|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Login Ask a Question Search About Us Policies Frequently Asked Questions Top-10 Favorites Order T-Shirt Archives Today's Posts (18) 21 20 19 18 17 16 14 13 12 11 10 09 07 06 05 04 03 02 31 30 29 28 27 26 24 23 22 21 20 19 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 09 08 07 06 05 03 02 01 30 29 28 26 25 24 23 22 21 19 18 17 16 15 14 12 11 10 09 08 07 05 04 03 02 01 31 29 28 27 26 25 24 22 21 |
Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, I didn't pay much attention to the first readability question that was asked and answered. However, with the recent posting analyzing the writing of Board writers, I became fascinated. Pretty cool stuff. My question or request is that you do the same analysis for each of the Apostles Conference addresses over the past several years, and then comment on the results, i.e., if you see any trends or other observations. Thanks! - 8.07 GFI
ADear 8.07 GFI, You're in luck. Turns out Yellow already had the text for the conference talks from October 1897 through May 2005 kicking around, complete with dates and speakers. I wrote another downloader to add in the Journal of Discourses, giving us decent coverage from 1851 through 1885, and then Laser Jock wrote a downloader to bring us up to date with the talks through last conference. This gave us a dataset of 8490 talks over 158 years to analyze. (Maybe that's more than "several." I'll assume your forgiveness.) Laser Jock and I (Kirĸe) both did some analysis; he used a homebuilt analysis script, and I modified his (beautiful) original Python script and ran the text through the website he’d previously used. Anyways, Laser Jock’s data gives us an independent check on the website and vice versa, so we can be quite confident any shared trends in GFI are not artifacts of algorithm implementation. But all that aside, I'll actually answer your original question. Are there trends in the readability of the Apostles’ recent conference addresses? Here are the last 19 years of data points for the current Twelve and First Presidency:  Needless to say, that's kind of unhelpful. Adding trendlines makes the graph even messier, hence I didn’t on the above, but it shows that the speakers who have given enough conference talks for their trendlines to be useful are either remaining constant or trending insignificantly upwards. So we lack an obvious trend in the recent talks, but a few bits of data did stick out to me. Firstly, the average GFI for conference talks since April 1997 is 10.34. This is reasonably low to start out with; given that conference speakers are overwhelmingly very well educated and are speaking at the most prestigious public-speaking event of the Church, it is remarkable. Conference speakers are clearly making an effort to keep things simple. Secondly, they’re quite consistent. Look at the scale on that graph. In most years most of the speakers being considered have average readability neither above nor much below an average high school graduate’s theoretical reading ability. President Monson’s conference talks are, on average, more readable than those of any other member of the Twelve or First Presidency. Their average GFI is 9.46. President Uchtdorf’s first conference talk, in 1994, is also currently his least readable. Not by much, but it is. This shows a general trend – individual general authorities frequently become more readable as time goes on. But of course at this point we’ve only dealt with recent data, which we’ve already observed is pretty consistent. It gets more interesting when you consider readability across most of church history.  This shows that there has been a significant, gradual decrease in the reading difficulty of major church addresses (the JD is not all conference addresses) over the last 150 years. From about 1851 through 1920 readability is fairly stable at GFI of about 15. It then drops until it hits about 10.5 in the 1980s, and it’s stayed around there ever since. And the drop isn’t confined to GFI – of the five indices graphed, all except Coleman-Liau obviously display the same trend. (As far as I can tell the Coleman-Liau index here gives no useful information, but I stuck it on there anyways.) The addresses of the prophets (including addresses given before becoming prophet) show a similar trend and suggest that it isn’t just an artifact of which talks we’re considering at different times.  This is a massive shift, and it obviously prompts the question: what caused it? There’s probably no one explanation, but I think conscious effort to make Church teachings (and teachers) more accessible probably played a large role (more readable probably means more easily understandable). The expansion of the Church outside of Utah may also have contributed, as audiences shifted from pioneer types long immersed in the church with just a smattering of recent immigrants to include whole wards of newer members. Translation of church addresses into other languages has also become much more important in the last century, so it’s possible that church leaders conscious of translation difficulties have been an influence for clearer, more straightforward speaking in the original English. Lastly, it’s entirely possible that the lowest-common-denominator literacy of the American population has dropped over the last century and that conference speakers are simply compensating. The data for individual speakers shows that even when Church readability is relatively constant, individual leaders often become more readable as time goes on. Here are a couple examples - the first few decades of President Hinckley's seem to have a lot of static (likely because he wasn't speaking as often back then so outliers are more influential), but after about 1980 there’s a clear downwards trend. Widtsoe's graph is straightforward.   I found the fact that Elder Widtsoe’s readability improved with time interesting – he’s considered one of the more intellectual historical members of the Twelve, yet as time went on his effort apparently went towards simplifying his messages. I checked a few other noted intellectuals from his time period to find that James E. Talmage’s readability shows a similar trend while B. H. Roberts’ is somewhat ambiguous. It seems that many speakers stay near their initial levels of readability, especially those who start out very readable. For example, President Monson started out around 9 and has held pretty close to that through his career – he seems to show a minor upward trend, but it doesn’t look like more than .5 GFI over 45 years.  