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Looked, can't find my source, which had weird mixed units 145 km and 500 ft per degree C (my recollection).

Looked it up less than a month ago?

Gotta say that graph is very suspicious. Is the average temp at the poles -1 degree C? Also source: 'own work'?

This: https://www.physics.byu.edu/fa... puts the 90 degree range at 35+ degrees vs your sources 30.

Either way, looks like I was wrong.

Get him a copy of Mr. Tompkins in Paperback.

Here's an excerpt:

https://www.physics.byu.edu/faculty/hess/106/Lectures/Mr.TompkinsRelativity.pdf

Heck, are there any monotheist religions with an anthropomorphic god?

At least one.

Latter-day Saints perceive the Father as an exalted Man in the most literal, anthropomorphic terms.

As a former LDS missionary, I'd have no problem with that question. I'd probably just quote the text of the hymn, "O My Father". Why, what answers did you get?

Here is a decent summary of LDS belief about our Heavenly Mother: http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/M...

Also, poking around your web site, I notice that you claim you couldn't buy into Mormon beliefs because you can't imagine a father damning his children to eternal torment... which is odd because Mormons do not believe God does that, which is a rather major difference between LDS theology and that of mainstream Christianity. I've also never seen any LDS congregation who would throw anyone out, unless they were being actively disruptive.

Something doesn't add up here.

Get over your jurisdictional objection, already. I'm allowed to challenge you on your beliefs about homosexuality on the internet. Do you have anything substantive to say?

Why did the US need to get involved? From http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/inde...

"My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour.
        I believe it is peace for our time...
        Go home and get a nice quiet sleep."

Singling out the US demonstrates a lack of understanding of the historical context.
 

And it has figured out that all objects have been constructed from an all knowing being. Divine intervention if you will.

http://aims.byu.edu/mission_statement

This is something I've seen over and over. Why do you think it's true?

Originally this came from early studies from IBM in the late 1950 and early 1960s. What they measured over and over is that developer productivity in teams, on average, was in lines of code almost regardless of language. The less lines of code needed to express a problem the faster developers were able to solve problems. That's why they went from advocating Fortran & COBOL for limited classes of programmers to instead advocating them for most programs regardless of class of programmer.

There still are performance shootouts happen regularly, and people still see the same effects. The functional languages crush Java / C / C++. The dynamic languages crush Java / C / C++ in writing programs. There have been studies of developer productivity you see this all the time. I can start citing articles but people believe it because there is over 50 years of research repeated again and again showing it. What you are calling "less characters" really really matters.

You wanted some evidence so just to pick an example, and you google and find dozens: http://sequoia.cs.byu.edu/lab/files/pubs/Delorey2007a.pdf

They tested 19,000 code based from Sourceforge in 2000-7. And found the typical result statistically that programmers were more or less producing roughly the same amount of lines of code per programmer per month.

And so on it went for every supposed advantage that Rails gave me.

Rails isn't designed to make solving hard problems easier. It is designed to make solving easy problems easier. Where Rails makes solving hard problems is because of Ruby not because of anything particular to Rails.

I've worked with other supposed "higher level" languages, and they didn't help with the meat or maintenance either. They all seem weirdly focused on saving characters.

I think you need to separate those two issues out.

Static typed variable languages are far easier better in terms of maintenance. The research here is clear cut, that there is a substantial long term maintenance penalty for dynamic. If you want to do a comparison for static, high level look at something like Haskell, OCaml / F#, Scala, Clojure...

Now in terms of meat... here I would say Ruby is likely to be helpful providing the "meat" falls into Ruby's sweet spots. That is "meat" where the abstractions in the program work well with Ruby's abstractions. If they don't then of course Ruby isn't going to help. Worse, Rails pulls against this because it brings with it, its own set of abstractions that often limit Ruby. Rails is a bad fit for most complex projects.

In terms of your personal experience, programmer experience matters. If you are much more experienced in Java your lines productivity will go way down at first in a new language. Moreover your productivity might take years to reach the same level in dynamic languages because your Java skills are well developed. Saying that programmer productivity is improved by a language is not the same your personal productivity will be improved. Productive programmers are something like 10x as productive as low productive programmers, on average. So I don't find it hard to believe you are able to generate 10 lines of Java in the time it takes you to generate one line of Ruby. And that's an average given individually it might be closer to 30 to 1, in which case something like Ruby's 4 to 1 lines advantage would be swamped easily.

For you to see a difference you might have to try it in an area you are unfamiliar with. A type of program using abstractions you've never had to use.

What would reformed Scientology look like... Okay, we admit the universe is only 13 billion years old, and maybe the human souls came up geysers and not volcanoes... You know, we got a little carried away.

