Being great isn’t just about the quantity of work, he asserts, but also about the workers themselves. In reviewing different studies about the role of practice in music, games, sports, education, and professional success, Hambrick found that rehearsal time accounted for only about one-quarter of any disparity in skill level. Other factors—like age, intelligence, and natural gifts—all played big roles in setting apart the better from the best.

–here

It’s about that ‘10,000 hours practice’ thing, which everyone knew was hokum from the get-go. (more…)

My life began with childlike faith. After then going through the dark forests of positivistic science, to which I gladly gave myself for so many years, I was finally able, through contemplation of the whole, to emerge into the light of day with a view of things that is both visionary and empirical.

It is a view that has roots in faith, and from it builds bridges of scientific coherence towards a new kind of visionary faith rooted in scientific understanding. This new kind of faith and understanding is based on a new form of observation. It depends for its success on our belief (as human beings) that our feelings are legitimate. Indeed, my experiments have shown that in the form I have cast them, feelings are more legitimate and reliable, perhaps, than many kinds of experimental procedure.

It is in this way that I was led from architecture to the intellectual knowledge of God. It was my love of architecture and building from which I slowly formed an edifice of thought that shows us the existence of God as a necessary, real phenomenon as surely as we have previously known the world as made of space and matter.

-thus Chris Alexander, Making the Garden

Our feelings are legitimate.

I’m not always sure why you guys read this blog or what you find of value in it.  I don’t ask, because I don’t cater.  Folks sometimes volunteer that they like the little parables.

Me, I’m proud of my discovery of what glory is; of virtue charts; of the parable of the nest of thorns; of the world’s worst pun; of my Christmas posting; of the insight into how time and eternity are integrated; and a few others.  It feels good to reflect on that.

But it may be the most important insight I ever had is one I don’t take much pride in.  It’s too obvious.  Too many people already know it.  It’s the argument from meaning. (more…)

Everyone small and large picked a scripture to present or music to play or sing.

For various reasons we had to do it outside on our front lawn.  The only barrier between us and the autos whizzing by was our trees and a couple of parked vehicles.  Reverence can make any setting spiritual.

Hypocrisy makes virtue look like vice.

Hypocrites make conviction look like virtue signaling.

As far as I know there are no LDS Christians living an Amish lifestyle out there. That reflects badly on us.

Here is a book review of a secularish man who decided to try it, and succeeded.

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The Prosperous Homesteader, Gregory Jeffers
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(more…)

The buffalo calf told his cow, “Mother, isn’t it kind of those wolves to always go with the herd, protecting us from our enemies?”  The buffalo cow upbraided him, “Son, they are looking for the old and the sick to kill and eat.  They are not protecting us.”  “Then they are the enemies,” he said and straightaway charged out to trample them, whereon he was slaughtered and devoured.

Moral: Know your enemies.

Old friend, old friend.

We knew each other best

when we first knew each other at all.

(more…)

Elder Bednar:

“While believers and their religious organizations must be good citizens in a time of crisis, we cannot allow government officials to treat the exercise of religion as simply ‘nonessential.’ … ”

“…Never again must the fundamental right to worship God be trivialized below the ability to buy gasoline.”

His comments are especially good at around the 50 minute mark.