None of the dozen or so other graphs I created out of curiosity (and am not posting out of laziness) showed really distinctive upward trends – certainly no upward trends on the order of the downwards trends shown above – and several more showed downwards trends, so I think this is a significant pattern. A graph I can’t be bothered to upload shows that the annual average length of a conference talk between 1897 and 2009 has stayed fairly constant. The Journal of Discourses has more variance and has much higher average annual lengths. This is probably due to the selection criteria for the JD being different from those for the conference reports and to the practice during that period of giving extemperaneous (and hence often long) sermons. The current record-holding most-difficult-to-read-talk of our dispensation (or at least the most difficult known to the Board’s collective webcrawling skills) was given by Elder Hyrum O. Smith, Presiding Patriarch of the Church, in the morning session of the second day of the April 1926 conference. The text is available here. The sentences require a bit of endurance, but it’s not all that unreadable. The couple most readable talks according to the spreadsheet seem to be the result of methodological problems (one got a much more average GFI upon retesting so I’m chalking it up to an unknown glitch, and another probably owed its low rating only to a known problem in the website's handling of ellipses), so I won’t declare a record there. The average GFI for the whole dataset is 12.18. The highest GFI prophet was Lorenzo Snow at an average of 16.43, with President Monson the lowest at 9.41 and President Hinckley next at 10.16. And with that I trust I’m getting close to exhausting most of your interest in my statistics, so I’ll stop. We have a handful of known problems in our inputs. The data Yellow originally downloaded included some files that didn’t work with the program he originally need them for; these talks, I think predominantly from the early 20th century, were ignored. Approximately 10 of 1428 Journal of Discourses failed to parse. It would be presumptuous, despite the fact that my Journal of Discourses downloader predicts it, to assume that Daniel H. Wells will give a talk with a precise set of readability statistics in 9613; this and a handful of other crazy points were outright deleted. The JD parser reports that Brigham Young addressed the Church in 1884; unlikely, as he was dead. Yellow’s data reports that Joseph F. Smith also gave a few conference addresses decades after his death, so some Joseph Fielding material has probably been misinterpreted. As noted, ellipses may have inflated sentence counts and therefore reduced GFI for some talks. It surfaced pretty late in the game that Laser Jock's downloader had a few problems with some interesting HTML choices in the lds.org source documents, and I was too lazy to redo all of the above analysis in order to fix the few affected years of talks. However, I did leave in Laser Jock’s email address removing function, so we can be confident that the periods in the Journal of Discourses’ email addresses are not influencing our results. On balance, a pretty clean set of inputs. In all seriousness, I doubt this motley collection of glitches affecting a handful of talks each will materially affect our dataset of 8,490 points, so our results should hold. Anyways, I thought this was quite interesting - good statistical evidence that as speakers improve, they simplify. This is something I am going to try to apply to my own talks. Good question. ~Ƥ. Ɗ. Kirĸe ADear 8, Kirĸe already pretty well described how we got our talks, so I'll skip that. The main difference between what he did and what I did is that I wrote a Python script to do the readability analysis, based on the definitions given on Wikipedia and other useful sites for the Gunning Fog, Coleman-Liau, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, ARI, SMOG, and Flesch Reading Ease—in short, the same measurements returned by the site we've been using. I thought it might be interesting to see how our results differed, especially given that the other site, although very useful, has some flaws that I corrected, such as splitting sentences due to all periods—in abbreviations, titles, URLs, etc. (Of course, my script isn't foolproof either, but I hoped to make a better stab of it than the online utility.) Anyway, here are a couple of charts showing some of the same information that Kirĸe presented above, but using my numbers. First, the trend for the current Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency, since 1990:  Kirĸe mentioned his average Gunning Fog index since April 1997; I got 10.8 using my method. Now, the yearly averages of five of the readability indices I mentioned over the entire dataset:  I noticed that my script generally scored the talks higher than did the readability site; one of the primary culprits is its method of sentence-counting. I didn't check more than a few talks, of course, but in general it seemed to overcount sentences by about 20%, while mine was within a percent or so (compared to counting manually). Since many of the indices divide by number of sentences somewhere in their formulae, an artificially high number of sentences would tend to drive down scores. Like Kirĸe said, fun stuff. We probably don't need another readability analysis question anytime too soon, though. With school starting again, we'd have a harder time going overboard like we prefer to do. —Laser Jock Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, Where can I find the text of Elder David Bednar's speech he gave at the graduation ceremony for the Marriott School of Management in April 2007? - Hoping to remember what he said
ADear Hoping, I called the Marriott School of Management and they were quite helpful in tracking down the speech you're talking about. It turns out, however, that there are some concerns that prevent his remarks from being published. Ms. JaLee Clarke, assistant to Dean Gary Cornia of the Marriott School of Management, explained why: A transcript of Elder Bednar’s remarks at April Convocation 2007 will not be publicly posted, transmitted or shared in any shape, version or form unless we have his written permission to do so. We also feel it would not be wise to ask him to approve these remarks, and we will keep them confidential out of respect for him personally and for the office which he currently holds. Let me share some of the reasons why:I'm sorry to disappoint you, but you're going to have to be satisfied with your own memories. I can understand why they would be careful, too: I don't know what instances Ms. Clarke was referring to, but last fall some remarks of President Packer's at a ward's sacrament meeting got spread around and caused big headaches for everyone involved. (See Board Question #48116 and Board Question #48182.) Caution is very understandable. —Laser Jock Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, I don't subscribe to a newspaper and use the internet to get most of my news. I use Google News the most, but I'm not impressed with their lack of options; Google News has very few options to make the page more personal. I would love to get my news from a more customizable source, sort of like a news version of Pandora. A place where I can select news articles I like so that it will show me more such articles. For instance, the Sci/Tech category on Google news is always inundated with articles about Ipods, Microsoft, and Computer Games, but I would much rather suppress those stories in favor of articles about environmental topics and astronomy. From the Entertainment section I would love to see more movie reviews and less Britney Spears. So...is there any news website out there where I can customize the news page to more closely match my interests? - Aardvark