That said, practicing a religion based on a dare between SciFi Authors (Isaac Asimov commented, and was later verified by Heinlein's wife, in a 1980's interview that the bet was informal, and not JUST between Hubbard and Heinlein. Supposedly, it was Asimov, Heinlein, Hubbard, and Frank Herbert, more of a dare than a true bet. "Who can make the best religious story." Resulting stories: Nightfall, Dune, Job, and supposedly, Dianetics), isn't any worse that practicing a religion created by a teenage confidence man whose "Tall Tales" changed frequently and repeatedly, and today there are perhaps 20,000 Scientologists, but there are about 14,000,000 Mormons. Personally I like Dana Carvey's "Cult of the Golden Orb".

So, to clarify, in Mormonism, Jesus is a God, but is not worshipped?

Correct. (Scroll down to the paragraph preceded by the heading "We worship the Father and him only and no one else".)

I can accept the definitions you've given, however I fail to see why it matters whether Mormons are monotheistic or monolatristic when deciding whether we're Christian. Regardless of whether we're technically Christian according to the definitions you've provided (and if it weren't even more off topic I could show how monolatrism actually is taught in the Bible) we're most definitely Christians in practice -- which is to say, we do our best to live our lives according to Christ's teachings, and we believe that it is only through Christ that we can be saved.

Isn't that relevant when considering whether it is reasonable for us to call ourselves Christian?

Ignore the fact that Joseph Smith and one of the eight were gunned down by a mob even though they had the chance to run away. Ignore the fact that each of the three witnesses on their deathbed each testified that they had seen the angel and the golden plates. Ignore the fact that more than half of the combined eleven left the church at some point and were offered money to recant, even fifty years after Joseph Smith was dead, and they never took the money.

These can be safely ignored because they're not evidence of anything supernatural. Serial killers have gone to their grave denying they've done anything wrong, despite being caught in the act of performing murder. Denal is a powerful thing.

There is physical, tangible evidence of the plates. . . the book itself.

This is not evidence of anything of the sort. The Son-of-Sam's Testimony that the dog made him do it is not evidence of a magic mutt. Your example is evidence that someone wrote words.

Joseph Smith was an 18 year old with a third grade education on what was then the frontier of the United States. His family had to move several times as a child, his main occupation was clearing stumps, plowing and digging wells. The Book of Mormon has over 260,000 words (over 500 pages) and is a complex blend of history and theology.

It is not a "blend of history and theology." To be a blend of history and anything else it needs to contain hstorical facts of the verifiable variety. The book of mormon contains no such things.

As Joseph Smith claims to have translated rather than to have authored the book, it has many features that has it compare to more of a Hebraic text than American Frontier English in the early 19th century. These are Hebrew writing styles and artifacts which typically aren't used in English. For example the Book uses chiasmus, colophones, and adverbials.

It does not. It was originally claimed to be an egyptian dialect and no matter which way you slice it, it boils down to the writings of a poorly educated, if imaginative, con man.

If you know Hebrew, then you might find this article interesting:

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=72&chapid=862

; ,

As for our creator's interest in our behavior, I feel it is because He is our Father. He loves us, much more than we know. Any father would be interested in the well being of his children, and the instructions given are for our benefit.

There is no evidence of that. There is no evidence of a creator. There is no evidence it is a he. There is no evidence it issues instructions. There is no evidence of any anthropomorphism you have supplied.

Please tell me, how does a hangover feel?

Like a headache that goes away, unlike religion, which lingers over much.

Or getting pulled over for a DUI?

Like getting pulled over for speeding, except with a sleepover at the end that is unwelcome, largely unmemorable, and topped off with a hangover, bad food, and a $1500 bill due your lawyer.

My wife was raised in a broken home by an alcoholic grandmother.

Which, if you follow your logic, was the will of god, so you can't really bitch, can you?

His commandment to avoid alcohol has been a great blessing for me.

I would say that your wife's avoidance of alcohol has been of benefit to her. Who gives a shit how it has benefited your ego.

As is the commandment to be faithful to my spouse.

It says a lot about your character that you need an invisible monster king to tell you not cheat on your wife: I do that perfectly well without demands or

Ignore the fact that Joseph Smith and one of the eight were gunned down by a mob even though they had the chance to run away. Ignore the fact that each of the three witnesses on their deathbed each testified that they had seen the angel and the golden plates. Ignore the fact that more than half of the combined eleven left the church at some point and were offered money to recant, even fifty years after Joseph Smith was dead, and they never took the money. There is physical, tangible evidence of the plates. . . the book itself.

