Another week

Work this week was mostly about learning Django and meeting with our main software vendor to evaluate our use of their products. Not to mention the disaster recovery test which was very educational. It’s a good thing it wasn’t a real disaster.

Thursday night was pack meeting, our Blue and Gold Banquet which had to be postponed from last month due to a scheduling conflict. David bridged over to Scouts, and then Friday night went on his first camp out.

Yesterday Jonathan had a soccer game and then his team pictures. (They lost the game but had fun.) From there we went to my mother-in-law’s house to celebrate her birthday. I left early to take Sam to work and to be home when David got home from scouts. Then we went back and got the rest of the family and came home, and Amanda, Julia, and I got dressed quickly and went to the Stake Center for the Young Women’s broadcast. (My current calling involves setting up the equipment for broadcasts.) So it was a pretty busy day.

I always thought they did

Adam Connor, one of my coworkers, posted a link to this on our intranet bulletin board site: High-powered mathematicians take on free will.

The gist of it is this: They say they have proved that if humans have free will, then elementary particles — like atoms and electrons — possess free will as well.

I have occasionally pondered whether or not elementary particles have free will, and if I had to guess I’d say the answer is “yes.”

The universe is a much stranger place than we think it is. People are always trying to put reality in safe little boxes, and often try to use religion or “science” to keep it there. But real science, and revealed religion, don’t cooperate; the weirdness keeps escaping if you pay honest attention.

Everybody look out…

Sam got his driver’s license today.

In other news, we had a pretty heavy hailstorm blow through this afternoon.

Speaking of the temple

One of the things we were asked to do at Stake Conference was have a family night lesson on the temple and then take the kids to visit the temple grounds. Since this week was Spring Break we had the lesson on Monday and then I took yesterday off work and we went down to San Antonio. Sarah got off work early and met us there.

Jonathan and Andrew by the pool

Everybody except Daniel (who took the picture.)

The kids.

Julia and I

This morning Julia, Daniel, and I went back (and again met Sarah there) for an endowment session and to do some initiatory. It’s really great having a temple less than two hours away.

Thoughts on “sacred”

Last night at Institute class* Sis. Smith, the instructor, mentioned a blog post she had made about Big Love and the temple that almost got her interviewed on NPR. (Part of her post was quoted by the Salt Lake Tribune as well.) She remarked that she’s decided we would be better off describing the temple ceremonies as “private” rather than “sacred” since our society has pretty much lost the idea of sacred, but people understand privacy. She’s probably right, but I’m not ready to give up on the concept of sacredness just yet.

In fact, I think the problem goes beyond just the sacred. It seems we’re losing the idea that context matters to the meaning of our speech or our acts; that what might be appropriate to do and say in one situation might not be appropriate in another.

”Sacred” comes from the Latin word sacer which besides “holy” can also mean “accursed”. If I remember correctly, my Latin teacher suggested that the idea behind the root was “set apart from the mundane or ordinary,” whether for good or for evil. In other words, it refers to something that has a special context separate from our temporal life. When you take it out of that context, it loses whatever meaning it has.

That’s why we’re upset about the temple ceremonies being portrayed on a TV show, whether in a sympathetic or hostile matter: when you remove them from their correct context, you destroy their meaning.

(* We studied the first part of Psalms last semester; this semester we finished Psalms and are now in Proverbs.)

Happy Birthday, David!

David is 11 today!

Before opening the presents

After opening the presents

With his cake.

With his siblings

(Sam was at work.)

Happy pi day

Sarah came home for the weekend and reminded us that today is pi day (3.14). Julia and Sarah made a chocolate cream pie after dinner, but it doesn’t look like it will be ready to eat until tomorrow.

Today Jonathan was supposed to have a soccer game, but it got canceled because the field was all wet. (We’ve had a lot of cold rain the past three days.)

What we’ve been up to

So I guess I’ll try to catch everybody up on what’s been going on around here. Don’t worry, I’m only going to go back a week.

A week ago (February 28 & March 1) we had Stake Conference. I spent most of it running around setting up projectors and stuff, but we did get to see Alyse and can report that she’s doing well.

This past week was the Share conference here at the Austin Convention Center. (For those who don’t know, Share is the big IBM mainframe users group.) So I wasn’t home a lot during the week. Although I’ve heard about Share for years, this was the first time I’ve ever attended. I wouldn’t give the presenters high marks as presenters (one of my coworkers described them as “consistently mediocre”) but several of them had useful content so I guess it wasn’t a total waste.

Then Saturday the university had “Explore UT”, basically a campus-wide open house, and I somehow got roped in to helping with a presentation on setting up parental controls, so I ended up having to go down there most of the day. Out of the thousands of people who came to the event only five actually sat through our presentation.

Saturday was also Jonathan’s first soccer game. His team lost 9–4 but he had a lot of fun.

I hate DST

Since I have a blog now, and today we started Daylight Saving Time, I’ll inflict my semi-annual rant on the internet.

DST is all about getting people who want to sleep in to get out of bed earlier. (I once read an article about time zones and stuff by Isaac Asimov, in which he said something like, “If Congress passed a law saying we all had to get up an hour earlier, there would be rioting in the streets. Instead, they passed a law saying we all have to set our clocks ahead an hour, and everyone just does it.” Well, I’m in favor of the rioting.) Anyway, it discriminates against those of us who are already getting up early: just when it’s getting so we’re not in the dark all morning all the clocks get changed and we’re stumbling around without light again.

The usual justification for this is “saving energy” but the studies pointing in that direction were all done in the 1970’s and have methodological issues. The most recent study, when all of Indiana went on DST a few years ago, showed unambiguously that it increased utility bills.

There are other costs; another study showed that traffic accidents go up significantly the Monday after DST goes into effect.

The biggest lobby for this is composed of businesses, like sporting goods manufacturers, that are related to outdoor activities. But I don’t see why I should have to get up in the dark so they can make more money.

So let’s get rid of this ridiculous practice of giving ourselves jet lag twice a year!

I’m giving in…

and starting a blog. I think I’m the last of my siblings to do this.

2 brownie points to the first person to comment and identify where I got the title of this blog from.