Inspiration

Some of us may need something startling like a burning bush experience to awaken our senses. In such an experience the essential nature of something—a person, a situation, an object—is suddenly perceived. We understand this to be inspiration. To be able to perceive by inspiration the common and ordinary things of life in their true meaning is a special gift. Many people fail to perceive inspiration because God’s “great power … looks small unto the understanding of men” or because they are “less and less astonished at a sign or a wonder from heaven.”  ^{James E. Faust}

感覚を呼び覚ますために、驚くべき経験を必要としている人々がいるかもしれません。このような経験をすると、人、状況、目的といったものの本質が突如として認識できるようになります。わたしたちはこれが霊感であることを理解しています。人生の平凡で当たり前の事柄について、真実の意味を霊感によって理解できることは、特別な賜物です。多くの人が霊感に気づきません。それは、神の「力は人々の理解では小さく見え」るため、あるいは「しるし、すなわち天からの不思議に次第に驚かなくなってきた」ためです。―ジェームズ・E・ファウスト

My Fav Star-Spangled Banner

A Two-Side System

When I struggle to understand the landscape of politics or social issues etc., I often times recall some words that are familiar to me:

In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it?

The more I become acquainted with opposition to opinions the more truth and judgement becomes distorted. That being said, understanding both sides of a story is key to forming a valuable opinion and belief for oneself. Regardless of the ideas that one buys into, there seems to be a need to have a solid underlying foundation that anchors people to hold each other up despite the difference of the branches of each persons core beliefs. 


Seek ideas from words of those who ring true. Emulate actions of those who stir you to do good.


I think choosing a principle or a standard to live by is wiser than choosing a person to stand by or believe in. Picking sides based off people and their beliefs seems to always lead people down a road they don't want to travel down. On the other hand, people that seem to live by principles they believe in seem to be comfortable wherever they travel.

How Bad is the Debt?

Some argue that America is different or that a debt crisis like Greece wouldn't happen to the U.S. But this graph causes you to consider certain possibilities.

Tapper VS. Carney Oct '11

Geithner VS. Paul Feb '12

I can't believe they aren't worried about discussing 10 years past the future. #thanksagainDC

Where Does Money Go When Stocks Fall?

The money does not "go" anywhere. It is literally lost. Stock market money is mostly a store (measure) of value, not a medium of exchange. When the value of a stock goes down, the money by which it is measured simply disappears.

 

Remember that money, especially as a store of value, is a matter of faith: it cannot be exchanged for anything tangible (e.g., gold or silver) except in a market in which the value of products is largely a matter of faith. The value of money in the stock market is based on faith in the value of the stocks that the money represents. So when the value of the stocks declines, the money that measures the value of the stocks declines by the same amount. No one gets the money that is lost. It simply evaporates.

The error in the question results from thinking of money as something real, rather than as an abstraction—a symbol. Money seems "real" because we use it as a taken-for-granted medium of exchange in daily transactions. We use money because, well, everyone does, and we know it "works" to make these transactions. But money is simply a system of accounting for trades. To the extent that it measures anything, it does so because we believe that it does. This is known as reification—the process of converting a symbol into a "real thing," of thinking of an abstract concept (money, in this case) as an actual object or material force. "Money" is not the material representation of "dollars" or "change" you carry around with you. It is an "idea," a concept that is based on nothing other than our faith in (a) its usefulness in procuring what we want—i.e., making us "free" in the sense of excusing us from obligations or obtaining things we think we want—and (b) its capacity to measure the "value" of the things we think we "own." When we lose faith in those functions, money ceases to exist. Hence, the money we invest in stocks disappears when the stock loses value.

Note that value is not a personal evaluation, but a product of social/culture determination. What an individual person thinks is irrelevant. What counts is value as accorded by others participating in the same market.

http://bit.ly/uyyxq9

Wall Street

The current malaise was caused by mortgage-backed securities combined with government-backed mortgages. Do you honestly think that Wall Street (properly pronounced "middle-class America's retirement savings") gamblers would have bet on mortgage-backed securities if the government hadn't been in the business of artificially propping up their prices? Don't blame Wall Street. They were just doing their job (which middle-class America was expecting and paying them to do). Blame the government for creating a bubble and for creating the false perception that our country was producing something. We didn't lose money when the markets crashed and the housing bubble burst in 2008. We lost a bet. No wealth was destroyed. The value of our wealth was simply valued where it should have been all along. The only way forward is to build wealth. This happens only when the private sector produces something, not when the government directs our consumption. The government should do everything it can to get out of the way of private production so that we can continue to build wealth, which is the name of the game.

