On, Wildfire, On!

One week ago, I was released as the ward Gospel Doctrine teacher. I admit I cried a few tears over that. I love, love, love teaching that class, and I felt very sad that I hadn't made it through all the standard works. I started when we were partly through the Old Testament, taught all the way through the New Testament, and only made it up to Mosiah in the Book of Mormon. Two years total just isn't long enough. Is it greedy to want at least two more years? Maybe three? It's not that I feel I am the best teacher in the world or anything, but I have learned so much as I've studied and pondered the scriptures in order to share the joys contained in them with the class and hear their comments and insights in turn. When I teach something, it sticks in my head better. I learn more as I study and prepare in order to try and teach it coherently, and I have learned amazing things.

So my new adventure will be in the new ward Relief Society presidency as first counselor--I've now come full circle, as that was the calling I received when we first moved here in 2009. The new president came up to me last week and told me that she knew how much I loved being the Gospel Doctrine teacher, but my name came to her at three in the morning one night and wouldn't leave no matter how much she prayed. Having been a former Gospel Doctrine teacher herself, she knew how hard it would be for me to leave it, but she knew I was supposed to be one of her counselors.

That's the way things work, and I'm fine with that. Besides, I get to work with three absolutely wonderful women as we serve and love the women of our ward.

Plus, Husband found me a brand new aluminum-frame street cruiser at the thrift store yesterday for $20. It's the little things that really give me a kick.

I'm naming this bike Wildfire II. I rode the original Wildfire (a purple Diamondback) on my mission in England over 20 years ago. And yes, that's a tribute to Rex O'Herlihan's grand steed in Rustler's Rhapsody, the 1985 cowboy parody starring Tom Berenger.

On, Wildfire, on!

In Which I Dream up an Entire Architectural Neighborhood!

I frequently have what I call Architectural Dreams, where I dream up some fantastical building and spend my time running through it for reasons that make perfect sense when I'm asleep and do not make much sense at all when I'm awake. It's the building my subconscious creates and not the storyline that I treasure when I wake up.

Last night, I dreamt a whole neighborhood. Lots of crazy stuff happened on my way to this neighborhood (including a massive traffic jam comprised of millions of people pushing shopping carts full of empty plastic containers down a highway), but suddenly I am there, walking up a hill on a sidewalk, looking around me at the beautiful homes and perfectly manicured gardens along both sides of the street. Some of the trees, for instance, were amazing--shaped somewhat like vast weeping willows, whose branches defied gravity and were covered in flowers so white they hurt my eyes to look at.

As I walked up the hill, I came to a fairly unremarkable but very neatly kept blonde brick house, and an old man in a wheelchair sat outside in his driveway. He greeted me, and I said hello back. I noticed he had a short brick column standing alongside the entrance to his driveway, and as I looked at it, the front face became transparent and I could see into the hollow interior of the column. The interior was swathed in white muslin, and I saw a mother mouse and several tiny mouse babies playing on the floor.

"We have mice," said the man, and I thought I'd be funny and respond, "And do the neighbors have mice, too?" Somewhere in my dream recollection, I drummed up a dim vision of once having a mouse infestation in my house (true). I felt alarmed.

The man said, "I didn't want them in the house, so I made them a little house outside. And they have a way to get in and out if they want."

I looked again at the transparent face of the column and noticed that there was a hole near the bottom right corner. It was like a soft membrane, with a tube of the membrane material extending into the interior of the mouse house.

As I watched, several rats suddenly appeared inside the mouse house. They were huge--as big as cats. They wriggled their way through the membrane and out to the sidewalk. The mouse family followed them, and I watched them all waddle up the sidewalk in a line: three massive rats followed by four tiny mice.

I had an alarming thought about how these rats and mice were going to infest this entire beautiful neighborhood, and I started to say something about it to the man in the wheelchair, but then I noticed that several of his neighbors across the street were gathered outside on a very green lawn and were happily socializing. They all glanced over at the line of rats and mice wandering up the sidewalk, but they continued smiling and talking as if it were perfectly normal. I was completely baffled. Then I woke up.

