Our Favorite Scripture Stories

Mondays are a little crazy around our house right now. We normally set aside Monday evenings for Family Home Evening (FHE), where we pray together, have a little spiritual lesson, play a game, and eat a treat. Since my oldest son has been in 7th grade, though, we've learned that Mondays are complicated by the fact that his teachers load up the kids with their weekly homework on Monday. Since our son goes to Boy Scouts on Wednesday and the homework is usually due on Thursday, it is imperative that he get his homework done on Monday or Tuesday. Also, since he is a procrastinator by nature, we make him do as much as he can on Monday. This collides badly with our hope of having a quiet FHE.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there, as I wanted to write briefly about last week's FHE. Last week we simply sat down and went around the circle to ask what everybody's favorite scripture story was. Here's the results:

• My older son likes the story about Ammon. Typically, when most people talk about Ammon, they remember the story of him hacking off all the Lamanite arms, but he actually likes the story that follows where King Lamoni became converted. He surprised me by sharing that he appreciates that Ammon's service had the effect of helping others to become converted to the Gospel. Sometimes my older son can be so mature ... not often, but sometimes.
  
• Our daughter likes the story of Alma the Younger when the angel of the Lord came and told him to quit being an idiot and to stop fighting against the church. She was impressed by the fact that he changed his heart and later became a prophet and leader to his people.
  
• Our younger son loves the story of Noah and the ark. Usually, when it is his turn to share a lesson during FHE, he will pick this one to share with us. We were not surprised.
  
• My wife loves the story of Alma the Elder, and how he had such incredible faith that he risked his life to stand up for Abinadi and then later led his people to freedom in Zarahemla.
  
• There's lots of stories I like and I struggled to pick a "favorite", so I shared the story of Nephi building the ship, and how he showed such faith and followed the directives from the Lord even though his stinker brothers weren't very cooperative.
  

Anyway, I just wanted to share that.

Holy Unexpected Truths, Batman!

So I read somewhere that if you click the first link in a Wikipedia article that is not in parenthesis or italics, and then repeat this, you will eventually land on the article for philosophy.

I tried it out with the word "Stargate" (since I kinda liked that show and everything related to it), and followed this chain of links:

Stargate
Military science fiction
Genre
Literature
Latin
Italic languages
Indo-European languages
Language family
Language
Communication
Meaning (philosophy of language)
Philosophy

Say what?! Not only did it lead to the article on philosophy, but it did so rather quickly, in my opinion. So I then tried it with a physical science, figuring it couldn't reasonably lead back to philosophy:

Volcanism
Volcanoes
Rupture (this lead to "ductile fracture" under ...)
Fracture
Stress (mechanics)
Continuum mechanics
Mechanics
Physics
Natural science
Science
Knowledge
Facts
Information
Sequence
Mathematics
Quantity
Property (philosophy)
Modern philosophy
Philosophy

Okay, by this time I was annoyed, because there had to be something that didn't relate. So then I tried it again with something I figured would have no possible chance of leading in that direction:

Lady Gaga
Stage name
Pseudonym
Name
Noun
Linguistics
Science
Latin
Italic languages
Indo-European languages
Language family
Language
Communication
Meaning (philosophy of language)
Philosophy

Not only did it get there, but it got there faster with Lady Gaga than it did for volcanism! Truly amazing. I'm sure there are other things you could check, but with 3 data points that uphold it, I'm satisfied that this theory holds ... for now.

How about you?

Perspicacious

Wow, I'm a nerd. I actually used the word "perspicacious" when writing up a performance evaluation for somebody at work. I'd be willing to bet that the supervisor who received my evaluation has NEVER seen that word before and will have to look it up ... *snicker*

Perspicacious : of acute mental vision or discernment : keen

On the Pronunciation of Jaguar

A silly thing to post, I know, but this blog is about my musings after all, and I think about all sorts of random things.

Here's a pet peeve of mine: on the radio the other day, there was a Jaguar ad spoken by a guy who had a weird accent. It was most definitely not a British accent, but something elsewise European. Anyway, so he kept repeating the name of the car he was advertising, as he should have, but every time he said it, I flinched. I recognize that I'm a pseudo-redneck unsophisticated American hack with no hope of being considered truly pretentious, but seriously, the word "jaguar" in the United States is pronounced ja-gwar. Look it up. Yet he kept pronouncing it ja-gyoo-ar.

Now, I recognize that in England, the latter pronunciation is correct, but the radio spot was not delivered in England! I can understand the desire to sound sophisticated, particularly for that brand of automobile, but even so, it was downright annoying.

Here's how sophisticated I am: when I think of the word "jaguar" I think of Mater from the Pixar movie Cars when he says, "You know, I once knew this girl Doreen. Good lookin' girl. Looked just like a ja-gwar, only she was a truck! You know, I used to crash into her, just so I could spoke to her."

It's just me, I totally know it.

On Missing Two Front Teeth

My youngest son's second front tooth just came out yesterday. Even though the other one is coming in and you can see it's white nub, he now has a very marked speech impediment. My favorite quote so far, spoken when he was wrestling with his shoelaces before church this morning: "My latheth are tho thlippery!"

We try so hard not to laugh, but it's so adorable that we can barely contain ourthelveth!