hirm

A Recent Drive to Work

2010-03-18T22:09:00.003-05:00

As I was driving to work one day, the car in front of me suddenly swerved to reveal a half-crushed black kitten on the road. It flopped around like a fish on the bloody pavement. With seconds to react, I swerved as had the car before me and as also did the car behind me.

As I went on, I tried to decide whether I should go back and do something. I could intentionally run it over, as unpleasant as that would be. I could try to move it out of the road, but that might only prolong its suffering unless I actually drove it somewhere. It was hard to imagine trying to drive with a thrashing, bleeding kitten on my passenger’s seat or in my lap. Inevitably, I thought, someone on the busy street would kill the kitten before long, accidentally or intentionally. I ended up doing nothing, feeling that whatever the correct choice was, that probably wasn’t it. But I decided that I should figure out what I should have done, in case I encountered a similar situation again.

I mentioned my experience to a co-worker. He told me of someone he had known in high school—a football player—who had encountered an owl in the road that had been hit but was still alive. He got out of his car to help the owl and was struck by another vehicle and killed.

For every visible suffering animal in an urban environment, there must be countless others in places with no human influence. I am occasionally reminded of this when I watch a David Attenborough documentary or when I see that our pet cats have torn the limbs from a smaller animal, leaving it to die.

On my way home that evening, I tried to remember where I had seen the kitten. I didn’t see any remains in the dark, however, and I realized at one point that I wasn’t driving very safely as I scanned the oncoming lane.

The next morning, I saw the kitten again. It was nothing but a flattened dark shape on the road. The shape remained for quite some time.

Space and Perspective

2009-01-28T22:21:00.019-06:00

Does space go on forever? I like this question because a yes answer and a no answer both seem absurd. My mind can't conceive of space going on forever, or of space not going on forever, and yet it seems that one of the two must be true. This is different than thinking about things like other dimensions or the afterlife because it's just plain physically there for us to (partially) observe and wonder about.

"And it came to pass that Moses looked, and beheld the world upon which he was created; and Moses beheld the world and the ends thereof, and all the children of men which are, and which were created; of the same he greatly marveled and wondered. . . . And he said unto himself: Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed."

     - Moses 1, Pearl of Great Price

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

     - Carl Sagan

"'Space,' it says, 'is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen . . . .'"

     - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

See also The Galaxy Song.

Macro Photography

2008-04-20T21:42:00.005-05:00

Macro photography is something I've always wanted to do, and my new camera does it surprisingly well, despite not being a really expensive sort of camera. These are some of my most recent shots.

You can click an image to see a larger view. You can see all of the macro shots I've posted here.

Passage

2008-02-19T22:44:00.019-06:00

Passage is a free computer game by Jason Rohrer. It's five minutes long and requires no skill (or interest) in video games. To play it, you only need to use the arrow keys. You can download it for PC, Mac, or Linux. Which leaves you no excuse not to try it.

A Few More LDS Articles and Interviews

2008-01-13T21:01:00.000-06:00

I found these interesting:

"What Is It about Mormonism?" is an article by Noah Feldman that appeared in the New York Times on January 6, 2008.

And this is a January 2008 interview with Armand Mauss, professor of sociology and religious studies, by John Morehead. The other 2004 interview that they mention is here (part 1) and here (part 2).

This is another "Twelve Questions" interview from 2005 with Terryl Givens, author of By the Hand of Mormon. (I recommend that book, by the way.)

New Year Night Photos

2008-01-01T02:00:00.000-06:00

LDS Interview Transcripts

2007-12-19T21:25:00.000-06:00

I'm posting these here in part so that I have them all on one place for easy reference.

PBS posted many of the interviews conducted for the show The Mormons on their site. The interviews with Boyd K. Packer and with Dallin H. Oaks are available on the official LDS site.

Richard Bushman, who wrote Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, was interviewed about "Mormonism and politics" in an event organized by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. After they covered the main topic, journalists asked him many additional questions.

Ken Jennings, that LDS guy who did very well on the show Jeopardy, had an interesting interview with FriendlyAtheist.com.

Richard Dutcher, who made the films God's Army, Brigham City, and States of Grace, was interviewed by Christianity Today magazine. He also wrote an editorial for the Daily Herald newspaper. Kieth Merrill responded and then apologized.

The Jeep Is Stolen Again

2007-11-05T22:41:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, our Jeep was stolen twice in as many years. The second time was during the summer, and the thieves might have reconsidered their choice had they known that the air conditioning was broken. Again, we found broken glass on the ground when we went outside in the morning.

That evening, we were at home and I was playing a scary video game called Fatal Frame. The game is about a girl with a camera that can capture ghosts. When I heard a pounding noise, I thought at first that it was part of the game. But it was someone at our back door. We didn't use the back door because it led into the bedroom of our small one-bedroom apartment. [j5] looked through the blinds to see who it might be, and the man at the door shouted, "I see you in there! Open up!" He continued pounding on the door. He wasn't anyone we knew, and he didn't identify himself, so we ignored him. After a while, he gave up and left. I guessed that he might have had some connection to the vehicle theft.

