The Criertower

Renounce War, or a Substitute for Victory

Ben — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 22:08:47 -0700

I’ve been reading Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints by Hugh Nibley recently. It is incredibly relevant to our current situation, with both Brigham and Nibley being what we would now term “anti-war.”

Here’s a powerful letter to the editor that Nibley wrote to the Daily Universe, BYU’s campus paper:

Renounce War

Reprinted from the Daily Universe, Letter to the Editor. 26 March 1971

Editor:

Recently the doctrine has been. propagated hereabouts that there is no substitute for victory—military victory. May I call attention to a very strong statement on the subject in the Doctrine and Covenants: “Therefore, renounce war and proclaim peace, and seek diligently to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, and the hearts of the fathers to the children; and again, the hearts of the Jews unto the prophets, and the prophets unto the Jews; Lest I come and smite the whole earth with a curse, and all flesh be consumed before me” (D&C 98:16-17).

“Renounce” is a strong word; we are not to try to win peace by war, or merely to call a truce, but to renounce war itself, to disclaim it as a policy while proclaiming (that means not just announcing, but preaching) peace without reservation. But if we renounce war, how shall we defend and advance our interests? We are told that, too: after the clear statement of what we must renounce comes the equally clear statement of what we must put in its place—the substitute. Instead of playing with fireworks we are to “seek diligently” to advance the work of salvation for the living and the dead, and to make a serious effort to influence the news. That is a full-time job and our whole assignment. Next after the prohibition and the command comes the penalty: if we do not take this course “the whole earth’” will be cursed, and all flesh consumed (D&C 98:16-17). The alternative is not Just a substitute suggested for our consideration, but an out-and-out command, accompanied by a resounding ultimatum: either to renounce war or to be totally destroyed; there is no third choice.

Thus we have the mandate to renounce military action, the order to substitute something very different in its place, and the terrible penalty for failure to do both. A few years ago such an extreme proposition sounded quite fantastic; the consuming of all flesh belonged to the category of wild apocalyptic nightmares. Today, however, the best scientists all over the world are repeating the same alternatives with ominous urgency and insistence; it is to be either no more war or mutual annihilation. Those two verses of the Doctrine and Covenants revealed almost 140 years ago are, standing alone, enough to prove Joseph Smith a true prophet.

The Jaredites, thoroughly convinced that there was no substitute for victory, kept hacking away at each other until they demonstrated the truth of the maxim “Destroy them and they will destroy you.” When the Nephites, after a series of brilliant military successes, declared “that they would go up to battle against their enemies and would cut them off from the face of the land” as the only solution to the Lamanite problem (for there is no substitute for victory), their great general Mormon instantly resigned his command and “utterly refused” to fight with them, but “did stand as an idle witness” (Mormon 3:16) to record for our benefit what happened next. His message to us is an impassioned plea “to repent and prepare to stand before the judgment-seat of Christ” (Mormon 3:22), substituting the work of salvation for the work of destruction. If we persist in reversing the words of the Saviour, Who takes up the sword shall die by the sword (cf. Revelation 13:10), to read, perversely. Who does not take up the sword shall perish by the sword, we shall deserve what happens to us. This is not a protest, just a timely reminder, that we may remember when it happens that we have been warned and forewarned.

Hugh Nibley

Professor of Ancient Scriptures

The Power of Ruby

Ben — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 01:01:15 -0600

Here’s my very incomplete notes of Matz’s presentation at the BYU CS Department. I stopped taking notes toward the end. I hope they post pdfs of the slides he used.

It looked like they were recording the presentation, so maybe we’ll get video.

Matz 18 October 2006

So many languages: 4000 years ago (Babel)

“It is the source of my suffer.” but we can compare languages.

English v Japanese:

totally different syntax
rich ways to express respect
thousands of characters
need no icons

Purpose of Languages:

describe facts
express thoughts/feeling
think in

Languages are not only tools to communicate, but also tools to think.

Language determines the way we think. It influences human thoughts more than we think.

So, does this rule apply to programming languages?

Since we think in programming languages, the programming language must have influence on our thoughts.

What is a good language?

helps human thought
makes the programming experience better

“Ruby doesn’t focus on run-time efficiency at all” “Ruby focuses on cost of programming, programmer productivity.”

Ruby has an easy to remember syntax, and looks like other programming languages (familiar).

Ruby = Smalltalk – Unfamiliar syntax + perl’s scripting power + python’s exception etc. + CLU’s iterator + a lot more good things

Pure OOPL

Matz created ruby so that programming would be fun. Usability is the focus.

“Easy things should be easy. Hard things Should be possible.”

I knew it.