ADear Aardvark, Google news is more like a hodgepodge of most recently updated news, and most looked at news, rather than individualistic. While I am not sure about any sites that are the Pandora of news, I would recommend the New York Times online. Their science section has specific links for Environment and Space/Cosmos related news, which seems to be part of what you are looking for. As far as finding a website that is customizable, there are none of which I am aware. Your best bet would be to research the topics you are interested in a little, saving the sites with news, and putting the links together in a nice little list. This way they are easily accessible every time you want to check the news about a specific topic, rather than you always sifting through irrelevant material. -Mico Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, Werf Werfovich, a Russian national living in the USA on a green card, has an illegitimate daughter (about ten years old) living with her mother in Russia. No official documentation was ever made of the relationship between Werf and his daughter. Because of this, Werf listed "no children" on his green card application and is officially childless in the eyes of U.S. Immigration Services. Werf would like his daughter to be able to visit him in America (and possibly come live with him during high school (or something along those lines). The mother of Werf's child is agreeable to letting the child visit the USA, and maybe come to live here permanently. What would need to be done to make this possible? -A concerned party
AConcerned- It looks to me as if his daughter's best bet is to apply for a visa to visit. Generally, in order to move here permanently, Immigration services prefers that you have a family member who is a US Citizen sponsoring you. I recommend that you visit the US Department of State website, which has a plethora of information regarding visas, visits, and immigration. Also, he might want to contact the US Embassy closest to where he lives and get information specific to his case. - Cuddlefish Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, A girl in one of my previous classes got an awesome jacket from a clearance sale by the BYU theater department. I think they sell out stuff that they don't need anymore. I don't know if they hold this sale regularly, so do any of you know any more details about this? - Bargain Hunter
ADear Bargain Hunter, I talked to someone in Costumes and they said they'd be having another sale around the end of September. Sounds like this one is going to consist mostly of hats, fur coats, and vintage clothing. It will most likely be held in the Gates Opera Workshop (which is just by the De Jong Concert Hall), but the exact date isn't nailed down yet. No stress though, it'll be advertised in the Daily Universe and on fliers around campus when the time gets closer, so if you keep your eyes peeled you should be able to get more specific info. I may have to pick myself up some fur and a fedora... -Commander Keen Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, I have heard that BYU has some extended supply of food to feed everyone on campus in the event of an emergency (I've heard that it's up to a week). I've also heard rumors that most of this emergency supply is stored under LaVell Edwards Stadium. Is there any truth to any parts of this? - Curious, but not hungry
ADear Curious, BYU does have enough food for all the students for three days. This isn't a special stash; rather, it's all the food that BYU Dining Services has on hand at any given time. And no, it's not stored in tunnels or under the stadium or anywhere exotic like that. For more information, see Board Question #42713, Board Question #26517, and Board Question #11292. (Just a gentle suggestion: try searching the archives next time.) —Laser Jock Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, Hi, I created a photobucket account just for you, because I wasn't successful at posting an image. My question: What is this?!?: http://i793.photobucket.com/al... It's almost exactly two inches long, from stinger to head. We've had a few of those on one of our trees during the last month. It's also big, scary, and gross, but sort of cool. - Lucy Pevensie
ADear Lucy Pevensie, That looks like a Japanese hornet. What's it doing in your backyard? Do you live in Asia? No? Then it's probably a European hornet with a different color variation than the one pictured on that article. -Ineffable ADear Lucy, I read this question last night, took a look at the picture, and shuddered. When I went to bed, I proceeded to have an extended nightmare where I was chased all around by these suckers, cornered in a church building, came within inches of being stung by a hundred giganto-psycho-hornet things, but was saved when they were finally blown away by the world's biggest leaf-blower! Anyway, I actually think the thing looks more like a Horntail wood wasp. The long thing at the end that looks like an enormous stinger is actually used to bore into the wood of trees. Sounds like they can get crazy big, as well. Anyway, I hope that satisfies your curiosity. Thanks for the nightmares. -Miss Scarlett, in the Conservatory Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, I have a couple of questions regarding job interviews and following up after the interview or after a resume is submitted. A few months ago I had a job interview here in Provo for an internship. I felt that the interview went very well and at the end, the interviewer told me that there was still a writing test I had to take and that they would call me to schedule the test. I didn't hear from them for a week or so and just figured that they determined that I wasn't the right candidate for the job and that was it. My wife and parents kept insisting that I call the guy and see what was happening. They said that maybe he lost my number or forgot to call. I figured that he said that he would call me back and that if I had been hired they would have made at least some effort to contact me. I didn't call because I knew that I submitted my number online and then gave him two copies of my resume and that if they didn't call then it was because I was not chosen (I guess my ego was a little bruised and I didn't want to keep bringing up the issue). When in the interviewing process should you call the interviewer back? If they tell you that they will call you, should you disregard that and call them instead? I also applied for an internship and had to e-mail my resume in. I did this and never got a reply or heard back from them, should I e-mail them back to ask if they got the resume? If you e-mail something these days is there really a chance that it didn't get there?) I have noticed that at a lot of jobs they have so many applicants that they can't call everyone back that didn't get the job or often that the response comes two or three months later. - Without an internship I'll be a super super senior