When the police recovered the Jeep this time, we weren't given any details. But the inside was in pretty bad shape and extremely filthy.

One other short story from around the same time: some friends were looking for an apartment in our area of town. During a brief visit to our apartment, they asked us whether the area seemed to be safe. We replied that we thought it was safe enough, despite our Jeep having been stolen once or twice. Our conversation was interrupted by some commotion outside. We looked out the window to see a police officer chasing a man down the street.

LDS Fiction

2007-11-03T19:13:00.000-05:00

I've been reading some novels and short stories by and about LDS people lately. I've sort of avoided such books in the past, assuming that there weren't likely many good ones, if any.

Summer Fire (1983) by Douglas H. Thayer
This is the story of a strait-laced fifteen-year-old boy from a sheltered environment who goes to work on a ranch for the summer. He's presented with many challenges to his attitudes. I liked the characters and was impressed with Thayer's reserved writing style.

Under the Cottonwoods (1977) and Mr. Wahlquist in Yellowstone (1989) by Douglas H. Thayer
These are short story collections. Each story in Under the Cottonwoods is about a character facing some sort of decision or challenge. I think that some of the stories are very good. The stories in Mr. Wahlquist take place in the western United States, but the characters are not necessarily LDS. "The Gold Mine" is probably my favorite from that book--I found it very funny, though the humor is subtle and kind of morbid.

The Backslider (1986) by Levi S. Peterson
In this novel, a young LDS cowboy has difficulty being the type of person he thinks he should be but doesn't necessarily want to be. This book initially surprised me with some of its language and subject matter, though I suppose that it's relatively tame compared to a lot of non-LDS-themed fiction. But what surprised me more was the religious attitudes and understandings of some of the characters. I wasn't really sure what to think of the book until I neared the end, but I was ultimately impressed and found the story uplifting.

The Broken Covenant (1985) by Carroll Hofeling Morris
A friend recommended this book and let me borrow it. It's a story about adultery and its consequences. Not a topic I'd think of when looking for something to read, but I found the book pretty compelling. Some of the characters struck me as odd or exaggerated, but the story held my interest. And this book made curious to know what other LDS fiction might be out there, so I did some research and discovered the others in this list.

I suppose that these aren't really useful book reviews, but I think it would take me too long to write more detailed impressions of the books.

Wherein Our Jeep Is Stolen

2007-11-02T20:16:00.000-05:00

Because some people have linked to this, I suppose I'll post again. But rather than mundane current events, I'll tell a mundane experience from 2001.

About a week after we got married and moved into our new apartment, we walked outside one morning to find the Jeep missing. We saw glass on the ground, indicating that it had been stolen. We called the police and reported the theft. The next evening, the police called us back to tell us that the Jeep had been recovered and that we could pick it up. It wasn’t far away.

We lived very close to the football stadium, and during games police would close off some roads to control the flow of traffic. This often caused us inconvenience, but this time it was helpful. The people who had stolen the Jeep panicked when they encountered a barricade and drove off into the woods. This being suspicious, the police chased them. The thieves soon abandoned the Jeep to escape on foot, but the police used dogs to track them down.

When we arrived to pick up the Jeep, we found that they had broken the steering column open to hotwire the car and had done some other damage inside and outside the vehicle. They had also left behind some shotgun shells, a butterfly knife, and a gospel music cassette tape. I still wonder whether they had taped something else over it, or whether they really listened to gospel music in the Jeep. We collected the items we found in a box and brought them to a police station.

Later, [j5] was supposed to go to some sort of hearing at a juvenile court. It turns out that it had been kids who stole the Jeep. They didn’t show up at the hearing. [j5] was asked to return at another time, but didn't.

Some people had given us money as gifts when we got married. The amount we had received covered the insurance deductible for the repairs almost exactly to the dollar.

A few years later, the Jeep was stolen again. Again from right in front of our apartment during the night. But that's another story.

A Disappointment

2007-11-01T18:30:00.000-05:00

Other than Shel Silverstein, I rarely read poetry. But I recently heard this poem on the radio and found it amusing.

"A Disappointment" by Louis Jenkins

The best anyone can say about you is that you are a
disappointment. We had higher expectations of you.
We had hoped that you would finish your schooling.
We had hoped that you would have kept your job at the
plant. We had hoped that you would have been a better
son and a better father. We hoped, and fully expected,
that you would finish reading Moby Dick. I wish that,
when I am talking to you, you would at least raise your
head off your desk and look at me. There are people
who, without your gifts, have accomplished so much
in this life. I am truly disappointed. Your parents, your
wife and children, your entire family, in fact, everyone
you know is disappointed, deeply disappointed.