Ben — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 20:09:00 -0600

My results from the Nerd, Geek or Dork test:

Pure Nerd
60% Nerd, 43% Geek, 17% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the “dork.” No-longer. Being smart isn’t as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

Congratulations!

THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on nerdiness
You scored higher than 99% on geekosity
You scored higher than 99% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Not everything they teach you in college is true.

Ben — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 02:13:22 -0600

Last semester I took an English persuasive writing class to fulfill my advanced writing general-ed requirement. A major focus of the class was learning how to understand an audience, to ensure that you don’t alienate them as you try to persuade them over to your point of view, or at least help them consider that you might have a point.

One of the things we talked about was Political correctness. Most of the time, I have little patience for the PC police that seem to be looking to take offense as often as possible, but I did see a point in trying to avoid needlessly giving offense when you are talking to an audience that would normally be hostile to your position.

As part of the PC section, my professor talked about her son who has autism. She mentioned that the she finds term handicapped very offensive, since it originates as a durrogatory word for beggars, often disabled, who have their “cap in hand.” She told us not to use such a degrading word.

So, months later, I’m reading through my news aggregator and stumble across today’s Volokh Conspiracy which points out that such an etymology has been used by PC folks to demonize the word, but that the history is not correct.

I still have a login to BYU, so I fired up the OED and found the etymology given there:

handicap, n.

A word of obscure history. Two examples of the n., and one of the verb, are known in 17th c.; its connexion with horse-racing appears in the 18th; its transferred general use, esp. in the verb, since 1850. It appears to have originated in the phrase ‘hand i’ cap’, or ‘hand in the cap’, with reference to the drawing mentioned in sense 1.

1. The name of a kind of sport having an element of chance in it, in which one person challenged some article belonging to another, for which he offered something of his own in exchange…

So the word originates in games, betting games, and later moved to other contests, such as a golf handicap, and was only lastly transfered to those with disabilities. That’s certainly not the history I was taught.

Gosh, I thought professors knew everything.

Anna Arrives!

Ben — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 21:45:00 -0600

Anna was born July 21st at 9:23pm. She is 6 lbs 10 oz and 21 inches long.

More photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbytheway/sets/72157594208060151/

The waiting game

Ben — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 01:13:00 -0600

I’m sitting here in LDS Hospital waiting for the birth of my first daughter. We’ve been here since about 8:30am. We were woken up to Amanda’s water breaking at about 7:15, so we got up and started getting ready to go to the hospital.

Is a very interesting feeling waiting for a first child. Our lives as a married couple will forever be changed. Nine months of waiting doesn’t prepare you for this process. Sitting here in this room with Amanda all wired up is surreal. I have no idea what the road ahead holds for us.

I can’t wait to take the first steps down that unknown road.

LDS Book Wars

Ben — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:56:00 -0600

I have refrained from saying a whole lot about the Deseret Book and Seagull Book & Tape wars, aside from a few comments on Michael Cleverly’s Blog.

Today, though, Bob Lonsberry put his 2 cents in, and he reference something I hadn’t heard of before: the Rotary club’s 4-way test.

Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?”

That seems to be a good basis for an ethical business to me. I’ll be sure to have those rules in mind as I go forward with my own career.

New Linksys Router

Ben — Sat, 13 May 2006 02:35:00 -0600

My old router wasn’t fast enough to keep up with my fiber to the house.

And that’s over 802.11g wireless.

I love UTOPIA.

Free LDS MP3s

Ben — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 03:28:00 -0700

Well, I’ve finally bitten the bullet and gotten myself a FLAC, cough, I mean an mp3 player. I’ve looked around the web before for some free LDS mp3s. One huge resource is BYU Speeches. They have thousands of mp3s archived. Unfortunatly, its much to hard to get a collection together of any size. It takes too many clicks to get to the actually place to download the files.

Anyway, I’ve decided to catalog and index some of the talks to make them easier to download and listen to.

I plan to add more files (specifically from lds.org), but figured others might enjoy it while work is in progress.

Free LDS MP3 Index

Already Forgetting Pearl Harbor

Ben — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 04:23:00 -0700

As I was driving home from school today, I flipped the radio over to KSL at the top of the hour while I waited for Glenn Beck to start on KNRS. I caught up with the national news via the short hourly ABC news broadcast when a story started that I thought would be a short memorial that this was the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. Instead this is what I get (paraphrased):

“Today is a day remembered by the world war 2 generation, the kind you remember where you were when you heard the news. But tomorrow is day remembered be another generation. Dec 8th, the day John Lennon was shot.”

The story then went on to quote movie stars talking about the tragedy, and how the world was never the same.

Maybe I’m alone in this, but I really think they could’ve saved that story for tomorrow, when the anniversary actually happens. Today should be about remembering an event that plunged the country into a world war. A war that this generation is quickly forgetting.