NEWS: I got to help the police

In the city I live at, there was a fire a 5 minutes drive from my place. The story is covered by local newspapers.
Daily Herald | Desert News | Salt Lake Tribune

Sometimes I translate firesides at the missionary training center (MTC) into chinese. One day I got a call and the MTC wants to know if I want to help translate for the police. The police needed to talk with the chinese restaurant owners involved in the incident, and so I was able to help translate in this investigation while the detective got a statement from the restaurant owners.

MOTIVATIONAL: Despair Inc Demotivational Posters

http://www.despair.com/demotivators/wishes.html
Is a great website for demotivational posters.

As of now, they've only release 4 of the 2006 collection, by my top pick of 2006 so far is about wishing upon a star.

INFO: Why were many jews money-lenders?

In one of my classes, my professor touched on it a bit, and so I emailed him for a little further depth. The time period context of this is medieval Europe. Here is what he said:
---
Mark,

Jews engaged in money-lending in medieval Europe because (1) they'd effectively been eliminated from farming after the Roman Empire became Christian by laws forbidding them to own slaves (who were necessary for agricultural estates) and because, in the feudal system, even peasants had to swear Christian oaths to the Christian noble who taxed them; (2) they were eliminated from crafts and local commerce because these economic activities were organized into guilds that were defined in Christian terms; (3) they were eliminated from professions that required a university education (law, medicine, etc.) because medieval European universities (Bologna, Sorbonne, Heidelberg, Oxford, etc.) were controlled by the Catholic Church; (4) they were eliminated from government bureaucracies, since government was also defined in Christian terms; (5) the Catholic Church forbade Christians to charge interest on loans on grounds of Exodus 22:25 (which forbade usury/interest generally), but Judaism (on grounds that Deut. 23:19 forbade only charging interest "to thy brother") allowed Jews to charge interest on loans to non-Jews.

A good recent book on the Protestant Reformation is U. Rublack, Reformation Europe (BR305.3 .R83 2005).

[courtesy dr. green]

QUOTE: Be yourself Eh?

"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
Anatole France
French novelist (1844 - 1924)

HUMOR: I'm My Own Grandpa

Many, many years ago, when I was twenty-three,
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be
this widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red.
my father fell in love with her, and soon they too were wed.

This made my dad my son-in-law and really changed my life,
now my daughter was my mother, cause she was my father's wife.
to complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy,
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.

My little baby then became a brother-in-law to Dad,
and so became my uncle, though it made me very sad.
for if he was my uncle, then that also made him brother
of the widow's grown-up daughter, who, of course, was my stepmother.

Father's wife then had a son who kept him on the run,
and he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter's son.
my wife is now my mother's mother, and it makes me blue,
because, although she is my wife, she's my grandmother, too.

Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild,
and every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild,
cause now I have become the strangest case you ever saw
as husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa!

Oh, I'm my own grandpa.
I'm my own grandpa.
it sounds funny I know but it really is so,
oh, I'm my own grandpa

I'm my own grandpa
I'm my own grandpa...
it sounds funny I know
but it really is so

Source: http://www.ziplo.com/grandpa.htm

PHOTOS: Mt. Timpanogos Hike Sep 5, 2005

Sunrise as seen from Mt. Timpanogos Sep 5 7AM (labor day)



It is windy up there, we were cold.



View from the summit back down on the trail we climbed.




This is a view of the summit from the trail (on our way back down)



The group of us.



Nice photography Kirk.



Another view of the summit from the trail in a meadow below, and me.



Kirk did some nice photography

MOTIVATIONAL: Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.

Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

-Source unknown