ASuperperson- If you have an interview where they say they will call, you can call and check up on the decision after a reasonable length of time, say about a week. If they say they'll have a decision to you by Monday, you can call them on Monday to check up on it. In any case, it's polite to send the interviewer a thank-you note, and if you do so, they will for sure have a way of contacting you. It's also fine to check in and see if they got your resume, whether you emailed it, mailed it, or turned it in in person. Things do get misplaced, and it's not a good idea to leave stuff like this up to chance. Basically, if you are relying entirely on the company to make sure everything is lined up for you to get that job, you're probably not going to get it. Call up once or twice to see if things are going smoothly with your application and hiring process. If nothing else, it'll give you an edge on the competition to have personal contact with the hiring manager. - Cuddlefish ADear Super, Dude. Follow-up for goodness' sake! People say they will call back, but they often don't. That doesn't mean that you've already been weeded out; it means they're human, and they don't remember you well or they don't have your phone number handy or any number of things. Emails do, in fact, get lost. They can wind up in junk-mail folders, or Outlook could be acting up that day, or if more than one person shares an email account it's very easy to lose track of who needs to see what and whether it's already been seen. It's happened to me loads of times. It sounds to me like you suffer from phone-phobia. I do, too. I've let a lot of opportunities slip by because I was too lazy or scared to use the phone. Finding a good job is a job in itself - you have to work hard at it. It will never, ever hurt to call back. Follow-through and persistence are things employers are looking for anyway. Good luck, Waldorf and Sauron Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, Why does rubbing glass together make a grinding noise? Is it bad for the glass? —Damasta
ADamasta- According to this site, it is the sound of the abrasive grains between the surfaces of the peices of glass. It can be detrimental to glass, as apparently this is how they grind glass to give it the convex and concave shapes used, for example, in lenses. - Cuddlefish Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, Several years ago, I was driving down 700 East in Provo, early in the morning. A police car pulled out behind me, raced down the road, and got so close to me that I couldn't see his headlights. Naturally, this made me a little nervous. But he didn't turn on his lights or siren, so I continued driving normally. When we reached the roundabout on Center Street, I made a right turn and so did he. Tired of having him ride me so closely, I pulled over. He immediately swerved around me and then sped off down the road, eventually running a red light. 1. How likely is it that he was responding to a call, but forgot to turn on his lights/siren? 2. Are there cases when a police officer legitimately needs to race around and run red lights but not turn on the lights or siren? 3. If I felt the police officer was just taking advantage of their position to contravene traffic laws and I decided to report them, who would I report them to and what information would they request of me? —Ticketless in Provo
ADear, We've covered this question before in the archives. Please see Board Question #48088 and Board Question #48167. Love, Waldorf and Sauron Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, Why has deviantart.com been down for so long? Or is it just my computer? -No other means of finding out
ALast Resort- It works for me. Maybe it's just your computer. - Cuddlefish ADear no other means, Allow me to introduce you to http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/. It does pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Sorry, but it's just you. -Yellow Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, I am in the process of buying a home. Unfortunately most of the homes in our price range are short sales. On one particular home the seller's agent explained to us that his client needs to be out of the home asap and that if we are serious about the home we could move in before closing and rent from the seller until closing. Our current lease is month to month so we could do this if we wanted to, but I'm hesitant. Pros: Seller knows we're committed. Assuming they have another home already they don't have to fully pay two mortgage payments. When the agent gets calls to show the property he can say that he has "uncooperative tenants" (us) and can't show the property. Thus we know that no one else is putting in offers. Cons: Deal falls through and we have to move out. Seller makes unusual demands as our "landlord". Have you heard of someone trying this? What are the potential pitfalls beyond what I have mentioned? - No one in particular
ADear one, Doing this forces you to give up (or almost give up) your most important bargaining weapon: the ability to "walk away" from the deal. Once you move in you are "invested" in the property. You went through all the effort to move in and you start to create an emotional attachment to the house and begin to think of it as "yours." Once that happens it will be game over for you when it comes time to close on the deal. You'll be much more willing to give in to demands that you would otherwise contend with simply because you're already in the house. No matter how hard you try to prevent it, the psychological attachment will occur. There's a reason that some car dealers will let you try a car for 24 hours. By the time that 24 hours is up you'll begin to think of it as your car and the dealer will be able to get more money out of you. While it would be nice to move in and finish the paperwork once you're in, it really is in your best interest to stay out. The seller will have even more incentive to close quickly on terms that favor you, because they'll be much more desperate to get the property off their hands. Once you're in and paying rent, well, their motivation to move quickly will disappear. That's my view anyway. I'll include a disclaimer: I've never purchased a house. -Curious Physics Minor Anoip- It sounds sketchy to me. It makes me feel like the agent is trying to push you around. I would most certainly not move into the house before I bought it. As CPM said, it really does take away your ability to walk away. You're free to discount my opinion, as I've never bought a house before, but it feels the same way a renter does when they try to push you into a contract for an apartment with no time to consider it. A house is a huge, huge investment that you will be paying off for decades. Take your time finding the right one, and don't let some horrible agent push you into something rash. - Cuddlefish Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, Through the summer I've worked on campus in a fairly labor intensive job and been able to come home at three and shower every day but with school coming up in the fall I have classes that start an hour after I get off work but would still like to be able to shower. So my question is aside from the athletic complex (RB, SFH) where on campus could a student find a shower to use? (if it makes in any easier I work out of the Brewster Building and know there are showers in there but they are not fit for human use) - hoping for hygine