Perhaps there is some deep symbological meaning to that dream, though I noticed that elements of the dream were lifted from things I had seen or thought about the previous day. I was far more disappointed that I woke up before I could explore more of that neighborhood. I rarely visit the same place twice in my dreams, so I'll just have to memorialize it now so I can remember and mull it over it later.

What I Know for Sure

Question: how angry does a person get when their world view is challenged by credible evidence?

Answer: angry like The Hulk.

"Hulk SMASH!"

I went through a bit of rage not too long ago for this very reason. I was seriously angry. And I was angry for several reasons:

1. If this new evidence is correct, why have I been taught a lie for so very long?
2. Was it purposeful or accidental that I was fed a lie?
3. If this new evidence is correct and it looks like I was fed a lie purposely, who is behind the lie, and what do they gain by perpetuating the lie?
4. Now what?

I am always in search of truth. I don't care if it's painful truth or not: if it's truth, I believe it will set me free. Being free is worth all the psychological pain I might go through in being forced to change my worldview. Therefore, bring it on. But it doesn't mean I'm not still human, so I do still go through the perfectly normal psychological distress of wanting to mock and reject things that shake up my understanding of the world. If things make too much sense to ignore, I get pretty furious until I can accept it. I have been learning how to leave my ego out of it, which does help to reduce the anger.

When I was younger, I knew lots of things for sure. Now I know two things for sure.

What I know for sure:
1. God exists.
2. God cannot lie.

There are corollaries to those two things I know, and those things I also believe. If God says it, and He doesn't lie, then I can believe those things, as well. This covers the reasons why I go to church and have faith in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ and try to live those beliefs on a daily basis.

It's the stuff that humans state are absolute facts that I question. If the "science is settled," I'm not on board, especially if it contradicts what God says. If a human theory is taught as a gospel truth--no matter how diligently and no matter how widely--I'm going to ask questions. I've asked the questions about God, and I've received my answers, answers that I cannot ignore or deny. But humans have this fantastic habit of getting things wrong because we are infants in our understanding of reality. Worse, some humans purposely mess with the facts for power, money, or ego.

We are human. And we're not even that smart. How can we know anything for dead certain when we only experience such a narrow spectrum of reality? Much of what we call Science these days has become as much of a religion as a belief in a Supreme Being, and it has also become corrupted by human desire and ego. We don't even know what we don't know. How can we dismiss God and then worship ourselves as gods when what we know for certain changes so frequently? That way lies madness.

When you start jumping down the rabbit hole of wanting to know truth no matter the psychological toll, it's tempting to become so cynical that you end up believing nothing. But you have to put your faith in something or you'll go crazy, so I put my faith in the one thing that has consistently proven itself to be: God. I have no scientific instruments to measure God, and I have no evidence that is not a personal anecdote in order to prove His existence to anyone else, but it's evidence enough to me. I have far less trust in humans with all their scientific tools, no matter how well-meaning. I do believe we know stuff as humans, but when we humans start worshiping ourselves and our vast and glorious knowledge of Everything, it makes me want to laugh and laugh. Or cry and cry.

Thanks for listening. Just had to get that off my chest.

Another Experiment with High Dose Vitamin C

I like to experiment on myself occasionally. For instance, I haven't had any soda for 15 months. I wish I could say that I've lost tons of weight and feel great, but that isn't the case. However, knowing how nasty soda is for me, I am only occasionally tempted to indulge in an ice-cold, sweetly carbonated Pepsi. I ruthlessly squash the urge.

If only I could apply this same self-will to portion control of the foods I like best, such as my homemade crispy black bean tacos with cabbage/cilantro/red onion slaw. My kids are so done with that dish, but I still love it so much, even when I don't have feta cheese to add to it.