Joseph Smith was an 18 year old with a third grade education on what was then the frontier of the United States. His family had to move several times as a child, his main occupation was clearing stumps, plowing and digging wells. The Book of Mormon has over 260,000 words (over 500 pages) and is a complex blend of history and theology. As Joseph Smith claims to have translated rather than to have authored the book, it has many features that has it compare to more of a Hebraic text than American Frontier English in the early 19th century. These are Hebrew writing styles and artifacts which typically aren't used in English. For example the Book uses chiasmus, colophones, and adverbials. If you know Hebrew, then you might find this article interesting:

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=72&chapid=862

As for our creator's interest in our behavior, I feel it is because He is our Father. He loves us, much more than we know. Any father would be interested in the well being of his children, and the instructions given are for our benefit. Please tell me, how does a hangover feel? Or getting pulled over for a DUI? My wife was raised in a broken home by an alcoholic grandmother. His commandment to avoid alcohol has been a great blessing for me. As is the commandment to be faithful to my spouse. She is my best friend, and now that I know her as intimately as I do, it would be a tremendous sin to betray her in any way. Since she has shared with me her feelings, her secrets and her trust how could I waste that trust on another throw away relationship? A deep, abiding relationship with one's spouse is a tremendous blessing. If you don't understand this, then I pity you. I have the best friend that anyone could possibly have. You know, one day I got called to Jury duty. She came down with me to the courthouse and wait in the jury waiting room, just to spend time with me.

I also know that God loves His other children on the earth as much as He loves me, and that they are my brothers and sisters. So, it is my responsibility to love them, even when they insult me.

Oh yeah, Mormons don't believe angels have wings.

Please don't take offense, but I am quite familiar with the topic. After some people confuted the words "spiritual experience" and started the "spiritual eyes" reporting Harris and Whitmer to clarify their testimony began using much more concrete terms while granting interviews, and made sure to write and publish their own accounts. Historians much prefer first hand accounts to second hand accounts (otherwise known as hearsay). Even after some of them left the church,

Look, I have a book full of 200 first and second hand accounts of the translation of the Book of Mormon called "Opening the Heavens" Accounts of Divine Manifestations 1820-1844 right next to me. I have also read the book "Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses" by Richard Anderson. Again, several accounts and let me quote

""'Do you still believe that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet?" Martin Harris, standing in the Kirtland Temple on a bright, winter day, pointed to one of the arched Gothic windows where the sun was streaming through it and said, "Do I see the sun shining? Just as surely as the sun is shining on us . . . I saw the plates; I saw the angel."

As a very old man, Martin went to Utah and spent the last five years of his life there in upper Cache Valley. When people in his community asked him about the plates of the Book of Mormon, he continued using physical objects like the sun to illustrate his testimony. One time he raised his hand and asked, "'Do you see that hand? . . . Are your eyes playing you a trick or something? . . . Well, as sure as you see my hand so sure did I see the angel and the plates." Martin Harris, like all the witnesses, was especially desirous at the end of his life to have people hear and repeat his testimony.

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=21

Reading that exmormon.org article was frustrating as I am familiar with the sheer volume of both first and second hand accounts that it plainly ignores. Read my comment on the flawed WWII lesson. Then understand when I say when a skillful writer with an agenda (like someone who is mad at the LDS church) can ignore evidence to bolster their argument. I'm not stupid or naive, I know that you aren't going to read those books or look up the article that I provided. Just know though that we aren't bat XXXX crazy and we do have reasons for what we believe. Getting through the stuff made up by people keeps people from the real message of the Book of Mormon. Its message is that God lives, has a plan for us, that we need to love and care for others, that offensive war is evil, pride from wealth will cause society to sicken and die, it is possible to change to become holy and that Jesus Christ paid a heavy price to save mankind. Most people who talk about it have never actually read it.

Then of course there's the Mormons, who believe in the Bible the way the regular Protestants do for the most part, but then they add a whole new book about Jesus coming to visit a bunch of fictional civilizations in the Americas before Europeans got there

There is plenty of archeological evidence pointing to advanced civilizations in what is now the Eastern United States. The Hopewell Culture for example flourished around the same time as one of the groups described in the Book of Mormon. There is also evidence that native americans had the ten commandments and that there were precolumbian horses.

If Christ had followers in America, why woudn't he visit them, he even spoke of doing so in John 10:16.

An excellent way to find the information you're looking for would be to visit the links in the story. Since you seem to have misplaced them, here's another copy for your convenience:

• growing collections of online words
• Wordnik
• Corpus of Contemporary American English

Furthermore, the summary actually contains the text "These sources differ from both conventional dictionary publishers and crowd-sourced efforts like the excellent Wiktionary for their emphasis on avoiding human intervention rather than fostering it."

How did you manage to make your post and miss all of the above?

There are studies that show that people who go to church regularly have larger families. Here is one just sample but with enough googling I am sure you can dig up others.

http://rsc.byu.edu/archived/religion-and-family-connection-social-science-perspectives/chapter-3-religion-and-family-mi

I'd look for a different study. Brigham Young University is a Mormon institution, and one of the central tenets of the Mormon religion is that people need to have large families. Given that, it's not surprising that there's a correlation between church attendance and family size.

What measure are you using to say that the median person is "better off" today? How do you even measure what that means? Are you measuring by wealth, debt, independence, health, literacy, life expectancy, infant mortatlity? Can you narrow it down a bit for me?