Brett Gilbert 9-16-2011

Omitted Statistics and Distortion Theory

In at least one important way journalists are very different from the rest of us- they are more liberal. For instance, according to surveys, in a typical presidential election Washington correspondents vote about 93-7 for the Democrat, while the rest of America votes about 50-50.

As I demonstrate, using objective, social-scientific methods, the filtering prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is. Instead, we see only a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass- a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see.

In general, journalists do not give us a representative sample. Instead- partly because of their own ideological views, and partly because of some institutional factors within the news industry- they give us a biased sample. That is, journalists are more likely to report facts and statistics that liberals want you to learn and less likely to report facts and statistics that conservatives want you to learn.

Stated differently, while the job of a journalist is to shine light on facts, in the current state of the U.S. media, journalists do not shine their light straight. Instead it is as if they are a prism, bending the light and causing it to make a left turn. The end result is that we, the readers and viewers of the news, are more likely to see facts from the left side of the spectrum. This what I mean by distortion theory of media bias. Such behavior of journalists also causes our political views to make a left turn- that is, to become more liberal.

Tim Groseclose 2011

Rich Man, Poor Man

Wisconsin Is Open For Business

Well, well, well. Looks like Evil ol' Governor Scott Walker's plan in Wisconsin wasn't so bad for the middle and lower class after all.

Mind Over Matter

There is a girl I became acquainted with during my study abroad in Japan back in 2009. She seemed a little eccentric at the time when I met her at my exchange university but I didn't think much about it until recent events. As I look back now I still am unable to pinpoint what drove her to become so disconnected with reality. She didn't seem like the type that would be unable to distinguish reality and fantasy. Nevertheless, she apparently is in a condition where merely telling her what reality is isn't enough to change her mind.

Hyejin is Korean and studied abroad at the same university during the same season at Yokohama National University as I did. I don't recall the first time we met but I wouldn't put is past her to remember specifics from our first encounter. Even as I received email from her recently she recalled events between us that I had long forgotten. To be honest, I never thought of her as someone I wanted to date let alone attractive. I intentionally emphasize with curtness to showcase Hyejin's psyche.

I cannot remember for certain that she made her feelings known to me while we were in Japan. However, I make it a point that I never expressed any form of admiration toward her other than we would occasionally chat if we ran into each other at school. I had no problem with that. What started to worry me were things that happened after I returned home to America. After returning home we were not surprisingly friends on facebook and Skype. I believe it was spring and summer of 2010 where she started describing to me her feelings about me. Frankly I was not very happy or appreciative of the matter albeit I tried to be kind in my rejection of her feelings toward me. She didn't seem to get the whole respecting other people's wishes social contract that I happen to value a lot. So after hours of trying to explain this via email, chat, and talking I decided to cut her off from my social networks. I ignored her emails and thought that she would get the picture after a while.

If I had only known that she wasn't going to get the picture I would have never followed up with her. It had been about 4 months or so before I tried to reach out to her just to see how she was doing. She seemed more normal in the aftermath and responded to emails concisely and not very timely (which was appreciated). But that all changed about a week ago. I received a longer email in English from her updating me about her job hunting and she related to me something we talked about in Japan which was not abnormal and well I wasn't creeped out at it, so that was nice. But the very next day she sent me an email that started a tornado of craziness that hopefully ended a few days ago.

To summarize, she sent me something to the effect that she had a dream and I was to buy her a ring from Tiffanys and that she was excited about our upcoming marriage!? WTF, right? Wait it gets better... So I responded promptly saying congrats to the job hunting thing and told her that the ring thing doesn't make any sense. I got a call during work the next day I assumed was from Japan but ignored it... because I was working. I got home and another message from Hyejin said something like I tried calling you, where are you, I wanna hear your voice, I wanna get that ring from Tiffanys I saw in my dream and crazy stuff like that. I knew now that I needed to try and put and end to this. This is exactly what I wrote back to her in English:

Hyejin,

I don't know what you are talking about.