ADear hoping for hygiene, There's a shower in the guys' bathroom in the basement of the Clyde, which is relatively close to the Brewster Building. I can't speak to its sanitation, but it may be your best bet. ~Ƥ. Ɗ. Kirĸe Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, The honor code states under the dress and grooming standards that "shoes should be worn in all public campus areas." Does this literally mean shoes or do you think it refers more to feet coverings? ie, are slippers/flip flops/sandals, etc technically against the honor code? -Cinderella
ACinderella- Unless it specifically states otherwise, flip flops, slippers, and sandals are all styles of shoes, and can therefore be worn on campus. - Cuddlefish Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, I, like so many other people my age, have several friends scattered across the country: Some in California, in Oregon, Florida, and quite a few in Utah, whom I won't be seeing any time soon because I'm staying home and working to pay for my mission. My life has been rather busy lately, what with working (maybe two jobs by the time this is posted; fingers crossed!) and helping out around the house. Nonetheless, I try to keep in touch with these friends, making sure to call or text them once a day, maybe once every two days. Nothing big; just saying hi, checking in. And they all have told me that they appreciate knowing that I'm on their minds, even if I can only talk for a minute or so, I like knowing that I've maybe made them smile a little. However, I'm always the one to initiate contact. If I am too busy, am unable to text or call these people for a week or two, they seem not to notice. Even though they seem appreciative when I do call, they don't seem to care when I don't. And they never call or text me to see if I'm all right... even though I've dropped hints - both consciously and, I'm sure, unconsciously, that I'm not all right, that I'm sliding deeper into my depression and am feeling overwhelmed and forgotten and alone. It's out of sight, out of mind with me; I'm forgettable, and forgotten. (Please forgive the rambling and melodramatic tone of the above paragraph. If I go back and edit it, I'll end up erasing the whole thing and writing off this whole question as a stupid idea.) My question is this, I guess: Is it unreasonable for me to expect some return on my emotional investment? Is the silence from the other end of the phone line indicative of something I'm not getting; that I'm annoying the other, that they'd rather I stop bothering them, but are too polite to tell me outright? Should I confront my friends with this question, at the risk of sounding clingy and whiny (which I'm sure I do here, but here I have the comforting shroud of anonymity to protect me)? If I'm so emotionally unstable that this stupid miscommunication issue is causing me stress, am I really mature enough to go on a mission in a few months? I'm sure there are other questions I need to ask, but I cannot articulate them. If you can see the questions inherent in the rambling, feel free to answer those ones, too. I just need help. I'm not sure what kind, or where from, or how. - ___________
ASunshine- I think your friends are not trying to cut you off; if they were, most likely they wouldn't answer your calls, emails, or texts in the first place. I think that what's happening is really just life: people get busy and things that are not right there in front of them get missed. I wouldn't worry about calling them on it, at least not like that. It's fine to say "Hey, how come I'm the one doing all the calling?" but it's less fine to say "Hey, you must hate me because you never talk to me anymore." It just sounds accusatory and melodramatic, and it won't accomplish anything but making your friends feel like jerks. I bet you're fine in terms of maturity, but if you're serious about being depressed and needing help, you should go see a good therapist and get that worked out before you go. Missions are hard, and there can be quite a bit of emotional bruising that happens on them. Half of the guys who left with my husband got sent home for depression. If you already have a problem with it, going on a mission with it unresolved may make it worse, not better. If you need someone to talk to, feel free to email me at cuddlefish at theboard.byu.edu - Cuddlefish ADear ___________, Good for you for trying to really keep up with your friends. I’ve been the person doing all of the holding together of the relationship before, and it’s hard work. Here’s the fact, though: unless you’re in a romantic relationship, I know no one who calls or texts each of their friends every day. I’m not saying you’re wrong or being clingy. I’m just saying that it isn’t exactly typical or expected. If you feel like that’s what you need to do for you and your relationships, great, but I don’t think you can expect your friends to do the same, especially now that there’s distance involved. Almost all people just kind of stink with distances. It doesn’t mean that they don’t care about you or that they’re annoyed with you or anything (they probably are really glad when you call!), but you just can’t expect other people to behave the way that you are. Embarrassing case in point: I moved out of Provo on August 11, and since then the only people in Provo I’ve had any kind of contact with (almost all of it was over an instant messenger, and not all of it was by any means substantial) are my cousin, a brand new friend I just made, Laser Jock, and Cognoscente. My roommates have only heard from me via email because my mom was freaking out about a griddle I left behind (oh hey, old friends!). No one else has heard from me. My sister’s family? Nope. My other cousins? Nada. I used to see a decent amount of some of the other Board writers, most notably Uffish Thought, and I haven't said one word to any of them, either, and they're freaking amazing! I hope they know that I care about them and that I’m interested in their lives. I simply have my own life and my own goings on, and even my nearest and dearest (and we’re talking my very, very best friends) don’t hear from me every day, or even every week, or sometimes even every month. This is the way a lot of us function. Don’t read anything into it beyond that. I do understand that you are in a vulnerable place right now, what with being alone at home while everyone else is scattered about doing a lot of different things. I imagine that you sort of feel as if your life is on pause, as if you’re just waiting for this mission thing to happen so you can get on with it, and then with the rest of your life. However, no one else’s life is paused. They are meeting new people, partying it up, learning new things, and all that good stuff. It doesn’t mean they are forgetting about you. It just means that you and them are in different places. The solution as I see it is for you to not allow your life to be paused, either. Make time for a social life in your current environment. I feel a little callous saying all of this, but man oh man if I haven’t done this to myself before and suffered way too much emotional pain because of it (freshman year STUNK). Don’t let yourself go there. You are not your old friends’ life anymore, and they shouldn’t