Right now I'm experimenting with high dose Vitamin C. I'm trying to find my bowel tolerance (the number of grams of Vitamin C that it takes to cause diarrhea), and I started out by taking 3000 mg total throughout the course of the first day. Then I read some more articles, such as this very helpful one, and decided to greatly increase my dosage amount.

Today, I've already had 4 grams (4000 mg) of ascorbic acid Vitamin C fizzy tablets in water. At our request, my in-laws bring home many tubes of fizzy Vitamin C tablets from England (though the tablets are made in Germany) whenever they go to visit. While I can stomach the black currant flavored ones (I'm not a huge fan of black currant), I prefer the orange flavored ones. When I run out of those, I'll buy some more pure ascorbic acid Vitamin C from a drugstore or health store, or I may order more acerola cherry powder.

I'm taking 2000 mg of the stuff every one or two hours today. I think I may be reaching bowel tolerance, which is great (if one can ever be excited about deliberately giving oneself diarrhea) because it means that despite my being overweight, I am pretty dang healthy internally. I would increase my dosage rates if I start feeling sick or if I am stressed. But for now, I'll find bowel tolerance and then reduce my dosage to 80%-90% of bowel tolerance on a daily basis.

I am also taking more zinc, but I had forgotten about the side effects of taking zinc on an empty stomach. Blech.

Tip: don't take zinc tablets on an empty stomach. If you don't actually vomit, you'll be suppressing the urge to vomit for hours.

You're welcome.

Last thing:

I know everything I write lately is completely dry and humorless. I blame it on my job. For years now I have been writing thousands upon thousands of words of dry and humorless content for the Internet. In fact, except for all the random trivia I have stored up in my head because of the research I have to do, I have become an utterly boring person in general.

The cure for being boring and humorless has got to be enjoyable, though. Right? I think I've found my next experiment.

The Curious Reason I May Have Become a Flat Earther

Here's a thing:

Back on November 7, 2015, I and several others were walking through a parking lot around 7pm. It was dark, and our eyes were suddenly caught by an extremely bright, unusual light in the western sky. We stood and watched this light until it slowly faded out. It was so unusual that I didn't forget it.

When I looked it up on the Internet the next morning, there were several articles (here, here, and here, among others, written in the two or three days following the incident) and a couple videos about it. This video, taken by amateurs in Southern California, includes some foul language (some F-bombs), but the light show they captured is exactly what I saw.



So the government says it was a rocket test over California, and they closed down air traffic over the Pacific. Fine. Just because it looks nothing like a rocket trail or like any light I've ever seen in the sky before, fine. We're used to explanations from the government that stretch the limits of credulity--not that I actually believe in aliens from outer space for a number of reasons. But I do believe the government has technology far beyond what they normally allow the public to see.

But that's not the issue I want to address, even if it is a good subject.

The question I have is this: if that rocket test happened over 670 miles to the southwest from where I was standing, how did I see it?

In the video above, the light is high in the sky, and it's massive. Standing where I was in Northern Utah, I saw it high in the sky, as well. In fact, to the direct west of my location is a range of very tall mountains. Given the curvature of the earth, I should not have been able to see that light either because it was below the horizon line or (even if it was very, very high in the sky above LA) still hidden behind the range of mountains. Yet I saw that light high in the sky, unobscured by the mountains. People reported seeing this same thing from all over the Western States.

There are two explanations I can think of.

Either the officials failed to mention that they shot off multiple rockets in various places throughout the West simultaneously (a theory that is not confirmed in any of the articles about the subject)

or...

the earth is actually flat and there is no curvature of a global world that would obscure my ability to see a light of that magnitude and height even from 670 miles away.

I can think of no other explanations.

I'll Do It Now in a Minute!

The Welsh have invented a wonderful phrase: "I'll do it now in a minute!"

It may seem contradictory at first, but then when you really think about it...it still is contradictory. However, it makes a certain amount of sense in certain situations.