There are studies that show that people who go to church regularly have larger families. Here is one just sample but with enough googling I am sure you can dig up others.

http://rsc.byu.edu/archived/religion-and-family-connection-social-science-perspectives/chapter-3-religion-and-family-mi

No matter what, though, you totally ignored/missed my whole point. I was saying that somebody will get rich off the this but it is unlikely that society will become wealthier as a whole because of it.

The gentleman who wrote this article complains, "why has it taken nearly 50 years for the contents of this material to be made fully public?" He fails to understand the simplest reason: the public doesn't really care enough. That is to say, some members of the public might care enough to read parts of a translation.

IMO, it's taken as long as it has because the scrolls were anciently written on papyrus or some other cloth or paper and stuffed together for storage. Some were preserved better than others, but still, IIRC, these papyrus and/or whatever-substance fragments can be very difficult to separate ("unroll") and in some cases have been reassembled manually. I am NOT an expert on the DSS. Another factor, of course, is the frequent political turmoil in the Middle East.

Also, as technology to analyze ancient stuck-together papyri has improved, reanalysis would seem to be required for much of the analyzed portions for the analyses to be scientifically valid. FWIW. Also. And. Too. For Chemists and ACS Admirers. For gnostics.

I'm sure you can find many other points of view.

Given that Apple's desktop OS was using the .app extension to denote user facing Application packages/launchers, I would say that Apple has the strongest claim to "App" and "App store".

The problem with your notion is that before Apple even existed, programs which existed to perform a task were already called "application programs". Also, if you REALLY had anything to contribute to this conversation you would have known the type(1) of pre-OSX MacOS applications and mentioned it, because OSX inherited "apps" from NeXTStep, which inherited them from Apple because much of what NeXT did was a direct copy of Apple (though most of it was an improvement.)

(1) Wow it took me a long time to find a nice citation for that. All my searches got a lot of crap with .app in it.

Here's a long LDS (Mormon) answer to your question but it covers many of the philosophical and religious answers to the question: http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=100&chapid=1111

Of course there's not. Kepler wasn't launched until almost 2000 years after the last book of the Bible was wrapped up.

If you want more on Kepler ST, but want it blended with bible-believing religious types, you already missed one event but you can probably still join the conversation now from the comfort of your armchair...

http://corpus.byu.edu/coha
Corpus of Historical American English.

-- 400 million words, 1810s-2000s.
-- Allows for many types of searches that Google Books can't:
* accurate frequency of words and phrases by decade and year
* changes in word forms (via wildcard searches)
* grammatical changes (because corpus is "tagged" for part of speech)
* changes in meaning (via collocates; "nearby words")
* show all words that are more common in one set of decades than others
* integrate synonyms and customized word lists into queries
* etc etc etc
-- Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), 2009-2011.

Take a look at the "Compare to Google/Archives" link off the first page.

75% of Americans donate every year (I'm not saying 75% of /.ers donate but they might). From a talk (source: http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=1826&tid=2) by economist Arthur Brooks:

"Seventy-five percent of America’s families give every year. Fifty percent volunteer their time, and many Americans give in myriad other ways that are not captured in data.... If we look at how much money Americans give per capita compared to citizens in other coun- tries of the world, we will find that the average American citizen gives away three-and-a-half times as much money each year as the aver- age French citizen, seven times as much as the average German, and 14 times as much as the average Italian. Now, as an economist I want to know whether or not that’s because we are richer. However, when you correct for income differences and tax differences and all the things that make the United States a different country, you find that the gap doesn’t close."

https://booklist.byu.edu/images/textbookdollar.jpg

How about we put some numbers on it, huh?

Here's what an e-book doesn't require anymore:
Printing costs - 32.2%
Bookstore personnel - 10.9%
Freight - 1.0%
Bookstore operations - 7.3%
Bookstore profit - 4.5%

Let's call that 56% in total. Most of that comes from making the actual book. The rest comes from selling it at a campus bookstore.

Of course, there's no way the savings will be passed on to the student.

On the other hand, I'm willing to pay a nice premium for the weight savings of ebooks on a small tablet. Imagine only bringing your tablet and a notebook to class!

But seriously...... the whole point of the DMCA was to protect third-party companies.

Nope. Copyright was intended "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts" by granting a government-sponsored monopoly to content creators with built-in checks and balances such as limited time and fair use. It's just getting systematically reshaped to allow for unlimited time, market control, and unaccountable censorship. It just looks like it's intended to protect tyrannical trade associations and unaccountable corporations, and effectively accomplishes, because that's who is amending it for congress.

Links follow:

• BBC
• Novinite
• Maxwell Institute, Birmingham Young University

Finding useful information on this book is... hard. You're right, Wikipedia doesn't even mention it. Anywhere.

It is not against the Geneva Conventions to fire cannon from an aircraft against people on the ground.

