One of the things that I believe will precede the fall of Babylon, or our collapse in general, is a crisis of meaning. Specifically, this mean our myths and heroes are hollow or not taken seriously. This is fundamentally a spiritual crisis.

The Jedi Church may be laughable, but a society incapable of even that… that is terrifying. A society without heroes or myths is spiritually dead. It can still move, still function—but only on momentum, like a corpse that hasn’t yet realized it’s dead.

And related to this, is a crisis in telling stories. You can’t have a compelling story without meaning.

It is interesting to note, that of the Eminent Men and Women who appeared to Pres Woodruff, said they laid the foundation of liberty for us. Besides the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the majority were artists and authors. What we might call mythmakers.

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Ok, in all seriousness, this says far more about the quality of AI checkers than anything else. Really they are just a fig leaf to comfort educators.

Still, the humor of it all did not escape me.

His Majesty is feeling much better.

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This morning on the radio they were talking about the year’s most frequent Google searches. It was said that the most searched person was Matt Lauer, which prompted my internal question “Who’s Matt Lauer?” And though quick use of an internet search engine would indeed educate me, I have a hunch that I would prefer remaining ignorant.

Provo’s Daily Herald reports the death of Bruce Porter, an LDS General Authority. His death leaves me with questions, all of them irrelevant: (more…)

I spent the Thanksgiving weekend in the home of a relative who became, in the course of his four years as a medical student at the University of Michigan, a Michigan football fan. Michigan’s series with Ohio State goes back to 1897, has been played annually since 1918, and it has been played in November as the teams’ last regular season game since 1935.

This year’s game was a great one. The Wolverines arrived in Columbus with a 10-1 record and ranked #3 in national playoff standings. The Buckeyes were also 10-1 and ranked #2. Attendance was a stadium record 110,045, and it was this season’s most-watched college football game on television. Ohio State won in double overtime 30-27. What a great weekend to enjoy being a Buckeye!

Then, two mornings later . . . eleven people “including at least one faculty member, one staff member and seven students” were sent to hospitals for treatment of injuries inflicted upon them by a student who was shot dead by a policeman to stop the student’s attack. Celebrate while you may, for it may not fit tomorrow’s mood.

For the last eight years, any disagreement with policies of the current administration were viewed as signs of racism by those inclined to view matters that way. Had the other major presidential candidate prevailed earlier this month, there would have been more of the same, with sexism taking the place of racism as the secret sin motivating any disagreement with the next president. However, with the president-elect we have the script has a little tweak: any agreement with any policy of the next president will be because he is a fascist, and those agreeing with him (about anything) are OK with that. For example (link):

“The Obama administration turned a deaf ear to us and frankly, with President-elect Trump, we feel things are going to move in the right direction,” Matthew LeBretton, New Balance’s vice president of public affairs, told the Wall Street Journal.

The answer was in response to a question about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, an initiative led by President Obama and staunchly opposed by Trump. Boston-based New Balance, the only major company that still makes athletic shoes in the United States, has said the trade policy would hinder its business and help competitors who operate overseas.

Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont also opposed the deal.

But that didn’t stop opponents of Trump from turning on New Balance altogether and accusing the company of formally endorsing not just his stance on TPP, but entire platform.

Near the top of a newspaper article about meerkats’ murderous ways: “The team of Spanish biologists and geneticists behind the study did not set out to point a bloody paw at the meerkat, however. They were more interested in plumbing the evolutionary history of lethal violence, comparing murder rates for 1,024 different types of mammals.”

1024 is 100,0000,0000 in binary. With the numbering starting at zero instead of one, so that the ordinal of the last item, the 11,1111,1111th, is a ten-bit identifier.

Monday night Mrs. Clinton brought up Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe who Trump was mean to, and bragged that she is now a U.S. citizen and will be a Clinton voter. Apparently, Miss Machado has lived a fairly wild and sordid life since her dealings with Trump twenty years ago. Not really the sort of person that candidates of the past would have pointed out by name before a national audience as supporters of theirs. But it’s not the past. It’s now, and as Mr. Trump asked, “Where did you find this?” Part of the answer is that Trump has contributed a lot over the decades, and more each decade than the one before, to creating our Kardashian era in which people like Miss Machado are easy to find. Unpleasantly hard to avoid, really.

So here we are with one candidate who thinks it’s a nifty thing that a woman who posed naked in magazines, served as the getaway driver for her homicidal boyfriend, and threatened to kill a judge has been given citizenship and a vote—because she finds some small advantage in this. The other candidate is married to a woman who posed naked for magazines, thinks that is normal, and has performed an oversized labor toward normalizing public depravity.

It’s been my impression that it is the policy of North Korea to scrape together all the loose fissionable material to found around the world, and when they have enough scrounged up for a critical mass, to make it into a bomb and blow it up. This seems like a useful service to the world. The interval between bombs had been three years (2006, 2009, 2012, 2016), but the latest came less than a year after the previous and released a larger yield.

“What do you think?”

“I already told you.”

“You know the answer.”

“Duh!”  (As in “The answer should be obvious.”)

And after petitioning to “please bless so-and-so”, “What are you doing to bless so-and-so?” (more…)

A few links:

“6 things to know about independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin,” Washington Post.

“Meet Evan McMullin, The #NeverTrump Movement’s Last Hope,” NPR.

“Here’s why #NeverTrump candidate Evan McMullin is too late to get in the game,” all the missed and upcoming ballot deadlines at Conservative Review.

infogalactic bio.

His Majesty has been much preoccupied lately.

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I don’t expect much of politicians, and yet they never stop finding ways to disappoint:

“Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie all said or suggested they’d support women being required to enroll in Selective Service and be eligible for the draft, since female service members can now serve in combat roles. Cruz was not asked.

“‘It was striking that three different people on that stage came out in support of drafting women into combat in the military,’ Cruz said. ‘I have to admit, as I was sitting there listening to that conversation, my reaction was: Are you guys nuts?'” (link)

“…and the Alt-Right is Right but Repulsive.”

This is the sort of thing that pops into my head while making a turkey sandwich. I blame the provolone.