For instance:

I was eating dinner the other day when Husband asked if I had put the colors into the wash. Oops. I had forgotten. So I said, "I'll do it now," and then immediately realized I was still in the middle of my dinner, so I instantly added, "in a minute." Then I repeated the entire phrase again in a Welsh accent, which caused Husband to laugh out loud for quite a long time.

It's obvious how useful this phrase is when you're being hounded to do something right that instant, but you're just not yet ready to jump to it. Like right now, when I am trying to digest a 22-page white paper on robotics software in order to coherently summarize it in about 500 words (including correct terminology), I stopped at page four in order to jump over here and write in my blog, thus relieving my overheated brain.

Yeah, yeah. I'm getting back to the rest of it. In a minute.

(Closely related is the phrase, "I'll be there now in a minute!")

(I think you get the idea.)

This is Not an Allegory

When I was at the end of my sophomore year of high school, the student body of my small school roundly rejected the sensible candidate for student body president and elected a pot-smoking punk instead. The sensible candidate was female, a cheerleader, and a straight-A student who seemed to be in the leadership of nearly every important school organization. She was smart, responsible, and just a tad bossy. She would have followed a long line of sensible, responsible student body presidents, each of whom would be qualified to win the "Most Likely to Succeed" award.

The pot-smoking punk, on the other hand (who happened to be in my circle of friends, though we were not close), was part of the inner drama club elites (and an excellent actor) and would, as a secret signal, wear the front of his hair in a little pigtail on the days he came to school high. He was charismatic and popular, but he wasn't necessarily what you would call responsible or sensible.

It was a revolution that brought Nate to power. Everyone was just sick and tired of the smart, responsible, rich, popular kids getting elected. They wanted something different, something not so status-quo. In a surprising upset, the cheerleader lost to the pot-smoking punk, and we all waited to see what would happen the next year.

When I started my junior year of high school, it soon became apparent that electing Nate had been a mistake. He was really terrible at being president. He didn't take it seriously, and when he did anything presidential, he butted heads with the real authority: the school administration. He wanted things that weren't appropriate, and he treated the position like a joke (which, okay, it really is in high school, where no student is ever going to be given any real authority to make changes). It was an interesting year, and there was even talk of impeachment amongst the more outraged.

Although no real damage was done, I think everyone learned a little bit of a lesson. The next student body president elected (one of my graduating classmates) was a responsible, athletic, charismatic, straight-A young man. I know I voted for him because I had had a secret but very intense crush on him since the first moment I saw him at the beginning of our freshman year. He was something special, that guy. And the girl who got elected as the senior class president that year was a straight-A cheerleader, athlete, and leader in the most important academic school organizations. She was also our class valedictorian, so you can imagine that she was also responsible and sensible.

Before you ask, I am not equating anyone in my story with any of the current presidential candidates. This is not an allegory. I was just musing on this memory as I was listening to and reading the news of the last few days of our nation's presidential circus race. If I have any points to make by sharing this memory, perhaps they are these (which I do not claim to be profound or even useful in any way):

1. Change simply for change's sake alone is never a good idea. Indiscriminate destruction is stupid and dangerous.
2. The real power behind the throne will never give up its power lightly or easily.
3. If the person who is elected actually does manage to wrest power and control away from the shadow power, you better be absolutely sure of his or her character.
4. Collectively, we're still reacting like immature high school students even as adults. Perhaps that is a sad constant.
5. Sometimes it is really satisfying to vote for the underdog.
6. Don't let the satisfaction of voting for an underdog make you forget your responsibility to seriously weigh the consequences of electing said underdog.
7. Presidents of the United States (along with members of Congress) can do real and lasting damage, unlike high school student body presidents. (As a side note, so can unelected Supreme Court judges and hundreds of thousands of unelected bureaucrats.)

That's it. That's the most profound I'm going to end up being today. I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.