Maybe you can explain what you mean about this ring stuff.

I hope you understand that I'm not going to be with you.

We are friends. But we will only ever be friends.

Hope you can understand me. Sometimes I think you live in a different world than me.

Let me know what you are doing but try and live in reality.

Tyler

 I was trying to be civil about the whole thing and that's when the phone calls started coming. Shortly after I sent this I started receiving foreign phone calls frequently. I ignored the first about 5 and then I got on Skype and decided to try and talk to her. I was suppose to go golfing early in the morning with some co-workers keep in mind. But I ended up talking at this girl for about an hour and a half and it was about 1:30 before I got to bed. At first I was trying to be nice but by the end I was saying anything I thought would wake her up. It progressed from I am not attracted to you, to I don't like you, to I hate you. Sadly friends, there are no avails in this horror episode. After I got off Skype my phone was getting calls every hour through the entire night. I ignored them all but was too drained to get up early for golf. The calls continued throughout the day and I would periodically answer them and speak my frustrations. That night I turned my phone off so I could get to decent sleep. Even to my surprise when I turned on my phone in the morning my voice inbox was full and the robot said I had 45 saved messages! Cue the Psycho music.

I listened to every last one of those messages with some Japanese friends because she was leaving the messages mostly in Japanese. At one point a teller from Tiffanys leaves a message saying that your wife needs information from you to buy this ring here. Ring? Wife?! Yeah, that was message about 22 of 45. As my friend Yuka and I were listening to the messages miraculously a phone call comes from her. Yuka answered it and told her I was in the shower and Hyejin says, So?! Who is this? Yuka tells her she heard about Hyejin and relayed the message that I didn't want her to call anymore. Hyejin hung up on Yuka. She called again about 5 minutes later instructing me to give her her stuff back?? Note: She is still in Korea and I am still in America during this whole fiasco. That was the last time someone answered her call on my phone. I got a few weird calls in Korean after that but it's been almost 2 days now since the calls. I called my service provider and they have supposedly blocked international calls and I haven't received any emails so I'm praying this is over.

I feel bad for her more so than anger because I know she is not all the way there. She needs help and it's not my responsibility but I hope her family and friends do something to help her. I thought about what I could've done to prevent this but I realize that people have problems like these and sometimes you can't really do anything about it. But for my sanity and hers I have decided never to correspond with her again.

Netanyahu Speaks to Obama

5 Questions for Candidates

Is America exceptional? Why?

Should the Constitution be upheld as the Founders intended it to be?

What is the government's role in people's lives?

What is the most important issue America faces?

What is America's role in the world?

The Rest are Details

A compelling, argumentative question posed by LeGrand Richards concerning the Book of Mormon. The query deals with Joseph and Judah, two of Jacob's (Israel's) sons (of the 12 tribes of Israel). The information surrounding the subject is found in Genesis chapters 37; 44; 49 and Deuteronomy 33. This argument is made based on the significance of Joseph's dream and the blessings he received by Moses and Jacob. Opponents of the Book of Mormon would be wise to answer these questions prior to making claims about the validity of the book. Consider Richards' questions:

1. Does the Bible record promises to any other man (Joseph) equal to these promises, except the promise that through the loins of Judah the Christ would come into the world?

2. Does the Bible record the fulfillment of these promises? If so, where?

3. It is generally conceded that the Bible is a record of the Jews, but where is the record of Joseph and his seed?

4. Is it consistent to assume that God would make greater promises to Joseph and his seed (Ephraim and Manasseh) than to any other group of the eleven sons of Jacob (Israel) and his seed, and then make no provision that a record should be kept of the fulfillment of these promises?

This is also why the scripture found in Ezekiel 37: 15-20 resonates so well with doctrine of the LDS. 

The word of the Lord came again unto me, saying,

 Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all of the house of Israel his companions:

 And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.

 And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these?

 Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand.

 And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes.