later that the mind of man does indeed have a beginning. BH Roberts and others later attempted to bridge this gap between Joseph and Brigham with the tripartite model of spirits where our spirits are essentially bodies (with a beginning) made of spirit matter that are powered by our beginningless (presumably immaterial) minds/intelligences. Orson Pratt speculated that spirit matter is made up of atoms or particles like all other matter and that at least some individual spirit particles have a rudimentary intelligence. He further suggested that these intelligent particles could somehow unify to create higher order minds. So in his model, only the rudimentary parts of the mind of man are beginningless while the human-level mind clearly has a beginning.

Cartesian minds?
(more…)

I’ll blog as we go.

First Quarter
– First defensive series has BYU coming hard after Andy Dalton and it really works. Three and out.
– First offensive series for BYU is a steady diet of Harvey Unga and quick passes. When Hall takes longer to pass he gets sacked.
– TCU gets the ball back and starts moving the ball. The D-line again can’t get the QB and that leads to big pass plays (like we have seen a lot this year).
– On the second series the TCU offense completely bullies the BYU D. It results in a Frog touchdown that seemed too easy.
– Three and out for BYU followed by another easy touchdown for TCU. 14-0. Something big needs to change or BYU will be blown out of this game.
– Next BYU possession — three and out again. That is just the first quarter. This could get reeeal ugly folks.

Second Quarter (more…)

Just wanted to note an interesting new marketing strategy from Deseret Book.

http://deseretbook.com/free

Here you can download a complete PDF of the books for free. Personally, I probably would never read most of these, but I was pleased to see Bruce Chadwick and Brent Top’s book here, as I like Dr. Chadwick’s studies, but would never have paid for this book. (As an aside, I’ve always loved the church’s policy of giving away their books for free via the web. (I wish the Boy Scouts did the same). Deseret Book, however, is not the church, but is a for-profit business. I can only assume they are doing this for marketing purposes.)

So what do you think? Will “the power of Free” help Deseret Book increase it’s market share?

BYU survived a motivated SDSU team in San Diego today and took down the Aztecs 38-28.

It was a fairly pedestrian showing by BYU but a win is a win and no one will remember the score if BYU can beat TCU next week. The good news is that the passing attack of TCU isn’t nearly as good as SDSU’s. The bad news is the TCU defense is a lot better than SDSU’s.

Since I have a degree from both schools I was pleased with how good SDSU looked today. I think the Aztecs are on their way out of the MWC cellar and ready to be at least a second tier team in the conference. They seem to have better coaches and a better culture overall than I have seen on Montezuma Mesa in a long time.

Some random thoughts on the game:

– Andrew Rich got burned on pass coverage a LOT in this game. The guy can really hit but he was a bit exposed as a pass defender I thought.
– How about that Scott Johnson? Before the half he made a shoestring tackle on a log pass play to save a touchdown and a couple of plays later intercepted the ball to keep the Aztecs off the board at all that drive. That was huge.
– Max Hall looked really good. Several touchdowns and no interceptions. But the best play of the game was his deciding to run the ball in at the goals line with the clock winding down when everyone (including his own team) thought he was going to spike it at the end of the half. That was cool.
– Look for Dennis Pitta on Sundays starting next season. The dude may be the best BYU tight end of them all before career is over and that is saying a lot.
– Manase Tonga is underrated. Tailback Harvey Unga was ok today but he is a lot better when Manase is playing fullback.
– It is nice to seen newer offensive players like Hafoka, Thompson, Diluigi, and even Ashworth really contributing. BYU has a lot of weapons.
– I loved the Jorgenson sack at the end. Not only did it finally ice the game but he added to his conference record stats.

TCU is up next week in Provo. This is a major measuring stick game for this team and season. The game has massive conference title implications.