still be yours. If you continue to make them your entire world, you're going to suffer a lot of heartache. Now then, whether you mean the term "depression" in a clinically significant way or in a has-the-blues, in-a-rut sort of way, here’s a note about expecting your friends to pick up on your hints: they stink at it. Your hints are never as big or obvious as you think they are, and people in general stink at picking up on them. Truth be told, most of us don’t want to know, and we don’t have practice in wanting to know. There are people, like me, who are really good at picking up on these cues, but we’re also really good at weirding out unsuspecting friends with questions like, “Are you REALLY okay?” because we imagine extra cues (hey psych nerds: if I were a test, I'd have high sensitivity and low specificity, heh heh!). We’re all just really bad about this stuff, but it doesn’t mean we don’t care. If you ever feel like you need someone to listen to you, you should pick your favorite person or couple of people, and be frank. Say that you’re down and you want to tell someone about it, and ask if that’s okay. They will almost always say it is. And if you have to tell someone again, tell them again. If you really are depressed, find another person with a mood disorder to chat with sometimes. Let’s face it: it’s just more comfortable that way. All my best goes out to you, especially in regards to your upcoming mission. - The Black Sheep ADear underscores, I'm not going to say anything different from what the ladies above have said, but I just wanted to re-emphasize that your friends sound, well, completely normal. I'm infamous for drifting out of touch, even with people I really care about. The fact that I wrote Sauron every week during his mission was a miracle. Most relationships that aren't sealed in the temple end up fading at some point anyway; long distance just speeds up the process. And I don't want you to fret about this, but honestly I think I would get a little annoyed if a friend tried to make contact every day just for contact's sake, not to mention if a friend often intimated that I wasn't pulling my weight. Yes, that reads a little needy to me, but I get that you're at a time in life when you need some love and support. If you're depressed and needy and emotionally imbalanced, go talk to someone. Your bishop at least, then your parents, then a good friend or two with whom you can lay it all on the table. As Sheep said, people just don't pick up hints. Be open and honest with yourself and with them. And, as always, please take your burdens to the Lord. With love, Waldorf and Sauron Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, Is there any way to get an RSS feed of the title bars? The title bar archives is nice, but I don't see a way to get an RSS feed of it. Nay, Contrary (I don't always read the board every day)
ADear Nay, Contrary, Sorry, there's currently no such RSS feed. -Yellow Back to top QO Illuftrious 100 Hour Board, Whose Knowledge furpaffes that of Kings, Whose Google Skillz are the Stuff of Legend, I afk that thou wouldft see fit To anfwer my humble Queftion. I recently received a laptop computer - a Dell Inspiron 1545, to be precise - and have mostly loved it, except one small problem. Being a habitual conlanger, I often need to input non-English characters into text - mostly accented vowels. On previous computers, I have done this by using the Unicode numbers: Alt+0235 on the number pad, for example, yields the character 'ë'. However, the 1545 does not have a number pad, nor a method to convert regular keys to a number pad by use of the Fn key. The old standby of Ctrl+:, 'e' works, but only in Word. I'm resorting currently to opening Word, typing the special character (or searching through the Special Characters window for it), and copy-pasting into whichever program I'm using (e.g., Pidgin, Chrome). Is there any easier method by which I might type my special characters? Thanks for your help! - Toni
ADear Toni, I suggest you add a foreign keyboard layout. It's quite easy in Windows. Open the Control Panel and go to "Regional and Language Options." (If you're using category view, click on "Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options" and then pick the "Regional and Language Options" icon.) Click the "Languages" tab, and then the "Details" button. Click the "Settings" tab in the window that opens, and click the "Add" button. Click the "Input language" drop-down menu and you can add whatever language you wish. Click "OK" on all of the dialogs. Now you can switch to that keyboard layout whenever you need to type in another language. The default to switch between layouts is the left Alt key + Shift, but you can change that if you'd like. (It's in the same place where you added another keyboard layout—click on "Key Settings.") I've only used the Spanish layout, but going off of that these layouts usually make it quite easy to input all the normal foreign characters. (For instance, in the Spanish layout, if you want to do an accented vowel you just hit the apostrophe key first and then the vowel, and it spits out the accented character: é.) You'd have to figure out how exactly to do your languages' characters, but after that it would be simple. You actually do have another option: I checked with someone I know who has the same model of laptop as you, and they said that there actually is a number pad of sorts, built in to the normal keyboard and accessible using the Fn (Function) key. I have the same thing on my Dell laptop, and I've used it from time to time. You just hit Alt, same as always, then Fn + the keys with the appropriate numbers on them (in blue). For instance, Alt + Fn + mjij (0151) would give you an em dash. So if you want to memorize individual characters that way, you can keep doing what you've been doing. I think the keyboard layouot idea would be easier, though. Good luck! —Laser Jock Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, Apropos to an earlier question... what were the underlying rules regarding older English capitalization, circa 18th century, as seen, for example, in the writing of several important American documents, such as the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence? It all seems a bit random, as if applying to personal aesthetic, although it seems to be mostly Important Nouns and their Accompanying Adjectives... except there are a few verbs, as well, from time to time. Can anyone shed some light on this? Thank you! - Toni
ADear Toni, I don't believe that the capitalization is the way it is in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution because they didn't know any better. No doubt that the rules of grammar and format were less standardized then than they are today, but they definitely existed. The Founding Fathers broke them for a purpose. For example, Evelina, which was released in 1778, abides by the same rules for capitalization as today. On the other hand The Old English Baron, released the same year as Evelina, uses capitalization to add poetic emphasis. Unconventional capitalization as a rhetorical device was common in the writings of the 18th century. It was a favorite of Emily Dickinson (although she's not a contemporary of the documents you referenced, she would've been taught by books and teachers that were). A whole new level of significance is placed on a concept when it is given the same typographical designation as a name, a title, or even that of Deity. This is especially helpful in a statement as important as:
