Faith will always remain a matter of choice

Terryl L. Givens on the FAIR podcast:

If we were to ever reach a point in our lives where we felt the evidence -- for, or against, Christ's divinity or the Book of Mormon, or Joseph Smith's prophetic calling -- were overwhelming, then there would be a kind of intellectual compulsion involved, and our faith would not be a matter of choice.

I've been trying to put that thought to words for almost 2 years. My experience so far has been that whenever I feel like the evidence weighs more heavily on one side than another, it's only because I haven't looked hard enough for the counterpoints on the other side.

But why faith? Because this life is principally a test of spirit. Sure knowledge eliminates the wrong answers from the test, and it ceases to be a valid test for the spirit, and instead becomes a simple test of will, which is interesting, but insufficient.

Russian soldiers in WWII who ran from the front line were shot by their own men -- how do you award medals of honor when valor is forced on you?

Japanese Earthquake

I had heard it was bad, but I hadn't seen this...

Mountains out of molehills?

Good thing we're all worrying so much.

By their fruits ye shall know them

A new sociological study just came out with much to say about the LDS church.

I can't imagine a better set of metrics for a church to score highly in.

How to "move" instead of "copy" a file into your iTunes Library

Handbrake users, rejoice! This seems to work:

1. Make a "temp" folder inside your Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder
2. Whenever you get a new file you want iTunes to manage, e.g. from Handbrake, drag it to that temp folder
3. Then drag it from there into iTunes

It should disappear from the temp folder almost immediately. Note, you need to have "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" in the Advanced Preferences pane.

If you do this a lot, try making an alias to that temp folder on your desktop.

If you *really* do this a lot, leave a comment and I can probably be persuaded to make a folder action script that will automatically send those files to iTunes when dropped there.

(Update, I wasn't the first to discover this.)

Crossing the line in new and surprising ways

A few weeks back I thought I heard offer this quote during a lesson, but nobody remembers it being said or saying it, and I can't find it anywhere on the internet (which knows everything, right?).

Still, worth sharing:

If you set the example to your kids that it's okay to cross the line, they'll cross it in ways that are new and surprising to you.

On getting, learning, becoming

"They Shall Ask the Way to Zion", Shawn Miller:

Stuff beyond our basic needs does not liberate. Consider the overall investment of your time. You have to shop for stuff. You have to clean, maintain, and organize stuff. You lose stuff. You look for stuff. You polish stuff, secure it against theft, trip over it, recharge it, upgrade it, accessorize it, pack it, move it, unpack it, insure it, fix it, and eventually sell, trash, or bequeath it. Stuff has no use beyond this life, and it takes a lot from us.

Very much unlike stuff, knowledge has few such liabilities.