The Hague Convention of 1923 would have covered it, but it wasn't adopted.
http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Hague_Rules_of_Air_Warfare

The same caliber weapons were used on vehicles against infantry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-propelled_anti-aircraft_weapon

"On occasion SPAAGs have been used as very effective direct fire weapons against infantry, for example by American forces during late World War II, in Korea against mass infantry assault, and extensively during the Vietnam War, where for example the U.S. M42 Duster SPAAG (based on a light tank) was employed purely for this purpose."

This might cover what you are talking about

1980 United Nations Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects (CCW)

But the M-1 tank has an anti-personal round and that is a 120mm gun.

M1028 120 mm anti-personnel canister cartridge was brought into service early for use in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It contains 1,098 38-inch (9.5 mm) tungsten balls which spread from the muzzle to produce a shotgun effect lethal out to 600 meters (2,000 ft). The tungsten balls can be used to clear enemy dismounts, break up hasty ambush sites in urban areas, clear defiles, stop infantry attacks and counter-attacks and support friendly infantry assaults by providing covering fire. The canister round is also a highly effective breaching round and can level cinder block walls and knock man-sized holes in reinforced concrete walls for infantry raids at distances up to 75 meters (246 ft).

This treaty was a successor to the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868 (Declaration Renouncing the Use, in Time of War, of Explosive Projectiles Under 400 Grammes Weight)

Full Text

In this treaty the signatories agreed to prevent the use of explosive or fulminating bullets.

The 30mm cannon on the AH-64 Apache can use either Armor Piercing or High Explosive bullets. However, AP bullets are primarily used against armored vehicles.

LDS students may be endorsed only by the bishop of the ward (1) in which they live and (2) that holds their current Church membership record.

Translation: If you're a member of the church, go see your bishop.

Non-LDS students are to be endorsed by (1) the local ecclesiastical leader if the student is an active member of the congregation, (2) the bishop of the LDS ward in which they currently reside, or (3) the nondenominational BYU chaplain.

Translation: If you're not a member, go find any one of those three people to get an endorsement.

That person will hold a short interview and basically ask if you will live by the school's honor code. Say yes, and you have your endorsement.

Here's the specific form: Ecclesiastical Endorsement. Please feel free to ignore the parts specific to LDS applicants.

As I said, there's no requirement to be religious (only a statement "encouraging" non-LDS students to attend their respective religious services). Think of it like marriage: you don't have to go do a church to get married (although that's what religious people do), just go to the county building and sign a form or two.

But I don't think your problem is with the application process or with religion in itself: it's with the rules and regulations that go with being a BYU student.

You know what? That's fine: not even all "Mormons" want (or have to) live by those rules: I even know some that have a (gasp!) beard! They just go elsewhere for school, and nobody thinks the lesser of them.

http://honorcode.byu.edu/content/what-process-obtaining-beard-waiver

I mean, this shit sounds like something you'd find the Taliban advocating.

I find it hard to believe that the Taliban are anti-beard. In fact:Taliban religious police jail beard-trimmers for 10 days

And thus, when I heard that BYU, founded on principles of racism, moral superiority, and hatred of atheists, I was surprised they had abandoned enough of their core principles to have a paleontology department that accurately dated fossils.

Strange, nothing I read from here, here, or here say anything about these "core priniciples."

It's quite interesting to see how many times scientific discoveries from BYU are discussed here on slashdot. Even more amazing is how ignorant slashdot readers are of the school and its students.

"I hope to see an Academy established in Provo that shall do honor to our Territory, and at which the children of the Latter-day Saints can receive a good education unmixed with the pernicious atheistic influences that are found in so many of the higher schools of the country." -Brigham Young

But, you got me on one point. There is a process for "beard exemption":

A student who wishes to obtain a beard exception must visit a BYU Student Health Center doctor by appointment (422.5156). The doctor will fax his recommendation. The student then needs to come to the Honor Code Office to fill out some paperwork and receive the letter allowing the growth of the beard, if approved. If a yearly beard exception is granted, a new Student ID will be issued after the beard has been fully grown, and must be renewed every year by repeating the process.

http://honorcode.byu.edu/content/what-process-obtaining-beard-waiver

That's literally the funniest thing I have read in the last 24 hours.

But wait! There's more!

Are Mixed Gender Camping Trips allowed?
http://honorcode.byu.edu/content/mixed-gender

Fear of Gays!
Homosexual behavior and/or advocacy of homosexual behavior are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code. Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings. Advocacy includes seeking to influence others to engage in homosexual behavior or promoting homosexual relations as being morally acceptable.

Fear of the Female Body!
A clean and well-cared-for appearance should be maintained. Clothing is inappropriate when it is sleeveless, strapless, backless, or revealing; has slits above the knee; or is form fitting. Dresses, skirts, and shorts must be knee-length or longer. Hairstyles should be clean and neat, avoiding extremes in styles or colors. Excessive ear piercing (more than one per ear) and all other body piercing are not acceptable. Shoes should be worn in all public campus areas.