"Rights" is capitalized because Congress is saying unalienable rights are a higher authority than the Crown; Life, Liberty, Happiness- these things mean more than whatever King George says to the contrary. "Governments" is capitalized to show that governments are a body, an entity ("a leviathan" to use Thomas Hobbes' words) endowed with power to the purpose of fulfilling its responsibilities. "Right of the People" sounds like a law, right? Or at least a treatise? Exactly. They are saying that the provisions of this unwritten law, the law of the Right of the People, must be reverenced. Man, I love history. We do the same thing today but you don't notice it because we've even regulated rhetorical emphasis. In this response I capitalized the following words which aren't proper nouns in the dictionary but have become so through standardization of use: Founding, Fathers, Deity, Crown. It's not so random if you think of it that way. -Ineffable ADear Toni, I believe the capitalization in such documents would roughly correspond to our usage of italics to provide emphasis in modern writing. Italics don't stand out nearly as much in hand-written documents, so other measures are necessary. -Yellow Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, I am trying to find some research, or at least notable or relatively reputable philosophical writing, on the benefits of charitable giving to society. However, I am having an uncharacteristically hard time finding anything other than sociologists complaining about how everybody only does it for their own good. Have any of you seen any relevant research before? Do you know of any specific sources that might work particularly well? Sincerely, Godwin's Paralegal
ADear Godwin's Paralegal, Arthur C. Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, gave a forum address about charitable giving that may be relevant. The BYU Magazine adaptation of that is available here. His bio on the AEI website contains links to four years or so of his published articles (click "List All" under "Articles and Commentary"), and some of them may be useful. His Fall 2007 article "Does Giving Make Us Prosperous?" in the Journal of Economics and Finance shows economic benefits from charity, and I understand some of his others show (in more depth than his forum address) that charity brings psychological benefits. His books might also be of interest, and of course you can mine his lists of references in either books or articles for further reading material. Good luck in your further research! ~Ƥ. Ɗ. Kirĸe Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, I saw the ever-popular John Schmidt rendition of Vida la Vida/Romeo and Juliet on piano, and I was curious: What kind of copyright restrictions would he have to work with? To record and market that song, would he have to get permission from the artists themselves? - Curiosity killed the cat...but satisfaction brought it back
ADear Cat, Yes, he'd have to get permission from the songwriters (or at least their publishers) for recording rights. But performance rights are much easier - he's free to perform covers of songs by other songwriters without permission because of a complicated system that involves the venue paying subscription fees to major songwriting organizations like ASCAP. Basically, the rights are included in your ticket price. But he'd need permission to even distribute a recording of that part of the live show. Love, Waldorf and Sauron ADear Curiosity, A) It's "Love Story" by Taylor Swift, not "Romeo and Juliet." B) It's Jon Schmidt, not John. The song will be on his next CD. C) It's "Viva la Vida" (which literally means "Live the Life"), not "Vida la Vida" (which literally means "Life the Life"). D) I don't hate you, though. Just spreading correct information. -Yellow Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, American Heritage or one of the other class combos (ie. Pl Sc and Econ)? Which is the lesser of two evils? - Analytic
ADear Analytic, I've usually heard of people taking a two-class replacement for American Heritage because they were going into a related major anyway (e.g., economics or political science). Or, I suppose, if you're interested in the two classes. Otherwise, I don't think the extra credits are worth it. To get a better experience with American Heritage: try the honors section. At least when I took it, it was much, much better than the horror stories I heard from my friends in a regular section. There was less busywork and it was more interesting. —Laser Jock ADear Analytic, Depends. If you like history and learning about the political, social, religious, etc., context of historical time periods, then American Heritage will not actually be the worst class ever. Like Laser Jock said, if you are going into some major that requires Political Science or Economics anyway, you may as well take those. Furthermore, if you, like me, have high school A.P. credit for half of American Heritage, then you can choose between American Heritage or something else, depending on what you enjoy. -Mico ADear Analytic, I've never taken (and never will - AP credit) any of the above, but it seems like the horror stories about Econ 110 are proportionally about as common as those from American Heritage, and of course the Econ route adds on the whole Pl Sc class, which is going to take time even if it's easy. Hence in your position I'd go for American Heritage if my major didn't require Econ or Pl Sc or the two-class version if Econ was required. If Pl Sc is required (but not Econ) it's about even. I know Econ is required for at least one slightly random major (Chemical Engineering) so be sure and check for your major even if it seems improbable. ~Ƥ. Ɗ. Kirĸe Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, My husband is wondering - if you start out skinny, sleep on your stomach with a cube cut out of your bed, and then get really fat, will your belly fat form and stay in the shape of a cube? -krebscout
ADear krebscout, Nope. First off, you would need a lot of belly fat before there would be enough to fill up your bed cube. Before that, the layers of skin and muscle do a pretty nice job of containing your belly fat where it's geographically supposed to be. The fat is packaged in thin, membrane-bound compartments that are attached to each other and to the cavities of your body (that's why your fat doesn't slide down to your feet when you stand up). The little sacs of fat cells wouldn't be able to permanently change their shape based on external influence when all your internal mechanisms are designed to keep them tightly bound up and where they are supposed to be. Second, fat at body temperature and even room temperature is liquid. Have you ever seen the bags they fill during liposuction procedures? shudder Definitely liquid. So even if your excess fat were to form into fun and interesting shapes, there is no way that it would remain that way for any length of time. - Rating Pending (who really, really wanted to put in a link to a video of either two fat kids doing the truffle shuffle in slow motion, or of a slow motion punch to a fat person's stomach, but would hate to offend or terrify. The point: belly fat in slow motion is both fluid and disturbing) Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, Why do we say, "in Utah," and not, "at Utah"? - newspeak
ADear More Good, This is my logic. You are at a lake when you stand on the perimeter and in a lake when you are submerged, even partially, in it. You are at a corral when you walk around the fence and in a corral when you are within it. Utah as an entity includes airspace, mountains, lakes, and rivers and has authority to regulate all of them. It is a large expanse of land covering 84,904 sq. mi. By the lake example, you are submerged in Utah, and by the corral example, you are inside the border. Either way, I cannot think of an instance where "at Utah" would be more accurate than "in Utah," but that's just me. -Ineffable Back to top QDear 100 Hour Board, (This is one of those relationship ones, sorry. But I'm so devastated, I don't know what to do. I don't know where to turn. I need help. My boyfriend and I dated for 5 years. I set my future around him, i love him. About six months ago we started to fight all the time, he would always invite this other girl to go on his guy's nights out. I would get jealous. I feel so bad for being jealous. Anyways we broke up and now 3 months later he's dating her. He has all these pictures of him and her on facebook. And it kills me. I need to talk to someone, i want to see a counselor but I can't cause byu's counseling doesn't start for a week, I need help now, i'm so hurt. I looked all over the internet for some sort of hotline the only ones i could find were teen pregnancy and suicide. I'm not either of those, i just i want someone to talk to, i live alone and its so hard without him all of the sudden. My next question, i truly i love him, should i keep trying to get him back, he keeps hanging out with me, and we flirt like crazy. Or should i let him go. While we dated he treated me like an angel, showered me in love. I'm afraid I ruined it with my jealousy. I'm afriade I drove him right to that girl. But on the other hand he would take her on trips to vegas and not invite me, saying I couldn't keep up (they are both horse back riders, i can't ride) But I always told him I wanted to learn. I feel so broken. Is he jerk, was he trying to meet other girls while he was dating me. Its such a long story I can't tell it all, it would kill the board lol. Please help me, I'm so utterly sad and alone. Who can I talk to. If you think i should try and get him back, how should i do it. If you think I shouldn't, then how do i get over him. ) - (wish i had someone else's life)
ADear Friend, I hope that by the time this posts, you're already feeling much better. You may have had to wait a week to talk to BYU counseling, but we're not much better at a wait of about four days. And so I encourage you, if you're still feeling this way, to go to them anyway. They're pros and we're not. Any time you need to talk to someone RIGHT NOW, have you thought about all the people who love you that you could turn to? Any friends, siblings, parents, aunts, cousins, former roommates, home/visiting teachers, or Relief Society presidents? Have you popped onto Facebook to see who might be online in the middle of the night? Or even something like Omegle? I don't necessarily endorse talking to a complete stranger about your deepest darkest personal problems, but it's a possibility. Or you could talk to me. I'm a stranger, too, but I'm a nice one. Just send me an email at waldorfandsauron at theboard dot byu dot edu, which as of now forwards to my personal email account, and we'll find a way to instant message. I'm online pretty often between the hours of six a.m. and eleven p.m. As for the other part of your question: you already know that you need to let go. Nobody in a healthy relationship should behave the way he did, inviting other girls on vacation while deliberately excluding you. That's a big sign that his interests lie elsewhere. He's a cad. So let's get going with your life. They say that living well is the best revenge, right? Not that we're seeking revenge here exactly, but living well will help you enormously. So, here's our Plan For Getting You Over This Jerk in One Month From Now: Get active. It's no secret that exercise makes you feel better physically and mentally, and a healthier, leaner body will amplify your self-confidence. 30 minutes a day, six days a week for one month. (If you're already rail-thin and an exercise buff, you can probably ignore this.) Get cookin'. Don't binge on ice cream, chocolate, and french fries. Just like above, feeling and looking better physically will do wonders for you. So go to the farmer's market and buy a truckload of fresh fruits and vegetables every week, get some whole grain goods and fresh meat and cheese from Buy Low, and cook for yourself for one month. Avoiding processed foods and eating out will save you money, too. Get pretty. Now with the money you just saved on groceries, go get yourself a set of whitening strips for your teeth, a really good haircut, and/or some new clothes. Get a new love interest. Works every time. Get perspective. Go to the temple every Wednesday for the next month. Also do one substantial, non-temple-related act of service every week. Throw yourself into your calling at church. Read your scriptures and pray every single day. Don't be afraid to ask for a blessing. Rely on Christ, and let Him lighten your burdens. Much love, Waldorf (and Sauron) ADear (wish i had someone else's life), I am so, so sorry that you are having such a hard time right now. My heart goes out to you. I think Waldorf's list is brilliant (and you can also email me, which will forward right to my personal address, and I'm only online all the time). I just had a couple notes. I know that right now you feel physical pain, like something is really missing. And there's no way to make that feel better right now. I know it feels like it's swallowing you, every second of every day. But soon it will go away for a few seconds here and there between gulps, and then a few minutes, and then a few hours. And then there will be the first day where it doesn't hurt at all. It's out there, and it's coming this way. All you have to do is make it. I just say this as a little reminder. My one recommendation: a clean break. In situations like yours, where it hurts this bad, I just don't think it's possible to get over it while the other person is staring you in the face. Don't talk to him. Don't email him. Try not to hang out with him. I know that you feel like you just can't help it, like you just need him, even just to talk to him just this one more time, but if you keep doing it you're going to turn around much too long from now and realize that you're just where you were in the first place. And this is not a good place. Good luck, and know there are a whole bunch of strangers out here thinking of you. - The Black Sheep |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||