Forced religion!
Students are required to be in good Honor Code standing to be admitted to, continue enrollment at, and graduate from BYU. In conjunction with this requirement, all enrolled continuing undergraduate, graduate, intern, and Study Abroad students are required to obtain a Continuing Student Ecclesiastical Endorsement for each new academic year. Students must have their endorsements completed, turned in, and processed by the Honor Code Office before they can register for fall semester or any semester thereafter. To avoid registration delays, endorsement should be submitted to the Honor Code Office by March 15. Those applying to BYU should use the new-student Admissions Application Part 3 endorsement and submit to Admissions, D-155 ASB.

I mean, this shit sounds like something you'd find the Taliban advocating. Read it for yourself:
http://saas.byu.edu/catalog/2009-2010ucat/GeneralInfo/HonorCode.php#HCOfficeInvovement

"I hope to see an Academy established in Provo that shall do honor to our Territory, and at which the children of the Latter-day Saints can receive a good education unmixed with the pernicious atheistic influences that are found in so many of the higher schools of the country." -Brigham Young

But, you got me on one point. There is a process for "beard exemption":

A student who wishes to obtain a beard exception must visit a BYU Student Health Center doctor by appointment (422.5156). The doctor will fax his recommendation. The student then needs to come to the Honor Code Office to fill out some paperwork and receive the letter allowing the growth of the beard, if approved. If a yearly beard exception is granted, a new Student ID will be issued after the beard has been fully grown, and must be renewed every year by repeating the process.

http://honorcode.byu.edu/content/what-process-obtaining-beard-waiver

That's literally the funniest thing I have read in the last 24 hours.

But wait! There's more!

Are Mixed Gender Camping Trips allowed?
http://honorcode.byu.edu/content/mixed-gender

Fear of Gays!
Homosexual behavior and/or advocacy of homosexual behavior are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code. Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings. Advocacy includes seeking to influence others to engage in homosexual behavior or promoting homosexual relations as being morally acceptable.

Fear of the Female Body!
A clean and well-cared-for appearance should be maintained. Clothing is inappropriate when it is sleeveless, strapless, backless, or revealing; has slits above the knee; or is form fitting. Dresses, skirts, and shorts must be knee-length or longer. Hairstyles should be clean and neat, avoiding extremes in styles or colors. Excessive ear piercing (more than one per ear) and all other body piercing are not acceptable. Shoes should be worn in all public campus areas.

Forced religion!
Students are required to be in good Honor Code standing to be admitted to, continue enrollment at, and graduate from BYU. In conjunction with this requirement, all enrolled continuing undergraduate, graduate, intern, and Study Abroad students are required to obtain a Continuing Student Ecclesiastical Endorsement for each new academic year. Students must have their endorsements completed, turned in, and processed by the Honor Code Office before they can register for fall semester or any semester thereafter. To avoid registration delays, endorsement should be submitted to the Honor Code Office by March 15. Those applying to BYU should use the new-student Admissions Application Part 3 endorsement and submit to Admissions, D-155 ASB.

I mean, this shit sounds like something you'd find the Taliban advocating. Read it for yourself:
http://saas.byu.edu/catalog/2009-2010ucat/GeneralInfo/HonorCode.php#HCOfficeInvovement

"I hope to see an Academy established in Provo that shall do honor to our Territory, and at which the children of the Latter-day Saints can receive a good education unmixed with the pernicious atheistic influences that are found in so many of the higher schools of the country." -Brigham Young

But, you got me on one point. There is a process for "beard exemption":

A student who wishes to obtain a beard exception must visit a BYU Student Health Center doctor by appointment (422.5156). The doctor will fax his recommendation. The student then needs to come to the Honor Code Office to fill out some paperwork and receive the letter allowing the growth of the beard, if approved. If a yearly beard exception is granted, a new Student ID will be issued after the beard has been fully grown, and must be renewed every year by repeating the process.

http://honorcode.byu.edu/content/what-process-obtaining-beard-waiver

That's literally the funniest thing I have read in the last 24 hours.

But wait! There's more!

Are Mixed Gender Camping Trips allowed?
http://honorcode.byu.edu/content/mixed-gender

Fear of Gays!
Homosexual behavior and/or advocacy of homosexual behavior are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code. Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings. Advocacy includes seeking to influence others to engage in homosexual behavior or promoting homosexual relations as being morally acceptable.

Fear of the Female Body!
A clean and well-cared-for appearance should be maintained. Clothing is inappropriate when it is sleeveless, strapless, backless, or revealing; has slits above the knee; or is form fitting. Dresses, skirts, and shorts must be knee-length or longer. Hairstyles should be clean and neat, avoiding extremes in styles or colors. Excessive ear piercing (more than one per ear) and all other body piercing are not acceptable. Shoes should be worn in all public campus areas.

Forced religion!
Students are required to be in good Honor Code standing to be admitted to, continue enrollment at, and graduate from BYU. In conjunction with this requirement, all enrolled continuing undergraduate, graduate, intern, and Study Abroad students are required to obtain a Continuing Student Ecclesiastical Endorsement for each new academic year. Students must have their endorsements completed, turned in, and processed by the Honor Code Office before they can register for fall semester or any semester thereafter. To avoid registration delays, endorsement should be submitted to the Honor Code Office by March 15. Those applying to BYU should use the new-student Admissions Application Part 3 endorsement and submit to Admissions, D-155 ASB.

I mean, this shit sounds like something you'd find the Taliban advocating. Read it for yourself:
http://saas.byu.edu/catalog/2009-2010ucat/GeneralInfo/HonorCode.php#HCOfficeInvovement

Smith was skilled at language and traveled widely: both obtaining a few samples of badly translated Hebrew and then imitating them would have been easy for him, in particular given his and his family's fascination with religious matters.

He was an uneducated farmboy, and he wasn't a skilled linguist until a decade after the Book of Mormon was published.

I suggest you read this. It's a (satirical) description of what Joseph Smith's life must have been like, had he been plagiarizing, inventing, and accurately predicting future discoveries as people like you claim he was. Even if you don't agree with the premise, it's an entertaining read.

You see, people like you want me to believe that Joseph Smith was:

a) uneducated (as he had no access to formal education)
b) highly educated (being a skilled linguist and an accurate-to-the-point-of-clairvoyance historian), despite not having access to such education until later in his life
c) extremely lucky regarding dozens of then-insane guesses about ancient American history which later turned out to be remarkably accurate both in content and timeframe
d) possessed of a photographic memory such that the hastily-written, fictional Book of Mormon would be found to contain no internal inconsistencies after almost two hundred years of examination.
e) capable of writing six to seven pages per day, almost every day for almost three months.

Those last two are what baffle me about your claims. Today's best writers of fiction - who don't try to masquerade their work as fact - cannot rid their books of internal inconsistently entirely, and they have years to write their books and professional editors and consistency-checkers to comb the text for problems.

(You might claim that he spent far longer writing, but the burden of proof would be on you, since no known historical evidence to date - neither within the LDS Church nor outside of it - supports that hypothesis. Here's an examination of the timeframe involved.)

And you want me to believe he did all that, without ever later modifying anything he wrote, so perfectly that almost two hundred years later nobody still has been able to find any internal inconsistencies in the book.

In other words, in an effort to convince me Joseph Smith was a fraud, you're trying to convince me Joseph was the smartest writer who has ever lived.

The most likely explanation is that Smith picked up some phrases and constructs while traveling and then liberally used them to produce something that sounded like a translation from some ancient language.

Where, exactly, do you posit he traveled that enabled him to "pick up some [Hebraic] phrases and constructs" - including the chaismus, which was not recognized as a Hebraic literary construct until recently - with a good enough understanding to use them properly?

At the same time, the Mormon church is exaggerating the complexity and significance of these constructs.

I should note the Church itself has no comment on language constructs or anything else; these are independent studies performed by both members and non-members of the LDS Church.

Furthermore, Hebraic constructs by themselves are insufficient evidence of anything one way or the other, but when taken together with all the other evidence I've brought up, it makes for an inexplicably long series of coincidences.

I found a reference to the article in a simple google. From the main author's profile at BYU's Marriott School:

"The Smell of Virtue: Clean Scents Promote Reciprocity and Charity.," Psychological Science 2009

The professor's profile:

http://marriottschool.byu.edu/employee/employee.cfm?emp=kla520

br/

The same Brigham Young University that has an article about how one of their archaeologists has proven the Book of Mormon's ludicrous ficitonal pre-Colombian American History is valid? http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/50535

I read about this questionnaire that helps decide how ready you are, what spots to work on; the 2nd link is another reference to it:
http://www.relate-institute.org/
http://griggs.byu.edu:8232/Article.aspx?a=148

That's quite the firm grasp of English you have there. Using multiple conjunctions is a common rhetorical device. His second sentence isn't idiomatic due to the misplaced "as," but there's nothing horribly wrong with it.

In addition to Oxyrhynchus, significant finds have been made at Herculaneum and Pompeii. There's a decent story here about those. The problem (and I suspect it's a common one) is that texts carbonized enough to require advanced recovery techniques aren't recognized as texts by non-professionals. I recall reading a story about 19th-century archaeologists finding a bunch of carbonized lumps in their excavations of Pompeei and Herculaneum. Believing them to be ancient foodstuffs, they examined and discarded them. In the late 20th century, similar but smaller finds were made and identified to be scrolls. Just imagine how much was lost to history due to the disposal of those innocent-looking lumps! And I have to wonder what we're missing out on now because of some future archaeological advancement.

On the other hand, the course is a massively multiplayer role-playing game in which students select a character class, develop specialized expertise, complete a series of individual quests, join a Guild, and work with members of their Guild to accomplish quests requiring a greater breadth of skills than any one student can develop during the course.

Dude! This guy is at BYU. You know the place whose Code of Conduct requires its own web space. All of those details about life that you need to work out have been decided for you already in intricate detail. If I had to go to BYU I would be thinking that it is time to set up a virtual campus too.

Human being are individuals. They have a genome (well, actually, two, 'cause of the mitochondria), they evolved, they form a population of interbreeding animals.

That said, they provide an ecosystem to a large number of microbial species, some of which are symbionts, some are parasites, some can be both. In general, we cannot live without our symbionts, and our symbionts are depending on us.

All that isn't news. This perspective on a human individual has been here for decades. What is new is that with 2nd generation sequencing it is now possible to thoroughly investigate the microbial composition of our symbionts parasites. This is an exciting new technology which allows such projects as the 1000 genomes project, Neanderthal genome sequencing, metagenomics and much, much more.

Just one more remark: given a population of genetically identical bacteria, it is sometimes wrong to call each bacterial cell an "individual". These cells can collaborate, exchange information, shape their environment and act more like an organism than a single invdividual. There are even some bacteria that can actually get together, differentiate and form a macroscopic, multicellular structure. So saying that we are colonised by 100 trillion of individuals is an exaggeration.

That said, we too can view ourselves as a colony of (mostly: think sperm / eggs and t-cells) genetically identical cells that communicate, collaborate and shape their environment, and also are (mostly, think: blood cells) physically linked together. And each our cell can be viewed as a symbiont between two organisms, each with its own genome and even its own genetic code (yep, the genetic code of the mitochondria differs from that used in the nucleus in our cells).

j. (IAAB)

While the chemical traces are intriguing... a complete and utter lack of corroborating evidence (I.E. remains of plants in the tombs, records of their growth, examples in tomb or temple paintings, surviving examples, etc. etc.) renders them suspect.
 
Hmm... a quick google search leads me to the page you cut and pasted the above from - a page from an organization with a vested interest in finding evidence of cross pollination from the New World to the Old. I can find no other mentions of the first paper. The second paper, I can find references to - mostly defenses against debunkers, and curiously the defense consists mostly of "the chances of error are infinitesimal, and since the chances of error are so small we can assume that there are no errors".

Well it appears it doesn't work in the range of visible light at all:

http://www.ee.byu.edu/photonics/fwnomograph.phtml

Might work with microwaves though

copyright law exists for the benefit of the copyright holder. Its intent and purpose is for the betterment of copyright holder, not you and not other people.

Google "purpose" and "Copyright" and you will see your wrong.

"The primary purpose of copyright law is not so much to protect the interests of the authors/creators, but rather to promote the progress of science and the useful arts--that is--knowledge.To accomplish this purpose, copyright ownership encourages authors/creators in their efforts by granting them a temporary monopoly, or ownership of exclusive rights for a specified length of time. However, this monopoly is somewhat limited when it conflicts with an overriding public interest, such as encouraging new creative and intellectual works, or the necessity for some members of the public to make a single copy of a work for non profit, educational purposes." - http://www.lib.byu.edu/departs/copyright/tutorial/module1/page3.htm

It's solar powered. No need to pay any electric bills. Maintenance & care is cheap dirt.
http://pws.byu.edu/tree_tour/images/tree116small.jpg

The Department of Homeland Security (which TSA is under) has very little actual authority.

Remember your rights, refuse to answer questions, the only answer you should EVER give a police officer, or federal agent is "I want a lawyer."

A lawyer tells us why we should never talk to cops in this video

This guy has been making a series of videos of himself at DHS checkpoint basically blowing off the Fedtards in video 1 of 11.

As Americans we have rights that we -allow- the federal and local governments to steal from us when we opt-in to their tactics. As you can see in the checkpoint video the guy did not opt-in and thereby became immune to their power and because they do not have any authority. (Hopefully you know the difference between power and authority.)

The Mormons will....

The Mormons "believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly" (Article of Faith 8). The idea of humans corrupting the inspired records of the Bible is basic to our understanding of the last 2000 years of religious history. The Book of Mormon speaks of "plain and precious things which have been taken away."

On the other hand, the fact of the resurrection and many other Christian doctrines is corroborated by other (religious) sources, and is fundamental to our faith. So the absence of these doctrines' mention in a particular source would not lead us to wonder about our doctrinal foundation.

Mormon scholars are actually quite interested in early Christianity. A significant amount of research at BYU (a Church-sponsored school), for example, has involved the Dead Sea Scrolls: CNN article; BYU research summary.

Seems that someone found a semi-reliable decryption mechanism that can not only stand up to that, but can reverse an even stronger algorithm known as "volcano".

Didn't mean to dash your dreams, but you know how the security game goes...

/P